He turned away from the stairs as he heard feet, scratching – claws? – on the wooden floor and a bizarre humming. Almost like human voices, but humming as if the things down there – whatever they were – were somehow gagged.
He turned and started in the dark, patting the damp peeling walls with his hands to feel his way. ‘Sal!’ he hissed.
He realized too late that she and Lincoln had turned right at the top of the stairs, and he’d gone left. The darkness was filled with the sound of feet scrambling up the stairs behind him, scratching and that unsettling humming sound, but more like a gagged snarl now than a humming.
His hands found a recess, a doorframe and finally a handle. He grabbed it with both hands, pushed the door open and was met with the faintest ruddy bloom of light from the very last blush of dusk. It seeped in through a small square dusty attic window.
Liam shut the door behind him, treading on boxes of soft things, perhaps toys, or clothes. The room must have been used for storage; the roof was low, with a thick wooden beam running across. He ran across to the tiny window, ducking under the beam, to fiddle with the latch to open it. Behind him he heard the tap and scrape of feet and claws, muted snarling and laboured breathing, then the crash of a fist on a door, the splintering crack of old dry wood giving way.
And then his blood chilled. He heard Sal scream, muffled by a door further down the landing. He realized as he fumbled with the latch of the small window that their pursuers had chosen to follow Sal and Lincoln and not him.
Crashing and splintering again. The things were ferociously hammering on it, tearing Sal’s door to pieces. Liam hesitated. He’d planned to open the tiny window and squeeze himself through, perhaps to hide outside on the shingle roof. But …
Sal screamed again.
But those things were going to get her.
Liam cursed under his breath. ‘Ahh … Jay-zus …!’
His hands fumbled for something, anything, to use as a weapon, frantically patting the floor around him while he listened to the struggle down the hallway: Lincoln bellowing curses, Sal screaming, horrible mewing sounds from those creatures, things being knocked over, blows being landed, the scrape and thud of feet on boards.
‘Come on! … Come on!’ he hissed. He heard Sal desperately pleading, Lincoln’s baritone voice too … an enraged roar. The sound of a violent struggle. He had to admit it – Lincoln had mettle. That obnoxious loud-mouthed long-limbed idiot sounded like he was putting up a fight with just his bare fists. Going down, fighting with just his bare fists.
Liam’s fingers touched a pole of some sort. He felt his way down it to a thicket of coarse fibres. A brush of some kind.
Ah, stuff it … good enough.
He picked it up and charged across the small attic room towards the doorway. Failing to remember the low beam.
Failing to duck.
CHAPTER 37
2001, New York
Colonel Devereau and Sergeant Freeman crouched down and shone their flashlights under the half-open corrugated-iron shutter door into the dark space beyond.
‘This is it?’ he said. He sounded disappointed. ‘This is your time machine?’
By the subdued tone of his voice, Maddy wondered whether he actually really had wanted to believe what she’d told him was for real. It would make persuading him, seeking his help, a great deal easier if he did.
She knelt down and looked inside. The archway appeared to be in a lot better shape than it had yesterday. Becks must have spent the night fixing things up; she’d swept away the fallen bricks and mortar, straightened up the shelves that had collapsed, tidied the general mess inside. Apart from the gaping crack running across their floor and the jagged holes in the roof it almost looked as normal, except, that is, for the fact that it was utterly dark.
‘We have no power,’ said Maddy. ‘Our generator was totally trashed when we, uh, landed here.’
Devereau shoved the shutter a little higher and it clacked noisily. The men of his platoon ducked inside and another half a dozen torches snapped on and began sweeping the archway, picking out details here and there.
‘Negative, Madelaine,’ said Becks. ‘The generator works. I was able to effect a temporary repair. I shall go and switch it on.’
Becks stepped inside and made her way briskly towards the sliding door leading