The London Pride

by Charlie Fletcher

  Jo thought if her heart sank any further it would need its own diving bell: there was no station platform visible beyond the scaffolding tower that they could possibly reach before the rat-tide at their heels engulfed them. And then she saw that the scaffolding extended further than the arched roof of the tube tunnel.

  It was an air shaft. And air shafts went upwards.

  Just as she saw that, a rat jumped and clawed onto the back of her shoe. She dug in and ran faster, fired by the anticipated nip of a rat bite on her Achilles tendon, but the bite never came as the rat was jarred off by the pounding of her feet.

  She saw the ladder on the side of the scaffolding and leapt for it. Ariel was right behind her. They clawed upwards as fast as they could, panting and gasping with the effort, and then they allowed themselves to look down.

  The wave of blazing blue-eyed rats surged past the foot of the scaffolding, propelled by an unstoppable forward momentum. The frozen workmen stood unmoving like rocks in a stream as the tide parted on either side of them. At the foot of the ladder there was a bobbling disturbance in the rat river, a kind of rodent eddy as the ones who had been at the forefront of the wave attempted to stop, maintain their footing against the unstoppable tide and get up the ladder after Jo and Ariel. The mass of rats behind them had not seen where their prey had gone, and only this hard core of front runners were attempting to follow them upwards. Luckily the ladder was metal and so gave them poor grip, and the pressure of the rat torrent pounding past them dragged them away.

  Ariel and Jo exchanged a grin.

  ‘Close …’ was all Jo managed to say before going back to the serious business of sucking oxygen into her starved lungs.

  After at least a minute of recovery, Ariel nodded. ‘Too close,’ she managed.

  Jo could feel a breeze. It was cool and welcome, and coming from above, and when she looked she saw strips of daylight, where the air shaft ended above ground in a series of louvred grilles. She jerked upwards with her thumb.

  ‘Out,’ she said.

  ‘You bet,’ said Ariel, and they swarmed up the ladder, heading for the light.

  Hope gave them second wind, and they got to the top quickly. The air shaft emerged into a rectangular tower with metal louvres that overlooked a rain-drenched section of the Euston Road. It was jammed with unmoving traffic and frozen people, and in the grey light of dawn it was colourless and lifeless and utterly without any redeeming beauty.

  Jo stared at it through the metal strips and thought she had never seen anything so wonderful in her whole life.

  ‘There’s a door,’ said Ariel behind her.

  ‘Good,’ she said, enjoying the sharp wetness of the breeze on her face.

  ‘No,’ said Ariel. ‘It’s locked.’

  It was. Definitely, immovably and extraordinarily frustratingly locked solid. And it was metal. And unbreakable.

  ‘Seriously?’ Jo asked the universe. The universe didn’t reply. Nor did it open the door.

  ‘Jo,’ said Ariel. She pointed down.

  Jo followed the direction of her finger.

  The tide of rats had stopped. Unfortunately it had not gone. It had just stopped moving. And in place of the flow there were hundreds of tiny blue eyes blinking back up at them. It was like looking down on a crowded starscape, and in any other circumstances might even have been a bit pretty. Jo didn’t see it like that. She felt the weight of the rat that had attached itself briefly to her leg, and then multiplied it by the number of pairs of eyes staring at her, and that imagined weight terrified her so much it made her want to be sick. Just thinking about falling into that horde made her whole skin itch on the inside, from the nape of her neck to the bottoms of her feet.

  ‘There are keys down there,’ she said, wishing she hadn’t noticed them. ‘The man pointing at the plan had a big ring of them in his hand.’

  Ariel tested her weight on a length of safety harness that had been clipped to the top of the scaffolding, and used it to lean far back out over the central void of the shaft. She squinted down.

  ‘I can see it,’ she said. ‘Lots of keys.’

  ‘Maybe …’ began Jo.

  ‘I know,’ said Ariel. ‘But we’d have to go back down there. With them.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll get bored and go away,’ said Jo hopefully.

  ‘Rats don’t get bored,’ said Ariel. ‘I watch them. They’re very tenacious. And resourceful. In fact, they’re good at everything, except giving up.’

  The sea of waiting eyes looked back up at them, as if to confirm this.

  It was a dilemma. The keys were there. The door meant freedom. But getting the keys meant going down among the bewitched rat army. And – as Jo’s dad would say – there was no way that would end up with everyone going home for tea and medals.

  Jo thought about it. One of them would have to go. Then she thought some more.

  ‘Ariel,’ she said. ‘Let go of that safety strap.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ariel. ‘I’ll fall.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Jo. ‘You’re above ground now, aren’t you?’

  Ariel’s smile was like a slow sunrise.

  She opened her hands and did not fall. Instead she drifted back into the centre of the shaft. She giggled and twirled a bit.

  ‘I am,’ she laughed. ‘I am myself again! A spirit of air and grace and beauty.’

  ‘Yeah, well, hold on for a minute and stay focused,’ said Jo. ‘Because we’re going to have to work out how low you can go before the flying gets to be a problem again.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ariel.

  ‘Because I have a plan. And it really needs you not to drop me,’ said Jo. ‘Do you think you can stay focused?’

  Ariel’s laughter pealed round the air shaft.

  ‘I can do anything!’ she said, suddenly her old theatrical self again. ‘I am Ariel!

  ‘I come

  To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,

  To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

  on the curl’d clouds—’

  ‘Yeah,’ interrupted Jo. ‘Calm down. We don’t need any fire-diving or cloud-riding. I really just need you not to let go of the strap.’

  Ariel got serious again as she lowered herself down the shaft to the point where her ability to fly stopped. Jo then joined her with the safety strap and lowered it to make sure it reached from that point to the supervisor. As the strap got close to the bottom, the rats took an interest and the bolder among them hurled themselves up at it. One even got a claw-hold for an instant before Jo cracked the strap like a whip and sent it tumbling back down into the chittering mass below.

  ‘OK,’ said Jo. ‘When I shout “Up”, get me out of there fast, because I don’t want to be taking on any passengers.’

  The thought of hanging on the end of the strap festooned with angry rats really increased the itchiness under her skin.

  Ariel watched her attach the safety harness and the strap, and then wound the outer end of the strap tightly round her wrists and nodded at Jo.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘Trust me,’ grimaced Jo. ‘If I could fly I wouldn’t be the one on this end of the string.’

  Ariel let her climb down the ladder until the strap was taut, and then she flew out into the centre of the shaft.

  ‘Hold on!’ shouted Jo as she let go and found herself swinging like a wild pendulum.

  ‘Get yourself steady,’ Ariel yelled back.

  All Jo could see was streaks of hungry blue eyes whipping back and forth beneath her. She managed to slow her swings by grabbing onto the passing scaffolding and braking herself, and then she nodded.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Lower me.’

  Ariel carefully manoeuvred her closer and closer to the supervisor and his pointing hand. Jo put out her own hand and balanced herself against his hard hat, but she was still swinging with enough momentum to knock it off instead. She tried again and grabbed hold of his hair instead.

  ‘
Sorry,’ she said.

  The tumbling hat alerted the rats to her target. And as Ariel had said, rats are tenacious and resourceful and not a bit stupid. They catch on fast.

  By the time Jo had got her hands on the key ring and was beginning to twist it out of his hand, they had not only caught on but had started to use the supervisor’s body as a ladder to get to Jo.

  By the time she had managed to twist the key ring free, they had reached his waist.

  By the time she shouted ‘UP’, the lead rat had swarmed onto his shoulder.

  And by the time Jo felt the strap begin to pull her skywards it was too late. The rat had launched itself high into the air, straight at her face.

  Jo’s world seemed to go into slow motion at the incoming horror of it all.

  She saw the rat’s open mouth, the long yellow teeth and the pink gaping maw beyond.

  She wrenched her head back on reflex.

  The rat’s eyes came into view, angry blue and blazing.

  Its claws reached for her face.

  Impact was unavoidable. But not, she realised in a strange timeless flash of a microsecond, uncontrollable.

  She snapped her neck forwards and nutted the rat, dead centre on her forehead.

  The perfect headbutt.

  It didn’t hurt her a bit, but the rat dropped like a stone as Ariel pulled her swiftly in the other direction.

  It was like being yanked home by a skyhook, and nothing had felt so good for days.

  ‘Good job,’ said Ariel as she watched Jo try the keys until she found the right one, and the door opened on the morning light beyond.

  ‘Just a matter of trying them until I found the right one,’ said Jo, breathing in the clean air and stepping out into the light.

  ‘Not that. Nutting the rat,’ said Ariel. ‘At least, I think it’s called nutting. I’m sure I’ve heard Little Tragedy use the word. Anyway, no one could possibly have done it better. Or more gracefully. Not even me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jo. ‘From you that’s real praise.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ariel. Airily. Then she grinned. ‘Shall we go to Coram’s Fields?’ She held out a hand.

  ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ said Jo, allowing Ariel to wrap a golden arm round her and lift her into the air. And as they lofted up and over the rooftops of the city she allowed herself the luxury of believing that not only would Will be there waiting, but that they might get the third scarab and revive their mother, and then – for the first time – have a new card to put down in the strange game that the Mighty Bast was playing with the city.

  24

  Last chance

  Will and Jo’s mum was going to be exactly where they’d had to leave her, at Coram’s Fields, just across the railings from the giant bobbly-trunked trees that overhung the street, frozen in place like all the other people in the city. She would be there, and the third scarab bead would be with her, tucked into her wallet where Will had left it before they had realised the scarabs were a protection against Bast’s magic. He looked down at the one on his wrist as they jogged through the street in the pale light of the early morning, Tragedy on one side, Filax behind him, the two cheetahs scouting ahead and, perhaps best of all, the reassuring mass of the huge gorilla rumbling along on his other side.

  He knew they were getting close. They were running through one of those split-personality London streets, with an older cream-coloured terrace of Georgian buildings running up one side, facing a long bastion of modernist flats that were stepped back from the street in ascending tiers, like a ziggurat. The neon sign for a cinema still glowed halfway along the concrete structure, and he recognised it as the Brunswick Centre. It was not far from here to Coram’s Fields. He picked up the pace.

  There was a gaggle of about eight house cats standing on a corner ahead of them, but one hiss from the cheetahs sent them streaking away in all directions, leaping under cars and over walls. It was like being in a running motorcade with the cheetahs as outriders clearing their path. He momentarily wondered what would happen if the cheetahs came face to face with the bigger cats of the London Pride, but then they turned the corner, and there they were.

  Coram’s Fields. He saw the trees and the railings and the blue glowing frozen people. He recognised their car in its parking space with a jolt of happy recognition, and then he looked across the street to where they had left their mother and saw the space where she should have been. He stumbled and looked wildly around.

  She was gone.

  He stopped and rested his hands on his knees and suddenly felt the ache of all the running in his legs and lungs. And under that he felt a much worse pain in his heart, because there was an answering void in there that matched the empty space on the street.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said Tragedy. ‘Your mum. She’s done a bunk!’ He sounded shocked. ‘How did that happen then?’

  Will stumbled across to the place in the street where by every law of fairness and decency his mother should have been. It wasn’t quite a void. There was something there.

  There was a funny-shaped slab of plywood, with a stick running up the back, and beside it was a shoe.

  He knew the shoe.

  He knew the foot that normally filled it.

  It was his mother’s.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tragedy.

  ‘She wouldn’t have done a bunk without one of her shoes,’ said Will, his voice thick and hesitant, as if saying the obvious conjured the truth of it into being. ‘Something took her.’

  Tragedy picked up the plywood. It spun in his hands.

  ‘Who took her, I wonder?’ he said.

  Will looked at the front of the plywood. It was shield-shaped. He read the neon writing.

  ‘GOLF SALE LAST CHANCE!!!’

  ‘No idea,’ he said.

  ‘A dragon,’ said Jo.

  Will’s head snapped up and for a moment everything was all right, because there was his sister, gently and silently dropping out of the sky, carried by Ariel, who was, he was delighted to see, whole again.

  ‘Where—’ he began, and then she landed and they were hugging and words weren’t necessary, or even possible because the hug was a really fierce and tight one. Then he felt her go stiff and push him back. He looked into her face. It was grim and looking at the shield and the void that had contained, that should have contained, their mother.

  ‘How d’you know it was a dragon?’ he said.

  ‘Because I saw one using that stupid sign like a shield.’ She looked at the dragon’s shield looped over his shoulder. ‘It didn’t have one of its own.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, unlooping the shield and looking at it. ‘ That dragon …’

  And before he could finish the sentence, ‘that’ dragon turned into ‘the’ dragon, the one that had been hiding in the trees waiting for them, the one that was perhaps too provoked by the sight of the boy hefting his own shield as if it belonged to him to stay still.

  The dragon attacked. He burst out of the leaf canopy and swooped at Will and Jo.

  If Will had not just taken the shield off his shoulder they would have been toast – literally. The dragon shrieked a twisting rope of blazing wildfire at them, but Will got it up just in time. Flame splashed and lapped round the shield, as if the flickering fingers of fire had a mind of their own and were trying to get a grip on it and wrench it from his grasp.

  There was a brief relaxation of pressure as the dragon took a breath, and then he charged forwards, stubby arms and scimitar-like talons reaching for his prize as he ran in down the jet of fire.

  ‘Will!’ cried Jo as a tendril of flame caught the bottom of her jeans and lit them.

  He reached down with his free hand and smacked the flame out, burning his hand.

  Her face looked at his, nose to nose behind the shield wall.

  ‘I can’t—’ she began.

  The cheetahs blurred past her and bowled the dragon’s legs out from under him by their sheer velocity. He face-planted and the fire-stream choked off with
a heavy and undignified clunk.

  He wrenched himself to his feet and took a huge, whooping inhale of breath. This was going to be the fireblast to end it all.

  Guy the Gorilla leapt clean over Will, Jo and the shield, and landed with a ground-shaking thump like a two-ton anvil dropping out of the sky, right in front of the shocked dragon as he opened his mouth to spit fire …

  The gorilla reached up with one massive hand and clamped the dragon’s mouth tight shut.

  The dragon scrabbled at the immovable primate with his short front talons while Guy held him at safely at arm’s length. Way out of the dragon’s reach.

  Will and Jo peered out from behind the shield and saw the fire-crop in the dragon’s chest beginning to glow redder and redder and then to pale as it reached white heat.

  The dragon clearly had no safety valve. His expression became wildly distressed as he tried to escape the muzzle the gorilla had effectively clamped over his jaws.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Tragedy, coming to stand next to them. He was grinning.

  The dragon thrashed frantically.

  Guy was immovable.

  The dragon’s blazing blue eyes pulsed and then he crossed.

  And then he went, ‘Ulp.’

  And then he went very, very still. His eyes now looked panicked and more than a little sickly.

  ‘What?’ said Jo, looking at Tragedy, who was now sniggering with glee. He nudged Ariel, who was also smiling.

  ‘What?’ said Will.

  ‘He swallowed his wildfire,’ said Ariel.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Jo.

  Guy let the dragon go. He staggered back and held his belly. His ears were flat to his head. He cowered. They could hear the rumbling from inside his guts. Like a locomotive boiler about to blow.

  ‘Er …’ said Ariel.

  ‘Put it this way,’ said Tragedy. ‘Probably best not to stand behind it for a while …’