Becks’s faint voice echoed out of the archway after her once more. ‘Madelaine! What are my orders?’
She ignored the support unit, left her sitting in the gathering darkness among the bricks, abandoned like an orphaned child.
‘Madelaine?’
One step in front of the other in the gathering twilight … each one easier than the last. She realized she could leave. Walk away from it all. Walk away from the responsibilities she’d never asked for, walk away from secrets she didn’t ask to know about. If all their field office was now was a crumbling archway and a bunch of machines that didn’t work any more, what difference would it make if she stayed or left?
She realized something. I can go.
She turned her back on the East River, Manhattan and the sun setting beyond, and faced north-east towards the ruins of Brooklyn, towards Boston …
Home.
Perhaps even in this alternate timeline the same people had met, fallen in love and made the same babies and somewhere north-east of here, in her home city, there was a little girl with glasses and frizzy strawberry-red hair who liked messing around with her father’s electronics toolset rather than playing with Barbie dolls. Perhaps that home was there. Perhaps her mom and dad were the same two people and she could explain to them who she was, get them to understand she was their daughter, but ten years older. For them it would be like having an older sister for their only child. A sister who could understand her in a way no normal sister could: a mentor, a guide, a friend.
Her faltering steps across the rubble-strewn landscape quickened.
A part of her argued the case that she still had responsibilities and obligations here. Liam and Sal, they too were stuck in this … whatever this world was. But what could she do for them? Sit on her bunk and wait for them in the dark? Wait until some bombing raid came here and decided to give this portion of the city another pounding?
Maddy shook the nagging voice away. She really hadn’t needed Becks to catalogue to her how complete and catastrophic the damage was to their equipment.
In the absence of a plan, or anything left of their field office for which she had to be responsible, there was only one small voice that made sense. A childlike voice.
I want to go home.
CHAPTER 30. 2001, somewhere in Virginia
The Chinese man looked down at them, surprised. ‘New York! You wan’ go New York?’
‘That’s right,’ said Liam.
‘You craz-ee.’ He shook his head. ‘I take you far as Dead City. No more. I goin’ west — New Pittsburgh, maybe Cleveland. You shou’ go west too.’
‘Dead City?’
The man shrugged, said something to his wife sitting beside him in the odd-looking vehicle’s front cabin. He turned back to Liam. ‘Yuh … Dead City, you know? Ol’ times use’ to be call’ Baltimore?’
It was dark and Liam could only see the side of the man’s face, lit by the paper lantern swinging in the fresh breeze. He read the expression as friendly bemusement.
‘You and your friends sit in back … with chickens. I take you north some way.’ The one eye Liam could see glinted in the lantern’s amber light; it was locked suspiciously on him. ‘You no trouble?’
Liam spread his hands, turned to make sure Bob had tucked the shotgun away out of sight. ‘I promise you, sir … we’ll be no trouble.’ He glanced at the side of the man’s vehicle. It reminded him of a traditional Romany gypsy caravan; every surface seemed to be lavishly decorated with intricate Oriental designs, and down along the side a multitude of hooks protruded, from which pots and pans and other kitchen miscellany rattled and clanged softly as the gentle breeze stirred ears of corn either side of the empty road.
‘We’ll just be in the back, then,’ said Liam, ‘keeping your chickens company.’
The Chinese man nodded, satisfied with that. Then turned to his wife and began chattering to her. She didn’t seem quite so pleased to have passengers come aboard.
They made their way to the back of the caravan. It rattled and vibrated from the idling engine beneath, which intermittently spat clouds of vapour out between the spokes of its six wide, wooden cartwheels.
Liam pulled open a wire mesh gate at the rear and stepped up inside to see a cramped space almost completely filled with carefully stacked household possessions. The rest of them followed suit, the vehicle lurching alarmingly as Bob finally pulled himself up inside and slammed the mesh door behind him. There was just about room for the four of them to huddle on the floor, shoulders rubbing shoulders and legs pulled up in front of them.
With a cough and a splutter the vehicle lurched forward and a thousand different objects around them began to squeak and rattle and clank. It might not be the most comfortable ride for them, but at least it was taking them in the right direction — north, towards New York.
So far there’d been nothing from Maddy. No portal, no message. Not a good sign.
Liam was thinking of something interesting to say when, with a flutter of dislodged feathers, a rooster emerged from behind a wobbling cupboard and settled on top of Bob’s head.
‘Oh sorry,’ said Liam, ‘I actually thought he was … uh … you know, joking about having chickens in the back.’
Bob swiped a big hand at it and the bird scrambled and flapped around the enclosed space for a full minute before finally, tentatively, returning to roost on his head again.
‘No place like home,’ offered Liam.
Bob stared indignantly back at him.
‘You, sir, look about as happy as a clam at high tide.’
Bob switched to stare indignantly at Lincoln.
‘Suits you,’ said Sal, affectionately patting his arm.
CHAPTER 31. 2001, somewhere in Virginia
As dawn started to make its mark on the horizon, the Chinese man deposited them at a junction of roads: one of them heading west, the other continuing north. He warned Liam once again that heading north to New York was ‘no good’.
‘Why? What’s going on in New York?’
The question caused the man to cock his head curiously. ‘You serious?’ He didn’t wait for Liam to answer. ‘You been ’sleep all your life? The city … it all gone now. New York, it just big ruin.’
‘A ruin? What’s up with it?’ He turned round to the others, standing beside him on the shoulders of the road. Sal’s eyes were wide, her face ashen.
‘How you not know this?’ the man asked, incredulous.
‘Well … we’ve … been away, a long time.’ Liam’s answer sounded lame and the Chinese man shrugged a whatever, as if to acknowledge that the answer maybe wasn’t his business.
‘The war … it stay there. It never move on. Been there forever.’
‘War?’ Lincoln took a step closer. ‘Great Scott! Did you say war, sir?’
The Chinese man leaned back in his cabin, wary of the tall man’s belligerent face. ‘Yeah … you not know of war?’
‘No, sir! A war between who, man? Tell me!’
Liam rested a hand on Lincoln’s shoulder. ‘Easy there, fella.’
The Chinese man’s wife uttered something into his ear and he nodded, firing up the engine on his carriage. It coughed and clattered noisily before settling down to a noisy chug. He was clearly getting a little nervous of these crazies he’d picked up and deposited here on this crossroads in the middle of nowhere.