‘Raise your hands where we can see them!’ barked Devereau.
Becks approached slowly until she was no more than half a dozen yards from them, then stopped, calmly evaluating the threat level of the soldiers for a moment.
‘Becks!’ said Maddy. ‘It’s fine! These guys are friendly … just show them your empty hands!’
Becks slowly raised her arms and opened her hands to show her palms, then turned her attention on Maddy, cocking her head curiously. ‘Why did you leave me?’
She seemed to need an answer, as if nothing more could be discussed until the question was answered satisfactorily. Maddy could imagine the software in her head was stuck on a loop of code, running over and over in an infinite circle, unable to escape it until it had some relevant data to process.
Best to be honest with her.
‘I … I just wanted to go home. I …’
‘Information: you are not permitted to leave the agency.’
‘Come on, Becks, cut me some slack here! You said everything was all smashed up! Didn’t you?’
Becks nodded. ‘Affirmative.’
‘Well!’ Maddy shrugged. ‘So, I suppose I figured … I thought our team was all finished. That’s why I — ’
‘A mission is still in progress.’ Becks’s gaze flickered across Devereau then back to her, ‘and there is still a time contamination event that must be corrected, Maddy.’
‘Yeah? And how’re we supposed to do that, huh? Some other team’s going to have to sort this one out, because we’re totally freakin’ ruined, aren’t we?’
‘Negative.’
‘What?’
‘I have now made a complete evaluation of the damage. I can effect adequate repairs, if we are able to secure suitably adaptable components.’ She looked at Maddy with an expression that almost looked like a plea. ‘I must have new orders, Madelaine. What are your instructions?’
Maddy stepped forward, reached out for the support unit and grasped her scarred left hand tentatively with both of hers. She squeezed gently. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.
Maybe it was in her mind, maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she thought she felt Becks return the gesture with the slightest squeeze.
‘Let’s go back to the arch, Becks. You can show me what we need to do to fix it up.’
She turned and nodded at Devereau and his men. ‘I think these guys might be able to help us out.’
‘Affirmative.’
CHAPTER 36
2001, somewhere in Virginia
Liam was shaken roughly awake. By the slanted stripes of blood-red dusk stealing in through the slatted windows, he could see it was Sal tugging on his arm.
‘What … what?’ he muttered irritably.
‘Some weird midget just ran in and stole Bob’s gun!’
‘What?’ He took a moment to digest that. It sounded like the tail end of some bizarre dream. ‘What did you just say?’
‘Midget … or maybe it was a child.’ It sounded like she wasn’t sure this wasn’t a dream either. ‘It happened so fast. I was talking to Bob … and this thing just ran into the kitchen, grabbed the shotgun and ran out again.’
‘Thing?’ Liam sat up on the creaking sofa. ‘Where’s Bob?’
‘Ran out after him to get it back.’
Good thing too. It was the only weapon they had between them. Apart from Bob himself, that is. He shook away the last tendrils of sleep, stepped through the kitchen where Lincoln’s long frame was sprawled across the table, still fast asleep. The back door was wide open.
‘He went out of the back?’
Sal nodded.
Liam stood in the doorway. He could hear a fast-receding rustle and thrash of movement across the cornfield at the end of the weed-infested garden. In the failing light he could just make out where Bob had entered the field, leaving a wake of broken and flattened cornstalks.
‘He’ll get it back, I’m sure,’ said Liam. ‘He’s fast.’
‘Hope so.’
The setting sun was no more than a golden sliver trembling on the horizon, the clouds combed out across the sky directly above it like cotton candy, a fleshy pink.
‘We’ll make a move as soon as he gets back,’ said Liam. ‘Grab as many tins as we can carry and — ’
‘Liam,’ whispered Sal.
‘What?’
‘Do you see that?’
‘See what?’
‘There.’ She pointed down the garden towards the edge of the field. He saw nothing but the dark parting of flattened stalks amid the chest-high wall of gently swaying corn.
‘What? I can’t see any-’ Then all of a sudden he did. Dark shapes, slowly emerging from the field and stepping into the garden.
‘Hey! Who’s that out there?’ Liam challenged.
The shapes moved carefully towards them, low shadows blending in with the tufts of weeds and the darkness of the ground.
Jay-zus.
Liam dragged Sal back inside the kitchen and slammed the door shut. The noise roused Lincoln from his slumber. ‘Curse you! I was sleeping!’ he snarled.
‘What are they?’ whimpered Sal.
‘I don’t know, to be sure … but — ’
The door suddenly lurched on its hinges, rattling from an impact. A splintered crack ran down the middle of it.
‘What the devil is going on here?’ roared Lincoln, still bleary-eyed with sleep.
‘Chuddah!’ gasped Sal. ‘The window!’
Liam turned to see hands fumbling at it — no … not hands … not quite … They looked peculiar, but moving, scrabbling, scratching too quickly to identify what it was that looked so odd about them. The grime-covered glass suddenly shattered as something was lobbed through it.
‘Out! Out!’ Liam barked, pushing Sal ahead of him and dragging Lincoln out of his chair. They tumbled together from the kitchen and into the dark hallway beyond.
He slammed the door closed behind him. It would swing into the hall, which meant they could lean things against it to prevent it being opened.
‘Block this! We need to barricade it!’
They looked around themselves desperately and Lincoln gestured to a tall floor-standing grandfather clock. Liam nodded. He and Sal helped him drag it across the dust-covered floor and tilted it back to lean against the kitchen door with a clumsy thud. It chimed noisily in protest at the rough treatment.
They could hear the back door being battered and finally swinging inwards; the bark of wooden chair legs bumped and scraping; the clatter of things knocked, falling, shattering and rolling across the floor.
‘Th-they’re inside!’ whispered Sal.
A moment later the door they and the grandfather clock were pressing their weight against shuddered under a huge impact. As if someone or something on the far side was wielding a mallet.
Lincoln cursed. ‘Who the devil is this?’
‘I don’t know … I don’t know!’
‘Not people,’ hissed Sal. ‘They’re not human!’
To their right along the dark hallway leading to the front of the farmhouse the handle of the front door rattled as something tested it. Liam turned to see a hairline crimson seam of twilight glowing between the bottom of the door and the doorstep. It flickered with movement as God knows how many shapes began to gather outside.
‘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.