Adrift 2: Sundown

by K. R. Griffiths

  With adrenaline coursing through her, she had run faster and further than she thought possible. The pause gave birth to a raging inferno in her hamstrings, and suddenly she could feel the pain in her calf where Remy had bitten her.

  “I need a minute, Rem.”

  Remy tilted his head inquisitively, but seemed content enough to hold their position.

  Stopping didn’t just give Conny time to feel pain and fatigue. It also afforded her an opportunity to think, but all her mind threw at her was guilt. She had stood and watched her colleagues being butchered, and then had fled, leaving the rest to die. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing she could have done; that most of the group were carrying weapons far more powerful than her handgun, and those weapons hadn’t made a blind bit of difference.

  I could have tried. Should have done something.

  And then I’d be dead, too.

  The remorse building inside her made Conny feel like screaming at herself in rage, and she gritted her teeth and swallowed back the urge. The time for self-recrimination was later. Right now, she had more pressing concerns.

  Like, where the hell am I?

  She summoned up a mental map of the tube system. After departing Euston, it should not have taken this long for her to reach the next station, King’s Cross St Pancras. Those two weren’t far apart. In fact, now that she came to think about it, she judged that she should have been damn close to St Pancras while Porter and the others had still been alive, yet she had run for several minutes without seeing a sign of either lights or platforms.

  No sound of gunfire, either, she thought. That’s the good news.

  The bad news was that she was almost certainly in a service tunnel, or one that was not in regular use. There were plenty of abandoned tunnels all over the network; even some entire stations that had been left to gather dust. At that moment, even the sight of one of those so-called ghost stations would have been welcome. Anything would be better than the clammy claustrophobia of the tunnels.

  I’m lost.

  Instinctively, Conny began to play the Glock’s light around her in a wide arc, hoping some sign or other means of identifying her location might have been helpfully left in the tunnel. There was nothing, save for featureless steel doors set into the wall at regular intervals.

  The doors had to lead to maintenance areas, she guessed. Maybe even access points that would offer a route to the surface? Perhaps she could find a stairway leading up; hell, even a ladder would do. If necessary, she would find some way to carry Remy. All that mattered now was getting out of the tunnels quickly, and warning whoever was in charge at ground level that they needed to pull out of the Underground system; making sure that whatever was happening, it stayed below the surface, as far away from London Bridge Hospital—and from Logan—as possible.

  She tried the radio clipped to her shoulder, but received no reply beyond a meaningless blast of static that sounded impossibly loud. Porter hadn’t been kidding: this far underground, the radio was useless.

  She paused for a moment, listening intently. Could she hear something screeching in the distance, the noise muted by thick stone walls? Had whatever was out there heard her trying her radio?

  If so, maybe it, too, was holding its breath; listening. She could hear only silence.

  Conny grimaced. She felt hopelessly exposed in the tunnel, especially whenever she flicked on the under-barrel light on the gun. The doors had to offer a better option.

  “Come on, Rem. We need to find a way out.”

  Remy huffed softly.

  *

  The first door she tried was locked, but the second swung open at her touch.

  Her heart sank.

  It was just a junction room, no more than that. One of many meeting places for the thousands of miles of heavy cable that ran below the city like a vast spiderweb. The room was empty, and there was no other exit. There was no deadbolt on the door, but she saw a few lengths of rebar just like the one Adam Trent had crushed skulls with. She could wedge one of them against the door, and at least she would have a place to hunker down and feel safe for a while.

  Coward.

  She headed back into the tunnel.

  Froze.

  This time she definitely did hear screeching, and it sounded like it was in the same tunnel. Distant, but sharing a space with her.

  It has finished with the others.

  Now, it is hunting me down.

  She flicked off the light immediately, and began to slide along the wall, feeling for the metal doors; listening to the pounding of her heart and praying it was the only thing she would hear.

  Remy began to tug on the leash, urging her to move quicker.

  She reached the third door.

  Locked.

  As was the fourth.

  When she was halfway to the fifth door, the thing in the tunnel screeched again, and Conny almost screamed an answer. It was closer. Much closer.

  She gritted her teeth, terrified of falling in the darkness, knowing that if she turned on the light she would paint a target on herself.

  Click…click, click.

  Blank terror soaked through Conny’s mind, and she might have broken down altogether had her hand not found the door handle.

  She twisted and felt tears of relief sting her eyes.

  It wasn’t locked.

  Unable to breathe, she hurtled through the door behind Remy, closing it quietly.

  She felt around for a deadbolt, and again found none. If there was something in the room for her to use to blockade the door, she didn’t dare turn on her light to see it.

  How well could the monster see in the dark? The question ripped through Conny’s mind like shrapnel. If the things lived beneath ground level, it stood to reason that they would be able to see pretty well in the dark. But how well?

  If it saw me…

  Conny pressed her ear to the door, and heard the strange tapping sound the creature made as it approached. It moved forward and then paused, almost like it was searching for something, before moving on again.

  If it had seen her, her chance of survival would be determined by her physical strength; whether she could hold the door shut if the thing in the tunnel began to push from the other side. That did not seem likely.

  Click.

  Her eyes widened.

  Right outside.

  Click.

  Conny clamped a hand over her mouth, praying that Remy would not make a sound. She didn’t dare to look down at the dog. Didn’t dare to move a muscle, afraid that even the slightest noise would give away her position.

  For a sickening eternity, Conny stood at the door, listening.

  And the clicking began again, growing fainter. Moving further away.

  After a long time, Conny allowed herself to breathe again, and she flicked her light on, glancing at Remy. He stared up at her with wide, frightened eyes, visibly trembling. She scratched reassuringly at his ears, wishing there was someone who might scratch hers.

  She swept the light from right to left and took in her surroundings: the room wasn’t really a room at all; just the entrance to a small service corridor which she figured probably connected two of the main tunnels. The corridor ended at a short set of steps leading up to another door.

  She peered at it uncertainly. On the one hand, putting another door between herself and the clicking thing in the tunnel seemed like the best idea anyone could ever possibly have; on the other, the corridor looked very old and little-used. There was every chance it would lead her even further away from civilization.

  “What do you think, Rem? Is this a way out?”

  Remy didn’t appear to hear her.

  He was staring back at the door that Conny had just shut.

  Conny’s jaw clenched, and she knelt next to the dog, placing her hand on his powerful shoulders. Remy’s heart was pumping like a jackhammer.

  “What do you hear?” Conny lowered her voice to a whisper.

  Remy tilted his head, ears tw
itching.

  And then he began to back away from the steel door.

  It was all the persuasion that Conny required.

  “Come on, Rem, let’s go.”

  *

  It didn’t take long to cross the corridor; certainly not long enough for Conny to believe it could possibly offer a way out of the tunnels. She prayed that the steel door at the far end would not be locked, trying not to picture the result if it was: trapped in a dead-end corridor, with only the tunnel she had just fled from as an exit.

  When she reached the door, she flicked off her light once more and put a calming hand on the back of Remy’s neck. Wincing, she grabbed the cool steel handle and twisted gently, letting out a soft sigh of relief as the door opened, and stale air washed over her.

  And not just air.

  To her right, the impenetrable darkness melted away, and was replaced by a soft orange glow.

  Light.

  It was one of the missing Tube trains, sitting silently on the track like some eerie museum exhibit. The typical surgical-white lighting of the carriages was gone, and in its place there was what she guessed were emergency lights. The train must have suffered some sort of mechanical failure.

  She dropped her eyes to Remy.

  He was staring at the train curiously, but he looked relaxed enough.

  Conny headed toward the train, keeping her gun levelled, scanning for movement. Approaching from the front, she had a long time to stare at the smashed front windows, and the torn corpse draped across them. A vast dark stain blossomed beneath the prone body of the driver, almost covering the nose of the train.

  When she drew parallel with the front of the train, she peeked through the open door. The driver’s controls had been smashed in, and the cab was a tangled web of ripped cabling and smashed circuit boards. It almost looked like the work of one of the creatures; a frenzied, animal attack. But why?

  To disable the lights?

  It made no sense. The things were animals, weren’t they? Or monsters? She had no trouble believing that the creatures could have smashed their way into the train and killed the driver, but how would they know how to cut the lights…and why would they even bother? Without the driver, the passengers were sitting ducks, lights or no lights. If a group of armed police couldn’t fight one of them, a bunch of terrified commuters trapped inside a stopped train would have stood no chance.

  Despite that certainty, Conny’s attempts to steel herself for what the rest of the train might contain fell short.

  Way short.

  A glimpse through the smashed windows of the first carriage was enough for Conny to truly grasp that what was happening in the tunnels below London really was far above her paygrade. Shit, it had to be above everybody’s.

  The passengers inside had been slaughtered—no, shredded—by something. What was left in the carriage, pooled on seats and splashed up walls, looked more like a grisly stew than human bodies. Conny’s eye fell on a dismembered foot here, an exposed jawbone there. Something sitting on a seat, which looked for all the world like a severed head with a human heart stuffed into its final scream.

  Conny tore her eyes away and gulped for air, felt her stomach heaving, and then finally, when she drank in a breath and tasted the meat hanging on the air, she gave up the fight and let her breakfast out onto the track, loudly.

  She heaved twice.

  Spat.

  Click.

  Gasped for air.

  Spat.

  Click, click, click.

  Conny froze.

  Somewhere behind me.

  Too late to run.

  This is it.

  She straightened, her nausea forgotten, and aimed her gun at the darkness, squinting; wishing that the light spilling from the train would just turn the hell off for a moment. The weapon shook wildly, and she figured her chances of actually hitting anything were around zero.

  The clicking kept coming.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Conny loosed off her entire magazine, and the report of the Glock was deafening in the tunnel. When the echo of the gunshots faded, Conny lowered the weapon, drawing in a tremulous breath.

  Click, click.

  The shape emerged from the darkness slowly.

  “Don’t shoot.”

  The shape rasped out a wheezing chuckle.

  Conny’s jaw dropped. Robert Nelson shuffled toward her, his own gun held in listless fingers, pointed at his feet. He was pulling the trigger, over and over again. Click, click, click. In his other hand, Robert clutched Jackson’s leash.

  It looked like there were still parts of Jackson attached to it.

  Robert stared straight through Conny, his eyes filled with tears that made his wide grin all the more unsettling.

  “Don’t...shoot,” he gurgled again, thickly, and collapsed to the ground.

  He was still pulling the trigger of the empty gun repeatedly, and when Conny knelt next to him and plucked the weapon away, his finger just...carried on. Firing the phantom gun that his mind still held.

  Robert’s eyes fixed on the roof of the tunnel, wide with fright and shock, and Conny knew as she looked into them that the roof would be the last thing Nelson saw. He was bleeding badly; choking out thick mouthfuls of blood.

  Conny ran the light down across his body, expecting to see savage tears; half-certain that she would see his innards hanging out, just like the driver of the train.

  What she saw was far worse.

  A single bullet hole, punched into the base of Robert Nelson’s throat.

  Blood spurted from the wound at an obscene rate, and when Conny shrugged off her jacket and pressed it to the awful chasm in his neck, the heavy fabric soaked through almost immediately. She tossed it away and pressed her palm into that slippery, ruined throat, praying that she might hold his life inside him through sheer will.

  She felt the pumping; the dreadful throbbing of blood.

  Ebbing.

  Slowing.

  Stopping.

  When Robert Nelson died, Conny couldn’t help but let out a scream of despair. For that moment, the fearsome creature and the tunnel and the train of torn bodies ceased to exist, and there was only the fact that she had messed up everything, and it had cost a man his life. She screamed because she had to. Because there was no choice.

  And somewhere in the darkness, something answered her.

  The shriek that echoed through the tunnel ripped a gasp of horror from Conny’s lungs. It was close. Jesus, in the silent darkness, the noise sounded terrifyingly loud.

  She stumbled to her feet, and for a moment her legs just wanted to start running again, but she caught herself in time. The front of the train was almost certainly blocking the thing’s view of her—but judging by how close the creature sounded that would only remain the case for a matter of seconds.

  Have to get out of sight.

  Conny stared about her frantically, and saw only two options: under the train, or in the train.

  She could drape the bodies over herself, maybe; camouflage herself beneath the horror.

  The prospect of lying in that lake of gore was numbing; something beyond terrifying, but there was no time to consider just how grim it might be. Right now there was only survival. Only those two options.

  In the distance she heard it coming fast.

  The hideous clicking.

  Charging toward her.

  Under the train.

  Or in the train.

  Conny grabbed Remy’s collar firmly.

  And made her choice.

  22

  It didn’t run along the ceiling this time.

  Conny saw the clawed feet approaching, and her blood froze. She and Remy were wedged beneath the train, and most of her view of the tunnel was cut off by the tracks and the undercarriage.

  But she saw the feet, and the sight of them dropped the temperature of her blood to zero. Each toe ended in a talon that looked like it belonged to some prehistoric predator.

&nbs
p; Alongside her, Remy’s body had gone alarmingly slack, like the dog was so scared it had slipped into a state of shock. She kept a palm pressed over his mouth, though it didn’t seem likely that he would make a sound and give away their position, and she craned her neck.

  The creature paused near the front of the train, and Conny’s eyes widened with alarm as her mind tossed up a horrific possibility for the first time.

  Can it smell us?

  The creature took two quick strides toward Conny, and she almost screamed, certain that it would reach a clawed hand beneath the train, but suddenly, those terrifying feet were gone.

  A thump above her made the carriage shudder.

  It was inside the train.

  She heard its clacking footsteps move from one side of the carriage to the other, and several quieter thumps, like the monster was tossing body parts around. Searching methodically.

  Looking for someone hiding among the bodies, Conny thought, and she felt like vomiting again when she realised how close she had come to hiding beneath the corpses herself.

  Above her, the creature continued to hunt.

  They weren’t just animals, she realised. They were intelligent; capable of considering their prey’s thought process. It was surely just a matter of time before the thing decided to check underneath the train.

  Run?

  She felt despair well inside her. Just crawling out from beneath the train would surely make enough noise to alert the monster to her presence. And even if she did make it out, where was there to run to?

  And what about Remy?

  She couldn’t run.

  All she could do was wait, and pray.

  Glass breaking.

  Another thump; further away.

  It went into the next carriage!

  Conny felt a surge of hope rush through her. Was it possible that she could be so lucky twice? To have the creature right on top of her a second time, only for it to head off in the wrong direction once more?

  She tensed her muscles, and listened. If the thing moved even further down the train, she might get a chance to run after all.