The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

‘Ah, fuck.’

  The two men started to walk away as others came forward to open up the freight truck doors. Wooden slats slammed down above them, cutting off their view. The open doors vibrated and wooden boards clattered as men ran up them to unload the cargo inside.

  Marta’s eyes caught Switch’s, then Paul’s. So, as they thought. They were hunted.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Paul whispered to Marta.

  ‘I have no idea. Switch?’

  They looked for the little man, and saw him moving away from them along the side of the platform towards the front of the train, crouched low beneath the metal pipes and supports of the carriage frame. He glanced back towards them. ‘Wait here,’ he hissed. ‘And stay in tight against the wall!’

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Owen asked.

  Paul and Marta both looked at each other. ‘You don’t think he’s going to –’ Marta began.

  Paul shook his head. ‘He’s not that crazy. Is he?’

  #

  Switch glanced up from time to time as he moved along beneath the train. He saw workers unloading the freight, men in dirty overalls with thick forearms, scarred faces with bitter stares. So, life in Bristol sucked as much as it did in London, then.

  While that was not his concern, protecting his friends was, and Switch had an idea. In a wide open space with no cover, the best way to escape was to have your enemies looking the other way, and he had just the way to make them do that.

  He reached the front of the train and ducked beneath the wheels to the other side. Peering up over the platform edge, he saw another train standing a couple of platforms away, providing him with cover. Pushing the clawboard up on to the platform ahead of him, he wormed his way up through the space beneath the cab’s step. He crouched in the cab’s shadow for a moment, checking again. Then, with one hand he reached up, searching for the handle behind him, eyes never leaving the platform.

  He found it and tugged. The handle turned, but the door didn’t move.

  Switch cursed under his breath. A common precaution dating back hundreds of years to the days of regular train hijacking was to keep the spare door locked. Most trains were operated by one man, and since most people were right-handed the right-side door was the obvious choice for access.

  Still, no matter. He gripped his clawboard tightly then jabbed it backwards above his head, ramming the thin end into the passenger side window with all his strength.

  Trains had thicker glass windows than a car, and while he felt the window crack it didn’t shatter. Wincing from the searing pain in his side and the jarring in his wrists, he hit the window again.

  This time he felt a crunch, and he twisted up and around, using the clawboard to break away the shards of broken glass. Switch slipped his hand in through the broken window and pulled up the door release from the inside.

  Inside the cab he put the clawboard down on the seat and looked around at the controls. He’d never been inside a train before, but it didn’t look dissimilar to the cab of a bus. There were dials, handles, buttons . . .

  He was choosing which handle to try when the driver’s side door opened and the driver, Phil, climbed up beside him.

  Phil had been looking down, otherwise he would have seen Switch and had a chance to get away. But, not expecting to find someone else inside the cab, he’d climbed right up into range before he looked up.

  Switch pressed a knife to Phil’s throat. ‘I’ve got not quarrel with you,’ he said, eyes hard. ‘Tell me what I want and you live.’

  The driver was overweight but his arms were heavily muscled. Dark eyes and a mashed nose that was bent a little to the left suggested he’d been involved in many a fist fight. He towered over Switch, and Switch knew that without the knife he’d be in trouble.

  ‘You little fuck.’ Phil started to lift a hand, but Switch’s other hand came up, holding another knife, a thin flick blade. The man paused, words cut off.

  Switch grinned, showing his teeth. Right in front of the driver’s face he jerked the knife back and made a thin incision down the side of his own face.

  Switch felt a warm trickle of blood dribble over his skin and down his neck. He grinned again, and moved the bloody knife back and forth so that the metal gleamed in the cab lights.

  Phil’s mouth dropped open, his eyes widened. Growing up on the street had taught Switch many things, and one of them was that while cutting someone else was hard, cutting yourself was far harder. An adversary willing to cut him or herself was one to be feared.

  The ruse worked. ‘What do you want?’ the driver said. ‘I have a wife, kids . . .’

  ‘The handbrake.’

  Phil moved his hand slowly, pointing to a red handle. Switch felt a certain satisfaction in that it was the one he had guessed on.

  ‘Release it.’

  The man did so.

  ‘The engine.’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Start it.’

  The driver hesitated just a moment, and Switch pushed the blade a little tighter. Phil turned the ignition and the roar of engines sounded all around them.

  Switch smiled. ‘Thank you for your cooperation.’ Before the driver could reply, he made a dummy feint with the second knife. Phil jerked backwards, and Switch kicked out, causing the man to overbalance. He stumbled backwards down the steps on to the platform.

  Switch pulled the door shut. As the train started to move, he heard shouting from outside. Back along the platform came the terrible grinding sound of wooden doors scraping on the concrete, the crash of overturning freight crates mixing with angry shouts. He only hoped the diversion would work long enough for the others to get away.

  He glanced out through the driver’s window. People were running along the platform towards the front of the train. He saw the driver back there too. Now the knife was gone from his throat, the man had recovered some of his courage and was leading several other workers and security guards in a pursuit of the runaway train.

  Switch was pleased. He was drawing them off; perhaps they thought he was alone. He hoped the others were safe.

  He moved across the cab and looked out through the passenger side window. He saw more men running towards him from this side too. The train was barely moving at ten miles an hour and without any knowledge of its operation, playing with the buttons and levers might cause it to stop rather than speed up. He was keeping in front of them, but only just, and if he tried to get out he risked being caught, or worse, shot.

  ‘Bugger it . . .’

  He grabbed his clawboard, kicked open the door and swung himself up on to the metal roof of the cab. He walked in a crouch for a few feet then dropped flat on his belly, out of sight of the men on the platform. The metal felt warm to the touch and the heat made the wound in his side ache.

  He lifted his head to look back, long enough to see several men still in full pursuit of the train as it rolled towards the end of the station. Behind them all, though, he saw the other Tube Riders running across the station, jumping over the tracks like a group of leaping deer.

  He’d given them the chance they needed, and as he watched, one by one they vanished down a stairway near to a set of rusting ticket gates that had once fed passengers into the station. Marta was the last, and as she reached the stairs she looked back across the station towards him, lifted her hand and waved. He knew he had to find a way to follow.

  He looked back towards the front of the train and found he had another problem. The line came to an end a few hundred yards further on, but blocking the way was another stationary locomotive. He was heading for a collision.

  Switch looked up. Just where the station building ended an electricity wire hung from the roof, stretching back inwards towards a small building in the centre of the station that had antennae and aerials on its roof. If he could catch it with his clawboard he could swing right over the chasing men, drop down and have a head start on them heading for the stairway. The only problem was that it was fifteen feet over his head.

  Switc
h smiled. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a coil of climbing rope: thin, strong nylon. He had armed himself well before leaving London, not just with knives and other weapons, but with several other small objects that he thought might come in handy, of which this rope was one.

  He tied it to one strap of his clawboard and then stood up in full view of his pursuers. One or two men had reached the cab and were trying to get a handhold to climb up. The train was still moving steadily and they were running out of platform.

  ‘Oi, you!’

  ‘There’s the bastard!’

  Switch threw the clawboard up into the air, above and over the electricity wire. As he caught it on its way back down and pulled the rope taut, he could only hope the wire would hold his weight. The wire across the street where Marta and he had escaped from the Huntsman had held both of them, but this one looked a lot thinner.

  He wrapped the rope around his wrists and then sprinted back along the top of the train. As he reached the end of the locomotive the wire began to angle away from the platform and Switch jumped, the rope sliding along the wire and taking him above the heads of the men. One or two turned to give chase but he was gaining speed, the wire holding firm and beginning to angle more steeply down to the small building he assumed was a power control booth.

  Behind him he heard a thundering crash and he turned back to see the cab collide with the stationary locomotive and topple over on to its side, the next few carriages hanging at decreasing angles until the weight of the train load took over. People were running in all directions, shouting for security, for firemen, and for someone to catch Switch.

  Twenty feet before he reached the power control booth he unhooked the rope from his wrists and dropped to the ground, pulling the rope down and wrapping it into a quick bundle around his clawboard. His heart was racing with exhilaration and sweat was beading on his forehead.

  He glanced back and saw three men rushing towards him, still a hundred feet away but closing. Looking in front of him, he saw the stairway across one more set of tracks.

  Suddenly Marta’s head rose up from the stairway on the far side. ‘Switch!’ she shouted. ‘Look out!’

  He guessed she meant the men, but as he took a couple of steps towards the set of tracks separating him from her, he saw another cargo train rushing into the station.

  It was moving too fast to stop; it had to be a through-train, heading on to another station further into the city.

  Looking up the platform he couldn’t see the far end as the trucks continued to flow into the station.

  It had cut him off. There was no way to get to Marta and he couldn’t outrun three men, not with his injury.

  One hand fell to his knife. He glanced back. They were big, burly men who probably knew how to brawl, maybe even work a blade. One, maybe two, he’d have a chance, but three –

  He looked back towards the train, and gripped his clawboard tightly, his decision made. Riding the trains was his life, he would let the train claim him rather than the men.

  As the trucks rolled past he sprinted forwards.

  Cargo trucks didn’t always have a drainage rail, but he saw one coming that did. He timed his run and leapt just as the truck came level with him, his clawboard out.

  A second later and he would have missed it, hitting the truck behind which had no rail, and slid down the side of the train to be torn apart by the sharp edge of the platform as the train ran by, but his timing was perfect. His clawboard caught the truck’s rail, just a couple of feet short of the end. He slid a few inches but used his feet to brace himself. He heard the shouts of the men behind him as he slipped his left hand free from the clawboard and gripped the rail with his fingers. Shouts of anger and surprise rose from behind him as he kicked off at the same time as he pulled, flicking his body over on to the roof of the train.

  He rolled, started to stop, and then pushed himself onwards, rolling across the top of the train and off the other side.

  He heard Marta screaming for him as he fell through the air, twisted and landed hard on the concrete. He gasped for breath and struggled to get up as the train rushed by, the knife wound sending daggers of pain up through his chest.

  Then hands held his shoulders and back, and he looked up to see Paul and Marta hauling him up.

  ‘Excellent job!’ Paul said, wrapping Switch’s arm around his shoulders and dragging him towards the stairway. Marta grabbed his clawboard and hurried after them.

  Switch felt air filter back into his lungs as they descended the steps into a dusty pedestrian underpass.

  Waiting at the bottom of the stairs, Owen shouted encouragement.

  ‘We’ve found a way out,’ Marta said. ‘There’s a door into an old underground parking garage. We can get out into the city through there.’

  ‘Quick, this way,’ Owen said. He was standing next to a door that opened on to darkness.

  ‘Look!’ Paul said. ‘Those men found another way down!’ He pointed. The three men who had been chasing Switch were running towards them from the far end of the pedestrian underpass.

  Marta pushed Switch through the opening. As Owen and Paul went through she dragged the door shut behind them.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then she realised they were in a vast underground parking garage, possibly an old long-stay area. One or two rusty, long dead hulks waited wheel-less in the dark. There, far across the parking garage, was the bright glimmer of an exit.

  Owen was fiddling with the lock. ‘There, that should hold them until they get something to break it with. I’ve jammed it.’

  Marta took a second to breathe. ‘Okay, we’ve made it this far. So far, so good. Now, Tube Riders, run!’

  They sprinted off across the empty parking garage together.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  White Rage

  Clayton felt that familiar sense of foreboding as he walked down the corridor to the Governor’s chambers. The eyes of the upturned past political leaders seemed to be staring at him, the reversed mouths down-turned in distaste.

  The Governor was standing by the window as usual, his back to Clayton. One arm rested on the tinted glass. Clayton quietly closed the door behind him and stood there, looking at the floor, unsure whether it was wise to break the Governor out of his reverie.

  After a few moments the Governor shifted slightly. One finger tapped against the glass, causing a dull thud. ‘Look at it, Mr. Clayton,’ the Governor said, not turning around. His voice took on a musing, wistful air. ‘The mess we made . . .’

  ‘Sir –’

  ‘Agricultural production in the southern GFAs is up six percent on last year, four percent in the north,’ the Governor said. ‘And in Scotland and Wales, the fisheries are working at closer to ten. Our great windfarms are producing more electricity than ever. We have problems in one or two of the GUAs, but production is still good in the south, industry good in the north. Most people are . . .’ He paused, choosing his word carefully. ‘Content.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘But here, in London, in our once glorious capital, crouching shamefully in the shadow of our pioneering space program, anarchy rules.’

  Clayton said nothing. He had sensed a tightening of the Governor’s voice, and thought that to interrupt again might mean death.

  ‘There are many ways to improve a failing situation, Mr. Clayton. The use of force, for example; crushing the opposition with tanks and bombs. But equally powerful can be persuasion, or manipulation. All can achieve similar results. None, however, work as well as one extremely simple, often overlooked action. Do you know what that is?’

  Clayton opened his mouth to answer, but the Governor cut him off. ‘Generosity. Give, and people respond. Give them what they want, and they will give what you require in return without question. Yourself, for example. When the government doubled your salary, Mr. Clayton, did it not make you happy? We gave you what you wanted, and in return you gave us what we wanted. You followed our orders without
question, regardless of what you might consider moral, and you achieved the results we required . . .’

  Clayton’s mouth was dry, but he managed to mutter, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Hmm. Until now, don’t you think?’ The Governor turned. Clayton took a step back as those red eyes bored through his own. The Governor continued, ‘With the Huntsmen in range, you called them off. Didn’t you?’

  Clayton, of course, had done no such thing. Vincent was responsible for the order to halt the Huntsmen as the Tube Riders headed back to St. Cannerwells, slipping behind Clayton’s back to further his own ambitions, and then hiding behind his senior officer when things hadn’t gone to plan. Clayton wanted to expose Vincent and see him rot in the torture chambers beneath Dr. Karmski’s research facility, but he knew that protesting his own innocence would achieve nothing. As senior officer, he was responsible for the acts of his men. He knew that if he left this room with his life his score with Vincent would be settled privately.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, hanging his head, unable to meet that gaze. ‘I thought –’

  ‘You are paid to do as ordered, Mr. Clayton, not to think.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Governor reached out for a standing lamp just in front of him and in one astonishing show of strength flung it hard across the room. It struck a shelf unit and smashed, the glass shattering, the wooden shelves cracking and collapsing, unloading their books and ornaments on to the floor. Clayton shrank back as the Governor advanced across the room.

  ‘Sir, I – it won’t happen again –’

  Ten feet from Clayton the Governor’s face jerked upwards towards the ceiling, the fiery red eyes revealing white undersides. Clayton felt his feet slip out from under him and suddenly he was lying on his back, his head not far from the door, his feet scrabbling at the carpet as the Governor advanced. Clayton was disorientated, but one thing was certain above everything else:

  The Governor hadn’t touched him.

  He looked up to see the Governor standing over him, red eyes like two cherries in a churning bowl of milk. The thick lips and high cheekbones of his face were blankly emotionless, the eyes alone carrying the threat of pain and suffering. Clayton gasped as one hand reached down, ice cold fingers closing about his neck.