The Eternal War (21 page)

‘GO AWAY!’ Sal screamed.

A crash against the front door and Liam saw a sliver of light in the middle of the door’s oak panel.

That’ll not hold for long.

Stairs. He remembered there was a staircase in this hallway. Up to the first floor.

‘Over there – the stairs, we need to go up!’

‘Are you quite mad, sir?’ snarled Lincoln. ‘We shall be trapped with nowhere to go!’

‘Doesn’t matter – Bob will be back soon. He’ll sort them out.’

‘He is but one man! There sounds like no less than an army of men out there!’

‘They’re
not human
,’ said Sal again.

The front door shuddered violently under the impact of another heavy blow and a second blood-red line of a crack joined the first. Not a hairline thread this time but a ragged gash.

‘Upstairs! Now! It’s our only chance!’

‘OK … yes … come on!’ Sal nodded quickly.

‘Damn you, sir! I will not run like a yard dog. Find me a weapon and I shall –’

‘For cryin’ out loud,’ snapped Liam, ‘what is it with you? Do you
want
to die?’

Lincoln’s face was thunder. ‘I am no coward, sir! I shall stand and fight!’

‘Well, I am,’ said Sal. ‘So can we go … 
please
?’

They suddenly heard the clatter of falling grit on the floor beside their feet. They turned to look where it had come from to see what appeared to be a jagged red eye on the plaster wall beside the kitchen door.

‘Wuh?’

It blinked. Or, more precisely, it
flickered
.

‘’Tis a hole,’ said Lincoln.

A small fist punched through the plasterboard and broke off a shard of plaster, which crumbled to the floor with a hiss of cascading powder and grit. Another small dull ‘eye’ of dusk red appeared beside it. And another.

‘Oh Jay-zus wept! They’re breaking up the bleedin’ wall!’

Lincoln pursed his lips. ‘Perhaps then, we should … as you suggested …?’

‘Run? Come on!’

The kitchen door bulged and cracked from a heavy blow and the grandfather clock lurched with a tuneless jangle of chimes. The three of them scrambled down the hall – past the front door, yielding again under yet another hammer blow. A strip of wood clattered to the floor and through the fresh gap Liam thought he caught a glimpse of something that resembled a face, wide and flat, with pinhole-small black eyes, and a hole – was it … a
hole
?
–
for a nose.

What are these things? … Demons?

‘Up! UP!’ he screamed at Sal and Lincoln. ‘GO UP!’

The front door was looking horribly fragile now, a spiderweb of cracks and gashes that flickered and widened with each shuddering blow.

Liam followed them up the wooden stairs, stumbling more than once in the darkness. Sal was waiting for him on the landing at the top. ‘Which way, Liam?
Which way?
’

‘Either!
Just go!
’

Behind him – down the stairs – he heard a splintering crack, either the kitchen or the front door finally giving way. He could hear Sal still there in front of him, hopping uncertainly from one foot to the other, Lincoln beside her, panting heavily.

‘
GO!
’ Liam screamed.

Sal fumbled along the dark landing, hands patting and feeling the wall in front of her for a door to open.

Liam heard the grandfather clock collapse on to the floor, filling the house with a jangling chime.

They’re through!

He turned away from the stairs as he heard feet, scratching – claws? – on the wooden floor and a bizarre
humming
. Almost like human voices, but humming as if the things down there – whatever they were – were somehow gagged.

He turned and started in the dark, patting the damp peeling walls with his hands to feel his way. ‘Sal!’ he hissed.

He realized too late that she and Lincoln had turned right at the top of the stairs, and he’d gone left. The darkness was filled with the sound of feet scrambling up the stairs behind him, scratching and that unsettling humming sound, but more like a gagged snarl now than a humming.

His hands found a recess, a doorframe and finally a handle. He grabbed it with both hands, pushed the door open and was met with the faintest ruddy bloom of light from the very last blush of dusk. It seeped in through a small square dusty attic window.

Liam shut the door behind him, treading on boxes of soft things, perhaps toys, or clothes. The room must have been used for storage; the roof was low, with a thick wooden beam running across. He ran across to the tiny window, ducking under the beam, to fiddle with the latch to open it. Behind him he heard the tap and scrape of feet and claws, muted snarling and laboured breathing, then the crash of a fist on a door, the splintering crack of old dry wood giving way.

And then his blood chilled. He heard Sal scream, muffled by a door further down the landing. He realized as he fumbled with the latch of the small window that their pursuers had chosen to follow Sal and Lincoln and not him.

Crashing and splintering again. The things were ferociously hammering on it, tearing Sal’s door to pieces. Liam hesitated. He’d planned to open the tiny window and squeeze himself through, perhaps to hide outside on the shingle roof. But …

Sal screamed again.

But those things were going to get her.

Liam cursed under his breath. ‘Ahh … Jay-zus …!’

His hands fumbled for something,
anything
, to use as a weapon, frantically patting the floor around him while he listened to the struggle down the hallway: Lincoln bellowing curses, Sal screaming, horrible mewing sounds from those creatures, things being knocked over, blows being landed, the scrape and thud of feet on boards.

‘Come on! … 
Come on!
’ he hissed. He heard Sal desperately pleading, Lincoln’s baritone voice too … an enraged roar. The sound of a violent struggle. He had to admit it – Lincoln had mettle. That obnoxious loud-mouthed long-limbed idiot sounded like he was putting up a fight with just his bare fists. Going down, fighting with just his bare fists.

Liam’s fingers touched a pole of some sort. He felt his way down it to a thicket of coarse fibres. A brush of some kind.

Ah, stuff it … good enough.

He picked it up and charged across the small attic room towards the doorway. Failing to remember the low beam.

Failing to duck.

CHAPTER 37

2001, New York

Colonel Devereau and Sergeant Freeman crouched down and shone their flashlights under the half-open corrugated-iron shutter door into the dark space beyond.

‘This is it?’ he said. He sounded disappointed. ‘This is your time machine?’

By the subdued tone of his voice, Maddy wondered whether he actually really
had
wanted to believe what she’d told him was for real. It would make persuading him, seeking his help, a great deal easier if he did.

She knelt down and looked inside. The archway appeared to be in a lot better shape than it had yesterday. Becks must have spent the night fixing things up; she’d swept away the fallen bricks and mortar, straightened up the shelves that had collapsed, tidied the general mess inside. Apart from the gaping crack running across their floor and the jagged holes in the roof it almost looked as normal, except, that is, for the fact that it was utterly dark.

‘We have no power,’ said Maddy. ‘Our generator was totally trashed when we, uh,
landed
here.’

Devereau shoved the shutter a little higher and it clacked noisily. The men of his platoon ducked inside and another half a dozen torches snapped on and began sweeping the archway, picking out details here and there.

‘Negative, Madelaine,’ said Becks. ‘The generator works. I was able to effect a temporary repair. I shall go and switch it on.’

Becks stepped inside and made her way briskly towards the sliding door leading into the back room. She was lost in the darkness.

‘Hey! Miss!’ snapped Sergeant Freeman, swinging his carbine off his shoulder. ‘Where ’n hell you think you’re goin’?’

Becks turned to look at him as torchlight danced across her face. Quite calmly: ‘To turn the power on, of course.’

‘It’s through that far door,’ said Maddy. ‘There’s a storage room back there. It’s where our generator is.’

Devereau shrugged. They’d walked once round this odd construction. It reminded him of a termite mound: a large badly put-together hummock made entirely of crumbling bricks. There was presumably no place inside for this other girl – Becks – to run or hide. ‘Better follow her back there, Sergeant,’ he said to Freeman.

Both headed through the opening to the back room and a moment later Maddy sighed with relief at the reassuring sound of the generator chugging to life.

The archway’s strip lights flickered then winked on in unison.

Devereau cursed. He reached out towards the shutter door and yanked it down. ‘Gimme a hand,’ he said to a young soldier. Together they wrestled it down until it clattered and bounced against the floor.

‘We’re right in the middle of the dead zone!’ said Devereau. ‘Last thing we want is begging the attention of their sky navy with a careless show of lights!’

‘Oh … yeah.’ Maddy nodded an apology.

The computer monitors were on, all of them busy showing the system slowly booting up. Becks emerged, Freeman with her.

‘There was damage to the fuel tank,’ said Becks. ‘We have lost a significant portion of our reserves.’ She approached Maddy and Devereau. ‘We will need more fuel, Madelaine.’

‘To recharge the displacement machine?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘But hang on! What’s the point? You said the tachyon transmission array was –’

‘I believe it may be possible to acquire analogous transmission technology and reconfigure it to channel tachyon particles –’

‘Excuse me!’ Devereau made a face. ‘Can you two stop talking whatever gibberish mumbo-jumbo that is for a moment?’

They did and then both looked at him.

‘All right, now … I suppose I’m more than halfway towards considering the pair of you aren’t Southern spies.’ He pulled out his packet of Gitanes and lit one, hacking up a gob of discoloured phlegm on to the floor as he did so.

‘Do you mind?’ said Maddy testily. ‘That’s disgusting.’

He ignored her. ‘But you, miss –
both
of you, actually – have got yourselves
a lot
of explaining yet to do if you don’t want to find yourself chained up in a federal military prison.’ He pulled on his cigarette and puffed a cloud of rancid smoke into the air between them. Maddy wrinkled her nose at the stench.

‘A hell of a lot of explaining,’ he added.

Becks was silent. A guarded expression on her face.

Maddy shrugged. ‘Sure … why not? You might as well hear it all … 
everything
.’ She turned to Becks, expecting her to sound a note of caution. ‘After all, this timeline isn’t meant to exist. None of it … not this war, not these soldiers.’ She smiled candidly at him. ‘Not even you, Colonel Devereau.’

‘I should not … 
exist
?’ His voice was midway between incredulity and anger.

‘Not the
way you are
. Not like this.’

He frowned and jutted his bearded chin indignantly. ‘Ma’am, I rather like the way I am, if that’s all the same to you!’

‘Look.’ Maddy puffed her cheeks. ‘It’s really complicated. Devereau, I guess I’d better explain to you all about how time travel works.’ She nodded towards their threadbare armchairs. ‘Want to go grab a seat? This could take us quite a while.’

CHAPTER 38

2001, somewhere in Virginia

Bob’s single-minded pursuit of the small creature that had boldly dashed into the farmhouse kitchen and stolen their one firearm from right under his nose was getting him nowhere.

He was standing in a field of corn. It was too dark now for his eyes to pick out the broken stalks suggesting which way the creature had fled. He was four hundred yards away from the farmhouse, the light failing, and a cautionary warning flashing in his mind.

[Tactical error]

He was about to process that into an analysis tree when he first heard the shouting and banging drifting across the silently swaying field of corn from the farmhouse.

Several conclusions presented themselves:

1. The childlike creature is not alone
   
2. The gun being stolen was a distraction
   
3. The others are in danger
   

He bounded back through the corn, taking the path of flattened stalks he’d already made. Ahead of him, the noises grew more distinct, more frantic. From the sound of it he determined the struggle was coming from inside the house somewhere and as he drew closer he could see that the back door through which he’d rushed out only minutes ago was nothing more than a splintered frame swinging gently on bent hinges.

He heard a high-pitched scream and identified the voice as Sal’s. Something inside his head twitched. Not the silicon wafer but the small wrinkled nugget of flesh, the brain the size of a rat’s with which it had a synaptic-wire link. As he bounded across the overgrown garden, his mind was drawing up a shortlist of candidate words to describe what he felt.

Guilt (90% relevance)

Shame (56% relevance)

Anger (10% relevance)

He’d been fooled, lured out into the field so that the others were left entirely alone, vulnerable. No gun between them. No support unit to protect them.

He crashed through the remains of the swinging back door, knocking it off its hinges. The kitchen looked as if a tornado had passed through it; everything that could be dislodged or broken had been. The wall was a mess of plaster dust and holes, revealing the wooden slats of support posts. The fist-sized holes punched into it all the way through to the hallway beyond. The door into the hallway looked just like the back door – smashed to splinters.