by Chris Ward
52
Alliance
The tiny device weighed no more than a few grams, but in Lindon’s pocket it felt like a cannon ball. He tried to put it out of his mind as he wandered the streets, breathing in the degradation and decay, listening to the screams and the sirens, smelling the smoke fumes and the pungent stench of heaped garbage. He tried to convince himself that Tim Cold was right, that they had a chance, that thousands of innocent lives wouldn’t be lost on Saturday, that he could both save Cah and protect the people of the Tank from slaughter, but all he could see was blood and death.
Frank’s upstairs bedroom light was on. Lindon stood in the shadows across the street, watching for a long time. No shadows moved behind the shutters, but the glow emanated out. Frank was in there tending to her, administering medication, keeping her alive. Everything would be all right. All Lindon had to do was keep his end of the bargain with Dreggo.
His apartment was empty when he arrived. There was no way to tell when Dreggo might show, but without a way to contact her, all he could do was wait. As he sat in a chair by the window, looking out over the grim grey highrise apartment blocks of London’s decaying suburbs, he wondered how it had been a thing of beauty. The old splendour was lost beneath a cloud of smoke, but unless he did what needed to be done, thousands more innocent people would choke and die.
It was dark when he opened his eyes to the certainty that someone else was in the room.
‘Hello, Lindon.’
‘Dreggo.’
She was a silhouette that glimmered in places where the weak moonlight found the metal parts of her body. She took a chair across from him and crossed one leg over another.
‘I knew you’d come back.’
‘I had no choice.’
‘There is always a choice, Lindon.’
He shook his head. ‘Not this time. This is the only way.’
She said nothing. In the darkness one eye shone red, but the human side of her face was in shadow.
‘He runs the Underground Movement for Freedom out of the Tank. He confided in me.’
‘Tim Cold?’
‘Yes. They have a command centre in the basement of the old Houses of Parliament. No one knows besides Tim Cold and a handful of others. The rest of the people in the Tank are innocent. They’ve done nothing wrong. Tim Cold controls everything.’
‘And he sent you here to kill me.’
Lindon lifted up the tiny silver ball so that the moonlight caught it like a Christmas light. He turned it around in his fingers. ‘They know you control the Huntsmen,’ he said. ‘The Tank can stand against the DCA and even the military, but the Huntsmen … are something else.’
Dreggo nodded. ‘You have a wisdom Tim Cold lacks, Lindon.’ She pulled off her cloak and dropped it on a chair. ‘They don’t deserve you. Join me. I’ll make you powerful in the government.’
Lindon shook his head. ‘I want only the safety of the Tank.’
Dreggo stood up. She walked across the room until she was standing in front of him. He could hurl the ball at her at point blank range, ending her, but he didn’t. He let her reach down and take it from his fingers.
‘Danger indeed,’ she said. She lifted it to her face and something flickered in her computerised eye. She gave a slow nod, then held it out for him to take back. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Use it. Where would you like me to stand? Over by the far wall? Would that be far enough? Go on, Lindon. Use it.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I cannot trust him.’
Dreggo gave a soft laugh. She squatted down in front of him and put her hands on his knees. ‘You were right. This little ball of terror packs quite an explosive. It’ll destroy everything in this room, including you and me. Is that what he told you?’
Lindon stared at the tiny object in his hand. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so. You know what you need to do, don’t you?’ Her finger was stroking the inside of his thigh. She was nothing beyond a shadow, a glowing red orb, but there was something about her that was stirring something in him. He despised her with every part of his being, but at the same time he felt a connection to her that he felt with no one else, not even Cah.
She lifted herself up until she was leaning over him, her body pressed against his stomach. He wanted to throw her away, toss her through the window and watch her tumble over and over as she fell, but he couldn’t move, and his body was starting to make its own decisions. Dreggo plucked the tiny bomb from his fingers and held it up between them.
‘I could have you hung from the perimeter walls by a noose,’ she whispered. ‘I could have you left hanging until the elements have stripped the flesh from your bones. But I like you, Lindon, and you’ve done well. I haven’t forgotten what I promised. All you have to do is something for me. There was a time, Lindon, when I used to be a woman. I’m sure you remember. I certainly haven’t forgotten you.’
She slipped the ball into her mouth, then leaned forward and kissed him. He felt metal, both warm and cold, and flesh, a woman’s tongue. She lifted her legs over him, and he knew that control as he had once considered it no longer belonged to him. He was Dreggo’s toy, a plaything, and he would only return to himself when she was done.
He let her hands guide him. He was glad that he couldn’t see her, but in many ways they were no different. They were both broken, beyond repair. The city could be revived one day perhaps, but its inhabitants were too far London-gone. Life would only begin again with a new generation. All Lindon could do was try to minimise the damage. As Dreggo slid her clothes from her body he tried to move his mind elsewhere, to forget everything, to force the betrayal from his mind. As he paid for Dreggo’s forgiveness with the yielding of his body to pleasure hers, he tried to be somewhere else, anywhere.
‘It’s been so long since I enjoyed a man,’ she whispered when it was over, her breath coming in tired gasps as she held the ball again in her fingers, one hand stroking the muscles of his chest between the folds of his unbuttoned shirt. ‘You were something special.’
Lindon said nothing. He had done what she wanted on autopilot, muscle memory. She repulsed him, but if it saved Cah and safeguarded the people of the Tank, it was worth it.
Dreggo stood up and pulled on her clothes. ‘Thanks for the memories, Lindon. I’ll treasure them, you can be sure of that. And I’ll see you again, won’t I? After the dust settles on Saturday. You won’t forget what you promised, will you?’
‘I’ll keep my end of the bargain if you keep yours.’
‘Of course.’ Dreggo lifted a hand in a salute. ‘I’m a girl of honour.’
He watched her leave. As soon as he was sure she was gone, he went to the bathroom where they had always kept a few bottles of water filled from a nearby rain culvert.
There, with water that was almost as stale as his clothes, he did his best to wash away Dreggo’s memory.
He didn’t know what time it was, but in a few short hours the grey sun would begin to rise over the shattered wasteland of London. Lindon headed straight out, heading across the city on foot. It took him more than an hour to reach the abandoned station of Charing Cross East, but in its bowels he found a handful of people gathered around an electric fire tapped off the local wiring.
They knew him as their leader and they welcomed him as a friend. If Cah was in his soul, then the rest of the Cross Jumpers were his brothers and sisters, and the Tank was his family.
‘Tomorrow I need you more than I’ve ever needed you,’ he said. ‘This is dangerous, but it’s important.’
A man named Wade clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ve got your back, man. You lead, we follow. That’s the rule.’
‘Rules no longer matter,’ Lindon said. ‘What matters is trust.’
Another man, Phelps, said, ‘We’re with you as Cross Jumpers and friends. What’s going down?’
Lindon took a deep breath. ‘Tomorrow we take over the Tank.’
53
Coup
‘I want you to listen, but I know you won’t.’
Tim Cold shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. This is our moment.’
Mika sighed. ‘My sister isn’t Marta Banks,’ she said. ‘The Governor is more intelligent that you can understand. He took power with words and he’ll end this uprising with words. He’ll expose Airie as a fake.’
‘All we need is the time to hamstring him. Then London will be ours.’
Mika shook her head. ‘It won’t work. The people are too negative. They won’t respond, not in great enough numbers.’
‘There will be enough.’
‘Rick Spacewell knew,’ she said quietly. Tim had told her what he knew of the original Tube Riders, that three of them survived—Marta Banks, the one they called Switch, and a boy called Carl Weston. ‘Those boards … they weren’t for us. They were intended for Marta and the others.’
‘They’ve served their purpose.’
Mika shook her head again. She stared down at the map on the tabletop so that Tim Cold wouldn’t see the frustration in her eyes. They couldn’t save Airie, but they could save the thousands who were set to die in a few hours’ time.
Someone knocked hard on the door. Tim turned towards it, frowning. ‘Who is it?’
‘Lindon.’
Mika felt a sudden uncontrollable panic as Tim went to open the door. Lindon’s voice was wrong, more urgent than it should have been. Dealing with the Huntsmen on a daily basis she had grown used to judging emotion from sounds. She started to tell Tim to wait, but it was too late, he had activated the code to open the door.
Lindon was barely inside before Tim was staggering backwards, a knife sticking out of his chest. Lindon stepped forward and punched Tim with staggering force, then turned towards Mika as she darted for the door.
His hand came up, holding a gun. Mika stared at her death, then thought of her sister’s face and dived under the nearest table, kicking a chair towards him. He knocked it easily aside, but Tim’s hands closed over his ankles, pulling him off balance. The gun went off, the bullet slamming into a tabletop above her head. Mika kicked out, using a filing cabinet for leverage, propelling herself through the door.
She didn’t give herself time to think about what might or might not happen next. She dragged herself up to her feet and raced for her laboratories.
She had to cling to what she had left or she was already dead.
Her sister.
Airie.
David stared at the aerial photograph of Parliament Tower Plaza. Taken some years before via satellite, various areas had been drawn over in black marker to show where parts had been removed or rebuilt.
It looked too open. There was nowhere to hide, no cover. They were facing a pitched battle, and the only thing the men of the Tank had on their side was the element of surprise. They weren’t expected to win, David knew. All they had to do was hold the Governor’s forces out in the open while a second group flanked him.
‘We’ll have gunmen in as many buildings as we can,’ one man was telling him, his words drifting over the top of David’s thoughts like a boat floating on a pond. ‘Unfortunately, so will they. What we do have is a few dozen stolen DCA uniforms which will give us an advantage—’
The door to the meeting room burst open and a group of men came rushing in. David reached for a knife at his belt but the butt of a gun slammed into his forehead, stunning him. He dropped to his knees as shots rang out, holding on to the tabletop for support. Two of the other men were already dead. He stared as one of the attackers held a gun to the head of a fallen man and pulled the trigger. Another tried to run for the door and was shot in the back.
In less than thirty seconds he was the only one left alive. He waited for them to kill him, but the men sheathed their weapons and dragged him up. He tried to struggle but one man punched him in the stomach, winding him.
‘Nice one,’ a man said to his left. ‘Clean as a whistle. Let’s go.’
He had hoped Tim Cold would be alone, but no matter, the scientist could wait. She was mistrusted in the Tank and it would only take a word to start a witch hunt to flush her out. As Tim Cold lay gasping on the floor below him, Lindon pulled the explosive device out of his pocket.
‘You risked them all,’ he said. ‘And you betrayed them. The Tank people are my people. You are not one of them. I will not allow you to send them to slaughter.’
‘Lindon, no … this is our chance.’
‘Liar.’
He kicked Tim Cold in the face. As the man groaned, Lindon went to the door and stepped outside. He lifted the explosive, then reached inside and pressed the door release. As the door slid shut, he threw the explosive into the room and then ducked back against the wall as a deafening explosion shook the corridor.
The door clicked shut, sealing off the gutted room. Lindon nodded. He alone knew the combination to open the door. Tim Cold’s pit of conspiracy and machinations was now his tomb.
Lindon headed for the upper levels. If all had gone to plan, the purge should now be complete.
David quickly gave up trying to struggle as the armed men marched him through the corridors, past several bewildered inhabitants who shrank away at the sight of their guns. They went up several flights of stairs, finally reaching a large antechamber with raised stepped seats on either side of a long central table, an old parliament debating room.
‘You’re making a mistake,’ David said, as the men dragged him down a set of stairs and pushed him into a seat.
The door opened and another group of men entered. ‘What’s going on here?’ one man said. ‘Wade? What’s all this about?’
‘Tim Cold betrayed us,’ came a voice David recognised. The newest group parted to reveal Lindon standing in the doorway, muscles bulging under a shirt flecked with blood and dust.
‘Lindon?’
‘His lies threatened everyone who belongs to the Tank. He has been replaced as leader.’
‘Who…?’
Lindon didn’t need to answer. He walked down the steps to the second group of men, looking at each in turn as if daring them to challenge him. The man who had spoken held his gaze a few seconds, then stepped back and nodded. The others did the same.
Lindon turned towards David.
‘The Tube Rider will be handed over to the DCA,’ he said. ‘But I want a word with him first.’
‘You fucking turncoat,’ David spat.
Lindon’s face was like thunder. ‘Get him up and release him. Push those tables aside.’
The men did as they were asked. David didn’t need to know what was coming; he could see it in Lindon’s eyes. Violence emanated from him like an aura. As Lindon snarled and came forward, fists raised, David glanced behind him, looking for somewhere to run, but there were only tables and spaces where chairs had been. Nothing he could use as a weapon.
He turned back, lifting his fists. If Lindon wanted to fight, he would fight.
The only people Mika saw were running in the opposite direction, back towards the explosions and the gunshots. She kept her head down as if shielding herself from attack and no one paid her any attention. She heard men hollering war cries, women screaming, children crying. They feared the worst, that the DCA or even the Huntsmen had come to flush them out. It was chaos, but it worked to her advantage as she reached the rooms Tim Cold had allocated her.
Lindon had been thorough. A man was waiting outside. He pulled a gun on her as she approached.
‘Lindon sent me,’ she called, trying to double bluff him. ‘He said to tell you to help me bring some stuff to the meeting room upstairs.’
The man shook his head, looking confused. She pushed past him without a pause into the room, ripping the first laptop she reached off its wires and around into his face as he moved to follow. As he groaned she kicked him between the legs, then slammed the laptop down over the back of his head. She tied his hands and feet with the wires as he lay stunned.
‘I had to deal with Huntsmen,’ she mutte
red, half talking to herself as she gathered up the things she needed. ‘Street punks like you aren’t really a problem. Do yourself a favour though, won’t you? It doesn’t matter whose side you fight on. The enemy is the same.’
Slinging a rucksack over her shoulder, she slipped past the man and back out into the corridor. As she raced for the meeting rooms where she had last seen David, she prayed she wasn’t too late.
You didn’t survive in London for long without being able to fight, but Lindon was a hardened cage fighter, and David was already weak from undernourishment. His only chance was to stay out of range as long as possible, but it was quickly apparent that Lindon would get the blood he wanted no matter how long it took.
David tried to weave around the old stalls, climbing over them as Lindon lumbered in pursuit, but the other men were keen to see the contest over quickly and began to close in. Eventually he had nowhere to go but forward, so he ducked in sharply, trying to get inside Lindon and give himself more time.
Lindon, though, had seen it all. He dropped quickly, and suddenly the punches were coming, hammer blows that rained down on David’s head and body. He ducked, curling his head towards his stomach, but Lindon shoved him backwards and then a blow landed that felt like the end wall of a platform on a failed tube ride. David hit the ground, his vision blurring, the taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to crawl away, but hands were pulling him up, pushing him back into range.
‘Come on, Lindon, that’s enough,’ he heard someone say, then he was falling again, the blow so hard it barely registered as pain. A laminate wooden tabletop met his stomach and he rolled over onto the aisle behind, gaining a couple of seconds of time. He tried to crawl away, then his ears filled with a strange high-pitched squeal that came out of nowhere.
He thought Lindon must have hit him hard enough to burst his eardrums, but when he turned he saw the other man lying a few feet away, writhing on the ground.