‘And you were told that you’d inherit the duty of fighting the snake… that huge snake that used to come out of the River Thames every Friday night. Remember?’
Carswell’s eyes burned into Sam’s. ‘Mr Baker. Your own foe approaches. Don’t forget them, will you?’
‘Listen, Carswell. Remember when I told you I fought one of these Bluebeards? The man with the snakes growing from his head? Well, there are plenty more monsters like him on their way here. They’re going to destroy the town and everyone in it. Can’t you interpret what your mother told you as some kind of omen?’
‘That snake came out of my mother’s troubled brain, not the Thames. Now if—’
‘Carswell, humour me then. Pretend the serpent is sliding out of the river. Come kill it with me.’
The man pulled a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and held it up in front of Sam’s face by the chain. ‘Tick-tick-tick, Mr Baker. Time’s running out.’
‘Carswell, please, we need you.’
‘Go launch your attack on the Bluebeards or it will be too late. Far too late.’
‘Carswell, we need you because you are a mean son of a bitch.’
‘Flatterer.’
‘You know what I mean. I need someone as ruthless as you to take charge of the bus… the fighting machine you created.’
‘What, Mr Baker? Me as captain of the good ship Thunder Child?’
‘Yes. What do you say?’
‘Tick-tick-tick… ding, ding, ding. Ooops, there goes your wake-up call. It’s time to smell the coffee, or rather the sweat and the bloodlust of your enemy. Now, you can almost taste it on your lips, can’t you, Mr Baker?’ Carswell smiled icily, his eyes never leaving Sam’s face.
Sam sighed. Without another glance at Carswell he left the visitors’ centre and ran across the car park to where the Range Rover sat, engine idling, with two infantrymen armed with rifles in the back seat. This time he assigned Jud to the bus.
Sam sounded the horn twice, then accelerated to the head of the vehicle column.
Ahead the cavalry and the foot soldiers had already set off for the pass, making as much speed as they could in the snow. Ahead lay the river, worming its way black as ink between the white banks. More flakes of snow spiralled from the sky.
As he pulled away from the car park Sam heard the sound of the bus horn.
He braked.
For some reason the bus had stopped. It sat there looking lopsided in the snow with just one ‘wing’ remaining.
Sam frowned. There could be no hold-ups now. They had to hit the Bluebeards at the narrowest part of the pass. Any other place would be too wide and the barbarians would flood past at either side of the 40-yard-wide battering ram of vehicles.
He looked back at the bus. There was no obvious reason for the hold-up. He could see Lee’s eyes behind the slot of the boxed-in driver’s compartment.
He looked back along the line of vehicles.
Then he saw Carswell walking briskly towards the front passenger door. He jumped lightly onto the first step. Then, holding onto the edge of the door with one hand, he leaned out and gave Sam a relaxed-looking salute.
Sam nodded to himself. Thunder Child now had her captain.
As Sam engaged the gear and pulled slowly away, big tyres crunching through the snow, he suddenly recalled where he’d seen the name Thunder Child before. Years earlier he’d read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds. When the Martian fighting machines had been laying waste the countryside with their death rays, the human armies could do nothing to stop them. But humanity did claim one small victory. As a Martian fighting machine walked out into the sea, sinking ships, there was one warship, the ironclad HMS Thunder Child, that had steamed out of the smoke and wreckage to charge at the seemingly indestructible alien invader. Thunder Child rammed the fighting machine’s legs, toppling it into the sea and destroying it.
But Thunder Child’s brave charge had been a suicide mission. Sam, driving along the track to face his own destiny, hoped that Carswell’s choice of name for his ‘warship’ hadn’t been some kind of dark omen.
Sam looked up at the foreboding gathering of storm clouds. Then he switched on the wipers as the snow began to fall heavily once more.
46
Mid-morning, Christmas Day, 1865
The vehicles formed a line in the snow.
Each a yard from its neighbour, they stood side by side, engines idling, the noses of the cars, bus and van facing forward. It was like the starting line of a cross-country race.
Waiting.
The snow blew in flurries. Sometimes the bottleneck of the pass between river and cliff was clear, the next obliterated in swirling white flakes.
Sam’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. A bitter flavour like aspirin not swallowed quickly enough flooded his mouth.
Behind him sat the two soldiers, rifles at the ready. The engine purred, catlike.
Sam could smell the exhaust fumes.
The Bluebeards were perhaps still a couple of minutes away from the bottleneck. They were undisciplined, little more than a mob of bandits and murderers, but they were smart enough not to exhaust themselves running towards their adversaries yet. They slogged through the snow at a steady pace, their axes, swords, spears at the ready.
They had numerical superiority. But Sam Baker’s people had guns, and motorised vehicles that were fast – and lethal weapons in their own right.
And somewhere behind the line of vehicles the 40 or so cavalrymen were forming up. And behind them were the 90 foot soldiers, already fixing bayonets to rifles, checking grenade fuses.
No-one spoke.
They were waiting for the Bluebeards to become a compact mass of men as they entered the bottleneck.
Sam glanced at his watch. The second hand swept by with agonising slowness.
Waiting.
His jaw muscles ached as he clenched his teeth.
What if that dizzying swirl of the fall through time came at that moment? What if he found himself sitting next to Zita with the rest of the surviving time travellers, watching Jud slip the pin into his collar, with the vehicles just as they had been in the car park?
It could happen at any moment. Surely it was long overdue.
Then the remaining natives of 1865 Casterton would have to fight this battle alone.
Once more Sam thought about his theory – that strange theory, as it had seemed at the time. That perhaps all this was part of a greater plan by some third party. Maybe those scientists of a distant future had deliberately plucked a mixed group of civilians from the amphitheatre of 1999 and transported them back to fight this battle. A desperate act by desperate human beings.
At that moment the snowfall eased off to nothing more than a few individual flakes. And that was the instant the Bluebeards reached the bottleneck some two hundred yards ahead of the line of waiting cars.
Sam sounded the Range Rover’s horn in one long blast. At either side of him the engines revved, exhaust-smoke billowing.
Slowly the steel cavalry of cars, van and bus moved forward.
Slowly, slowly does it.
A unified line of cars. A single unbroken line. Moving slowly across the snow.
All along the line, drivers hit light switches. Headlamps blazed dazzlingly against the snow.
Sam sounded the horn again.
Then he reached across and hit the strips of metal that formed the triggers of the rocket launchers.
With a loud swishing sound the rockets flashed from their pods at either side of the car, engulfing it in smoke.
Sam watched the exhaust flames of the rockets shoot like red sparks towards the enemy line in front of him.