Tom clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. Why did everything Mack say sound like a threat? Stupidly, he had trusted him.
Tom realised what a dangerous position he had got himself into. These people could do anything to him and no one would be any the wiser. Abby wouldn’t even report him missing for a couple of days, maybe even longer if she was really pissed at him. He imagined the police finding the Audi deserted and the speculation that would follow. They would wonder if he’d been carjacked or if he’d done the worst and killed himself. He hated to think of the anguish his disappearance would cause—how Abby would turn their last argument over and over in her head, trying to figure out if something she’d said had caused him to vanish, wishing she’d done things differently. Then, with his heart bound in chains, he thought of David and how he’d think his daddy didn’t love him enough to want to stay with him.
Tom’s eyes pricked with tears and he pressed his lips together. “I have to go back. I’m sorry, I can’t do this”
He turned; momentarily forgetting the skinhead. But Mack’s arm shot out and closed around his bicep. His grip was ferociously strong and Tom stared at him in surprise.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“What?” Tom tried to pull out of his grip. “Get off me.”
“You’ve got to do this,” Mack said, his eyes shone fierce in the torchlight. “We need you to. We all need you to.”
Tom yanked his arm again and this time Mack let go.
“Try and see the bigger picture,” Mack said, desperation creeping into his voice. “This isn’t just about you and your family.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Well that’s funny, because, right now, they’re all I care about.”
“If this thing gets out, your family won’t even recognise the world they are living in. Is that what you want to happen?”
Tom was baffled. “No, of course not. But what is going to happen?”
Mack shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. “That’s the problem. We don’t know exactly.”
Tom opened his mouth. “But—”
“But, do you really want to find out?” Mack interrupted.
“How the hell would I know? I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.”
“You’re saving us,” Mack said. “You’re saving us from Hell.”
Chapter 4
DAVID WORRIED ABOUT his mother.
She hadn’t been the same since his dad left only a few hours earlier. She kept smiling at him in that weird, tight way she did when she was trying to stop herself crying. Dark bags, like black and purple thunder clouds, clung beneath her eyes. Extra lines seemed to have suddenly sprung from the corners of her eyes and the sides of her mouth.
Worrying about him, about his illness, made his mother different, but now she also worried about his father. David felt a little mad at his dad for leaving her like this, but at the same time he understood his dad didn’t have much choice. He trusted his dad. He trusted his mum too, but in a different way. His dad was the one who got things done. When his mum asked him to do stuff—mow the lawn, redecorate the spare room, put away the laundry—his dad did it. This was the first time he could remember where his dad had done something his mother didn’t want him to. This was the reason David knew for sure his dad was doing the right thing. His dad wouldn’t upset his mum if it wasn’t important.
But his mother didn’t seem to see things that way. Only hours had passed since their terrible fight—the one they assumed he’d not heard—and now she sat on a chair beside his bed, biting the skin around her nails. She was supposed to be reading his Spiderman comic to him, but she kept losing her place. David caught her staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts, a distant, worried look in her eyes.
She snapped back to him again, smiling that tight, supposedly reassuring smile, and picked up where she’d left off.
“Dad will be back soon,” he said, interrupting her.
She gave him a bright, fake smile—like something painted onto one of his comic characters.
“Of course he will, sweetie,” she said, her voice matching her smile. “He’ll be back as soon as he can.” She patted the back of his hand. “Why don’t you try and get some rest.”
He smiled back at her, desperately wanting to make things better, but she turned away, her attention focused, once again, on the window.
David didn’t want to get some rest. He’d been feeling a bit better today. The horrible sickness from the chemo still came in slow, leisurely waves, but now the points between the peaks and troughs had distanced. At the moment he felt okay, so he knew he was in a trough. But, pretty soon, he’d have to ride out another breaker and he wanted to make the most of not wanting to throw up all the time.
But making the most of not wanting to puke wasn’t the only reason he didn’t want to get more rest. He’d been having bad dreams lately—real bad dreams—ones that woke him up with their ferocity. He’d wake and find himself tangled in the bed sheet and still fighting, certain he was still in the clutches of his nightmare. David didn’t know what the dreams meant; he only remembered being in the dark. Being in the dark and knowing he wasn’t alone. The dreams seemed to be getting clearer and he suspected it wouldn’t be long before they became more and more real. Soon, he thought, he may not be able to tell the difference between his dreams and reality.
David felt the same way about his life before the sickness got him. The four months he’d been ill seemed like a lifetime and, though he had memories of being out, of playing in the garden and riding his bike, they were distant and dream-like. He used to play football out on the street with his friends. They’d kick the ball against the garages until old Mr Jefferies came out and yelled at them. Then they’d run off, laughing at him behind his back. He remembered Saturdays when he and his friends would go to the swimming pool and his mother gave him fifty pence for sweets or crisps afterwards, knowing how swimming left him ravenous. He had treasured that fifty pence, the pleasure of knowing he had the silver coin almost more enjoyable than the swimming itself.
These things had happened to him, but now they seemed so far away, so different from what his life had become, they might be someone else’s memories or perhaps scenes from a movie he’d watched. One of those dorky kids’ movies his friend, Si, always laughed at. He struggled to believe a life existed where sickness didn’t plague him, where he had the strength to run and kick a ball, where he still saw his parents laughing and where he walked in on them kissing in the kitchen.
His parent’s affection for one another had embarrassed him at the time. They held hands across the table in restaurants and kissed each other hello and goodbye in front of his friends. He felt so stupid about that now; he would practically force their heads together if he thought it would build a bond between them again.
His mother stood up and pushed back the wooden chair she had been sitting on, its feet making an unpleasant ‘skeeerrch’ against the linoleum floor. She wandered over to the window and reached out, her fingers wrapping around the cord that operated the blinds. She pulled first one and then the other, adjusting the blind, pulling it up and then back down again.
Someone had painted a picture of a clown on the back of the blind. David thought it looked dumb; as if a picture of a clown could make this room any less scary. Anyway, the picture was fine when the blind was fully down, but as soon as you wanted to let any light in, you pulled the cord—as his mother was doing now—and separated the clown’s face into pieces. They would have been better, he decided, just to have painted it on the wall.
Sighing and rolling over, he turned his back on the split, grinning clown’s face, and his mother. His fingers snuck out and grasped the soft material of his blanket and pulled it towards his face, rubbing the soft material between his fingertips.
Dad will make everything better again, he told himself.
But as he plugged his mouth with his thumb, trying to stop the sob trying to erupt from his throat, a fat tear ploppe
d down the side of his face and soaked into the pillow, leaving a dark stain like a birthmark.
Chapter 5
TOM FELT AS though they’d been walking for a day or more, but they must have only been in the tunnels for a matter of hours. Being in the dark, so far underground, was disorienting. It was impossible to tell if it was the middle of the day or the middle of the night. The deeper beneath ground they got, the wider and taller the tunnels became. Now they stretched at least fifteen feet high and twenty feet wide. Every few minutes, the tunnel would grumble, the sound building to a muffled roar as underground trains in nearby tunnels, their carriages packed full of commuters, roared between stations.
Tom’s legs started to ache. He wasn’t used to doing too much exercise beyond kicking a ball around with David and, obviously, he hadn’t been doing much of that lately.
He picked his way carefully along the sides of the tracks. In some places, the rails were missing altogether, but then they would suddenly reappear and catch him out. Mack strode on ahead, making little effort to slow down and let him catch up. Tom swore and grumbled beneath his breath, cursing the man who had dragged him into this mess.
A metal bar caught against his foot and he stumbled and fell, his torch slipping from his grasp. The torch hit the track and instantly the light went out. Tom put his hand down to break his fall and his palm landed on something large, warm and hairy. The thing shrieked in response, a terrifying and blood-curdling sound, before scurrying away into the shadows.
Frantic, his heart pounding, Tom grabbed for the torch and hit the bulb end against his hand, jarring the light back on. He swung the beam in the direction he thought the thing had run. The light caught what he first mistook for a length of rope—a thick, twisted cord—but as he followed up its length, he found the rope ended in a sleek, furry body.
The rat was bigger than any Tom had ever seen—bigger than he’d ever imagined before. Easily the size of a small cat, its eyes glinted yellow in the torchlight. As Tom stared, mouth agape, the rat flashed sharp teeth at him and hissed like a snake.
Not wanting to see any more, Tom jolted the torch away and the scraping of the creature’s claws scurried off down the tunnel.
Mack’s hand on his shoulder made him jump.
“Jesus Christ!” Tom said. “What the hell was that?”
He could still feel the sleek body beneath his palm, its sturdy yet agile body slipping beneath his fingers.
Mack grinned. “Track rabbits.”
“What?” he said, momentarily bewildered and doubting his own eyes. “There are rabbits down here?”
Mack laughed, a sound out of place in the cold black. “Track rabbits are what we call the rats down here. They get so big they’re practically a different species.”
Tom shuddered and wiped the palm of his hand on his trousers. He wished he had some of the disinfectant gel Abby always carried around, or even a couple of wet wipes. He experienced a sudden pang of longing for his wife; wishing he had her support and they were a team again.
“I can’t believe they get so big,” he said, unable to hide the awe in his voice.
“Yeah, well, life’s different down here. Above ground things have limiting factors—competition for space or food. Those things don’t apply down here.”
“But there must still be competition for food?”
Mack shrugged and started walking down the tunnel. “Depends on what you eat,” he called over his shoulder. “Those rats will eat anything. There’s plenty of tales of men falling asleep, drunk or high on one thing or another, and waking up to find two or three, or even more, of those rats chewing at their fingers.”
“Oh, my God!” Tom’s stomach did an uncomfortable lurch. “Those things eat people?”
“Meat is meat to them. One guy died down the tunnels and by the time they found him, he was nothing more than hair and bones. The little sods had even chewed on his bones. You could see the teeth marks.”
Tom hurried to keep up. “I can’t believe it,” he said, already out of breath. He couldn’t believe Mack was older than him. The man was putting him to shame.
“People eat them too, if they can catch them,” Mack continued. “But they’re pretty smart; if they see you coming, you won’t stand a chance.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Maybe to you, but some people in Asia think cockroaches are a delicacy.”
“Even so, I’d never eat a rat.”
Mack shrugged. “I guess that depends on how hungry you get.”
“I knew I should have packed more sandwiches,” Tom muttered.
Moments later, the tunnel the two men had been walking through for the past two hours opened up into a huge room. It was still curved like the tunnel, but bigger than the tunnel they had just been in. The space was longer than it was wide, easily stretching two hundred feet ahead of them.
Tom’s mouth dropped open and he swung his torch, illuminating old, cracked and blackened tiled walls. Cobwebs hung, thick and heavy with dust, and unused spotlights caught the light, reflecting it back at him. Stuck up on the wall was a piece of old, yellowed paper, its corners curled with age. Tom read the words, ‘To First Aid Post’, and realised he stood in an old, abandoned tube station.
Mack noticed the direction of his gaze. “The stations were used as bomb raid shelters during the second world war,” he explained.
“Where’s the platform?” Tom asked, looking around.
“Pretty much all of the disused, deep-level stations have had their platforms removed. I don’t know why.” He started walking deeper into the station and Tom followed, his eyes wide.
A passenger exit had been bricked off—a rough and apparently hurried job, as though someone had been trying to keep something out... or in. The bricked-up doorway hung ominously about six feet above the ground, suspended in mid-air. The missing platform made it look out of place.
“I never knew these places existed before,” Tom said, his voice hushed with awe. “It’s kind of creepy, like a ghost town. Why are the exits bricked up?”
“After the war ended, the stations weren’t needed anymore so they bricked them up to stop people coming down here. Not that it worked of course. People still found their way back in.”
Located halfway down the station was another smaller, open exit.
“Why didn’t they brick that one up?”
Mack shrugged. “Doesn’t go to the surface. It just leads to another old station that’s also bricked up.”
“Can we go and look?” Tom said, excited. He had forgotten the threat of giant rats and skinheads. This reminded him of being child again, the excitement of exploring an old, forgotten ruin buzzing through him. He strode towards the open exit, hooked his hands over the side and started to pull himself up.
“You can if you want,” Mack called after him, “but you might find you’re disturbing someone’s home.”
Tom let go of the ledge in alarm and stepped away. He had no intention of disturbing anyone.
“Someone is living down there?”
“Probably not,” Mack admitted. “The guys from the department of transport still come down this far to move people on, but one of the newbie’s might have bedded down.”
Tom shined the torch at the hole and once again wondered how people could stand to live underground.
“How did you end up down here, Mack?” he asked suddenly. “You might be a bit strange sometimes, but you seem to have your head screwed on. You don’t seem like a nutcase or a druggie. You’re not on drugs are you?” he added hastily.
“Not at the moment,” Mack joked. He grew serious. “I’ve had some dark times though, with drugs and stuff. I was lucky; even though I messed about with them real bad, didn’t know who or where I was most of the time, I always came out the other side.” He sighed and scuffed his foot along the ground, dislodging some of the debris. “I think some people are wired differently than others. I’ve seen a lot of good people in a real mess. There’s a lot of me
ntal illness down here; the drink and drugs go hand in hand with a restless mind.”
He looked up and fixed Tom with a piercing blue stare. “We’re just people,” he said, finally. “People who have fallen on hard times.”
Tom remembered his thoughts of deformed, weird people living in the dark and a wave of guilt washed over him. He thought of all the times he’d practically stepped over homeless people living in central London and realised he’d never given a thought to who these people actually were, where they had come from, or if they had loved ones looking for them.
“But what happened to you,” Tom pressed, his curiosity getting the better of him. “You seem like an intelligent guy.” He held up his hands, gesturing to their surroundings. “Surely you could have done better than this?”
Mack’s eyes flicked away, finding something more interesting on the floor. “It’s not a special story. I grew up in Glasgow, but my dad died when I was twelve. After that, Ma had a number of different guys coming back and forth from the house, but when I was about seventeen she met this real arsehole. In the end, I made her choose—him or me—and she chose him. So, I stole his car and came down to London and ended up living in the car. Then one weekend I went to a party and by the time I got back the car had been towed. I don’t know if the car was reported stolen, but I didn’t intend on finding out.” Mack still wouldn’t meet his eye. “So here I am,” he finished with a shrug.
“Didn’t you have any friends to take you in?” Tom thought of David and how he would feel if David up and left and ended up on the streets. He would search the ends of the world until he found him. No matter how old David was or what sort of trouble he got in, Tom would never leave his son on the streets.
But Mack’s father had died.
Tom looked around the cold, dark place, totally devoid of any natural light. He thought of the people who sought shelter here during the war, huddled together, terrified, praying this would be the one place that would keep them safe.
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