by Glynn James
I spotted it. Over the top of the doors and ran forward.
"Shutters. There are metal shutters."
"Then you better figure out damn quick how to get them down," said Reg, taking aim and firing another shot. "I can hear them coming, lots of them, and we don't have long."
I glanced around. I needed something to climb up on, and I'd abandoned the trolley in our rush to escape. But I couldn't see anything.
"Over here," shouted Rudy.
I ran over to the dark corner of the platform, where his voice was coming from, and saw the stack of boxes. They were empty, and only made of flimsy wood, but I only needed them to hold together for a few seconds. I grabbed two and ran back to the doors. Reg was now firing as fast as he could out into the stairwell. Behind him, the dozen Maw were crouched, ready to take down anything that got through.
I dropped the first box and stacked the second on top, jumped up, took hold of the bottom of the shutter and pulled down as hard as I could. There was a creaking noise, followed by something snapping, and I nearly fell on top of Reg as the steel shutter came slamming down into the ground, just as some more of the night creatures appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Moments later and the steel shutter was shaking and rattling as they tried to get through.
I collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily, next to Reg, who was covered in sweat and gasping as loud as I was.
"What the hell are those things?" I asked.
"I have no idea," said Reg, shaking his head. "I've never seen anything like them before."
I was exhausted.
"I really hope these Sisters of Rahl are going to be worth this."
"Me too."
Rudy was pacing the ground and looking warily at the dark entrances either end of the platform.
"What if they find another way down here?" he asked.
"They more than likely will," said Adler. "They seem quite determined."
"Yes. We need to move. We can't stay here. Anyway, DogThing is trapped down here somewhere, and needs help."
"He is? Is he hurt?" asked Rudy.
"I don't think so. Just stuck. Give me a moment. I need to try and talk to him."
I closed my eyes and thought of DogThing again.
"Where are you DogThing?"
"I don't know. In the tunnels, the wall broke and I was stuck. Here."
That last word was almost like a beacon to me. He was there. When he spoke to me, I could feel it. I could vaguely sense where he was. There was a room off of a platform similar to the one that we were now on, somewhere along the same line. He had gone in there and somehow not been able to get out. I just had to try and figure out where it was.
"What were you doing down here?"
"Following a scent. I knew the smell. I can't think of who it is. I went to look."
I stood up, glancing left and right at the two dark holes either end of the platform. We had to pick one.
"Okay. He is down here in these tunnels, off of one of the platforms, but I don't know exactly where."
Reg frowned.
"So I guess we just pick one?"
I walked to where the boxes had been, trying to see down the tunnel, but it was too dark.
"This way?"
There was a low growl behind me, and I turned to see one of the Maw standing a few feet away. It sniffed the ground and then moved a few feet in the other direction, stopping and turning to look at me again. The other Maw were on their feet now, some of them moving towards the other end of the platform.
"Can you smell him?" I asked the Maw.
It scratched at the floor and then took a few more steps along the platform, sniffed the ground and then looked up at me. It made a low whining noise.
"You can, can't you?"
I moved forward, following the Maw.
"Follow the Maw," I said. "They can find him."
A few minutes later, torches lit, and we were jogging along the rail track behind the Maw. We passed three platforms that were a few hundred yards apart, the entrances collapsed and littered with debris, old broken boxes and shopping trolleys lying on the ground, covered in decades of dust. In amongst the rubbish and the decay were skeletons, covered in huge cobwebs that had to have been made by particularly large spiders. They covered areas metres wide. I tried not to think about it too much as we searched for signs of DogThing.
At the fourth station I noticed paw prints in the dust that lead over to an open doorway. This platform was very different to the previous ones. Most of those had been simply laid out, with one set of doors that were either already shuttered, or collapsed. This one had two levels, with a stairway leading up to the higher platform. Three doors lead off of it. Two that were closed, and another that was wide open.
The paw prints led inside.
One of the Maw took a sniff of the door and then backed away.
"Looks like we're near," I said. "Wait out here. I'll look inside."
"I'm coming with you," said Reg.
I shined the torch through the gap, and saw almost straight away where DogThing had gone. The room was large, and stacked high with dusty boxes, but straight through the middle was a wide path that led to another opening, and his paw prints were visible in the dirt.
"Looks like some kind of storage depot," said Reg. "We might find something useful here."
"We're near. I know we are."
I walked slowly through the room, wondering what was in the boxes that were stacked up a dozen high in places, and glancing into the dark corners. This place made me feel uneasy.
On the other side of the room the second entrance led out into a passage that went on for a long way, but I didn't need to go far. Just as I reached what looked like a small section of collapsed wall, on the right, about twenty feet down the passage, I heard a bark.
I looked down, shining the torch so that we could both see. Some of the wall and the floor had collapsed down into what looked like some kind of drainage area. At the bottom, maybe ten feet down, was DogThing, and he was lying underneath a pile of rubble and metal pipes.
With Reg's help, I hung down from the passage and dropped to the ground, next to DogThing, and began shifting the rubble off of the pile of metal pipes that he was pinned under. Ten minutes later, I was sweating like crazy and breathing heavily, but DogThing managed to crawl out from underneath the mess. He was limping.
"Did you hurt your leg?"
"Yes. But it will be okay soon."
It's not an easy task to lift a massive dog that is easily as heavy as a man, up on to your shoulders. I had no idea that the Maw were that heavy, and DogThing was relatively small when compared to the huge, black things upstairs.
He hopped off of my shoulders and scrambled up the few feet of rubble, into the passage above. Reg reached down and helped me climb back out again.
Outside on the platform, we all sat down on some of the boxes from the store. Reg was busy opening some of them up and throwing aside what look like table cloths and bottles of cleaning fluid.
"Damn maintenance stores for cleaners by the looks of it," he cursed.
"Didn't think we would be that lucky," I answered.
I looked over at DogThing, who was busy licking his leg.
"So, what were you searching for down here?"
"I don't know. I was just wandering around the city and smelled what I thought was a person. I went to look, but it led me here."
"We should get moving," said Rudy. "We have no idea if those creatures up there will find their way down."
I started to go down the stairs with the others following me. DogThing was still limping a bit, but seemed otherwise okay. I'd seen him recover from worse.
The Maw were waiting down on the lower platform. I sensed that something was not quite right, even before I got close to them. They were all crouched low, looking at something along the track.
I moved between them, peering through the darkness until the torchlight reached the end of the platform.
&
nbsp; A figure was standing up on the platform, barely twenty feet away. Humanoid.
Reg went to raise his shotgun, and I lifted my handgun, ready.
"You will not need those weapons here," said a woman's voice. "If you have peaceful intentions, then nothing here will harm you, and those outside will not come here."
She moved forward, stepping further into the light of the torch. She was tall, easily my height, and very pale skinned. Her eyes were so dazzling that they seemed to almost be on fire.
"Are you a Sister of Rahl?" asked Reg.
"Indeed," said the woman. "What reason do you have to be here? Men should not come here, lest they become what you have seen outside."
"Those creatures?" I asked. "They were once men?"
"Yes," said the woman. "They were the original inhabitants of the city. The male ones at least. The city was attacked by The Horde and everyone infected with the same affliction. The virus doesn't react very nicely with men's blood. Now they will forever be bound to a torturous fate. As would you, if you were bitten by one of them. I do hope you weren't. I would have to deal with you if that was the case."
"Well, we didn't come here to harm anyone," said Reg. "We are from the Resistance."
Her expression softened for a moment.
"Be that as it may. Then you may be welcome here, but that is not for me to decide."
"Who is the one who decides?" asked Adler.
"If you chose to come further, then the council will decide. You may come, but you must promise that your Maw will behave themselves, and that you will put away your weapons."
I nodded.
"We agree."
In my mind I spoke to DogThing.
"Tell the Maw they must relax and not attack anyone in here."
There was a moment of silence.
"They understand."
The woman looked at the Maw.
"You can guarantee that they will not attempt to attack anyone?"
"Yes."
She was looking straight into my eyes now. I could feel something. Some kind of prying.
"What is your name?"
"James. James Halldon."
At that, her eyes opened wide. Surprised.
"How is this so? You were believed to be dead," she said.
"You know of me?"
"Of course I know of you. What is wrong? If you don't remember the Sisters, then you are either lying, or your brain is faulty. Either way. Come, quickly. I don't like walking these tunnels."
I wanted to answer, and to ask her questions. At last, someone who knew of me in the past. But she turned away.
"This is not the time," she said.
We followed her into the darkness of the next tunnel, our torches barely giving enough light to see twenty feet ahead of us. Along the new section of tunnel was even more rubble and debris than we had seen in the others. Some of the walls had given way and lay crumbled on the ground a few feet thick, and water poured from some broken pipes that had been exposed by the collapse. After a few hundred yards I saw the light ahead. It was a sharp, white light, not like the glow that came from a natural fire. This seemed harsh somehow.
After another hundred yards or so we emerged from the tunnel into another platform. This one was clear of all rubbish. A bright florescent light hung from a wire over the top of the doorway in the middle of the platform. It flickered on an off every few seconds, but was bright enough for me to see that the end carriageway of a train was sticking out of the opposite tunnel. Across the top of the train, the tunnel had collapsed. Stone, bricks and mud filled the entrance so that only about half of the carriage was not submerged. There would be no way of getting around the train.
The woman jumped up on to the platform and led us towards the train, pulling open the rear door to let us in. I was the first through, with Reg right behind me. Rudy and Adler followed. I saw straight away that all the fittings and furniture that may have once been on the train had been removed so that the carriages had become a metal tunnel through the tonnes of fallen rock outside.
The woman waited whilst DogThing and rest of the Maw shuffled their way through the door and onto the train, then she pulled the door shut.
"You will wait in here whilst I go ahead and speak to my sisters."
We waited for what seemed like hours, but I would imagine that it wasn't really that long. As I sat on the floor, I took out the small note that the girl from the road station had given me and read it again.
They had called her Ella, but she had called herself Eleanor. Somehow that was important, but I just couldn't place why. I was still puzzled that she seemed to think that I would be going back for her. Why would she think that I would do that? It's not like her adopted parents would just let a stranger take the child away.
A noise from the other end of the carriage snapped me out of my thoughts. Three robed figures approached us along the train, stopping a few feet away.
"You may come," said one of the figures, a different woman by the sound of her voice. This voice was deeper, sterner.
We followed, and I was surprised to find how long the train was. At least four carriages held up the collapsed tunnel, and another two emerged at the other end. The platform that we stepped out onto was also abandoned. The door in middle of this one was much larger, as was the platform itself. As we walked into the passageway I glanced up towards the huge, rusty sign that hung on the wall above, lit up by yet another florescent light.
Landshaw Sports Stadium.
The women in robes walked ahead of us, not even glancing back to see whether or not we followed. The passageway that they led us along was much larger than any of the others had been, and it sloped upwards gradually. Along the walls were broken glass panels that still held in place the remains of huge pictures. People dressed in bright clothing standing upon small platforms with bright medallions around their necks. Soon the passageway opened up into a vast hall. All around were shop fronts and broken seating. Hanging from the ceiling were the cracked and broken remains of large display screens. It looked like some kind of shopping mall, where there would have been cafes and gift shops. One large, open space looked like it might have been a bar of some kind. Now, of course, all of the furniture was falling apart, and various stains tainted the frayed carpet.
We climbed an escalator that was covered in rust and cobwebs and probably hadn't worked for many, many years, and then entered another walkway. This one had an old ticket booth in the entrance. The windows were long gone and even the wooden booth itself looked close to collapsing in. Still sitting in the chair, slumped over the counter, was a skeleton without a head.
No one spoke. We all just followed.
The walkway finally opened out into a wide grass field, surrounded by sloped stalls of chairs that climbed higher and higher into the sky. Dotted all around were the same hanging florescent lights. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, glowing eerily and reminding me far too much of the strange, glowing plants in The Corridor, all of which only emphasised the sight that awaited us in the middle of the stadium.
I couldn't have counted how many there were, but at least fifty, maybe a hundred, massive marquee tents were laid out across the huge field. Some of them must have been fifty feet high in the centre, and they were all joined together by covered walkways.
I was too busy standing and staring in awe at the sight in front of me to notice that the women had stopped, and one of them was now just a few feet away from me.
"This is the home of the Sisters of Rahl. You are fortunate to see it. Not many men have seen this place and lived. In fact, from my knowledge, only some of the soldiers of the Resistance have been here. You of course," she said, looking directly at me, "have been here before. Though, it is apparent that you do not remember."
I looked back at her.
"I had an accident and lost my memory. That is why I'm here."
"I see," she said. "We will have to do something about that.
"That is what I had hoped."
She looked around at the others, and then the Maw.
"All of these are with you?"
"Yes. Well, Reg here is looking for someone."
Reg stepped forward and bowed.
"My name is Reginald Weldon. And I lost my wife many, many years ago. I have tried to find her, and it has led me here. I hope that you can be of some help. Is there any chance that she is here? Or if not, could you tell me where she went to?"
The woman stared at Reg.
"Reginald Weldon you say?"
"Yes maam."
She turned to one of the others and spoke quietly to her.
"What is your wife's name?"
"Marie. Marie Weldon."
She nodded.
"The woman who was once your wife is here. She has been a member of our order for many years. Word will be sent to her that you are here. I cannot promise that she will want to see you, though. Sisters of Rahl leave their old lives behind when they take up their vows."
She looked at me.
"You must all rest. In the morning we will talk."
Day 50
It was only a few hours before the sun came up. Most of our night had been spent running from the creatures that had swarmed the city, and then stumbling around the underground railway, but I still managed to get some sleep in the tent that they took us to.
Tent seems hardly the word to use. Inside, the marquee was huge.
I glanced around when I woke up. DogThing was lying at my feet, but no one else was around. He shifted his legs, and then looked up at me. How did he do that? He always seemed to wake up the moment I did. Something to do with our mental connection, maybe.
I walked out of the nearest exit and into the sun. It was blisteringly hot outside, the glare of the sun almost too much to bear, but I wandered around for a while with DogThing tagging along behind me. I saw some of the Maw up in the stadium stands, lying on the chairs in the shade, and then I spotted Reg. He was walking along one of the paths that wound all the way around the stadium between the rows of seating, about half way up the stands, and he wasn't alone.
