by Rob Parker
Christian couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could detect regret. ‘Who take child?’ he asked, mimicking the man’s delivery.
The man pointed to the door. ‘Boy…’ He tried again, putting more effort into another last consonant, as if he hadn’t put his mouth in such a shape in years. ‘Boys.’
‘The boys? Out there?’
‘Boys. Out there.’
Christian was getting somewhere, and despite the horrors of where he was, he felt hope. He didn’t see threat from this man, although he would be damned if he was going to take it for granted. Despite his resemblance to the others, this one was different.
‘The boys—who are they?’ he asked.
The man thumped his own chest gently. ‘My.’
‘Your boys?’ Christian couldn’t hide his shock as his mind filled in blanks and made connections. ‘They are your sons?’
‘Sons.’
‘Where is their mother?’
The man looked crestfallen and confused, as if in his head his mind was a forest canopy and the sunshine rays that pierced through were emotions he was not quite able to handle or process. ‘Mother,’ he said as softly as his gravelled voice allowed.
‘Where is their mother?’ Christian said.
‘Mother,’ the man replied again.
Christian, not for the first time today, was stumped. And in the silence of his confusion, he noticed a greater quiet.
Outside the door, in the main chamber, the fighting had stopped.
59
Letting go of Dewey was the hardest thing she’d ever done—but it gave Peter West the best chance of survival. Not to mention that Dewey had a bit of a rapport with Peter, liked him, even. Dewey, bless him, wanted to go and protect him.
Grace had done fast maths on the subject. What was the best way to create enough time for her to sneak off and find the children? Let Dewey go and occupy them.
As she sprinted into the darkness of the tunnel—the tunnel those creatures had just emerged from—she found herself fancying Dewey’s odds. The men clearly didn’t like him. They acted as if they’d never seen anything like it, hadn’t ever thought such a creature was possible. She could understand. Most people in the street found Dewey a bit hard to get their head around, with his mad combination of size and affability, and many such people had their own dogs. But if you’d never seen a fully grown, grizzled Irish wolfhound before, charging at you in the dark? Nightmarish.
Go on Dew, sort them out.
She ran knowing time was of the essence, and her eyes retuned to the darkness. She didn’t want to use her torch, not yet, because, should they look down here, it would be a beacon to call those creatures after her.
That thought caught, however. Why had they all ignored her?
They’d looked at her, then looked at Peter. Then descended on him alone to attack. Why not attack her? She was grateful to whatever quirk had made it happen, of course—but was still none the wiser.
The tunnel began to narrow somewhat, and was soon half the width of the tunnel they had been in earlier. But before she could wonder as to why this was happening, what design purpose the narrowing sought to achieve, a voice cut the darkness.
‘Hello?’ It was female.
‘Hello?’ she hushed in reply, a strangled call.
More than one voice replied.
‘Grace! Is that you?’
‘Grace!’
Grace couldn’t work out what was happening, how there were other people down here that weren’t the children, when she came across the cage. She finally dared to flick her torch on as she came to a stop, and saw a sight that shocked and appalled her. Filthy, wet-eyed, cowed but unbroken, packed together in a small filthy enclosure of bent metal and wet brick—Alice, Pam and Joyce.
‘How did you…’ Grace asked, as she reached the bars.
‘They took us,’ said Alice. ‘Those men. Knocked us out and brought us down here.’
‘Pam, I left you up there with your son?’
Pam shook her head, her face cracking with worry. ‘I’ve not seen him. They took me soon after you left.’
‘My boys are still up there too,’ added Joyce. ‘I think.’ She, too, wore maternal concern like a ten-tonne veil.
‘Where are the others?’ said Pam, looking down the tunnel to the pinprick of light. ‘And what is that noise?’
Grace felt a wave of shame that wobbled her footing. She’d left this woman’s husband to chance, fate, luck—and whatever he and an old dog could bring to the party.
‘I don’t know what’s happening.’
It wasn’t really a lie, not really, but she could make a ninety per cent sure guess that it was a fight to the death that Pam’s husband was a very key part of.
Refusing to dwell on her own indecision, with the time factor an accelerant, she checked over the cage for a lock.
‘Over here,’ said Joyce, catching on immediately. ‘It’s held shut by all this wire here.’
Grace followed her gesture to a bird’s nest tangle of industrial wire, that was coiled tight. She took the end and started to unravel it, but soon found she could go no further. The wire was thick, stiff, and bent by raw power—the kind of power that the really big one possessed, she thought.
‘Have you seen Fletcher at all?’ Joyce asked, joining Grace as close to the wire binding as the structure allowed. Grace paused, and met eyes with Pam.
Pam shook her head in a quick jerk. Grace got the message. Not only didn’t Joyce know the fate of her husband, but Pam had also chosen not to tell her, and the rub Pam was giving her daughter’s shoulder suggested the omission may have, in part, been to protect her too.
‘No,’ said Grace, careful not to say any more. ‘Have they hurt you?’ she asked.
‘Not yet,’ whispered Joyce. ‘Alice has been here most of the day, and she seems alright too.’
Grace looked at Alice, who was dirty, wide-eyed, ever-so-young—yet defiant as a tree in a flash flood. Grace nodded at her in admiration. ‘Well, we all need to get out. Heads together, what have we got?’
‘I’ve tried pushing the panels,’ said Pam. ‘But they’re all fixed in place with this wire.’
Grace stood back, and traced the edges of the contraption. She realised, if she could see the brick behind, and that there was no interruption of metal, then the structure wasn’t four sided.
‘Is it fixed to the wall?’ she asked, her torch brushing along the framework edges, paying particular attention to where it met brick.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Alice, having moved away from her mother to look at the brick above. ‘No, I can’t see any join.’
‘So if it’s not attached to the wall, can you push it?’ asked Grace. Looking at the thing they were stuck in, it seemed more like a pen that you’d use to section off animals. Like livestock. Grace shuddered—that that was most likely precisely how those men viewed the women.
Cattle.
The women in the cell looked at each other, as if wondering how they could have missed this and immediately darted to the front wall of the prison, pushing it from the inside.
It clanked, wobbled, juddered, until Grace took Dewey’s lead, looped it around one of the bed supports that was part of the frame, and pulled for all she was worth. The whole thing jumped forward a fraction. The promise of hope—the small flash of possible sanctuary—flooded the four women in an instant, and they couldn’t help but release small exclamations of joy.
‘Wait, focus on this corner,’ said Grace, moving her dog lead attachment along to the furthest point of the front panel—where the cell abutted the wall. ‘If you push here, you can tilt the whole thing and create an opening.’
The women inside excitedly did exactly as instructed. Pam lay on the ground and pushed with her legs, Alice above over her mother, with Joyce on top, and Grace outside, pulling with her dog lead.
With a scrape, a gap emerged between wall and cage. Just an inch. Alice’s fingers were through. They kept going, and t
he gap widened with excruciating slowness, until Alice was able to force herself out of the gap. Grace caught the girl, who was immediately overwhelmed with freedom and gripped Grace tight around the neck.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered with a quiver in her voice.
‘Come on, let’s get your mum and Joyce out,’ Grace said, and Alice turned, grabbed the opening, and really put her back into it. It didn’t take long before Pam and Joyce were free too, and the four women were embracing in the tunnel, a tight-knit spark of brightness and joy in the dark.
60
They hadn’t been in the house long when David decided that enough was enough, and he had to go and find all the people in his neighbourhood that had gone missing—and find out who these people were that had been causing so much harm. Sitting in the dark, at the bar stools in Fletcher Adams’ kitchen, had listened to everything the boys told him with confused horror.
Well, boy, singular. The twins were mute while Jacob West was honest, and told as much as he could, stumbling over the parts which clearly butted against his comprehension. But David had heard their story now. Every last impossible part. That Alice West had gone missing. That there’d been a huge fight in the kitchen in their home, as evidenced by what the young lad had heard while hiding under his bed, and the lashings of blood he discovered in the room when he came to see where everybody had gone. How his mum had stayed with him, until she too disappeared. How he’d almost been attacked by a strange pale man, only for the twins to save him with nothing more than some bright lights and their dual presence.
It seemed these people, whatever they were, didn’t like the twins. Couldn’t understand their identicality. It led David’s mind down a rabbit hole of wide questions, but the big one remained, looming large: what was going on at the quiet estate of Blackstoke tonight, and where was his own family?
‘And the power has been out this whole time too?’ he asked, spinning slightly back and forth on the bar stool as if he had a sideways nervous tick.
‘It went out a couple of hours ago, and never came back on once. Not even a flicker.’ Jacob seemed more emboldened and encouraged as the moments passed. As if having an adult in their midst was an offer of hope.
Two hours was a long time for an outage, thought David. It suggested to him that, outside of the estate, nobody knew. ‘Stupid question, but no phone reception?’
‘Stupid question,’ agreed Jacob.
‘Then we have to get the word out some other way. Get help. Are you boys happy enough here while I go?’ He didn’t like the idea of leaving them there, but it was the logical, right thing to do. People were missing, the power was off, and neither of those facts appeared to be about to change without some kind of intervention.
‘Yes, we can do that,’ replied Jacob, glancing at the twins. They nodded, predictably in unison.
‘Can I borrow a torch?’ One of the twins stepped forward and handed him one, which he pointed at the floor and gave it a quick click on and off to check it was working. It was. ‘Stay quiet, stay safe, alright? Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know.’
‘What do you think we’ve been doing these last couple of hours,’ Jacob replied with a smile.
They let David back out into the street, which he surveyed with eagle-eyed care, and locked the door behind him. He didn’t ignite the torch, but used the moonlight to cross the road to the Wests house. He just needed to check. He didn’t doubt the boys, but he was well aware that adolescents were capable of embellishment—and he wanted to be sure before he raced into the night and its supposed nightmares. The easiest way to verify the severity of the situation would be to check the West’s kitchen.
The front door to Iron Rise was unlocked, and only once inside did he hit the torch. Within seconds, he was back out of the front door again, gasping lungfuls of crisp air.
The boys were right. The kitchen was every bit as bad as described, although he’d noticed some plasma-soaked money that the West kid hadn’t mentioned. On seeing all that blood, and how it was dry in places and congealed in others, the stakes just rocketed. They were all in grave danger, and given the amount of blood loss he’d just seen, at least someone was surely already dead. David breathed, and composed himself.
Where to start? They couldn’t be far, and the boys said their attacker ran into the hedges at the back, down the dog trail. David thought that would be as good a place to start as any, but he looked at it reservedly. A dark inlet, into thick brush, it was hardly inviting, and God knew what horrors he would find down there.
And then he heard something. Faint, almost a whisper. On the breeze, coming from the opposite direction. He turned his head, and looked along the entrance road to the cul-de-sac, to the bend that brought cars onto it, then the thick trees beyond.
He couldn’t hear it anymore, and for the briefest second thought he must have imagined it.
No. There. Again.
A distance away, but unmistakable.
A dog barking. Deep in the grounds of the estate.
He jumped up, energised, renewed with purpose and direction.
But the question of help slowed him. He was supposed to get some. That was their best bet for survival. Then, an idea lit. He ran back over to the Adams’ house, and knocked softly on the door. ‘Boys, open up, it’s me again, David.’
The door cracked open a centimetre, and three pairs of eyes looked out at him as he spoke:
‘Can you all walk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how do you lads feel about saving the day?’
61
Peter had so many hands grabbing him, clawing at him, shoving him, that he hadn’t realised that there was one more which had come with light. The strikes of the men had been vicious, his position at the top of the stairs precarious, and the pressure of the life and death balance had been so severe, so much so that when the hand reached down to pull him upwards into blinding light, it could well have been God himself calling time and plucking him from this world with a personal touch.
But it didn’t work out like that. There were no pearly gates, unless the doorway was rusted, horizontal and embedded in soil. Because within seconds that is exactly where he found himself. In dirt. Outside. Under the bare sky. With fresh air, which he gulped in mouthfuls that felt so pure and searing it was like chugging bleach.
He had no idea what was going on.
There was a bright light, brighter than any torch he’d seen before, which hit his attackers as he was pulled through, and it kept them oddly at bay, like fire. Like it carried harm to the men.
And it was another man pulling him through—a large man with a pale blue shirt, with a starched collar and navy epaulettes. He was wielding a torch that resembled a briefcase with a colander on one end.
‘Quick,’ he shouted, as soon as Peter was through, ‘close the door.’
Peter crawled in the dirt to the hatch opening, as the man waved the torch down the stairs, emitting a near-absurd level of white light.
‘Back, back!’ he was shouting.
‘The dog!’ shouted Peter. There was no way he was going to leave Dewey down there, if he could avoid it. ‘Dewey!’ he shouted. The light from the monstrous torch occupied the men just enough to allow Dewey to slip between them. He was big and tightly wrought, but thank God he was slender and agile. He hopped up and out, bounding into the dirt, as Peter slammed the door shut. His saviour immediately slid a spade handle through the metal grip of the door, pinning it closed. There was furious banging and shouts from beneath them, cries of fathomless anger, muffled by the metal doors. Suddenly, ominously, they receded.
Peter lay in the dirt, panting, until Dewey licked his face.
‘Jeff,’ said the other man finally, through deep breaths. He finally switched the torch off and the darkness crowded in. ‘My name is Jeff.’ He held the contraption up. ‘It’s got the power of ten thousand candles. Ebay, in case you need one.’
‘Thank you so much, Jeff,’ Peter said, sitting up. As
Jeff was dusting himself down, Peter took a good look at him, then made the link. ‘You’re our security guard?’
‘That’s right,’ he sighed wearily.
‘I’ll make sure there’s a good showing for your Christmas collection.’
Jeff remained silent, and appeared not just tired, but troubled.
‘How did you know I would be here?’ Peter asked, as he took in his surroundings. ‘And where is this?’
‘It’s a… complicated story.’
‘Please tell me—what do you know?’
‘They just came up, started causing trouble?’
He knew, Peter thought. Jeff knew about these people living in the tunnels. ‘Yeah, fair to say, there’s been some weird things going on these past few days. But tonight it all… went mad.’ It was in that precise moment, when forced to try to explain even a scant summary of the night’s events, that Peter knew this was going to take a very long time to get over.
‘They’ve been more active, I’ve noticed.’ Jeff still couldn’t look at Peter properly.
‘You knew about them, and you… you didn’t think to warn us?’
‘I didn’t know they were like this.’
‘How long have you known?’
Jeff’s eyes suddenly became glued to his fancy torch, but sadness was evident. ‘Not long. A few days. When I found this place.’
Peter stood, petted Dewey, and looked around. They were at the back corner of a vast clearing, closed in on either side by thick trees. In the clearing, were huge mounds of rubble, made up of masonry, twisted bits of metal, chunks of earth and brick. And here in this back corner, a square of overturned earth with a battered door embedded in it.
‘What is this place?’
Jeff sat morosely, and looked about. At the mounds and the trees, then eventually the sky. ‘It’s all going to come down eventually.’
‘What?’
‘This… this is all that’s left.’
‘Of what?’
