“Thanks,” Mack said, his features softening in gratitude. “Guess I’m hungrier than I realised.”
The two men fell silent as they wolfed down the sandwiches.
Somewhere deep in the tunnels, small feet scurried along the ground, sharp noses having picked up the scent of fresh food. If the men kept still for too long, they would find themselves with company for lunch.
Tom spoke between mouthfuls of bread. “I can’t help thinking back to how you found me. I’m guessing it was more than coincidence?”
“No coincidence,” Mack said. “I’m not a big player in all of this, Tom, and when the Watchers approached me to step in front of your car, I had my doubts that they’d even got the right man. Only when I saw you for real did I believe you were the same boy from back then.”
“But how did they find me?”
“They’ve always been watching you, Tom. They’ve been watching you since you were a kid.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Since I was a child?” He remembered something. “I had a weird experience one night on the Underground not so long ago and I’ve been seeing graffiti that said, ‘Go back’. Was it actually meant for me?”
“They didn’t know how much you remembered. The graffiti was their way of testing you, of finding out if the words meant something to you.”
Tom thought back to all the times he had seen the graffiti—on park benches, bus windows, and tube station walls. The words had meant something to him. Every time he’d seen them, he’d experienced a strange twisting in his stomach, a slight shudder across his shoulders, and the inability to tear his eyes from the words. He’d known they meant something, he just hadn’t understood what.
The thought of these people watching him his entire life gave him the creeps. He remembered a time, at age twelve, when he’d found an old girly magazine. Though torn, damp and the pages half-missing, enough had been visible to excite his twelve-year-old mind and he’d sneaked behind some old warehouse buildings and masturbated.
He thought of the hundreds of times in his life when he’d believed himself to be anonymous or in private and the things that these people might have seen, things he had never imagined people would find out about him.
Tom’s cheeks flared hot in the darkness, imagining the people who had been watching him—homeless people from his past, people who lived on the streets, who were part of the Underlife.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve gone through my whole life not knowing anything about myself and now I find out I’ve been spied on as well. Do you know what it’s like to not know who you are?”
The older man shook his head.
“My birthday,” said Tom, “it’s the eleventh of April, right?” He looked at Mack as if for confirmation, but the older man said nothing. “Wrong. When the authorities picked me up, I didn’t even know when my birthday was, so when they asked me, I guessed. Every year, people brought me presents and wished me happy birthday and it was just another day. I used to dread it when I was a kid, but I was too embarrassed—too ashamed—to admit I didn’t know when my own birthday was. Do you have any idea how shitty that is? To be a child and dread your own birthday?”
Mack stared at the floor.
“And now you’re telling me people who knew everything about me were out there the whole time!” As he spoke, his anger built, starting as a slow trickle and quickly rising to the surface as torrent. “What about my real mother? Is she one of the people who have been spying on me? I mean, what did she do; dump me off on the social and then watch me from the streets?”
Mack put his head in his hands and sighed. “I don’t know what happened to your mother. I told you before, I’m not a big player in this; I don’t have all the answers.”
Tom shoved his boot back on his foot, the pain forgotten in his anger. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed himself down. “Then I suggest you take me to the people who do.”
“That’s exactly what I intended to do.” Mack sighed.
“Fine.”
Tom picked up his bag and stomped off down the tunnel. For the first time, he led the way with Mack following behind.
* * *
TOM FUMED AS he continued the walk through the tunnels. He wondered about these people who seemed to be controlling his life like puppeteers. In his head, he rehearsed the things he wanted to say to them, the snide and witty snippets he would use to make them understand how wrong they’d been. He was furious he’d been allowed to go through his whole life not knowing where he came from or why he’d been given up. He could hardly believe people who had all this information had been lurking in the background the whole time. How could they have waited until he was thirty-seven years old before bothering to contact him? But beneath the anger churned a ball of mixed emotions. Might he soon find out who his real mother was? Would he even be able to meet her?
“We need to go through here.”
Mack’s voice pulled him from his thoughts and Tom turned to find the older man standing by a niche carved into the tunnel wall. An arched doorway had once been sunken into the wall, but had been bricked up in the same way as the exits in the old tube stations.
“Go where?” Tom frowned. “There’s nothing here.”
“You sure?”
Mack reached out and grasped a brick about halfway up the doorway. His fingers hooked a notch in one of the bricks and he gave it a hefty tug. A large chunk of the wall—about three feet by three feet—slid out in one piece, so it now sat a couple of inches out of the face. Though the piece appeared to be bricks on the surface, Tom saw they were actually only a couple of inches thick. The chunk didn’t dislodge completely from the rest of the wall. Instead, Mack pushed the piece to the left and it ran out in front of the remaining wall as though on a set of rails. The missing piece revealed a gap big enough for them to climb through.
“Impressive,” said Tom, meaning it.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Mack said before stepping through the hole.
Tom followed. He ducked down, hoping this hole would be big enough for him to get through without getting stuck. Mack turned back and reached past Tom. He pulled the piece back, filling the gap they’d climbed through. It locked back into place with a ‘clunk.’
Tom straightened and looked up. His mouth dropped open in awe.
“My God.”
They had stepped into a huge cavern, easily the size of a cathedral. Its vastness yawned ahead of them. The natural stone walls were carved by the passing of time, the creases and crevasses smoothed by water that had run through for thousands of years and had now dried up. Stalactites hung from the roof, some long and a sharp as spears, others short and stubby. From the ground grew stalagmites, reaching up to meet their aerial counterparts.
Perhaps the most surprising thing for Tom was the presence of lighting. Electrical cables with bulbs attached to the ends hung from the walls and ceiling.
Tom and Mack had entered at an elevated position. Below their feet, steps carved into the rock led down to the floor of the cavern. They stood at the top, looking down on the cavern, which was far from empty.
Clusters of tents littered the floor; Tom counted more than twenty in all. A group of people sat around a gas burner, cooking something in a pan. Steam rose from a kettle and dissipated into the air. The sound of people talking and laughing filtered up to them.
As they stood there, people began to look up and notice them and the casual chatter stopped. Tom had never felt so self-conscious and out of place in his life.
“Go on then.” Mack gave him a gentle nudge to get him moving. “These are the people you were so keen to meet.”
Tom took a deep breath and carefully started to walk down the narrow steps. One by one, the people living on the cavern floor got to their feet, all eyes locked on Tom. By the time he reached the bottom, a small crowd had formed, a mismatch of people—men and women, young and old, black and white. At the centre, one ma
n in particular stood out. The man stepped forward, moving in front of his companions.
A mountain of a man, he stood well over six-feet tall with the shoulders of an American football player. His skin was black as ebony and he had the cut cheekbones and piercing eyes of a model. His head was shaved as smooth as stone.
Though striking, this wasn’t the reason Tom stared at the man. On his shoulder sat a huge rat, its naked pink tail curled around the man’s thick throat. Its whiskers twitched and its eyes fixed Tom with a stare that seemed to see right through him. The man reached up and petted the animal, smoothing down its fur as though it were a pet dog.
“I’m Otto,” he said, his voice as dark as his skin. “This here is Bugs.”
Tom eyed the rodent nervously. “I don’t know how you can have that thing’s tail around your neck,”
“It’s comforting,” Otto said with a chuckle. ”Like the arm of a lover.”
More like a snake about to crush its meal to death, Tom thought.
“We’re glad you could make it T.J.”
“Tom,” he said. “My name’s Tom now.”
“Of course.”
“So are you one of them?” Tom said, nerves flickering in his stomach. “One of these Watchers Mack keeps talking about?”
As if suddenly remembering the man who had brought Tom all this way, Otto looked past him and smiled at Mack.
“You did a good job,” Otto told him. “We’re grateful to you.”
Mack shrugged. “I didn’t think I had much choice in the matter. You’ll need to be gentle with him; he’s as green as they come.”
Otto cocked his head to one side, the smile still playing on his lips. “Did I hear genuine concern for the man, Mack? I didn’t think you cared too much about anyone but yourself?”
“Hey, I fly solo, but that doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit. And in case you were wondering, he doesn’t remember a thing.”
The first signs of a frown marked Otto’s smooth brow. “Is that true?” He turned his attention back to Tom. “We thought your memories may be distorted, but you don’t remember anything?”
The flashbacks from his dreams flicked through his mind, but he shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t remember a thing.”
Otto nodded slowly. “We will need to work on that. You can’t defeat the Shadows if you don’t remember how.”
Tom felt everyone watching him, hope lighting their eyes as though they thought he was going to save them. Didn’t they realise he was just a middle-aged, slightly overweight salesman? Whatever he had done as a child, he had no connection to that person now.
“I don’t know what you think I can do. We came across the Shadows in the tunnels and it wasn’t scared of me. I have no idea what I’m even doing here.”
A woman stepped out of the crowd, a woman with long, dark hair and deep brown eyes. Tom recognised her, but couldn’t place her. He stared at her for a moment, his brain wracking over who she was, turning over all the possibilities, grasping for the answer. Then it came to him—David’s nurse from the hospital.
“Samantha?” he said, incredulous.
She smiled. “Hello, Tom.”
He felt like his eyes were falling out of his head. “What are you doing down here?”
“I’ve come to help these people, Tom. They needed me.”
“But... but...” He stuttered like a tongue-tied teenager. “Surely, you don’t live down here?”
She shook her head. “Not any more. I used to, many years ago, when I was young. A church group took me in and gave me a home and an education. I wasn’t a great believer in God, but I wanted to do something that would help other people so I became a nurse. But I never stopped seeing the people who took care of me down here.” She smiled at Otto. “I tried to help get others back above ground, but, for them, this is their lives. They belong down here; they have communities, they have a place.
“I think I understand,” Tom said. “I’m just amazed someone like you came from this.”
She smiled a slow, wide smile that warmed her eyes. “But what about you, Tom? Would you say the same thing about yourself?”
Every moment, this place knocked him sideways. All of a sudden, part of his real life had collided with this new, strange world. Before now, on some level, he could have kidded himself that they’d made a mistake and they had the wrong person, but now here was someone he knew and trusted telling him this was all real. How could he deny them now?
“We need your help, Tom,” she said.
“I’ll do whatever I can...”
“He can’t do shit!”
The voice, that of a female, came from the side of the cavern, away from the main group. A girl sat on a ledge, her legs pulled up to her chest, her skinny, pale arms wrapped around them. She watched them with an intense mixture of curiosity and mistrust. Something about her seemed wild. Her short, dark hair stuck out from her head and she had aqua marine, almond shaped eyes.
At first, Tom thought she was no more than a girl, eighteen years old at the most, but then she unfurled and stood with the grace of a dancer and walked over to them. She looked him up and down and as soon as she spoke again, he realised she was older, at least ten years older.
“So, this is who we’ve all been waiting for?” Her nose wrinkled, her upper lip lifted in a barely disguised sneer.
“Don’t start, Sky,” Otto warned. The giant grey rat squealed in response. As soon as Tom heard her name, a jolt went through him, and he had to stop himself repeating it, tasting it on his tongue like some forgotten language.
She walked slowly around him, sizing him up like they were competitors in a boxing match. Then she stopped and folded her arms across her narrow chest.
“This is pathetic,” she spat. “He couldn’t fight a cold.”
“It’s true,” he agreed. “I hate to fight.”
“This isn’t about fighting,” Otto interjected. “It’s more than that.”
“Bullshit,” she said, glaring at Tom as though she hated him. “Fighting is all we’ve got left.”
Not giving any of them a chance to answer, she spun around on her worn sneakers and stormed off, back to the ledge she’d been sitting on. She faced away from them, as if pretending they weren’t there.
“You have to excuse Sky,” Otto said. “She has no manners. She was brought up down here; she’s practically feral.”
But something about her made Tom unable to tear his eyes from her—and it wasn’t simply because she was beautiful. He felt he’d seen her before, like he had known her in another life.
Otto walked up to Tom and put his arm around Tom’s shoulder. The rat was only inches from Tom’s face, its whiskers twitching, and he leaned away, trying to increase the distance between them.
“I expect you are tired,” Otto said, steering Tom towards the groups of tents and away from the people. “We’ve prepared a sleeping quarter for you, and Tally over there,” he nodded to one of the women who was leaning over the camping stove when he first came in, “has made you something to eat.”
Tom gave her a cautious smile and she smiled back, holding up a tin of something hot.
“Thanks,” he said.
Otto showed Tom to a green two-man tent. A sleeping bag had been placed inside and, for a moment, Tom hoped it would be clean, expecting it to smell of stale beer and cigarettes and urine. Instantly, shame washed over him for his stereotyping. When he huddled down inside, the small space was filled with only the familiar scent of canvas.
The woman, Tally, bought over a tin plate with steaming hot beans and a couple of slices of bread. His stomach grumbled. The sandwich obviously hadn’t quite hit the spot.
“Thanks,” he told her again and she left without speaking. The others in the group had all wandered off to do their own thing, the interest in him now dissipated, leaving him alone with Otto and Bugs. Tom looked around for Mack, expecting him to be close by and to make some sort of smart comment about Tom being given food when h
e hadn’t, but the older man was nowhere to be seen.
His heart clenched in disappointment. As much as he and Mack had managed to rub each other up the wrong way, Mack was the closest thing to a real friend he had around here. He had felt a certain—albeit strange at times—protection with the man around and now suddenly he was on his own again. He hoped Mack would show up. He hated to think he might not see him again and that he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
“Eat and then try to get some sleep,” Otto told him. “You’re going to need your strength for what happens next.”
“Why do I not like the sound of that?”
“I’ll see you later,” Otto said, leaving for his own tent without bothering to answer the question.
Hungrily, Tom scoffed down the beans and bread. He wondered if he should take the empty plate back to Tally, but she’d also vanished and he wasn’t going to start searching the tents to try to find her. The lights were still on in the cavern, but from the lack of activity Tom guessed it was night time. A couple of people sat talking quietly, but most had taken to their tents.
Leaving the plate on the floor outside the tent, Tom climbed inside and lay on top of the sleeping bag. He stuffed his bag under the top part to make a pillow and tried to get comfortable. He thought it would take him ages to fall asleep, what with the uncomfortable bedding and the strange situation, but, as soon as he closed his eyes, he was dead to the world.
Chapter 9
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Tom woke to find Samantha sitting beside him.
He sat up in surprise and then groaned as his muscles seized. He had a kink in his neck from lying with his head on his bag and his ankle throbbed. His head felt muggy and he knew he’d slept deeply. He’d been so exhausted he hadn’t even heard her entering the tent.
“I need to talk to you, Thomas.”
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