The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

Carl didn’t really understand. Ishael just shook his head and thanked Jess. The girl said nothing.

  ‘We still have a train on our tail,’ Carl said. ‘What do we do about that?’

  Ishael shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Easy,’ Jess said, in that same monotone. ‘You release the trucks. Block the tracks.’

  Carl smiled. ‘I suppose you know how to do that, too?’

  Jess pointed at another control screen. ‘This one,’ she said.

  ‘You were watching him all along, weren’t you?’ Ishael asked her.

  Jess’s voice didn’t change; neither did she look at him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I watched.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Bloodlust

  Dreggo stood by the canal bank with a group of Huntsmen clustered behind her. The handlers stalked around them like lion tamers, their hands guarding the leash remotes. She was beginning to realise just how damaging the neuro-stunners could be: several of the Huntsmen twitched erratically or rolled on the ground, their faces shielded. One, back at the station, had failed to get up from a series of stuns. The others had watched the assault cautiously, their eyes flicking to Dreggo as though willing her to bid them attack the men that tortured them in the name of control. Despite their frayed, irrational minds, they were beginning to trust her. Maybe they could see that she suffered like them, and that she found kinship in the pain they felt.

  She looked at the canal bank, at the scrapes in the earth where the Tube Riders had gone down into the water. Her Huntsmen had checked the other side, and found no evidence that they had ever got out over there. The canal, Clayton had told her, was part of a route built in the early years of Mega Britain as an alternative freight line between Exeter and London, to be used in the event of serious fuel shortages on the railways. Despite his assurances that it was no longer in active use, that there were no boats on it, she knew he was wrong. The Tube Riders had found something to take them away.

  The scent had gone, of course. Even Huntsmen couldn’t track through water, but Dreggo had no doubt it would be easy to cut the Tube Riders off. Two Huntsmen were already heading in pursuit, and unless the Tube Riders had found something with an engine, the Huntsmen would run down their quarry within an hour. There was no direct road that followed the course of the canal, and Clayton’s plan was to get in front of the Tube Riders and lie in wait.

  ‘You can take them back now,’ Dreggo said to the handlers. ‘Take them to the train station and get your orders from Clayton there.’

  ‘They went downriver?’ one of the handlers asked.

  ‘Unless they flew away.’

  The man grunted. He barked orders at the other handlers and they started to move off, the Huntsmen clustered between them.

  Dreggo sighed. She looked out at the water, and despite the conflict she felt inside she could appreciate how peaceful it was. There was another time, perhaps, another life, in which she would have sat down by the canal side and drifted off to sleep as the sun warmed her face, and the birds sung in the trees. Not now, though. There was too much blood on her hands, too much hate in her heart.

  The radio fizzed in her pocket, startling her. She took a step backward as she dislodged a loose rock with her foot and sent it tumbling into the water.

  The call was from Clayton.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You’ve sent the Huntsmen back?’

  ‘The others, yes. The two I sent to follow the canal have orders to report any sightings of the Tube Riders or wait in Exeter if they find nothing. I’ll keep in contact with them.’

  ‘Good. I hope you chose the Huntsmen wisely. I don’t want them going haywire out in the countryside.’

  Dreggo thought of the slaughter she herself had initiated in the Reading GFA. ‘They won’t,’ she said. ‘What have you done with Leo?’ She found it impossible not to use the Huntsman’s real name.

  ‘Nothing. We’re keeping him safe. I have a feeling he might come in useful.’

  Dreggo said nothing. On the other end of the line she heard Clayton shouting at someone.

  ‘Dreggo? You still there? Jesus fucking Christ. We’ve had another setback. Meet us by the gate the Tube Riders broke out of. We have to go by road because the others blocked the railway line.’

  ‘How did they do that?’

  ‘Don’t ask. We’ll meet you by the gate in twenty minutes. If you want to make yourself useful, get the Huntsmen to sort out the scrap by the gate. We have a bit of a situation there. A few civilians tried to get out while the gate was down. All the obvious rebels were killed or chased off, but a group of the general populace thought it would take the opportunity to have a goddamn picnic. I want the uprising quelled and the gate secured.’

  Dreggo’s heightened awareness sensed an extra tenseness in his voice. ‘Clayton, what is it?’

  She heard him sigh. ‘It looks like we’re going to have company. The Governor himself is coming down. He’s going to meet us in Exeter.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. So just get the job done.’

  Before she could say anything else, Clayton cut the line. Dreggo frowned. If the Governor was coming, that was bad news for Clayton. She suppressed a little smile. Maybe, just maybe, she might have a chance to take them both out.

  The faint sound of a gunshot broke the tranquility of the canal bank, reminding her of the world she lived in. A mile away, just inside the city gate, people were starting to die, and later, perhaps, their blood would be on her hands. With her face set in stone, she headed back through the trees, following the trail left by the Huntsmen and their handlers.

  #

  Outside the gate Clayton grimaced. With Vincent’s death, things had started looking up. Now that brief glimmer of hope had been quashed by the news that the Governor himself was coming to meet them. Clayton would be top of the Governor’s hit list if the Tube Riders weren’t caught soon. One was dead, but the rest were still loose, and they still had the memory card.

  ‘Get ready to roll out,’ he shouted, as his men climbed up into the back of a battered old removal truck. They’d arrived by train and didn’t have time to wait for reinforcements from London so Clayton had been forced to use what road transportation he could find. The underfunded Bristol branch of the DCA had come up with a serviceable land cruiser for himself, but his men had to make do with the hard wooden floor of a vehicle designed for carrying tables and sofas.

  The Huntsmen, though, had fared even worse. The third of Clayton’s commandeered vehicles was an old freezer truck with the coolant system turned off, and a hole broken through the back for ventilation. The creatures whined like cattle being sent off for slaughter as they were loaded up and sealed inside.

  Not for the first time, Clayton cursed his country’s lack of forethought. Tearing up the roads might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but he was faced with a tough, three-hour drive to Exeter where the major national rail line terminated, and where he hoped to cut off the main group suspected of traveling by water.

  ‘They’re ready,’ Dreggo said from behind him.

  He turned to look at her. Beyond her, back through the gate, a group of his men were setting fire to the piled bodies of the rioters. Her face was flecked with blood, her expression grim, and he knew she had unleashed the full horror of the Huntsmen. He wondered how that made her feel. Most of the rioters had fled, but more than fifty were dead, their bodies torn apart.

  ‘I guess you could call the gate secured,’ he told her with a wry smile. ‘Blocked with bodies.’

  Her single human eye watched him impassively. ‘He will kill you, you know,’ she said.

  Clayton felt a flash of anger at her bluntness and his fingers closed over the remote device in his pocket as he took a step closer.

  ‘Not before I kill you first,’ he said.

  ‘Those people, and the others, and the ones yet to die,’ Dreggo made a sweeping movement with her arm. ‘It’s all in your government�
�s name.’

  ‘You gave the order,’ he said. ‘You’re more of a beast than they are, more of a beast than I’ll ever be. After all, I stand for the principles of this country, such as they are. I live to protect it.’

  ‘Good for you.’ She turned and stalked away. Clayton watched her climb up into the back of the removal truck with his men.

  ‘Animal,’ he said bitterly, but as he turned to follow her he wondered whether he should be referring to her or to him.

  #

  As the truck bumped along the cracked and torn up tarmac of an old highway, Dreggo didn’t look at the men who sat around her, their weapons resting on their knees. She sat right at the back, and as darkness fell outside she tried to let it drown out the pain in her head, the buzzing in her limbs, the low humming of fourteen hurting souls as they cried their own pain from inside the old freezer truck, bringing up the rear of the convoy. Killing hurt the Huntsmen too, more than anyone knew, but like an addiction it just drove them on while their souls steadily died. The killing frenzy at the gate had sucked another layer away from the remnants of their sanity. It would not be long before they had nothing left to give.

  Dreggo had given no order to attack.

  She’d walked slowly back through the woods, her heart heavy, and had reached the gate just as the short battle was coming to a close. The handlers, anticipating her orders, had shocked the Huntsmen into a blind rage and then set them loose. She’d reached the gate to find her charges practically ankle deep in blood.

  She tried to close her eyes, but all she could see were a thousand sickles swinging out of the darkness towards her.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Crossed Paths

  We’re coming up to Exeter,’ Ishael said, glancing back at Jess and Carl. The girl was sitting in a corner, her chin on her knees. Carl was leaning out of the window, the wind blowing his hair back over his face. Neither should be part of any of this, Ishael thought. They’re both too young. They didn’t need their lives ruined.

  ‘What will happen when we get to Exeter?’ Carl asked.

  ‘The line ends. We look for some other way to continue.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Ishael watched him. Carl looked more than tired, and despite the pain Ishael had suffered from the beatings, he knew that Carl was hurting worse. He was being braver than his years, and Ishael wondered how long it would be before cracks started to appear.

  ‘We’re going into Cornwall,’ he said. ‘We think there’s a way to get across to France from there.’

  ‘How?’

  He wasn’t keen to tell Carl what he knew until he’d managed to speak to William back in Bristol. So far, he’d had no luck with the radio, and he feared for his old friend’s safety. ‘I’ll tell you as soon as I know,’ he told Carl. ‘In any case, Cornwall gives us a better chance because there are no people there.’

  ‘None? Why not?’

  ‘The government emptied it. Quite why, I’m not entirely sure, but the rumours cover everything from a military testing ground to a ‘play area’ for government tourists. One person I spoke to years ago said that in Cornwall there were golf courses as far as the eye could see, and barely a soul using them.’

  ‘Well, I’d prefer that to a military shooting range any day,’ Carl said.

  ‘Me too. I guess we’ll find out soon.’ Ishael dabbed at a deep gash on his cheek with a piece of gauze they had found in a medical kit in the train’s cab. He’d told Carl earlier that he’d hit his face on the ground after his captors had pushed him. He didn’t know why he’d lied; after all it appeared Carl had seen many terrible things himself, but something about the look in that DCA man’s eyes as he’d dragged the piece of broken glass across Ishael’s face like he was slicing butter, his dark eyes never once flickering with concern or guilt or regret, that image haunted Ishael enough to set that one aside, cover it over with fallacies and hope it stayed buried. Their pounding fists and kicking feet had been anger and resentment, but the glass, a piece from a broken window, had been pure callousness. Most of his wounds would heal and fade with time, but that one would stay forever.

  ‘Can you do something for me?’ he said, holding the radio out to Carl. ‘The buttons hurt my fingers.’

  ‘Sure. How does it work?’

  Ishael showed him how to use it. ‘We gave Jess’s friends a radio. We need to try to arrange a rendezvous point. Your contact is called Switch. This frequency should work, but we’re not getting through so see if you can pick up something else. Also, listen out for anyone trying to contact us from Bristol.’

  ‘Okay, no problem.’ Carl started to fiddle with the radio, but something else caught his attention. ‘Wow! Look at that!’

  The railway line made a gradual incline into a copse that stood at the bottom of a gentle valley. Evening was closing in, but the clouds had cleared just enough for them to make out the land around them, all disused farmland, the fields overgrown with shrubs, bracken and nettles.

  Beyond the copse, the spires of a tall cathedral were lit up against the night.

  ‘That’s Exeter Cathedral,’ Ishael said.

  ‘Can we go take a look?’

  Ishael gave him as sympathetic a look as his battered face would allow. The boy seemed to have momentarily forgotten the situation they were in. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Exeter Urban Area is closed off like all the rest.’

  Carl nodded to show he understood. Rising up beyond the copse a few miles distant he saw the grey barrier that kept people out of the city – Exeter UA’s perimeter wall. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not going inside. Our pursuers may have radioed ahead, depending on what back-up, if any, resides in the city.’

  ‘What do they do in Exeter?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Textiles,’ Ishael said. ‘They make our clothes.’

  ‘It’s clever, really, to put all the same industries in the same place,’ Carl said.

  ‘I guess,’ Ishael said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. Much as he liked Carl, he wondered what naivety was breeding out in the GFAs. ‘I imagine that the idea was to focus people’s efforts.’

  Carl looked back at Jess. ‘Are you okay?’

  The girl took an age to look up at him, but when she did she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When are we getting off?’

  ‘In a couple of minutes,’ Ishael said. ‘Any luck with that signal, Carl?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Keep trying. Okay, I’m going to slow us down now.’

  A few minutes later the train had slowed to a crawl. Carl and Jess picked up their things.

  ‘Aren’t you going to stop it?’ Carl asked.

  ‘No. I’ll let it run right on into the station. If Exeter UA has been notified, then a runaway train will certainly focus their attention for a while. Not too fast, though. Enough people have died today as it is.’

  Carl nodded. For such a young boy his face looked weary, haggard. ‘Yeah, I noticed.’

  ‘Okay, get ready to jump. I imagine this is going to be a lot easier for you two than it is for me.’

  As he looked up, Jess actually smiled. ‘We’re barely moving,’ she said, and stepped out on to the ground.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Ishael muttered, thinking at the same time how good it was to see the girl smile.

  Carl jumped down after her. Ishael tapped a new speed into the train’s digital control and jumped down last, landing in a heap just as it began to speed up. He rolled over, feeling the press of a dozen welts and bruises. The train moved away from them towards Exeter UA, slowly picking up speed.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. Let’s get clear of the tracks. Preferably to somewhere where we can see people coming in case we need to move quickly.’

  Carl pointed. ‘Top of the ridge?’

  ‘That’s good.’

  #

  The fizzing sound was coming from Switch’s bag.

  ‘What’s that?’ Marta said, looking around. ‘Paul, can
you grab his bag?’

  The fizzing noise came again. Paul, still playing monopoly with Owen, pulled Switch’s bag over. He unzipped it and rummaged around inside. ‘God, he’s got a lot of stuff in here! Knives, guns . . . ah! What the hell? He’s got a damn radio!’

  He pulled out what looked like a large mobile phone, but with less buttons.

  ‘It’s a walkie talkie,’ Owen said. ‘We had some of them in school. In science class we used to use them to call each other from different rooms.’

  ‘Do you know how to answer it?’ Marta asked.

  ‘Press the red button,’ Owen said.

  ‘Hello?’ Paul spoke into the mouth piece.

  ‘Stevie? Is that you?’

  Paul held up the phone to Marta and Owen. ‘It’s William,’ he said, somewhat bemused.

  Owen hit Paul with a pillow. ‘Well, answer him then!’

  #

  ‘This way,’ Ishael said, leading Carl upslope towards a thin stand of trees on the hilltop. Jess had gone on ahead, and was now sitting with her legs pulled up to her chin, facing away from them. Whether her eyes were scanning the surrounding countryside for the canal or just staring vacantly into space where the memories of Simon and her parents waited, Carl couldn’t tell.

  A few minutes earlier they had finally managed to pick up a signal, this one from Ishael’s friend William, back in Bristol GUA. ‘From what William told me, this supposed canal should pass by the southern side of Exeter,’ Ishael said, sounding a little more positive now he knew his friend was safe. ‘We should be able to see it from the top of the rise.’

  ‘Jess doesn’t seem to be getting too excited,’ Carl said. ‘Maybe William was wrong.’

  ‘Let’s hope not. We’ll try to get back in contact when we reach the top.’

  Carl nodded. He glanced across at Ishael as the climbed, looking up from the limping, jerky footsteps past the missing fingernails to the bruises, welts and cuts on the man’s face, the terrible gash in his cheek now covered with a bloody piece of gauze and a few band-aids.

  Ishael had faced his own form of death today, Carl knew. All three of them had faced a swinging sickle and somehow managed to duck beneath it. But it followed them still, just a few steps behind.