‘There’s more changes coming,’ said Sal. ‘They’re coming!’
‘I know! I can feel it!’ It was like an almost constant vibration now, tickling through their feet as if they were standing on some sort of foot-massaging mat. Change after change, each one causing a tiny piece of reality to adjust. And all around them minor things flickering — winking out of existence, winking into existence, or morphing into some alternative-history variation.
She saw the large Toshiba LED screen looming over Times Square shimmer and become a much wider display that spread out either side of the building it was mounted on. On its longer screen she saw what appeared to be mechanized chariots racing each other round an oval race track.
‘Sal, look at that!’
At that moment they heard a piercing shriek from the crowd.
‘What now?’
The crowd gathered round the front of the bus scattered like pigeons startled by a handclap. They both saw a pale and slender, bald-headed figure get to her feet. A young woman in an orange anorak standing in the middle of Broadway, entirely alone now, looking directly at them.
‘My God… that looks just like…’
Becks?
The young woman slowly raised her arm. For a creepy second Maddy imagined it was a ghostly visitation of Becks pointing accusingly at her. Some Scrooge-like apparition come to haunt her in the middle of Times Square.
Then several loud cracks filled the air — like the snap of a bullwhip — and the shop window right behind them exploded into granules of glass that cascaded on to the pavement.
Maddy stared agape at the shattered window, while the rest of Times Square seemed to register a gun had been fired and collectively dropped to the ground.
‘Shadd-yah! She’s shooting at us!’ yelled Sal.
‘What?’
The pale young woman began to stride towards them. Maddy could see she was barefooted. She raised her arm again and fired another three shots at them. This time Maddy felt her hair whisked by a bullet passing right beside her ear.
Oh crud!
‘RUN!’ screamed Sal, grabbing her hand and pulling her. ‘ RUN! ’
CHAPTER 30
2001, New York
The pavement was clogged with people either cowering on the ground or scooting for cover. Maddy glanced over her shoulder. The young woman — almost certainly a female support unit — was weaving her way across logjammed lanes of traffic. Impatient with her progress, she leaped up on to the long bonnet of an ornately decorated car, gold oak leaves and murals all down the glistening panels to running-boards at the side. The driver — at the vehicle’s rear — gaped wide-eyed at the sight of the firearm in her hand.
She leaped gracefully across from the bonnet of one car to the next, like a girl playing stepping stones across a babbling stream.
‘Oh crud!’ gasped Maddy. ‘She’s coming straight for us!’
The pavement was impassable with people crouching nervously on their haunches. ‘In here!’ hissed Sal, dragging Maddy towards a pair of glass doors that slid open for them.
‘What…?’ Maddy looked around her. They were inside a large store; a blast of cool air from an AC unit hit them from above. It was only eight-forty in the morning and the place was already heaving with tourists shopping for mementoes: brass figurines of naked male torsos, faux marble busts of august-looking elders, cheap plastic gadgets that Maddy realized she couldn’t identify.
Only right now business was a suspended tableau; dozens of faces were turned their way.
‘ Julii! Was that ballista-fire I just heard?’ someone called out.
Maddy wrenched her hand free of Sal’s. ‘We’ll get trapped in here!’
Sal pointed across lanes of goods-display spindles towards the glare of daylight streaming into the store on the far side. ‘Over there! An exit!’
‘OK… right… yeah.’ They began to push their way past shoppers, momentarily frozen and confused by events, Maddy leading the way.
Just then they heard a horn sounding, followed by several more that suddenly were choked and silent, followed almost immediately by the crackle of gunfire.
‘Praetorians are here! It’s like war out there!’ shouted someone standing by the glass doors opening on to Broadway.
A man with oriental features and a cheerfully coloured tunic grasped Maddy’s arm. ‘Is this gang war? Collegia?’
‘Uh… yeah. It’s war. Just stay inside.’ She pulled his hand off, and pushed past him.
The gunfire was intensifying.
What’s going on out there? It sounded like the entire NYPD — no, not them, some other form of police had arrived — was laying down a barrage of small arms fire. All that response for one young woman?
She was about to say something about that to Sal, when Sal tugged at her from behind. ‘Down!’ she squealed.
‘Uh? What?’
Sal pointed past her, over her shoulder, towards the glow of daylight they’d been weaving their way towards. ‘Look!’
Maddy turned to look at the double doors of the exit. A solitary figure was silhouetted by rays of morning sunlight streaming over rounded, bulky shoulders of sinew and muscle. Like the young woman, it was bald and pale, wearing an unzipped hooded tunic and bright blue beach shorts, several sizes too small.
‘Oh my God…’ She ducked down with Sal and they continued to observe the figure through a display rack of plastic cases with covers showing the scarred faces of wrestlers… no, gladiators?
‘Hang on! Is that Bob?’
‘That’s not Bob,’ whispered Sal.
‘But it looks like him!’
‘It’s not him, though.’
Maddy felt her breath thicken, a whistling noise that in complete silence would have given them away in a heartbeat. She cursed herself for not picking up her inhaler on the way out earlier.
‘They’re support units,’ she gasped. ‘That’s what they are.’
Another figure joined the first. Another male, just as tall, wide and muscular as the first. It was holding a gun in each hand. Hands that were spattered with dark dots of blood. It silently passed one of the weapons to the first unit.
Maddy realized the crackle of gunfire had now ceased. ‘Oh God, Sal
… I think they just killed all the police guys outside!’
She glanced back at where they’d come from — the entrance to Broadway. And there was the young woman, silhouetted against the daylight glow of the double doors. A perfect statue, gun in one hand, head slowly swivelling, studying the shoppers and staff cowering amid display racks and aisles of cheap tourist goods.
Oh crud! Now we really are well trapped!
One of the male support units took a step forward into the store. ‘Everyone please leave!’ his deep voice boomed.
Nobody dared move.
He fired a single shot into the floor. ‘Everyone please leave this building now! Or you will be executed!’
There was an immediate stirring of movement across the store. People hastily getting to their feet, dropping baskets of forgotten bargains and making for the exits. As they streamed anxiously out past the support units, their bald heads panned quickly one way then the other, examining each person’s face as they hurried out. The female grasped the wrist of someone leaving, a young Asian girl. She pulled her closer then placed a hand under her chin to turn her head towards her. The girl whimpered and squirmed as the support unit quickly studied her face. She tossed her aside a moment later.
‘Negative ID!’ she called to the other two.
They’re after us! Specifically us. After me and Sal.
Outside they could hear the distant wailing of yet more police horns approaching. Times Square was unsettlingly quiet. A thousand or more people, crouched behind rubbish bins and newspaper vending machines, in shop doorways, and peeking out through store windows, all wondering what to do… wondering what was going to happen next.
And faintly, very faintly, Maddy could hear the deep drone of an approaching aeroplane.
‘We know you are hiding in here,’ said the support unit in shorts. ‘Please reveal yourselves to us… and you will not be harmed.’