by Chris Ward
He was on his feet before she started to laugh, moving away from her to look for a way down into the building. As she heard him kick a door in and call for her to follow, she wondered if this was what madness felt like.
She glanced back across the street at the other building. The Huntsman still stood there, a darker shadow against the night, watching her. Perhaps confused by their escape, perhaps amused by its prey’s wiliness, perhaps merely considering what to do next, it was observing her calmly, the crossbow hanging idle by its side glinting in the light of the street below.
There was no way to tell what was going through its mind, but going through her own was the realization that she had just cheated death, and that she was probably going to have to do it again in the days to come.
She turned away from it and headed after Switch.
Chapter Twenty
Escape
Paul was off the train practically before it had stopped, pushing through the crowds and up the stairs to the ticket gates. He found them manned for once which delayed him for five painful minutes. To see people checking for tickets was an uncommon sight, but when the gates were manned, armed guards were usually present, and he’d seen more than one fare dodger shot dead. He couldn’t let himself be among them.
Through the ticket gates he raced towards the east exit and jumped the stairs three at a time. Out on the street he found a bus had just pulled in and he jumped aboard even though it was barely half a mile to his house. He was so tired he could barely run anymore, but it was also another chance to throw them off the scent.
He jumped off again while the bus was still moving, alighting outside the building in which he lived with his brother. Once, this building at 14 Monument Square had been their family home, and Paul could still remember having good times here before the air darkened, the perimeter gates shut permanently and the guns appeared on the streets. Back before Britain became Mega Britain, and hope began to fade.
The day after the Governor passed the law prohibiting anyone to leave the city without a permit, Paul had watched from his bedroom window as tanks rolled into the square, dispersing hordes of protesters. Eight years old that day, still a year and a half before his brother would come into the world, Paul saw his first death, a young man with dark hair and glasses, wearing a student-friendly anti-war T-shirt and an old pair of jeans. Even through the glass Paul had heard the crunch as the body went under the tank.
The boy had been his older brother, Gareth. Just sixteen, he was killed outside their front door. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one that mattered that day to Paul’s family, and their lives, until then peaceful, were shattered.
Owen fulfilled some of their mother’s desire for a replacement, as his birth was the only thing that ameliorated her sorrow. That she saw her dead son in the eyes of her newborn was probably one of the reasons why, when Paul was just thirteen and Owen four, she chose suicide as a way out.
Their father too, was dead by the time Paul was fifteen. Weighed down by loss and sorrow, he was unable to cope with two young boys. Paul came home from school one day to find his father had left them. A suitcase was missing from the cupboard in his parents’ bedroom, and some of his father’s clothes were gone. There was no note.
Paul had let Owen believe their father might still be alive, but he knew otherwise. There was nowhere to go and their father had been weak; he hadn’t had the strength for adventure.
The first few weeks afterwards had been a struggle. That fateful day had proved Paul’s last at school and his next had been part begging, part petty theft. He had lacked the skills for it, getting beaten up more than once, chased by the police and also by his intended victims. Then one day he had been caught in the act of trying to pilfer someone’s wallet, and the man pressing a knife to his throat had offered him two ways out. One was death, the other was life, but at a price. He quickly realised there was a new demand for this kind of work, and he quickly got good at it. While it tortured his mind each time he lay with his face pressed against a concrete floor in an abandoned building, or on his knees in a dark alley with rough hands gripping the back of his head, the money came. And the money meant food and clothes for him and more importantly, Owen. Sometimes, you did what you had to do.
He pushed in through the door and hurried up the stairs to the third floor landing. Once, the whole building had belonged to their family, but his mother’s death had prompted his father to downsize, splitting the house up into three, making some renovations and subletting out the two lower sections as self-containing flats. It was the last genuinely useful thing his father did, and a long term tenant in the bottom floor flat who paid rent on time was a godsend for Paul, despite a succession of short-lived tenants on the middle floor.
‘Owen?’ he shouted. ‘You home?’
He shouted again, but his brother didn’t respond. As he reached their door Paul prayed he wasn’t too late. The flat was unlocked. He dropped his clawboard by the front door and burst in.
‘Owen? Owen! Where are you? Owen!’
He crashed through into the kitchen, the door thudding back against the wall. On the table in the centre of the room were a half-eaten sandwich and quarter of a glass of orange cordial. There was no sign of a struggle.
He heard a sound behind him and spun on his heels.
‘What’s with the door slamming and the shouting?’ Owen stood in the doorway, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. His arms were folded. ‘I was just watching a movie, all right?’
At the relief of seeing his brother alive, unharmed, and as cocky as ever, Paul’s legs sagged. He gripped the edge of the table for support. ‘Thank God you’re okay,’ he said.
Owen just gave an adolescent’s nonchalant shrug. ‘Of course,’ he grunted.
‘Listen. You have to get some stuff together. Spare clothes, money if you have any, and anything essential or that you can’t bear to part with. Keep it small, keep it light. Just one rucksack.’
‘But I’m watching a movie! It’s only halfway through!’
Paul slammed a hand down on the table. ‘This is important, Owen. We’re in danger. We have to go away for a while.’
Owen raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s after you?’
‘Trust me, you don’t want to know. But if you don’t hurry up, you might find out.’
Owen grinned. ‘Are we going on an adventure?’
‘Yeah, I guess you could call it that.’
‘Cool.’ Owen turned and rushed off to his room. Paul did the same, picking through the cupboards first for some lightweight packets of dried food: fruit, noodles, soup, as much as he thought he could carry while running. He had no idea when they might eat again. Then, with the food and some basic toiletries stuffed into a small bag, he rushed through into his bedroom and filled the rest of the bag with spare underwear and another sweatshirt. From under his bed he grabbed an old clawboard Owen might need, and jammed it into the bag behind his clothes. Rummaging through the drawers of the bedside tables, he found what little money they had left, enough to buy them food for a few days. Then, hauling the bag up over his shoulder, heavier than he’d hoped, he turned back to the door.
Something on the desk to the right caught his attention. He moved closer, his heart caught in his throat. He reached out and picked the object up.
Out of the photo frame his parents smiled at him, his father with his arm around his mother, who was holding an infant Owen in her arms. Paul, age twelve, stood to his father’s left, a big grin on his face, a mop of light brown hair sprouting out of his head, blue eyes still unobstructed by the glasses he began to wear at age seventeen.
Above their heads, big white capital letters read, LONDON ZOO.
Thinking back, it must have been less than a year before the zoo closed, and it was the last happy time Paul could remember, before his mother slipped into depression. If Gareth had been there, it would have been perfect.
He opened up the picture frame, took out the photograph and stuffed it into his
bag.
In the kitchen he found Owen waiting. ‘I’m ready!’ his brother announced with a huge smile, and Paul couldn’t help but think his brother had been waiting for this chance all his life.
‘Christ, Owen, don’t you have a coat or something?’ Paul’s brother was still wearing the same clothes.
‘It’s by the door,’ he said.
Paul nodded. ‘Right, let’s go.’ He led the way to the front door. As he picked up his clawboard and pulled open the door, he looked back at his brother. ‘Owen, I said one bag.’
His brother had one bag over his shoulder and was dragging another one along the ground. ‘Ah, come on. It’s just some comic books and a few movies. I don’t want some bastard looting the flat and getting all my black market stuff.’
‘Owen, we have to travel light!’
His brother looked about to argue back, then his expression suddenly changed. His eyes had drifted past Paul, out into the stairway. ‘Er, Paul, there’s some guy down there. How the hell did he get in? Did you forget to lock the bottom door?’
Paul’s face drained of colour as he looked down the stairs to see the robed Huntsman standing outside the door of the middle flat, facing up the stairs towards them. Under its hood, its eyes were shadowed but its dog-like mouth seemed to grin. He heard that same salt-grinder voice:
‘Tube Rider . . .’
Paul acted through sheer self-preservation. He reached back, grabbed the bag of Owen’s loot and flung it as hard as he could down the stairs. The Huntsman lifted its arms to fight off a hail of books, DVDs, Blu-Rays and ancient VHS tapes. One heavy volume that Owen loved, about a boy wizard or something, struck it square in the forehead. The Huntsman howled in pain and slumped to its knees.
As Owen was gasping, ‘What the fuck is that?’, Paul was slamming the door, pulling the deadbolts and a larger anti-theft bar across, aware that they would do nothing other than give them a little time.
‘You got weapons? Is there another way out of here?’ Paul shouted.
‘What? Just a screwdriver, couple of kitchen knives. I’m just the kid, you’re the hero!’
‘Let’s hope so.’ Paul tried to think quickly. ‘Okay. Back into mum and dad’s room, we can get out the window.’
‘We’re fifty feet off the ground!’
‘I know! But I’ve seen what that thing can do! I’d rather jump than stay here. Now go!’
They rushed through into the bedroom. Paul heard the Huntsman pound on the front door a couple of times, heard the handle rattle. Then silence, followed a moment later by a loud cracking sound. The handle shook. The Huntsman had shot it with something, a weapon of some kind. It had broken the lock, but the deadbolts still held it shut.
‘Come on, Paul!’
Paul realised he’d been transfixed, while in the meantime Owen had pulled the window open and thrown his bag down on to the street.
‘How am I supposed to get down?’
‘The drainpipe,’ Paul said. ‘Climbed a tree before, haven’t you?’
‘Trees have a bit more grip, though!’
Paul heard a splintering sound from behind him. He tossed his bag out of the window, watched it fall a frightening distance and then land with a loud crunch, the food he’d put inside no doubt now mashed.
There was no margin for error. Owen was already out on the pipe, trying to twist himself around and get a decent grip before starting his descent. He looked irritated rather than scared, which was how Paul felt.
‘Hurry up, Owen –’
The front door burst open and something stumbled in, too fast for Paul to see clearly. It was off-balance, limping, though he couldn’t imagine it had shoulder-barged the door. Its build looked too slight.
‘. . . Rider . . .’
It veered towards them, one furred, wiry arm loose of the robe, wires beneath its skin clearly visible. The other hand was clutching at something at its waist, something that gleamed metallic under the kitchen light.
It reached the bedroom doorway and suddenly jerked sideways as it hit the door frame. It staggered across the room and the cowl fell back from its face. Paul’s mouth fell open as he saw the jumble of wires snaking back and forth across the creature’s scalp, above one eye that stared blindly and another that oozed blood. He had got lucky. The Huntsman had an old war wound, and one of the items from Owen’s bag had hit its one remaining good eye. Now it was pursuing them purely on the strength of its sense of smell.
Owen was still struggling with the drainpipe. Paul watched as the Huntsman dropped into a crouch, the claws on one hand scraping at the carpet, the other still fumbling blindly with its weapon under its robe. Its bloody eye flicked back and forth. Its teeth were bared and its nose wrinkled as it sniffed the air.
Paul couldn’t breathe. His whole body tingled as though his heart had stopped and he was caught in the moment between life and death. He stared at the Huntsman as it crouched by the door less than ten feet away.
As Owen shouted, ‘Paul!’ the Huntsman leapt at him.
He reacted instinctively. One hand was curled around the leather strap of the clawboard at his side. As the Huntsman flew at him he jerked it up, swinging it round as though he were trying to swat a fly.
The clawboard struck the Huntsman square in the face. Its momentum carried it forward on to him and his nostrils filled with a pungent mix of blood, animal and machinery. Then it fell past him, rolling across the floor into the corner.
‘Is it dead? Shit, is it dead?’
It took Paul a moment to collect himself and realise he wasn’t dead. ‘I don’t know! Get down the fucking pipe!’
‘I’m going!’
Paul backed away towards the window as Owen started down. The Huntsman had fallen in a heap, and at first didn’t seem to be alive. To kill one of the legendary killers so easily didn’t seem possible, and as he hooked one foot over the window ledge it shuddered and began to turn back towards him, body low to the ground, arms caught underneath it. As he watched, one arm freed itself and rose towards him. Gripped in its clawed fingers was what looked like a small metal crossbow.
Paul ducked as a crossbow quarrel slammed into the window frame less than five inches from his face. The Huntsman growled, then began to fumble with another bolt in the mechanism. Paul glanced down, saw his brother standing below him holding both rucksacks, then quickly shimmied down, his clawboard, still attached to him by one leather strap, tapping against the plastic pipe as he went.
‘You okay?’ Owen asked, as Paul jumped off the drainpipe and staggered over to him.
Paul tried to smile. ‘I’m still alive, that’s good enough.’ He pointed up at the window. ‘I’d say we have about five minutes before that thing is back on its feet and after us. Let’s make it count.’
‘Where to?’
‘The station.’
They started off in a run, rucksacks slung over their shoulders. Paul held his clawboard under one arm.
On the way, he said: ‘There’s something I’d better tell you. Something you’re going to need to know about if we’re going to avoid those things in future.’
Owen nodded towards the clawboard. ‘It’s about that skateboard thing of yours, isn’t it?’
Paul nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right. But it’s not a skateboard.’
‘Of course not, it doesn’t have any wheels.’ In the dark, Paul sensed Owen raising one eyebrow at him. His little brother said, ‘Hence the expression, “skateboard thing” . . .’
Chapter Twenty-One
Gathering
The huge portable television screen was set up on the back of a stationary truck parked on St. Cannerwells High Street. A large crowd had gathered around it, and an almost equal number of police stood lined up in front or were mingling amongst the crowd. Switch and Marta stood near the back, in the dark recesses of a cubbyhole stairway up to a tall town house.
The screen showed a press conference. A middle-aged man had just taken the stage. Cameras flashed and microphones were bei
ng waved at him by reporters just out of shot.
A voiceover announced, ‘The Foreign Secretary, Mr. Douglas Lewitt, will read the following statement, made earlier today by our commander and chief, Maxim Cale, Governor of Mega Britain.’
Marta glanced at Switch. He was staring at the screen with undisguised hatred in his eyes. ‘Fucking typical to send his minions,’ he spat. ‘Too scared to show his ugly ass face even on television.’
‘Shhh!’ she cautioned. ‘He does have some supporters, you know. And most of them are carrying guns.’
On the screen, Mr. Lewitt cleared his throat. ‘”Dear Patrons of Mega Britain,”’ he read. ‘“Many of you will be aware of the explosion that rocked our streets earlier today. This was due to an explosive device that detonated inside Westminster Underground station. An as yet unconfirmed number of civilians have died, as has, tragically, the honourable Ambassador from the European Confederation, Mr. Alberto Sucro.”’
There were a few ums and ahs from the crowd. He paused to let the news sink in before continuing. ‘“Finding those responsible and bringing them to justice is currently the government’s highest priority. However, it pleases me to inform you that, due to the unrivaled ability of our own Department of Civil Affairs, the identities of those responsible are already known, and an operation has been set in motion to see these criminals brought into custody. As I speak, our best DCA agents are on their trail and we expect their apprehension within hours. In the meantime, I can only request that the general public be on their guard and stay inside where possible. There may be more insurgents acting with these terrorists, and we are yet to rule out further attacks.
“Sadness springs to our collective hearts as I say these words, and though it brings pain to me to say that death may be worthwhile, in this situation that might prove true. Mega Britain has long been troubled by insurgents and terrorist attacks from within our own ranks, trying to undermine Mega Britain’s rise towards greatness. With the tragic death of one of their own, we can only hope to bring our cause to the hearts of the European Confederation’s wise leaders, and seek their moral and financial aid in repairing the cracks in our state caused by those who do not believe, those who do not share our vision . . .”’
