Time Rocks

Chapter Eighteen

  I woke slowly from a dream about Jack. He was trapped in a dark, wet cave. There was water dripping, though the sound of it came to me from far away. I felt awake in my sleep and I tried to cling on to Jack, but light forced in to my dreaming and I was borne away to an empty room. Nausea swept over me, and the relentless sound of dripping water grew in my head.

  There was whiteness everywhere. The whitest light lit everything. I awoke on a hard white bed in a windowless room. My feet were freezing. Sanitised air brushed the hairs and goose bumps on my skin. My hair was slicked back from my forehead. It felt damp on my neck. I had been bathed and was naked beneath a paper hospital gown. There was nothing else in the small room, or perhaps I should say ward, except two white doors, one ajar, leading to a bathroom, and the other firmly shut.

  I raised myself up and sat on the edge of the bed. I could hear nothing but the steady rush of the ventilation system. In the bathroom I sat on the toilet for a tinkle, looking around at white tiles. There was nothing unnecessary or wasted in the room, except the steady drip of water from a shower head.

  I remembered being injected. A small bruise on my arm showed me where the needle had punctured my skin, but there were two other marks too. What were they? How long had I been out? Whatever it was, they had undressed me, bathed me, towelled me off, and put me to bed without my knowledge. Feeling panicky, I looked for an electronic cuff or bruising on my wrists. There was nothing.

  Beating my fists on the ward door and shouting produced nothing, except sore fists. After ten minutes, of useless pounding I collapsed on the bed glaring at the door, willing it to open. When eventually it did I was sleeping and the sound woke me up.

  ‘Get dressed, you’re coming with us.’ Two armed guards were in the room. One tossed my bra and pants, and an orange boiler suit onto the bed, the other a pair of white, ankle length, rubber boots.

  ‘Where are my own clothes?’

  ‘You don’t need them anymore, not where you’re going.

  ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘You’ll find out. Get dressed.’ Their hard expressions betrayed not a scrap of compassion. I could see they would not hesitate to leap on me and dress me by force if I did not do as ordered. I shuddered, wondering if they had been the ones who had bathed me. I tried not to think about it. They refused me any privacy. I turned my back and struggled to dress as best I could. It was good to get into my own underwear, but the boiler suit felt strange. I buttoned it up to the throat and pulled up the sleeves, which were much too long for me.

  ‘And the boots – be quick!’

  The boots were cold inside and huge. ‘They’re too big.’

  ‘Oh dear, did you hear that, Eric? She says they’re too big.’

  ‘What a shame. I’ll have her size flown in from Jimmy Choos. They’ll be here tomorrow.’ He chuckled, enjoying his joke as he unholstered an electronic pistol device. ‘Do you know what this is, fairy feet?’ He waved the odd looking weapon under my nose. ‘It’s a TASER, an electronic stun gun. It’ll give you a 50,000 volt electric shock if you try anything stupid.’ He waved it to indicate that I should move to the door. ‘So - on your way, and remember, sweet toes, I’m right behind you with this. I love watching people writhe in a gibbering mess when I use it. So please, give me an excuse.’

  An electric cart was waiting in the corridor. The driver ignored me as I was pushed into the rear seat. TASER man slid in beside me. The other guard sat in the front. We set off, whizzing along the wide, brightly lit tunnels, past office doors and windows. After a couple of minutes we arrived at an elevator door and I was made to alight. Taser man operated the voice identification lock and the elevator doors opened. Moments later we were in a place I recognised, the entrance hall of MCF’s palatial country house headquarters.

  ‘Ah meez Morreez, how nice to see you again. Pliz come theez way.’ Seeing the oily butler in his turban was a particularly unwelcome sight. I shuddered as I thought of its grim significance. His presence proved this was my last stop. MCF no longer cared about hiding things from me, or putting on a show. They no longer cared who or what I saw. They were going to kill me. I would be a problem no more.

  ‘Wait in here pliz. Sir Mackenzie Carmichael will be here presently.'

  It was the room with the television screens. Nothing had changed. Through the window I could see it was a lovely day outside. The sun was shining across the broad grassy avenue between the horse chestnut trees and copper beaches. I wondered what my parents would be doing on a pleasant day like this. Was it the weekend? I wasn’t sure how long I had been locked up. I had eaten four meals in the cell, but was that one or two meals a day, or maybe even three? How long had I slept? I could have been out for days.

  Would granddad have found his bolt croppers and screwdriver missing? What would my parents make of that? Had they told the police? Surely they must have by now. Would they have checked to find out which of my friend’s houses I'd slept at? If so, they would know by now it was a lie. My mum would be weeping, my dad would be trying to calm her, and my granddad would be running the police ragged with his questions and theories.

  The disguised door in the wall of floor to ceiling book shelves opened, admitting an electric wheel chair. It whined into the room carrying the sickly, hunched figure that was, Sir Mackenzie Carmichael. It steered behind the desk in front of the sunlit window.

  I heard again the low, sibilant voice, and remembered our last meeting. ‘Well your little spree in the tunnel got you nowhere. There was no breach of security. We started a fire of our own in the woods above the tunnel and called the police and fire brigade, just in case anybody reported smoke from the fire you started in the tunnel. I’m pleased to say that everything is back as it was.’

  ‘You won’t get away with it. People know where I was going. The police know.’

  ‘Yes dear – I’m sure. I expect the S.A.S. will come bursting in here any moment. In the meantime however, I’m putting you on ice.’ He covered his mouth with a surgical gloved hand and giggled. ‘Forgive me. That always makes me laugh. It’s our speciality you might say. Any of our friends who become embarrassing are sent back to freeze. It’s very efficient. You see glaciers take care of everything. First you freeze to death. Your body is crushed and ground into paste which is eventually flushed out into the rivers. It’s a wonderful system.’ His trembling, gloved hand moved slowly to the control panel on his desk. He flicked a couple of switches. ‘I have something to show you. I think you will be interested.’ All but one television screen went black. ‘There you see. I always keep my word. I told you I would do my best to find him for you, and there he is.’

  It was Jack Shire. He was in a small stone room, hammering on the door with his fists. ‘Jack! Is that Jack?’ He was filthy. His hair was long and tangled and he had a bit of mangy fur hanging down one side. His clothes and shoes were filthy. It looked as if he had been hammering on the door with the slop bucket. It was bent almost beyond recognition.

  ‘Jack! Jack.’ I was patting the screen like an idiot. Don’t ask me why. ‘Is that really him?’

  ‘Would you like to have a little chat with him before you leave us for your chilly adventure? I bet you would. I bet you’d enjoy a brief reunion before you’re parted by twelve thousand years.’ He pressed a button on the control panel. I leaned forward trying to see into his face. I didn’t believe him. I was staring trying to see his expression, to see if it was a serious offer, or just a cruel joke. I could see nothing but the medical gauze with its pale liquid staining covering his face. I couldn’t tell if he would really let me see Jack? I doubted it. It might not even be him. They had probably hired some poor look-alike actor to do the scene just to wind me up.

  ‘You won’t get away with it forever,’ I told him, gritting my teeth. ‘Somebody will find out soon. Perhaps one of those people underground will talk? You can’t keep a secret like this, not when so many people have to know about it. Somebody is sure to talk. Anyone of them might
talk to the press or the police, and that will be the end of it, and of you too.’

  The screen showing the look-alike Jack in his cell went black.

  ‘My dear girl, you really don’t understand do you? Don’t you realise what power time travel gives one? Take those people down below for example. They are all from the future. They have to keep quiet and do exactly what we say, otherwise they know they’ll never get back to their own times. I bring them here for as long as I need them. Some have been here years. When I’ve finished with them their memories are chemically adjusted and they’re sent back. But the clever thing is, we program their return to be just a second or so after we took them. Apart from a few strange dreams and the occasional nervous breakdown they don’t know they were ever here. Their friends in the future don’t miss them either. They don’t even know that I’m stealing their technology.’

  There was a tap at the door from the entrance hall. It opened and Jack Shire stumbled in, propelled by a shove from one of three armed guards.

  I couldn’t help what happened next, and thank goodness neither could he. We ran at each other and grabbed hold. I had almost sucked his face off before I remembered he was not supposed to be my boyfriend. But he didn’t seem to mind and was doing a good job snogging me back. He’s a great kisser, and he’s not a look-alike. But boy, did he stink?

  The guards got in between us and shoved us apart. ‘Jack, you stink awful,‘ I said, regretting it as soon as the words sprang from my mouth. I mean really, I didn’t want that to be the first thing I said to him after all this time, but boy did he honk?

  ‘You say the nicest things.’

  He was grinning at me, and you should have seen him. I mean he looked so, wow, different. Sort of tougher and a bit menacing too. It was scary, in a sexy sort of way.

  Suddenly, he leapt at Sir Mackenzie Carmichael and rolled the wheel chair straight at the three guards. One of them ran to the door and locked it. Another pressed a button on the desk control panel. I grabbed the steel rack holding the television screens and pushed it over. It took all my strength, but the result was spectacular. I don’t know what happened next but somehow Jack got hold of a rifle and shot one of the guards. The other two were facing each other across the room. One opened fire and Jack dived for the carpet. The bullets struck his comrade and knocked him back into the dummy bookshelf door. His face had disappeared behind a mask of chopped meat and bone. I grabbed the last guard. It was not difficult. He had completely lost it. He was a jabbering wreck when he saw he had shot his partner’s face off. I ripped his rifle from him bashed him hard with the butt end and knocked him out cold.

  Sir Mackenzie Carmichael was struggling to drive his wheelchair over the wreckage of the television screens. The chair was hopelessly stuck. Jack turned to face him. For a second I thought he was going to shoot the old man, but guards poured into the room from the bookcase door and dived on him. They overpowered him before either of us could do anything. One of them pinned me to the floor and squashed my face into the shattered glass covering the carpet. They held me there as others pulled the wheelchair free of the metal debris to rescue their lord and master. In their haste and confusion the blanket around the old man’s knees got caught on some debris and briefly pulled aside. To my astonishment I saw no legs, just shoes.