The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

  ‘Find cover!’ he screamed, just as huge spotlights came on at the far end of the parking garage, blinding him.

  He heard gunfire, saw the puff of smoke around him, bullets frighteningly close. He heard men shouting, the growl of the Huntsmen. He glanced back at the door and saw a couple of his men half buried under the rubble. A couple of Huntsmen lay still beside them, but there was no way to know how many were dead.

  The gunfire came again, automatic weapons, and he rolled behind a chunk of fallen masonry that moments before had just missed landing on his head. To his right he heard a growl and then a scream as a Huntsman took a bullet, a thud as it slumped to the ground.

  ‘Return fire!’ he shouted.

  ‘What about the Huntsmen?’ Jakob shouted from nearby. ‘Chained up they’re just waiting to die! Release them and we’ll win this fight!’

  Clayton frowned. Even now, ambushed, bullets flying around his head, he didn’t want to. But the way in was blocked, and their attackers, whoever they were, were heavily armed and covering the only way out. One or two more explosive devices and the battle would be lost.

  ‘Do it!’ he shouted. ‘Set them loose! And God help us if they don’t know who they’re fighting against.’

  He heard a click, the wrist locks binding the monsters opening by automatic control. Even as heavier gunfire cracked against the concrete around him, he heard a roar go up in union from the Huntsmen. Risking a glance up out of his hiding place, he saw them running into battle.

  Like the devil’s own cavalry, the Huntsmen raced across the parking garage towards their attackers, who still hid behind their blinding spotlights. As gunfire commenced, several Huntsmen dived forward and rolled across the floor like whirling, spinning ninjas, while others leapt up and clambered across the beams and lintels of the parking garage roof. Others dropped to their knees, crossbows and other weapons in their hands, loosing their arsenal at the enemy, covering those who moved in towards close combat.

  There were only perhaps ten or twelve involved in the charge, but Clayton noticed how the enemy’s organised position fell into sudden disarray, guns firing wildly, bullets spraying in desperation as the Huntsmen advanced. He watched as one Huntsman was shot and fell, only to leap to its feet again, claws stretching to tear and maim.

  One of the spotlights took a bullet, sparked and went out, quickly followed by the others. Men began to scream.

  Clayton didn’t want to think about how he would round up the Huntsmen once the carnage was over. With the spotlights no longer trained on him, he waved his remaining DCA agents forward. ‘After them!’ he shouted. ‘We need prisoners. We need to know who the hell these people are!’

  Clayton let his agents get a decent start and then he followed after them. Leading his troops from the front was hardly the plan; that’s why the Huntsmen were here.

  #

  In fact, Clayton was last bar one. As Clayton jogged after his men, Adam Vincent got up from his own hiding place, behind a support pillar left at an angle after the explosion, and moved after Clayton. His gun was in his hand, and he was wondering when would be the best time to put a bullet in Clayton’s back.

  #

  From behind the row of abandoned cars his men were using for cover, Ishael had detected the Department of Civil Affairs agents coming through the door from the station on an old, hand-held heat detecting radar scanner. He knew immediately how important the Tube Riders must be by the sheer number of agents – at least thirty, maybe more. He could see their steady blips on the radar, but worse were the pulsing blips that appeared to be Huntsmen, the body heat they gave off far higher but unstable, as though they were flushing hot and cold at two-second intervals. He felt his own blood chill at the thought of them, especially when he realised how many the Department of Civil Affairs had brought. He knew instantly that his own group, twenty-four armed and capable men, wasn’t nearly enough. That many Huntsmen could take out a small army.

  With the DCA agents and the Huntsmen crowding through the doorway, Ishael’s men had detonated the bomb. Looking at the scanner, he’d seen five or six DCA agents killed or hurt by the rubble, but not nearly as many as he’d hoped. One or two Huntsmen were down, their blips flickering wildly, but it was difficult to tell if they were dead or even disabled. He prayed at least a few were. Most of the survivors had ducked down for cover, and he had felt confident his men could pick them off or at least keep them down using the scanner and the spotlights they had brought.

  Only when he saw a group detach from the main contingent, all of their blips pulsing like little heartbeats, had he realised just how hopeless their situation was.

  Now, looking up, as the Huntsmen raced across the open space of the parking garage, heedless of the bullets flying around them, he felt he was looking into the face of Death himself.

  A man standing beside him grunted and slumped back, a crossbow bolt in his neck. As his blood pumped out on to the oily concrete, Ishael barely had time to reflect on how many good, loyal men he was about to lose.

  ‘Back!’ he screamed, waving towards the parking garage exit. ‘Out on to the street!’

  He turned, just as a snarling Huntsman launched itself across the top of the car towards him.

  Overwhelmed by terror, Ishael gasped like a frightened child as the snarling jaws broke from beneath the dark cowl and darted for his neck. He pulled his rifle up at the last second, knocking the monster off course, the jaws missing him but one clawed hand raking his arm, pulling him around. As the Huntsman skidded and rolled past him, he clutched at his side, feeling blood flow from a deep gash. Someone shouted his name, but he didn’t have time to move as the Huntsman wheeled and launched itself again. Ishael dodged sideways and the Huntsman struck the car, but it was already turning, its reactions far faster than his. He grabbed the car’s loose rear door and slammed it into the Huntsman, but instead of being knocked back the creature gripped the door and tore it off its hinges, tossing it aside.

  This is it, Ishael thought. This is where it ends, at the hands – or claws – of one of these half-human monsters.

  ‘Die . . .’

  But Ishael wasn’t ready to die, not yet. For a second the image of Marta – the beautiful and brave Tube Rider – entered his mind, and he felt a surge of adrenaline. He scrambled backwards, dropped to the ground and rolled sideways, slipping underneath the adjacent car. As the smell of old oil and petrol filled his lungs, he saw the Huntsman’s feet move as it came after him, and then it too dropped to the ground and tried to follow, its claws reaching under the car to rake at his legs.

  Trying to make space, Ishael kicked at it, striking it once in the face. As he felt a jarring pain race up his leg, the lack of give and the strength of the beast’s neck terrified him. It had felt like kicking something imbedded in concrete.

  It caught hold of his leg and began to pull him out. He kicked again, aiming for its cowl, where he hoped the eyes would be. He cried out as it shifted to the side, and then powerful jaws clamped down on his calf muscle, biting right through the combat trousers he wore. He felt the heat of blood again, and wondered if the creature would bite right through his leg.

  Instead, its teeth released their grip and it jerked him backwards, pulling him out from under the car. For a moment he saw the Huntsman silhouetted above him in the light of one of his own men’s spotlights, and then it dived at him, jaws snapping.

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Pull it off!’

  Ishael opened his eyes to see the Huntsman spasm in the air above him, a terrible wailing coming from its open maw. It scrabbled at its neck, claws pulling the cowl free. Ishael saw what looked like a human head behind its dog-like snout, wires snaking across its scalp. Then it slumped away from him, landing on its stomach a few feet away. Two men rushed to clamp its arms.

  ‘Well, well.’

  Spotlights had come on again, pointed skyward now to leave the parking garage illuminated in a twilight glow, and Ishael could see the eyes of the man
standing above him. Perhaps forty, his body was solid beneath the black suit, his jaw firm, unsmiling. His hair was flecked with spots of dust. Hard, dark eyes watched Ishael with contempt, but also, Ishael thought, with what looked like a hint of admiration.

  The man waved his hand and two other DCA men came up behind him. ‘Secure the prisoner,’ he said. ‘And find me a room. We need to have a talk with him.’ As the agents moved forward, the first man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Vincent! Move the men forward on to the streets. Follow them down and kill them if you can’t take them alive. Find where they’re hiding the Tube Riders.’

  ‘What Tube Riders . . .’ Ishael groaned, but the man just shook his head as if to say, don’t bother. We know. Then he turned and was gone.

  Ishael started to push himself up, but one of the agents stepped forward and kicked him hard in the face. Ishael was conscious just long enough to see the man lean down towards him, and then everything went black.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Departure

  As the train rushed through the forest, picking up speed again, Jess inched her way along towards the front of the freight truck, her feet on a thin rail barely above the wheels, her clawboard sliding slowly along the water drainage rail above her. Occasionally it got caught on a piece of grit or caked mud, and Jess had to carefully unwrap one hand and pick out the obstruction with her fingers. Twice she had to hold on with her hand and lift the board over. Glancing down at the gravel and sleepers rushing past below her, she was reminded just how close she hung to death; that a momentary slip would see her pitched off the train and down onto whatever surface they were passing at the time. She’d survived once; she didn’t fancy her chances of surviving a second time.

  Simon was five trucks ahead. At the end of her truck, she painstakingly climbed down into the working area that fixed the two freight trucks together before climbing back up on to the drainage rail of the next one. Just at that moment the train started around a wide bend. The trucks arced away to the right and she saw Simon again, what seemed like miles away, hanging from the side of the train, his head lolling back and forth as though every second was a fight against unconsciousness.

  She’d pushed him hard through the forest, and she’d got him this far. If she could just get to him before his strength gave out again then she could save him, she could hold on to him until they reached Bristol. She had no idea how far it was, but guessed it couldn’t be more than an hour. She could do it; she could be the strength for both of them.

  She glanced back down the train, and her heart almost stopped.

  There, just three trucks back, a Huntsman was crawling along the top of the train towards her.

  Jess wanted to scream, but no sound would come out. As she watched it in horror, she felt all her last hopes fade away.

  #

  Dreggo stood beside Lyen on the platform edge as the train rolled away into the forest. Her face was damp with tears that she didn’t bother to hide from the Huntsman; no doubt he had his own pain. The two Tube Riders had escaped again; with the help of the country bumpkin boy even the wounded one had managed to get on to the train. Catching them would be easy; a simple radio call to Clayton would have twenty agents and Huntsmen waiting for them when the train arrived in Bristol, but still she couldn’t shake the feeling of failure. Despite the tears, her hatred and anger were back, and being so close yet again only to have them escape made her feel weak and incapable.

  The country boy, though, he impressed her. Not only had he managed to kill Jacul, but he’d made a possibly suicidal jump on to the train. She would only know if he survived or not when she viewed his corpse in Bristol, but a leap like that had taken some faith, and lot of guts. Despite seeing her Huntsman cut down and pulled under the train, she had gained a little respect for the country boy.

  If Clayton could leave him alive, she’d enjoy killing him.

  She pulled the radio from her pocket, intending to call Clayton and inform him of proceedings, and request he have the next through train stop for them. As she lifted it to her ear, though, she felt a crackle of static in her mind, the sign of a Huntsman’s internal transmitter. Lyen shifted beside her; he’d felt it too.

  The voice that came into her mind was broken and indistinct, but still it could come from nothing else.

  ‘. . . alive . . .’

  She glanced across at Lyen and he gave her a dark, feverish glare in return. Jacul wasn’t dead. Through whatever twist of luck and fate, he had survived being pulled under the train.

  She sent Lyen to check the tracks. There were no signs of a body, mutilated or otherwise, which meant, of course, that Jacul was still on the train.

  She put the radio away. There might not be a need to inform Clayton after all.

  #

  As Jacul felt his foot slip out from under him, he could only think of relief; that it was finally over, that he could rest. Then, as one arm reached out, his clawed fingers closing over something metal, he felt himself jerked away from the wheels of the train, and from the death that he would have so welcomed. The last vestiges of his human mind had prayed for the thundering salvation of the huge metal wheels, but the robotic part of his body, that which would obey orders until death, refused to let him go.

  It was too late for his other arm. As he hung from the bottom of the train, he swung inwards, and struck the side of the nearest wheel. He reached out as a reflex to push himself away, and then it was gone, ripped off at the shoulder, his body filled with a thousand spasms of pain. He felt human blood, oil and fluids oozing down his side, mixed with those that bled from the crossbow wound. His mind was already drifting, and he estimated that he would be dead within half an hour. His human mind wanted to close his eyes and let him drift away, float back through the fragments of childhood memories that had survived his transformation into a Huntsman, but the machine part of him, the engineered part, knew there was a mission to complete, and that half an hour might be all he needed.

  The Tube Riders, his prey, were on the train.

  With his one good arm he hauled himself along the underside of the train, using his legs to support him while he searched for another hand-hold.

  Inch by inch he made his way forward, the blurring wheels of the train never more than a couple of feet away. Then, finally, he came to the end of the freight truck, and saw daylight again above him.

  Hauling himself up and over on to the mechanism that latched the two trucks together, he managed to stand, bracing his feet against the rocking of the train, hanging on with his one good arm.

  There was a door in the back of the truck in front, but when he tore the lock free and pushed it open he found the truck packed full of crates, labeled with various food company labels. There was no way through, so he closed the door, and looked up at the top of the truck.

  Fear wasn’t something that the Huntsmen felt. Like a lot of emotions, it had been erased by the technology used to develop the minds of the killing machines, but every now and then Jacul would feel a certain sense of otherworldliness, as if what he was about to do was more dangerous than usual. He felt it now, but as he glanced down at the blurred ground passing below him, he shrugged what was left of his shoulders, and began looking for a way up.

  #

  It was scant relief for Jess to realise that the Huntsman was missing an arm and appeared to have been through a serious battle. Blood streamed down its canine face and dripped on to the roof of the train as it closed on her. She was half a truck ahead of it still, but it was gaining. She was still one truck away from Simon, who appeared to be hanging on desperately. The back of his shirt was soaked in blood, his head was lolling drunkenly, his arms stretching and tensing, and one or other of his feet occasionally slipped away from the rail below him.

  Getting to Simon was her main priority. Once she had made sure he could hang on, she would worry about the Huntsman.

  In the back of her mind she wished now that she’d not given her crossbow to Carl. After what he’d d
one to help them, she had owed him, and just hoped he’d managed to get away. Now, the best weapon she had was a knife, but she knew the Huntsman, even one-handed, would be able to deal with that.

  Just as she reached the end of the freight truck, and began to climb around into the gap between it and the next, she glanced back at the Huntsman, saw it shift its head towards her. And there, protruding from its neck and glistening in the sunlight, was the shaft of a crossbow bolt.

  Jess’s heart plunged. Carl had attacked this Huntsman, yet it still lived and was on the train. Did that mean Carl was dead?

  She knew she might never find out. She squeezed her eyes shut against another wave of pain, and tried to concentrate on getting to Simon.

  Then something slammed into her from behind.

  She fell forward across the stubby metal joints between the trucks, felt them vibrating and shifting as they knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for breath as she glanced around, swinging her clawboard up instinctively. Something thudded into it, and she felt the inhuman strength in the Huntsman’s remaining arm as it then tried to pull the knife free. Jess screamed, her resolve failing her as she looked into its muggy, bloodshot eyes, and wondered how it had closed the gap on her so fast.

  It jerked the knife out of the wood and almost overbalanced, its knife hand clutching awkwardly at a maintenance handle beside the freight truck’s door. Jess almost lost the clawboard, but managed to get it up between them again just as the Huntsman, using its legs for support, swung its knife at her again.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed.

  As the clawboard deflected the slash, Jess struggled to hold on with one hand, the Huntsman’s strength pushing her back. It would be a short fight, she knew; if she moved for her knife she would lose her shield or her handhold, and she couldn’t survive without either.

  The Huntsman’s eyes followed her impassively, its mouth torn back in a snarl that revealed yellowed, gummy canine teeth. The breath was pungent, like that of a dog’s, but the tongue as it lolled was shorter, thicker than a dog’s but not quite as squashed as a human’s. Its nose, too, was thinner and paler than a dog’s might be.