by Chris Ward
She looked at the Huntsmen again. Like flicking through files, she knew about all of them from the information Karmski’s minions had uploaded into the computerized part of her mind. She knew which ones had been in active service, which ones contained blemished records, which ones were most likely to be uncontrollable once set loose. The scientists hoped that their data on each creature would help her control them, but it just scared her even more. From her own feelings she knew how much each Huntsman was hurting, and knew that madness and bloodthirsty insanity were just a simple order away.
One of the creatures stirred, its head lifting with a grunt, snout jerking towards the door. It shifted forward on to hands and knees, moving doglike towards the edge of the freight truck. As it reached the door, it lifted one hand and scratched at the wood.
Dreggo dropped into a crouch. She searched the data for information and found that this Huntsman, Craul, had tested highly in scent recognition tests. It had picked up something the others had missed.
‘Craul, what is it?’
The Huntsman swung its head towards her. Drool hung from its jaws, and the skin moved back from the teeth in a snarl. ‘Tube Riders . . .’
Dreggo raised an eyebrow. Could the disturbance in Bristol have been something else? Witnesses had spotted four people, but she knew the Tube Riders numbered six including the little kid. More likely was that they had split up.
Or perhaps one of them lay dead by the train tracks. It would take just minutes to stop the train and check.
Craul was growling and pulling at the door, locked from the outside. Dreggo knew they could break through if they really needed to, but it was worth Clayton thinking the DCA had control.
She tugged the radio from her belt, tapped in a number.
Clayton’s voice fizzled on the other end. ‘What?’
‘We’ve got something,’ she said. ‘Stop the train. We need to check.’
A minute later the train began to slow, finally bumping to a stop. Dreggo waited while doors opened further down and the voices of men carried down towards them. She could hear a lot of them out there; no doubt they weren’t taking any chances with a car full of Huntsmen.
She heard keys rattling in the padlock. ‘Stay back from the doors,’ someone shouted.
‘We’re back,’ she shouted back. She wanted to wait by the door and order the Huntsmen to attack them now, but the DCA agents would be heavily armed. Their time would come; she had sworn it to herself.
The door swung down. At least ten DCA agents stood there, weapons leveled at the Huntsmen. Dreggo felt sure the creatures could still overwhelm them if she gave the order. Many of them would be happy to die.
The Huntsman, Craul, snarled and took a couple of steps forward. ‘Tube Riders,’ he growled again.
‘Craul, back!’ Dreggo ordered, and to her surprise the creature responded, slinking back into the shadows where the others waited.
The men moved back to let her get down. ‘Lower your weapons,’ she said. ‘The Huntsmen work on my orders. Unless I say, you’re safe. Unless I say.’ She glared at them, undermining the threat. On the heat sensors installed into her robotic eye, the faces of several men flushed red with fear.
Leland Clayton stood at the back, behind his line of defense, she noted. ‘How was first class?’ she called to him, pushing through the armed men towards him.
‘What do you have?’ he said, ignoring her sarcasm. She noticed he had one hand in his jacket’s pocket, where no doubt his finger hovered over the button of the device that would stun her if she attacked him. His weakness made her want to kill him even more.
One of my Huntsmen picked up a scent,’ she said. ‘I think the Tube Riders might have split up. Otherwise, we’re looking for a body.’
Adam Vincent moved up alongside Clayton. His nose was bruised and blackened and one eye was swollen closed. He was limping from the nail gun wound and his obvious discomfort cheered her up greatly.
‘What happened to you?’ Dreggo quipped. ‘You fell asleep and the train rolled over you?’
Vincent glared at her. ‘I cut myself shaving.’
‘You shave with a sledgehammer?’
‘Shut it, bitch.’ Vincent turned to Clayton, who, she noticed, had a little smirk in the corner of his mouth. ‘One of them was hurt,’ he said. ‘One of the boys. The Huntsman shot him with a crossbow.’
‘Let’s do a sweep of the line,’ Clayton said. ‘See if we can find his body. The Huntsman smelled it when?’
‘A couple of miles back.’
Clayton nodded. ‘Can you pick up the scent yourself?’
Dreggo smiled. Clayton didn’t want the Huntsmen released if he could avoid it. ‘Not as well as they can,’ she said.
Clayton looked grim. ‘Okay, take two, have one track on either side of the line.’ He lifted a finger to point at her. ‘Keep them reined in though. I’ll have guns trained on them at all times.’
She held his gaze until he looked away. ‘Yes, sir.’
She took Craul and another Huntsman who had tested well, Jacul, and set one either side of the train line. Together they moved along the track, Craul and Jacul bent close to the ground, Dreggo walking along the tracks between them. Behind her four of Clayton’s agents followed, their guns trained on the Huntsmen. Clayton himself walked at the back. He had left Vincent back by the train to conduct his men in a sweep of the nearby forest. The other Huntsmen had been locked back up in the freight truck. Like cattle, she thought bitterly. Don’t give up, my new friends. Your time will come.
They had been walking for maybe twenty minutes when Craul let out a howl and darted towards the fence that kept people off the railway line.
‘Stop!’ someone shouted.
Dreggo heard the click of a gun. ‘Craul!’ she shouted. ‘Wait!’ But the Huntsman had ducked down by a hole in the fence and pushed through.
‘I’ll shoot!’ the agent shouted behind her, as the Huntsman emerged on the other side of the fence and dashed off into the forest.
‘Craul!’
The agent fired. The tak-tak-tak of automatic rifle fire blasted through the trees, sending birds flocking into the air. Dreggo flinched back from the sound, shutting her eyes for a moment. Finally, as the agent stopped firing, she smelt cobalt in the air, her enhanced sense of smell picking it up as thick as treacle. She looked through the forest towards Craul.
The Huntsman was lying face down about thirty feet away. He wasn’t moving. Dreggo felt a sudden pang of regret; after all, Craul had simply been following his initial order to find the Tube Riders.
Dreggo searched her files. Craul had once been a man called David Wilson, abducted from outside his home in Green Park in October 2064. He was survived by a wife and two young children, who, if luck was with them, would be still alive and well, the children now close to finishing high school.
Dreggo hung her head. A bolt of guilt ripped through her, thicker than the Huntsman’s crossbow quarrels in a pouch attached to her belt. It was government policy to send a certificate of death to any fallen Huntsman’s family. She knew what it would say: David had died in service of his country; his death had been honourable.
That they had probably stopped mourning him ten years ago was no matter. That certain details would be omitted, about the cruel experiments that turned him into a monstrous killing machine, or that he would have eaten his own children without a moment’s hesitation, didn’t matter either.
Whatever he had become, all Dreggo could see now was a man lying dead in the grass, shot in the back while trying to follow orders. She tried to feel nothing, tried not to care, but somewhere inside her the part that was still human burned with rage and shame.
‘What the hell happened here?’ Clayton, who had dropped back, shouted, running up towards them. ‘Keep the noise down, we’re not in the city anymore! People take note of gunfire out here!’
‘The fucker tried to run away,’ the agent said, looking at his weapon with suspicion, as though it had fired i
tself.
Dreggo glowered. ‘He was following the scent. Now one of my best trackers is dead.’
Clayton stopped a few feet away. He looked towards the fallen Huntsman and huffed. Dreggo watched him. Just behind his shoulder, Jacul waited by the edge of the tracks. A digital transmitter inserted into his brain meant she could speak to him with her mind; he could be on Clayton in a second. Another agent had his gun trained on Jacul, but at least Clayton would be dead before he had a chance to fire. Dreggo hesitated a moment, fighting the urge, but in the end she glanced back towards Craul’s fallen body, and couldn’t bring herself to sign Jacul’s death warrant too.
Clayton said: ‘You communicate with those things. They break loose out here and we have hell to pay. Remember that.’
‘It was okay to have them roaming wild in the city.’
Clayton shrugged. ‘There are lower standards there.’ Dreggo glared at him. His broad generalization took in almost everyone she had ever known. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘One less of those monsters is one less to worry about.’
Something inside Dreggo snapped. She leapt at Clayton, barely aware that while in her vicinity he had slipped his hand back into his pocket.
She knocked him to the ground, one arm sweeping for his face, metallic fingernail inserts raking at his eyes.
Pain bloomed in her and everything seemed to vibrate, as though someone had stuffed her into a washing machine set on high power. She tried to scream but her breath caught in her throat; all her muscles seemed to be bunched so tightly they might burst like blisters all over her skin.
Then it stopped. Dreggo opened her eyes, wiped away a sheen of sweat and tried to breathe as her heart raced. Clayton climbed to his feet. His free hand touched the scratch on his cheek that was a sign of just how close she had come. His other hand held the little box of pain Karmski had given him.
‘Try that again . . .’
Dreggo bared her teeth. ‘Always, always . . . look over your shoulder, Clayton. One day . . .’
Clayton tried to match her stare but failed. Despite his weapon’s potency, he knew how close she had come. ‘Just get on with finding those kids.’ With his finger hovering over the button, his voice shook as he said, ‘Or I’ll have you put down like the dog you are.’
‘You’d be doing me a favour.’
Clayton brushed himself down. ‘Get another one out of the freight truck and get me those damn Tube Riders.’ Without waiting for a reply he strode off in the direction of the stationary train.
Dreggo glared at the other DCA agents in turn until they looked away. Then, commanding Jacul to follow, she went to investigate what Craul had found.
There was a hole in the fence, a disturbance in the undergrowth nearby. Dreggo bent close and found the fence had recently been cut open, perhaps no more than a day ago. Jacul growled as he smelled what she did: Tube Rider scent, mixed with blood.
So, the injured one had fallen after all. The question was, was he dead or not? Someone had found him and come back with wire cutters. She found several sets of footprints, three unfamiliar scents.
Jacul, a few feet away, growled.
‘What is it?’
He pointed, saying nothing.
Dreggo nodded. She understood as she picked up the scent for herself.
The wet grass showed it had rained recently, and as a result the scents of the boy and the three who had carried him were a little dull, but a fifth scent was sharper, more recent. And Dreggo recognised it instantly as that of the boy’s girlfriend, the one she had tried to follow.
How sweet, she thought. He fell, and she came after him.
She ordered one of the agents to call Clayton. A moment later he came jogging back down the track, Adam Vincent hobbling along behind him.
‘We’ve got two of them out here,’ she said. ‘One is definitely mobile, the other could be dead. We can’t tell. I’m pretty certain he’s hurt at least. They shouldn’t be difficult to track down.’
‘Just two? So the others made it to Bristol?’
Dreggo nodded. ‘I’ll take three Huntsmen and track the two out here. You take the rest to Bristol and pick up the scent there. The handlers can control the Huntsmen for you.’
Clayton turned pale. One hand absently touched the mark on his cheek where she had slashed him. It was still bleeding slightly; he brushed the blood away with his finger and wiped it on his trousers.
‘I can’t leave you out here. How can I trust you?’
She pointed. ‘That little thing in your pocket? You have a choice. We split up and follow both trails while they’re still fresh, or we risk losing the Tube Riders. They escaped your pathetic attempts once. In Bristol they could disappear like rats down a drain.’ She smiled. ‘Of course, if you’d rather we stick together, I’m happy to take nineteen Huntsmen on a little outing in the country. I’m sure we could have lots of fun, out here, where the standards are . . . higher.’
‘She’s right,’ Vincent said. ‘We’ve wasted enough time already.’
‘Okay.’ Clayton turned to Vincent. ‘Order the handlers to secure the Huntsmen. When we get to Bristol we take only as many as we need, until she gets there. And you –’ he pointed a finger at Dreggo, ‘You stay in constant radio contact. As in every thirty minutes. I want to know exactly where you are. If you sight them, you call me. If you think you sight them, you call me. In fact –’
‘Okay, I get you. If I just want a little love chat, I call you.’
Clayton glared at her for a moment. Then, with a grunt of annoyance he turned on his heel, and they all headed back towards the train, Jacul at the back with the agents’ guns trained on him. The rest of the Department of Civil Affairs entourage waited near the train. Clayton told her a sweep of the area had found nothing but a ruined village. He offered to print her maps of the area from his laptop, but she refused.
‘The only map I need is the one the Tube Riders left behind,’ she said, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Don’t worry. I expect them to be dead by nightfall.’
‘Good.’
The Huntsman’s freight truck was opened up and Dreggo selected two more Huntsmen to accompany her in addition to Jacul. Several of the handlers who had also traveled with them as backup in case something happened to Dreggo, climbed up into the freight truck to secure the remaining Huntsmen.
Within fifteen minutes, the train had pulled away, rumbling on down the track, leaving Dreggo and her three Huntsmen behind. As the train rolled out of sight she turned to look at them.
Jacul was crouching by the hole in the fence. The other two, Meud and Lyen, were waiting a few feet away for orders. She looked at them and nodded. Together they made their way through the hole in the fence, and away from the train tracks into the forest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Government Policy
Marta found Ishael in an old dressing room not far from the room where they’d been allowed to sleep. He was standing by a wall that was covered in maps and charts, newspaper clippings, photographs and memos. He appeared to be studying a map of the city centre.
He smiled as she entered. ‘Hi, Marta. Did you sleep okay?’
‘Yes, thank you. Apart from the dreams.’
‘I can imagine.’ He looked uncertain for a moment, and his eyes flicked from her face to the floor and back. ‘Sorry about the interrogation yesterday,’ he said. ‘Times are hard, and it’s difficult to trust people.’
She raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘Especially those who walk in your back door unannounced.’
‘I guess we’ll have to lock it next time.’
She watched him as he turned back to the wall. He was maybe thirty, about the same age that her brother would be now. His face had the hardness of the streets, but his eyes still radiated kindness. She found herself wanting him to turn back, wanting him to look at her.
‘I especially enjoyed the shower,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘I haven’t felt clean in a while.’ Immediately she felt like an idiot
. What are you saying, Marta? You don’t want him thinking about you being dirty.
‘No problem.’ He turned back towards her, and Marta suddenly felt nervous. What the hell is wrong with me? I feel like I’ve met a film star.
‘This is our command room,’ Ishael said. ‘Really you shouldn’t be in here.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I forgive you.’ He smiled at her again. ‘From here we organise all the revolutionary activities that we don’t do.’
She laughed, glad to be back in control of herself. ‘Still waiting, huh?’
He nodded. ‘The time will come. Probably a little sooner than we were expecting, with the sudden appearance of you and your friends.’ She noticed how his smile dropped, as though he’d just been told the family he loved and cared for wouldn’t be coming home again.
‘How are the others?’ he asked, breaking the silence.
‘Switch went off to spend time with his uncle. Paul and Owen are still sleeping. I think they’re exhausted just from looking after each other, not to mention everything else.’
He took a step closer. ‘And you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re their leader, aren’t you?’
She shook her head, felt her cheeks redden. ‘I don’t know. I think they look to me, sometimes, because my brother was the first Tube Rider. They think that makes me leader by default.’
‘It’s hard being a leader, sometimes. Knowing that what you ask of others might put them in danger.’
She nodded. So, he understood.
‘What happened to your brother?’
Marta looked down at the floor, seeing Leo’s face there in the dirty tiles. ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘He disappeared a couple of years ago.’ She looked back at Ishael. ‘There were rumours he’d been taken. That he ended up on one of those space ships.’
