by Ian Beck
‘You see, my boy, I try to keep watch over you just as a good godfather should. I am not as authentically of the past as I make out. Privately I use the new technologies when I have to, and I don’t mean steam power. I am your true father, Adam – you were always my idea. Lucius here contributed and poor Jack helped. They were your enablers, but I conceived the idea of you,’ said Buckland. ‘Come on, three more floors to the roof and safety for you both. I fear that the forces of reaction are biting at our heels. Lestrade is even now acting to destroy your ragged men. It is too late for them, but not for you two. Come on, both of you, now.’
Outside in the night sky two airships hovered near the roof, one a Buckland Corp. passenger vessel, the other a smaller security model. Both were tethered by taut anchor wires to the girders of the exposed roof. Buckland walked towards the edge of the building and raised his arms up. He turned to the Fantom and Lucius. ‘Soon one more of my dreams will be realised. There will be a double celebration. You have come back to us and this hideous building is to be finally destroyed, blown from beneath us in a huge fireball.’
.
Chapter 54
Sgt Charles Catchpole and Bible J made their way through the dank tunnels towards Moorgate station. The police lamp lit their way effectively enough. It also lit up the wildlife, the scavenging rats, the skittering mice, even one or two feral cats who seemed to thrive in the musty disused spaces.
Catchpole spoke to Bible J quietly as they walked, weapons drawn. ‘I have learned something about this Fantom, something very disturbing,’ he said.
‘What, that he cuts people up and takes their hearts out? I could have told you that.’
‘No, about the real nature of him. The person himself.’
A shot rang out from the tunnel ahead of them. Catchpole turned out the lamp and dived down amid the filth between the tracks. A wavering light was coming from ahead, spilling over the curved vault of the tunnel. Distorted shadows soon followed, looming over the curved brickwork – armed men, several of them too, by the look of it.
‘Ragged men,’ said Catchpole. ‘Keep still, lie low.’
Three ragged men appeared at the turn of the curved tunnel. They slowed as they entered the straight stretch. They shone their lantern around and in a moment the beam picked out Bible J, who was still defiantly standing up, his two pistols raised straight out. The lantern moved away and then almost immediately swung back on to him, but from his position flat among the steel rails Catchpole took careful aim with his rifle at the lantern. He knocked it out in one clean shot and the tunnel was plunged into darkness again. Bible J fired wildly with his revolvers at where he thought the ragged men had stood. Answering fire followed; bullets ricocheted from the walls, one buzzing past Catchpole’s head like a wasp. The three ragged men retreated back down the tunnel. Catchpole laid down a barrage of fire with his rifle. The sound echoed and rolled deafeningly around the tunnel walls. They sounded like an army, especially when he stood and bowled a grenade further down the tunnel at where he supposed the ragged men were running. The explosion knocked him back among the tracks with compressed force; fragments of tiles and bricks clattered around them.
‘That’s it,’ said Catchpole. ‘He’ll know we’re coming now. Let’s move on. Are you all right, young man?’
‘I’m fine, ’cept I can’t hear any more.’
They moved further down the tunnel, picking their way through shrapnel and twisted rails.
They met no more opposition on the tracks, no stray ragged men anywhere further down the tunnel. Instead of gunfire there was now a sort of deafening and uncanny silence which seemed to fill the dark tunnels all around them. Then there was a warm wind and a roaring sound and the clattering of wheels. It sounded exactly like an underground train heading for them, but here the tracks were plainly unused and indeed had not been used for years. The clogged dust at their feet remained undisturbed. Catchpole hurried on ahead in case he had to head off some approaching danger. He arrived at the junction of two tunnels in time to see a line of brightly lit Underground train carriages rattling towards him, sparking on clean electrified tracks. He pressed himself against the walls of the tunnel and the train swung past him on the bend and rattled down the side tunnel which joined theirs. The carriages passed close by him and he was able to see the passengers inside. Policemen and Buckland Security. Dozens of them stuffed into the carriage like the rush hour. Some were bloodied and obviously wounded. There were bullet holes spattered and raked along the side of the carriages, and he could see grenade damage and some of the men were holding their weapons as they passed him by; they looked like weary soldiers returning from the front.
He scuttled back down the tunnel to where Bible J waited in the dark.
‘What was that?’ said Bible J. ‘I thought I heard a train.’
‘You did,’ said Catchpole, ‘a fully electric one too. Someone has got to them before us, someone official. Come on.’
They walked on down the disused tunnel past the section of clean and maintained track which led off to the side and vanished into the darkness. Their way was soon blocked by twisted rails and lumps of masonry, and then at the mouth of the tunnel there were the bodies and bits of the bodies of dead ragged men everywhere.
‘God,’ said Catchpole, ‘it’s a slaughterhouse.’
Bible J walked through the dark, bloodied mass, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.
‘Who did this?’ he said, looking around the walls and the blood-washed station platform as they emerged into the half light.
‘Buckland Corp.,’ said Catchpole with disgust. ‘I saw an underground train full of police and cadets, it must have been them. This was an organised surgical strike. Someone in authority wanted the ragged men gone.’
‘Look over here,’ said Bible J. ‘It’s Ma Boulter, shot through the head. What’s she doing here?’
‘Reporting to her boss, the Fantom, of course,’ said a voice from the shadows, and Inspector Lestrade stepped out in front of them. ‘I hope those weapons are licensed. I am sorry you had to see “beneath our skirts”, so to speak, Sergeant Catchpole, but we have been forced to act, to cleanse the hive. This mess will all be gone by morning and few will be the wiser.’
‘Mess?’ said Catchpole. ‘They were people – men and women. Shouldn’t they have been brought to trial? It’s savagery, pure and simple.’
‘I thought you were a company man, Catchpole.’
‘I am a policeman, and I thought you were too, Lestrade, not a cold-blooded killer.’
‘They engaged us in battle. We had little choice, and there is still the head of the snake to attend to,’ Lestrade said, pointing above.
.
Chapter 55
Eve and Caleb waited on the staircase. They could hear the voices on the floor above. Someone was there with the Fantom and Lucius. Eve pressed her finger to her lips. Then the voices stopped.
They crept up the last of the stairs, into the corridor, where a red-eyed mech rat tried to stop them. ‘Restricted area, restricted,’ it said. They ignored the rat and continued up a final set of temporary wooden steps which led out on to the roof of the tower.
Caleb went first. He put his head up into the wind and darkness. The noise of a crowd drifted up from far below. He could see three figures standing on a level surface among the exposed and dangerous girders of the tower top: his father, the Fantom and an older man he did not recognise. Two airships were tethered some way away, rotors idling, ready for business.
Caleb turned and gestured for Eve to come up. She joined Caleb on the roof girders. Her hair blew about her perfectly shaped face as she stood to her full height.
Eve strode forward across a narrow girder towards the temporary platform where the three men stood together.
Caleb tried to follow her across the broad steel beam, holding his revolver out as a balance weight but he stopped immediately in terror. He had taken one misguided look at the crowd six hundred feet below them and t
hat was enough to make him freeze, to lock him solid.
‘Oh good, look who has joined us,’ said the Fantom.
‘Eve,’ said Buckland, ‘at last. Welcome. I am Abel Buckland, CEO of the Buckland Corporation. It is a long time since I have seen you, my dear, and I doubt that you would remember me at all. My, but you are certainly more beautiful now than I could have ever hoped or remembered. We met only the once and that was when Lucius and Jack and the rest of us were out celebrating your,’ he paused, ‘your completion, might be the word to use. We had a celebration, with fireworks, just like there will be tonight.’ He raised his arms as if to take in the whole of the artificial night sky. ‘Another celebration tonight, a demolition, the last building to leave us, and not before time. It seems so right and so appropriate that you should have been found now and reunited with your Adam. Now we can enter a whole new phase of special entertainment in Pastworld, and you and Adam will feature brightly at the centre of it.’
Lucius wrenched his mouth free from the Fantom’s hand.
‘It is wrong now, Buckland, and it was always wrong,’ he said. The Fantom clamped his hand back over Lucius’s mouth.
He turned to look at Caleb balanced some yards away, stuck on the high girder, unable to move forward or back.
‘Our father is becoming a bore, young master Brown. Shall I pitch him down to the ground? One shove from me and he will fall like a stone.’
‘Hush, Adam, calm yourself. Just keep hold of Lucius for now,’ Buckland said. He signalled with the device he was holding and the passenger airship moved further away from the tower and the anchor wire tightened. He made another adjustment, and the second smaller airship moved closer.
‘We will soon be ready for the fireworks,’ he said. He pressed the device in his hand once again and part of the gondola floor of the larger airship dropped open. Thousands of sheets of paper fell out and scattered in the air like giant wedding confetti; they spiralled slowly down to the grasping hands of the eager crowd gathered far below. The countdown had begun.
.
Chapter 56
Catchpole and Bible J finally pushed themselves out through the hoarding at Moorgate station. They had searched the remains of the Fantom’s lair. There was nothing but a chair in the middle of the ticket hall with ropes attached. There were the remains of some food stores and enough weapons and ammunition for a siege, but nothing else, not a living thing except some newly emboldened rats.
They had no direction to follow now and the crowds were dense. Even getting through them was likely to be difficult let alone catching sight of the Fantom. There was a moment of silence and anticipation. The crowd around them pointed and looked upwards, raised their hands, excited. High above them a tethered passenger airship was dropping thousands of leaflets that fluttered and swung around in the cold air. Catchpole picked one out of the air and read it aloud to Bible J.
M
A GRAND DEMOLITION!
.
M
WELCOME TO THIS TENTH ANNIVERSARY PARTY IN CELEBRATION OF PASTWORLD. THE MOST SUCCESSFUL THEME PARK IN HISTORY. THE PLACE WHERE PEOPLE COME TO LIVE THE LIFE OF THE PAST, WITH ALL ITS CERTAINTIES, PLEASURES, AND DELIGHTS; BUT YOU DON’T NEED TO BE TOLD THAT, BECAUSE YOU ARE HERE ALREADY!
M
THE SPECTACULAR DESTRUCTION OF THIS, THE LAST OF THE 20TH-CENTURY BUILDINGS, TOWER 42, WILL SHORTLY TAKE PLACE. YOU ARE ADVISED TO STAY WELL BEHIND THE SAFETY BARRIERS. PLEASE ENJOY THE FIREWORKS AND THEN JOIN ME, ABEL BUCKLAND, FOUNDER AND CEO OF THE BUCKLAND CORPORATION, IN BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE LAST ARCHITECTURAL ANOMALY STILL STANDING IN PASTWORLD.
M
ABEL BUCKLAND
M
Catchpole threw down the leaflet. ‘Tower 42. The Fantom was there just recently. He was caught by our security cameras. That will be the place.’
They moved off through the crowd towards Tower 42. Danger signs were everywhere, but luckily the bobbies on the perimeter were all distracted, looking up at the two passenger airships in the sky and the still scattering leaflets.
Catchpole and Bible J squeezed in through the fence and the hoarding and on across the wasteland into the stairwell of the building.
Catchpole led the way up the first staircase using the beam from the borrowed police lamp. They continued to climb floor after floor until eventually they found themselves in a long corridor full of debris, abandoned tools and carefully placed explosive charges. Catchpole kicked aside the mech rat that scuttled over and it hit the wall. ‘If you’re monitoring any of this, then that’s for you, Hudson, old friend,’ he said.
Outside, on the temporary platform, Abel Buckland stood enjoying the muted sounds of the crowd rising up from the city far below them. Using his hand-held device, Buckland set off the first rocket of his great firework display. It shot upwards and exploded high in the air in a great white burst of light. The light revealed the Fantom who stood fully masked, his cape billowing in the wind.
It was then that Eve stepped forward. She walked almost to the very edge of the building and held her black-sleeved arms out wide from her body. ‘No, Eve,’ Lucius called out, fearing that she was about to leap or fall from the building.
‘Eve,’ said the Fantom, and he let go of Lucius carelessly and in a rush so that Lucius lost his footing and slipped down on to the uneven surface of the roof itself. He huddled there, holding tight to a twisted steel beam.
‘Dad,’ Caleb called out in fear.
‘I’m all right, ’ Lucius called back. ‘Hold on and don’t move. I’ll save you.’
‘Rather save yourself,’ said the Fantom and aimed a cruel kick at Lucius. His boot flicked across the top of Lucius’s head, narrowly missing him.
Caleb shouted from his frozen position. ‘Leave my father alone or I will use this.’ He waved the long-barrelled gun uncertainly in the Fantom’s direction.
The Fantom laughed. ‘Sadly the recoil will send you straight down to the ground, my poor little brother, so go ahead and fire.’
The Fantom reached over and held on to Eve. He lowered her arms carefully, slowly, tenderly, so that finally they stood close together, on the very edge of the building, like lovers in an embrace, high on the very edge of the world.
Buckland called out excitedly, ‘The charges have been set, and in a short time, after the sirens, the building will simply be no more.’ He switched something on the device. More fireworks, bright rockets and fountains of colour lit the sky.
Buckland raised his device and signalled with three quick flashes of white light across the gap towards the smaller of the airships. The ship moved out from its position and slowly approached the building.
Lucius Brown crawled gingerly back from the edge, keeping low to the platform on his knees, his elbows tucked in and his head down.
Catchpole and Bible J stepped out on to the roof. Catchpole shouldered his rifle, and aimed it in the direction of the Fantom and Eve. Bible J called out, ‘Eve,’ and she turned her head a little and smiled across at him.
‘Let her go,’ said Bible J.
The Fantom swung round and saw a man with a rifle and another boy with a gun, a rough-haired boy with a familiar face. ‘Of course, the black book, the Bible – the boy is called Bible something,’ said the Fantom.
‘Let her go, come to me, Eve. I . . .’ said Bible J.
‘Eve is mine,’ said the Fantom, ‘made for me. You have no understanding of this creature. She and I are linked for ever, linked in love and death in a way impossible for you to understand.’ He turned Eve so that she faced Bible J back across the jagged roof braces.
‘This young man has called for you to go to him. Perhaps you should show him who you love. She has been made, programmed especially to respond to me. She can never resist me no matter what happens.’
Then Eve took the Fantom’s hands and placed them around her own throat. She tilted her head back with her eyes closed in an image of surrender, of submission. Eve and the Fantom teetered together on tiptoe on the brink.
The Fantom, inscrutable behind his mask, and Eve seemingly the swooning, willing victim.
Lucius Brown, unnoticed, had crawled over to Caleb, who still stood on the girder. Lucius stood and helped his son down on to the more solid roof platform. Caleb hugged his father fiercely.
Sgt Catchpole picked his way across the roof and stopped some feet short of Abel Buckland. He spoke. ‘I now know the truth about this whole sorry mess, Mr Buckland. I have read Inspector Lestrade’s files and personal notes and I know about the Prometheus project.’
‘I do not have to answer you, Sergeant Catchpole. You are an employee of the Corporation. I order you to arrest these youths, who are threatening my life and the lives of my characters.’
‘Do they really have lives?’ Catchpole said.
The small airship had reached the edge of the building. Inspector Prinsep’s pale face loomed out of the cabin port. He raised the vessel up so that the gondola door was easily accessible, directly above the roof platform.
‘We are leaving,’ said Buckland. ‘You must arrest Lucius Brown and his son for their own safety. Take them somewhere secure. The other youth is a known criminal, a felon, and may be shot at will. I should hurry if I were you. This building will not be here for much longer.’
‘Caleb,’ Catchpole shouted, ‘take your father now and get off this roof. Go now, straight down and don’t stop. Save yourselves at least.’
‘So,’ said the Fantom, ‘you will run away, Father, and leave us. Well, you may run, but you cannot hide for ever from me. I will find you.’
‘They’ll be under tons and tons of modern rubble if they don’t get out before this place goes down,’ Buckland shouted.
Sgt Catchpole fired his rifle once so that the bullet struck Buckland’s hand and his remote control device shattered. Fragments of it sprayed out into the darkness beyond the roof. Blood streamed from Buckland’s hand and he fell on to his knees moaning.