In the Shadow of London

by Chris Ward

  David lifted up his board and hooked it over the drainage rail along the top edge of the train. Leaning back, he braced his legs against the metal panels beneath the window, letting the board take his weight.

  ‘Like this. Then to dismount, push in and up.’

  He pushed the board forwards and it popped out of the drainage rail. David stepped back onto the platform.

  ‘Obviously when you’re moving at sixty miles an hour it’s a whole lot more dangerous,’ he said. ‘One mistake can kill you.’

  Airie stared at him. ‘A lot of things can kill you. When are we gonna try it on a real train?’

  David smiled. ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ He handed her the board. ‘Here. Practice. You’re ready when I say you’re ready.’

  Airie glared at him, but the corner of her mouth turned up in a half-smile. ‘Yes, coach.’

  For the next couple of hours David made her run and leap up at the stationary train, practicing her mount and dismount, her bracing position. Despite her cocksure attitude, the first few times she missed, slamming against the train windows and bouncing off. Once her leg slipped and got caught between the platform edge and the train. David winced, remembering the time he had seen it happen for real. He felt it necessary to point out what it sounded like when someone’s leg was torn clean off, but Airie just glared at him, then trudged back to her starting point and ran in again without a word.

  She was a quick learner. After a few dozen tries, she could leap up and hook the drainage rail as well as anyone he’d ever seen.

  ‘Are we ready for a real train yet?’ she asked him, after her fourth successive clean hook.

  David shook his head. ‘No. Give it time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve only just met you. I don’t want you to die right away.’

  ‘Thanks, but whatever. I can do it.’

  ‘I’m sure you can, but take it slowly. It hurts to fall badly. Trust me, I know.’

  Airie stared at him. ‘Is that how you got your scars?’

  David shrugged. ‘That and other ways.’ Glancing up at the darkening sky, he added, ‘We should go. It’s safe enough here by day, but we shouldn’t be around here by night.’

  From Airie’s knowing nod, it was clear that she had spent more time in such places than someone of her age should. Still holding David’s clawboard, she turned and headed back the way they had come in, David trailing along behind.

  The girl had taken to wearing green combat trousers and a thin black sweater she had found in one of the apartments next to his hideout. She was slimmer and her hair was tied back in a ponytail, but something about the confident way she walked reminded him a little of Marta. A come-and-take-me attitude, so different to the defensive wariness she had first displayed. It was as if the board gave her strength—

  Airie was twenty feet away before David realised what was happening. By the time he had broken into a run to follow her she had half a platform length’s head start, running at full stretch, the board tucked under her arm.

  A booming horn told him what he feared, even before the train came into sight half a mile down the track, moving in a gradual arc like a giant metal snake as it followed the former British Rail mainline past the siding yard towards Hackney Central. As David ran out through the last derelict locomotives into a weed-strewn open area behind the main platform, he saw Airie running up a set of steps at one end, watched by a handful of surprised commuters. The train was still a few hundred feet away and slowing, but not enough.

  ‘Airie!’ he screamed. ‘It’s a through-train! It’s not stopping!’

  Perhaps she thought a slowing train coming into the station would give her a chance to practice without having to worry about dismounting at speed, but as she glanced back over her shoulder and gave David a pout he knew there was no way to stop her. She dropped down in a crouch at the end of the platform, her head lowered, her mouth moving in silent prayers as her hands wrapped around the rubber straps of the board.

  ‘Wait!’

  The train hit the station, still moving at fifty miles an hour. With a scream Airie raced along the platform as it began to pass. Further along the platform people were pointing at her, hands covering their mouths. As David reached the foot of the stairs, Airie leapt up, the clawboard swinging down towards the drainage rail.

  One hook missed, and for an instant he was sure she would fall into the killing gap between the train and the platform edge. One shoe scraped along the tiles, then the other hook caught and she lifted off, bracing herself first with one foot, then the other. One hand untangled itself and she held on to the rail with her fingers as the train pulled her away, the other hand shifting the board until it had caught.

  She glanced back as the train pulled out of the station, and her look was one of horror. A single shouted word drifted back along the platform:

  ‘David!’

  As the train arced away to the left as it exited the station, taking Airie with it, David forced himself to move forward even as a great sinking feeling filled his chest. He walked past several gaping commuters towards the end of the platform, waving away their questions, hearing over and over the stunned words: ‘Tube Riders….’

  As two station guards appeared out of an office midway along the platform, he realised he had no choice but to try and follow her. He sprinted down the remaining section of platform and onto the tracks, leaping from sleeper to sleeper in the direction the train had gone as the guards shouted for him to stop.

  It was already out of sight, but as he followed it through overgrown sidings and down concrete channels covered with graffiti, he found himself checking every piece of trash lying in the undergrowth as though it might be part of her body.

  He had crossed under two road bridges and was approaching the next station when he heard a girl’s voice calling him.

  ‘David! Over here!’

  Airie was walking calmly down the track towards him, the clawboard tucked under her arm. She looked completely unscathed, and waved as he jogged up to her.

  ‘What the hell were you playing at?’

  ‘Expected it to stop, didn’t I? Had to wait for the next station.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I got quite a bit of attention.’

  ‘Airie….’

  ‘Isn’t that what you wanted? Look at us, the big bad Tube Riders.’ She held the board over her head and waved it about like a placard board.

  ‘Congratulations on surviving your first tube ride.’

  Airie grinned. She tossed his board back at him, and he caught it just before it slammed into his stomach. ‘Wasn’t that hard. Pretty easy, really. I’ll let you join my club after you’ve shown me you can ride.’

  David resisted the urge to scold her. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. He turned around, looking for the best way out. They were in a wide concrete-walled ditch with road bridges stretching overhead at intervals of a few hundred feet. It was half a mile in either direction to the nearest stations. ‘There,’ he said, pointing towards a set of steps set into the concrete near the closest road bridge. ‘We can get out over there.’

  Airie pouted. ‘Aren’t we going to ride home?’

  ‘Yeah, on a bus. Once you go underground, not all of the tunnels are wide enough for a person to hang to the side of the trains. You’ll get crushed.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  David shrugged. ‘Well, come on then.’

  They began to pick their way through the weeds. As the grass came up around their thighs David began to worry about stepping on something unpleasant. He had already felt the curved shape of several discarded cans and bottles under his feet, and he worried about finding the remains of someone who had drunk them. He was just starting to think about following the tracks to the next station when Airie cried out.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve found a stiff.’

  David flinched
. ‘Come back. Don’t get any closer—’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a human. At least I don’t think it is. It’s made of metal.’

  David came up behind her and together they pulled aside the clumps of weeds to reveal the rusting metal thing lying among the junk-clogged undergrowth to the side of the tracks.

  It was certainly human in shape, its once dark-grey casing cracked and crumbling with rust, but all that remained was a rusting metal frame. Its body cavity had been broken open and stripped of anything worth stealing, while in a hole broken into its head-shape nestled the blackened remains of a small fire. It looked like it had been thrown from the bridge overhead, probably long before either David or Airie were born.

  ‘That’s not a Huntsman, is it?’

  David almost laughed, but only the memory of meeting the eyes of one made him stop. He shook his head. ‘It’s a robot. Britain used to export them. So I heard.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Money. I guess they got decommissioned. I remember when I was a kid there was a big rush to hide all the old ones lying around. We had one in the entrance to our school, standing on a frame in the lobby. It had long ago stopped working but its palms were smooth where kids gave it high fives on the way to class. Then one day a group of DCA guys showed up and hauled it away.’

  ‘What for?’

  David shrugged. ‘No idea. I was only seven or eight. I can barely remember it. Looking back on it, perhaps they thought we might start it up again and use it against them. I don’t know. Sounds stupid.’

  Airie nudged the metal casing with her foot. ‘Perhaps they wanted parts of it to repair others. Have you noticed how hardly anything works in this shithole?’

  David stared at the shell of the old robot. He hadn’t thought of the one at his school in years, but now that he did he saw how Airie might be right. Its feet had been embedded in concrete, but some kids had claimed that if you hung around the school after dark you could sometimes see lights appear in the glass circles it had for eyes, as if it were still watching.

  He reached out towards Airie and the girl took his hand without a word. ‘Whatever the reason this thing ended up here, I think we’d better get going. It’s getting dark, and some of that graffiti looks pretty fresh.’

  Airie nodded. With David at the front, they picked their way over towards the stone steps leading up to the road bridge overhead. Within a few steps the remains of the robot were lost in the weeds, and by the time they had reached the top of the steps, shadows had begun to lengthen, filling in the railway culvert with a shroud of darkness that made David shiver.

  ‘If the people keep rioting, do you think they’ll bring them back?’

  ‘They might. I heard there are warehouses full of them on the outskirts of the city.’

  Airie gave a grim smile. ‘You know, if you really wanted people to pay attention, you could try blowing one up.’

  David looked for the humour in her eyes, but there was none. He glanced up at the sky, at the towering arc of a distant half-finished highway bridge that perhaps had once been intended to curve over the top of the perimeter wall. Like a lot of things, it was a sign of London’s stagnation. David had never been outside the city and had an image of a blighted wasteland in his head, despite rumours that it was a green and fertile place where people could live without persecution. He had long ago given up trusting anything he didn’t see or hear with his own eyes or ears, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter.

  London was a walled cage. There was no way out, not now the train tunnels had been sealed and the guards increased on the gates.

  Airie was right, though. If he wanted to make a statement, causing a little disruption to the government’s stores would go some way to achieving it.

  14

  Names

  Lindon owned one photograph, of a school trip when he was twelve. It had been in the days when trips were so rare all the kids in the school would be jammed onto a bus and shipped out together. He remembered it had been a shit day, the kids taken to some London factory built most likely for the sole purpose of hosting school trips. It had contained a skeleton staff of smiling workers, far too few for the textiles production the factory was supposed to undertake. Rather than actually visit the factory floor, they had sat through a movie, then been talked through the production process by a group of over-eager workers, before being dumped in the gift shop where none of them had the money to buy anything. As a result, there were few smiles among the kids assembled into rows for the group photograph against a grey wall outside the factory, but Lindon cared only about its connection to his family.

  Sammy was kneeling in front of him, two spaces to the left, his arms crossed as if already waiting for things to change. Like the boys on either side of him, the kid Lindon had unofficially adopted as a younger brother in his teens was wearing a deep frown, angry at something behind the camera. In fact, only one of the kids in the picture looked genuinely happy, a petite blond girl at the end of the second row, from two years below him, who wore by far the brightest smile of the group.

  Caroline Madison. His first crush. She didn’t know him then, had never acknowledged his existence in the few times they had passed in the corridor and he had risked a glance in her direction. Within a year she had disappeared from school into whatever life awaited her, and he had never expected to see her again. He had almost forgotten her by the day she showed up in the tunnels, wanting to join the Cross Jumpers.

  She would no longer answer to Caroline, and she had never told him why. Only to Cah, an identity to take her forward into London’s new world. Cah, that rhymed with car, but also, as she often told him, not dissimilar to the sound made by the crows that plagued London in threatening black clouds, picking through the trash and debris that littered the streets.

  It was a name for the end of the world.

  She was sleeping on the sofa; he could hear her soft breathing drifting through the door. Spacewell was out, and the apartments either side of theirs were silent. The floorboards creaked as he approached, but he stopped just short of the door, unwilling to look inside.

  Brought up by his wiry old grandfather, Lindon understood the way of the street. He had been using his fists to earn respect since his early days at school, and had gone toe to toe with the best street fighters in the city. He feared no man, yet the thought of losing Cah hollowed out his heart. She had made him swear to stay away while she was destroying himself, and the sincerity in her eyes had been enough to convince him. Spacewell used every room as his own, but Lindon had never once entered their sparse living room while Cah was descending the ladder into her own personal oblivion.

  He lifted a hand to touch the door. The glow of a gas lamp illuminated the corners of chairs and a table, but Cah was out of sight. Lindon took a step back, the door creaking as he lowered his head.

  ‘Lindon.’

  He hardly dared to breathe. He waited a few seconds, then when she called his name again, he answered. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Hold me.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t. Not now.’

  ‘I need you, Lindon.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  He pushed the door open and took a step into the room. Cah lay on the sofa as he had expected to find her, a threadbare blanket covering her from the waist down. Her upper body was naked, her breasts pressed together by one arm hung across her, fingers stretching loosely towards the coffee table and the metal tin on top of it that was the end of all things.

  Lindon’s heart began to race. He’d never looked inside it; he didn’t dare. The urge to snatch it and fling it from the window was nearly overwhelming, but the fear that Cah might follow it held him back. He didn’t know what was in it, her poison of choice. He had known a lot of drug addicts over the years, and many of the smells and signs were familiar, yet none of what he knew hung around Cah. Something unknown, something different hid away in that little metal box.

  He could open i
t anytime and destroy what was inside, but Cah would simply find more. Lindon knew enough about addicts to understand that one could only stop when the motivation was there. If they didn’t want to stop … they were beyond help, as good as dead.

  ‘I’m cold, Lindon,’ she said. ‘And so tired. Please.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have to go out,’ he said. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘What work? I heard you come in just before.’

  ‘Tank work.’

  She sighed, and for a moment he considered granting her wish, but his feet refused to move. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, wanting to both go to her and to run as far away as he could. In the end he just said, ‘I’ll be back later.’

  He could feel the rage growing as he barrelled down the stairs. He passed a drunk slumped against the wall on a lower landing, and forced himself to look away, afraid he would start wrecking too early. Instead, he hit the building’s entrance at a run and within a few steps he was moving at a full sprint, heedless of where he was going, just needing to get away.

  He had passed through the courtyard of their building and down a litter-strewn road before the urge to do damage became overwhelming. A couple of young guys standing on a street corner smoking something out of a plastic supermarket bag barely had time to look up as he slammed into them, knocking them over. As one turned around, Lindon punched him in the face, then kicked the other in the stomach as he crawled away. Lindon turned back to the first, fists up, but the young guy was already starting to back off, and Lindon didn’t have the patience for a chase. Instead he moved on, looking for someone or something else to destroy.

  ‘Cah!’ he screamed, aiming a kick at a heap of rubbish outside a collapsed bus shelter, but succeeding only in slipping and falling hard to the ground. He pounded his fists against the tarmac, then pushed himself back up, his palms slick with blood.