by Steve Feasey
26
Trey and Alexa stood outside the building that had been his prison, waiting for the taxi. They hadn’t spoken since their last exchange, each lost in their own thoughts about what had happened and what was to come. They’d managed to clean Trey up a bit, using some old towels they’d found in the toilets at the back of the garage. He still looked pale and grubby, and the overalls he’d put on gave him the appearance of a prison inmate who’d escaped and was on the run. The cab driver must have had the same thought as he pulled up in front of them; staring out of the windscreen he gave Trey a less than friendly look.
They climbed into the back of the car.
‘Chelsea football ground, please,’ Alexa said.
The cabbie turned round in his seat and looked in disbelief at each of them in turn.
‘You’re joking, ain’t ya? Haven’t you heard? That part of the city is like a war zone now. Police, army, helicopters – I even heard on the radio that they’re bringing tanks in. Tanks! In Chelsea! ‘Ere, have a listen for yerself.’ He pressed a button on the radio to increase the volume. A female reporter was in the middle of an outside broadcast.
‘… that the police have cordoned off the area surrounding the football ground, and are stopping anyone from returning to their houses and businesses for the foreseeable future. From my vantage point here on top of the shopping centre just off Fulham Broadway, I can see the vast dome-like structure that has got scientists and everyone else completely baffled. What is it, how did it get here, and what might its arrival mean to the people of London, the UK, and possibly the world? ‘
The broadcast switched back to the studio and a silky-voiced male presenter.
‘Thank you, Anita. That’s our reporter at the scene, Anita Harvey, and she’ll be keeping us abreast of any developments that occur with regard to what many people are describing as the Dome of Doom. Please keep your calls, texts and emails coming in with your ideas on what the giant hemispherical object is, and we’ll discuss them during the show.
‘There’s already been speculation that the thing is some sort of spaceship, and to discuss this possibility, and what it might mean to the human race if indeed it is an extra-terrestrial visitation, is Professor Daniel Linkwater of the University of St Andrews who is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and of the SETI Permanent Study Group. Professor, what do you think the—’
‘How close could you get us?’ Alexa asked the driver.
‘Look, I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing, full stop.’
Alexa dug her purse out of her pocket and counted out the money she had in it. ‘I’ve got one hundred and fifty pounds here, and I can get another two hundred out of a cashpoint machine on the way.’
‘Why are you so keen to—’
‘My dad’s inside.’
There was a silence in the cab as the driver considered this.
‘How close can you get us?’ Alexa repeated.
The cabby looked back at her in the rearview mirror. ‘Three hundred and fifty quid?’ he asked.
Alexa nodded.
‘Close enough,’ he said, already pulling away.
The cabbie had informed them that he was sticking to the south side of the river for as long as possible, moving his way west before trying to cross the Thames as close to Chelsea as he could. He kept the radio on, scoffing at the views of some of the various experts and panellists filling the airwaves. He told Trey and Alexa that he was firmly of the view that it was an alien invasion, and that the people inside were all abductees who were going to be experimented on in some way.
‘I saw this documentary about it,’ he explained. ‘They’ve been watching us for years.’
Trey glanced across at Alexa, who was sitting completely motionless, head bowed slightly with her eyes fixed on the footwell in front of her. He caught snippets of the words she was whispering under her breath, words in a language that had no place in this world. He glanced up at the driver, who was looking back at him in the rearview mirror.
‘You two are potty going up there. I know her dad’s in that thing, but there’s nothing you can do for him now. They’ve probably got him in a room somewhere, probes in every orifice, turning him into gawd-knows-what. Alien genetic manipulation,’ he said in a low voice, then shouted at the driver of a car that pulled out in front of him without indicating. ‘This is the first stage of an invasion. As soon as I drop you off, I’m going straight home. I’m gonna stock up on supplies, lock myself in my flat and wait this thing out. There’s no way I’m going to be captured and experimented on by those bastards.’
He slowed to a stop at a red light.
As he pulled on the handbrake a low rattling sound started in the car. It got louder and more intense until Trey could feel the vibrations juddering through his body.
‘What’s that?’ the driver shouted.
The purse that Alexa had put beside her as she’d got back in the car when they’d stopped for the cashpoint lifted off the seat a little, and Trey slammed his hand down on top of it.
‘Maybe you’ve got a problem with your rear axle,’ Trey said, cringing as he uttered the words. A rattling axle? They were stationary!
The small tree-shaped air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror in the front of the car began to rotate back and forth, slowly at first, but picking up speed until it swivelled about the elastic cord it hung from at an incredible rate. The driver stared at it in horror for a moment, and whimpered. A staccato rat-a-tatting now filled the car. Every loose article, every gap and joint vibrated wildly. This, coupled with the hypnotic revolutions of the air freshener, was simply too much for the cabbie, who was already in a heightened state of fear and paranoia.
‘They’re coming!’ he shouted, opening the door and piling out on to the road, almost falling under the wheels of an oncoming car.
‘Wait!’ Trey shouted, but the man was already off, running back up the street, shouting out warnings to pedestrians and looking up into the skies above as if he expected a beam of light to suck him into the mother ship at any second.
Quite suddenly the rattling stopped and the air freshener ceased its hypnotic swivelling.
‘I know where they are,’ Alexa said. ‘Or at least I know where Hag is.’
‘Great,’ Trey said through clenched teeth, the muscles at the sides of his jaw bunching and unbundling as he stared at her.
Alexa took in his angry expression and then the empty front seat. ‘Where’d he go?’ she asked.
‘Thanks to your witchy shenanigans, our cab driver has done a runner.’ He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘At this very moment he’s legging it in that direction, telling everybody to do likewise because ET has come to eat them.’
‘Oh.’
There was the sound of a car horn behind them. The lights had turned green again.
‘You’ll have to drive,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the front seat.
‘I can’t drive! I’ve only had ten lessons.’
The car horn sounded again. Trey turned in his seat and gave what he hoped passed as a placating wave to the driver.
‘Well, that’s ten more than I’ve had. Look, we don’t really have much choice right now. Besides, it can’t be far, I saw a sign back there saying that football traffic should take the next bridge.’ He nodded at the satnav attached to the front windscreen. ‘Just follow that thing.’
Alexa went to say something, but stopped when the driver behind them sounded his horn for a third time and shouted something out of his window at them. Instead, she climbed over the seat into the front of the car. She pulled her seat belt on and adjusted the rearview mirror. The engine was still running, so she pressed the clutch pedal, put the car into gear and took off the handbrake.
The car lurched forward sickeningly and stalled.
Alexa and Trey’s eyes met in the mirror.
‘One word,’ she said threateningly. ‘You just say one word about my driving, Laporte, and it
could be the last one you ever say.’
Trey battled to wipe the smirk off his face.
Alexa restarted the car, put it in gear and drove off up the road.
27
‘This is ridiculous!’ Trey said, banging his fist down on the dashboard. He’d climbed into the front of the car and was now staring out at the vast line of unmoving traffic ahead of them.
At the far end of Battersea Bridge, in the direction they were heading, was a roadblock.
They’d been stationary for what seemed an age now, and they could just make out the line of metal barriers that the police had arranged across the road ahead of them. Male and female officers in bright fluorescent jackets were redirecting traffic down Embankment, away from Chelsea, and in the distance it was clear that similar barriers had been erected all along that route, stopping people from turning off and doubling back on themselves. The traffic was solid on this side of the bridge, but nothing was coming towards them on the other side of the road; it appeared the police had stopped that too.
Alexa slammed her palm into the steering wheel. ‘What now?’
She watched Trey narrow his eyes and nod to himself, as if he’d decided on the only course of action left open to them.
‘You’re going to have to floor it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Get this thing on to the other side of the road, and floor it.’
‘Are you mad? They’ll be after us in a shot! Look, see those things with bloody great engines and two wheels?’ She pointed ahead. ‘The ones with blue lights flashing on top of them? They’re police bikes, and they’re a sight faster and more agile than this old heap is going to be.’
Trey thumbed the screen of the satnav device hanging over the dashboard.
‘We’ve only got to make one turn up ahead,’ he said, decreasing the size of the map on the screen to show her what he meant. ‘We go up Beaufort Street on the other side of that roadblock, and then left into Fulham Road. From there it’s straight on until we hit Leroth.’
‘They’ll outrun us!’
‘So what? They won’t be able to pull us over, not on bikes. And by the time they’ve mobilized any cars to stop us we’ll be close enough that it won’t matter. We need to get there as soon as possible, Alexa, and it’s either this or we get out now and try to make it all the way on foot.’
‘They’ll be armed.’
‘Then you’d better drive quickly and make us difficult to hit.’
She looked at him for a second.
‘I haven’t even got a licence yet, and you want me to start a high-speed chase with the police.’
‘If we don’t help your father stop whatever is happening inside that Shield, I doubt not having a driving licence is going to be at the top of your list of troubles.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know why I listen to you, I really don’t.’ She took the handbrake off.
‘That’s my girl,’ he said grinning back at her.
Alexa swung the wheel to move the car out on to the other carriageway and pressed the accelerator to the floor, crashing through the gears as she sped straight towards the police barrier.
The policemen and women saw the car pull out and accelerate up the wrong side of the road towards them. A couple of them put their arms up in the air, waving them back and forth for the driver to stop. The waving faltered when they caught sight of the young girl in the front seat, hunched over the wheel, a look of grim determination on her face.
One officer drew his weapon.
‘YEEE-HA!’ Trey shouted when they were no more than a few metres away.
Alexa wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, but she was concentrating too hard on not losing control of the fast-moving vehicle. She’d never driven at more than 40 mph before, and the car handled totally differently at this speed.
The policeman with the gun had taken up a position right in the centre of the road. He’d adopted a shooting stance and managed to fire off one round before he realized that they weren’t going to stop and that staying where he was wouldn’t be good for his long-term health. He leaped clear of the car moments before it crashed through the barrier, a climax of noise filling the air as metal shrieked and glass shattered.
They were through. The car lurched sickeningly to one side, and Alexa had to fight with the wheel to keep control. One of the rear tyres burst, and the loud noise of reinforced rubber repeatedly smacking into the tarmac filled the car.
‘You did it!’ Trey said over the noise.
Alexa was silent. Her face was as white as her knuckles as she gripped the steering wheel. She was shaking.
Trey decided it would be a good idea to keep quiet. He turned in his seat at the sound of sirens. Peering out through the rear screen he could make out the three police bikes, which had begun to pursue them up the road.
The car was incredibly difficult to control with only three good tyres, and Alexa thanked her lucky stars that there was no other traffic on the road. She slewed round a bend, the car making a terrible din that momentarily drowned out the howling sirens from the police bikes behind them. She glanced in the mirror.
The lead rider in pursuit was no more than ten metres behind the car now, flashing his lights at her. The police officer accelerated, bringing his bike up beside the car and pointing a gloved hand at her to pull the car over.
Trey grinned and waved back at him from the passenger seat.
‘Stop antagonizing them!’ Alexa shouted.
‘I was just being friendly.’
They could make out the turning they had to take up ahead. Alexa steered the car over as far as she could on to the wrong side of the road, trying to give herself the best possible chance of making the corner at speed in a car that was pulling alarmingly in the other direction. Then she forced the wheel over, causing the car to shake and moan in protest. Trey glanced behind him again and saw a shower of tiny yellow sparks flying out behind the vehicle as the steel rim of the back wheel ground against the tarmac.
They made the turn. Alexa swore out a long string of expletives as she battled to keep the car from crashing. And then they were on the long, straight stretch of Fulham Road. For one second they forgot the police pursuing them, forgot that the car they were in was so dangerously damaged, their gazes drawn to the skyline visible between the buildings up ahead. Even from here Leroth and the Shield looked indomitable.
‘Stop the car,’ Trey said, looking down the road and seeing the way blocked first by abandoned vehicles, then by a wall of people.
‘The police …’
‘I’ll get rid of them,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There’s no other way through. Stop the car.’
Alexa braked to a halt.
‘We’ll have to take the final stretch on foot,’ Trey continued. He frowned, thinking things through. ‘It’s only about six or seven hundred metres to the beginning of the Shield. Can you make us invisible?’
She shook her head. ‘Not if we’re moving. If we were stationary, yes, but—’
‘Then you’re going to have to hang on to me. I’ll give you a piggyback. Just give me a minute to get rid of these guys,’ he said, motioning with his head towards the three police bikes which had pulled up behind them. One of the officers stayed on his bike, barking something into his radio. The other two dismounted, and started to walk towards the car.
‘Stay in the vehicle, sir,’ one of the cops called out when he saw Trey climbing out of the passenger door.
Trey ignored him and turned to face them.
‘Get back in the car please!’ the lead officer shouted, reaching for something on his belt.
Trey knew there was little point in trying to reason with them. He and Alexa had committed goodness knows how many offences, and he suspected that telling the officers that they needed to get into that thing up the road to try and save the world from a zombie epidemic wasn’t really going to wash. Instead, he Changed.
The policemen froze, watching in horror as the overa
ll-clad boy turned into a monster before their very eyes. The werewolf took a step forward, lowered its head and roared.
The officer who was still mounted on his bike dropped his radio and put the vehicle into gear, twisting the accelerator and spinning the bike round so that smoke billowed off the rear tyre in a huge blue-grey cloud as he sped off. The other two ran. They simply turned on their heels and ran as fast as their legs would carry them.
Alexa climbed out of the car, shaking her head in Trey’s direction.
The lycanthrope shrugged and then walked round to her, turning away and dropping down on one knee so that she could mount his back.
‘This is crazy,’ she said into his ear.
Trey concentrated on the spell that would allow him to ‘talk’ back.
Crazy actions for a crazy day eh? Now hold on tight because this is going to be a rough ride.
Alexa held on for all she was worth, wrapping her arms about the huge werewolf’s neck and gripping with a force that would probably have strangled a human, but seemed not to bother the massive lycanthrope at all. As soon as she was on his back he leaped forward, his long rangy strides eating up the ground. The roofs and bonnets of abandoned cars that blocked their way caved in beneath the combined weight of the werewolf and his human passenger, as Trey jumped on to, and then over, them. It was only when they approached the back of the crowd that Trey slowed a fraction. Everyone was looking ahead at the giant supernatural hemisphere when Trey let out an almighty bellow, sounding like a great male lion roaring across the savannah. The people turned en masse and faces already filled with fear took on an even more terrified look – then everyone scattered before him. Trey kept up the noise, running straight through the middle of the crowd. People must have thought the young girl on the creature’s back had taken leave of her senses and attacked the beast, leaping astride it to try and throttle it. But nobody stepped forward to assist her.
