They both nodded.
He led them down the wide boulevard, all three of them happy to have the broad river to theirleft, and four lanes of wide, empty road to their right.
Another ten minutes and they were hurrying up a narrow brick stairwell to the WilliamsburgBridge’s pedestrian walkway. The sick orange sun was now low in the sky and looking fora place to settle among the broken horizon of ruined buildings. Long violetshadows were spreading across the river, reaching for the building on the far side.
‘Nearly home,’ gasped Sal. ‘Looks like we’re going to make it,’she said, grinning at Maddy.
The walkway, just wide enough for three to walk abreast and caged by high sides of basketwire, ran above the traffic lanes over the bridge. As they hurried along, they looked down ontwo lanes of crumbling tarmac filled with the ancient rusting hulks of bumper-to-bumpertraffic. A soft wind moaned through shattered windscreens and across car seats and the bonesof those who’d died at the wheel suddenly, mysteriously, decades ago — a vehiclegraveyard filling the bridge with hushed whispers of torment and pain.
Foster concentrated on the way ahead. Just another three or four minutes across the bridge,down the steps on the far side, a turn into the backstreet at the base of the bridge, thenthey’d be home.
He’d checked that the generator was ticking over when they left. Provided the thing hadmanaged to keep on going while they’d been out and not choke or stall on them, heguessed the displacement machine would be ready to use by now. He hoped.
Liam’s message had given them an exact time. And once they’d entered theco-ordinates into the computer they’d know the exact location. If the lad was thinkingsmart, he knew precisely where that location should be.
Despite all three of them being exhausted and winded, their pace quickened as the far side ofthe lifeless, sluggish, polluted river below loomed. The prospect of safety was just ahead,just minutes away. The prospect of bringing home Liam, of bringing home Bob — a heroictower of muscle who could protect them from virtually
They were nearly there. And Foster had begun to allow himself to think thatthis nightmare might just be nearly over.
There was a scream.
He spun round to see a twisting branch of lean milk-white arms pulling at Sal through a largehole in the basket-wire cage.
‘Oh no!’ screamed Maddy. ‘They’ve got hold of her!’
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Sal’s arms and legs thrashed manically in their grasp. ‘Oh God no!He-e-elp me! Help me!’
Foster shouldered his shotgun but realized he couldn’t fire for fear of hitting Sal.Maddy rushed forward and began kicking, punching and scratching the arms pulling at Sal.Through the cross-hatch of rusting wire, he could see a pack of half a dozen of the creaturesfighting each other to get a grip on her. They were standing on the roof of a truck’scab; the large hole in the rusting wire, he guessed, had been made recently, perhaps only inthe last half an hour.
He realized some of the creatures must have rushed ahead, must have known they were headingthis way, must have known they crossed the bridge using the raised pedestrian walkway.They’d found a place they could reach up to, they’d made a hole in the wire…and waited.
More of the creatures scrambled up over the truck and on to the cab’s roof. Theyslammed against the wire noisily with their fists, snarling at them through the gaps.
Sal’s legs were being pulled out from beneath her, and through the gaping hole in thewire. ‘He-e-elp me!’
Maddy desperately tried to peel off the long, pale fingers wrapped tightly round her ankles,her legs, her waist. But then found them snatching at her hair, roughlypulling the glasses from her face, attempting to find a firm hold to pull her through aswell.
Sal was all but through the hole now, nothing left but her hands wrapped tightly round thesharp ends of wire. The creatures’ clawed fingers snatched and twisted at hers, tryingto wrench them free as she screamed and screamed and screamed.
Foster aimed the shotgun at the pack of creatures, no longer concerned that Sal might catchsome of the blast. The cross-hatched wire would deflect some of the shotgun’s blast, butmost of it would certainly fly through and inflict damage on their tightly packed bodies.
He fired.
One of the creatures was thrown off the roof of the cab. Others screamed angrily as thescattered pellets from the shotgun cartridge painfully lashed their bare bodies. But theycontinued their eager work, their long claws twisting Sal’s fingers off the wire, one byone, as Maddy desperately punched and scratched and screamed at them.
The last of Sal’s fingers were suddenly wrenched free.
Foster’s eyes met the girl’s for one frozen moment in time. Wide, confused,terrified — her mouth an elongated ‘O’ from which a shrill high-pitched‘
The creatures carried her away between them with alarming speed, down over the truck’sshattered windscreen, over the engine hood down on to the road, holding her body aloft betweenthem like some squirming trophy.
She disappeared from view, her thin, desperate, screaming voice fading as they carried herdown the bridge, weaving through the vehicle graveyard back towards Manhattan.
Maddy turned to look at Foster, her pale face frozen with shock and dawning realization ofwhat had just happened.
‘Foster?’ she managed to whisper.
‘We… we have to — ’
‘Foster,’ she said again, unable to say anything else.
‘She’s gone, Madelaine. She’s gone,’ he replied. He tried desperatelyto blank out of his mind the fate that awaited her.
‘We… we h-have to go after her,’ gasped Maddy, already beginning to squirmher way through the hole in the wire.
Foster took a step forward and grabbed her wrist. ‘No! Maddy. No!’
She struggled to pull herself free. ‘We can’t leave her!’ she screamed,tears rolling down her scratched and dirt-smudged cheeks.
A part of him wanted to follow her through, to give chase down the road. If not to rescueSal, then at least to get close enough to take aim and attempt to give the poor child a quickand painless death.
But that would be foolish.
It was obvious to him now. Obvious that those creatures had been biding their time, waitinguntil the three of them were boxed in on the bridge, had dropped their guard and were certainthey were home and dry. They were clever enough to set a trap. What’s more, they musthave known all along where they’d been holed up.
‘Madelaine!’ he snapped as she squirmed in his grasp. ‘They set this up!This was a trap!’
She continued to struggle. In the distance, echoing down the bridge, they heard Sal’sfaint cry, pleading for help once more.
She shuddered, her shoulders shaking convulsively as she sobbed. ‘I’m coming,Sal… I’m coming!’
Foster struggled to pull her back. ‘We have to go, Maddy… There’s nothingwe can do for her.’
‘I’m not leaving her behind!’
Foster grabbed Maddy’s jaw and turned her face to look at him.
‘Come on!’ he snapped. ‘If they get a hold of us too… then it’s
