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Lifers

Page 15

by M. A. Griffin


  That’s how close they got to leaving.

  Then someone appeared out of the dark, a shape made of shadow. A step forward, and the kid was all bones and edges. Strong shoulders and arms, short red hair, glasses over small black eyes. Behind him, a clot of darkness broke into three other figures. They were back.

  “Okay,” said Fox. When he spoke, his voice was like a hacksaw—his words somehow a statement, not a question. “Which one of you bastards has the key card?”

  Preston knew everyone would look in his direction.

  Ryan had inadvertently raised his eyebrows at him, staring across Ellwood’s slumped figure, an accidental betrayal. Alice was staring at him wide-eyed and terrified, the Longsight lads grouped either side of her.

  Mace, on the other hand, didn’t know what on earth was going on and recorded the fact, his phone at his chin. “We’ve been joined by a small group of fellow prisoners,” he said.

  Fox stared at the newcomer. “Who the hell are you?”

  Mace blustered onward. “Under the mistaken impression we have some sort of key card.”

  “Mace,” said Preston. “Just stop.”

  “New boy,” said Fox, flashing his teeth. “All eyes are on you.” He held out a palm and flexed his fingers. “Hand it over.”

  Preston didn’t have long. His stomach jumped like a skimmed stone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Fox laughed. “Yeah,” he said bitterly. With that, he turned to one of his boys—a squat kid with a rat’s face who read his leader’s glance like semaphore. The kid grabbed Alice, pushing her arms backward and down, crushing her wrists together behind her back. Alice winced and gasped, her face a picture of terror. Fox picked at his teeth with filthy fingernails. “Hand it over, screb.”

  Preston held up a hand. “I get it. Okay. Stop.” He gave Ryan what he hoped was a meaningful look. Behind them, the open valve was a matter of feet away. They’d been so close.

  Ellwood’s breathing was faint and shallow. Preston checked the databand with a hooked finger, careful not to draw attention to it. Ryan whispered something so quietly, Preston couldn’t hear it. Was it something like, “What are you doing?” It sure as dammit wasn’t a vote of confidence.

  But Preston couldn’t see that he had any choice. “Maybe I’ve got it somewhere here,” he said, rising and fake-checking his pockets.

  “Correction,” said Mace into his phone. “It seems my colleague Preston Faulkner does indeed have the aforementioned key card.” He looked up at Fox. “I can only apologize.”

  Mace withered slightly under Preston’s glare. Preston patted his jeans stupidly, preserving whatever time he had left. He lifted out the card. “Your lucky day,” he said. His voice sounded hollow. He readied himself. Most of what followed was going to hurt. “Catch.” He flicked his wrist, sending the card across their heads in an arc.

  Fox couldn’t help track it as it spun, eyes upward.

  That’s when Preston ran at him, and barreled him down in a great charge. He knew the knife was in his back pocket. He wrestled it free as they fell and threw it clear. The Longsight lads leapt into action then. Alice was discarded and they flew into the fray, teeth bared, directing vicious kicks. Ryan was among them too now. Mace had given up commentating and was running for the fight.

  Some school fights are for show—one kid getting held back by a mate, doing the let-me-at-’im dance while the other kid snarls and whips up the crowd. Other fights are quick and humiliating: two or three well-placed punches and a headbutt—one kid getting whipped big-time and retreating. Others are all pile in, dirty as hell, PE changing room fights—teeth and hair and barely enough room to swing a fist.

  This was one of those.

  The key was, Preston knew, to stay close, wrestle hard, protect your eyes, and make sure the bastards didn’t mess up your goggles. That’s what he did. He was on the floor with Fox, rolling over and over, kicks raining in. Then Ryan was somewhere close, giving some kid a hiding. Alice was trying to pull Fox off him. Mace shouted, “Big-time unnecessary!” and then hit someone on the nose. Preston threw punches hard and quick, trying to escape Fox smothering him. Nothing made contact with any force. Someone was tugging at his hair with a fist. He threw an elbow back, felt it make contact. Someone’s nose gave a horrible splitting sound and a voice screamed in pain—Preston couldn’t see who.

  Then he had Fox’s hands at his throat. Fox was digging his thumbs into his windpipe, a big grinful of spit close to Preston’s face. Then Fox was gone, and Ryan was pulling him back by his tags, pummeling him with a mad roar. Alice was kicking like crazy, one of the Longsight lads on the floor cursing and swearing.

  Everyone had lost their minds. The cave had turned them into animals.

  “We’re going!” shouted Mace. He was at the door of the valve, goggles on, roaring. Preston was exchanging blows with the rat-faced kid and caught him a good one on the chin. Then someone was on his shoulders, both arms around his head, and he was spinning, his vision obscured. He heard Mace shout, “We’re going! C’mon!”

  Alice was helping him now. He knew it must be Alice because someone spat “Bitch” as she hit him.

  Ryan’s voice had joined Mace now. “Press! C’mon!” and “Alice, run. Leave!”

  Preston backed into a valve hard, crushing the kid hanging on to him, sending an elbow into his face. Alice was backing away, free now, her nose bloody. The Longsight lads were down. Two of them, anyway.

  “Go, Alice!” Ryan shouted. “Go! Find Chowdhury!”

  Alice wiped her face, gave a wild wave, then turned and ran.

  Ryan was pulling Ellwood across the threshold of the valve. Mace was at the door, shouting, beckoning. Preston started to run. It seemed to take an age, a dream where sprinting at full speed is like wading through gluey fluid. Then his legs went and he skinned his knees as he fell. He made it up again.

  He was at the door now. Inside, the light was burnt orange and the air was so cold he could see his friends’ breath cloud. He could see Ellwood on the floor, Ryan pulling a pair of goggles down over her eyes, Mace at the lever. He turned to close the door behind him.

  Fox was at his face with a knife.

  “Don’t move a frickin’ muscle, screb,” he spat.

  Preston froze, his heart somewhere up in his throat. Mace could throw the lever now, even with the door half-open, and the three of them would get away home. He’d be thrown clear, half-dead, and Fox would cut him up.

  Except Fox did something strange instead. The lad paused a second, pulled the blade clear, and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Let me in,” he said. “Let me come with you.” Preston choked on nothing, trying to make words come. There was a steady stream of blood from a cut on his forehead and he had to wipe it from his eyes. He wondered again if he was dreaming. “Please,” said Fox, lowering his knife arm farther.

  Preston licked his lips. There was a time—maybe just a couple of days ago—when he would have done the right thing. He reached for his own databand, ready to peel it off and hand it over. He ran a finger along its edge, heard the Velcro begin to tear. He knew what the right thing was—he had to hand the band over to Fox, send him in his place, and stay with Alice.

  But he wasn’t going to do that, he realized. Things had changed. He thought of the balloon debate.

  Then he punched Fox hard in the glasses and shut the door on the cave as the kid stumbled backward down the valve steps, his dropped knife clattering away.

  “Let’s go,” said Preston.

  The light flickered, and the valve began its breathing. Preston fumbled his goggles on. There was that strange feeling again: the curious sensation of movement, as if somewhere beneath them was a moving sidewalk.

  The valve was working.

  It was shuttling them, swapping them—spinning its chambers like a gun. There was the unholy stutter of flashing light, bright enough to burn his eyeballs. Preston felt weirdly seasick. In the half-light, he saw Mace lose
his balance a bit and grab Ryan’s arm. The two of them spread their feet and balanced like passengers standing in a railway carriage.

  “I feel horrible,” Ryan said. “Has it happened yet?” He placed a hand on his stomach. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “Wait,” said Preston. “You’ll feel the band in a sec.”

  He prayed they would.

  In a second or two, it happened. There was a strange tightening, as if it was hardening against their skin. Then he felt the needles drive in. His upper arm went suddenly very cold. He blinked away a strange dreamy dizziness.

  Mace had winced and brought his hand up to his arm. After a moment he said, “We’re done, right?” Scratching the band, he announced, “We’re home.”

  It was Ryan who pulled his goggles down over his chin first, opened the door, and peered out. “It’s quiet,” he hissed. “It’s dark out here.” There was a slow pause. “Smells different. And it’s, like, totally silent.” He slipped his head and shoulders outside. “There’s no one out here,” he said. Then he was through.

  Preston pushed his goggles up, stooped over Ellwood, and raised hers carefully too. Her head lolled. As they moved her outside, Preston could see the dark silhouettes of his friends. Ryan, the tallest, with his hands on his hips, looking upward as if inspecting something; Mace with his phone out, lining up a voice memo. “This is difficult to explain,” he said, stilted and slow. “We aren’t … ” He cleared his throat, lowered the phone for a second, and then raised it again. “We aren’t in the right place.”

  They lowered Ellwood onto the cold concrete floor, making a pillow of Preston’s jacket. Her breathing was shallow and shifting. She was in bad shape. They stood, and took in their surroundings.

  They’d entered the valve in a basement under M.I.S.T., a long, dark open-plan space with blinking banks of tech, high windows, and a heavy fire door out into the sunken garden. But this? This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were standing in an icy-cold cramped room. The ceiling was low and rattling with rain, the walls exposed brick. The valve they’d emerged from looked like a rust-encrusted old prototype, angular and ungainly. To its left there was a desk with scattered, curled Post-it notes bleached of their color, a chair on casters, a telephone with no dial tone—Ryan was checking it—an empty filing cabinet and, across the far side of the space, huge wooden pallets with plastic-wrapped packages on them—canned food and water. There were hundreds of them: tinned meat, cheap soup, potatoes, all wrapped for transport.

  This must have been one of the valves where the food supplies had gone in. Esther had mentioned one out at Blackstone Edge. Preston found his voice. “The others must be in shutdown already. The valve redirected us. Maybe this is the last one still open.” And maybe they’d come within minutes of being trapped in the pipes.

  The far wall was a floor-to-ceiling paneled shutter, like a garage door. Preston tried the button mounted on the wall next to it. Nothing. Maybe the motor had stopped working. Mace crouched by Ellwood, a hand on her shoulder, checking her breathing, while Preston and Ryan worked their fingers underneath the door. They heaved upward and it shuddered and screeched. It moved a little. Mace joined them.

  “On my count: one, two, three,” said Ryan, and they hauled again. There was a gap now, just ten inches or so. Enough to squeeze through. Ryan lay on his back and began to work his way under. “Gimme some more room!” he panted. Preston and Mace hauled the door up another few inches, and a few more again. It was old and rusty and squealed on its tracks. “Hey!” Ryan said. “Lift your eyes, man. Taste this air! It’s beautiful!”

  He was through and out into the blackness beyond. They heard him crouch and lean in, his shoulder against the outside of the door.

  “Where are we?” Preston said. “What can you see?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then they heard his voice. “You’re not going to believe this.” They checked Ellwood, then Preston and Mace pushed their way under, wriggling on their stomachs.

  They were back in the real world again and it was stunning.

  There was a parking lot edged with a high chain-link fence. The wind, sweeping across the tarmac in icy-wet sheets, buffeted the side of the building. The air was clean and bone-chilling. Some way off, invisible, a motorway hissed with traffic. There was a gate bound loosely with a padlock and chain. And there was a van, a white Transit with regular UK plates and missing wheel trims.

  Beyond the fence were moors. Blackstone Edge. Preston took a couple of steps forward, watching the dark contours of the landscape. It was British moorland all right—empty, bleak, familiar. The few trees that huddled around the building soon thinned to low, gnarled bushes and then to spongy peat and wet grass.

  Mace was at his shoulder suddenly, shivering, his back to the rain, phone tucked in under his chin. “A moody moor at midnight,” he said. “The glittering lights of a city in the distance. We could be literally anywhere in the world. Perhaps we’re even strangers treading the surface of a distant planet … ”

  “That’s Manchester,” Preston said, pointing.

  Mace stopped speaking for a moment and sighed. “My colleague Preston Faulkner also present,” he said, before returning to his dictation. “We have emerged at a different place. I don’t know how to explain this, but I swear I didn’t come in at this point. It seems there could be some sort of underground train working beneath the city and we’ve stumbled across a top-security transportation system … ”

  Preston scoffed. “C’mon, Mace. Get real.”

  Mace paused the voice memo with a wet finger. “Manchester’s aborted plans to develop a subway are the stuff of legend,” he said. “There’s a huge pit under Piccadilly Gardens. There are six miles of nuclear bomb–proof tunnels under Chinatown, brotherman. I am one hundred and sixty percent serious.” He fixed Preston with an earnest glare, then spoke into his phone again. “An eerie light plays across the underbelly of the clouds over the scene before me. This phone says it’s just gone four a.m., but I don’t know if it’s accurate … ”

  “We need to get to Shade,” Preston said, turning. He was thinking of the little pouches of drugs in the databands: Could more be administered after an accident and still help someone pull through? “He can help Ellwood.” He made his way back across the slick tarmac. Ryan, who had been out at the edge of the compound, pressing his face against the fence to examine the world beyond, was returning too, a hunched figure with his hands in his pockets.

  Preston nodded in the direction of the van and said, “Can you drive?”

  Inside, Preston cradled Ellwood’s head, bending in low to check her. She seemed alarmingly still. There was the slow in-out of breathing, but it seemed tired and fading.

  “I can see the Beetham Tower out there,” Ryan said, rifling through the desk drawers. “Manchester’s a few kliks off, down that way.”

  “We need to get her to Shade,” Preston said. “He’ll know what to do.” Preston wasn’t sure he believed himself, but added, “He’s been looking out for us, after all.”

  Ryan grunted. “You’ve a weird definition of looking out,” he said. “This is the guy who built the madboxes, yeah? I’ll be more in the mood for battering the dude if I ever get near him … Ah!” He turned, lifting a set of keys from the desk drawer. “Check these out!” he said, spinning them around an extended finger. “If these fit that rust bucket outside, maybe we’re in business. Come on.”

  The van smelled of spilled gasoline, coolant, chemicals. Frost patterned the inside of the windshield and Ryan had to scrub at it with the sleeve of his jacket, his breath coming in clouds. Preston helped lift Ellwood into the back, holding her gently under the arms, Mace at her boots, and pulled the door shut with a slam.

  Up front, Ryan struggled with the wheel and seat belt. The seats were soft and pockmarked with cigarette stubs, the dashboard dusty. Mace got in next to Ryan, soaked from opening the gates in the rain, and used his phone to pull up a map and give some rudimentary directions.


  The vehicle grumbled and shuddered and came to life. Only one headlight worked. “Christ,” Ryan complained. “This thing’s scrap. C’mon!” he urged, the gears scraping. The van began to move, reluctantly.

  They didn’t bother closing the gates. Preston watched the road unspool behind them as they dropped slowly down an uneven track, the suspension groaning as it bounced them, the moors banking high on either side as if the road had been cut into it to disguise the route. Sometimes, when his dad had driven “over the tops,” as he’d called them, Preston had noticed an occasional solitary landmark and wondered what it was. There might be a substation for the TV mast farther south, or a small outbuilding used by the water board near one of the steel-gray moorland reservoirs, but other than that, the tops were a wilderness. The existence of a small, fence-bound compound up here wouldn’t attract any attention. It was a good hiding place for a reserve valve.

  The track emerged at the edge of a road so thin it looked as if it might crumble into the peaty banks of sedge grass flanking it. Ryan stalled the van a couple of times. The engine was damp. He gunned it again, cursing. Soon, they reached a broader road—at least this one had reflectors and markings—and began heading down the valley toward the city suburbs below.

  “What if the cops stop us?” Mace said as they hit a steady, rattling speed.

  Preston thought of his dad and his heart shuddered. “There won’t be any patrol cars up here,” he said.

  Ryan held up a hand. “Quiet a second,” he said. He was checking his side mirrors and everyone held their breath while a pair of headlights drew up behind them. There was trembling silence in the van while they waited for the car to overtake and relief when it sped off ahead of them.

  “She’s getting worse, I think,” Preston said, checking Ellwood. “We’d better hurry.”

  They dropped through a couple of deserted moorland villages and then the housing began to thicken. Old factories and textile mills started cropping up, along with pubs and post offices. They sat and listened to the engine turning at a pair of traffic lights or heard the squeal of the ancient wiper blades and the cough of the heating system as Ryan drove them into the city through housing projects toward high-rise apartment and office buildings. The radio didn’t work at first, just hissed and crackled, but as the moors fell away behind them and the streetlights and billboards of the center came closer, Mace fiddled with the dial until a local station emerged from the fuzz.

 

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