Chase (ChronoShift Trilogy) (8 page)

"We may have to grab a few passersby and knock ’em out."

Their reflexes weren't fast enough to react to the all-too-familiar shriek of an RPG plowing through the air before the house next to them exploded in a cloud of fire and splintered timbers.

The joyful London peasants were suddenly scrambling for cover, abandoning the streets.  Mark and Hardy did the same, pistols drawn, withdrawing, seeking cover.  Rialto had seen them before they'd seen him.

They raced for the other end of their street, only to see "Grey Patch" block their exit wielding an Uzi.

"This way!"  Hardy yelled, throwing himself through the thin wooden slats which made up the wall of a house to their left. They burst through wall after wall, randomly changing directions, gaining access to new buildings and unpredictable pathways, shocking not just a few unsuspecting medieval serfs.  Mark's shoulder burned from the impacts with these walls.  Though they were thin, they still resisted brute force.  Thankfully, adrenaline numbed most of the pain.

The benefit of this tactic was that Rialto and crew would not be able to guess accurately where they were, in spite of the racket they were making.  They were creating an urban warfare maze.

Still, they were the rats in the maze and they needed to get out.

Random machine gun fire tore through the air and wooden homes at random.  Rialto didn't know where his prey was exactly, but that didn't stop them from firing indiscriminately, caring not at all who might get hurt in the crossfire.  One stream of bullets hit too close to home, striking planks a few feet from Hardy's head.

"Go!" Mark ordered, pointing in the direction of the main street.

Hardy followed him as they plowed new entranceways to their objective.  If they could cross unseen, they might conceivably take up sniper positions, though they had no rifles.  Thankfully, no one was in sight when they made their move.

The main thoroughfare was completely abandoned.  Mark and Hardy rushed across it and through the front door of a house on the opposite side, hoping Rialto would not expect them to have crossed.  To their dismay, the home was not empty.  A lone woman began to scream bloody murder, terrified by their unexpected appearance in her living room.  Well…it was actually her
only
room.

Hardy put his finger to his lips and made a threatening gesture with his pistol to shut her up, but she only screamed louder.

"Knock her out," Mark said.

"Mark..." Hardy hesitated.

"Knock her out!"

Hardy obliged.  They could only hope she hadn't given them away.

The cracks between the slats in the walls were large enough to sight and fire their pistols if a target presented itself.  A moment later, Mark was rewarded with the sight of Rialto himself searching for them.  The screams of the woman had drawn him out.

Mark depressed his trigger.  A pistol was never as accurate as a rifle, and thus never a good choice for sniping, but here the distance was close enough he wouldn't miss.  Just as he fired, though, the woman jumped on his back and began flailing at his head, causing his shot to go wild.

Either she had recovered very quickly, or Hardy hadn't hit her very hard.  Either way, she was now in crazy mode, attacking him without regard for her own safety.

"Hardy!"

"Sorry, Mark."  He conked her good this time and she fell limp.

Mark's shot hadn't completely missed.  A trail of blood showed where Rialto had dragged himself into a darkened recess.

"Cover's blown, Mark.  We've gotta get out of here."

Their enemy was armed with Uzis, RPGs, and who knew what else, while Mark and Hardy only had a couple of handguns. The wood which made up the walls of these buildings would shred like paper under a barrage of heavy fire.

"Bring her along," Mark commanded.

"She'll slow us down."

"They're going to strafe this house.  She'll die for sure if we leave her."

Hardy hoisted her onto his shoulder and they ran out into the street again.

"Lay her down over there.  She'll be all right there."

Hardy did so hastily, and Mark signaled they would head back to the stables again.  There were lots of stalls and they'd have more hiding places.

A shout went up from behind.  They'd been spotted.  Machine gun fire splintered the stable's door frame as they dove through it.

Once inside, Mark pointed to the rafters above.  It was a risky move, but probably their only real option.  People never thought to look up.  If they did, however, Mark and Hardy would be sitting ducks.

They scrambled up as high as they could and laid themselves in position, each with his own rafter below him.  Thankfully, the rafters were fairly massive and concealed a good portion of their bodies.

Rialto, Usher and Grey Patch entered warily, Uzis at the ready.  Rialto limped in, a cloth tied around his thigh.  Blood heavily stained his pant leg.

All three of the men held what looked like hand grenades. Pulling the pins, they launched all three of the mini-bombs toward the far end of the building.  Timber, hay, and horse blood filled the air as they detonated.  One of the grenades must have fallen near a support post, because the far side of the building suddenly collapsed, closing off the only other door of escape.  As the roof at the opposite end dropped closer to the ground, Mark and Hardy were almost shaken from their posts, but they held on with grips of death.  To fall off would mean annihilation.

Usher and Grey Patch unleashed a hail of devastating machine gun fire through all parts of the stable, while Rialto lobbed a few more grenades into the far end.  The Uzis strafed through every board in the place.  They did not aim high, but low. If Mark and Hardy had tried to hide themselves under the hay anywhere in the stable, they would have been decimated by the continuing fusillade.

After the men had exhausted several clips, their weapons fell silent.  They advanced into the havoc they'd wrought, looking for bodies.

As fortune would have it, their advance gave Mark and Hardy the perfect opportunity to turn the tables.  For just a moment, one perfect moment, Usher stood directly below Mark, and Grey Patch was lined up under Hardy.

Mark raised a hand.  Hardy acknowledged.  He wiggled silently into a little better position.

Rialto saw them and yelled, but it was too late.  Mark and Hardy fired their weapons as they dropped, both their bullets and feet slamming home.  Rialto snapped off a hasty shot, but missed.

It was doubtful their bullets had killed Usher and Grey Patch, but they were definitely out for the count.  Rialto hightailed it out the door he'd come in.

"Get him!  He's behind all this."

They raced after Rialto, but he was long gone by the time they got to the alley.  They took stock of the situation.  Rialto had disappeared again.  If they tried, they could probably flush him out.  Still, he had an Uzi and they had pistols.

"Hey, Mark."

"What?"

"My shifter's working again. Yours?"

"Yeah, mine too."

"You wanna just get out of here?"

"Rialto's still got a detector.  If we shift out now, they'll have time to regroup, heal, and come after us again, right at the moment we shift into 2013."

"Then what
do
we do, Kemosabe?"

"We go back in, make sure Usher and Grey Patch are finished, then get away from London and shift forward to 2013 from a different place."

Suddenly, the wall next to them disintegrated under a barrage of more machine gun fire.  Rialto was back, and he looked half-crazed.

"Forget it!  To the river!"

The Thames River was and always has been the main artery of London.  Large enough to handle large boats, it made London a port city.   It was also swift enough to carry them away.

They plunged into the dark grey water with a splash.  It was surprisingly refreshing, even if it did stink a bit from the waste dumped in from the city.  There was no sign of Rialto following.  Mark finally permitted himself to relax a little as they floated out of London.

They floated several miles downriver until they were far enough in the country to escape unwanted attention.  Then, they walked another ten.

They had reached a large, rustic barn when they saw a wagon approaching on the road from the opposite direction.  They took cover behind some brush, waiting to see which way the wagon would go.

The barn couldn't be described as anything resembling a modern red barn, though there were some similarities.  This barn was two stories high, but it was more triangular in shape than polygonal.  It had an enormous thatched roof supported by thick, roughly hewn, unpainted wood posts.  The spaces between these posts were covered by the same thin wooden slats they’d seen in London.

Behind the wagon followed three large, healthy stallions, and astride them were three finely dressed riders.  A fourth man drove the wagon.  He looked like death itself, wrapped in a dark cloak, hood pulled down so far it covered his face.

In the back of the wagon lay a prone figure, a sack covering his head and face.  When they reached the front of the barn, the small caravan stopped.   The riders prodded and pushed the hooded man from the back of the wagon while the driver sat motionless, staring straight ahead.  Once on the ground, it became obvious the hooded man's hands were tied behind his back.

"Let's check it out," Mark whispered.

Hardy wanted to keep going.  Just get far enough away they could shift safely and then go home.

But Mark was different.  Mark couldn't stand by and let someone be victimized.  If an innocent person were in danger, Mark would find some way to insert himself into the middle of it.

This fact Hardy knew all too well, so he just sighed and followed his friend as he scurried over to get closer to the action.

Near the barn, all they could make out were muffled voices.  They circled around to the back and found a door ajar.  Through it, they could not only hear the discussion more clearly, but also observe the drama as it unfolded.

"Thes ær bith the cild?"

"Yi, thes the vilein bith!"

"The murtherour af Rufus, eh smæl cild?"

"Anhenghim bi the nekke."

Not that they understood what was being said though.  Their ears distinguished the syllables, but it sounded like a foreign language of some kind.

"What are they speaking?" Mark asked.

"Not sure.  Don't recognize it."

"Sounds kind of like English — but not quite.  Know what I mean?"

Hardy snapped his fingers, understanding having dawned.

"Dude, they're speaking
Middle
English."

"Middle English?"

"Yeah, English hasn't always sounded like it does today."

"It changed enough that we wouldn't understand it?"

"Yes."

"How do you know that?"

"Back in high school, they had us read an old version of Robin Hood one time.  It was written in Middle English, and it
was
weird.  Impossible to understand in places, at least for me."

Inside the barn, one of the men held a noose.  Another yanked the sack off the hostage.

"He's just a boy.  Can't be more than twelve years old," Mark said.

"You're right."

"We've got to do something."

"Look, we don't know who else is involved.  For all we know, there might be an army coming up the road as we speak.  We don't know if our shifters are going to shut down again.  We don't know what this boy did.  We don't know anything."

"We can't just leave him."

"I know what you're feeling.  I do."  Hardy wasn't budging.

"You don't know what I'm feeling," Mark growled.

But he did.  Mark was thinking about his kids and how he hadn't been able to save them.  "We've got to save Ty first, Mark. If something happens to us, he's lost."

"We can't just let them hang this boy."

"He'll always be here, in this time, in this moment, ready to be hung, waiting for you to come back and save him.  Let's go save Ty while our shifters are still working.  If they're still working after that, you can come back and save him."

A long moment passed.

Finally, Mark nodded.