The Replacement Phenomenon

  “Did you catch anyone's name?”

  “They wouldn't tell me. They just said this was part of something big and important and the less I knew the better.”

  “Are you reporting back to them after Friday?”

  “They said I'd get my money on Saturday morning at the same old building.”

  “Thank you Frank. I believe you.”

  Frank's shoulders slumped and he seemed like a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  “I'm so sorry you've become involved in this. I think these people will be keeping an eye on you, and I think they might come after you now. I think you should get out of here.” Jake turned to walk away before Frank had time to formulate a response.

  “Go? Where should I go?” Frank asked loudly, obviously hoping from some advice from Jake.

  “Somewhere they're not likely to look for you,” Jake responded, loud enough for Frank to hear.

  His thoughts about Frank had changed over the last few minutes. He was unfortunate to be caught up in this. He wasn't an evil man. He was now a victim, a pawn in their murderous game.

  A short walk soon returned Jake to his car. He replaced the wheel brace in the back, got into the driver seat and started the engine. Soon he was heading back to Wymundham Way with some explaining to do.

  Jake's mind turned to the events of the future and the impact his actions would have. If Frank wasn't to be involved, would he be late home? Would they add Frank to their hit list? He would have to see what happened as soon as time returned to normal. A short drive later Jake was pulling into his home driveway. All he had swirling around in his head was the truth. Whether his wife liked it or not, that was what she was going to get from Jake in a matter of seconds.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Do you honestly expect me to believe any of that?” Amy said, clearly upset at what seemed to be an attempt to mislead her. It seemed he'd stirred in her the temper that so often laid dormant an unnoticed. “Do I really seem that stupid to you?”

  Jake didn't have the opportunity to answer any of the questions being fired at him. He'd tried to explain all of this over the last half an hour. He was not surprised she didn't believe him. The story sounded ridiculous, and his experience of it was all that prevented him from not believing it too.

  “Who were you with? What were you doing?” she demanded, obviously accusing him of something but she didn't quite know what. Jake didn't like where this was going. She'd never shown an angry or a jealous streak before. She was upset about being lied to by the person she most trusted. She just wanted a straight answer. Unfortunately she wasn’t going to get a different answer. It was the truth or nothing.

  “This is absurd!” Jake said in response.

  “Is it absurd that I wouldn't believe you? Is it more absurd than time travel and random killings of complete strangers, and your mighty calling from some mystical power to stop it all? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

  Jake thought that if he kept going back in time, eventually he'd reach the day when she was born yesterday. He kept that comment to himself. It wasn't going to help anything.

  This conversation wasn't going anywhere. She'd determined that either he was lying or he was completely mad. Either way, he wasn't likely to change her mind any time soon.

  He would have to leave her to cool off. Maybe he'd have to sleep elsewhere tonight. She had been wonderfully calm throughout their married life but he'd heard from her family that when she got angry she got very angry. He had once thought such stories to be based on an exaggerated reality. Now he knew they were speaking the truth. Amy was clearly of the belief that every word he had spoken was a fabrication, and he understood her annoyance. He didn't know what he'd think if their roles had been reversed.

  The day was getting old quickly, and their argument still seemed to be quite young by comparison. He needed to go somewhere to let Amy cool off, maybe for the rest of the day. A relatively cheap Victorian era hotel was just around the corner, so Jake left and checked in there for the night, after agreeing to disagree (strongly) with Amy.

  The daylight was fading as Jake approached the Greyhound Hotel. It was an ageing Victorian building, but provided good value for money. Overlooking the grand Darlington Civic Theatre immediately across the road, the place was old inside and out, and was in need of modernisation. Both buildings looked to have been built at the same time, probably by the same architect. Both were ornate red brick and light stone buildings with large, arched windows on the ground floor and pitched grey slate roofs. Once upon a time, he imagined people would have stayed in this hotel after a night at the rather impressive looking little theatre.

  Despite the lack of modernisation, the place was comfortable and friendly. He had no need for satellite or cable television channels. The theatre over the road was showing Roald Dahl’s “George’s Marvellous Medicine” but he had no plan to spend the rest of the day entertaining himself anyway. He had to concentrate on the future, or the past.

  It was going to be a frustrating night, but at least he had time to think through tomorrow's plans. The difficulty would be in waking up on time. He couldn't set an alarm to aid his waking up if he was going backwards. He'd relied on his own body clock to wake himself occasionally in the past, but this time two lives depended on it.

  He wasn't sure how he'd sleep until yesterday, given all that he'd been though today, but he laid on the modest but comfortable bed, and his eyelids felt like lead weights. All of a sudden he didn't doubt how he was going to get to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day than today had been. Only time would tell if that was to be the case.

 

  CHAPTER 6

  Wednesday 28th January, 5:07am

  Jake's eyes opened as his heart started to pound in his chest. He glanced at the clock on the wall to discover that he'd managed to wake up early, but not as early as he would have liked. Seven minutes past five in the morning. His head was spinning, his eyelids were heavy. At that moment he wanted to close his eyes again more than anything else in the world. He knew, however, that the decision to get out of bed now could possibly be the most important decision of his life so far.

  Jake wasn’t an early morning person. He had always chosen late nights over early mornings when he had the choice. He had long since known that he did his best thinking after ten o’clock at night. How did anyone function getting up so early? He knew people who would practically wake up with a smile on their face, whistling and humming their favourite tunes. No amount of early mornings could encourage Jake to start the day in such a way.

  Looking at the clock again he suspected he now had just a couple of minutes to get to the old factory. He hoped that the factory was the starting point for their journey to target Mr Brady and his son. He crept around the bedroom as quietly and quickly as possible.

  It seemed as he finished getting dressed that he had managed to get ready without disturbing Amy. She stirred a little as he sneaked out the bedroom door, but she wasn't awake. She certainly wouldn't have been awake enough to have any clue what was going on around her.

  Jake was out of the house and in the car within a minute of leaving the bedroom. He looked at the instrument panel of the car and figured it was actually 5:10am. He was probably cutting this a bit too close.

  He drove quickly and slightly recklessly to the same spot where he had parked on his last visit.

  He trampled his way through the wooded area to the car park. It was still dark, but dawn was breaking. He could see a faint silhouette of the van, with no cars surrounding it. He walked up to it and looked through the window. It looked a lot newer than it had yesterday and the steering column seemed intact. This van hadn't been hot-wired yet. The doors were locked. He still couldn't fathom what was really going on here. Why was the van here the morning before it was stolen, and why would they hot-wire a van they already had possession of the day before? This van had to be the key to finding and helping the Brady family.

  Having t
ried the back doors, and finding them to be unlocked, Jake had found his way to help the Brady family. On climbing in and closing the door behind him, he discovered there were several bags piled up in the middle of the back of the van. Scattered on top of and around the bags were several pieces of paper. He picked one of them up, but didn't yet have enough light to see what was printed on it.

  All of a sudden, headlights flashed across the inside of the back of the van and the sound of a car engine grew louder and louder. The hired goons for this task were here. If they opened the back of this van they'd see him, and his plan would have backfired considerably. He heard car doors open and close, and some weary sounding voices getting ever closer.

  He needed to think quickly again. Now he could hear footsteps. They were very close, and one seemed to be heading for the back doors. He dove across the van and hid as well as he could underneath the bags, hoping the darkness would hide any parts of him that he couldn't obscure beneath the contents of the van.

  The left hand back door swung open, and a second later Jake felt the thud of a fairly heavy bag landing on his stomach. It took all of his energy to not yelp in pain as it hit him. “What the hell are you doing?” he could hear one of them say as the door slammed shut again. The words were now muffled but he could still hear what they were saying. “We don't know how sensitive this stuff is. One wrong move and we won't even make it as far as the Brady house.”

  The voices were becoming increasingly muffled. They were going into the factory before setting off on their murderous journey.

  On the very top of the bag that had collided with Jake, he found another information sheet about the Brady family. He was trying to make out the writing underneath the pictures of the two men whose lives he'd try to save in a few minutes. He could just about make out the pictures, and some of the printed text, but there was additional writing on it. The other pages surrounding him had several unusual symbols and large print messages to someone.

  He still couldn't see enough to decipher it all. A thought hit him as he lay there in the dark. This van didn't show any signs inside that it had been used by a butcher or a baker. There were bags in the middle and papers strewn everywhere. Somehow it didn’t seem like the same van he had peered in to yesterday. Once again something didn't add up.

  He'd thought at great length on his yesterday evening about the whole plan for B. Brady& Son, but had come up with nothing. How were they going to attempt to bump off these people? With that thought, he heard footsteps again. This was it.

  The men were sitting in the front, the engine started without any fuss, and the van was being driven quickly and erratically, cornering sharply to the left, then to the right. He could tell how aggressively they were driving by how hard his head was hitting the side of the van when they turned right. They were apparently trying to make up for lost time.

  A band of orange light illuminated half of the rear of the van, moved gradually forward and then vanished, then another band of light appeared. It was from overhanging street lights. Jake was able to see what was on the paper in front of him every few seconds. He picked up a piece of paper and read what he could.

  ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST JIHAD MOVEMENT was printed in the middle of the piece of paper. That was crazy. The program of hits put out on people's lives wasn't run by people who were Muslims as far as he could figure out.

  These people were putting a religious front on their actions. They weren't doing this for religion. He didn't know what their motivation was, but it seemed as far away from religious or philosophical reasons as one could get. He knew a little bit about all the major religions, and everyone was against killing and bloodshed, with the occasional allowance of such actions if it was in defence of family, rights, and liberty. This was clearly not religiously motivated, but religion was being used as a scapegoat.

  He heard excited talking between the two in the front of the van, and then he could feel the van stopping. The passenger door opened and one of the men stepped out.

  Five minutes later another vehicle that sounded like a beaten up van approached and stopped behind the one in which Jake and the mystery driver were seated. The passenger door opened and someone shuffled into the seat, then the door was slammed closed again. That seemed to be the cue for Jake's driver to move. He drove for thirty seconds around a couple of corners and then they stopped again. The engine turned off and everything was quiet for a few seconds.

  The driver door opened and he heard more panicked, but hushed voices this time. He heard something about a vantage point and a mobile phone, then the door closed and he was in the van alone.

  Jake decided to take the opportunity to examine the contents of the van. All of the paper had some reference to the Islamic Fundamentalist Jihad Movement, which he was sure wouldn't actually exist, and if it did, it was pure coincidence. It was a terrorist façade to redirect the possible ramifications of their actions.

  The paper gave no other clues. He rummaged through the several canvas hold-all bags on the floor of the van and found what looked like an old radio, a mobile phone, and several random electronic components.

  This was hopeless. He was never going to get any closer to knowing what was about to happen. He heard two distant male voices, getting louder. They were different from the others. These could be the voices of Brian Brady and his son.

  Their conversation about work was drowned out by a random beep inside one of the bags. In a few seconds there was another one. After several beeps they sped up. At first there was five seconds between beeps. Then there were two... Then one.

  It all clicked in his head. This was a dummy van that was going to be detonated by those thugs who put it here. They'd hot-wired the original and driven this one into its place. The voices grew louder. They hadn't noticed the switch of vans. Why would they? Who would go to the hassle of rigging up another van to look like theirs, complete with cartoon pig logo? The driver door opened, and the father asked his son to get something from the back.

  Their faint conversation could just be heard over the incessant beeping. It sped up. The van was going up in smoke in a few seconds and he needed to get out of there.

  “No!” he shouted. “Don't get in! Move away!” He jumped up and ran to the back door of the van. “Don't come any closer! It's going to blow!”

 

  CHAPTER 7

  Wednesday 28th January, 6:31am

  At the moment Jake flung the back door of the van open, he saw Joseph Brady for the first time in real life, but he wasn't stopping to chat or to offer a hand and introduce himself. He grabbed the guy by his t-shirt and was running as fast as he could away from the soon-to-be exploding red butcher's van.

  Only a few steps after spinning Joseph around, a thunderous sound erupted behind them, then instantly a fiercely hot gust of air hit the back of his neck before engulfing him and throwing him forward off his fast-moving feet. It was as if an unseen force had literally picked them both off the floor and had thrown them onto their chests and faces. As Jake picked his face up from the tarmac he was certain that he would not look pretty when the action died down. He was now certain to have sustained several cuts and bruises.

  After a few long seconds pain flooded his face and hands. He turned his hands over, revealing the palms. He hoped his face was in better shape than his hands. Even in the dim street light he could see that they were scraped and already covered in blood. The guy to his right had somehow fallen with less force on his front, and had only one or two small scratches.

  Behind him lay smouldering pieces of what had been a replica van just seconds before. These large pieces had been thrown some distance from the van by the explosion. The Bradys hadn't noticed the switch or any difference in the vehicles in the dim light. They surely had no reason to suspect anything was different. Whatever the motivation behind this attack, it seemed to Jake to be equally as cold-hearted as the attack on his own family. They were wrecking a family and possibly their business for some reason that he wa
s yet to determine.

  Flames still rose high from what was left of the van, now a short distance away from Jake and Joseph. The van's remnants would probably be burning and smouldering for some time yet. The bags in the van must have been packed with large amounts of explosive, probably home-made. He'd heard about people smuggling fertiliser, sugar and coal dust onto an aeroplane with the intention of combining ingredients when on board. These people had probably concocted something similar.

  Jake looked around at the street that had started the day with a bang. The street appeared to be part of a housing estate built and once owned by the local Council. The houses were in blocks of four terraced houses, were bland in appearance and had a grey-looking render applied to the outside. They had gently sloping tiled roofs and window styles that varied from house to house. Some windows were single paned with cheap metal frames. He suspected these to be original windows. The majority of houses had cheap white UPVC framed windows of all shapes and sizes. Front gardens had an overgrown look, separated by waist high chain link fencing and old metal gates. The houses looked like they were built by the lowest bidder some time ago, but they were showing their age and in need of an overhaul.

  In recent years these houses would have been bought by tenants for less than the market price and would now be privately owned. A reputation surrounded streets like these that Jake had never believed to be accurate. This reputation suggested streets filled with broken families, where loud children walk the rubbish lined pavements into the early hours of the morning. Places where one would be crazy to walk around after nightfall and expect to return home with their wallet. Jake knew good people living in such areas, and was not aware of such anti-social problems. This street wasn't very attractive to look at, but looked quiet and seemed to be the kind of place where families could live quietly, excluding the events of this morning.