by Will Hill
The man himself had been sullen ever since arriving in the hangar, and had said very little during the journey from the Loop to London. He had not been rude or genuinely insubordinate; he had answered questions, although his answers had largely been limited to single words, and he had given the appearance of listening to the briefing update. Jamie believed his pride had been dealt a blow by the psych evaluation, which could end up being a good thing; if it made him determined to prove Jamie wrong, it could work to the squad’s advantage. But, as he looked at Morton, sitting stiffly in his seat in the back of the van, he was far from sure.
“We work with the information we have,” he said, forcing as much calm into his voice as he possibly could. “And Surveillance says he’s down there. So until we’ve checked every inch of those tunnels and found nothing, we’re going to assume they’re right. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Morton.
“Good,” said Jamie. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ellison?”
The third member of Operational Squad M-3, who had been watching the conversation between Morton and Jamie with gathering unease on her face, nodded. “I’m ready, sir. What’s the plan?”
“Right through the front door,” said Jamie. He had turned his attention back to the monitors and seen what he was looking for: a moment in which the pavement outside their vehicle had fallen quiet. “Move out.”
He threw open the van’s back door; cool air rushed in as Morton leapt out on to the temporarily empty pavement. Ellison went after him, the flicker of a smile on her face as she did so. Jamie followed them, slamming the door shut behind him, and strode quickly across to the pale stone façade of the station where his squad mates were waiting for him.
The two padlocks hanging from the security grille covering the station’s red metal doors were intact, and covered with a thin layer of dust; it was clear that no one had entered the station by conventional means in at least a number of weeks. Jamie glanced upwards and instantly saw what he had been expecting: a broken window on the third floor.
That’s how he went in. So he was here, even if Morton is right and he’s gone.
Ellison pulled a small cylinder from her pocket and sprayed liquid nitrogen over the padlock. There was a crackling sound, like milk hitting breakfast cereal, before she reversed the cylinder and brought its pointed end down on the centre of the lock. The metal shattered, tumbling to the pavement in a hundred jagged pieces. Morton reached between the bars, unwound the chain, and pushed one of the doors open.
The ticket hall had once been grand, and some of that grandeur still remained in the green and cream tiling, the carved wood around the ticket windows, the high ceilings and arched openings. But dust now covered everything, and evidence of the functional use of the building was everywhere: piles of cables, extension leads, yellowed printouts of script pages and call sheets.
Jamie called for torches and ordered Morton to lead them through the empty ticket barriers and towards the long-stationary escalators that would take them underground. A single lift remained in working order, for transporting equipment and lazy actors and directors down to the platforms, but it was sealed shut. Jamie would not have used it in any case; he wanted to be able to see his surroundings at all times.
Jamie followed Morton, with Ellison close behind, her MP5 in her hands. He had not drawn a weapon, but his fingers were resting within easy reach of the grip of his T-Bone. They rounded a sharp corner, the beams from their torches sweeping from side to side, illuminating the green tiles of the old station walls. Then Morton raised a single clenched fist, ordering them to stop.
“What is it?” asked Jamie, his voice low.
“Door,” replied Morton. “Broken open.”
He stepped forward, pointing for Ellison to stay where she was. The corridor widened to accommodate the three escalators that filled it, and white wooden doors were set into the walls on both sides. One of these was hanging open, its lock splintered and dangling by a few narrow splinters.
“Check it,” said Jamie.
Morton nodded, drew his T-Bone, and crept silently forward. He reached the door and pulled it towards him with the barrel of his weapon. It creaked once, then swung on its one remaining hinge, revealing a storeroom full of empty metal cages. Jamie stepped up to the doorway, his T-Bone against his shoulder, as Morton entered the storeroom, twisting and crouching to shine his torch up at the ceiling and the high corners of the room.
“Door,” he whispered.
Jamie nodded and stepped through the doorway. At the end of the storeroom was a second door, also open. Footprints had been left in the thick dust in front of it, footprints that led towards where he was now standing. Morton edged forward and craned his neck through the door.
“Spiral staircase,” he said. “Heading upwards. It must come out on one of the floors above the station.”
Jamie nodded. “This is how he came in,” he said. “Through the window, down the stairs, and—”
“What window?” asked Ellison, from out in the corridor.
“There’s a broken window on the third floor,” said Jamie. “I saw it as we came in.”
“Thanks for telling us,” said Morton.
“Sorry,” said Jamie. “I thought you might have noticed it yourselves.”
He shone his torch across the floor, following the footprints. They ended at the broken door, but that was far enough; they all knew where Alastair Dempsey had gone.
“The escalators are twenty-one metres,” said Jamie, walking back out into the corridor. “There are two platforms, one on each side. If there’s no sign of him, we’ll check the east platform first. The tunnel was closed in 1917 and it’s sealed at both ends.”
“What about the west tunnel?” asked Morton.
“It was closed in 1994,” said Jamie. “The tracks are still there and the tunnel is clear. It runs north for about half a mile.”
“Half a mile?” repeated Morton. “Don’t you think there might be one or two places to hide in half a mile of tunnel?”
“We’d better get on with it then,” said Ellison, glaring at her squad mate.
Jamie shot her a quick smile. “Agreed,” he said. “Morton, you stay on point.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, and started down the middle escalator, his boots thudding on the metal stairs. The beam of Morton’s torch rested steadily on the distant floor; Ellison’s and Jamie’s swept slowly in wide arcs as they followed him down towards it.
At the bottom, Jamie immediately saw that there was no need to check the east platform. A thick layer of dust and dirt covered the floor tiles, in which Dempsey’s footprints were clearly visible; spaced widely and evenly apart, they disappeared through the arch that led to the west platform. It was darker at the bottom of the escalators; the lights in the station still worked, but Jamie had not asked for them to be turned on. He did not want to make it obvious to Alastair Dempsey that someone was coming.
The three Operators stepped silently through the arch and emerged on to a perfectly preserved platform. The tiling on the walls and ceilings was immaculate, and a tube train sat silently on the tracks before them, its doors open, its seats empty.
“What the hell?” asked Morton, his voice low.
“It must be used for filming,” said Ellison.
“It’s creepy.”
“Tell me about it,” said Ellison, and smiled at her squad mate.
The footprints headed north, then disappeared at the end of the platform. Jamie led his squad in the same direction, their T-Bones drawn, their torches casting bright white light before them. It was hot on the platform, and humid; the air was warm and musty, and seemed thick, almost solid. It smelt faintly rotten, and Jamie felt his nose wrinkle in mild disgust as he reached the end of the platform. He lowered his visor, twisted the dial on his belt to thermographic and looked down the tunnel; it appeared as a flat tube of dark red, with no detail whatsoever.
The humidit
y’s blowing out the sensors, he thought, pushing the visor back up. Awesome. No thermographics, no satellite overlook, no console signal. Welcome back to the dark ages.
A concrete walkway extended about three metres, until four wide steps led down to the tunnel floor. The train loomed over them, incredibly tall when viewed from the same level as its wheels. It seemed oddly threatening, as though it was merely sleeping; Jamie imagined its engines suddenly roaring into life, the flat metal front lurching after them in the darkness as they fled along its rails, and shivered. He turned his back on the train, felt his shoulders tense slightly, and shone his torch down the dark abyss of the tunnel.
The tracks gleamed in the torchlight. Between and beyond the silver rails, the tunnel floor was dust and dirt. Toppled piles of crumbling bricks stood against the walls, and plastic bags full of goodness knows what were piled in shiny, sweating mountains. Rats scurried away from the beams, their feet clicking across the floor, their tails leaving trails in the dust and soot.
“This way,” said Jamie, his voice sounding far less confident than he would have liked. He was suddenly very conscious of where they were, who they were looking for, and how far away help would be if something went wrong in this old, forgotten place.
“Let’s do it,” said Ellison.
Jamie nodded, and led his squad into the dark maw of the tunnel.
They swept the wide space with their torches, swinging them in slow, overlapping arcs. Water dripped from the ceiling, creating dark puddles topped with an oily film. The cables that powered the lights ran in thick bunches on the ceiling above their heads, black snaking tubes that reflected their torches back at them. They moved at a determinedly slow pace: the rails were slippery, the floor unsteady, studded with cracks and holes. It would be very easy to twist an ankle, and a long way back to the surface to have it dealt with.
“Question,” whispered Morton.
“What is it?” asked Jamie.
“Has anyone actually thought about why Dempsey would be down here?”
“What do you mean?” asked Ellison.
“Exactly what I said,” hissed Morton. “It’s not like Dempsey worked for the tube, or was an engineer or a town planner. He didn’t even live in London, for Christ’s sake. So how come he knew about this place?”
“Why don’t you ask him when we find him?” whispered Jamie. “Enough talk now. Let’s keep moving.”
They passed several emergency exit doors, as Morton had predicted, but all of them were locked and none looked like they had been opened in the last hundred years. The squad moved steadily, all three silently aware that they would soon be reaching the end of the tunnel. Jamie could feel tension wriggling into his stomach, where it curled up in a tight little ball; he had expected the confrontation with Alastair Dempsey to have come by now, that the newly-turned vampire would have merely been hiding from the sun in the old tunnels, and therefore easy to find.
He was certain they hadn’t missed him: the tunnel was simply not wide enough. Instead, he was starting to believe that Dempsey had flown back over his footprints and into the east tunnel, hoping that anyone who came looking for him would blindly follow the footprints half a mile in the wrong direction. Jamie didn’t give voice to this awful possibility; doing so would cement it in his mind, would force him to explain why he had led his squad the wrong way. He was trying to force down his anger at himself – arrogant, stupid, useless – when they reached the end of the tunnel and saw what was there.
The circular passage had been sealed with a concrete plug that filled it to the edges on all sides. The grey wall was speckled black with dust and dirt, stained green by dripping water; its surface was still smooth, except for one small area near the right-hand wall of the tunnel. There, a dark hole absorbed the light of their torches, large enough for a grown man to squeeze through.
“OK,” said Ellison, slowly. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
Jamie didn’t respond. He walked forward, carefully stepping over chunks of fallen concrete, crouched down in front of the hole and shone his torch through it. The white beam illuminated nothing more than a few metres of identical wall, but picked out a splash of colour on the jagged edge of the hole itself. He shuffled forward and touched it with a gloved finger; it came away red.
“There’s blood here,” he whispered. “This is where he went.”
“Through there?” asked Morton. “Are you kidding me?”
Jamie stood up and faced his squad mates. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
“What’s on the other side?” asked Ellison. “Could you see anything?”
Jamie shook his head. “More tunnel, as far as I could tell.”
Morton laughed, a strange, high-pitched grunt of a sound. “More tunnel? The whole tube network is on the other side of this thing. He’s gone.”
“Maybe so,” said Jamie. “But I want to know where this leads.”
“He’s gone,” repeated Morton. “Why can’t you just accept that?”
“Why are you fighting us on this?” asked Ellison, fiercely. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” shouted Morton, his voice deafening in the quiet tunnel, his eyes wide with incredulity. “I don’t want to waste our time stumbling around under half of London and there’s something wrong with me? What’s wrong with the two of you? This is RIDICULOUS.”
Jamie stared at his squad mate. The rookie’s eyes were wide and his skin was deathly pale; he looked like a ghost in the harsh light of the torch.
“Operator Morton,” he said, as evenly as he was able. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to send you back to the surface. Is that what you want?”
Morton stared at him with resentment shining in his eyes. “Of course not,” he spat. “Sir.”
Jamie took a step towards him. “Tell me the truth, John. Right now. Can you handle this?”
“I’m fine,” said Morton. “I just think this is a bad idea.”
You don’t look fine, thought Jamie. You look like you’re hanging by a thread. I nearly left you in the van and now I really, really wish I had.
“You’ve made that clear,” he said. “I’m going to do it anyway, so can we count on you? That’s all I’m interested in right now.”
Morton took a deep breath, and glanced over at Ellison. She was staring at him with huge concern on her face.
“Yes, sir,” he said, looking back at his squad leader. “You can count on me.”
It was tight, but the three Operators made it through the hole without tearing their uniforms or breaking any of their equipment.
The tunnel beyond the concrete wall was structurally identical, but Jamie realised within ten paces that this was a very different space to the one they had just walked through. The walls of this new section of tunnel were covered in paint; graffiti had been sprayed from floor to ceiling, wild patterns of pink and green and white, loops of yellow and gold. Faces stared down from the curved walls, grotesque figures with huge, gaping mouths and staring eyes. Letters emerged from beneath layer upon layer of aged paint, creating words that were not words at all. The three Operators scanned their torches slowly over the chaotic mural, taking it in.
“This is crazy,” said Ellison, her voice low. “Who did all this?”
Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It must have taken years.”
Morton said nothing; he was staring at the graffiti with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open.
“Come on,” said Jamie. “Let’s keep moving.”
They pressed on, spaced out across the tunnel. The tracks came to an end about a hundred metres from the concrete wall, prompting Ellison to point out that this could not be part of the main tunnel system. Her comment hung ominously in the air; Jamie could not think of a single reassuring response. As they made their way down the tunnel, his torch picked out a cylindrical object leaning against the wall and he stopped to look at it.
It was a large metal drum, scorched black on the ins
ide by fire. There were lumps of charred wood in the bottom, and the surrounding floor was covered in ash and scraps of newspaper. Jamie reached down, picked up a handful, and let it drift away between his fingers. Ellison and Morton had carried on down the tunnel, their torch beams glowing beyond them. He watched them, his mind working, then shone his torch into the drum. The beam picked out something white and he leant down to get a closer look.
It was a small pile of chicken bones, picked clean of all their meat. Jamie stared for a long moment, then realised what he was looking at. He was looking at the remains of someone’s dinner.
His eyes widened. Then he took off after his squad mates, his boots thudding across the floor, his torch beam jerking up and down as he ran. Ellison and Morton heard him coming and turned to face him, questioning expressions on their faces.
“Ready One!” yelled Jamie. “There are people down here! Ready One!”
He skidded to a halt and shone his torch past them, down the dark tunnel. And, at the edges of the beam, he saw shapes start to move.
Lots of shapes.
36
SIN CITY
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA
Larissa had been in Las Vegas for just over eighteen hours.
After her friends told her the amazing news about their furlough, she raced to her quarters, threw the small collection of civilian clothes she had brought with her across the Atlantic into her gym bag, and arrived in the hangar almost five minutes early. Tim appeared a few moments later, a wide smile on his tanned face, closely followed by the rest of her friends. They piled into one of the black SUVs that lined the wall of the hangar, Tim in the driver’s seat, Kelly beside him, Larissa sandwiched between Kara and Danny in the back.
“Music,” demanded Kara, before Tim had even turned on the engine.
“I’m on it,” said Kelly, pulling a wire out of the car’s centre console and plugging it into her phone. She hit shuffle and pounding drums and juddering bass thudded through the car as Tim turned the key in the ignition.