The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

  Switch looked away, frowning. ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt, Uncle.’

  William grinned, displaying pale yellow teeth. ‘You won’t see it. With luck you’ll be long gone by the time the Huntsmen start feeding on me.’

  ‘Don’t fucking joke like that.’

  ‘Sorry. Listen, don’t worry about me, kid. Stayed alive this long, haven’t I?’

  ‘I guess.’

  They were silent for a while, sipping their beers, listening to the occasional creak and groan of the old wood of the theatre. Then, Switch said, ‘Unc, what’s behind the fence? When I was a kid it was completely off limits.’

  William grinned. ‘I wondered when you’d ask. We have a bit of time, I think. Let’s go take a walk, shall we?’

  A few minutes later they emerged from a side door in a building a couple of hundred yards inside the fence. William ducked down behind a small wall and waved for Switch to join him.

  Switch was amazed at the extent of the tunnel network William had led him through. Down through the rambling basement of the old theatre, Switch had seen where walls had been knocked though into sewage systems and then through again into other buildings. Some openings had been covered by hanging tarps or even doors, while others, especially those further away from the theatre, were barely disguised demolition jobs.

  It reminded Switch a little of the London Underground, and looking back he wished he’d used the trains to get around a little more than he had. The tunnels were the perfect way to move about without being noticed, especially if you weren’t traveling the conventional way.

  ‘Look,’ William said, as they watched the two guards by the fence. ‘They don’t look particularly alert, but that’s because all they’re guarding is a little back road. The government has about forty percent of the city cordoned off, but without serious reconstruction work the best they could do was put up fences everywhere. They’re electrified, of course, but that wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to get in. Not that anyone wants to.’

  William led them down a thin stairway beside the cathedral. They emerged on to the dockside.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be in disguise or something?’

  William grinned, and Switch recognised the same adrenalin-fueled eyes that others saw in him. ‘Not if we don’t get seen.’

  They walked along the dockside, beneath the shadow of an overhanging converted warehouse. The dusty, rusted and broken signs of clubs and bars long dead called to them from the shadows: Evolution, Club Crème, Lloyds, Walkabout, Café Underworld. Switch could only imagine the revelry that had taken place here in the years before the Governor and Mega Britain.

  ‘Okay, it begins over there.’ William pointed out across the water towards the far bank.

  At first Switch couldn’t see anything. All that was over there was a row of warehouses and factories, smoke rising from the chimneys of some, lights flickering in the windows of others.

  Then he realised. This was what his uncle had brought him to see.

  Industry.

  ‘What do they make in there?’

  ‘They process food. At the far side of the city there’s a gate where they bring in fresh produce from the GFAs. Vegetables and meat mostly, but they grow some amazing shit out there in greenhouses and the like. Strawberries, tomatoes, rice . . .’ William licked his lips. ‘And they bring it in through the gate in trucks and in those factories they can everything up and make it taste like crap. Then it comes out for us to buy.’

  Switch watched as a large garage door opened and a truck pulled out. It made a sharp turn near the water’s edge and then headed off around the side of the factory.

  ‘Where does all the metal come from to make the cans? Paul reckons they won’t import anything anymore.’

  William nodded. ‘So they say. Up north they’ve opened up some of the old iron and steel mines, but I gather pickings are pretty thin. Most of it comes from the decommissioned ships. In the Liverpool and Sunderland GUAs they take them apart and use the recycled steel to make cans. There’s cars, too. Sooner or later they’re going to have to start clearing up the streets.’

  Switch nodded. He watched a group of people walking around the side of one of the factories, marching in an orderly fashion. He couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. All his life he’d grown up in the squalor and decay of London, where nothing seemed to work and anarchy ruled. On arriving in Bristol he’d thought the situation to be the same, but suddenly he was seeing another side of things. From where he stood the factories looked like a model of economic success. He felt something inside which he tried to force away. Envy? Pride?

  ‘Looks good, don’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Looks like they’ve got something good going on right over there.’

  ‘The economic situation in the country isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says,’ William told him. ‘The government seized control of all the major companies. Those factories are government-owned, government-run. All the money from the food sales goes back in there. Or what that fucker doesn’t spend on his ridiculous space program does, at any rate. They recycle most of the cans. The factories run on bio-fuel or electricity, like most cars that are left do.’

  ‘They don’t use petrol?’

  William grinned. ‘Man, you must have spent a lot of time underground, Stevie. There’s no oil anymore, nothing new at any rate. Most buses and trains run on bio-fuel made from people’s garbage, while most cars are electric. The problem is that everything falls apart in the end and once a vehicle’s done, it’s done. There ain’t no more coming in.’

  Switch nodded thoughtfully. Again, the successes of Mega Britain that he hadn’t known anything about were making him think. Perhaps the world wasn’t so screwed up after all.

  ‘Why the hell does everyone hate what’s going on, then?’ he said. ‘Looks to me like everything’s running just fine in there.’

  William pulled something from his pocket. Switch had seen one before. He’d swapped a knife for one, once, but he’d dropped it running away from a fight a few months later.

  He lifted the eyeglass to his good eye.

  ‘Look at the people,’ William said.

  It took a moment for Switch to focus the lens and then to find the far bank of the river. Once he had, he panned along the riverbank until he came to the first group of people walking along the front of one of the factories.

  His mouth fell open.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. They’re chained to each other.’

  ‘This is what we fight against,’ William said quietly from beside him.

  Switch steadied his gaze. He saw men and women, mostly old, but even some children no older than Owen. They had shackles on their hands, the chains linked to each other so that if one tried to escape, the rest would have to go too. Switch looked at the guards. They had heavy weapons like those he had seen before.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Many of them are criminals or street kids or other people the government didn’t like. But the vast majority are people from the GFAs that no one wanted. For the last forty years or so, since the Governor took power, the government has been making regular sweeps through the countryside, razing unwanted towns and putting the land into production under the ownership of landlords, usually the richest people from each area, those able to keep their families out of the factories with heavy bribes. A certain number of people were left behind to work the farms, and over time the communities started to build up again. But those that missed the initial cut, so to speak . . .’

  William shook his head. ‘They live in here, behind the fences. Many of them are old now, kept here their whole lives, but the younger ones were allowed to have children, keep the supply fresh. But all of them – every man, woman and child over the age of eight – work in alternate twelve-hour shifts. The factories work day and night.’

  ‘Why don’t they take the people from the cities?’

  ‘Oh, I think they take some. But the city folk have more means, more fight. And the
y need people to buy the crap the factories churn out.’

  ‘Why the hell isn’t there an uprising?’

  ‘There have been many. But the government has shit going on somewhere, developing weapons, creatures like the Huntsmen. There are three types of people in this country, Stevie. The pampered, out in the GFAs. Their lives are so goddamn easy they were quite happy to forget about their missing friends, get on with raising their crops, riding horses, playing bridge and drinking beer on Friday fucking nights. Then there are those in there, ruled by an iron hand. I’ve watched people die from here, Stevie, just for talking out of turn.’

  ‘That’s fucked up.’

  ‘And then finally, there’s us. What you might call the general population. Scrapping and batting against the government who keep us down with packs of trigger-happy police and the occasional release of the Huntsmen. Discontentment rules, Stevie. We spend so much time fighting each other that our potency as a group is lost. What the UMF is trying to do is pull those people together. It’s hard, boy, but it’s not impossible. People are starting to come around. They figure if they’re gonna die, they might as well do it for a decent reason.’

  Switch took a couple of steps towards the river and squinted towards the far bank. As he turned away from the choppy waters, movement to his right caught his eye.

  He dropped instinctively into a crouch and pushed back against the wall of the converted warehouse. William fell back beside him.

  Switch glanced out, and saw two guards moving slowly along the waterfront in their direction. They weren’t moving with any urgency but there was no way Switch and William could get all the way back to the path by the cathedral before the two guards came around the corner and spotted them.

  He pointed them out to William.

  His uncle grimaced. ‘A patrol. We’d better get out of sight. This way.’

  William led them back past the abandoned bars and clubs. He stopped by a door labeled Art Café, and kicked it open. Switch followed him inside.

  ‘Get down, we’ll wait until they pass,’ William said. ‘They’re just a patrol, they’re not looking for us –’

  The windows burst open in a blaze of gunfire, the noise deafening as it filled the empty room. Switch and William dived for cover.

  ‘You’re surrounded!’ someone shouted as the dust settled. ‘Give yourselves up and you will be returned to your stations with minimal penalty.’

  ‘Minimal penalty,’ William scoffed in a whisper from the darkness behind a stack of old tables. ‘Those bastards.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Switch whispered back. He lowered himself to the ground and crawled along towards the middle of the room where a metal pillar rose about four feet up out of the ground to where it ended in a wider table top. Switch leaned back against it and risked a glance round.

  Two heads appeared outside the broken window. They were wearing blue police helmets and shouldering heavy guns. From the way they squinted nervously into the dark it was clear to Switch that they couldn’t see anything inside. With a clear view of them, he felt he had an advantage, despite their weapons.

  ‘Uncle!’ he whispered sharply. ‘Move to your left and knock over that stack of chairs. I need you to draw their line of sight.’

  ‘Sure thing, kid, but I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Switch watched William creep through the shadows and stand up behind a table stacked on its end. He lifted a chair and tossed it twenty feet into a pile of others near the far wall.

  There was a huge crash as the stack of chairs collapsed. The two guards rushed to the door, lifted their weapons and opened fire on the chairs, still unable to see inside. With their attention diverted, Switch reached into his coat and pulled out a little metal star, its edges honed sharp. Moving out of cover, he flung it in the direction of the guards.

  His aim had the precision of long hours of lonely practice. The star hit the nearest guard in the eye, and the man went down screaming. He twitched for a few seconds and then went still.

  Switch was on his feet before the other guard could turn, a throwing knife in his right hand. He took a couple of steps closer as he gathered his aim, only to feel something shift under his foot, a broom handle or an old ashtray, maybe even a dead rat, stiff with rigor mortis. It took his balance, sending him sprawling to the floor, the knife landing tamely in the wooden wall beneath the window.

  Switch looked up as the man raised his gun, only to see a flying chair slam into the man’s face.

  As the man grunted and felt backwards, William reached him, a broken-off chair leg in his hands. One sharp thrust and the man lay still beside the other.

  William helped Switch to his feet.

  ‘I ain’t a goddamn freedom fighter for nothing,’ he said, and suddenly a smile lit up his face in the shadows. ‘But I’m glad to see my boy’s growing up. Nice work with that shuriken there.’

  Switch returned the smile. ‘I learned everything from you, Uncle,’ he said.

  William’s face fell grim again. ‘Glad to hear it boy, but we’d better get out of here. Two ain’t too much to deal with, but in about ten minutes there’ll be half an army outside.’

  William led them through the mess of fallen furniture and out of a door at the back. A dark stairway led up and from there they crossed an old floor where only rats and spiders danced now, through another door and out on to a fire escape. They emerged on to a quiet lane behind the warehouse.

  At one end they climbed up a grassy bank and over a wall into an overgrown garden around the side of the cathedral. They waded through it and jumped over a metal railing fence as shouts came from the waterfront behind them.

  Ducking low behind a wall surrounding a fountain, they crossed the square and ducked into the doorway they had come out of before. Inside, William leaned back against the wall, breathing hard.

  ‘Phew! Close one!’

  Switch was about to reply, when he heard a muffled explosion followed by the distant sound of gunfire. It didn’t come from the waterfront, though, but further away, back across the city, in the direction of the train station. He looked at William.

  The older man gave him a grim smile. ‘Ah, Stevie. I hate to lose you again so soon, but I think you’d better get back home and pack. Sounds like a train from Hell just pulled in over at Temple Meads.’

  Stevie knew what his uncle meant. The Huntsmen had arrived in Bristol.

  The chase was on again.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Escape

  It wasn’t the pain from the electric cattle prod that had hurt her so much, but rather the memory of the pain from before. As she felt the shock jolt her, all that agony had come flooding back, and for a few minutes the part of her brain that was electronic had ceased to function. Only as the human part of her started to regain control did she realise she wasn’t as badly hurt as she’d first feared.

  As she tried to run after the two Tube Riders and the boy who’d surprised her, her mind felt clear but the receptors in her arms and legs were still misfiring, causing her to stumble and fall.

  When she finally emerged from the house to find the group of men there, with their heavy, inaccurate shotguns trained on her, her mind filled with hate and murder. All her life she’d been persecuted and abused, when her only mistake was to be born into a bad place and time. She didn’t deserve any of her suffering, but it had happened anyway, the same as her wrath would now be unleashed on these simple country people, regardless of their deserving. Her heart was heavy as she ordered the Huntsmen on them, and somewhere inside her mind, another little piece of her lingering humanity died.

  It was over in less than a minute. She walked over to the cars, their bodywork and windows now stained red. There had been eleven men in total, all of them now dead or dying, their bodies ripped up and torn open, their faces nearly unrecognizable. A couple of low moans came from those not yet expired. Of her Huntsmen, Meud was dead; a shotgun fired point-blank into his face had left him beyond any hope of repair
. Both of the others had picked up minor injuries, but nothing their enhanced tissue regenerative genes couldn’t deal with. Now they waited, their bloody cowls lowered over their faces, for their next orders.

  Instinct made Dreggo look up at the house, at the tall, vine-covered walls. A woman’s face was at a window on the second floor, looking out, watching them. The woman’s mouth was agape, and with her computerized eye Dreggo could see her lip was trembling, and her cheeks were stained with tears.

  A shock like an earthquake rocked through her heart, and she felt a sudden, overwhelming guilt for what she had done. This woman, she was sure, was now widowed, as no doubt were many others in the local area, their husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons, slaughtered like the cattle her Huntsmen had fed on before the battle. Dreggo had possessed the power to call them off, to make them stop. But she hadn’t. She’d wanted every single man dead.

  She remembered, just two days ago now, her friend, Maul, killed by that Tube Rider with the bad eye. Maul had loved her, and he’d been murdered without thought. Regardless of the situation they had been in, the Tube Rider with the bad eye had cut him down.

  Why should it be any different for you? her mind screamed at the woman. It’s life; we’re born, we suffer, we die. Why should I spare you and yours when no one would spare me and mine?

  Taking one last look up at the window Dreggo saw the woman was openly crying now, her hands held up to her cheeks. Dreggo turned to the Huntsmen. ‘Into the woods,’ she ordered. ‘Find them, and kill them.’ Realizing she was about to cross another bridge that would subsequently fall behind her, she added: ‘Kill the boy too.’

  Lyen and Jacul raced off across the lawn. Dreggo followed at walking pace, her head hung low. I will not cry, she told herself. I will not. But it was too late. From her one good eye tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks, and sobs jerked what was left of her heart.