by Chris Ward
He had David’s eyes, and his smile.
‘Why did you have to come back?’ she whispered, stroking the side of Jake’s face as the baby went slowly back to sleep.
4
Scent
The Huntsman had been whining for hours. Usually upon returning from a mission they would slink quietly back into their holding cells to crouch like wraiths in the dark, their hoods turned down towards the ground. Like most animals, they were afraid of pain, and the electrical stunners embedded in their bodies that could be activated from a handler’s remote were a useful deterrent against unrest. Sometimes though, like now, one of them needed putting in its place.
‘You gonna shut up or what?’ Jed snapped. He lifted his hand, holding up the small remote. He had set the stun to low. It was enough to hurt them but cause no lasting damage. A blast on high for more than a minute would kill one, but killing one was a death wish. There weren’t so many left that they could be tossed away like garbage.
The creature whined again, dipping its nose towards the ground. Jed got a look at the human eyes peering over the doglike snout and grimaced.
‘I told you to shut up.’
Jed jabbed the button on the remote and the Huntsman shuddered, its feet slipping out from under it. As it staggered back into a crouch, its head lifted and its eyes fixed on Jed’s. Its lips drew back in a snarl over long, hooked teeth.
He tried to hold its gaze. Each Huntsman had just one remote. There was talk of installing them with a single override, but in the hands of an enemy the entire battalion could all be rendered useless at once.
With the remote in his hand, Jed held the power. Without it, the creature would tear him to pieces.
‘You don’t want to look at me like that,’ he said. ‘You want some more? Do you—’
‘What’s going on here?’
Jed turned. A pretty woman in a lab coat stood watching him, a clipboard in hand. Spectacles covered eyes that were slightly Asian. Brown hair was tied back in a ponytail but one strand had broken loose to trail down the side of her face.
‘Just trying to settle my dog. He’s restless tonight.’
‘He’s not your dog. Get out of here.’
She pushed him in the chest, then turned away nonchalantly to look in through the bars at the Huntsman, as if it was Jed that was worthless and not this pathetic creature.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘Get out of here or I’ll call the guard. I could have you thrown in there with him. Would you like that?’
Jed put up his hands. ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ he said, turning his back on her. How the hell did women get given jobs down here? Dealing with the dogs was man’s work. Best place for a pretty little bitch like that was at home on her back.
Pissed that he’d been talked down to by a woman, Jed headed for the elevators back up to the surface. His shift was long over; he just liked to remind his dog who was boss. There needed to be a mutual respect between a handler and his animal. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be?
His pride was hurting. Luckily he knew a place where he could drown out his anger with a few jars of homebrew and find a willing woman on which he could vent his frustration.
‘I’ll be thinking of you, lab bitch,’ he muttered, one calloused finger stabbing at the elevator’s up button.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Mika said, peering in through the bars at the Huntsman crouched back by the wall. God, they were treated worse than animals, she thought, but there were men under those cloaks and behind those doglike snouts. Some had retained more of their humanity than others, but they all deserved to be treated better.
The scientist who had designed the original prototype had died long before she was born, but she had met Dr Karmski, the man responsible for developing them into the killing machines they now were. She had taken an immediate dislike to him, particularly the way his eyes had run across her body as if sizing her up for sale, but she had admired his brilliance. He could do things with gene manipulation that no one else could, but even so, she had not been sad when he had disappeared, rumoured to have fallen foul of the Governor himself.
She checked the Huntsman’s name plate above the door.
Sorel.
She would have to check the files for its background information, but the bullying handler was right, the Huntsman was playing up. Something was bothering him.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Can you tell me?’ She didn’t doubt for a moment that the Huntsman would rip her to shreds if the bars of its cage were removed, but speaking to them with kindness had got her far better results than anger and scare tactics ever had.
The Huntsman slowly rose to its feet. It was big one, she saw, nearly seven feet tall. The metal inserts that gave them their agility and strength often stretched their human limbs out of proportion, something that caused them great pain. Her heart started to thunder as the Huntsman moved slowly towards the bars, its face still hidden by the hood of its robe.
The bars were close enough together to prevent it snapping its jaws or slipping a hand out to grab her. A low grumble came from the darkness beneath its hood. It sounded like purring.
‘Scent,’ it growled.
‘Scent? What scent?’
Jaws appeared from out of the shadows of its hood, and furry, discoloured jowls drew back to reveal its vicious teeth.
‘Tube Rider,’ it said, its voice a low growl that carried enough menace to make a shiver tickle down Mika’s neck.
5
Airie
Taku stood back by the trees, taking a long draw on his roll-up cigarette. ‘Come on, man. There’s no need to be going down there.’
David turned back to him, grinning. ‘What are you afraid of? Ghosts?’
‘Huntsmen.’
David’s smile vanished. ‘I’m pretty sure Huntsmen wouldn’t have locked the gate.’
‘But just in case….’
‘Stay here if you want to.’
David hauled the rusted metal gate across just enough to squeeze through. Heaps of dead leaves and litter had piled up inside.
‘Bro, it’s dark down there….’
‘Trust me. Come on.’
David led the way down the stairs into the darkness. Behind him, the metal gate creaked in the breeze, leaves caught in its bars flicking against the metal like tickertape in a storm. He heard Taku’s footsteps but didn’t wait. The first corner was always the worst, where the gloom was greatest. Once you were past it on to the main passenger thoroughfare it got easier.
Old ticket gates outlined themselves against the gloom. The empty counters of old sandwich vendors and newspaper stands appeared along the side of a wider area with a ruined ticket office in the centre, its windows smashed in, the glass almost all gone. One or two larger shops had shutters pulled down.
There were fewer emergency lights than he remembered. Some had gone out, even their long-life bulbs eventually giving in. He didn’t know how long the place had been abandoned; it was ten years at least.
He walked past the ticket gates and down an escalator so gummed up with trash and dirt that it looked like a regular staircase until he rubbed his fingers in the dust and felt the dried, cracked plastic of its old motion rail. At the bottom he saw the platform and a sudden wave of emotions washed over him like a dry wind billowing up from the train tracks.
The platform opened up in front of him, lit by emergency lights in the tunnel roof, stretching at least a hundred metres from left to right. There were two lines of track, two platforms on either side and one in the centre, but all of the other exits had long been bricked over or demolished. There was only one way in or out.
Behind him, Taku stumbled down the last of the steps. David turned to see the glow of another cigarette as Taku tugged on it in quick, nervous draws.
‘What the hell is this place?’
David smiled. He took a deep breath, trying to calm a heart beating with both excitement and nostalgia. The last time h
e had walked out of here, he had never planned to return. Yet here he was, perhaps the last of his kind.
‘This is St Cannerwells London Underground station,’ he said. ‘This is where the Tube Riders used to ride.’
‘Come on, man, don’t slap me with any more of that Tube Riders bullshit. You know that’s just some crap made up to scare people. Wraiths of the underground, my ass.’
‘They weren’t wraiths, and never were. They were guys like us, playing a game.’
‘Yeah, whatever. They’ve gone now, in any case. They’re probably all dead.’
David turned to face him, a smile on his face. ‘Not all of them.’
‘Bro, you’re not going to tell me….’ He trailed off as David opened the rucksack he had brought and pulled out the clawboard, holding it up so that the emergency lights glittered off the metal hook he had polished to a shine.
‘I used to ride with them. Things didn’t work out.’
As Taku stared at him, a roar began building in the tunnel. David felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. His fingers wrapped around the rubber straps, holding the board firmly, tilted slightly up, the front a little higher than the back to take the jolt of the forward momentum.
He dropped into a sprinter’s crouch, holding the board against his left side as Marta Banks had taught him. As the train exploded out of the tunnel he kicked off the tiles and bolted forward, running hard at a tight angle towards the train. Too close and you had no press momentum, too wide and you’d bounce right off. A mistake could mean death.
The first three carriages were passed him when he leapt for the train, the clawboard swinging down towards the metal drainage rail along the top.
His first thought was that he had missed.
It had been more than a year, after all.
Then the metal hooks clanged as they caught the rail, jerked harder on his shoulders than he remembered, then slid a little, showering him with bits of grit dislodged from the rail.
He braced his feet against the side of the carriage as the train took him along, the lowered faces of the handful of passengers appearing static against the blur of the platform at his feet and the tunnel roof over his head.
The breakfall mats were still there. He had noticed them on the way down, still piled up by the platform wall, a motley assortment of old mattresses, pillows, blankets, sofa cushions, even one or two car seats.
It was time. He kicked upwards, his face flushing with heat as his hooks got stuck on a piece of grit an instant before moving, then he was falling backwards, sailing through the air to land with a soft thump.
He lay on his back among the breakfall mats, staring up at the roof as the train thundered into the tunnel. In a couple of seconds it was gone, leaving just the sound of his ragged breathing and Taku’s whoops from further up the platform.
His heart was thumping harder than the train’s wheels over the tracks. As Taku came running over, David crawled coughing and wheezing out of the dusty cloud kicked up by the mats. He crawled to the platform edge and wiped away the dust to reveal a number painted on the edge of the platform: 27.
He looked up at the wall at the end of the platform, thinking that it seemed so much closer. Still, it wasn’t bad for a comeback effort.
‘Bro, what the fuck? You’re off your tits, man. Ha! That was awesome!’
David grinned and held up his board. ‘You want to try?’
‘Never in a million years. That’s tube riding, is it? Just for the record, I wasn’t going to clean you up if you hit the tunnel wall. I’d have raised a glass to your memory, though.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So tell me what’s the big secret? Why’d you hide that shit from me?’
‘I quit. Over a year ago. Broke up with a girl—you know how it is. You’re not a Tube Rider unless you ride.’
‘Well, you looked like you knew what you were doing.’
David shrugged. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘So what now?’
‘What do you mean?’
Taku tossed the butt of his rolled up cigarette down on to the tracks. ‘I know you, bro. It’s not like you to do something like that for a hobby unless there’s some reason for it.’
‘Well—’
From somewhere up near the ticket gates came a girl’s scream.
‘What the fuck? We’d better bail, bro. Shit don’t sound good.’
David climbed up from the platform and walked back towards the escalator. ‘Someone’s up there.’
‘No shit.’
A cry came again, this time of pain, followed by the grunt of a man.
‘Let’s go,’ David said. ‘We have to help.’
‘Since when did you turn into a goddamn vigilante for righteousness?’
‘Since I realised that nothing will get better while we sit by and ignore all the bad stuff that’s happening,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
Not waiting to see if Taku followed him, David headed for the old escalator, taking the steps two at a time, his clawboard held in front of him like a shield. He had fashioned his board out of an old desk, the wood strong and hard, tough enough to withstand the rigours of tube riding. The last thing you wanted when you were hanging from the side of a train at sixty miles per hour was for your board to fail. He had seen it happen, and it wasn’t pretty.
The flicker of flashlights came from the concourse above him, the sound of several sets of heavy footfalls, and another lighter set, staggering, uncertain.
‘Grab her,’ came a man’s voice.
A cry of pain, then the sound of a hard slap, followed by a submissive whimper.
‘You got her?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Kneel, you fucking whore.’
‘Wait, I’m first.’
‘Fuck you.’
David gritted his teeth as he crept closer. He peeked around the corner at the top of the escalator and saw a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen, pushed to her knees, one man holding her hands over the back of her head. Another man stood off to the side, his arms folded, while a third man stood in front of her, unbuttoning his jeans.
The one with his arms folded was tall but scrawny, but the other two were solid. The one holding the girl was older, perhaps in his forties, and wore a leather vest which exposed tattooed biceps. The other was younger, perhaps thirty, and wore a heavy trench-coat.
With a sudden twist, the girl turned and swung a knee up at the man in front, missing his groin but catching him on the side of the leg. With an angry growl he punched her in the side of the head. David recoiled from the savage crack of the man’s knuckles on her cheek.
‘Hey, watch it,’ the scrawny man said, taking a step forward and lifting a hand as the girl went limp in the tattooed man’s hold.
‘Too late,’ Trench-coat said. ‘Get the fuck away unless you want some. Otherwise join the line.’
He started to unbutton his jeans again. The girl moaned, her head swaying. David glanced behind him. Where the hell was Taku? He had no chance on his own, but he couldn’t just sit here and watch.
His heart was thumping. His hands shook. Speed was his only weapon. He would have to be quicker than he had ever been on the tubes, or he and the girl were dead or worse.
He wrapped one hand through a rubber strap on his clawboard, holding it against his side. Then he stepped out on to the concourse and walked quickly towards the men and the girl.
The man holding the girl was the first to spot him. ‘Hey, what the…?’
David swung the board up in a fast arc. The wooden edge cracked against the man’s temple. He groaned and fell backwards, letting go of the girl. As the board bounced backwards, David turned and swung it at Trench-coat, who still had one hand on his belt. This time his aim was a little off, and the board twisted in the air. The flat side of the clawboard connected with the man’s face, and the metal hooks tore a gash down his cheek, but the impact wasn’t as heavy as a side-on blow would have been.
The man staggered but did
n’t fall. One blind eye and one seeing one watched David with pure hatred as his fists came up.
‘Big mistake, crusader boy.’
A fist like iron crashed into the side of David’s face, sending him sprawling. He swung the board around as a reflex, but Trench-coat stuck out an arm to knock it aside. He grabbed David’s shirt and jerked him forward. David ducked at the last moment to avoid his nose being smashed, but the clash of heads sent a clumping sound echoing through the abandoned station.
As he hit the ground, David was only vaguely aware of a boot striking him in the stomach. Ahead of him, the girl was crawling towards the feet of the scrawny man who had backed away against the wall.
‘Lift him up,’ Trench-coat said to the tattooed man. ‘Let me have a look at him before I cut his throat.’
Strong hands grabbed David around the shoulders and hauled him upright.
‘Who the fuck are you, man—?’
Something metal flashed in the dark and Trench-coat staggered. David caught a glimpse of a tiny glowing light, then the knife flashed again. Trench-coat gave a wheezing gasp and fell backwards.
‘You coward!’ the girl screamed, as the scrawny man ran for the exit stairs. The tattooed man let go of David and backed up. Taku’s cigarette glowed and the knife gleamed in his hand.
‘Run home, asshole. Tell your friends to stay away from this place.’
The tattooed man didn’t wait to be asked again. He turned and ran. David crouched, one hand on his head, the other on the ground. His ears were ringing and his cheek stung.
In front of him lay the man in the trench-coat, blood pooling around him. Taku grabbed his legs and started tugging him towards the escalator. ‘I’ll put him on the tracks,’ he said. ‘He won’t be there long.’
‘You just killed that guy….’
Taku shrugged. ‘No one’ll miss him. He’s London-gone now. Deal with the girl. I don’t know. Swear her to silence or something.’
David had almost forgotten about the girl. She was sitting back against the wall, her legs pulled up close to her chest. Hard eyes stared out of a face that would be pretty in other circumstances. Her body was slender, her skin pale. He wanted to find her attractive, but all he could think about was the ringing in his head from the punch.