The Future of London Box Set

by Mark Gillespie

  “Jesus,” Walker said.

  “I don’t know if they meant to kill her or not,” Carol said. “But when I woke up, everybody was dead. I was the only one left alive – they must have thought I was already dead. I don’t think they were doing me any favours. But I was alive anyway. Does that make me lucky? I didn’t feel lucky. My family and friends were dead, and I was stuck in this shithole.”

  Walker felt a chill go through him. “Sorry,” he said. “You must have told that story more than a few times. Didn’t mean to put you through it again.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But to tell you the truth, it’s starting to feel like someone else’s story. Like it happened to someone else I knew once. Know what I mean?”

  Walker understood. He sure as hell wasn’t the same person anymore and if he’d been asked to recount the story of the teenage boy, Mack Walker, and what he did on the first day of September 2011, then maybe it would have felt like he was talking about someone else too. Maybe that’s how people coped with it.

  “So how did you end up at Station?” Walker asked.

  Carol shrugged. She was walking faster now, trying to keep up with Barboza who’d edged a little ahead of them.

  Walker hurried along with her, trying to keep his place in between of the two women.

  “They found me a few days later,” she said. “Michael King, Fat Joseph and some of the others who were the first Bedlamites. I was still on that same stretch of road, lying amongst all those corpses. I guess I was waiting to die. I was delirious, dehydrated and beaten up. They picked me up took me to Station – it wasn’t called Station then – and slowly brought me back to life. We went back later and buried the bodies. But after that, it took a long time to heal, mentally more than physically. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been easy to deal with sometimes. Nightmares, things like that. The tiniest little thing can set me off. But then a couple of years back, something happened that brought a bit of light back into my existence. A little boy came to us off the streets. And you know what? He needed a mother.”

  She was smiling. But then a dark cloud passed across her features, as if their grim purpose was recalled.

  “We’ll get him back,” Walker said.

  “We’d better,” she said. “I’m not going back until we do.”

  During this conversation, Carol had taken them on the quickest route from Liverpool Street to Old Street. After a short walk north on Bishopsgate, they’d travelled west onto Pindar Street. They’d continued in that direction, walking past Finsbury Square Garden, and eventually coming onto City Road, which would lead them north towards Old Street.

  Walker was beginning to tire of the scenery – the gruesome leftovers of a lifetime ago. There was an old Travelodge without a front door. They walked past an off-licence and an electrical store, standing side by side. Both shops looked like a bomb had tore through them many years ago. Rubble spilled out of the building and onto the street. Outside the off-licence, the burned out skeleton of a car was parked halfway up the pavement.

  They passed Bunhill Fields burial ground. Walker glanced to his left, peering over the steel fence that ran along the perimeter of the ancient graveyard. He saw the ancient headstones, peeking back at him over a sea of wildly overgrown grass. It was a city of the dead, much like the rest of London.

  At last, they came to Old Street.

  At first Walker, couldn’t see the underground station that they were looking for. The only thing he could see was a massive roundabout, an urban island that was surrounded by road and concrete buildings as far as the eye could see.

  “Where is it?” he asked Carol. “Where’s the station?”

  “There’s no street level building to Old Street,” she said. “You access it down the ramp or stairs.” She pointed to the other side of the roundabout. “Over there.”

  Carol didn’t hang about. She took off towards the station in a hurry and Walker and Barboza followed close behind. They crossed over the roundabout, hopping over a small concrete island that was located in the middle. A few moments later, they were standing at the top of a set of stairs that led down into Old Street Station.

  “Ready?” Carol said, looking at them both.

  Barboza nodded. “Yeah,” she said.

  “C’mon,” Walker said. He looked up towards the sky and felt his heart sinking. It was now a mixture of dark blue and grey up there. Whatever little light was left, it wasn’t going to last much longer.

  They walked down the stairs. Despite the eeriness of what they were walking into, Walker felt a sense of relief at getting off the streets. At the very least, he felt a little less exposed to the millions of eyes that inhabited the city. But despite this, it was going to be hard to see anything in Old Street Station. It was almost pitch black in there.

  Charlie was alone in there?

  But the darkness didn’t seem to bother Barboza and Carol. They were already rushing ahead of Walker, moving into the station. He wasn’t certain, but he got the sense they were trying to outdo one another – that whoever found Charlie first would be the winner of their ongoing feud.

  They hurried past an old ticket sales window on their left. Walker was a few feet behind them, stepping tentatively onto the narrow concourse, which was much smaller and narrower than the one at Liverpool Street Station. That narrowness only made it feel more dangerous and claustrophobic, walking around the station in the dark. What else came creeping around in here after the sun went down? To his surprise, Walker found himself thinking back to a scene in An American Werewolf in London, where the American werewolf was chasing some English guy in a suit around the London underground.

  Of course, the lights had been on in the movie.

  But despite the lack of light, they hurried through the station as fast as they could, checking every nook and cranny. Their footsteps in the darkness made them sound like giants. The noise reverberated off the walls and ceilings and it felt like there was no way they could sneak through this place unheard, unnoticed.

  Walker searched through a few empty shops and abandoned units that ran alongside the concourse. He heard the others calling out from nearby.

  “Charlie!” Carol yelled. “Where are you?”

  “Charlie!” It was Barboza. “Are you here? Please talk to us.”

  Walker found nothing of interest in the old retail units. He tried the bathrooms too but all he found in there was the rancid smell of ancient piss and shit. It was enough to send him running back outside, vowing never to set foot in there again.

  After that, Walker hurried down the escalator that led towards the platforms. The platforms themselves were terrifying – everything was black and it was like something out of the climactic scene in a horror film. It had been creepy enough standing in the London underground when the lights were on. But in the dark, it was terrifying. It was like being dropped into a massive underground tunnel. Anyone or anything could have been in there with him.

  A sudden noise made Walker jump.

  He looked left and right. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the shape of someone or something hurrying along the platform. Whoever it was, they were running away from Walker, heading towards the tunnel on the far side of the tracks.

  “Charlie!” Walker yelled. “Is that you? It’s Walker, and Carol’s here too. We’ve come to take you home.”

  No answer.

  “Fuck.”

  Heavy breathing. High-pitched and frantic. It was almost certainly a child down there and whoever it was, they were getting away.

  Walker ran along the narrow platform, spitting out his breath in short, sharp bursts. There was no time to worry about frightening Charlie – he had to grab the little shit and they had to get out of this godforsaken place. Where did the boy think he was going anyway? Into the tunnel? That’s exactly what it looked like he was doing. Up ahead, Walker saw the dark outline of Charlie stopping dead at the platform’s end, as if bracing himself to jump onto the train tracks.

&n
bsp; And then? Into the tunnel. Where anything could be waiting.

  “Charlie! Stop!” he yelled. “Please. Don’t jump onto the tracks.”

  “Charlie!”

  It was Barboza’s voice. She was behind them on the platform, running towards the tunnel.

  “Charlie!” Carol yelled from further back. “Is that you? Are you down here?”

  “He’s here,” Walker yelled back. “He’s trying to run.”

  The boy hesitated at the edge of the platform for too long – it was just long enough for Walker to catch up with him and grab a hold of him. As Walker reached an arm around the boy, he dragged him back onto the platform.

  “No!” Charlie screamed. “Let me go!”

  “Shut up kid,” Walker said, breathing heavily. “You really want to jump off the edge? You want to go into that dark tunnel by yourself?”

  Carol and Barboza caught up with them at the edge of the platform. Carol rushed over and grabbed Charlie by the arm, pulling him out of Walker’s grip. She knelt down and lifted the boy into a tight embrace, nearly squeezing him to death. The boy’s legs dangled helplessly, a few inches off the ground. Then she put him down again.

  Tears were streaming down Carol’s face. But Charlie looked gutted, like he was horrified to see them.

  “Why did you run off like that Charlie?” she said. “How could you do that to me?”

  Charlie wriggled free of her vice-like grip. Carol stood up and took an uneasy step backwards, trying to disguise the expression of deep hurt in her eyes with a smile. But Walker saw it, even in the darkness.

  “Leave me alone,” Charlie said. “What if she’s here somewhere and you scared her off with all that noise? What if she’s waiting in the tunnels? What if she came looking for me and got hurt? I’m not going back without her.”

  Barboza stepped forward. She did so gently, so as not to spook the boy. Then she knelt down in front of him and smiled sadly.

  “Charlie,” she said. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I should never have said anything about your mum today. I just wanted to make you feel better – that’s all. But you must know yourself that she’s not coming back. Not today, not ever.”

  Charlie was blinking hard, like she’d just shone a beam of torchlight into his eyes. “But you said she was alive,” he said.

  The hurt in his voice was palpable.

  “I’m sorry Charlie,” Barboza said. “We don’t lie to the children, I know that now.”

  “We’ve got to go,” Walker said, looking around the black void that surrounded them. “If we wait any longer, there’ll be something worse than this waiting for us outside.”

  Carol pulled Charlie towards her. Then she lifted him up and this time he didn’t resist. Instead he buried his head in her chest and Walker heard the boy sobbing quietly.

  “Can you manage okay?” Walker asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s just get the bloody hell out of here. I want to go home.”

  Walker led the way back through Old Street Station. He moved as quickly and quietly as possible, keeping the axe in front of him. Keeping it ready.

  Fortunately they made it back to the entrance without any interruption. Walker breathed a sigh of relief as the warm evening air touched his face. It felt like a caress from the gods, a pat on the back for finding the boy. Now all they had to do was get back to Station.

  Ten minutes. That was all it would take to get them home.

  Walker reached the foot of the stairs that led back up to the Old Street. Just as he was about to climb the first step, he stopped dead.

  There was a noise.

  It took Walker a moment to figure out what he was listening to. But when he did, he was certain of it – it was a drum. It was a single drum beating in a steady, monotonous and powerful rhythm – one-two-three-four. It was a primordial sound, out of place in that gritty, urban environment. The drumbeat made Walker think of sailors arriving on uncharted islands in the South Pacific, hundreds of years ago. He imagined those old merchant vessels, like HMS Bounty, approaching the unknown, black and shadowy land on the horizon. Listening to the drums in the distance.

  Walker looked up the concrete stairs towards the sky. The last of the sunlight had disappeared while they’d been in the station – a cruel joke on the part of Mother Nature.

  Walker turned back to the others who were still standing at the entrance. Three horrified faces were looking back at him.

  “Please no,” Carol whispered.

  Before anyone else could speak, something growled in the distance. Walker thought he felt tremors underneath his feet, something rumbling, like the earth was having a seizure and was about to give way.

  It was the sound of an engine – lots of engines. Walker thought he heard cars and trucks up there. They were roaring and bearing down upon the Old Street roundabout at a tremendous speed.

  One-two-three-four.

  Then the drums stopped.

  There was an explosion of noise. This time, it was a noise that drowned out everything else – the car engines, the rumbling of the earth, and even the screaming, irrational voice in Walker’s mind that told him he needed to get out of there.

  It was music. It sounded like an entire nightclub was on the move, with speakers as big as skyscrapers. The pulsing bass was powerful enough to make Walker’s senses scramble.

  Walker knew the song they were playing. He knew it well.

  It was called ‘Ghost Town’.

  Chapter 12

  CBC 1: The Weekly Debate (with Joe Antony)

  July 12th 2020.

  The CBC stage lights up, accompanied by lukewarm applause from the studio audience.

  Three men are sitting around a circular shaped wooden table on the stage, facing the cameras and the audience.

  The man in the middle is Joe Antony, presenter of The Weekly Debate. Forty-five year old Antony is a former political journalist, well known for tackling the most controversial topics on his weekly TV show.

  Sitting on the presenter’s right is Billy March, lead guitarist from popular seventies rock band, Flaccid Cactus. Billy is dressed in a Black Sabbath t-shirt and tight black jeans that smother his long, spindly legs. His shoulder-length, grey hair falls well past his shoulders.

  On Joe’s left is Cedric De Vere, the twenty-first Earl of Oxford. De Vere is fifty-five, with sharp, angular features, thin lips and a nose that curves outwards forming something of a hook shape. He’s immaculately dressed – wearing a navy suit over a salmon pink shirt and tight blue jeans.

  JOE ANTONY: Good evening and welcome to The Weekly Debate. Now in a change to tonight’s scheduled topic, we’re going to be looking at events in London. Not today’s tragedy at the M25, but what’s happening tonight. As you’ll all know by now, the Ghosts of London are back and this time, they’re travelling north of the river. Of course we all remember the horrible images we saw in March when the last Big Chase took place. Utterly shocking, I think you’ll all agree. Well it’s happening again and as you no doubt know by now, SKAM are broadcasting the Big Chase on their Future of London channel. It’s certainly a controversial decision by Rudyard Campbell and his team, and joining me tonight to discuss this, we have Billy March of the great Flaccid Cactus, and the Earl of Oxford, Cedric De Vere. Thank you gentlemen for joining me tonight.

  BILLY MARCH: No problem Joe.

  CEDRIC DE VERE: Pleasure.

  JOE ANTONY: Now Billy, let’s start with you. You consider yourself an evolved man – not only are you an accomplished musician in one of the great rock ‘n’ roll bands, but you’re actively pursuing a PhD in astrophysics at Cambridge University. As a man of both science and the arts, you see no place for this sort of thing in modern society. Am I right?

  BILLY MARCH: (Nodding) Yes Joe. There’s no excuse for continuing this cruel exploitation of the people of London. It’s obscene to let them go on suffering like this. And what’s even more obscene is the decision to broadcast something like the Big Chase – the absolute wo
rst of what’s happening in there. And then Campbell has the cheek to call it a learning process for the rest of us, like it has some sort of educational value instead of just being the crass entertainment that it is.

  JOE ANTONY: Cedric, do you disagree?

  CEDRIC DE VERE: I disagree entirely. The whole RELEASE campaign is an overemotional farce, incapable of objective and rational thought. And in regards to what’s going on tonight with the Ghosts, well here’s what I think. As human beings we have an in inherent fascination with the hunt. I’m sorry but we do. The idea of one creature pitting its wits against the other is thrilling. You may not want to admit it Billy, but it’s true. We as a species are fascinated with the superiority of the strong – why is man destined to outwit the fox? And now in London, we have the twenty-first century equivalent of the old hunting sports – men hunting men. What will happen? Who will survive? These are questions that teach us a lot about ourselves.

  BILLY MARCH: That’s a complete load of bollocks. I’m sorry Joe but it’s fucking bollocks mate.

  JOE ANTONY: (Smiling to the camera) Please excuse the colourful language. Of course, this is a very passionate subject.

  BILLY MARCH: The Big Chase is a blood sport of the most heinous kind. We should not be broadcasting this torture porn and pretending that there’s some educational benefit to be gained. It’s an absolute scam – a front for people like Cedric and Rudyard Campbell who simply enjoy watching people suffer from the comfort of their living rooms. It’s time we broke down those bloody walls and showed a little compassion to the people that we’ve kept prisoner behind the M25 for nine long years. There are children in there for God’s sake!