Continued from Part 1
The glass shattered as the brick passed through it, Herbert Bellamy grabbed a handful of clothes from the shop and tore off down an alley.
“1940! Yuri sent me to 1940! The Bolshie twat!” Herbert muttered to himself as he ducked behind some bins to remove his ice cannisters and get changed into, what for him, were old timey clothes. The jacket was too small, the pants to big, no underpants to speak of and the shoes were odd, but at least the hat fitted snugly. “And to the United States of all places.”
Herbert pulled out some old newspapers from the bin and scanned the headlines. KRAUT BOMB LEVELS UK STATION.NAZI WOLFPACK SINK 32.**
“Righto, still time to warn them about Pearl Harbour,” Herbert said as he tossed the papers away. “Also need a way to get over to Germany…” He spied an Uncle Sam poster. “Well, if you need me…”
“Sorry Herbert, but you’re needed here.”
The man from 1973 whirled around to see a man in a very slim, tight fitting, dark blue body suit; a weird gadget on his wrist. He looked in his mid-40’s, like his accountant’s assistant. “Who are you?”
“I’m from HQ, old boy,” the man said adjusting a dial on his wrist. “Zane, Zane Krolo, Royal Engineers. You were overshot on the target and we’ve come to correct your course.”
“But...”
“Time isn’t linear old boy,” Zane said with a smile. “At present its 1940 and you’re a six-year old boy living in Nottingham, but here you are a 39-year old man in New York. Time dynamics are confusing at times. Does my head in honestly.”
Herbert scanned the man suspiciously. “If you’re f…”
“Leeds United, one nil over Arsenal. Alan Clarke header.”* Zane recalled. “Believe me now?”
“Yes,” Herbert sighed with relief. “So, what’s my mission now?”
Zane opened up his wrist device to produce a three-dimensional floating picture that Herbert stared at in amazement. “Things have changed since your initial mission. Trotsky died, World War One happened, right royal cock up. Now you’re going prevent a mass extinction. This man, Andrew J Moyer, microbiologist, is the cause. His brain will invent a virus based weapon that will kill over a million people in 1945. You have a chance to stop him and change the world for the better.”
Herbert was confused. “You mean, someone creates something worse than the atomic bomb?”
“My dear boy,” Zane replied as he pulled up a head shot of the good doctor. “The bomb created by Oppenheimer was tragic but it ends the war. What Moyer creates, is essentially the modern-day equivalent of the ten plagues of Egypt rolled into one, and all contained within one’s own blood passed along by human contact. He makes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS as it will be called. From its invention to 2017 it kills over thirty-five million people, when it blooms into a full-on pandemic. Like all things, he thought he was doing good.”
Zane tapped another button filling the air with pie charts, facts, figures and graphs. Herbert’s eyes absorbed as much as he could, his brain working overtime to process the information from the future. “Where will I find him?”
Zane packed away his device and was about to speak when he suddenly vanished before Herbert’s eyes as a pair of headlights bore down on him. The truck squealed to a halt inches from Herbert.
“Outta the way, ya bum!” roared the truck driver hanging out the window.
Herbert scrambled away, contemplating his new mission. On top of the building Zane pulled of his poly-synth face mask to reveal a woman with dyed grey hair and piercing purple eyes, she began to chuckle as she watched Herbert dash away through this new time. “Godspeed Herbert Bellamy. That’ll teach that meddling Zane Krolo to cross me!”
To be continued...
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