Fugitives

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  We rounded a bend into the ticket office foyer. Every other time I’d been here the place had been heaving, people everywhere bustling and shoving and swearing at each other. Now it stood empty, the quiet unnerving, weighted, as though we’d caught it doing something it shouldn’t have been. Ticket machines blinked at us, startled, and overhead one of the fluorescents shimmered on and off.

  Devoid of life, the station felt artificial, as if it was nothing but stage props, and another insane thought crossed my mind. What if this was a stage? What if this was just one of the warden’s jokes, his sadistic tests? Letting us think we’d got out, letting us think we’d made it, only to reveal that this world was his creation, that it was a giant theatre of cruelty buried deep in Furnace. Any minute now he would jump out of the shadows with his blacksuits and his dogs, howling with laughter as he tossed us back to the wheezers. Had we really just been outside? Had that really been the sun? Right now my mind was too ravaged to be able to give a straight answer.

  ‘Anyone got enough to buy a travel card?’ Zee said, his whisper almost deafening in the silence. It shivered around the hall, bouncing off the tiled walls and the concrete floor before ebbing away, leaving goosebumps on my arms. He was patting the empty pockets of his jeans. ‘I’m a bit short right now.’

  We walked across the middle of the room towards the gates, Zee stopping by a vending machine. He kicked out at it repeatedly, and on his fifth attempt the glass smashed. Reaching inside, he pulled out a handful of Kit-Kats and a bottle of Coke. Then he grabbed a carbonated mineral water and handed it to me. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I was until I unscrewed the cap and let the cool water flow into my mouth. It fizzed down my throat, seeming to strip some of the tiredness, some of the fear, along with it. I threw the empty bottle aside and grabbed another one, downing four in a row then unleashing the longest, loudest belch I had ever done in my life – so impressive that Simon almost jumped right out of his skin.

  ‘Easy there, tiger,’ he said. ‘You’ll burp yourself inside out.’

  I laughed. The water was good, had spun my energy levels back up, but it hadn’t done anything about the gaping hole in my stomach, that unbearable, impossible hunger that made me feel like a hollow man. I remembered what Simon had told me, back in the prison, about my appetites. I was hungry because my body was running out of nectar. If it didn’t find a way to function without the warden’s poison then I was doomed either to die, or to become a bloodthirsty beast killing anything that got in my way.

  It wasn’t exactly the future I’d been hoping for.

  ‘You all right?’ Simon said.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ I nodded.

  Zee had walked ahead to a route map. He ran his hand over the mess of tangled, coloured lines, stopping at one marked WHITESMITH LANE – the same name detailed in mosaics all over the station. We were near the bottom edge of the map, five more southbound stops to the end of the line.

  ‘If we head in that direction we could make it all the way to Hollenbeck,’ Zee said, running his finger along the blue string until it popped off the edge of the board. I doubted if our escape would be as easy as that, but it was nice to imagine. He used the same finger to scratch his nose before plopping it back where it had started. ‘Trouble is, that’s what they’ll be expecting. They’ll know anybody down here will be making a break for the edge of the city, so I’m guessing those stations will be rammed.’

  To the side of the map was an electronic board listing the status of each line. To my surprise every single route but this one was running, albeit with a warning: SEVERE DELAYS.

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Simon. ‘Head for the city?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zee replied, nodding. ‘I’m guessing – and this really is just a guess, guys – that they won’t be expecting us to head north. It’s too risky, there are too many people. We’re escaped cons, we need shadows and darkness, at least that’s what they’ll be thinking. If we head into town then there will be cops everywhere, but there will also be crowds, thousands of people.’

  ‘We can lose ourselves,’ I said.

  ‘We can lose ourselves,’ Zee confirmed. ‘Nowhere better to do that than the city.’ He turned his attention back to the map. ‘So, we head north on the tracks, two stops, that’s a couple of miles I should think. We hit Twofields and get on Line 11; should take us all the way through the city and out the other side.’

  ‘That’s a whole lotta stations to get through,’ said Simon. ‘What if they search the trains.’

  ‘As soon as we see police we change trains,’ Zee said. ‘If they’re all running then we’ll be able to hop between them. So long as we keep moving we’ll get out of the city eventually. If we leave at one of the stops up there,’ he nodded at the top of the map, ‘we’re home and dry. Won’t be many police on the northern ring, they won’t be expecting anyone to make it that far.’

  ‘And if there are …’ Simon slapped his huge fist against his smaller one, then winced, clutching his shoulder.

  ‘You’ll moan and groan at them and they’ll feel so sorry for us they’ll let us go?’ I finished. He grunted something indecipherable at me, pulling his hand away to investigate the smear of black blood on his palm. My expression grew serious. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ he answered with a weak smile. ‘I’ll treat myself to a plaster when we’re out of the city. Now come on.’

  He jogged to the nearest gate and bounded over it, Zee and I close behind. We traipsed along another passageway then reached the escalators. I started to run down one but Simon clambered onto the middle section that separated the moving stairs and cautiously began to skid down it, looking like a surfer in the middle of a wave. He giggled as he slid, losing his balance somewhere near the bottom and skittering onto the tiles below.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that!’ he shouted up at us once he’d found his feet. I skipped off the bottom of the escalator and made my way towards one of two arched openings in the walls. The sign beside it read NORTHBOUND and showed a map of the stops. We strolled through to find ourselves on an empty platform. It was freezing down here, a cold wind ripping through one side of the tunnel and out the other, and it felt good. This was nothing like the hot stench of Furnace’s breath. This was a fresh current that would carry us to freedom.

  The electronic board above us read NO TRAINS, but we didn’t need one. Zee checked both ways before lowering himself over the edge of the platform into the pit.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere near that rail,’ he said, pointing at the third rail of four. It was different from the rest, higher and with yellow supports. Simon and I sat on the platform and jumped down together, doing our best to ignore the smell of oil and urine that clawed at our throats. ‘If you touch it, just once, then you’ll be blown right out of those shiny new shoes. I watched a programme about it, about all the people that had been killed down here. Nasty stuff.’

  I could feel the buzz in the air, the low whine in my ears, and the slightly metallic taste you get when you’re near something with a huge electrical charge. The last time I’d sensed it was on my first day in Furnace, standing in the wire compound they called the Barbecue. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  ‘And whatever you do,’ Zee said as he started making his way up the track, keeping one hand against the wall to steady himself. ‘And I’m talking to you, Alex, since you’ve just drank about a gallon of water, don’t take a piss. There was one guy in that programme who tried that and, well, I don’t need to tell you that wouldn’t be a pleasant way to die.’ He made a gruesome exploding sound and I was glad that I couldn’t see where his hands were.

  We picked up the pace, entering the tunnel to the right-hand side of the station. It was dark in here, but my improved vision did what it was supposed to, picking apart the shadows to see the line stretching out to vanishing point. Mine weren’t the only silver eyes in the tunnel – tiny, glinting spots glared at us from beneath the tracks, desperate squeaks like fingernails on a
blackboard.

  Rats, I thought to myself, the word chilling me to the bone. I didn’t mind these furry ones – the worst that could happen down here was getting rodent crap on our shoes – but the sight of those demonic eyes up ahead made me think of the tunnels beneath Furnace, the warden’s horrific creations with the same name, the ones that had gone wrong, the creatures that had once been kids but which were now mindless freaks with ragged claws and razored teeth, which wanted to feast on blood …

  ‘Maybe you should take the lead, Alex,’ said Zee, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Can’t see squat in here.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, squeezing past Simon then Zee, my heart pounding as I tripped over a foot and nearly sprawled into the death rail. I swore, the noise bouncing off the walls, like the tunnel was mocking me. Then I set off again, walking as fast as I dared, the end of the tunnel always the same distance ahead.

  Eventually the light from the platform grew dim, then faded altogether. We were all used to darkness, keeping our breathing hushed and our mouths closed so we could let our ears guide us. There were noises down here, not just the click of clawed feet on concrete but the rise and fall of the wind as it gusted past us, and distant squeals that sounded like monsters but which I knew were the trains. Every time I heard those brakes I just about died, imagining lights blazing up in front of us as twenty tonnes of solid steel bulldozed this way. If that happened, if this line started working again, then we were history.

  And after having seen the sun again, the worst thing I could think of was being a ghost trapped in these tunnels, so close to daylight and yet back underground. I gritted my teeth together so hard it hurt, increasing my pace. We had to have walked half a mile, at least. The next station couldn’t be far.

  It was. I counted my heartbeats, three for every second, reaching a thousand, then two, and nearly five before I caught a glimmer of something at the end of the tunnel. We all stumbled towards it, blinking as the light became stronger. We peeked up over the platform – COLLIER’S POINT stencilled on the walls – and at first I thought it was deserted. Then I noticed the bodies, maybe five or six of them. Two were wearing body armour, two were in prison uniforms, and the last had been stripped down to his underwear, revealing the bullet holes in his pale flesh.

  There were noises, too. The patter of distant footsteps echoing out from the archway to our side, and a hiss of dry laughter, too close for comfort.

  We continued along the lines, crouching below the level of the platform in case there was anybody else nearby. But as we drew level with the corpses I risked another look to see that the blood pooled beneath them was sticky and almost dry. Whatever had happened here had happened a while back.

  ‘We obviously weren’t the first to think of doing this,’ Zee whispered.

  We scampered along the length of the platform and into the tunnel at the other end. Even my supercharged vision struggled to make sense of the shadows, and I kept my hand firmly against the wall so I didn’t stray to my death. Tiny objects kept popping beneath my feet and it took me a while to realise they were probably rat skulls, weakened by time. The smell, too, was age old and rotten. It reminded me, more than anything, of the warden’s breath; of decay, of bodies pulverised and putrefied. And it was difficult not to picture ourselves strolling down his throat.

  ‘You hear that?’ Simon said, his words turning my bones to ice water. I tried to calm my heart, cocking my head to see if I could make out what he’d heard. There was still a distant, banshee-like squeal of brakes, along with the echo of our steps and the constant whine of the electrified rail. But other than that I couldn’t make out anything new. ‘Thought I heard shouting,’ he went on. ‘Probably my—’

  He stopped, and this time I heard it too, a dull voice that could have been a pipe clanging. It was too far away to tell. We moved as stealthily as we could, marching in time until once again the gloom of the tunnel began to peel away, the distant glow rising like daybreak, a semicircle of tired yellow light breaking free from the night. It grew as we approached, as did the noises. Simon had been right, they were shouts.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Zee as we crept towards the Twofields platform. It was deserted, but there were definitely voices filtering through the doors, echoing off the cold, clean tiles and making it sound like they were right there in front of us. Like they were ghosts.

  ‘Leave them,’ Simon said. ‘Keep moving to the next station.’

  ‘But this is the one we need,’ Zee replied. ‘It’s a junction stop. The Elizabeth Line is through those doors. If we keep going then it’s five or six more stops to the next junction, and then we only get on … I can’t remember which line is up there but it will take us in the wrong direction, I’m sure of it.’

  Another noise tore through the arched opening of the tunnel, this one somehow far more unnerving than the rest. It was a laugh, high-pitched and lunatic. I looked at Simon, then at Zee, meeting each boy’s gaze with the same reluctance.

  ‘It might be even worse if we carry on,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, that settles it,’ Zee said, putting his hands on the platform and clumsily hauling himself up. He stood, brushing his hands on his jeans. ‘We watch each other’s backs, same as always.’

  ‘Same as always,’ I said, waiting for Simon to clamber up reluctantly before leaping onto the platform. The noises may have been even louder up here but it was good to be back in the light. We cautiously made our way towards the nearest exit, peering through the archway to see a sight that might have belonged in a war movie.

  The first thing I noticed was the colour. The pristine white tiles had been splashed with so much red that it looked like a hospital morgue. It was so vivid that it didn’t look real. There were more bodies, slumped and broken, dead eyes staring at the rolling escalators to our left as if wondering why they couldn’t get to the top. These corpses were a mix, just like the last lot – maybe three or four sets of Furnace overalls as well as a number of police and SWAT uniforms. The smell of blood was fresher here, and the taste of gunpowder hung like cigarette smoke in the back of my throat.

  ‘Jesus,’ whispered Simon. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Gangs,’ Zee replied. ‘Skulls or the Fifty-Niners. Or maybe they’re all working together now.’

  Zee’s words caused a thought to explode, so powerful and so overwhelming that I almost doubled over. I began to shake my head, trying to deny the revelation, but I couldn’t. The truth was there, right in front of me. I couldn’t quite believe I had never thought of it before, but I can honestly say it hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been so focused on getting out, on being free, that I’d been blind to the consequences of my actions, blind to the real nightmare.

  We were free, but so was each and every inmate in Furnace, the ones who had survived, anyway. And for every kid like me who’d been framed there were ten, twenty, maybe a hundred who were guilty of their crimes – murder, arson, assault, and worse. They were out, on the streets, the same cold-blooded killers who had been responsible for the Summer of Slaughter, the same brutal gangs that had made the streets run red.

  They were free, and it was my fault.

  ‘This way,’ said Zee, leading us off in the direction of the voices.

  I did my best to ignore the nausea, to shrug off the guilt, following him with a heavy head and a heavier heart. Signposts showed us the way to the Elizabeth Line, and we followed them round a bend, down another vast escalator and along a narrow tunnel lined with bare crimson footprints. At the end of it was a staircase that dropped onto the platform. This one was larger, kiosks embedded in the green tiled walls. Shadows danced and played against the empty stalls like a puppet show. We waited, frozen at the top of the stairs, knowing we needed to get down them but unable to take that first step.

  ‘Jesus, when are we gonna catch a break?’ Simon muttered.

  ‘Ignore it,’ I said. ‘Whatever’s down there, whoever it is, we leave them alone and they’ll leave us alone.’

  ‘Or m
aybe we could just wait,’ Zee said. ‘They’ll be gone soon, surely. We don’t want any trouble.’

  It was a tempting idea, but I knew that no amount of waiting would help. Trouble just had a funny way of finding us.

  Ambush

  We descended the steps slowly, every muscle tense, ready to defend ourselves. We didn’t know what was down there, but if experience had taught us anything it was to expect the worst.

  Zee had taken the lead, but when he reached the bottom he stopped and motioned for me to proceed.

  ‘I don’t want to cause them too much damage,’ he whispered with a nervous grin, flexing his non-existent biceps. I wasn’t in the mood to laugh, stepping past him onto the platform. The noises were even louder down here, but the wide staircase blocked our view. Only the strange shadow puppet show on the wall continued, a parade of phantom limbs and elongated torsos.

  ‘Forget it,’ a voice pulled itself out of the cacophony, louder than the rest. ‘You saw those things up there, you wanna die then go ahead, bruv’, but I ain’t wiv you.’

  The shouts rose in pitch, a dozen people arguing. I was surprised to hear a female voice in there too, the sound so alien to me after Furnace that at first I didn’t recognise it. We moved cautiously around the staircase, the other half of the platform sliding into view. The first thing I saw was three inmates in torn overalls, two leaning against the wall and another – a Skull – pacing back and forth, a rifle gripped in his white-knuckled hands. He pointed it across the platform towards something out of sight, his finger wrapped around the trigger.

  ‘I told you to shut the hell up,’ he said, his voice desperate and broken. ‘This ain’t none of your concern.’

  I took a few more steps, lifting my arms into the air and coughing gently. The prisoner with the gun spun round and loosed a shot, the bullet flying up and gouging a chunk of concrete from the ceiling. The sound seemed to startle him as much as everyone else and he almost lost his grip on the weapon. He blinked furiously, seeming to recognise us, but if anything this made him even more wary.