The Cross-Time Road Trip

Christopher G. Nuttall

Blurb

Bruno, Kit, Erica and GBW – four college friends who find a mystery device in a junk sale and connect it up to a power supply.  When they push the button, they find themselves – and their RV – tossed across the timelines into an alternate world.  Struggling to escape, they jump from world to world, looking for a way back home.

But each of the alternate timelines has its own dangers and their mere presence damages the balance of power that dominates each world.  With evil doppelgangers, megalomaniacal creatures and mysterious alien space bats, finding a way home might be the easy part...

Dear Reader
The following story is not meant to be taken seriously.  It is both a mild send-up of tropes often to be found within alternate history and a long series of in-jokes based on the online AH community.  However, please rest assured that a person reading the story without such knowledge will still enjoy it.  And if you want to join the community, where better to start than http://www.counter-factual.net?
I have also placed free books online at http://www.chrishanger.net
If you enjoyed this book, please review it at Amazon.

Prologue

Whatever happens in the universe, happens.

Whatever can happen in the multiverse does happen, just not always in the same place.

This may seem really silly, but it’s the way the multiverse works.

Best not to look too closely.  You might lose your mind.

Chapter One

“Junk,” Erica said.

She looked around the warehouse and rolled her eyes.  Every table was covered with computer junk, from relatively modern – and already outdated – computers from a year ago to machines that were older than her twenty-two years.  The hall buzzed with computer geeks, who were studying the machines and bidding frantically on the handful of interesting or useful devices.  It was very definitely not her scene.

“Junk,” she said, again.  “When are you going to find a proper job?”

Bruno snorted.  Short and swarthy, compared to Erica’s blonde good looks, they made an odd pair.  “If this is junk,” he said, as he picked up an old laptop and frowned at the state of the battery, “why are you wasting your time here?”

“Because I lost the vote,” Erica reminded him, dryly.  It was perfectly true.  The four of them had bickered over what they would be doing over the break and only settled the issue by voting.  She made a mental note to insist on going to the breach at least twice during the break.  Some exposure to the sun would be good for the three boys.  Not that they were really boys, of course.  Bruno was actually three years older than her.  Quite why he preferred to stay at college was a mystery to his mother, but not to Erica.  Bruno simply enjoyed tinkering with computers and electronic junk.  “And besides, I can see Duke over there and I might have a chance to kick him in the balls again.”

She smiled at the thought, running her hand through her short blonde hair.  A year ago, she’d been lonely and bored and accepted Duke’s offer of a date without thinking about his true motives.  The date had been short and terminated by his hand making a very unwanted grab for her breast and Erica lifting her knee and ramming him right in the groin.  There was something about being a football player, she’d often considered, that made men think that they were lords of all creation.  Duke hadn't been able to play for several weeks after she’d kicked him and walked out.

“Right,” Bruno said.  He headed over to another table and, bored out of her mind, Erica followed him.  “I think he’s a bit out of his depth here.”

“Or maybe he’s just stupid enough to think he knows what he’s doing here,” Kit said, as he appeared from behind a massive pile of hard drives that had been top of the range only five years ago.  “I mean...why would he come here, unless he thinks some of the smartness in this room would rub off on him.”

Erica rolled her eyes again.  Kit was wearing his favourite outfit, daring anyone to make fun of it.  He wore a very effeminate frock coat and garish pants, advertising his sexuality for all to see.  Erica, who knew that he was also an unarmed combat expert, had once asked him if he was deliberately trawling for jerks to beat up.  Kit had only winked at her.

“Not the only thing that is likely to rub off on him,” Bruno said, and stuck out his tongue.  Kit returned the rude gesture and added a one-fingered embellishment of his own.  “Does he really matter in her anyway?”

Erica watched him picking through the computer junk and made a show of checking her watch.  Perhaps the three boys – she spied GBW making his way towards them through the mob of computer geeks – would enjoy being in the warehouse and looking at computers, but she was bored, bored and bored.  On the other hand, she told herself, Duke might come over and make another pass at her.  She’d heard enough whispers about how he treated his dates to know that a second chance to hurt him shouldn't be passed up.

“Look at this,” Bruno said, as he picked up an odd piece of technology.  “What do you think this is?”

Erica studied it as Kit took it from Bruno and held it up to the light.  It was a small box, painted silver, with a big red button on the top.  She was reminded of a cartoon detonator for a second, before reminding herself that such devices had gone out of use decades ago.  When Kit passed it to her, she was surprised by the weight.  It felt heavier than a standard hard drive, if indeed it was a hard drive.  But then, what she knew about computers was barely a drop in the ocean compared to the boys.  What they didn't know about computers wasn't worth knowing.

“Odd,” GBW said, as he joined them.  Compared to Kit and Bruno, GBW was surprisingly ordinary, almost invisible in a crowd.  He was the perpetual straight man compared to his two friends, although like the rest of them he was an outcast from the different social classes at college.  Erica sometimes thought that the only thing that bound them together was social exclusion from everywhere else.  “I've never seen anything like it.  Japanese, you think?”

“Could be,” Bruno said, as he took the device back and turned it over in his hands.  He uncovered a small compartment that appeared to be linked to the device’s power supply.  “I wonder if we could link one of our laptops into this...thingy.”

“Why not?”  Erica said, dryly.  “Perhaps you think that it could be used in your tower of power?”

Bruno grinned.  “Why not indeed?”  He echoed her, before calling to the seller.  “Hey, how much for this piece of junk?”

The seller, a young man who looked old enough to be Erica’s father, frowned.  “That’s not one of mine, dude,” he said.  He took it and studied it thoughtfully.  “I don’t know where it came from, or what this mark here is.”

He passed it back to Bruno.  “Just take it,” he said.  “I don’t have room for whatever it is.”

Bruno smiled and passed it back to Kit, who dumped it in his bag and led the way over to the exit.  Erica looked around for GBW, who was picking up a small collection of CDs from one of the tables, and beckoned for him to follow them.  GBW shrugged, dropped some money on the table and headed over to join them.  The bright sunlight struck her as soon as she stepped through the exit and she smiled, even as the boys recoiled from its touch.  Who knew?  A bit more sun and they might blossom into manhood.

They stopped at a burger bar for a bite to eat and then walked back towards the college.  After their first year at college, they’d moved into a small apartment that the boys had rented using the profits they’d made from selling a handful of computer programs on the internet.  Bruno had told her once that most of their customers hadn't bothered to pay them a single red cent, but the ones who had had paid enough for them to live on without needing jobs.  Erica couldn't decide if she loved the idea or hated it.  They’d offered to let her stay with them without rent, yet she’d refused.  Her parents hadn't brought her up to leech off anyone.

Bruno’s RV glittered in the sunlight as they walked up to the vehicle.  Erica had been astonished when Bruno had paid good money for a vehicle that was clearly headed for the junkyard, but the boys had worked hard on her and converted her into a very viable motor home.  In fact, they actually did most of their computing inside the RV and sometimes slept in the vehicle when they couldn't be bothered walking the short distance from the vehicle to the apartment.  Erica had pointed out that this was incredibly lazy and the boys had thought about it and then asked her if it mattered.  They were having fun at college and sometimes they even attended classes.

“Come on inside,” Bruno said, as he pulled open the door.  Erica clambered up after him, struggling to find a seat amidst the piles of computer equipment and devices she didn't recognise or understand.  The other two boys pushed huge piles of junk out of the way and sat down on the floor.  “Anyone want coffee?”

He tapped the coffee machine and it hummed into life.  It was one of his more successful experiments – a coffee machine that actually produced decent coffee – and Erica had tried to nag him into patenting it and selling the design for a huge sum.  Bruno had refused, reminding her that he didn't lack for money.  Besides, he’d added, hardly anyone who had the power to buy equipment would want to pay extra for a decent coffee machine.  The worker drones would just have to endure poor coffee and overpriced food.

Erica took a cup and sipped it gratefully.  “What are we going to do now?”  She asked.  “We could still go down to the beach...”

“We,” Bruno said grandly, “are going to find out what this actually is!”

Kit produced the strange device from his bag and placed it on the table, shoving off a pair of broken keyboards and a mouse to make room.  Under the RV’s light, the device seemed odd, even to Erica’s eyes.  She hadn't seen any design or engravings on the silver surface before, but now there was a single design on one side.  A snake, endlessly chewing its own tail.  It reminded her of something, something she’d heard once, long ago, and then forgotten.  If any of the others knew, they kept it to themselves.

“Weird design,” Bruno said, finally.  He gave Kit a wink and turned the device over, opening the small compartment in the bottom.  “It isn't built to take anything I have here.  You couldn't get a USB cable into here or even something from an earlier age.”  He started to pull at the compartment, exposing a handful of wires.  “I’ll have to rig up something just to take a look inside.”

Erica shrugged.  “I’m sure you’ll have fun,” she said, as Bruno pulled out a standard USB cable and pulled the USB connector out.  “I’ll just sit and listen to my Iphone, all right?”

“Oh, but you could be missing something,” Kit put in.  He gave her a wink that seemed oddly suited to his droll expression.  “Do you remember that hard drive we found last time?”

“My porn!”  Bruno said.  Erica snorted.  Bruno had the largest collection of pornographic photographs, files and videos that she’d ever seen, covering everything from naked women showing off their bodies to group sex and hard fucking.  And he was never satisfied.  He moved from site to site, hacking into their databases and downloading their porn, before moving on to the next website.  “The bastard had some videos I'd never seen before.”

Kit chuckled.  They’d bought a group of hard drives that had been chucked out of an office to make way for the next generation of data-storage technology.  Most of them had been wiped, but one of them had held over fifty gigabytes of pornographic videos.  Erica had wondered how the unknown gatherer had managed to download and watch so many on an office computer system, before the boys had explained that it was easy to circumvent the office network security systems if one knew what one was doing.  There were times when she wondered if the world was a safer place with the boys in college.  They’d be holy terrors if they were unleashed upon the job market.

She pulled her Iphone out of her jacket pocket and started to listen to music, plugging in the headphones when Kit and GBW started protesting about the noise.  Her phone had started life as a fairly basic Iphone, but then Bruno had gotten his hands on it and reworked it into something that worked far faster and stored much more data – or videos.  He’d also done something to the wireless programming that allowed her to piggyback on any local network, regardless of security protocols or unknown passwords.  Erica had long since given up worrying it that was even remotely legal.  She’d paid enough for the phone, she felt, to justify not having to pay internet access charges.  

Bruno popped the device back onto the table and started to fiddle with connecting wires.  It took several tries before he had something that could splice into the device, which was starting to look as if it was covered in wires and surrounded by junk.  He plunked his laptop down next to it and connected the end of the cable to his machine.  Erica had once asked him if his laptop was secure and he’d snorted, explaining that he’d written the computer’s operating system himself and no virus could infect his machine unless it had been specifically written for his system.  He’d also reprogrammed her laptop so that it would defend itself against viral attacks without needing help from outside.

“Interesting,” he said, after a moment.  Erica put her headphones away and pretended to be interested.  “It's actually drawing power from the laptop...quite a lot of power, actually.”

“Oh,” Erica said.  “And that's interesting, is it?”

“Oh yes,” Kit said, as he peered over Bruno’s shoulder.  “It proves that this device, whatever it is, is doing something.  All we have to do is figure out what that something is and we’ll know what it does...”

“Or even what it wants to do,” Bruno added.  He frowned as a new screen blinked up on his laptop.  “It seems to be...well, a kind of plug-and-play device, yet I’ve never seen anything like it.  I swear it’s actually reading my laptop and adapting itself, rather than the laptop figuring out how to talk to the device.”

“Marvellous,” Erica said.  “GBW; you fancy going out for a walk and leaving these two to it?”

GBW considered it.  His real name was Geoffrey Bradford Wilkinson, but Kit had said that that was too long to remember and they’d promptly shortened it to GBW – or GWB when they wanted to tease him a little.  Erica hated walking on her own and tried to look as inviting as she could, but GBW shook his head as he looked down at his own laptop.

“I can't go right now,” he explained.  “Someone is wrong on the internet.”

Erica scowled and headed for the door.  All three of the boys spent half of their time on the internet, particularly the forums that discussed computer technology, science-fiction and fantasy and pornography.  She had once worked out that Bruno spent only about four hours in classes per week, and probably less than that sleeping.  They got up late, watched science-fiction off the internet and spent the rest of the day online.  

When she returned, an hour later, Bruno was still fiddling with the device.  “I honestly can't make head or tails of it,” he confessed.  “There’s a sophisticated operating system inside this device, but my laptop can barely read it – let alone explain what it is and how it works.  I keep thinking that it’s a flight computer of some kind, yet nothing I put into it seems to make sense.”

“Perhaps it’s from the military,” GBW put in.  “You know they lost a tank back in Iraq and discovered its computer in a market in Baghdad after the war.”

“Could be,” Bruno agreed.  “The computers for the latest generation of fast-jet fighters are reputed to be awesomely fast and powerful.  Even the smallest task would require thousands of lines of computer code.  It might be something from the military, except...”

He scowled.  “It just feels...weird,” he added.  “As if whoever produced it was operating to a completely different set of assumptions about how a computer should work.  Everything I try either does nothing or spits back a lot of code I don’t understand.  It's...”

“Like trying to read a book in Japanese by using an English-French translation program,” Kit put in.  He looked tired, yet also vastly amused.  “Perhaps you should sit back and watch some nice porn.  That always puts you in a better mode.”

“I was going to say that it seems that the language used in making this machine is two or three generations ahead of ours,” Bruno said, crossly.  “I don’t even know what this thing does!”

“I think that it would be easy to find out,” Erica said, impatiently.  She pointed one long finger towards the device.  “Perhaps you should just push the button.”

Bruno stared at her, and then reached out towards the device.  “Ah, this has to be done properly,” he said.  He gathered himself up.  “To the last, I grapple with thee; from Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee...”

“Shut up and get on with it,” Erica snapped.  “It’s only a button.”

Bruno reached out and pressed the button.  The device lit up, just for a second, and then the entire RV lurched.  Erica grabbed for the table as her feet seemed to lose contact with the ground for a split-second, followed by a crash that shook the vehicle.  She heard smashing sounds as pieces of computer junk fell off the various shelves that had been shoehorned into the RV and abandoned. 

“What the fuck?”  GBW demanded.  “I just lost the internet!”

“Earthquake,” Kit said,  He seemed the least perturbed of them all, although he had long cultivated an air of languid amusement that irritated his parents and was roundly ignored by everyone else.  “They’re not exactly uncommon around here.”

He leered cheerfully at Bruno.  “Congratulations,” he said, “you’ve invented an earthquake machine.”

Erica pulled herself to her feet and glared at the two men.  “If that was an earthquake,” she thundered, “people could be hurt!”

“Bit of an odd coincidence,” GBW mused.  “Bruno hits the button at the same time we get an earthquake.”

Erica snorted, swallowing a number of possible retorts, and stormed over to the window.  She expected to see fires, chaos and students running everywhere in panic.  Perhaps there would even be looting.  Instead...

“Guys,” she said, as she took in the scene before her, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Chapter Two

They looked out upon a field of untold devastation.  

It was the college, but it was in ruins.  The buildings that had looked so welcoming when they'd first arrived now looked derelict.  Erica stared up towards the apartment block where she’d lived and saw a building that looked to be on the verge of collapse.  Nothing moved out in the desolation.  The ground below the RV seemed to be dead.  Even the flower beds that some enterprising college official had planted were gone.

“My God,” GBW said, for once speaking for all of them.  “What the hell happened?”

“That was no earthquake,” Bruno said.  Even he seemed to have been dampened by the sight.  “I...I don't know what happened.”

Erica had a more practical question.  “Is it safe to go outside?”

“The RV isn't exactly a spaceship,” Kit pointed out, dryly.  “If there are poisons in the air, we’re breathing them already.”

Bruno reached for the door and opened it, allowing them to step outside onto the blackened ground.  The air was warm, yet silent.  Erica looked in vain for some traces of animal life, even birds flying through the distant air.  There was nothing.  She walked around the RV, trying to take in the sight before her.  The college had been wrecked in a matter of seconds.

“I think this happened some time ago,” Bruno said, when she raised the issue.  “If...something had happened to destroy the college, it wouldn’t have taken seconds.  There’d be fires everywhere and people trying to help.  I think we must have shifted forward or sideways in time.”

“That’s ridiculous,” GBW protested.  “We can’t move in time or space.”

Bruno grinned.  “Do you have a better theory?”

Erica shook her head.  Bruno was right.  Whatever had happened – nuclear war, or a biological plague – wouldn't have happened quickly.  There would be bodies lying everywhere and people coming to help.  Unless the crisis had been global...she remembered some of the nuclear war books she’d read as an impressionable child.  The entire world might have been exterminated, with only a few pockets of humanity left alive.  They’d exaggerated, of course, but now...now she wasn't so sure.  She looked up again at their apartment block and tried to estimate how long it had been since it had been effectively destroyed.  It didn’t seem possible to come up with any definite answer.

“Bruno,” she said, suddenly, “if this was a nuclear attack, what about radiation.  There could be deadly radiation floating in the air...”

“I’ve thought about that,” Bruno said.

Erica looked at him.  “And?”

“And we’ll all catch radiation poisoning and die,” he said, in his best impression of Matt Smith.  Erica raised one fist in a threatening manner.  “There are some ways to check for radiation using makeshift tools, but I didn't think to bring any of them with us.  I didn't even know that we were going somewhere!”

“Perhaps we should try to reverse the device,” Kit suggested.  “Get out of here.”

Erica nodded.  “Come on,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

***
“I don’t think we can leave so quickly,” Bruno said, thirty minutes later.  “As near as I can tell, the device is still recharging after the last...whatever it was.”

“Hop through alternate timelines,” Kit said.  They stared at him.  “You have to admit that’s better than assuming that we jumped into our own future.”

GBW snorted.  “How long do we have?”

“At least another four hours,” Bruno said.  “We do have some time to go exploring.”

“You want to explore the remains of a nuclear wasteland?”  GBW said.  “Are you out of your mind?”

“I never knew he was in his mind,” Erica said, mischievously.

Bruno shrugged.  “Don’t you want to know what happened here?”  He asked.  “The knowledge could come in useful for something.  We could write alternate history novels based on real events.”

“I doubt you’d get any humour out of this,” Kit said, “but you’re right.  We should go exploring.”

He reached forward, opened the door, and stepped back out onto the blackened ground.  Erica hesitated, and then followed him.  The air was as still and silent as before.  She remembered how noisy the campus had been before they’d...departed and felt a lump in her throat.  People had died here, believing themselves to be safe.  If Kit’s theory was accurate and they’d crossed into an alternate timeline, the dead might even have worn her face.  Or maybe there was another Erica out there who had survived, or maybe she’d never even been born.  Her mother and father might not have married in this timeline.

Bruno closed and locked the door of the RV behind him and then set out up the road, towards the library.  Erica followed him, casting distrustful glances into the shadows cast by the ruined buildings.  The more she saw of the desolated wasteland, the less she liked it.  It looked as if something had sucked the life out of the buildings, leaving them drab and gray.  Some of the shadows even seemed to move...she was halfway towards leaping out of her skin when she realised that she was imagining it.  But there wasn't even a single blade of green grass to be seen.

Kit seemed to feel the same way.  “It can't all be like this, can it?”

“I have no idea,” Bruno admitted.  They stopped, briefly, outside one of the computer labs, back where they’d first met.  It had been modern design, constructed according to plans drawn up by someone who’d won an award for original thinking.  Erica had always considered it a thoroughly ugly building, but it was now nothing more than a pile of rubble.  “There were...stories about what the Russians had in mind for nuclear war.  They couldn't build more nukes than us, so they built rockets with germ warheads that would spread disease over America and obliterate what remained of the civilian population.”

“Diseases are no respecters of national borders,” Kit objected.  “They might spread back to Russia.”

“And sweep across the entire world, carried by refugees fleeing the nukes,” Bruno agreed.  “Unless someone was completely isolated from the world, they’d probably become infected and die.”

He hesitated.  “Have you noticed the complete shortage of bodies?”

Erica nodded.  “You think they all decayed?”

“Perhaps,” Bruno said.  “How long does a body take to decay?”

“No idea,” GBW answered.  Kit shook his head.  “If there’s anyone left alive...how do we search the entire world for them?”

“We can’t,” Bruno said.  He stopped, looking up at the library.  “I knew it would have survived the blast.”

Erica smiled.  Unlike the computer lab, the college library had been built back when people had built things to last, rather than building fragile palaces of glass and plastic.  It was a solid block of stone, still standing against the ravages of time and the firestorms that had devastated the rest of the college.  The walls were blackened and the windows were gone, but it looked safer than any of the other buildings.  She found herself wondering just how much of the book collection would have survived, before pushing the thought aside.  They had to find something, or they’d never know what had happened to this world.

Kit grinned, suddenly.  “I forgot my library card,” he said.  “Can one of you buzz me in?”

“This is no time for jokes,” GBW said, crossly.  They walked up the steps to the library and through what remained of the glass doors.  They’d shattered under the blast that had destroyed the campus.  “There could be anything inside the library...”

They stopped, just inside.  The building had clearly been ransacked.  Two of the turnstiles that required a visitor to have a library card to enter had been removed, while some of the bookshelves left in the lobby to greet important guests had been emptied.  Erica found it an oddly hopeful sign, even as the guys surveyed the damage.  Someone was alive in the desolated world.  Even if they were burning the books for heat, they were alive!

“Interesting choice of reading matter,” Bruno observed.  “Unless things were different in this world, they’ve taken the reference books and some of the crap the college produced to prove that it was spending the government’s money wisely.  All of the really interesting books were upstairs.”

“I’m not sure I want to go upstairs,” Erica admitted.  “How safe do you think the stairs are in here?”

“We certainly can't trust the elevators,” GBW agreed.  “But how else do we get upstairs?”

“We shouldn’t have to,” Bruno said.  He walked towards the library desk and then behind it, pushing aside a smashed computer that had been left blocking his path.  “I used to work in the library, fixing their computers after they let people with more money than sense download whatever they wanted onto the system.  They used to keep old newspapers in sealed cases through here.”

“I’m surprised they didn't throw them out,” Erica said.  “I thought they were all available online.”

“They had legal issues,” Bruno said.  He shrugged.  “I wasn’t paying much attention at the time, to be honest.  All that matters is that they should still be here...”

He stopped in front of a large cabinet and tried it.  “Locked,” he said.  He looked up at Erica.  “I don't suppose you have a hairpin?”

“No,” Erica snapped.  “Do you know where they kept the keys?”

“Probably somewhere around here,” Bruno said.  “Everyone pick a desk and start looking.”

Erica opened the first drawer nearest her and blinked in surprise.  There was a small amount of loose change, a handful of library cards and a photograph that had to be someone’s wife or daughter.  She found herself wiping away tears as she picked up the library card and checked the date.  It had been issued four years ago and looked new.  The photograph showed a young dark-skinned girl with a faint smile and pretty teeth.  She had to be dead by now, Erica knew, unless she’d been very lucky.  And in their world she might still be alive.

“Four years ago,” she said, after she checked the remaining cards.  “This happened under four years ago.”

“Makes sense,” Bruno said.  “I think most of the really dangerous radioactive gunk would have faded away by now.”

“Are you sure?”  GBW asked.  “Would you bet your life on it?”

Bruno gave him a dazzling smile.  “We are betting our lives on it,” he said.  “Anyone found any keys?”

“I’ve found some here,” Kit said.  He tossed them over to Bruno and returned to the drawers.  “See if one of those will open the cabinets...”

Bruno tried the keys, one after the other.  “It might have rusted,” Erica pointed out, after the first five keys didn't work.  “Can we break it open by force?”

“We might have to,” Kit said.  He laughed, suddenly.  “Who’s going to come and arrest us for vandalising the library here?”

“Got it,” Bruno said.  The cabinet creaked open, revealing a stack of yellowing newspapers.  Even inside the airtight cabinet, they had started to decay.  Bruno pulled the first newspaper out and cursed as it came apart in his hands.  Erica and GBW moved forward to help and between them managed to get a set onto the desk.  Dust billowed up into the air as they started picking their way through the old newspapers.

Slowly, the story began to emerge.  There had been a crisis in the Middle East, one where the Arabs had faced the Israelis for a final showdown.  The US had moved to help Israel, only to find itself threatened by the Russians and Chinese, who had allied with the Arabs.  History had changed sometime around 1999, as far as Erica could tell.  Certainly there was no mention of 9/11, or the invasion of Iraq.  Instead, Israel – pushed to the wall – had unleashed a nuclear holocaust upon its enemies.  The last newspaper howled about the dangers unleashed by Israel and the reports of biological warfare being used in Europe by the surviving Arabs.  And after that...?

“Nothing,” Bruno said.  “The Russians and Chinese must have nuked the United States.”

“We would have nuked them back,” Kit objected.  “Surely they would have known that we wouldn't just sit there and let ourselves be nuked?”

“Maybe they were dying already,” GBW said.  “If the Arabs were unleashing biological warfare, the Russians might have been infected too...they might have decided to unleash a holocaust to make sure we went down with them.”

“Bastards,” Erica said.  She shook her head angrily.  “Bastards, all of them!  What the fuck did the world do to deserve...this!”

“There must be some recent history books upstairs,” Bruno said.  He checked his watch, thoughtfully.  “We could spend the next hour or so looking for books that would tell us what happened, and why...”

“Or we could just go back to the RV,” Erica said.  She was normally adventurous, willing to do anything on a dare, but the devastation around them had overwhelmed her.  “We don’t belong here.”

“I think we should look for survivors,” Kit said.  “Someone clearly took books from the library.  For all we know, there might be a small society living nearby...”

“And then what?”  Erica said.  “We can’t do anything to help them.  Do we just take them with us, back to our world?  How many people could we stuff in the RV before it burst?”

Bruno hesitated.  “But history...”

GBW shrugged.  “Do we really want to know?”

“I think that we should find out,” Bruno said.  “When we get home, we’d be able to use the knowledge...maybe prevent the war occurring in our world.”

“But history diverged in 1999,” Erica objected.  “Our world is nothing like this one.”

“But how long will it be before everything changes?”  Bruno countered.  “I think we have to look.”

“And we will,” Kit said, softly.  “We might find clues about survivors.”

The upper levels of the library felt eerie as they climbed up the stairs, watching carefully for pitfalls.  As they stepped into the second floor, something fell with a terrific crash that shook the entire building.  The floor itself seemed unstable under their weight.  Many of the bookshelves had been emptied, their contents dumped through holes in the floor and presumably taken away from the library.  There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the ransacking; the survivors had taken books from almost every section within view.  The floor creaked alarmingly as Bruno moved forward, and then started to tilt.  Bruno jumped backwards, barely in time to prevent himself from falling through the floor.  A stack of books collapsed and smashed downwards, hitting the bottom floor with a terrifying sound.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” Erica said.  “The walls might be safe, but the floors are unstable.”

For once, there was no argument.  They picked their way back down the stairs and out of the library.  The air seemed different, somehow.  It was still silent, yet...Erica realised that the sounds of falling bookshelves would have been audible for miles around.  If there were survivors nearby, they would probably have heard the sound and decided to come to investigate.

“No birds,” GBW said.  “You’d think that the birds would have survived.  Did they kill the entire planet because they thought that they would lose the war?”

“Maybe,” Bruno said.  He seemed more subdued after nearly falling through the floor.  “I think they used to call it Mutually Assured Destruction.  You kill us – we kill you in our dying moments.  And so on, and so on.  Stupid fucking idea.”

Erica saw something moving at the corner of her eye.  It was so unexpected that it took her a moment too long to register it, just as the first shots rang out.  She lunged at Bruno and knocked him to the ground as bullets started whistling over their heads.  It sounded as if they were under attack by a small army.  She yelled at the boys to keep their heads down and started to crawl towards what little cover she could see.  It was a miracle that none of them had been hit – or, maybe, their attackers hadn't been shooting to kill.  The sound of firing grew louder...it was hard to be sure, but it sounded as if they were caught between two different groups.

Kit scrambled towards her and yelled in her ear.  “Did you think to bring any weapons?”

“No,” Erica yelled back, cursing her oversight.  But what would one weapon have done if they were under attack by an entire group?  She glanced back at Bruno and GBW and saw them trying to bury themselves in the dead ground.  Both of them would be sitting ducks if they stood up.  “Can you see who’s attacking us?”

The sound of firing abruptly faded away, leaving an uneasy quiet.  Erica heard someone issuing orders, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't make out the words.  Kit, beside her, started to crawl forward.  Erica would have given her soul for a few guns and grenades.  They needed to escape, or fight back.  She looked back at Bruno and saw him looking at her, clearly nervous.  He’d never been under fire before – but then, neither had she.  The closest she’d come was on hunting trips with her father.  

“Don’t move,” a female voice bellowed.  Erica froze as their attackers came into view.  They were all women, wearing strips of red cloth around their thighs.  Their breasts were exposed, bouncing freely in front of them as they moved forward.  They carried enough weaponry to fight a small war.  “Who are you?  You’re not one of them!”

One of them caught hold of Erica and rolled her over.  “And you’re a woman!  You treacherous bitch...”

She pointed her rifle at Erica’s head, but one of the others pushed it away before she could fire.  “You’re all prisoners of the Amazons,” the newcomer said.  “The queen will judge you personally.  Resistance is futile.”

Bruno found his voice.  “We’re just travellers...”

A blow from the wrong end of a rifle silenced him.  “Resistance is futile,” the Amazon said.  “You will come with us!”

Chapter Three

Their captors took no chances.  They kept their rifles pointed at their captives while their hands were bound behind their backs and their legs shackled.  Erica tried to flex her wrists to allow her to wriggle free, but her captor was wise to that trick and pushed down on her until she had to relax.  It was clear that escape was almost impossible, although where would they go?  If their captors had taken the RV...

“On your feet, scrum,” the leader of the Amazons ordered.  It was almost impossible to stand up while shackled, but Erica somehow managed it.  The Amazons had to help pull the guys to their feet.  GBW and Bruno, she noted disapprovingly, were finding it hard to keep their eyes off the Amazons chests, while Kit was studiously ignoring them.  “This way – march!”

Erica started to walk, pushed along by an Amazon behind her whenever she started to slow down.  It wasn't easy to walk while shackled; even if she had managed to get away from them, it would be impossible to get very far away without being caught.  The chains made an unpleasant clinking sound that would lead them right to her.  She heard grunts behind her as the guys were pushed along, even though the Amazons seemed to reserve the worst of their scorn for her.  It made no sense.  Did they think that she was one of them?  Or was there another Erica in this world who had betrayed the Amazons?  Her mind kept mulling over the possibilities as they walked onwards, out towards the edge of the college.  There’d been a business estate there, she recalled, and a Church.  God alone knew what had happened to it in the devastated world.

“Behold,” the Amazon leader said.  “The Palace of the Queen.”

Erica followed her gaze.  The Church was in front of them, guarded by armed women carrying rifles, just like their captors.  Some of the women seemed surprised to see them, others looked almost...eager.  Erica didn't like the looks on their faces at all.  They were halted by their escorts and left to wait outside while the leader went into the Church.  It was a strong building, over ninety years old.  Unless one of the nukes had gone off within a few miles of it, it was no surprise that it had survived.  She found herself glancing around, looking for other signs of life, but there were none.  The ground was blackened and dead.  

Kit nudged her back.  “I wonder how they remain alive,” he said.  “Do you think they can grow anything here?”

“There are – were – farms not too far away,” Erica said, thoughtfully.  “Perhaps they’ve managed to decontaminate the soil.”

“Silence,” one of the guards bellowed, and slammed her rifle butt into Kit’s chest.  “Men do as they are told here or they get taken away and beheaded!”

Kit staggered to his knees, gasping for breath.  “Damn you,” Erica said.  “Can’t you see that he’s helpless...?”

“I ought to slit your throat,” the guard said.  She produced a knife and held it against Erica’s neck.  “A filthy traitor like yourself deserves no mercy.”

“That will do,” the leader said, as she came out of the Church.  “The Queen will see them.”

Erica allowed herself a moment of relief as they were pushed forward and into the building, leaving most of their guards outside.  The Amazons had stripped out most of the pews, leaving a clear space leading up to where the altar had been, back before the war.  It had been removed and replaced with a tacky golden throne, upon which a woman reclined nude while gazing at them in a superior manner.  Erica was shocked to discover that she recognised her from their home timeline.  Susan McCann had been a professor of feminist studies at college, a harridan whose lectures consisted of blaming men for everything and claiming that sexism had held her back from the position of power that she deserved.  Erica had never liked her, but this McCann should never have met Erica’s counterpart.  Assuming she had a counterpart...

“On your knees before the queen,” their captor ordered.  “Your Majesty, we have brought you some captives from the patriarchal tribe.  And a traitor to her sex.”

“How nice,” McCann said.  Her sugary-sweet voice was as obnoxious as Erica remembered from the single lecture she’d attended.  On the other hand, she’d clearly lost a great deal of weight since becoming the queen of a post-nuclear tribe.  “I trust that the men are all in good health?”

“They show no signs of the pox,” their captor said.  “We could use them for breeding stock.”

McCann stepped off her throne and walked down to Erica, standing so close to her that Erica could feel her breath on her forehead.  “And why are you with the patriarchs?”  She asked, softly.  “You should be with us.”

“They’re my friends,” Erica said, trying hard to keep her voice under control.  McCann had clearly gone off the deep end...and she’d never been very stable in the first place.  “I don’t abandon my friends.”

“So thought many of the submissive girls,” McCann said.  Her voice was rising as she spoke.  “They accepted their place in the male world – mothers, daughters, wives...and nothing else.  Men got to rut with whores; women were cursed for even daring to think about having orgasms or finding sexual happiness.  And what did it get them?  Men destroyed our world!  Billions are dead because some stupid men got into a stupid fight over a stupid tiny country and refused to back down when the nukes started to fly!  How many of us are left alive because of their foolishness?  We will never be slaves to men again!”

Erica recoiled as the spittle landed on her face.  “We are the Amazons,” McCann said.  “We will be strong.  We will take what we want from the men and they will serve us!  We will never kneel in front of a man again, forced to beg for scraps from his table, or to bear his children so he can educate them in the ways of the patriarch, or to be beaten for daring to raise our voices.  We will not be slaves again!”

“Your Majesty,” GBW said, “we’re just travellers, passing through.  We’re not here to enslave you...”

“And you won’t,” McCann said.  She reached inside his shirt and started pressing her hand against his chest.  “You will stay here and become breeders for us.  No pox – you can give us untainted children.  Take them away!”

Before Erica could say anything – although what she could have said was an open question – they were picked up and carried to a prison cell.  Their bonds were removed and the door was banged closed behind their guards.  It didn't take Erica more than a few moments to realise that they were trapped.  The door was locked and the window was far too small to use as a way out.  It was nothing more than a tiny source of light.

Bruno started to laugh.  “This ought to be fun,” he said.  Erica stared at him in disbelief.  “If they happen to want breeding stock...well, it would be our pleasure to serve.”

“You’re going to...willingly have sex with them to get them pregnant?”  Erica asked.  “Have you any idea how bloody irresponsible that sounds?”

“I know,” GBW said, “but if we’re trapped anyway...”

“You filthy...man,” Erica said, angrily.  “What do you think they’ll do after they’ve finished fucking you to death?”

“What a way to go,” Bruno said.  “Did I tell you about the time I nearly died when performing...”

“Yes,” Kit said, sharply.  “Heterosexuals.  I support them politically, but the act...yuk!”

He scowled as he checked the lock.  “We have to get out of here before they come back,” he said.  “We need to get back to the RV and then get the hell off this world.”

“But think of all the fun we could have...”

“I don’t think that these women are interested in letting you have your fun with them,” Kit said, sharply.  “Think about how barbarian men treat women and then think about what women might do if they were given the opportunity.  I think they’d fuck you to death.”

“No argument,” Erica agreed.  “Now...how do we get out of here?”

***
An hour passed slowly as they waited in the cell.  All their attempts to open the door failed, leaving Erica convinced that the Amazons had bolted the door as well as locking it.  It was certainly an effective way to keep prisoners trapped, she thought sourly, unable to suppress the worry at the back of her mind.  The guys were going to be treated like breeding stock and as for her...McCann had been utterly savage about how treacherous women should be treated, back in their own world.  What would she be like with no restraints holding her back and an army of devoted servants?  

The door finally clicked open, revealing a tough-looking woman carrying a whip.  “You’re going to be put to work at once,” she snarled.  “You – the elegant one.”  She pointed to Kit.  “Come with me, now!”

Kit started to protest, only to feel the whip cracking across his knuckles.

“Don’t worry, Kit,” Bruno said.  “Take it like a man...”

He broke off as the whip struck him too.  “You’ll all be put to work,” the woman informed them, “except for you, bitch.” She stared at Erica.  “For treachery to your sex, you will be forced to fight for your life...”

Erica found her voice.  “Tell the Queen that I challenge her to a contest,” she said, quickly.  “I want to fight for my life and those of my friends.”

“Hah,” the woman said.  “The queen is undefeatable.  She has reshaped our world to her will...”

“And yet you’re still living on dead ground,” Erica said, quietly.  Reason wouldn’t touch a true fanatic, but maybe there was hope for this woman.  “What are you going to do when you run out of food?”

There was a long pause.  “I will take your challenge to the Queen,” she said, finally.  She took Kit by the arm and dragged him out of the cell.  “And if she accepts the challenge, you will be defeated by her.”

The door slammed closed behind her.  “Erica,” Bruno said, “why...?”

“Because I can't think of anything else to do,” Erica said.  She heard her own voice growing louder.  “You’re too busy thinking of the delights of fucking these women to think about getting our asses out of here!  I want to get home, back to where everything makes sense!”

Bruno reached out and put an arm around her shoulder.  “We’ll get out of this somehow,” he said, “although hopefully not before I’ve had a chance to sample some of those Amazon warriors...”

“Bruno,” Erica said, “I think you’d discover that you couldn't handle them.”

She sat down on the floor and started to think, trying to think of something they could do to escape.  But everything she could think of involved being on the other side of the solid door.  She checked the hinges, just in case they could be unscrewed, but they were solidly in place.  Cursing, she promised herself never to leave home again without some proper tools – assuming they ever made it home.  The chances were good that they were trapped forever in a devastated world.  She remembered one of the Amazons mentioning a pox.  It was quite possible that it was smallpox, and smallpox was lethal without proper vaccination.  They didn't have the vaccination...her father had had, being a soldier, but his daughter had never been immunised against smallpox.  No one had seen the need.

And if some of the stories she’d heard about Russian bioweapons were true, they could have unleashed plagues a great deal worse than smallpox...

She rubbed her eyes tiredly.  Perhaps they were already infected, or perhaps they were slowly being irradiated with radiation...no, surely that couldn't be the case.  The women were clearly still alive and reasonably healthy.  Absently, she wondered how McCann had survived the war.  Plenty of people who might be helpful in rebuilding society had died, no doubt, but a madwoman with a crazy belief system that had never been tested in the real world had walked away without a scratch.  If there was a God – and Erica had never known if she believed or not – He had a strange sense of humour.

“An hour,” Bruno said, suddenly.  “He’s been gone an hour.”

Erica glanced at her watch.  He was right.  She listened, wondering if she would hear anything, but the only sound she could make out was a distant drumming.  Perhaps McCann was calling the women to lunch...absently, she found herself wondering what they ate.  If McCann had managed to take control of a stockpile of food and weapons, she and a few fanatical followers would probably be able to dominate the survivors.  Anyone who refused to go along with her would simply be refused food and drink.  It had been hellishly effective in some parts of the Middle East and Pakistan.

The door crashed open and Kit was shoved inside.  His clothes had been torn away, exposing his ribs and chest.  He wore a loincloth covering his groin.  Erica reached forward and caught him before he landed on the floor.  He’d been beaten, she realised.  Dark bruises covered his arms and legs.  Whoever had done it had known precisely what they were doing, she realised, remembering her father’s lessons.  They’d beaten him to inflict pain without actually causing permanent damage.

“It was awful,” Kit murmured, so softly that she could barely hear him.  “They touched me...there.”

Erica looked up at the guard.  “Did you take my message to the Queen?”

“I did,” the guard said.  Her face twisted into a sickening leer.  “The Queen has not yet decided your punishment for consorting with the patriarchs.”

The door slammed closed once again, leaving them alone.  Erica and GBW helped Kit onto the bed and tried to take a proper look at his wounds.  In the semi-darkness, it was almost impossible.  Kit seemed half-dazed, almost as if his mind had snapped.  Or perhaps they’d simply drugged him to make him more pliable.  Erica silently promised herself that she’d throttle McCann if she ever had the opportunity.  A woman who raged about men using rape as a tool to keep women under control had no excuse for ordering her followers to commit rape themselves.

There was a tap at the door, followed by it opening slowly.  “Quiet,” a voice whispered.  “You – girl.  Can we talk to you alone?”

Erica leaned forward, seeing a young woman who couldn't have been more than two or three years older than her.  “I have a name, you know,” she said.  “I’m Erica.”

“I used to be called Janet,” the girl said.  “The Queen says that names given to us by males shouldn't be used any longer, ever since they blew up the planet.  I need to take you to meet with a few of my friends...”

“Take all of us,” Erica said.  Maybe this was their opportunity to escape.  “We’d come with you.”

“I couldn't slip men past the guards,” Janet said.  Her voice was growing more frightened.  Erica couldn't blame her, not really.  If McCann could condemn her for being captured with three men, she’d certainly take a dim view of treason among her followers.  “I need you to come now.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Erica promised the guys, and followed Janet out of the cell.  As she had guessed, it was both locked and bolted strongly enough to keep any man prisoner, no matter how strong he was.  She looked up at Janet, who beckoned her down the corridor.  “Where are we going?”

“Quiet,” Janet hissed.  “The last thing we want is to be caught.”

Erica had never realised that there was an underground complex under the Church.  It might have been part of the college before the bombs had fallen, a hidden bomb shelter to keep people safe if the bombs ever did start to fall.  They slipped past small bedrooms housing sleeping Amazons – many of them were sleeping together, Erica noticed – and a handful of larger rooms storing food.  Several similar rooms seemed to be empty.  How long could their supplies last?

They reached a tiny meeting room and Janet led the way inside.  Four other girls were sitting at the table, their faces covered with cloaks that concealed their features.  Erica was tempted to point out that trying to hide was often a sign of guilt, but kept the thought to herself.  At least someone was trying to fight McCann and her fanatics...

“You told Helga that this world is dying,” Janet said.  She didn't introduce her allies.  “What does that mean for us?”

Erica blinked, and then remembered that they’d probably been students with little real experience of the world.  “I don’t think you can grow crops here,” she said, after a long moment.  “Once your food supplies run out, you’re going to starve.”

“The Queen says that the land will become clean once the patriarchy has been wiped out,” Janet said.  “We are pushing their tribe back and back...but the land becomes no cleaner.”

“She’s mad,” Erica said, flatly.  “There is no way that you’ll be able to grow crops here for a very long time.  You have to move somewhere with less radiation and to hell with what the Queen says.”

“She’s the queen,” one of the cloaked girls objected.  “She kept us safe when the bombs started to fall.”

“And now she’s sentenced you to a slow death,” Erica said, flatly.  “Why does she need my friends for breeding stock?”

She knew the answer almost as soon as she’d asked the question.  Radiation poisoning did odd things to the human reproductive system.  It was quite possible that the men in the nearby tribe were impotent, or sterile, or that their children would be deformed.  The thought was horrifying, but it had to be faced.  Bruno, Kit and GBW wouldn't have such weaknesses.  Perhaps they should stay after all...

The door crashed open.  “Treason,” a voice barked.  Armed women filed into the room.  “Take them to the Queen!”

Erica winced and raised her hands in surrender.

Chapter Four

McCann had, thankfully, decided to wear a long dress instead of remaining naked, but there was nothing merciful in her gaze.  Erica listened to her ranting at the girls she called traitors and realised that there almost no sanity left inside her mind.  In truth, she wasn't too surprised.  Everyone who had survived the complete destruction of all they knew and loved would probably be on the edge of insanity for years afterwards.  There would be no therapists in this universe to help them recover from their trauma.  They’d have to do the best they could on their own.

“And you,” McCann thundered, turning to Erica.  “You foul slave of the patriarch, you have brought dissent into our world!  You will be held to account for what you have done!”

Erica felt her temper snap.  “Give it a rest,” she snapped.  The Amazons holding her gripped her tighter, as if they expected her to try to break free and attack their Queen.  “You’re struggling to survive on a dying world and you’re obsessing over traitors in your ranks.”

McCann reached out and grabbed Erica by the chin, pulling her face upwards to stare into her eyes.  “I rescued women from males after the war,” she hissed.  “There was no longer anything covert about their slavery.  They were forced to serve as whores, fighting each other for scraps from their man-master’s table.  If we do not remain united in our determination to remain free, we will be enslaved by the male tribes.”

“That doesn't excuse what you did to my friend,” Erica said.  It was hard to talk with her chin held in a vice-like grip, but she managed it.  “I challenge you to a fight.  If I win, my friends and I get to go free.”

McCann hesitated, just long enough to hear the whispers from some of the Amazons.  Not all of them were fanatics, Erica realised.  Some of them were smart enough to realise that there was no future in McCann’s world.  Their only real hope was to find somewhere that hadn’t been so badly damaged by the nuclear war.  Chances were they’d have to walk south and hope that Mexico hadn't been targeted by the Russians.  The thought of such a journey, through perilous dangers and radioactive hotspots, chilled Erica to the bone.  If Bruno had been able to rig up a primitive radiation detector...

“This is absurd,” McCann snapped.  Erica felt a flash of triumph.  McCann sounded as if she was going on the defensive.  “You cannot mean to say that you would fight for men!”

Erica gathered herself.  “They are my friends,” she said, flatly.  “I know that they would do it for me, if the situation was reversed.  But even if they weren't, it would still be the right thing to do.  You’re leading your people to death.  The longer you remain here...”

McCann slapped her, hard.  Erica tasted blood in her mouth.  “Lies,” McCann shouted.  But she still seemed to be on the defensive.  “You dare to suggest that I would lead my own people to their deaths?”

This time, the background mumbling seemed louder.  Erica tried to assess who was on what side, but it was impossible.  Humans had a pack mentality in times of stress; as long as the leader seemed tough and unchallengeable, few would dare to stand up alone and proclaim that the emperor had no clothes.  But when the balance shifted, when hope or fear became too strong to endure, the balance could shift very quickly.  How secure was any leader’s grip on power when his own people were questioning his every move?

And how many of her Amazon, Erica asked herself silently, could McCann kill before the remainder turned on her?

“What happens when you run out of supplies?”  Erica asked, throwing down the gauntlet.  “What happens when you...?”

“Silence,” McCann bellowed.  One of her guards pressed a hand over Erica’s mouth, forcing it closed.  “You wish to challenge me for leadership?  I, who saved these women from slavery or death?  Fine – you will fight me.  And if you lose, I promise you that you will spend the rest of your life wishing for death.  Bring her.”

She marched out of the Church and outside onto the dead ground.  Someone had been trying to clear the area up, Erica saw, as her guards released their hold on her.  Piles of broken glass and chunks of debris had been pushed to one side, while the damaged wall had been repaired with concrete and shards of broken glass.  It would be difficult for an unprotected human to scramble over the wall, she realised.  The Amazons weren’t alone in the dead world.  If there was a male tribe out there...

McCann was insane, she reminded herself.  She should have tried to put together an alliance with the men, rather than fighting them.  Or perhaps she had had a point, at first.  People acted badly when society’s restraints were shattered.  Men who wouldn't dream of raping a girl before the bombs fell would find themselves offered the opportunity to do what they liked, with little chance of facing justice for it afterwards.  And it would be easy for some fundamentalist preacher to put together a religion that insisted that women had to remain under careful control.  They might even say that it was for their own good.

Erica’s mother had died when she was very young.  Her father had treated her as a son, teaching her everything he might have taught a male child.  But some of his friends had been more dismissive of Erica, simply for having been born female.  And yet they’d also been incredibly protective.  What would they have done in a world where they had to fight for survival?  The civilians back home had no idea how lucky they were to be alive.  This world was a nightmare.  And how far was the distance between man and beast?

“I will beat you for your imprudence,” McCann said.  Erica was tempted to ask about rules, but realised that there wouldn’t be any.  She’d never had to fight to the death before and she hesitated.  Could she kill anyone, even an insane woman who would have her and her friends tortured to death?  “And all will know that I am fit to rule.”

She leapt forward, lashing out towards Erica, who jumped backwards.  McCann was faster than she had expected, even though it shouldn't have been a surprise.  Everyone who’d survived the bombs and short rations would be quick on their feet by now.  McCann moved like lightning, kicking out with an absurd high kick that almost made contact with Erica’s head.  It was all she could do to avoid it.  McCann wasn't fighting like any of the opponents she’d faced as a child.  But then, none of those opponents had been trying to kill her.  

Erica gathered herself and stepped backwards as McCann came around to face her.  This time, she promised herself, it would be different.  McCann lunged – and Erica aimed a punch right into her throat.  It should have connected and staggered her, but McCann’s hand came up at blinding speed and knocked Erica’s fist to one side.  Erica managed to lash out at McCann’s back, only to see her shrug off the blow.  Of course – someone from this world would probably be used to pain too.  

The moment of reflection almost killed her.  McCann’s next lunge sent them both crashing to the ground.  Erica gasped in pain as she hit the hard concrete, before head-butting McCann in the forehead and trying to knee between her legs.  McCann was insanely strong and seemed almost unaffected.  Her hands reached towards Erica’s throat, intending to crush the life out of her.  Desperately, Erica pushed her head forward and bit McCann’s nose.  McCann grunted in pain and leaned back, intending to plunge her fist into Erica’s chest.  Erica managed to twist just enough to avoid the blow.  She brought up her legs as McCann recoiled and kicked out, trying to win enough time to get back on her feet.  McCann staggered backwards and almost fell onto the ground.

Erica scrambled to her feet and threw herself at McCann, landing on top of her.  The insane woman twisted frantically, her hands clawing at Erica’s skin, but she forced herself to ignore the pain.  Instead, she pushed down, reaching for McCann’s throat.  McCann let out a howl as Erica’s hands grasped her neck and began to squeeze.  She seemed somehow to gain extra strength, but Erica refused to be thrown off.  Her hands started to tighten almost of their own accord.

“Give up,” she hissed.  She didn't want to kill her, no matter what she deserved.  Her father had warned her that killing someone changed a person and Erica wasn't sure that she wanted to change, or take that burden upon herself.  “Give up before I kill you.”

“You’ll enslave us to the patriarch,” McCann hissed.  She twisted again, even though she was fighting for breath.  Erica almost lost her grip on her throat.  “I won’t let you do that to us.”

“Give up,” Erica repeated.  What the hell did she do now?  “Please...”

She heard a click and looked up – and froze.  One of the Amazons was pointing a pistol right at her head.  “You’ve won,” the Amazon said.  “Get off her, now.”

Erica hesitated, and then obeyed, cursing her own mistake.  Of course McCann would have rigged the game in her favour.  Fairness had never been a part of her life, even in their home timeline.  “I always knew that you were faithful, Jill,” McCann said.  “I must not be killed...”

“But you are no longer Queen,” Jill said.  McCann and Erica both stared at her.  “You allowed her to challenge you – like a man.  And you fought – like a man.  We are women and we should not allow ourselves to act like men.  The outsider is right.  You are no longer fit to be Queen.”

Jill looked over at Erica, who was struggling to hold herself together.  McCann had hurt her worse than she’d realised at the time.  Her legs and chest hurt badly.  “We will free your friends and you may leave, if you wish,” she added.  “Or you may stay with us.”

“They must stay with us,” McCann said.  “Don't you see?  All the men in the tribes are impotent!  Where will we get the next generation of Amazons from if we don’t have any fertile men?”

There was a long pause.  “I’m going to free my friends,” Erica said, putting the issue aside for the moment.  “And then I think you owe them an apology.”

“Maybe they can stay for a little while,” Jill said, slowly.  She shrugged.  “Take her to the cell and release the prisoners.”

Erica allowed one of the guards to lead her back into the underground network and back to the cell.  The door clanked open and she started to step inside, before hesitating.  A moment later, Kit almost punched her in the face.  He’d been hiding, preparing to jump the guard when she opened the door.

“Erica,” he said, in horror.  “I meant to...”

“Never mind,” Erica said.  All the tension bubbled up within her and she found herself giggling.  “I faced McCann and beat her and we’re free – well, reasonably free.”

“You beat her?”  Bruno asked.  “I hope you kicked the shit out of her.”

“Men,” Erica said, unable to resist the chance to play a little joke.  “Of course I didn't fight her physically.”

Bruno’s eyes narrowed.  “So what did you do?  Where were you?”

Erica winked.  “The Queen’s bedroom.”

***
“You see our problem,” Jill said, after a brief meal in the former Church.  “We need to have children, but the men in the nearby tribes are impotent or sterile.  You may be our only hope of survival as a race.”

GBW considered it for a moment.  “As much as I like the idea of having lots of sex with no strings attached,” he began...

“Get to the point,” Erica injected, tartly.

“...There are only two of us – three, if you count Kit,” GBW finished.  “You’ll run into problems with inbreeding pretty darn quickly.  And that doesn't include the radiation damage your cells have probably soaked up over the years.  It may not be just the men who can't have children.”

Jill’s face fell.  “It’s something we haven’t wanted to consider,” she admitted.  “If we leave this place, perhaps with an alliance with the male tribes...might we be doomed anyway?”

She scowled.  “Where did you come from, anyway?”  She added.  “If you came from somewhere safe...”

Bruno and Erica exchanged glances.  In truth, Erica had been expecting the question for some time.  After all, if they needed men who weren't damaged by radiation poisoning, logically there had to be others where Bruno and GBW had come from.  But she hadn't been able to think of a good answer, apart from the truth.  And who knew what Jill would make of that?

“I think I have a solution to your impotence problem,” Bruno said.  “I once had an internet friend who could never get hard.  He used to buy all sorts of dubious herbs from the internet to put some iron in his pecker...he must have spent thousands of dollars on trying to get excited.  It didn't work, of course...”

Erica cleared his throat.  “Anyway, what did work was a course of internet porn,” Bruno explained, quickly.  “We have a spare laptop and you can probably figure out how to run it from some of the batteries you have here.  I can transfer a vast amount of porn onto the laptop and you can show it to the men.  It will definitely put some lead in their pencils.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Kit said.  “You’re going to overcome radiation poisoning with a display of nude women?”

“Nude women doing unspeakable things,” Bruno said, with a leer.  “It’s guaranteed to give a man an instant erection.”

Jill frowned.  “The former Queen was very much against the objectification of women,” she pointed out.  “Are you sure that it will work?”

“Positive,” Bruno said.  “It worked for him.”

“Right,” Erica said.  It seemed insane, but it was their best hope for getting out of the situation before Jill decided that the guys had to remain with the Amazons.  “Let’s go back to the RV and get them some porn.”

The walk back to the RV took longer than she had expected, but she was silently grateful for the chance to flex her muscles and try to recover from the fight.  Jill chatted absently about the college she’d known before the war, pointing to places where the Amazons had salvaged supplies they’d used to keep themselves alive.  The bodies had been buried, she explained, once they’d been confident that the war was over and it was safe to emerge.  One of the blasts had apparently wrecked the campus, although Erica found that a dubious claim.  There was no logical reason for the Russians to waste a nuke on a harmless campus.  

“I haven't seen a working vehicle since the war,” Jill said.  Unexpectedly, there were tears in her eyes.  “We lost so much...”

“You can rebuild,” GBW said, awkwardly.  “You and the male tribe will have to learn to work together and rebuild.  You never know – there might be other survivors out there.”

“We could always check to see if we have something on Wikipedia about nuclear fallout patterns and nuclear winter,” Bruno said.  “Many of the early models were...well, junk science.  I think there’s a good chance that most of Latin America survived the war.”

Erica waited while he rooted through the RV, finally producing a laptop and a hard drive containing porn.  “This should give them some...ah, encouragement,” he said.  He passed it over to Jill, who took it with an expression of wonderment.  Erica puzzled over that for a second, before realising that the nuclear warheads would have released EMPs when they detonated, wrecking computers and other electronic devices.  “Take it back and have fun.”

They clambered back into the RV, leaving Jill to trudge back to the Church alone.  Erica watched her go, and then turned to Bruno, who was poking the device.  “Can we get out of here?”

“Maybe in another hour,” Bruno said.  The laptop he’d attached to the unknown device seemed to be blinking frantically at him.  “I don’t understand half the gunk this thing is putting out.”

“More importantly,” Kit said, “can we get home?”

“I don’t know,” Bruno admitted.  “This isn't rocket science, you know.  I have no idea how our world relates to this world, or how the makers of this device plotted their course between dimensions...”

“Maybe there’s only two dimensions,” Erica said, seriously.

“Unlikely,” Bruno said.  “If every choice everyone made created an alternate universe, there would be billions upon billions of possible alternate realities.”

“I see,” Erica said.  “So...how do we get home?”

Bruno looked down at the device.  “Perhaps we need to figure out how this thing works before we go anywhere else,” he said.  “How long do you think we could stay here?”

Kit glanced out of the window.  “We can’t,” he said.  “Hit the button!”

Erica followed his gaze.  A screaming mass of Amazons was charging towards them, carrying clubs and spears.  No, not just Amazons – men as well.  They’d be on the RV within seconds.  There was no time to turn on the engine and drive away, even if it actually worked any longer.  God alone knew what Bruno and Kit had done to it after they’d started mucking about with the innards...

“Get us out of here,” she yelled.  The sound of approaching murder was growing louder.  “It doesn't matter where we end up – hit the fucking button!”

Bruno hesitated, and then hit the switch.  There was a groan of protest – from the device, or perhaps from the universe itself – and then Erica felt as if she’d been turned inside out.  And then the world went away and they crashed down into darkness.

Chapter Five

“All right,” Erica said.  “Where the hell are we now?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Bruno said, with some irritation.  “The device appears to be powering down again.  I think we may have to wait some time before we can jump again.”

Erica nodded and peered through the RV’s windows.  Absolute darkness greeted her eyes.  There was no light at all, not even a faint glimmer in the distance.  The darkness almost seemed to be a physical entity, coiling around the RV.  She found herself lost for words.  Something deep inside her mind, a legacy of the days when humanity had huddled around the campfire, was telling her to run.  This was not a safe place for humanity.

“Interesting,” Bruno said, climbing up beside her.  “I wonder if...”

There was a brilliant flash of purple-white light overhead.  For a second, Erica saw a flat metal floor beneath the RV’s wheels and a tower in the distance.  A second flash of lightning revealed other metal structures surrounding them, glimmering in the light.  High overhead, Erica could have sworn she saw a monstrous beast floating through the air before it was cloaked in darkness again.  The sight sent chills running down her spine.  There was nothing like that back home.  It reminded her of legends about dragons flying through the sky.

“I think we need to get out of here,” GBW said.  “Push the button again.”

Bruno did, but nothing happened.  “Too low on power,” he said.  “Coming to think of it, how much power does it take to punch a hole between dimensions.  The device must be drawing power from somewhere else.  I wonder what would happen if I took it apart...”

“We’d end up stranded right here,” Erica said, sharply.  “I think that that would be a very bad idea.”

“I won’t disagree,” Kit said.  He shrugged towards the door.  “Should we go out and have a look around before we leave?”

Erica hesitated.  She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go.  “Why not?”  She asked, keeping her tone as light as she could.  “Let’s go see where we are this time.”

“Hang on,” Kit said.  He reached into a compartment and produced a pair of flashlights and a single Browning automatic.  “Pity we don’t have any other weapons, but...”

“If we get back home, we’ll buy out a gun store,” Erica said.  Her father ran one.  He’d always said that a young lady should be armed at all times.  Right now, she cursed herself for not listening to him.  She took one of the flashlights and opened the door.  “Let’s go, shall we?”

The darkness loomed around them like a physical entity, almost like fog or mist.  She shone the flashlight around, but the beam seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness.  Beneath their feet, she felt metal and tapped it experimentally.  Even the sound felt funny in the darkness.  She listened, but she could hear nothing apart from a faint crackle in the air.  A second later, another flash of lightning flared up above them.  She saw, to her horror, that they were standing on a large metal platform.  They could have easily walked off the edge in the darkness and fallen to their deaths.

She looked up, but saw nothing above them.  No stars illuminated the world they stood on, or maybe they were too dim to shine through the darkness.  The more she saw of it, the more she was convinced that there was something unnatural about the darkness that shrouded the world.  It seemed to twist around them like a living thing.

“My God,” Kit said, suddenly.  “We’re standing on an aircraft carrier.”

Another flash of lightning illuminated the scene – and everything fell into place.  They were standing on a carrier’s flight deck, staring towards the control tower – no, two control towers, one to port and one to starboard.  It struck her as an odd design, but she was no naval expert – her father had never liked the navy.  The flashes of lightning seemed to be coming quicker now, revealing hundreds of ships scattered around the surface of the world as if they’d been dropped there by an angry god.  There weren't just ships, she realised slowly.  It looked like a junkyard of military technology.  She could see tanks, aircraft and even what looked like a space shuttle, abandoned and left to decay.

GBW put her thoughts into words.  “Do you think we’re on the same world we just left?”

“I don’t think so,” Bruno said.  He hesitated.  “But it was late afternoon when we left and now...”  He waved a hand around, encompassing the darkness.  “Do you think we’re moving in time as well as space?”

Erica shook her head.  “I hope not,” she said.  “How will we ever get home if we are?”

“I think we should investigate the carrier,” Kit said, firmly.  “That might tell us what happened here.  This place can't be natural.”

“Maybe space aliens picked up all of our warships and dropped them here,” GBW suggested.  He sounded nervous.  Erica couldn't blame him.  Just for a second, she felt sure that someone – or something – was watching them.  She found herself glancing around, but the darkness shrouded everything.  “Or maybe...”

He shook his head.  “I don't know what this is,” he said.  “I think we need to find out before it gets us.”

They walked towards the starboard conning tower, watching carefully for pitfalls.  Towards the prow of the massive vessel, someone or something had torn open the flight elevator allowing aircraft to be brought up from below decks and launched into the sky.  Erica tried to decide if the crew had opened it or if some colossal monster had ripped through the metal to get at the crew inside.  She tried to imagine how the crew must have felt to be trapped here, if the crew had come with the aircraft carrier.  The ship was so huge that it seemed impossible to imagine anything that could pick it up and deposit it in the midst of a junkyard, but they were clearly not floating at sea.  All of the vessels in the area had been dropped on dry land.

“Shit,” Kit said.  “Look at that.”

Erica followed his pointing finger.  The symbol on the side of the conning tower was a repulsive historical nightmare, a black swastika set against a red and white background.  It was more than familiar from her grandfather’s tales of the time he’d driven a tank into Germany during the Second World War.  Adolf Hitler and his Nazis had ridden to war under their swastika banner.  But the Germans had never had the technology to build something as big as the carrier, at least as far as she knew.  The carrier looked like something from the 1970s rather than the 1940s.

“I think they must have won the war in this timeline,” Kit said, confirming her thoughts.  “This brute is bigger than the Eisenhower.”  Erica glanced over at him.  “It’s one of the Navy’s biggest aircraft carriers, one of the biggest ships in the world,” he added.  “And this Nazi ship is bigger.  The Germans always did go in for spectacular construction at the expense of practicalities.”

He glanced back towards the flight deck.  “Interesting design, though,” he added.  “Most carriers only have one conning tower, which allows them to reduce the risk of an aircraft crashing into the bridge.  This ship has two of them – despite its colossal size, I’d be willing to bet money that they could only launch one aircraft at a time.”

“Maybe they had something like the Harrier,” Bruno suggested, as he fiddled with what looked like a hatch.  “They could launch them vertically into the air...”

“Maybe,” Kit agreed.  The hatch clanked open, revealing a ladder heading upwards, into the conning tower.  “Ladies first?”

Erica scowled at him, and then led the way.  The ladder felt cold and clammy under her fingers, almost as if the entire ship was sweating.  She found herself rubbing her forehead as she clambered up to the top, nearly dropping the flashlight when she banged her head into a sealed hatch.  It took her a moment to work out how to unlock the hatch and push it open.  The crew of the ship must have worked out, she told herself.  It was a strain to open the hatch on her own.

The ship’s bridge was larger than she expected, a curious mixture of primitive and modern.  A wheel was positioned in front of a large window, allowing the ship to be steered manually, but a set of computers dominated the rear of the bridge.  There was no sign of the ship’s crew, or of anything that might explain what had happened.  From the dust that had settled on the consoles, Erica guessed that the ship had been abandoned for several years.  She checked each of the consoles, one by one, but they were completely inoperative.

“I wonder if they had a nuclear reactor on this ship,” Kit mused, as he started poking around the chair in the centre of the bridge.  “I don’t see how else they could power her...”

“Maybe they have thousands of hamsters on wheels,” Erica snapped.  If there was a nuclear reactor below them, God alone knew what had happened to it when the crew...went away.  It might have been shut down, or it might have been left to fester and slowly become unstable, leaking radiation into the air.  She remembered the dead world they’d visited and shivered.  “Did the Germans ever develop nuclear power?”

“They never did in our timeline,” GBW said.  “But if they won the war in this timeline they might have developed all kinds of nasty surprises.  They’d certainly have had longer to get over their obsession with avoiding Jewish science.”

“Idiots,” Erica said.  Absently, she wondered what would become of any child brought up in a world where the Nazis had won the war.  They’d have a total moral invasion.  Their schooling would embrace Nazi ideas, all of which would have been ‘proven’ by the fact the Nazis had won the war.  “What else can one say about them?”

Kit looked up from where he had been digging through the compartments at the rear of the bridge.  “I’ve found the Captain’s logbook,” he said.  “Does anyone read German?”

“A little,” Bruno said.  He took it from Kit and flicked back to the first page.  “Graf Zeppelin, Adolf Hitler-class aircraft carrier, launched from Kiel on December 13th, 1974.  Apparently the second ship to bear the name – according to this, the first was sunk in battle with the Americans in 1965.  The ship was dedicated to the cause of National Socialism by Fuhrer Von Wolfe.”

He looked up.  “Can anyone remember a Von Wolfe in history – our history?”

“I don’t think it matters,” GBW said.  “If history diverged around 1940 or whenever, anyone who was an adult in 1974 would be a child – if that.  They might have been babies in our world when the Allies won the war.”

“But who knows what they would have become if the Allies didn’t win the war?”  Kit mused.  “Everyone who had any kind of Nazi past kept it to themselves.  But in an alternate world...”

Bruno kept flicking through the logbook.  “Sailed to Massachusetts on her first cruise, hosted the President of America and his Commissioner for dinner,” he muttered.  “There are a lot of notes about the nigger extermination program here.  I think they must have either beaten us or forced us to embrace their ways.”  He shook his head.  “Sickening.  The ship then went around South America to pay a call on the Japanese.  She apparently helped out the French in Indochina...there aren’t many details here.  I wonder if the vessel’s commander was trying to conceal some of the facts.”

Erica frowned.  “How remarkably un-Teutonic of them.”

“Perhaps they were a little ashamed of what they’d done in service to Nazi Germany,” Bruno said.  “They paid a call to India and then headed to South Africa.  God alone knows what they might have done to Africa’s black population.”

“I read a story where the Nazis had invaded India,” GBW said.  “They massacred protesters and shot Gandhi.  That might be what they did in this reality.”

“Maybe,” Bruno agreed.  He flicked through a couple more pages.  “I think we’re getting to the important part here.  Reports of sightings of strange bat-like creatures.  Watchman reprimanded for drunkenness on duty.  More sightings, including one made by the Captain himself.  Ship caught up in a green mist, which faded – leaving them alone.  Radio contact with Berlin lost and unable to be recovered.  Some messages picked up on the radio in unknown languages, making no sense at all.  Crew starting to suffer problems – some disciplinary problems, others seemingly the result of madness.  Some officers report hearing voices coming from the shadows.”

He shook his head.  “I think the Captain was losing his mind by this point,” he admitted.  “The writing becomes increasingly erratic.  Crewmen missing – some apparently lured overboard by voices.  Mutiny in the engineering section – SS troopers who attempted to restore order apparently turning their guns on each other.  Crew becoming increasingly deranged; one officer apparently tried to trigger one of the nukes and had to be shot down before he could push the detonator.  Power losses throughout the ship without explanation.  Reactor running increasingly oddly – almost as if the laws of science don’t quite make sense any more.  It starts to fail and they have to shift onto batteries, but they seem to leak power from the moment they turn them on.  The Captain starts hearing voices himself – he claims that he can hear his dead son, taken away by the state for being born with a cleft foot.

“And someone blows up one of the aircraft in the hangers.  The whole situation is out of control...”

Bruno placed the logbook on the table.  “At that point, the writing becomes impossible to decipher,” he concluded.  “From what I’ve read, I think we can conclude that they were drawn into another universe, one that proved to be hostile to human minds and technology.”

“You mean here,” Erica said.  She glanced down at the flashlight, suspiciously.  “How do we know that our own technology isn't going to fail?”

“We don't,” Bruno said, flatly.  He closed his eyes for a long second, and then peered out over the flight deck, illuminated by bursts of lightning.  “You want a really distressing possibility?”

“No,” Erica said.

“We could be in a lobster pot,” Bruno said, ignoring her.  “The lobster crawls along into the pot and then gets stuck.  No matter how much it struggles, it can’t get free.  This universe could be absorbing energy before we can build up enough to jump out...”

“You’re just guessing,” GBW said.  “We don’t know that it works that way here...”

“I know,” Bruno agreed.  “I think we ought to go back to the RV and see if we can get out of here.”

Erica felt the presence of an unknown watcher again as she scrambled down the ladder.  It wasn't so easy as finding their way up the ladder, but she made it down to the flight deck without slipping and falling the rest of the war.  She started to head towards the gaping hole in the deck, catching sight of what looked like wrecked helicopters, before changing her mind.  There was little point in exploring the rest of the Nazi aircraft carrier.  Her crew was long gone.

“Bruno,” she said slowly, “how long ago did this happen?”

Bruno, who had carried the logbook under one arm, glanced at it.  “The last entry before they came here, or were brought here, was dated 1975,” he said.  “It’s possible that they didn't come here immediately.  The Captain is quite clear that they were floating at sea – they just didn't know where they were.  Maybe whatever force took them to that strange ocean dumped the ship here after the crew was dead.”

“But why?”  Erica asked.  “What’s the point of making an entire crew suffer like that?”

“They were Nazis,” Kit said.  “People who killed other people because they were different, because they thought that sub-humans were to blame for all their woes.  They killed Jews, Russians, Blacks, Homosexuals...in our world, they killed over six million people quite deliberately.  What do you think they did in a world where they won the war?”

He waved a hand around the flight deck.  “This is a pretty impressive piece of technology,” he said, “but it’s built on human bones.  I bet you anything you care to put forward that her Captain was steeped in blood up to his eyeballs.”

“No bet,” Bruno said.  They reached the RV and stopped outside.  “I think that...”

“Hey,” GBW said.  “What’s that?”

Erica followed his gaze.  High overhead, a twinkling yellow light had appeared, heading down towards them.  She could hear a faint humming in the air as it got closer, rapidly taking on shape and form as a glowing ball of light.  It wasn't blinding, but somehow she found it impossible to look at it without covering her eyes.  Just before it hit the aircraft carrier, it slowed and halted, hovering above them.  The sound of humming grew louder.

“We come in peace,” GBW said.  “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!”

The yellow light hovered for a second longer, and then it fell on GBW.  Before anyone could react, he was wrapped up in the light – which lifted back off the deck and flashed off into the distance.  Erica was left staring after him, helpless to do anything to help.  He’d been kidnapped right from under their very noses.

“They took him,” Bruno said.  He sounded shocked, barely able to speak.  “What do we do now?”

“We get him back,” Erica said.  “Wherever he is, we’ll find him and we’ll get him back.”

It sounded good, but in truth she had no idea where to begin.

Chapter Six

“First things first,” Erica said.  “We need to figure out a way to get down to the ground.”

The sheer size of the Graf Zeppelin was disconcerting.  It was over a thousand feet long, towering high over the ground below.  When she crept as close as she dared to the edge of the flight deck, it was clear that they’d never be able to jump down to the ground without breaking their legs.  A quick check inside the RV revealed nothing that they could use to scramble down and then get back up to the flight deck again.  It seemed impossible to escape the Nazi aircraft carrier.

“We could go down into the ship and see if there is a gash in the hull,” Kit suggested.  “Bruno – did you have any luck with that compass?”

Bruno shook his head.  “The magnetic field on this world is all screwed up,” he said, holding up the compass.  The needle was spinning madly, as if the north pole was rotating around their position.  “I think we’re going to have to be very careful not to get lost, or we’ll never find our way back to the RV.”

Erica looked over the colossal graveyard of ships, illuminated by flash after flash of lightning.  It seemed to stretch for miles, as far as the eye could see.  She couldn't believe that they were all German ships from a Nazi victory timeline, not when even the USN hadn't produced so many ships.  And they were of radically different designs.  One ship in the distance looked more like a familiar aircraft carrier from their own world.  

“I take your point,” she said.  Finding GBW seemed hopeless, but she wasn't about to give up in a hurry.  “Come on.  Let’s see what we can find below decks.”

The gash in the flight deck revealed a half-smashed elevator and signs of a gun battle, with bullets scattered everywhere.  There was no sign of any bodies, which Erica found more than a little creepy after reading the Captain’s logbook.  She shone her flashlight into the darkness and saw a dozen wrecked fighter jets that looked like crude F-15 Eagles.  Several missiles lay on the deck, looking as if someone had been smacking away at them with a hammer.  They hadn't exploded, Erica told herself, and they probably weren't going to explode while they were in the ship.  She still wanted to keep a safe distance from them.

At the edge of the underground hanger, there were a pair of black helicopters marked with lightning bolts.  They looked more advanced than the other aircraft and seemed almost undamaged until she looked inside the cockpit.  The controls looked as if they had been melted, perhaps with a cutting torch of some kind.  She found herself glancing down at the helicopter’s seat and wondering if the pilot had gone mad, or if someone else had sabotaged the helicopter during the mutiny on the ship.  There was no way to know for sure.

“This way,” Kit said.  “I think it leads down to the belly of the beast.”

Away from the hanger, the air tasted foul and the temperature seemed to vary wildly.  Erica found herself wiping her forehead as they headed deeper into the ship, trying to find a way towards the outer hull.  If there were any gashes in the ship’s hull, they had to be there...the air grew hotter, so hot that it almost burned their skin, and then fell back to freezing.  Erica wondered if the reactor had been breached and they were experiencing the effects of radiation poisoning, but kept the thought to herself.  There was nothing they could do about it if they were being slowly poisoned by the ship.

They turned a corner and saw a colossal gash in the hull.  The ship had clearly hit the ground hard enough to tear through solid steel, or whatever the Nazis had used to build their aircraft carrier.  It would be tricky to make their way over the debris and out of the ship, but it was doable.  Kit led the way, clambering over scattered chunks of metal, and paused at the edge of the hull.  It was thicker than Erica had expected, somehow.  Bruno glanced over at her, and then nodded to Kit.  Kit winked at them and jumped out onto the rocky ground.

“Feels like rock,” he yelled.  Erica took a step forward and saw him standing on the ground, touching it with his fingers.  “I wonder where we are...”

“This world might not have anything like the geography we are used to,” Bruno said, thoughtfully.  “If you went back in time far enough, you’d see the continents separate out and spread out over the world.  But if things were different...”

Erica had a more pressing concern.  “Help me push this piece of debris over the edge,” she said, seriously.  “We’ll need to use it to climb up and get back into the ship.”

Bruno nodded and together they managed to push it over the edge.  It hit the ground with a sound that echoed for miles, reflecting off the metal hulls of a hundred ships.  Scrambling down to the ground, Erica felt dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the aircraft carriers, and of the other ships.  Humans were very tiny on such a scale.  She had never felt claustrophobic before, but the thought of what would happen if one of the ships happened to roll over while they were walking beside it chilled her to the bone.  It took everything she had just to get moving, walking down alongside the hull of the Graf Zeppelin.  The ship just seemed to loom over them, casting everything into shadow.

They reached the prow of the mighty aircraft carrier, dented and bruised by the impact that had brought it to this world, and paused.  GBW had been taken off in a particular direction, but it was clear that they were going to have to walk for miles to recover him – if they could recover him.  Erica had read books about UFOs abducting people and performing anal probes – and many of the witnesses had talked about balls of light.  Maybe GBW was being probed right now...or tested to destruction.  The aliens, assuming there was any truth to the stories at all, had had to return their victims to Earth, but the wreckage of the ships suggested that the aliens here didn't have to worry about leaving their captives intact.  

High overhead, something moved through the darkness, it’s presence sensed rather than seen.  Erica flashed her flashlight upwards, wondering what she would see, but the darkness just seemed to absorb the beam of light.  There were no stars in the sky, twinkling down on Earth – even the Moon was absent.  And yet they’d left the nuclear holocaust world in late afternoon.  Were they moving through time as well as space, or was something more sinister going on?  There was no way to know.  

Kit caught her arm.  “Look!”

Erica followed his gaze.  Down beside a strangely-advanced looking ship, an angular design that reminded her of a stealth aircraft, there was a small patch of light.  It seemed to grow, and then split into smaller lights, heading towards their position.  Flashlights, Erica realised.  The world wasn’t uninhabited after all.  There were so many ships in the graveyard that some of them might still have had crew onboard...but would they be friendly?  Kit produced his gun, only to have Bruno hiss at him to put it away.  They were badly outnumbered by the locals.

“We come in peace,” Bruno yelled.  “Who are you?”

Erica half-covered her eyes as the flashlights were levelled at them.  There seemed to be at least a dozen men out there, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness.  Several of them were whispering to one another in a language she didn’t recognise, creating yet another problem.  They might have no way to communicate with their new friends – or captors.  The flashlights seemed to be focused on Bruno, and then they were pointed at the ground.  Erica blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to get the glare out of her sight.  The darkness seemed to have swallowed the newcomers up.

“We’re the lost,” a voice said, from out of the darkness.  It sounded faintly Texan, but with a hint of something Erica didn’t recognise.  “Welcome to the junkyard.  I’m afraid you’re stuck here for the rest of your lives.”

The speaker stepped forward into the pool of light, revealing himself to be wearing what looked like a cross between a cowboy outfit and a naval uniform.  He was a tall, powerfully built man with hair cropped close to his head.  “Mike Collins,” he introduced himself, “formerly of the Republic of Texas Navy.  They took us when we were on patrol watching for Brazilian ships in our waters.  I’ve been here for the last seven years.”

“You have?”  Bruno asked.  He sounded almost childishly eager to learn.  “What happened to bring you here?”

Collins looked oddly reluctant to talk to Bruno – or was he being wary?  “We sailed into a green fog,” he said, finally.  “Most of the crew went mad.  Some of us barricaded ourselves into a stateroom and tried to stay alive, despite the whispers we could hear in our minds.  Eventually, there was a crash and when we left the stateroom, we found that we were here.  They’d just abandoned us.”

The second man stepped forward.  He was a shorter, dark-skinned man, wearing a fez.  “Abdul Pasha, serving the Caliph,” he introduced himself.  “We were sailing to Britannia to strike at the Prussians from the rear when we sailed into green fog.  Pretty much the same thing happened to us.”

“There’s all sorts here,” Collins explained.  “Some of us have made common cause – banded together to try to remain alive and maybe use some of the technology here to get back home.  Others have gone out into the darkness in the hopes of finding civilisation.  And others...well, they’ve been taken.  As private parts to the Bats are we, they play with us for their sport.”

Kit stepped forward.  “The Bats?”

“Big black creatures the size of dragons,” Collins said.  “We see them flying through the air sometimes, when the darkness isn't too oppressive.  We think they’re the ones behind what happened to us, although we have no idea why they wanted to snatch so many ships from a thousand different timelines.  Maybe it’s their idea of a joke.”

He shrugged.  “Anyway, you must be starving,” he added.  “Come along and we’ll give you some food and you can tell us what happened to you.”

Erica hesitated.  Some instinct was telling her not to mention the RV, not to desperate men stranded on a strange world.  She hoped that the guys would keep their mouths shut about it, at least until they knew if Collins and his men could be trusted.  And then they could see about recruiting help to recover GBW.

***
The small settlement had been built using material recovered from a dozen different ships, Erica realised, as they approached.  Prefabricated buildings that had been intended to serve as advance headquarters for invading soldiers had been put together and turned into houses, while a handful of other buildings had been constructed out of sheets of metal and pieces of cloth.  It looked alarmingly like a refugee camp; dozens of people were sitting around the fire, just staring into the flames.  Erica realised that they had to be permanently running short of food.  The ships had probably carried emergency rations, but they wouldn't last forever.

She tried to estimate how many people there were, but gave up as she realised the settlement extended into the hull of a nearby ship.  The settlement could be larger than she suspected, if they were using cabins onboard ships as well as prefabricated buildings.  She smiled as she heard the sound of drumming from one of the ships, followed by the wail of bagpipes.  The stranded castaways might have had little hope of getting home, but they were trying to keep up their determination to carry on and make the best of their situation.

“Welcome to Paradise,” Collins said, seriously.  “Nine hundred and seventy people, all stranded with no way to go home.”

Kit looked up, sharply.  “But many of these ships had thousands of crewmen,” he objected.  “Surely there should be more...”

“Only a handful came off each ship,” Collins said.  “Sometimes...we find ships that are completely unnamed when they get here.  The tales are always the same – the crew goes mad, there are mutinies and outbreaks of insane violence...and when they arrive, only a handful of people have survived.  We’ve sometimes found bodies of people who have arrived here, but died before they found us or another settlement – if there is another settlement.”

He stepped forward.  “Come on,” he said.  “It's time to meet the neighbours.”

Erica followed him into the lighted area...and stopped as she realised that everyone was staring at them.  No, not at them; they were staring at Bruno.  He looked back at them, confused.  None of them looked happy to see him.  Erica bunched his fists inside her jacket, silently preparing to fight.  If they didn't like Bruno...but why?  Why didn't they like Bruno?  They hadn't seen him until now, had they?

“There’s no need to panic,” Collins said.  His voice completely dominated the silence.  Even the bagpipes seemed to have stopped playing.  “This isn’t him, it’s an alternate.  A duplicate.”

There was a long uncomfortable moment, and then the crowd slowly looked away.  “I wish there was some way I could have warned them,” Collins admitted, “but radio transmissions don’t work very well here.  There's something in the atmosphere that interferes with them.”

Bruno, surprisingly, didn't look nervous.  “Are you saying that there’s a duplicate of me on this world?  Me from an alternate timeline?”

“Something like that,” Collins said, vaguely.  “We’ll talk about it after dinner.  For now – rest and eat.”

Erica and Kit shared a long glance, but there was nothing they could do.  The cook, one of the handful of women present in the settlement, ladled out bowls of stew.  Erica sniffed at the stew warily, but her stomach grumbled and she found herself swallowing it down as fast as she could.  It was hot and spicy, although she didn't want to try to guess what kind of meat had been used to flavour the stew.  From a handful of muttered comments, she guessed that it had been taken from ration packs recovered from the ships and then mashed into a stew.

“Reminds me of being at camp,” Kit said, cheerfully.  “We used to experiment with improving MREs all the time.  It turned out that if you put in enough Tabasco, you actually managed to enjoy the food.”

Bruno made a face.  “It’s good, but hot,” he said.  “But what about my...?”

“Leave it for the moment,” Erica said.  Bruno was still attracting glances and none of them looked friendly.  “Whatever you are here, I think we ought to tread carefully until we know what’s going on.  We’re going to need their help to recover GBW.”

She listened to the stories being shared around the campfire as they ate.  Collins had been right – many of the stories about their abduction from their homeworlds were almost identical.  The interesting details lay in the homeworlds themselves.  There were people from a Roman Empire that had never fallen, a Japanese Empire that ruled all of East Asia, a Soviet Union that had won the Cold War, an Islamic Caliphate that had conquered Europe, a Persian Empire that had defeated Greece and gone on to dominate the world...she watched Bruno listening to the stories, shaking his head at how different some of the alternate worlds were from their own.  The story of how Napoleon had gone to America as a young man and transformed it into his own empire was remarkable, although she wasn't sure how much of it she believed.  But how much of their own history would be believable to a man who came from a very different world?

“The Lizards only invaded my world,” an American sailor said.  “I don’t know why they didn’t invade any other timeline.  Something must have happened to them in all, but one universe.”

“The Draka got there first,” a dark-skinned man offered.  “The Lizards wouldn't last long against the Snakes.  They’d probably have a properly engineered subject race up and replacing the originals before too long.”

“Sounds about right,” Collins put in.  He looked over at Erica.  “I think it’s time we talked.”

Erica nodded.  “What’s the deal with Bruno’s alternative?”

Collins sighed.  “I told you that some of us go searching into the ruins for technology we can use,” he said.  “I’m afraid that your friend’s counterpart, when he arrived here, was one of them.  He found a place with some very advanced technology and set himself up as a mad scientist, for want of a better name.  Since then, he’s been carrying out his experiments on human subjects...”

“That’s absurd,” Bruno said.  “I would never carry out experiments on live subjects.”

“This...person probably isn't the same as you,” Kit said.  He sounded troubled by the implications.  Somewhere out there, there were probably billions of different versions of himself.  Erica wondered absently if any of them would like girls.  “And everyone’s scared of him?”

“With reason,” Collins said.  “I think he’s probably the one who kidnapped your friend.”

“If you know where he is, then we’d better go get after him,” Bruno said.  “I’m not allowing any evil version of myself to harm my friend.”

Kit snickered.  “What’s he called, anyway?  Evil-Bruno?

“I think the Marvel Comics preferred version would be Dark Bruno,” Erica said.

“He doesn't call himself Bruno at all,” Collins said, impatiently.  It wasn't a game to him.  Collins and his people had been stranded for years, preyed on by the alternate Bruno and the mysterious power that had brought them to the junkyard.  “These days, he calls himself Doctor What.”