There was a time, Bo told them, before the glideways were set up, when rail lines carried passengers to and from old Hong Kong. Now, only derelicts and a few adventurous souls ever entered these tunnels.
Their lights cut through the blackness, sweeping across tunnel walls layered with crudely drawn symbols and graffiti. Bo aimed his chocklight down the tunnel. It seemed endless. The light dissipated after a few kilometers. Smells of burned wood, machine oil, and ether filled the air.
“What’d I tell you?” muttered Bo, who was only eleven but nearly a head taller than the other two. “Way gone, isn’t it?”
“Way,” said Lei, his eyes wide open.
Leon said nothing, keeping his trepidation to himself.
Lei yelled, “Whoop, whoop!” and the walls reverberated.
“Shhhhh,” said Bo. “We don’t know who’s in here.”
As they walked along the abandoned platform, things crunched and rolled at their feet. Turning his chocklight to the floor, Lei saw empty meck ampules and wine bottles sparkling amid the rubbish. He kicked and they rolled away, one of them stopping next to a heap of trash.
“Hey, look at this,” said Lei, holding his light to a stack of material.
Leaning against the wall was a small shelter held together haphazardly with tape and metal wire. Inside, trinkets hung from its low cardboard ceiling: toys and spoons, and bits of holographic foil. Leon reached in and plucked a plastic harmonica from one of the strings and wiped it on his trousers. Putting his lips to it, he blew, but only air rushed out. He threw the harmonica to the ground and reached for something else.
“Gross,” said Lei. “I’d never put my mouth on something like that.”
“He’s a little piggy,” said Bo, yanking his brother’s arm. “Come on, give us an oink.”
Pouting, Leon looked back at the shanty. His brother yanked him again. “Let’s go.”
Walking a few paces farther, they heard a rustling noise behind them. As they swung their lights to the spot, the heap of trash next to the shanty rustled again.
“It’s a rat,” said Bo.
They relaxed and began to turn when suddenly the heap shifted to one side. The pile of trash slowly rose, pieces of plastic and foil shedding from it. A big chunk slid off, crashing to the floor. The mound tilted and twisted and another chunk went crashing to the ground. Then slowly a human form, covered in a ragged coat, emerged. The thing began to straighten from its crouched position. A grimy face glared at them, stained teeth and hollow cheeks, eyes in narrow slits looking at them. Raising a gnarled fist, the figure growled like an animal. The boys took off running down the tunnel, legs churning furiously, their chocklights bouncing.
“Rats!” yelled Bo as he kicked one out of the way.
The sound of metal banging on concrete reverberated from the tunnel behind them.
They ran faster and faster, crashing into to a wall of trash piled almost to the ceiling. Looking up at the rubble, Lei yelled, “There’s no way out!”
“Up and over,” said Bo, scrambling up the pile. At the top, there was just enough clearance for them to crawl through. Sliding down the other side they continued to run, down one tunnel and across another. They ran and ran, following Bo, hoping he knew the way. At last they came to a cavernous, empty room, water dripping from the ceiling. Fresh air was drifting in from above and they could see light filtering in. There was a grate high above and the green of trees beyond.
The sound of metal banging on concrete came again.
Their chocklights flicked across the walls. They were in a dead end.
“What are we going to do? We can’t go back that way,” said Lei, nervously feeling for the lucky rabbit’s foot he kept in his pocket.
“How are we going to get out of here?” cried Leon, panicking.
“Get on my shoulders,” said Bo, standing directly under the grating. “I can hold both of you. We’ll go out the top.”
Grabbing Bo’s shoulders and stepping on his knee, Leon climbed up, then paused and jumped off. “You need to be near the wall so I have something to hold on to.”
Bo repositioned himself next to the wall and Leon quickly remounted, climbing onto his brother’s shoulders. He called down to Lei, “Come on.”
Lei began to climb, feeling uneasy as the bodies of his friends flexed under his weight. With his hands against the wall, he managed to get to his feet on top of Leon’s shoulders.
“Go ahead, Bo,” he said. “Walk over to the opening.”
Bo moved slowly, one small step at a time. His knee threatened to buckle under the weight and he grunted, slowly trudging away from the wall.
The sound of metal banging against concrete became louder. The grime creature, as they would later refer to it, was getting closer.
“Hurry,” said Leon.
“Don’t move,” said Lei, as he studied the grating. What he saw was not good. The grate was wet and encrusted with rust. Pushing his chocklight against it with both hands, it wouldn’t budge. He thought for a moment.
I can make it . . . but they’ll see me. I promised mother I wouldn’t, but there’s no other way. I have to . . . just this once.
Bending his knees, Lei crouched down. He concentrated and particles began to swirl around him. As hard as he could, he pushed off from Leon’s shoulder. He went flying, and Leon fell to the ground.
The force of Lei’s jump knocked both of them to the ground. They looked up to see Lei standing on top of the grate.
Getting to his feet, Bo yelled, “Hey. Find a rope or something.”
“Yeah,” came the answer came from above. “I’m looking. Hold on.”
The banging noise came again from the tunnel, this time much louder.
Bo aimed his chocklight at the ceiling and said incredulously, “The grate’s still closed. How’d you get out?”
“Wait,” said Lei, “I’ll be back.”
Lei returned a moment later with a long branch and wedged it into one of the open squares of the grate. He called to the boys below, “Watch out.”
At the other end of the branch, he brought all of his weight to bear. The grate moved slightly. He began to kick up and down, swinging his legs higher each time, coming down hard on the end of the branch. With a dull crunching sound, the rusted metal suddenly broke free and Lei fell to the ground. Picking himself up, he flipped the grate over and lowered the branch down into the darkness. Leon scrambled up. Shaking with adrenaline he took up a position next to Lei. Together they held on as tight as they could while Bo climbed up, grabbing their clothes at the last to haul himself out.
Dropping the branch into the abyss, they heard a growl from the chamber below and took off running through the park. Reaching a safe distance, they stopped at a park bench, laughing nervously.
“Whoa,” said Leon. “That was something!”
“Yeah. We would have been dead if he had caught us,” said Bo.
Lei was uneasy. He wasn’t sure what the others had seen. They were down on the floor when he passed through the grate and appearing on top of it wouldn’t be easy to explain. His mother forbade him to go to that other place, the place with the particles. He would have to tell her, and she would be angry. She would stare into his eyes and talk a lot. She often did that when he did something he wasn’t supposed to do.
They were happy to have a whopping good story to tell—they escaped the grime creature and, in the telling of it, the creature would become more terrifying with each iteration.
On the way back to South Point, Bo asked Lei how he was able to pass through the grating. Lei lied, saying the grate was loose and it flipped open when he jumped through. Then it must have fallen shut by itself and he had to pry it open. Lei left out the bit that would have been impossible to explain. In mid leap, in that moment when he closed his eyes and entered the world of churning particles, he passed through the grate unimpeded – assisted by something unseen—something that pulled him up to the top.
About the Author
&
nbsp; Jack Philip Hall began writing science fiction and general fiction stories in 2001. In an earlier life he was a product design engineer in Silicon Valley, designing mass-produced products for major corporations such as Sony, Fujitsu, Apple, IBM, Motorola and Intel. He collaborated on the world’s first laptop computer and the world’s first handheld GPS locater. He currently lives above the white water in Southern California.
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