Down: Trilogy Box Set (70 page)

To Hathaway’s pleasure, Holborn Avenue was in a time warp. The same long rows of two-story brick houses on either side of the dead-end road. The same fanciful Moorish arches leading to recessed front doors. The same rows of parked cars jammed half-on, half-off the sidewalks. The only difference he could see was that the brickwork on some of the houses had been painted white or tan and most of them had curious gray dishes with wires bolted onto the second stories.

“That’s the one,” Hathaway said to the others, slowing and pointing at the shabbiest house on the block. The bricks needed pointing and the paint trim was peeling.

“Are we getting out of this crate now?” Youngblood asked.

“Not yet,” Hathaway said. “I’ll scout it out first. Let’s see if I remember how to parallel park.”

There was a tight space past the house and he managed to cram the Hyundai into it. He told the men to stay put and keep out of sight. Chambers promptly relieved himself in the back seat.

Most of the houses were dark and this one was too. Hathaway tensed and rapped lightly on the door. He’d left his knife in the car but he didn’t need it. He’d learned how to destroy people with his fists, feet, and teeth.

After a short while he knocked again, this time louder. There was a slight glow above his head and when he stepped back out of the archway, he saw a light had been switched on. Then the front window glowed and a muffled voice came through the door.

“Who’s there?”

He made himself talk. “Is that Harold? Harold Hathaway?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

His heart leapt. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Piss off. Tell me who it is or I’m calling the police.”

He took a very deep breath and said, “It’s Lucas.”

There was no response, none at all.

“I said it’s Lucas. Your brother.”

“Okay, you’ve got three seconds to leave or you’re going to get nicked.”

“Our cat was called Agatha. Our goldfish were Ronnie and Reggie. Mum’s favorite food was chips and Daddies Sauce. Dad was drunk on barley wine nearly all the time.”

After a long pause the door opened a crack, then a bit more. A fat, bald man appeared in his boxers, his gut ballooning a wife-beater undershirt. It wasn’t until the door was open wide and the light from the hall fell upon Lucas that his brother’s face fully registered what he was seeing. A second of an abjectly shocked expression was followed by collapse as the blood drained into his stout legs. He fell backwards into the hall.

From upstairs a woman called his name and asked if everything was all right.

Lest she ring the police, Hathaway called up. “It’s all right. He’s just fainted. It’s a mate of his.”

A woman, also in her sixties appeared at the top of the stairs. She looked like her round body had been stamped from the same mold as Harold’s.

She came waddling down the stairs and got to her husband’s side at the same time as he began to come around.

“Get him some water,” Hathaway said.

“I don’t know you,” she said, cradling Harold’s head. “Who are you?”

“A mate, like I said.”

“He don’t have no mates your age. What did you do to him? I’m going to ring the police.”

Harold tried to get to his feet but only managed to sit. He stared at his brother. “It
is
you.”

“Yeah.”

“Who? Who is it, Harold? Should I ring emergency?”

“No! Just help me up.”

Hathaway had phenomenal strength. He lifted his brother as if he were a child and carried him to the sitting room. Some of the furniture was familiar.

Harold came to completely. “How is it possible?” he asked, over and over.

“How is what possible?” his wife asked.

“It’s Lucas, my brother.”

“What do you mean, it’s your brother. Your brother’s been dead for thirty years.”

“You look the same,” Harold said. “Exactly the same as I remember you.”

“You look different, mate,” Hathaway said.

“Are you dead?” he asked in a rasping whisper.

“I don’t know what I am, to be truthful. It’s a ridiculously long story.”

“You smell like you’re dead.”

“You smell like booze.”

Harold told his wife to get him a large gin.

“Bring us a glass too,” Hathaway said to the woman. “Listen, I’ve got some mates in the car. Mind if I bring them in?”

“Are they like you?” Harold asked.

“Similar, I’d say.”

Molly and Christine made their way through dense woods until they came to farmland. They climbed a wire fence and in the near distance heard the lowing of cows in the dark.

“Better not be a bull about,” Molly said.

Christine took her hand. “Better a bull than rovers.”

They walked for at least a mile before they saw the roof of a farmhouse silhouetted against the starry sky.

“No lights,” Christine said. “They’re either asleep or away.”

“You sure it’s a good idea?” Molly asked.

“We’re hungry, we’re dirty, we’re cut up. Yeah, let’s try it on.”

All the windows were pitch black and there were no cars in the driveway. They spent a few minutes in whispered debate before deciding to break a window with a rock. The sound of the glass shattering was louder than they hoped so they hid behind an outbuilding. When no lights came on, they returned to the house, unlatched the lounge window from the inside and climbed in.

Armed with brass lamps pulled from the mains as weapons, they made a slow and cautious tour of the dark house, floor by floor, searching for occupants. It was only when they finished creeping through the small bedrooms on the third floor that they were able to relax and begin to luxuriate in the idea of having the place for each other.

Unsure how near they were to the closest neighbors, they were reluctant to switch on lights. Instead, they found some candles and matches in the lounge and headed straight for the fridge. Inside, to their delight and amazement was a roast chicken, bowls of mashed potatoes, and vegetables, and in the freezer, several tubs of ice cream.

“This isn’t Earth,” Molly said. “It’s Heaven.”

When they couldn’t eat another morsel they turned to the next object of their desire: the bathtubs. Each one filled their own hot tub, the water promptly turning brown and almost black from their grime. Christine decided to drain the tub and have a second fill with clean water. She spent a full hour in bliss, her skin wrinkling, her mind at peace for the first time in thirty years. But drying herself with a marvelous fluffy towel she saw herself in the mirror and began to cry. Gone were her saucy good looks and big hair. The woman in the mirror was skin and bones with gaps in her teeth and sagging breasts. It was a wonder that Jason still cherished her, though he hadn’t exactly escaped the ravages of their harsh existence. Pulling herself together she found a bottle of cologne and applied it heavily to try and mask her odor. She couldn’t bear to put her ragged, filthy clothes back on so she had a rummage through the bedroom dressers and wardrobes but the lady of the house was several sizes larger. Molly had been pursuing a similar course of ablutions but was having better luck in a daughter’s room where she laid out several outfits on the bed. The two women spent a half an hour like teenagers, trying on clothes and laughing, but the reality of their situation intruded and they forced themselves to gather clothes, toiletries, and food in a sports backpack they found in one of the closets and reluctantly they left this bountiful, fantasy of a house.

Molly thought to check the outbuildings for vehicles and inside a barn they found a fairly new Cooper Mini in racing green. The keys weren’t in the car so they re-entered the house and soon discovered a key ring on a peg in the kitchen.

The car interior was difficult to decipher and by the glow of the instrument panel they read the driver’s manual and figured out how to start it.

“Do you need a map?” Molly asked as Christine drove off.

“Unless the roads have changed I know the way.”

“Are you sure we should go there?”

“I don’t know too many other places we can go.”

Left behind in the kitchen was a note Christine wrote for the homeowners done in halting penmanship. It was the first time she had put pen to paper in three decades.

We’re sorry for using your house and stealing some items. It was the best night we’ve had for a very long time. Please forgive us.

An emergency telecon was about to begin. Ben logged on at MAAC and before long the screen filled with participants joining from London and America. Ben opened with a preamble. He reminded everyone that the goalposts had shifted. One-for-one exchanges were still happening but now they were geographically dispersed around the huge MAAC oval. The appearance of the Iver Hellers was particularly disturbing.

Leroy Bitterman was at the US Embassy at Grovenor Square where he had been briefing the president on secure comms. He looked up from the map of Greater London spread before him and said, “It seems to me that the implications are profound. Each MAAC restart must be altering the dimensional fields in ways we don’t understand. Previously the connection between them and us was only a pinhole. Now I would say it’s a portal. We have no way of knowing what the restart in four weeks is going to do. I’m concerned that further collider activity will open the door wider. We don’t want to see a floodgate. Fortunately we made the decision to have only one more restart.”

Trotter, online from his perch at MI6, cleared his throat to announce he was about to speak. “For the record, I was against further collider activity. We should have slammed the door closed, locked it, and thrown away the key.”

“And condemned twelve innocent bystanders to an awful fate,” Bitterman said.

“I’m more concerned about the fate of sixty million Britons.”

“That’s hyperbole,” Bitterman said.

“Is it? Can you give us an ironclad guarantee?”

“Of course not. We’re all feeling around in the dark on this one.”

Smithwick chimed in from her office in Whitehall. “I for one would not like to characterize our endeavors to the prime minister as feeling around in the dark.’”

“Is honesty discouraged at 10 Downing Street?” Bitterman countered.

Smithwick puckered her mouth and allowed Trotter to press on.

“In light of the Iver intruders,” Trotter said, “which Dr. Bitterman just described as a profound development, and lacking scientific guarantees, I think we should make a recommendation to our respective governments to terminate all future activities at MAAC.”

“We just sent a rescue party of four brave people over,” Bitterman said, his voice rising. “The US government will not allow them to be abandoned and anyway, we’re a month away from the next restart. We haven’t even convened the first meeting of the scientific advisors who are being empaneled to help us mitigate the situation in which we find ourselves. My understanding is that this videocon was called to deal with practical and pressing matters. Mr. Wellington, I believe you had the first agenda item.”

Ben minimized Trotter’s feed but even in a thumbnail view, his smirking face was a distraction. He briefed the group about the status of all the prisoners now held at MAAC, the lack of new information about the Hellers from South Ockendon, and then he expanded on the backgrounds and life histories of Jason Rix and Colin Murphy.

“Despite the new wrinkle of geographical separation,” he said, “to date, the principle of parity seems to have been maintained,” he said. “There have been sixteen people who have traversed from our side and sixteen Hellers we know of who have come to Earth. Therefore, it is incumbent on us, in order to have the best chance of recovering all sixteen of our people in one month’s time, that we locate the missing Hellers. From our interviews with Rix and Murphy, it appears that two of these people are their wives, Christine Rix and Molly Murphy.”

He put the photos of all four of them on the screen. They had been obtained from 1984 news stories about their murders.

“These women are likely traveling with a group of rovers which includes this man, Lucas Hathaway.”

Another newspaper photo filled the screen.

“Hathaway was their murderer. To say there’s bad blood amongst them is an understatement. The reason I bring this up to the group is that given the law enforcement backgrounds of Murphy and Rix, and given their zeal for finding their wives, I would like to take them up on their offer to help us in our investigations.”

“And how would they do that?” Trotter asked, his face filling the screen again.

“They want to go into the field. We would accompany them at all times with armed guards and would give them zero freedom of independent movement.”

“I vote no,” Trotter said, “and I advise others to do the same. It’s too risky. If they escape, you’ll have two more runners to deal with. If they have any pertinent information on the potential whereabouts of the Hellers, then extract the information from their jail cells.”

“They have rejected the idea of remotely assisting our inquiries,” Ben said. “They were shoe-leather detectives and maintain they can only be effective if they are allowed to follow the trail in person and I am persuaded to agree with them.”

“Are you quite sure you can keep them on leashes?” Smithwick asked.

“I am,” Ben replied.

They voted; Trotter was the only one casting a no ballot. For the rest of the meeting he maintained a clench-jawed silence and failed to bring up the matter of Giles Farmer.

Brian skillfully maneuvered the flat-bottomed sailing barge upstream. When a fishing boat passed in the opposite direction, Emily hid amongst the cargo and passing fishermen seemed unaware that the crew of the barge was exotic.

From a distance, John recognized Solomon Wisdom’s house perched on a high hill. Approaching Wisdom’s dock, the men readied their weapons but there was no one about. Wisdom’s boat was tied up. Brian maneuvered the craft to the opposite side of the dock and threw lines out to John and Trevor. They had plenty of swords to go around but Emily declined one.

“Guess you’ve got your own weapons,” John joked, looking at her chest.