Book Excerpt: The Time Warriors: The Belbridge Mystery

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

A trip to the old Wild West town of Belbridge brings the Time Warriors face to face with an old enemy. The arachnoid Mentara have harvested the townspeople and left it a ghost town. Along with sole survivor Elijah, Varran, Michael, Jacke and Tyran find themselves trapped on the Mentara homeworld.Deep in the heart of enemy territory they discover deadly secrets and the lethal leader of the Mentara forces, General Cade. The race is on to save the people of Belbridge from the Mentara food harvesters before Cade uses the town as the launch pad for the total domination of Earth. When Varran, Jacke and Michael are kidnapped by a new faction of Mentara, Tyran and Elijah are left to face the horrors of the Mentara agenda. What they find will change them forever. Who are the Nasgul? Why has General Cade been waiting for Varran? Who are the butchers of Carden? What will Varran do when he faces the most impossible decision of his life? A decision that will determine who lives and dies.

Everyone was heading outside into the gloom in an air of subdued murmur at first. Elijah swigged his bourbon down in one gulp burning his throat before following the relieved Jake.

Horses were whinnying and rearing in panic. The dull vibration punched the air repeatedly like an unwanted intruder trying to smash down a stubborn door. There was a dust cloud stirring from the force of some sort of wind pushing down from above. Shielding his eyes from the dust Elijah squinted at the sky. He was scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. Along with everyone else the gambler wondered what was this thing above them was. Had I been sent from a hidden people they had not yet encountered to reclaim their home from the savage white man? Could it be that the indigenous Indians were not the only civilisation inhabiting this land after all? It was after all a vast continent gouged with mountainous canyons and gorges that could hide entire cities. Elijah remembered the whispered stories of impossible doorways to other worlds, dark alien creatures and strange happenings lurking in the desert. Indians that came to town told stories of a mystical lands and people that retreated like a tortoise into its shell in fear of the white man. Dark forces coiled the land seething with infinite patience, waiting for the day to reclaim it from the invaders. There were many creatures of legend that lived in those shadow places between the tick and the tock of night and day. Skinwalkers, werewolves, giant desert lizards and thunderbirds were just some of the dangers Elijah had heard all about from those that drifted into the bars back in Quebec and here in his new home of Belbridge. Looking up, Elijah now firmly believed every story he had been ever told.

It was then that the milling streets lit up with the shimmer of pulsing pillars of purple light. My God, was this heaven or hell itself breaking open before their eyes? Glancing to his right, the gambler saw old Father O’Malley tightly clutching his bible. His face was a tapestry of rapture. He saw tall unearthly figures begin to form in the purple pillars of light. Was this the end of days? Were these beings angels or demons come to carry the people off? Stunned, the gambler could only stare open mouthed as the middle aged minister’s tapestry unravelled into one of total cold abject fear. Following his gaze, Elijah finally saw what was crawling from those pillars of lights.

Demons.

They were huge; inhuman distorted heads atop taut muscled bodies immediately began looking eagerly around. Burning multiple black ovoid eyes quickly scanned the crowded streets of Belbridge almost in delight. These athletic four armed lithe torsos were mounted on impossibly bulbous arachnid bodies flanked by six segmented powerful legs like great thorough bred race horses. Thick black hair, spines like in nature covered every inch of their bodies.  They scuttled along on their multiple segmented legs that could skewer a man where he stood like a rapier. They held bolas and some type of gun with nets they aimed at the townspeople. With a whoosh of compressed air the nets flew from the weapons. They slammed into people taking them down in a swarm of red energy. Elijah knew these tarantula centaurs were the relentless slavering monsters that screamed in a slumbering child’s nightmares. Set across their awful faces, burning multiple ovoid red and black eyes coldly scanned the streets of Belbridge. Seeing the frightened citizens there was a definite ripple of intense excitement. A chorus of terrifying high pitched screeches ripped the air like a war chant.

The result was instantaneous. Raw terror exploded like an atom bomb among the townspeople. Three men and a woman close to Elijah turned to run. In a heartbeat they were felled by one of the nets. They crackled with hot red energy that dropped them into oblivion.

In their confusion the townspeople had unwittingly gathered in one place making them easier targets; the proverbial lambs to the slaughter. The air bore silent witness as it bled with the futile cries of the damned.

Squeezing his eyes shut to block out what he was witnessing, Elijah prayed but in his heart he knew God was not listening right now. Even Cork born Father O’Malley would admit God had closed his eyes on the town today. The world was going to end in a storm of dust and terror with no hope of divine intervention.

Elijah’s head snapped round at a sudden cry of fear.

Young willowy Jimmy Mellor was no more than fifteen years old, face full of freckles with a mop of mad red hair. He was training to be a barber with Mister North in the hopes of moving one day to one of the bigger cities. Crying out in fear, Jimmy was scrambling backwards along the ground. His eyes were locked in wide terror towards the rear.

For a moment Elijah thought he was being pursued by the demons until something else otherworldly caught his eye. A rat was swiftly scuttling across the street towards Jimmy. It wasn’t a rat he realised. It looked like a large wood lice. He had never seen one of them move so fast or grow to that size before. It was racing on a hundred grey white legs and intently heading straight for Jimmy. The poor kid couldn’t outrun it. It what seemed like a second the thing had scuttled up Jimmy’s torso and straight into his open mouth. It happened so fast that Elijah couldn’t process it for a second. Jimmy fell back choking. His skinny dirt covered frame began to convulse uncontrollably.

A sick deep gurgle accompanied the violated red headed teenager’s fitting. His poor head twitched so violently that Elijah thought his neck would snap.

Suddenly through the haze Jimmy rolled over on to his side directly in Elijah’s line of sight. Recoiling fearfully, Elijah realised Jimmy’s blue eyes were as dead as stone. He began to mourn the loss of one so young until the corpse’s head jerked suddenly.

To his horror, Elijah stared as the dead kid’s skull pulsed and stretched before splitting wide open. Trying to not retch, the gambler heard the skull bone crack. The hair and scalp peeled back like ripe fruit. Red blood poured out mixing with the dirt on the street. It matted Jimmy’s red hair thickly as the back of the lice thing protruded from the top of his head. Helpless to stop it, Elijah couldn’t help himself. He threw up there and then. Wiping his stained mouth on his sleeve, he stared in horror as the serrated back of the thing began to rise and fall as if it were breathing. Like a broken puppet on broken strings, Jimmy then pushed himself to an upright position.

A familiar voice caught Elijah’s attention. With a horrified gasp he saw Sally approach Jimmy. She had obviously seen him fall. They were friends so Sally was just being her usual caring self. Biting his fist hard so as not to cry out, Elijah watched her concern turn to terror as she stared at her friend. Blood was trickling down Jimmy’s youthful face into his unmoving eyes. Elijah began to shake as he saw Sally run screaming in terror away from the dead Jimmy. She was fleeing with absolutely no sense of direction, clashing with others running in all different directions. The storm of dust hindered everyone’s sight resulting in painful collisions and mayhem as the instinct to flee gripped them all. Those crackling nets were dropping people where they stood. Her heavy skirts caused Sally to trip. Elijah had bitten into his fist so hard, he had drawn blood. Cowering with fear he daren’t call out to her. Elijah couldn’t reach out in time anyway. No doubt the demons would surely take him too. The last thing the gambler saw was Jimmy grab Sally by the hair before getting lost in a mass of people, demons and dust. Telling himself that someone had to survive to tell what happened here gave Elijah little comfort as he could not deny his cowardice. He heard his inner voice spitting at him in disgust. Even as he thought it Elijah knew he would be put in a mad house. No one would believe him. It was so outrageous even he feared his own sanity would totally shatter under the stress. There was only enough room under the watering trough for him, only him. Maybe that was what God had intended all along. The demons would never see him so low down. They were so tall that this crawlspace would never even cross their minds to look in. He was so afraid Elijah could scarcely believe they were real. His ears were hurting from their high pitched cries. It sounded like the hungry chattering teeth of eager Armageddon itself.