A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St Mary's) (26 page)

Below us, the Battle of St Mary’s raged on. Occasional muffled booms shook the building beneath my feet.

I said, ‘Let me see to Dr Bairstow,’ and moved slowly toward him. She raised her gun. ‘Stop right there.’

I don’t often do as I’m told, but I was alongside his desk, which was where I wanted to be. From here , there was just the faintest chance I could reach her.

We stared at each other. Everything else slowly receded into the background.

I took a deep breath to calm down. I had to get this right.

‘So, Izzie – what now?’

‘For you? Nothing.’

At that moment, with a final explosion that shook the room, all sounds of battle ceased. The silence was deafening. And terrifying. I could think of only one reason why everything should stop.

St Mary’s was finished.

Chapter Sixteen

They say that just before you die, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes, but since I was too busy concentrating on Barclay, I missed it.

‘Take off your helmet.’

I blinked. ‘Why? What for?’

‘I want to watch your brains splatter all over that wall. I want to watch your face blow apart. I want to see that stupid, smug, self-satisfied smile wiped off your face. For ever. So take off your helmet.’

She quite literally shook with fury. Or fear, maybe. She should turn and walk out of the room. Now. I’d be too busy with Dr Bairstow to prevent her. She should go now. That was what she should do. But she was going to take a moment for personal revenge and that’s always a mistake. I’ve said it before. Don’t gloat – just shoot.

I reached up slowly and fumbled to get my helmet off. I pulled it away from my head, took a moment to sigh with relief, wiped my forearm across my sweaty forehead, turned slightly to lay it on the desk, pivoted on my heels, and threw it at her.

And missed.

She fired at the same moment and her bullet thunked into the wall beside me. I felt the wind of its passing on my cheek. Bloody hell! If I’d known she was that good a shot …

I leaped for her.

I was far too far away. I would never have made it. I should have died there and then, knowing that I’d lost everything.

Dr Bairstow swung his stick and caught her behind the knees. She sagged forwards, instinctively catching at the table to save herself, dropping the gun. I threw myself on her. We both crashed to the ground and fought for our lives.

I’d once killed her. She’d once killed me. A score draw so far. Now we were into extra time.

I drove my fist hard into her face, feeling bones shatter. Hers and mine. She was jabbing below my ribs – short, hard blows, every one precision-delivered in exactly the same place. I felt pain sheeting through my kidneys, around my back …

She bucked suddenly and I flew through the air, rolled, and staggered painfully to my feet. I couldn’t stand straight, but she couldn’t see properly. Blood streamed from her nose and mouth. Already, her eyes were swelling.

My hand was a ball of throbbing fire.

Face to face really wasn’t her style at all. She was looking past me for a way out. No, she wasn’t – she was looking for her gun. We both saw it at the same moment.

She tried to scramble for it and I fell on top of her, which must have driven the breath from her body, because she suddenly went limp. I seized a great lump of her stupid red hair and banged her battered face into the parquet. Hard. She screamed in pain. I put my knee on the back of her neck, leaned forwards, removed the gun from her fist, and slapped it on my sticky patch.

Rolling off her, I stood shakily.

‘Get up.’

She moaned something indistinguishable and I kicked her hard on her knee.

‘Get up.’

She was crying. Great bloody bubbles frothed from her nose. Blood ran down her chin. Her jaw looked the wrong shape. I’d done some real damage there.

I wasn’t much better myself. My hand looked and felt like a purple, puffy football. A belt of fire encircled my waist. Every time I breathed, a sharp pain stabbed my ribs.

I left her for a minute and bent painfully over Dr Bairstow.

‘Sir?’

He was very white. I stared anxiously, but couldn’t see any blood. Kevlar does its best, but he’d been shot at close range. At the very least, his ribs were broken.

His eyes flickered open.

‘Buy … me … time.’

‘I will, sir.’

I picked up the precious data stick and placed it in his hand. His fingers curled around it and a little colour came back into his face.

I placed the blaster within his reach and left him.

Time to find out what was happening elsewhere.

And buy him some time.

I had to help her up. I wasn’t very gentle, but as far as I could see, her weakness was genuine. I heaved her out of the door, and with the gun rammed into the back of her neck, we took the short walk to the gallery and looked down.

The Battle of St Mary’s was over.

People lay where they had fallen. My heart clenched. They couldn’t all be dead, surely? I forgot Barclay, forgot everything. I stood on the gallery and stared down at the ruins of St Mary’s.

The Hall was wrecked. Small fires burned. Scorch marks bloomed up the walls. The plaster was pockmarked and scored from flying shrapnel. Splintered wood lay in heaps. Most of the banisters around the gallery had just – gone.

Bodies sprawled everywhere. I forgot this was another St Mary’s. These were people I’d known. People I’d worked with. People I’d loved.

If I turned my head, I could see Ian Guthrie, slumped against the wall like a broken doll, his chin resting on his chest, looking curiously vulnerable.

Dieter lay where he’d fallen. His eyes were open but I was certain he didn’t know where he was. Markham was partially buried under a pile of rubble and broken glass. What I could see of his face was just a mask of blood.

There was so much blood. Great arcs of it sprayed up the walls and pooled across the floor. People had walked through it and bloody footprints criss-crossed the floor.

Professor Rapson and Dr Dowson lay as they’d fought – together. The professor still clutched the remains of his homemade crossbow. By the looks of things, he’d run out of bolts and been using it as a club. Dr Dowson’s blood-stained morningstar had fallen from his grasp and lay nearby. Even now, he was making feeble moves to pick it up.

Our caretaker, Mr Strong, lay nearby. He’d disobeyed the order for the civilian staff to retreat. His glorious comb-over was in disarray. Long strands of grey hair flopped over his face. He lay very still. He was an old man and he had pinned on his medals and turned out to fight for St Mary’s. He lay very still as dust floated downwards, slowly covering the brightly coloured ribbons on his chest. It looked as if he’d been defending St Mary’s with some kind of garden implement.

A dirty and furious Dr Foster was supervising the removal of the wounded. Hunter knelt over someone I couldn’t see, packing a wound, and calling over her shoulder for more dressings.

A figure I thought might be Peterson lay in a heap. Not moving.

I saw Perkins, Clerk, and Prentiss, their helmets off, being pushed against a wall and made to kneel. Dirty, defeated, and angry.

All the courage. All the spirit. All the bloody-mindedness. All gone.

The Time Police were kicking open doors and pulling out people who had their hands in the air. Everyone was shunted down into the Hall. All those not actually unconscious were kicked into a kneeling position, their hands behind their heads.

Something was missing.

Even as I stared, Colonel Albay, helmet off, his face streaked with sweat and dirt, glanced up.

‘Dr Maxwell! Please join us. Is that a hostage? How kind, but it’s not a bring your own, you know.’

I preferred him before he had a sense of humour.

‘Please take care on the stairs.’

He wasn’t joking. Lack of ammunition had not been a problem. We’re St Mary’s. We can fashion a heat-seeking missile out of two toilet rolls and an elastic band. I remembered the tangle of equipment behind Dr Dowson and Professor Rapson. They had been letting rip with medieval anti-personnel devices, and with some success, it appeared. The stairs glistened with oil. An old medieval trick, oiling the staircases and ramps. Simple, but effective. Judging by the smears on their uniforms, quite a few of the Time Police must have come crashing down.

Two of them were kicking homemade caltrops to one side of the Hall. Caltrops are two or more nails, twisted together in such a way that one wicked spike always points upwards. Not something you want to fall on if you’ve just slipped on a patch of oil.

And the third part of their unholy trinity – sand. You heat buckets of sand – something with which St Mary’s was always liberally provided in the form of fire buckets – and tip it over the battlements onto the attackers below. As anyone who’s ever eaten a sandwich on the beach knows, sand gets everywhere. In your hair, down your neck, inside your armour … and hot sand, baking-hot sand, is no different. And it retains its heat. And it doesn’t shift. It gets into all your nooks and crannies, and even when it cools, it’s still chafing away, driving the victims insane. I sometimes wonder if Professor Rapson did his training in one of the circles of hell.

I felt a momentary surge of pride. We’d taken on a superior force and we’d given them a run for their money. They knew they’d been in a fight. We’d fought with every last weapon at our disposal. I suspected the professor had even had a plan to prise up the stone flags and throw those as well.

But we’d been defeated …

It was a measure of the completeness of his victory that Albay didn’t even bother to send an escort for me. There was nothing in the world I could do that would threaten him in any way. If I resisted, he’d simply have someone shot.

Since I had no choice, I pushed Barclay ahead of me. Given her recent history with the Time Police, she was probably as reluctant to go down there as I was, because, somewhat dramatically, as we reached the top of the stairs, she collapsed.

I sighed. Nothing but trouble.

My foot, never a limb over which I’d had a lot of control, made one of those inadvertent nudges and she fell down the stairs. She came to rest on the half landing, and since she’d come so far, it seemed unkind not to help her the rest of the way. Her head hit every single stair with a kind of thudding, booming noise. Her arms and legs whirled limply. I thought I heard something crack. She lay in a tangle at the foot of the stairs. If she hadn’t been unconscious at the top, she certainly was at the bottom.

Slowly, I followed her down and was relieved of my weapon.

‘And where is Dr Bairstow?’

I said, dully, ‘Here, somewhere,’ and looked vaguely around.

‘Do I really have to tell you what will happen if you lie to me again?’

‘She shot him.’

He nodded and two officers peeled off towards his office. Good luck to them. He had a blaster.

The occupiers were clearing rooms and gathering weapons. Over in the corner of the Hall, someone was setting up a series of portable lights.

I wondered how Hawking looked and whether there was anything left. I wondered if Dr Bairstow had managed to get away. I hoped to God that he had because I really didn’t want him seeing this. I looked around at a defeated St Mary’s and had to blink hard to keep back the tears.

The lights came on, illuminating the Hall but leaving everywhere else in deep shadow. I looked around at the groups of people being herded together and realised what was missing. Or rather – who. Where were the civilian staff? Oh, my God. Had they already been removed? I had a sudden dreadful picture of them being shoved into some closed vehicle, shocked and hurt, and driven – where? And for what purpose?

I stared hard at the stone flags, impotent rage and despair boiling inside me, forbidding myself to cry.

It started to snow.

I know! That’s what I thought! But I swear, it started to snow. The air was full of a fine white powder, drifting gently across the Hall to fall silently on every horizontal surface. I peered upwards into the gloom. I could see dark figures up high, leaning precariously over what was left of the gallery, shaking white dust over everything.

And while I was getting my head around that, something sailed out of the dark, fell at my feet and burst. And another one over there. And there. I looked up. Above our heads, Mrs Mack was hurling scores of fat condoms down into the Hall, and, believe me, that is not a phrase anyone should ever expect to use. Intimate rubber items plopped around us, splitting on impact, and diffusing even more clouds of white dust.

Colonel Albay and I, united for once, stared at them in disbelief. I looked down at myself, lightly dusted with flour.

Flour? Were we going to bake them to death?

Then my mind flew back to the day I sat in Mrs Mack’s office, watching the cat, Vortigern slumbering heavily on a hairy copy of The Flour Handling Regulations and I knew what was going to happen next. Flour dust is one of the most explosive substances around. More explosive even than coal dust.

Guthrie had led the conventional defence. When that was finished, the professor had done what he knew best and improvised. And when he was done, the civilian staff had stepped up. Surreptitiously, I looked around for somewhere safe to hide.

Around me, The Forces of Darkness had stopped rounding up personnel and were looking around in puzzlement. I saw one raise a com device. ‘I think it’s flour. No, no idea, sir. Yes, copy that.’ He motioned his men forward. There were a good number of them in the Hall now. They were all looking around, watching the flour fall.

I edged slowly backwards.

Because Mrs Partridge stood motionless at the top of the stairs. She was dirty and smoke-streaked. Her arms were bloody to the elbows and her hair was falling down. I thought suddenly of The Furies, those remorseless, merciless goddesses of retribution, who pursue their victims to the grave and beyond. She stood under the glass lantern, holding something cylindrical. Not a scroll, this time. She was holding a fizzer.

Around the Hall, everything stopped. Half a hundred Time Police stared in disbelief and then the penny dropped for everyone.

Beside me, Colonel Albay raised his gun. I grabbed for his arm, pulled it down with all my might, and shouted at her. ‘Do it. Do it now.’

She pulled the tag.

Time does slow down when you’re about to die. I saw the flash as it ignited. I watched her draw back her arm and hurl it high into the air. It rose in a graceful arc, turning end over end and then, at the height of its trajectory, exploding into a brilliant red ball of flame, just as it was designed to do.

I pushed the colonel away and dropped. Around me, those of St Mary’s who weren’t already on the ground were hurling themselves there and covering their heads. I ignored my complaining ribs and curled into a tight ball that I hoped would expose as little of me as possible and waited for flour power.