Floodworld

by Tom Huddleston

  The girl moved in, her eyes gleaming. She held Joe’s nose with her fingers, forcing him to open his mouth. Then she shoved her doll inside, jamming the greasy bundle of rags between his teeth. He felt hands round his wrists and ankles, lifting him off his feet.

  The ragged boy cackled with glee. “Doorkeepers gonna eat well tonight!”

  Two MetCo officers lay spreadeagled on the tiled floor of Sub Level Four staring up at the ceiling. Their guns had been taken, their radios smashed. Behind them a steel door stood wide, dented with bullet holes. Beyond the door was darkness.

  Singh knelt, checking their wrists. He shook his head.

  “Redeye,” Kara said. “Do you believe us now?”

  Singh nodded. “We’ll go to Mr Remick. We’ll prove to him—”

  “There’s no time,” Kara said. “They’re heading for the back door. We’re the only ones who can stop them.”

  “Us?” Nate asked. “I mean, I’ll come if you want, but I don’t think I’ll be much—”

  “Stop,” Kara cut in, facing him. “Who attacked John Cortez with a fire extinguisher? Who piloted that sub to safety?”

  “Erm, me?” Nate asked, only half certain.

  “Exactly. So stop acting like a coward, because you’re not one.”

  Nate blushed, managing to look frightened, flattered and embarrassed all at once. Singh squeezed his shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, I’m terrified too. But I think she’s right; it’s down to us now.”

  Stepping over the bodies, Kara knew she should be just as frightened. But somehow her nerves were steady. She had a job to do and it was more important than anything, even fear.

  Beyond the door was a vertical shaft with a steep metal staircase winding down through it. There were lights in the wall and the steps were cold beneath her bare feet.

  Nate checked the map as they descended. “The next clue is six down. And look, there’s a sort of flat bit every time the stairs do a loop. Maybe it means six of those.”

  “Please tell me you’ve been counting,” Kara said.

  “Of course. That’s four.”

  “I see a door,” Singh said, peering over the railing. “Two loops down.”

  The staircase continued, but they stopped at the door. Singh took the handle, but before he could open it Kara held up a hand. “Hang on. I’ve been thinking.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Nate muttered.

  “Redeye doesn’t know you’re with us,” Kara told Singh. “He knows me and Nate have the map and that we’re in the City, so if we show up he won’t be surprised. But he doesn’t know about you.”

  “What’s your point?” he asked.

  “I think we should split up,” Kara said. “No, listen. Me and Nate can go on ahead. You follow a little way behind, so if they catch us you can still get the drop on them.”

  Nate sighed. “So we’re bait is what you’re saying?”

  “If you want to look at it like that.”

  Singh stepped back. “Makes sense to me. I’ll stay close and keep you in sight.”

  Kara grasped the handle. “Ready?” she asked. “One, two…”

  She yanked the door open, springing back with a cry. Singh raised his pistol and Nate pressed himself against the wall.

  “Wow,” Kara said, exhaling raggedly. “It’s… Well, take a look.”

  They peered round the door. A figure stood just inside, staring back at them.

  “It’s a statue,” Nate whispered.

  A man’s head and shoulders were carved from stone, lashed with rope to a marble plinth. He had a proud nose and blank white eyes beneath a curly mop of hair.

  Kara edged past into the room beyond. It was large and unlit, the ceiling too high to make out. But in the glow from the stairway she could see a forest of stone figures stretching off into the gloom. There were other shapes too, vases and paintings and piles of crates stacked unevenly.

  “I bet they’re from a museum,” Nate whispered as they crept through. “That’s where they keep stuff from olden times. There’s one in Frisco; my dad used to take me. They had pistols and a stagecoach; they even had this pod that some guys went to the moon in.”

  Kara laughed. “That’s just a story.”

  “No, it really happened,” Nate insisted. “It wasn’t much bigger than the Marlin. And— Hey, look!”

  Set into the wall ahead was a row of shutters, and a board printed with a single red word.

  “News,” Kara read. “I guess it means we go down there.”

  There was a narrow opening beside the news stand and a tunnel sloping down. Kara held up her hands as the light faded, drowning them in darkness. The thought of Singh following made her feel a little safer, but he’d be just as blind as they were.

  “I think this used to be a train station,” Nate whispered. “A stop on the underground network.”

  “I don’t really know what those things are,” Kara admitted.

  “Trains were like buses,” Nate said. “But big, hundreds of people could go in one. And stations were where they’d pick up passengers. There would’ve been thousands of folks coming down here every day.”

  Kara tried to picture these dark halls filled with light and people, all going places. The world must’ve been so different then.

  Their footsteps echoed as they emerged into another open space. Kara stubbed her toe and cursed. “More statues,” she complained, feeling her way. “Perfect.”

  “We should’ve brought a flashlight,” Nate whispered. “Like they did. Look.”

  He was right – in the blackness up ahead Kara could see a beam of light glancing off the walls. Stilling her breath she heard voices too, distant and indistinct.

  “Redeye,” she hissed excitedly. “We’re not too late.”

  “Too late for what?” a voice asked, and light blinded their eyes. “Put ’em up, both of you.”

  It was the narrow-faced Mariner, his pistol trained on them.

  Nate raised his hands. “Kipps, it’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  The man smirked crookedly, then he raised his voice. “Hey, Redeye. I found your friends.”

  “Which ones?” Redeye called. “I have so many.”

  Kipps gestured with his torch. “The traitor and the mudfoot girl. I’m bringing them to you.”

  “Kara?” Redeye laughed. “I thought you’d be rotting in some MetCo cell.”

  “I didn’t want to miss this,” Kara shouted back.

  Kipps directed them between the statues, his torch flashing across the faces of men and animals, making them shift and grimace. Redeye turned towards them as they stepped out into the open, his briefcase clutched in his hand. “I am genuinely happy to see you both,” he said. “Kara because I love that you don’t quit, however many times we try to kill you. And Nate because you know the sort of pointless trivia that might actually help right now.”

  “You want to know which of these statues is Wellington,” Nate realised.

  “Bravo,” Redeye clapped. “Elroy died before he could explain what the notes on his map actually meant. The rest were obvious, but now we have six tunnels and one clue. So I need you to tell me which of these people, or horses, or whatever that thing is, are called Wellington.”

  Nate frowned. “What if I refuse?”

  “He’ll shoot me,” Kara said. “And he’ll probably torture you.”

  Redeye grinned. “Smart girl.”

  “Would you tell him?” Nate asked Kara. “If it was you?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “Then I’d find a way to hurt him later. He’s not that bright, so it shouldn’t be hard.”

  Redeye laughed, waving his gun at her. “Maybe I’ll shoot you right now, just for fun.”

  “It’s that one,” Nate said quickly, pointing at a massive iron sculpture of a man on a rearing horse. He held a sword, thrusting it towards the far left-hand tunnel. “I’m pretty sure. I mean, he looks like a Duke to me.”

  “He’s right,” Pavel grunted, turning his torc
h on the dusty floor. “It’s been moved.”

  “Elroy’s work,” Redeye said. “It seems the boy knows his ancient historical junk after all. But now I have another problem. Obviously I can’t let you go; you’d follow us and do something annoying. But believe it or not I’ve actually grown fond of you, Kara. I really don’t want to kill you. Luckily I have a solution.” He turned to the pinch-faced Mariner. “Kipps, wait until we’re gone, then shoot them both. You can catch us up.”

  Kipps grinned toothily. “It’s done.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Redeye said as he backed towards the tunnel, “you’d never have survived what’s coming. Cortez would’ve made sure of that.”

  He strode away into the darkness, Pavel on his heels. The light from their torches was soon swallowed up.

  “Move.” Kipps gestured with his pistol. “No, not in front of him. Get out of the way.”

  “No,” Kara said, shielding Nate.

  “But when I shoot you you’ll fall down, then I’ll shoot him anyway. It’s—”

  There was a flash in the dark and the slam of a gunshot. Kipps hit the ground, his pistol tumbling from his hand.

  “Shoot again,” Kara called out. “In case they’re listening.”

  “Oh, right.” Singh emerged from the shadows, firing once into the air. Kara heard the crack of tiles.

  “What took you so long?” she asked as he took the cuffs from his belt, yanking the groaning Mariner off the floor and chaining him to the wall. “You let Redeye get away.”

  “There were three of them,” Singh pointed out. “I might’ve shot one, even two. The last one would’ve killed you. Now the odds are better.”

  Kipps’s eyes fluttered as they moved towards the passageway. Blood soaked through his shirt and he strained against the cuffs. “You can’t stop Cortez,” he said. “If you try to fight him, he’ll demolish your precious Shanties.”

  Kara turned back. “Not if we demolish him first.”

  22

  The Back Door

  Joe sat upright on a cold stone floor, his hands tied in front of him. They’d yanked the rag doll from his mouth but the oily taste of it was still foul on his tongue. He was in the basement of a tall tower, the levels above rotted out. Light came filtering down through clouds of dust and the floor was strewn with white objects in higgledy piles. Squinting, he realised it was bits of bathroom furniture – toilets and sinks and mirrored cabinets, all disconnected and discarded.

  The ragged boy perched on the edge of a claw-footed bathtub, a spring-lock blade in one hand, Joe’s bear in the other. He was whittling with his knife, carving off thin strips of plastic, sharpening Growly’s legs into pointed stumps. His tongue protruded between his teeth as he worked.

  “He lost one arm being kidnapped by Mariners,” Joe said. “And the other when I got attacked by a shark.”

  The boy looked at him dubiously, then he lowered the bear. “Why you come here?” he asked. “Why, if you not Rubble King spy?”

  “I was with some friends,” Joe explained. “We were looking for a door.”

  The boy gave a nod of understanding. “I heard of folks like you. Trying to find the door, trying to go to the special place. Ain’t been one since the last chief, but Doorkeepers always find them before they find it. We show them the way.”

  “You show them?” Joe asked. “So you know where the door is?”

  “Course!” the boy said. He rose to his feet, pulling Joe up. In among the piles of porcelain a group of grey-faced Doorkeepers sat round a small fire, turning something on a spit. Joe saw pointed ears and scorched ginger fur. Beyond them was a circular archway like a tunnel’s mouth, so deep in shadow he hadn’t noticed it before. The ragged boy pointed. “The door.”

  The other children bowed their heads. “The door, the door,” they murmured.

  Joe crossed towards it, his eyes adjusting slowly. The tunnel was shallow, its end blocked with a huge circle of solid metal. He knew right away what he was looking at. The back door was three times his height and perfectly smooth, with no hinge or handle.

  “How do you open it?”

  The ragged boy came up behind him. “Open it?” he whispered. “Can’t open it. Door stays shut until He comes.”

  “He?” Joe asked, touching the cool surface with his tied hands. “Who’s He?”

  “None knows,” the boy said. “But he’ll take us through to the special place, just like the others who came looking.”

  “So these others went through the door? They managed to open it?”

  The boy shook his head, then confusingly he nodded. “They go through. But they not open the door.”

  Joe frowned. “So how did they go through?”

  “The same way everyone else,” the boy said, holding up the plastic bear. “They meet the Doorkeepers, and we send them on their way.”

  In a flash Joe realised what he meant. “No,” he said. “You don’t have to—”

  The boy lashed out, Growly’s sharpened legs cutting twin furrows in Joe’s upper arm. Blood flowed – just a trickle, but enough to shock him out of his stupor. He ducked as the ragged boy lunged again, forcing him back against the hard steel door.

  “Don’t fear,” the boy grinned, advancing. “We send you where you want to go.”

  There was a sudden clang and a high-pitched whine. Sparks flew as a bullet ricocheted from the door, slamming into the opposite wall. The children shrieked and Joe turned. Booted feet descended the steep concrete ramp that led back up into the light.

  “Joe?” Maura called down. “I see you’ve been making friends.”

  Kara clutched Kipps’s torch as they stepped into a long thin room with white walls and only half a floor. Peering over the edge she saw steel rails enveloped in decades of dust.

  “This must be where the trains would come in,” Nate whispered.

  “The footprints go that way,” Singh said, pointing. They climbed down on to the tracks.

  In the tunnel the air was cool. Pipes and cables sprouted from the walls all criss-crossed with glistening webs. In the torchlight Kara saw a spider the size of her fist scuttling out of sight. Between the tracks the dust was so deep it was like walking on a thick carpet, if carpets sometimes rustled and squeaked when you trod on them.

  The tracks sloped downward and she heard Nate shiver. “We must be under the old River Thames. They filled it in when the Wall went up, cleared the whole area. Which means…”

  “We’re under the Wall,” Kara realised, looking up. “It can’t be far now.”

  “You should put that light out,” Singh said. “They could be watching.”

  Kara did as he said, tracing the rail with her foot. She could only imagine what she looked like shuffling along like a zombie, her peach dress smeared with filth. She wondered where Redeye was now – at the back door, or even through it? Had Cortez already arrived? Were his troops right now massing by the Wall, ready to swarm down this tunnel and murder everyone inside?

  The thought of it made her pick up the pace, hurrying the others along. She was moving so fast that she slammed face first into a steel barrier that stood blocking the way.

  She rubbed her nose. “Who put a wall there?”

  “I think it’s a train,” Singh said. “It must’ve been down here forever.”

  Kara felt the obstruction with her hands. “There’s a gap at the side. Nate, can you fit?”

  “Of course,” the boy said defensively, taking a deep breath.

  They slid alongside the train, their backs to the wall. The air was thick with dust and the stink of oil and chemicals; Kara had to fight to stop herself sneezing. That’s all we need, she thought. A city lost because I couldn’t keep it in.

  Then Singh stopped, drawing his pistol. “Look. The last carriage.”

  There was light up ahead, leaking through the open doors of the final train compartment. In the stillness Kara could hear voices.

  “It’s them,” she whispered. “And see, ther
e.”

  Ahead of the train the tracks stopped dead, hitting a wall of inward-curving metal. It filled the tunnel, a smooth circle of polished steel inset with a single blinking panel. The back door.

  Kara crept closer, holding her breath. They’d almost reached the carriage when Pavel appeared in the doorway, looking at them in surprise. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.” And he raised his weapon.

  Singh fired first, the roar of his pistol filling the tunnel. Pavel was thrown backwards off his feet, tumbling into the train carriage, blasting wildly as he fell. Singh staggered back, hitting the wall. Then he sank to the floor of the tunnel, blood coursing from his shattered left knee.

  Kara dropped at his side, her hands trembling. It had all been so sudden, and so loud.

  “I’m OK,” Singh said hoarsely. “Just need to sit for a minute.”

  There was a scuffling sound inside the train car, followed by a roar of bitter anger.

  “Don’t move,” Kara called out shakily. “Stay there or we’ll shoot you too.”

  “You killed him,” Redeye said. “You didn’t have to do that. Pavel was a good man.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kara said, taking a step closer to the open doorway. “But we can’t let you do this. We can’t let you open the back door, and we can’t let Cortez come through.”

  Redeye put his head out of the carriage, looking at her in complete bafflement. “Say again?”

  “We won’t let Cortez through,” Kara repeated. “We won’t let your men invade the City.”

  Redeye frowned, then he ducked back inside. “Let me get this straight. You think I’m trying to open this door so Cortez and his men can take over the City?” He laughed, a short, barking sound. “I know you think I’m stupid Kara, but that would have to be the dumbest plan of all time. How many troops do you think can fit on the Kraken? Eight, nine hundred? And how many do MetCo have guarding London? Five times that. Also, if that was the plan, why would I need this bomb?”

  Kara stepped into the doorway, her heart seizing. Pavel lay sprawled on the linoleum floor, his arms flung wide. Beside him Redeye knelt over the briefcase, his sharp features lit by the glow of a computer panel. In the case Kara could see two vials of green liquid and a large red button.