TimeRiders: The Eternal War

CHAPTER 46. 2001, Dead City

Sal grunted in pain as the creature finally dumped her unceremoniously on the ground. She looked around at the dark place and saw nothing but a few faint glints of daylight. But she could hear plenty: grunts and groans, the gasp of dozens breathing heavily, the rancid odour of stale sweat.

A match suddenly flared in the darkness and she saw she was in the coal cellar of some building along with the entire pack of these strange creatures. The match lit the end of a thick candle, already well used, sheathed in drips and rivulets of hardened wax. In the steady glow she watched the creatures. Some of them settled themselves on beds of scrap cloth and threadbare mattresses, and she realized that this must be their … lair … for want of a better word. Some of the creatures had no bed or nest to settle on. She noticed that the small childlike creature seemed to be organizing something, distributing scraps of cloth for those without something on which to rest. She heard hushed mutterings and grunts as it pointed and gestured to make itself understood to half a dozen of the salamander-like creatures. They seemed uncertain of their surroundings, and frightened.

They’re new to this group. She supposed this pack must have picked them up on a foray out of –

Her blood ran cold.

The Dead City.

That’s what this place was, wasn’t it? She’d caught glimpses, turning her head to one side, away from the creature’s sweat-soaked shoulder, caught fleeting glimpses of the outskirts of a deserted town, weeds chest high, saplings growing in the middle of cracked tarmac roads, long ago broken into a crazy paving by Mother Nature. The sun coming up, casting shadows from tall brick buildings lined with windows fogged by grime and algae, nubs of moss emerging from cracked wooden window frames.

She’d caught sight of old shopfronts and signs, faded and flaking: MCKENZIE’S HARDWARE STORE, RUSSELL AND BARTON’S CANDY AND CONFECTIONERY, MA JACKSON’S FRIED CHICKEN. Signs that swung lifelessly above smashed windows and hollow shells beyond, long ago picked clean of anything useful or edible.

The Dead City. Hadn’t that Chinese man warned them not to stray any closer?

‘Miss Vikram.’ She turned her head at the sound of the whispered voice, and saw, to her relief, Lincoln lying on the pile of coals beside her.

‘Jahulla!’ she hissed, surprised at how pleased she was to see him. ‘Are you OK?’

His wiry hair was clotted with dried blood. ‘One of those infernal big ones walloped me hard in that farmhouse. I must have been knocked senseless for a while.’

‘I think we’re in that Dead City that the Chinese man said we shouldn’t go near.’

Lincoln nodded. ‘I believe we are.’

‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

‘Me too.’ Lincoln swallowed. ‘Do you have an idea what these creatures are?’

She shook her head. If she believed in the things her parents had once believed in — in Shivu, in Brahma and his four heads and Vishnu with all his arms — all that crazy stuff, perhaps she might have allowed herself to think they were something supernatural, something evil.

‘Spawn of Hell?’ whispered Lincoln. ‘Demons? Do you think we died? And this is the very first layer of the underworld?’

She looked at him, incredulous. ‘Why? Do you think that?’

He winced as he fumbled at the lump on his head. ‘These are not any creatures of Earth I have ever seen.’

Their whispered conversation had attracted the attention of the ‘child’. It stopped organizing the others and wandered over towards them with an awkward gait that looked like an uncomfortable approximation of a person walking. As if it was making a conscious effort to appear more human.

Sal and Lincoln instantly stopped speaking and looked up at it from the pile of coals they were lying on. She could see it more easily now, even if it was just by candlelight. It was no more than four feet tall, slender and narrow shouldered. Its head was loaf-shaped like the others, but, in proportion to its meagre body, much larger.

The creature squatted down, a position that looked more comfortable for it to settle into, and cocked its oversized head curiously at them. Its eyes were bigger than those on the ape-like variety that had carried her and Lincoln. Bigger and more childlike. But it was the mouth that drew her attention. There were no lips, just a jagged, uneven line of scarred, ribbed and bumpy flesh. As if some careless, or perhaps drunk, sculptor had fashioned them as an afterthought from lumpy clay.

Sal noticed, surprised she hadn’t spotted it before, that the creature had a dark bow-tie tied round its thin neck. It looked almost comical, and reminded her again of children playing dress-up. If she wasn’t so terrified of what these creatures were going to do to her and Lincoln, she might have thought this thing actually looked almost cute.

‘I … I’m … Sal,’ she whispered. ‘M-my name … is … S-Sal.’ She pointed at Lincoln. ‘And he is … A-Abraham.’

It cocked its head again, the eyes — all black like a rodent’s — narrowed, and faint frown lines appeared on its featureless pale skin. The gash of a mouth flexed unpleasantly.

‘Shal?’

‘Saleena,’ she said again. ‘M-my l-longer name … it’s Saleena.’

‘Shaleena?’ it repeated carefully.

‘No, it’s Ssss-aleena.’

‘Thatsh what I shaid. Shaleena?’

She realized its malformed mouth was producing a lisp. She nodded. ‘That’s right, then.’

It looked at Lincoln. ‘Ay-bra-ham?’ it pronounced carefully.

He nodded.

The creature looked down at them carefully for a full minute in a thoughtful silence, then finally its lips rippled and flexed.

‘My name ish … Shixty-one.’

My name is Sixty-one?

‘That’sh what my name ushed to be.’ The creature’s lips moved in a way that Sal interpreted as a possible smile, although with the twisted jagged lines of its ‘lips’ the twitch of movement could have meant anything.

‘I changed my name … It’sh Shamuel, now.’

She shot a quick glance at Lincoln. Did he just say Samuel?

She looked at it again. ‘Your name … did you s-say y-your name is Samuel?’

It nodded. There was a hint of childlike pride in that gesture, she thought. Like a little boy showing his teacher that he can actually tie his own shoelaces now.

‘That’sh exshactly right.’ It smiled again. ‘Shamuel’sh the name.’