Simon Clark - The Fall

But Thunder Child ’s brave charge had been a suicide mission. Sam, driving along the track to face his own destiny, hoped that Carswell’s choice of name for his ‘warship’ hadn’t been some kind of dark omen.

Sam looked up at the foreboding gathering of storm clouds. Then he switched on the wipers as the snow began to fall heavily once more.

Mid-morning, Christmas Day, 1865

The vehicles formed a line in the snow.

Each a yard from its neighbour, they stood side by side, engines idling, the noses of the cars, bus and van facing forward. It was like the starting line of a cross-country race.

Waiting.

The snow blew in flurries. Sometimes the bottleneck of the pass between river and cliff was clear, the next obliterated in swirling white flakes.

Sam’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. A bitter flavour like aspirin not swallowed quickly enough flooded his mouth.

Behind him sat the two soldiers, rifles at the ready. The engine purred, catlike.

Sam could smell the exhaust fumes.

The Bluebeards were perhaps still a couple of minutes away from the bottleneck. They were undisciplined, little more than a mob of bandits and murderers, but they were smart enough not to exhaust themselves running towards their adversaries yet. They slogged through the snow at a steady pace, their axes, swords, spears at the ready.

They had numerical superiority. But Sam Baker’s people had guns, and motorised vehicles that were fast – and lethal weapons in their own right.

And somewhere behind the line of vehicles the 40 or so cavalrymen were forming up. And behind them were the 90 foot soldiers, already fixing bayonets to rifles, checking grenade fuses.

No-one spoke.

They were waiting for the Bluebeards to become a compact mass of men as they entered the bottleneck.

Sam glanced at his watch. The second hand swept by with agonising slowness.

Waiting.

His jaw muscles ached as he clenched his teeth.

What if that dizzying swirl of the fall through time came at that moment? What if he found himself sitting next to Zita with the rest of the surviving time travellers, watching Jud slip the pin into his collar, with the vehicles just as they had been in the car park?

It could happen at any moment. Surely it was long overdue.

Then the remaining natives of 1865 Casterton would have to fight this battle alone.

Once more Sam thought about his theory – that strange theory, as it had seemed at the time. That perhaps all this was part of a greater plan by some third party. Maybe those scientists of a distant future had deliberately plucked a mixed group of civilians from the amphitheatre of 1999 and transported them back to fight this battle. A desperate act by desperate human beings.

At that moment the snowfall eased off to nothing more than a few individual flakes. And that was the instant the Bluebeards reached the bottleneck some two hundred yards ahead of the line of waiting cars.

Sam sounded the Range Rover’s horn in one long blast. At either side of him the engines revved, exhaust-smoke billowing.

Slowly the steel cavalry of cars, van and bus moved forward.

Slowly, slowly does it.

A unified line of cars. A single unbroken line. Moving slowly across the snow.

All along the line, drivers hit light switches. Headlamps blazed dazzlingly against the snow.

Sam sounded the horn again.

Then he reached across and hit the strips of metal that formed the triggers of the rocket launchers.

With a loud swishing sound the rockets flashed from their pods at either side of the car, engulfing it in smoke.

Sam watched the exhaust flames of the rockets shoot like red sparks towards the enemy line in front of him.

He counted the rockets.

One, two away.

Three, four, five, six.

Not bad, Mr Carswell. Only two duds.

He glanced to his right.

Thunder Child fired the rockets from her remaining ‘wing’. Streaks of smoke drew the trajectory line of the rockets. Somewhere ahead they were exploding in the faces of the barbarians. More blood would be speckling the snow.

To his left, the roof-mounted cannon of the ice-cream van fired its single shot. The sound of the explosion rolled along the cliff wall like thunder.

Sam sounded the horn again in a long blast.

The Bluebeards were perhaps a hundred yards away, a dark raggedy line spiky with spears.

Now Sam accelerated, taking the car up to 40 miles an hour. Beside him the other cars, matching his speed, stayed in formation.

A tight line rushing across the snow to hit the flesh-and-bone mass of Barbarians head on.

Ahead of the group of men and women lay the time-gate. Nicole put her arm round Sue as they rested before entering the world of 1865. It was a gesture of reassurance as well as affection. They’d gone through a lot together over the last few months. Nicole was determined to see her safely back with Lee.

Here there was no snow. It was a cool, damp place, with trees and grass and sluggish streams.

All around her the women and children they’d released not an hour or so before sat exhaustedly on the ground. They’d have had precious little sleep in the last three days. The women especially.

William stood at Nicole’s side.

From the slot in his jacket Bullwitt looked out with his brown bulging eyes. ‘There it is,’ he said in his nasal voice. ‘The doorway back to 1865.’

‘The way to home and safety,’ William said, pleased. ‘Unless we happen to run into the Bluebeards face to face.’

‘The Bluebeards have embarked on another of their raids.’

‘I know, but what if something makes them turn around and come back bleeding home. Have you thought of that?’

The speedometer needle hovered on 40. Snow spurted from either side of the tyres like the V-shaped spray of a speedboat.

At either side of Sam the vehicles held their line. A near-as-damn-it solid wall of steel rolling along the pass towards the line of barbarians.

Sam gritted his teeth. ‘Hold on,’ he said to the men in the back. ‘We’re going to hit them any second now.’

The windscreen wipers batted away the snow. Headlamps blazed.

The drivers began laying into their horns, sending an automotive battle cry before them – from the high bleating of the Fiat’s horn down to the bull-like bellow of the bus.

Suddenly the blurred dark line ahead resolved itself into sharp focus as the speed annihilated the open ground between the vehicles and the Bluebeards.

Now Sam could see faces.

He could see the whites of their eyes, as the saying went. He stared into the faces of brutalised and brutal men. Their ferocious glares raked the oncoming vehicles.

Then the cars slammed into the oncoming line of warriors.

Sam wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Bodies crashed over the bonnet and up over the roof.

The sound was incredible.

He could hear the screams and shouting of the Bluebeards above the roar of the engines.

As well as screams of pain there were screams of bloodlust and fury too.

The wipers slashed at the snow on the now-cracked windscreen.

The snow had turned pink.

A face slammed against the glass, leaving a great sunburst of red. The wipers slashed at it, the whispery sound of the blades giving way to a wet slip-slop sound.

Sam hit the screen-wash.

Still the momentum of the car carried them on deeper into the pack of men in front of them.

The ‘wings’ at either side of the car were sheared off the moment they hit the solid bodies.

And still the car moved on.