by Chris Ward
He led them down the street between the rows of old banks, away from the park, towards the city centre. The street was eerily quiet after the ruckus behind them, empty of people besides a tramp sleeping in a doorway. Even a dog beside him, sitting beneath a makeshift cardboard kennel only gave them a brief look, before dropping its head to its paws and closing its eyes.
The road opened out on to a wide plaza, a central area surrounded by a large roundabout, office buildings, old hotels and theatres rising up all around. To their left, the plaza opened out on to a harbour waterfront, while almost opposite them the road wound uphill past a towering Gothic cathedral.
‘This’ll be the city centre, then,’ Paul said. ‘It’s rather pretty, but where are all the people?’
‘Holed up in their houses?’ ventured Owen.
‘Not a bad guess,’ Marta said.
‘Or at work.’ They looked at Switch, walking ahead of them, his face hidden. ‘They keep this country running somehow,’ he said. ‘Who’s to say they don’t have whole armies of slaves chained up in underground factories?’
The others were silent for a moment.
‘Because the police are so pathetic?’ Owen said at last.
‘Yeah, the ones back there were, but I’m not so sure about those.’ Switch pointed towards the road that led up past the cathedral. A little closer now, they could see it was blocked by a tall chain-link fence that ran across the length of the road. Behind it stood two men in dark uniforms, their faces covered by helmets with visors. Each had a gun of some kind, tall like a rifle but with a thicker barrel.
‘We had best keep out of sight,’ Marta said.
Switch looked around as though getting his bearings. Familiarity flashed across his face, and he pointed. ‘See that old theatre over there? We’re going in there.’
Paul coughed. ‘You mean the one right near the fence over there? Er, pardon me for sounding crazy, but wouldn’t it be better to go back the other way?’
Switch grinned, good eye wide with a hint of insanity. ‘The last place your enemy will look for you is under their own fucking doormat,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I have plenty of enemies. And have I ever been caught?’
Without waiting for a reply, he headed off to the right, skirting around the central plaza, close to the buildings around it which cast long shadows in the dawn sun.
‘That’s unless your enemies hunt purely by smell,’ Paul muttered.
Marta shrugged. ‘He’s got us this far and we don’t have any better options.’
They followed after Switch, who skirted around out of sight of the guards by the fence and then headed back in their direction on the same side of the plaza. On this side the buildings all had a second floor overhang, giving them cover. They spotted a scattering of other homeless people lying asleep in the doorways here, but the buildings around it looked dark and abandoned.
The front entrance of the old theatre was shut up, huge barred wooden doors offering no way through. Switch, though, ducked into a thin alley that ran alongside. The others followed, almost having to turn sideways to squeeze through.
‘Where’s he going?’ Paul asked, stumbling on a mess of garbage, old drink cans and plastic bags, a couple of smashed up chairs and the charred remains of an old bookcase.
‘Voila,’ Switch said from the shadows ahead of them. Marta, going ahead of Owen with Paul coming last, stumbled out into a small courtyard at the theatre’s rear. A thin lane wound up out of sight behind a derelict pub towards the fenced off area, and in the other direction towards a distant junction.
Switch was standing by a service entrance, a small door in the wall alongside a larger opening blocked by a metal shutter, a drop off point for equipment or stage sets.
‘You want to get inside?’ Marta said. ‘I think between us we should be able to pick the lock.’
Switch shook his head and grinned again. He twisted the handle and the door opened silently. ‘It’s unlocked.’
Before they could say anything, he slipped through the opening.
‘Uh, Switch . . .’ Marta started, then shrugged her shoulders and followed him in. Paul started to tell Owen to wait outside, but his brother was already close behind Marta, his clawboard held up like a weapon.
Inside, Switch pulled the door shut behind them, and pulled a small torch out of his pocket. ‘I don’t want them to know we’re here,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Marta asked him.
‘Whoever lives in here.’
‘Is this not likely to get us killed?’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. A lot of things could get us killed right now.’ He flashed the torch around and headed across towards a door in the far wall. When he opened it a thin light slipped through. ‘Electricity’s on then,’ he said.
A square emergency light coloured the corridor beyond orange. Switch flicked a switch on the wall near to him and for a moment the loading bay was basked in a clinical brightness before he quickly turned it off again.
‘Why did you turn it off?’ Paul said, still squinting from the sudden brightness. ‘I preferred this place with light.’
‘I don’t think we’re in any danger,’ Switch said, ‘But I’d prefer it if we got to see whoever lives here before they see us. You know, just in case.’
‘You scared, Paul?’ Owen quipped.
Paul gave him a mock slap around the ears. ‘Shut up, kid.’
Switch headed up the corridor, the others following. He moved cautiously, checking around the corners before he moved on, always light on his feet.
‘Could be they’re sleeping too,’ he said.
‘Let’s hope so.’
Finally, Switch pulled open a door into what looked like a storage room. He glanced around inside, then flicked on a light. At the back of the room they could see a number of large chests stacked against the far wall. Switch shut the door behind them, then went over to the chests and started to pull one down.
‘We’ll help,’ Paul said, motioning Owen over.
‘It’s heavy,’ Owen said, as they dropped it down on the floor. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Old costumes, I’m assuming,’ Switch said. ‘This is a theatre, isn’t it?’
‘What do you want with those?’ Marta asked.
Again came that grin. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but after a long night of traveling, not to mention jumping over trains, hanging from buildings, getting stabbed, attacked, shot at . . .’ He spread his arms. ‘I fancied a few hours sleep.’
‘You’ve got that right,’ Owen said.
‘And you, kid, after getting a little shut-eye earlier, have nominated yourself for first watch.’
‘Switch, you’re one hell of a guy,’ Paul said, as Owen scowled.
‘Anyway, enough of the deserved praise. Let’s get this bastard thing open, see if we can’t find something that’ll work as a blanket.’ He tugged on the catch, but it was locked. ‘Okay, that’s fucking strange.’
‘Perhaps the costumes are valuable,’ Marta said.
‘Maybe, who knows?’
‘Let me try,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve dealt with worse locks than that. You got something thin?’
Switch pulled what looked like a metal pencil out of his coat and handed it to Paul.
‘What the hell is this?’
‘I got it on the black market. It’s an old ninja weapon. You throw it.’
‘Well, let’s see if it’ll pick locks too.’
Paul knelt in front of the case and pushed the metal pencil into the lock. The mechanism was big, not made for high security, and after a few seconds of jostling the tool back and forth, Paul grunted, ‘Okay,’ and the clasp snapped up. Switch pulled up the lid and stood back for the others to see the chest’s contents.
‘Oh my,’ Marta said, eyes wide.
‘Well, I’ll be fucked if that’s not quite what I was expecting to find.’
Paul and Owen leaned forward to look. Both gasped with surprise and Paul even took a step back.
The chest was full of guns.
‘Well,’ Switch said. ‘Looks like we’ve found ourselves a way out of this. There are enough guns here to storm London.’
From the doorway behind them, someone said, ‘That’s pretty much the plan.’
Switch and Marta spun, Switch with a knife in his hand, already coming up to throw. Paul stepped back, dragging Owen with him.
The door stood wide, opened so silently none of them had heard. Three men stood there, casually dressed but each with a semi-automatic weapon trained on the Tube Riders.
‘Okay,’ the man in the centre said. He was around thirty, lean and tight with wiry muscle, and, Marta thought, very handsome. She felt colour fill her cheeks and silently scolded herself for getting all girly at the most inappropriate moment. What the hell is wrong with me? They’re going to shoot us!
The leader’s eyes flicked to Marta and for a moment he looked amused. Then he glanced across at the others, gave a wry smile and flicked long, dark hair away from his face. ‘Well, there’ll be time later for introductions, but first of all would you mind telling us how you ended up in our armoury?’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lost Girl
It was twilight when Jess woke. She sat up and rubbed her head, then brushed some leaves and twigs off her body. She wrapped her arms around her, shaking out some of the stiffness. She had fallen badly and hadn’t intended to lose consciousness, but she was still a novice after all so really had to be thankful she hadn’t broken anything at best.
At first she had thought it was dawn, but then realised the sun was on the wrong side of the sky. It had been dark when she’d jumped from the train, and it appeared she had been unconscious right through the day. Perhaps her body just needed to shut down for a while, work some of the trauma out of her system, or perhaps she’d hit the ground harder than she’d intended and should consider herself lucky to still be alive.
Foolhardy, Jessica, she scolded herself. What good are you to Simon if you’re dead?
She climbed to her feet and saw the crossbow and her knife lying further back up the line. When she’d jumped after Simon she’d remembered to throw her weapons down first; landing on them would have been suicide. Her clawboard too, lay in the grass near her feet, and she was relieved to see it was undamaged.
Everything flooded back quickly: the ambush by the Cross Jumpers, her parents’ brutal murders, fleeing London with the DCA and the Huntsmen on their tail. She wanted it all to be a bad dream, but the sight of her parents’ mutilated bodies was burned on to her eyes, one that felt like a knife in her stomach, constantly being twisted. But perhaps even worse, had been that never-ending race through the pitch black of the railway tunnels, as they clung like lichen to the side of the freight train.
#
It seemed like they were speeding through the wet darkness forever, the freight train taking a different route to the normal underground trains, following a thin, cold tunnel that sometimes seemed so close that their bodies brushed the walls. Ghosts screamed out of the darkness and rare flickers of light burst from nowhere to dazzle them. Jess felt her hands shaking, her fingers seizing up from the cold as she fought to hold on.
The train roared on endlessly, the wheels thudding a rapid dakka ta dakka ta dakka ta over the rails below. Jess screamed her own panic out at the dark as her clawboard jumped and shook, its tenuous grip on the metal rail forever near to failing. Her legs ached from the vibrations, and her neck was stiff from the buffeting of the wind. For a second she leaned her head back into the dark, stretching her neck, only to feel something catch and tear away a clump of her hair. She jerked her head back in, acutely aware just how close they were to the tunnel walls. Another inch . . .
The tunnel continued roughly straight as far as she could tell, the train jerking back and forth in a meandering line, tugging her shoulders, making her hips hurt. After what felt like an eternity the tunnel began to rise, and then suddenly they were outside, rolling below the clear night sky, the looming perimeter wall of London GUA receding behind them like a chasing mountain that couldn’t keep pace. And as Jess looked out past a thin chain link fence at the dark shadows of forest behind, lit only by the light of the moon, she felt as though for the first time since escaping the Huntsmen she could breathe.
Suddenly the train didn’t seem so fast. Suddenly her aches and pains seemed to leave her, and suddenly she understood how this could be not just dangerous and terrifying, but exhilarating. Defying the danger she had faced in the tunnel, she leaned her head back into the cold air and let the wind take her hair.
As her eyes adjusted to the night she could make out the others on the train ahead of her. Paul, at the front, was suffering worst from the wind; he had a coat but was also trying to shield Owen from the full blast of the cold. Marta and Switch too, had managed to crowd together now the threat of the tunnel wall was gone, but it barely made a difference.
Now that she could see him, Jess shuffled her way forward to Simon, and from his agonized moans she realised his wound was worse than they had thought. His head lolled as he struggled to stay conscious, even the constant buffeting of the wind failing to help.
‘I can’t hold on!’ he gasped, eyes squeezed shut with pain.
And then, suddenly, before she even had a chance to reply, the train bucked, hitting a loose or ill-fitting rail. Simon was there one moment, gone the next, his already tenuous hold unhooked by the train’s movement, pitching him off into the dark. The train rushed on so fast she didn’t even hear the sound of him striking the ground.
Jess screamed, her mind snapping alert. ‘Marta!’ she screamed forward into the wind. ‘Simon’s gone!’
Marta looked back at her, and in the dark her expression was unreadable. Whether Marta had heard or not, Jess couldn’t tell.
‘I have to find him!’ she screamed. Then, ‘We’ll meet you there!’ although she wasn’t really sure where there was. She heard Marta shout her name, but Jess was no longer listening. She threw her weapons away, then closed her eyes, tensed her hands on the clawboard, and kicked up and off.
She trusted entirely to luck. Life owed her a break, and she took it now. Landing on a slope, the wind was crushed out of her as she rolled, bouncing down through thick grass and brambles that tried to hold on to her clothes. Her head spun, the clawboard falling loose from her grip, and the last thing she remembered was something hard as it collided with her head.
#
As she looked around now under the last remnants of sunlight, she realised the claws of the brambles that had raked her skin through her clothing had slowed her progress just enough. Otherwise the rock she hit might have killed her.
Taking her weapons, she crept back alongside the railway line, looking for signs of where Simon had fallen. In the dark, it had been difficult to judge how far the train had gone while she’d been dumbstruck, but she guessed it could be anything up to three miles. It had taken time to throw her weapons down and alert the others, and also – it shamed her to admit – time to decide if she should follow Simon or not. She had been frightened, of course, but part of her wondered if there was any point. He had been badly injured already and the fall would surely have killed him. Only the image of her dead parents had spurred her on. Simon was all she had left now, and if there was a chance he was still alive and she could save him, she was prepared to take it.
After half an hour of walking she had still found no sign of him, and had come to a small bridge under which a fast flowing river made its rocky way down into the valley. While she couldn’t be certain, she had no recollection of them passing over a river after Simon had fallen, and she was sure she had gone too far. Frustrated, she began to backtrack.
Just as she was beginning to wonder whether they might have passed over the bridge after all, she saw something wooden poking up out of the undergrowth by the fence.
Simon’s clawboard.
Of Simon, though, there was no sign.
Jess looked around h
er, wondering if he’d crawled a few feet and was lying nearby. There was no sign of him on the upslope side of the tracks, nor in the trees in the immediate vicinity. There was a hole in the fence that he could have climbed through, but there was no blood, no sign of torn clothing. The sky was darkening but Jess could still see that on the other side of the fence the undergrowth had been trampled down.
As she ducked through the hole she touched a piece of the cut metal with her finger and found it still sharp. In the twilight she’d thought the hole caused by rust, but someone had done this recently with wire cutters. Simon, she knew, had no such equipment, which meant someone had been here and taken Simon with them. Whether he was living or dead, though, was another matter.
She looked back towards the railway line. The trees that overhung them already made it difficult to see, and with no torch or way of making light she knew she could easily get lost. Still, Simon was out there somewhere, maybe in danger. And there was no telling how much of a head start they had on the Huntsmen. It could be days, it could be hours, depending how hard they were to track and how fast the Huntsmen could run.
She turned with her back to the railway line, and started forward into the forest. The undergrowth was sparse beneath the trees, many of which tilted at bizarre angles. For a while she was able to follow the trail left by whoever had taken Simon: the undergrowth was trampled and hacked down in places. Whoever had taken him –almost certainly more than one person – had not feared pursuit, making her more and more certain that it wasn’t the Huntsmen or the DCA.
In places, the foundations of old buildings rose up out of the undergrowth. Pretty soon Jess realised she was walking through an overgrown, abandoned town. Wide sections between buildings marked old roads, with occasional patches of tarmac appearing underfoot. She remembered a fairytale from her childhood, Sleeping Beauty, where everyone in the castle fell into a deep sleep for a hundred years and everything became overgrown. She felt a little nervous, but in another way it was almost beautiful. Nature, something she’d seen so little of, was untamed here, rapidly claiming back its stolen land.
