‘You tell them.’
‘Oh I have, darling, I have.’ She paused. ‘You shouldn’t have come back, you know. There really isn’t time.’
‘Time is movable,’ I replied. ‘Or at least it better had be.’
‘You’re a good boy. Tell you what, I’ll meet you there, if only to give you a lingering kiss before we’re burned to shadows.’
‘Right.’ I didn’t quite know how to respond to that.
‘You could at least try to flirt with an old lady given we’ll only have a few hours of existence left.’
‘Sorry. Erm… that will be lovely, you… sexy thing…’
‘Oh shut up. It’s awful – you’re making me feel sick.’ She hung up.
‘I am sorry,’ said Tamar as we cut into the city. ‘I should not have acted in the way I did.’
‘No worries,’ I assured her. ‘To be honest I had planned on doing something similar myself. I don’t know how Krishnin managed to jump between the planes but I’m willing to bet he needed to think hard in order to do it. That’s not something he’s going to be doing again.’
‘Do you really think we can bring August back?’
‘If this works. If Krishnin had actually died back in 1963, then none of this would have happened. Derek is panicking because it’s dangerous to interfere with history, but Krishnin was barely part of this world over the last fifty years, so – bar the last forty-eight hours – the change shouldn’t be too significant.’
‘And you’re going to go back and kill him?’
‘Not exactly. The machine needs a specific focus. Usually an area of space, but in this case we’re going to use Krishnin himself. We’ll see moments from his life, significant events. I’ll be waiting for one in particular – the time he should have died – when I intend to give history a helping hand.’
‘I think you are all very mad. But I hope it works.’
Her and me both.
I asked Derek to pull over so that I could get out and join him at the front; I was sick of rolling backwards and forwards in the rear and not being able to see where we were going. Besides, if things got difficult he might be in need of a supportive co-driver.
I caught my first sight of the sleepers just past Brent Cross. A small group of them were attacking one another as the van drove by. Checking in the wing mirror, I could see them abandon their own squabbling in favour of trying to catch up with us.
‘Do they do anything but fight?’ I asked.
‘Not that I’ve seen,’ Derek replied. ‘They’re violence personified. Like a raging mob, fighting each other, smashing up cars, buildings… all they want to do is attack.’
‘I wonder what it is inside them that makes them that way…’ I told him about Gavrill, about his old colleague who had decided the reanimated corpse knew it shouldn’t exist and wanted nothing more than to hit back at the world it had woken up into.
‘That all sounds a bit spiritual to me,’ Derek said. ‘It’s probably more a case of falling back on instinct. The body is being attacked internally so the endorphins kick off: fight or flight.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Still, what do I know? I’m a physicist and ex-wrestler. My experience of biology is pretty much limited to bruises, fractures and groupies.’
I could see a large bonfire in the distance, over towards Regent’s Park.
‘You get a lot of those,’ said Derek. ‘People have been building them in the open spaces. Burning the bodies. Someone built a pyre twenty-foot high in Hampstead Cemetery – they were digging up all the bodies and throwing them into the flames, just in case that might stop them.’
As we crossed Tower Bridge it was beginning to grow dark. I looked over the edge of the bridge at a rough line of bodies thrashing their way through the water.
‘The river’s full of them,’ I said.
‘They fall in and then the current carries them. It’s not as if they can drown, after all.’
We reached the warehouse a few minutes later and Derek parked the van right outside.
‘Looks like the coast is clear,’ he said, checking the mirrors. ‘Be on your guard though; they’re pretty quiet so they can sneak up on you if you’re not careful.’
We got out and he moved around the back to let everyone out and collect the few pieces of equipment he needed.
Jamie showed he had recovered some of his old sharpness as he climbed out. ‘I am seriously considering defection,’ he said, sneering at what remained of Krishnin. ‘I don’t like being a spy anymore.’
It was disgusting pulling Krishnin’s body out. It flailed at us, trying to fight back.
‘It makes me think of flatworms,’ said Jamie. ‘Cut bits off them and they all keep wriggling. If you think I’m touching that, you’re sadly mistaken.’
‘Sod it,’ said Derek, grabbing it by its arms and slinging it over his back like a sack of potatoes. ‘After the last couple of days you become numb to the horrible stuff. Bring my kit, would you?’
I picked up the single plastic storage box and stepped back as Tamar closed the doors.
‘We are not alone,’ she said, looking past the van.
A large group of sleepers was running towards us. This was the first time I had seen them up close. They moved quickly but chaotically, limbs flinging about as they fought to get at us. Their faces were solid and expressionless. They were like ambulatory shop window dummies, human dolls.
‘The gun,’ I said to Tamar, shoving the box at Jamie.
After shooting Krishnin with it, Tamar had returned the gun to her waist band. I had let her keep it, more to show that I forgave her using it than anything else. Now, unarmed and reliant on her, I wished I’d taken it back.
‘Stand back, children,’ instructed a voice behind us and April appeared carrying a shotgun. It looked utterly ridiculous in her hands, but she quickly put it to use, sending a couple of shots into the advancing group, cutting several pairs of legs from beneath them.
‘Get inside,’ said Derek, ‘or we’ll be attracting more of them!’
Tamar took a couple of shots as April reloaded. We all ran inside the warehouse as the shotgun barked again.
April came through the doors last, Derek and Jamie slamming them shut behind her.
‘That was as close to orgasm as I’ve been for years,’ she said, handing me the gun. ‘Say what you like about the impending apocalypse but it certainly knows how to show a girl a good time.’
The sleepers began banging on the doors, Derek and Jamie only just managing to hold them back as they dropped a bar across them.
‘I don’t know if it’s going to hold,’ said Derek.
‘Tamar,’ I said, ‘help Jamie secure those doors. Derek, get everything up and running as quickly as you can. We’re not going to have long to do this.’
Derek nodded, picked up the plastic box and hoisted it over to the desk where the rest of his equipment still lay.
‘I need you to drag the projectors further in,’ he said, gesturing towards the four things that looked like speakers. ‘We want them all pointing towards the body, keeping the focus as narrow as possible.’
‘This the bastard that shot my brother?’ April asked, looking down at Krishnin.
I nodded, starting to pull one of the projectors across from the corner of the room.
She stared at him for a moment, watching the body writhe. Then kicked it, hard. She said nothing, just walked over towards one of the other projectors. I noticed the dampness in her eyes, even in the low light. She had loved her brother dearly.
Derek switched on a pair of arc lamps, one aimed at his equipment, the other pointing towards Krishnin’s body.
‘I need a couple of minutes,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’