The small blurs of rat-shaped blue light scattered between them and the platform were blinking out, one after another, as if a wave of darkness was sweeping along towards them at track level.
‘Why’s that happening?’ said Jo. ‘Those are rats. Something’s snuffing out the rats.’
‘No,’ said Ariel. ‘No … I don’t think anything’s snuffing them out …’
And as the lights went out, there was a small but growing noise of tiny claws scrabbling on concrete.
‘I think they’re coming back to life.’
‘You think the city’s coming back to life?’ said Jo, her heart beginning to soar in relief.
Ariel pointed at the blue human shapes on the platform.
‘No,’ she said, beginning to back up. ‘I don’t think the city’s coming back to life. I think the rats are coming back for us. Run!’
22
Herded
Music may be magic but it fades with distance, and the further Will ran with Tragedy and Filax, the more he was aware that they were leaving the zone of safety that Wolfie was radiating from his violin.
Because of this he slowed again and began checking side streets before he crossed them, and it was thanks to this caution returning just in time that he caught sight of the two cheetahs.
Lions are one thing. Cheetahs, even bronze ones, are both lighter and somehow more immediately dangerous. A bit like the difference between a sharp arrow and a spear: the spear has more weight and heft, but if you had to choose between the two being pointed at you in anger, you have the nasty suspicion that an arrow will move much, much faster. Not that these cheetahs were, at the moment, moving very fast at all …
Nor were the cheetahs actually stalking them. In fact, the first time Will caught sight of them, they didn’t seem to have seen him at all. They were on a parallel road, also heading north, and as they padded over the cross street he happened to look east and see them. He instantly went very still, as did Filax and Tragedy. The cheetahs just ghosted on northwards and disappeared from view.
‘That was close,’ breathed Tragedy, and they jogged on for a couple of streets east to put some space between them and the two predators. It took them away from the direction Will wanted to go in, but sometimes he remembered his dad saying that the longest way is the shortest, because it gets you there, whereas short cuts can be dangerous. It hadn’t made much sense to him when his dad said it when they were out on a dog walk, but now he realised his dad must have been repeating something he’d learned in the army. There was no point taking the straightest path to Coram’s Fields if it walked them straight down the gullet of two very rangy-looking predators. More haste, less speed was another way his dad had of saying it. Thinking of his dad gave him the familiar ache; if only he was able to talk to either of his parents about all this. If only they were there with him. Having to do it all on his own, or all on his and Jo’s own, was horrible. He’d spent a lot of his life in a hurry to be grown up, and right now he’d much rather a grown-up would show up and make some sense of this nightmare he was trapped in.
Either there were four cheetahs, or the ones to the west of them were fast movers when they were out of sight, because it seemed only a couple of minutes before Tragedy held up a hand and stopped. Without moving his head, Will swivelled his eyes left, and sure enough, there were two very similar cheetahs standing in the cross street to their east. He had a sense that this time the cats saw them as they stood there, tails swishing back and forth in lordly disdain. He flinched as they stepped forwards, anticipating them blurring into a fast, running attack that would eat up the hundred metres that separated them. He knew cheetahs were the fastest animals on Earth, but in this case they neither sprinted nor moved towards them. Instead they just padded away, out of sight, this time heading south, away from them.
‘They must have seen us,’ said Will.
‘Yeah,’ said Tragedy. ‘I don’t like it.’
Filax growled.
‘Neither does he,’ said Will.
The next time they saw the cheetahs they were ahead of them, which forced them to go east a bit, until the animals appeared to their east again and sent them north. And the more Will caught glimpses of the cats, the more he felt there was something wrong, something deeper beneath the obvious fact that the cats were controlling them. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and he felt stupid because of it. Fear and exhaustion were beginning to fuggle his mind. He could certainly put his hand on that.
‘I don’t think they’re hunting us,’ said Will, though that wasn’t the thing.
‘No,’ agreed Tragedy. ‘I think they’re doing what cats do with mice. I think the bleedin’ things are playing with us, ’cos they definitely see us. I seen ’em looking out of the side of their eyes, pretending not to look.’
‘I think we’re being herded,’ said Will slowly. ‘I think they’re acting like sheepdogs.’
‘So what do we do?’ said Tragedy.
‘We don’t act like sheep,’ said Will, surprised at the grimness in his voice.
The next time the cheetahs appeared it was to their right, obviously intending to send them east again. Instead of doing that, Will waited until they had strolled out of view and then led Tragedy and Filax at a silent run straight towards the very intersection the cheetahs had just vacated. They paused to check the way was clear, and then ran on through it and sped up.
‘Come on,’ said Will. ‘Got to make up for lost time. We’ve been pushed too far east.’
They zigged and zagged west and north, from intersection to intersection, beginning to believe they had shaken off the cheetahs, right until the moment they came to a wide street of at least six lanes, which had the unwelcome bonus feature of two waiting cheetahs in the middle of it.
And then the herding began in earnest.
Whether the cheetahs were angry or just stepping up the tempo of the game, things began to happen quickly. There was no doubt that the cats saw them, because they snarled and ran at them.
And though they could clearly have leapt and attacked at any moment, they didn’t. Instead, just like the sheepdogs that Will had likened them to, they curved and ran round them, growling and snapping at their heels, so wherever they tried to escape to, there was always one or other of the animals there to intercept and push them back on course. And there was no doubt about it, there was a definite course and the cheetahs were absolutely pushing them towards something. The trouble with this – one of the many troubles with this, of course – was that once they were running scared (and Will was perfectly clear about the fact his legs were now being fuelled by pure high-octane terror) it was impossible to think straight or work out how to escape from the pell-mell rush towards their doom.
Filax did manage to turn and try and attack one of the cheetahs but the cat just swatted him away and jumped nimbly right over him, so that the dog found itself running rather ignominiously behind the main group, trying to catch up. Clearly the cats had little time for him and were concentrating on Will.
‘I think they just want me,’ he panted, looking sideways at Tragedy. ‘You should stop …’
‘I ain’t stopping for no one!’ gasped Tragedy. ‘They got big curved teeth on them like dirty great Arab daggers, in case you ain’t noticed.’
Will had noticed. It was hard not to, because of the snarling and panting as the cats chivvied them along the road. There was definitely something about the cheetahs that he should be able to put his finger on, but still he couldn’t.
He knew there was going to be something bad at the end of this run, and whatever it was, as exhaustion began to make him stumble instead of run smoothly, he hoped it would either give him a chance to talk, or be very quick. He was disoriented and wondered if he was being run straight towards the museum and the horrible cat. Well, that might be good. He might be able to plead, or explain. Not that he knew what he was going to explain, but talking …
Talking turned out not to be an option.
The cheetahs bounded in front of him, making him twist and career down a narrow mews passage. He was so busy keeping his balance that he didn’t realise he was about to crash headlong into the waiting gorilla until he hit it.
He bounced off the unmoving block of living bronze and sprawled, winded, at its feet. He looked up in horror.
The gorilla was massive above him, blocking out the night sky, a looming cliff of bunched muscle with a mouthful of seriously lethal teeth that made the cheetahs’ fangs look puny by comparison.
Will was stunned by the impact, but he could see that even more frightening was the fact that the gorilla had a second head sticking out of one of its shoulders, smaller than the massive main head, a more delicate human head with a waving topknot of hair on it. It was like something from a mutant horror film.
He was about to shout, or maybe scream, or maybe just roll into a ball and pretend none of what was about to happen was real, when he saw Tragedy leap over him and hurl himself at the mountainous primate.
He couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t think what Tragedy was hoping to achieve by this suicidal head-on assault.
And he certainly couldn’t understand the exultant whoop of pleasure Tragedy gave as he slammed into the gorilla and let it hoist him up into the air like a baby.
‘Put me down, you big old banana-breath!’ he chuckled, clearly not minding a bit.
As the gorilla held him up Will saw that it was not some freakish two-headed monster statue, but a terrifyingly huge but perfectly common or garden gorilla with a small bronze girl riding piggyback on it.
‘Put him down, Guy,’ said the girl. Her voice had a mild Indian accent that lilted gently and made her seem on the bubbling point of laughter.
‘Will,’ said Tragedy as the gorilla lowered him to the ground. ‘Will, this is AP, my mate. We call her ’Appy though, cos she always is.’
The girl slid off the back of the gorilla and grinned at Will. A bronze dove fluttered in from the shadows and sat on her shoulder.
‘Hello,’ she said, extending her hand rather formally. ‘I’m Happy.’
‘I know who you are,’ said Will, amazed. This was a statue he knew. She was from London Zoo. He’d been there three times. She was normally by a water fountain, reaching up for the dove. She was wearing a high-necked dress, but was barefoot, as if enjoying herself at a children’s party. ‘You’re from the Zoo.’
He shook her hand, which was warm and soft. She had a good firm handshake for a young kid, he thought, and she smiled right into your eyes without a smidgen of shyness. You couldn’t help but like her.
‘We all are,’ she said. ‘Me, Guy, the cats.’
He turned to see the two cheetahs were sitting calmly behind him, licking their paws as if they hadn’t a shred of interest in him. Filax stood between them, looking confused. Happy walked over and stroked him.
‘Hello, dog,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you yet.’
She scratched behind his ears and his tail gave a couple of tentative wags.
‘He’s Filax,’ said Tragedy. ‘Brave old hound, he is. Saved my bacon.’
‘I can see that,’ she said, looking into the dog’s eyes. ‘I can see he’s a brave one. You’re a beauty, and you’re among friends here.’
Filax’s tail lashed the ground and he sat happily between the two cats, as if he understood exactly what she had said to him. Only when he looked at the three statues lined up next to each other did Will see the niggling thing he had been missing about the cheetahs. He looked at Guy the Gorilla, and saw it too. Or rather, he didn’t see it in any of them.
‘Their eyes,’ he said. ‘They’re not shining with blue light like the other animal statues.’
‘No,’ said Happy, leaning back against the comforting bulk of the gorilla.
The rain had stopped, and now the main sound of the city was quiet, mixed with dripping gutters and burbling drains.
‘The others have had a bad spell put on them. Or a curse.’
‘But not these ones?’ said Will.
Now he was – gloriously and unexpectedly – NOT about to be killed, he was back to wanting to understand everything.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think they felt the spell too. But a spell? Or even a curse?’ She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s just magic.’
Will looked back out into the street, seeing all the blue-lit figures of frozen people dripping rainwater onto the pavement.
‘Well, “just magic” is doing a pretty good job of messing things up around here, I’d say. It seems it’s pretty strong stuff.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But it’s not as strong as what binds us together. Me to them. Them to me …’
‘You have stronger magic?’ he said.
She laughed again and shook her head. ‘No. We have love. Love is the one thing stronger than anything. Love defeats everything in the end.’
‘The animals love her,’ said Tragedy. ‘Always have.’
‘And I love them,’ she said.
‘But …’ began Will.
She closed him down with a smile.
‘I can’t explain it. It’s just how I am. How I was made. I’m lucky! I was made with love, to show love.’
‘And she’s right, Will,’ said Tragedy. ‘Nothing all girly and weak about love when you look at it like that, is there?’
Will looked at the gorilla and the way it stood protectively around the small girl. Immovable. Like a rock. He nodded. He got it. This was strength.
‘I sent the cats out to keep you away from the others,’ said Happy, looking at Tragedy. ‘Ariel flew by and told us what was happening, just before all the other animals went funny and started drifting towards the museum.’
‘Thanks,’ grinned Tragedy. ‘You nearly killed us with your kindness though, cos we was about to have bleedin’ ’eart attacks with all that running.’
‘Thank you,’ said Will. ‘Can you help us get to Coram’s Fields?’
‘Of course,’ said Happy a bit hesitantly. ‘But why?’
‘Because there’s something else there that might be stronger than all this blue magic too,’ said Will.
‘But maybe you should stay with us. It’s safe,’ she said. ‘No one would attack Guy or anyone he was protecting. Not even a lion.’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘My sister’s there.’
‘Sister?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Yep. At least I hope she is.’
‘You have a sister?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And we swore we wouldn’t get split up again, but we did. And my mum too, though she’s frozen.’
‘Family,’ she said, suddenly looking both serious beyond her years, and, as a result, exactly six years old.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Family is important.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘Family is love too,’ she said. ‘Guy will go with you to protect you all. If that’s OK?’
He grinned back at her.
‘It’s better than OK. It’s brilliant.’
He was grinning because now he knew they had a chance …
23
The black tide
Jo and Ariel had no chance.
Jo knew this with the certainty of the freshly doomed. They were deep below the city, running through a network of tunnels with a torch that was beginning to dim and sputter, and the darkness around them was full of not just more darkness but a wakening tide of black-coated rats, rats that were audibly on the move.
They could hear the scrabbling of claws and the rising chitter of the approaching wave of rodents behind them.
‘I hate rats,’ gasped Ariel. ‘I see them at night when they come out on the street.’
‘I hate them too,’ panted Jo.
‘Perhaps they’re just panicked,’ said Ariel. ‘Maybe if we get out of their way they’ll just run past us and leave us alone.’
Jo risked a fast look backwards.
She really
wished she hadn’t. The approaching tide had eyes. In fact, all she could really see were eyes. It wasn’t hard, because the eyes were all blazing a horribly familiar frosty blue.
‘No,’ she panted through gritted teeth. ‘Not going to leave us alone. Hunting us.’
There had been a lot of eyes, enough so that the snatched look had left her with the horrible image of a rippling wave of blue lights flowing after them like floodwater down a sewer pipe.
Drowning was a nasty enough thought when it was in water. Drowning in rats was a whole deeper level of horrible nightmarishness.
The torch was definitely losing power. The bobbling halo it cast round them as they sprinted down the ribbed tunnel was getting dimmer with every step.
‘This is bad!’ puffed Ariel. ‘Running is bad. Rats are bad. The dark is bad …’
Jo wanted to say wasting your breath is bad too, but she didn’t. She had too much of a stitch and needed every cubic centimetre of air her lungs could suck in just to keep her legs pounding along the unforgiving rail-bed.
The tunnel made an endless curve. It straightened out with no welcoming rectangle of a station in view, and then arched in the other direction, making another blind curve that seemed to have no end.
Jo grimaced and risked another fast look back.
The wave of blue eyes had very nearly caught up with them. It was close enough for the backwash of light from her torch to pick out the undulating black fur of the running rats as well as the blue eyes. Filling in the detail of the wave made it worse.
‘Come ON!’ she gasped at Ariel. ‘Faster!’
‘I can’t!’ Ariel gasped. ‘I just wasn’t made to run …’
Jo grabbed her arm and shoved her forwards.
‘You weren’t made to give up either,’ she choked. ‘RUN!’
There were lights ahead. For a moment Jo thought they might have a chance of escape if only they could keep on running before they burst or collapsed. But then she saw they were not the welcoming white lights of a platform. These were halogen work lights, and they were aimed at a section of yellow scaffolding tower that stood in the middle of the tracks like a roadblock. Hard-hatted workmen in high-vis yellow jackets were grouped around a supervisor who was pointing at something on a blueprint taped to the wall with a hand that also held a big ring of keys like a janitor would carry.
The London Pride Page 11