‘Trying our best to get the hell out of London,’ he said. ‘Where the hell were you all this time? You’ve been gone for over a day. You have no idea the shit we’ve all sunk into.’
That long? If the radio signal had been binding the two realities together, breaking it had severed the link; no wonder my body ached. ‘I have some idea, actually,’ I replied. ‘The man Tamar just shot is the one responsible for it.’
I looked over to where Krishnin was still writhing, despite the demolition of most of his head.
‘He’s like them!’ said Derek. ‘They’re everywhere. We’ve got to keep moving, the city’s full of them.’
‘I need your equipment,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s the only way we can dig ourselves out of this.’
‘What are you talking about man? There’s no going back now. These things are all over the country, there’s talk of airstrikes.’
‘Airstrikes?’ echoed Jamie.
‘Not ours,’ said Derek. He sighed, trying to marshal his thoughts.
‘Look. The place is overrun with these things. Dead people, only they’re not, they’re mad, running through the streets, smashing the hell out of anyone and everything. The rest of the world is panicking too. They think it’s viral. They think the only way to be sure it doesn’t spread is by making sure the outbreak is limited to the UK.’
‘And so they’re going to try to sterilise the source, regardless of how many people are still here? That’s horrendous.’
‘And it’s happening soon. London is by far the worst affected, so that’s the first target. The UK government has agreed to sanction a nuclear strike on the city in the hope that they can mop up the remaining stuff elsewhere. It’s all panic and politics. Not that it matters – there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘There is,’ I said, ‘but you’re not going to like it.’
b) Hard Shoulder, M1 Motorway, Nr. Junction 11
‘What part of “insanely dangerous” did you not understand?’ Derek was shouting. ‘This is not something you can screw around with – the consequences are potentially catastrophic.’
‘Look around you,’ I said. ‘We’re overrun with the living dead and they’re planning on dropping nukes on London. What makes you think this isn’t already a catastrophe?’
‘Listen. You don’t get the scale of this. You start interfering with causality and all of this is nothing. This is a pinprick. A mosquito bite.’
‘But the change is minimal,’ I insisted. ‘Think about it, Krishnin shouldn’t even exist in the first place.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with causality. The universe doesn’t care what abominations we build, it’s not the moral arbiter of reality. It just is. He exists and so he’s part of the fabric of our timeline.’
‘Barely. He has spent most of it in another plane entirely. The impact he’s had is this… the last couple of days. This one operation. If we remove him now, before things develop even further, the change is minimal.’
Derek thought about this. I could see that he wanted to. I could see that he was considering it.
‘We will save thousands of lives,’ I said, ‘including Shining’s.’
‘Who?’
‘Leslie.’
‘Right. “Leslie”.’ Derek rubbed at his face, trying to come to a decision. I wondered if I could operate the equipment without him. I would certainly try. If he said no, then I would do whatever it took and to hell with anyone who was in the way. I’m sure he must have realised that.
‘It only works on things that are not alive,’ he said finally.
‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, do you?’
‘You say that, but he’s obviously alive in some way – they all are. We’re saying they’re dead because they’ve died once already, but how you do you really define life? Moving around is usually a fair indicator…’
‘Whatever consciousness he had, I think Tamar’s spread it over the inside of your van.’ I said. ‘But… whatever. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work – and nothing will happen.’
‘We’ll get blown up.’ Derek gestured towards the back of the van. ‘The controlling mechanism is back there, but I had to leave most of the kit back at the warehouse. When I heard what they were planning I didn’t want to waste time packing, I just grabbed the potentially dangerous bit and ran. They could drop the bomb at any minute.’
‘All the more reason to hurry then,’ I said. ‘Please. We have to try this. I think it’s the only option left open to us. We go back there, we turn your machine on what’s left of Krishnin and we cut him out of recent history.’
‘Oh God!’
I turned to look at Jamie. He was looking at his mobile.
‘So many texts from Alasdair. The silly sod came looking for me. Then got himself cornered by those…’
He began to cry, dropping the mobile to the floor of the van where I could see a single pair of goodbye ‘X’s on the screen.
‘This cannot be allowed to stand,’ I said to Derek. ‘We have one chance to make it all stop. Yes there are risks. There always are.’
‘These are pretty big bloody risks,’ he said, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that I had won him over. ‘Oh sod it,’ he continued. ‘If I had a chance to save the world and I didn’t take it…’ He started the van again and drove on to the next exit. ‘Of course,’ he said to himself, ‘my chance to save the world could be stopping you doing something as stupid as this…’
c) Brent Cross, London
Getting back into London was easy enough; the choking traffic moving in the other direction proved testament to Derek’s description of panic as car after car fought to escape the capital.
‘The emergency services just can’t cope,’ he said. ‘Spread too thin from the start. Estimates vary, but we’re potentially dealing with an attacking army of half a million, countrywide. It’s worse in the built-up areas, of course; some rural communities have barely felt the pinch. It’s all down to odds. A large percentage of bodies buried in the latter part of 1962 and the whole of 1963 have become active. Some are a greater threat than others. The decomposition may be negligible, but cadavers that were damaged can’t regrow missing parts, obviously. On the way out, I saw little more than a torso, dragging itself along the middle of the road.
‘But it’s not just the numbers, it’s the fact that they’re hard to put down. You have to completely incapacitate them. I saw an armed response team overrun by a massive crowd of the things. They say it’s best to aim for the legs. At least that stops them running after you.’
I called April. She managed to sound utterly nonplussed at the fact that I was back in action. I got the impression that her hands had been pretty full trying to provoke some form of action from the government. Now that was all redundant. No need to convince anyone of imminent trouble when it’s running down every street.
I told her what had happened to her brother, quickly followed by what I hoped to do about it.
‘I dare say you know what you’re doing,’ she said, ‘or not. I was never sure he did half the time. You made a good pair, that’s for sure.’
‘And still will, if I’ve got anything to do about it.’
‘Bless you.’ I could tell she was unconvinced. I couldn’t blame her.
‘You know the clock’s ticking, don’t you?’ April reminded.
‘Derek said there was a threat of a nuclear strike.’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment on an open line. Still, what are those silly old buggers going to do about any indiscretions? Yes. It’s been agreed. We have a couple of hours at most. Ridiculous. Makes me sick the way the stupid shits behave.’