Simon Clark - The Fall

He took a deep breath, blinked.

Twenty paces from him was the tour bus.

Carswell’s Thunder Child had made its last valiant charge. It lay on its side. The barrels of wood alcohol lay all around it in a tumbled heap. Some had shattered; pools of violet liquid lay in the snow.

Sam sneezed. To his astonishment a crimson spray filled the air.

He touched his nose. It had a flattened, rounded feel to it, like a mushroom.

‘Sam!’ Lee shouted. ‘We’d appreciate a hand if you’re up to it.’

Lee fired a rifle at one of the attackers who ran from the trees, an axe gripped in his two hands.

The man’s face disappeared in a splash of crimson.

Sam felt at least half the bones in his body were broken.

His teeth were gone. One eye was nearly closed.

He must have been thrown clean out of the bus when it hit one of the trees.

Nevertheless, he heaved himself to his knees, then from his knees to his feet.

Pains shot from head to toe.

Only one arm worked; the other hung limply, terminating in a bloody cluster of fingers.

With his single functioning hand he pulled a handgun from his pocket and blasted a pair of Bluebeards. Carswell was right about the killing power of the ammunition. The two went down in mid stride.

‘Thank God you’re back with us,’ Lee shouted. ‘They’re swarming out of the woods like ants!’

‘Lee… you’ve got to… set fire to the bus.’ Sam had to work the words through his broken mouth. ‘We’ll hold them back here.’ He nodded at Ryan, who’d just decapitated another axe-man with a single shotgun blast.

‘Okay, then I’ll come back here and help.’

‘No, you won’t, Lee. Once it’s burning get out of here.’

The smell of neat wood alcohol filled the gorge. Although it was evaporating slowly, the rock faces were containing the vapour as if it were a liquid. If anything, the cold air brought by the snowfall pressed it down from above, too.

A Bluebeard ran from the trees at Sam.

Sam dropped him with a single shot in the stomach. He glanced back to see Lee light the fuse of a grenade, then toss the miniature bomb into the bus.

Lee clearly hoped he would have chance to escape the blast before the grenade exploded.

But the burning fuse was enough by itself to ignite those hundreds of gallons of spilt alcohol.

That didn’t so much burn as explode.

One moment the world was white with snow. The next it was a shimmering blue.

A fireball ripped from the bus.

And it did not stop.

It just kept on coming. Like a moving wall of flame.

Sam glimpsed Lee running out of the fireball, his hair on fire.

‘Run!’ Sam yelled to Ryan.

Instinct kicked in.

Sam turned and ran away from the bus, deeper into the gorge.

He didn’t feel the pain any more.

He flung himself under the cover of the trees. Ahead of him he saw the Bluebeards running too. They were throwing away their swords, spears, axes.

Sam looked back. That wall of flame wasn’t stopping. It advanced remorselessly through the undergrowth, popping, snapping, firing out sparks like machine-gun bullets.

Sam’s smashed ribs barely allowed him to breathe; even so, he ran faster.

Now he heard the explosions of detonating grenades.

He jumped over a stream.

A rainbow sheen on the water told him that more wood alcohol floated there.

A second later the blue flames rushed along that, too. Now it seemed as if the whole wood was ablaze.

A man ran towards him. Sam didn’t notice the face, only the wickedly curving knife. Sam fired point-blank into the chest. The man went down like a sack of potatoes, eyes bulging.

Just for a moment he glimpsed Ryan Keith. He was using the shotgun as a club and was trading blows with a massive man in an iron helmet.

Ryan’s forehead had been split open by a sword blow.

Blood streamed down his face, but still his two eyes blazed like twin silver balls. Sheer rage drove him on.

Sam turned, intending to help. But with another tremendous roar like thunder, a wall of fire ran between him and Ryan, obliterating the two men as they fought.

Now the flames seemed to be all around him. The heat was so intense that snow melted in seconds to reveal black earth. Sap bubbled from tree trunks. Then they, too, flashed into flame until the wood became a mass of pillars of fire.

He backtracked until the heat grew too intense, then he cut along a different path. Fires raged on either side. The blood that soaked his shoulder began to steam. His skin smarted; his eyes watered. Sparks landed on his clothes and hair.

Brushing them off with his one good hand, he ran again towards the mouth of the gorge.

Ahead was a mound about as high as his shoulder. He ran up it in order to get a better idea of the lie of the land.

From there he saw he was surrounded by a sea of fire.

He screwed his eyes against the incandescent flare. With difficulty, he could just see over the burning scrub to where the mouth of the gorge lay, perhaps a hundred paces away.

The heat had driven Casterton’s defenders back but they were still holding a steady line, preventing the Bluebeards’ escape.

And now Sam could see the Bluebeards. Rather than burn in the gorge or be gunned down by the soldiers they were running into the time-gate.

For a moment Sam watched them being funnelled from this world of 1865 back to God knew when.

So it really was over. The last of the surviving Bluebeards ran with their hands over their burning hair into the gate.

Sam held up a hand to protect his own face from the stinging heat as the flames crept closer to him.

In theory, once the fires had died down the Bluebeards would be able to return, but he knew that somehow Rolle would seal the gate shut for ever. Maybe the soldiers could…

But, no. That didn’t matter now. That was a problem for someone else to solve.

Now the flames were like a rising tide that encircled the mound. His cool island in a burning sea.

Sam realised he could stay put and slowly roast.

Or he could make one last dash through the burning bushes to the mouth of the gorge.

You never know , he told himself, I might make it. The miracles have been coming thick and fast today.

Strangely, he felt a grin come to his face as he took a deep breath.

So this was it. All the roads of his lifetime converged on this single moment. Maybe this was why he’d survived that lightning strike after all.

He pushed his face into the crook of his raised arm. And ran.

The flames enveloped him. He’d entered a world full of light…

There was no pain.

Sam Baker opened his eyes to find himself in the amphitheatre.

Seated beside him on the wooden bench was Zita, dressed once more in tiger-skin leggings.

At the other side of him, Sue and Lee were back in their old Stan Laurel and Dracula costumes. Lee ran his fingers through his hair as if unable to bring himself to believe that not only was it still there, it wasn’t blazing like a Roman candle.

Nicole had vanished. Sam knew she was with the Liminals now and off the time-travel trail. Ryan Keith was gone, too. The last Sam had seen of him he’d been slugging it out with a big guy in an iron helmet. Clearly he hadn’t made it.

For a moment or two, the accidental time travellers sat dazed after the sudden time-jump.

Below them, at the bottom of the amphitheatre, Jud Campbell slipped the pin into his shirt collar, while his gold waistcoat looked as pristine as the first time Sam had set eyes on it.

Meanwhile, Sam was still a good few seconds away from actually being able to frame the question: which year is this now?