Simon Ian Childer

by Tendrils (epub)

  He swung blindly again. The rope parted and he stopped moving. He saw the end of the rope vanish into the hole. Then he saw a tendril groping towards him. He hacked the tip off and then scrambled away on his hands and knees. He felt himself being lifted to his feet. ‘C’mon, doc, hurry!’ It was Cox-Hayward.

  They half-ran, half-staggered down the tunnel. When they were certain the tendrils weren’t following they paused to catch their breath.

  ‘I had to do . . . it,’ gasped Thomas.

  ‘Yeah, they were goners,’ agreed Cox-Hayward. ‘You did alright, doc.’

  There were now only four of them left. And they still had a long way to go. Thomas had the distinct feeling he would never see the world above ground again.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ said Cox-Hayward. ‘No time for mourning until we finish the job.’

  They trudged on down the tunnel.

  About another sixty yards further on they came to a massive hole. It was so wide it extended across to the adjacent southbound tunnel, the intervening wall having disappeared. Thomas stared nervously up at the unsupported rock ceiling of the cavern that had been formed by the collapse. It looked as if it could come crashing down at any moment.

  There it is!’ cried Cox-Hayward. He was standing on the rim of the hole and shining his lamp down into its depths.

  Thomas joined him. The lamps revealed the end of a red-painted Bakerloo Line tube carriage. They had found the train.

  They secured the end of their remaining coil of rope around one of the twisted lengths of tube rail and dropped the rope into the hole. As usual Cox-Hayward went first.

  Thomas and the two remaining SAS men watched tensely as the lieutenant made the descent down the steep slope of loose rock to the tube carriage. When he made it safely he signalled to them to follow.

  Thomas hooked the handle of the metal case onto one of the catches on his harness. He was going to need both hands on the rope. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here,’ he murmured to himself as he climbed down into the hole. The other two men followed him.

  When they reached the end of the carriage there was no sign of Cox-Hayward. Then they heard sounds of movement and he emerged through the door on the side of the driver’s cabin. For a moment Thomas was puzzled by the existence of the cabin at the end of the train when it was obvious the train had crashed down the hole nose first but then he remembered that there was a driver’s cabin on each end of a tube train.

  ‘As far as I can see the carriages aren’t crushed,’ panted Cox-Hayward over the radio. ‘But we’re still going to have trouble getting through the train.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come and look for yourself.’

  With difficulty, Thomas followed him in through the slanting door, through the cabin and into the carriage proper.

  ‘Oh hell,’ he muttered.

  The carriage was still full of people.

  ‘Some sight, eh, doc?’

  Thomas swung the beam of his lamp around the interior of the carriage. A few of the bodies were still in their seats but most of them were stacked up in the aisle where they stood rigidly like wax dummies. Their skin reflected the light in a strange way; it was as if they’d been sprayed with sequins.

  He made his way down the 40-degree slope of the carriage, using whatever handhold he could find, until he reached the nearest body. It was that of a man in his twenties, casually dressed. Thomas saw that the entire body was covered in a thin layer of white, web-like fibres - similar to the material that had sealed off the stump of the tendril.

  The young man’s eyes were open and he seemed to be staring straight at Thomas. There was a sickly sweet smell in the air and Thomas knew that if he didn’t switch over to his bottled air again he was in danger of vomiting.

  Mustering all his last reserves of scientific detachment he'gave the body a tentative prod with his finger. Beneath the webbing the flesh was hard and brittle, like that of the corpses at Harpenden. But the difference here was that this body was no empty shell. It was still quite solid.

  ‘What do you make of it, doc?’ asked the lieutenant.

  ‘The bodies seem to be preserved in some way,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Preserved? You mean the creature . . .?’

  ‘Yes. Like a squirrel storing nuts.’ Thomas gave a humourless laugh, it’s turned this tube train into a larder. Probably just one of many . . .’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Doc,’ said one of Cox-Hayward’s men anxiously, ‘there’s no chance that these poor bastards could still be alive, is there?’

  Thomas knew what the soldier meant. The eyes of the corpses seem to glow with life. But aloud he said, ‘No, it’s impossible. For one thing, with their skin petrified that way, they can’t breathe.’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘They’re dead,’ said Cox-Hayward firmly. He lurched past Thomas and started to push his way into the mass of bodies, roughly shoving them aside. ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘We’re running out of time. It must be dark topside by now which means that thing’ll be active again.’

  For Thomas what followed was even more of an ordeal than the journey alongside the giant tendril in the tunnel. As he thrust himself between the rigid corpses, following in Cox-Hayward’s path, it became harder to maintain the conviction they were truly dead. Their eyes seemed to bore into his through his face-plate, silently pleading for help, and their hands seemed to be plucking at the material of his insulation suit.

  When he thought he glimpsed Anne among the jam of bodies he knew he would crack up completely well before he reached the end of the train unless he got a grip on himself. He shut his eyes and forced himself to think of something else. Something pleasurable . . .

  Robin. He conjured up thoughts of what she’d looked like the previous night. When they were making love. He decided that as soon as he got back to Colindale he would find her and they would make love again. In his office, on the couch. Or maybe on the floor . . .

  Robin was rolled roughly over onto her back and jerked up into a sitting position. ‘Now what?’ she asked listlessly as he used strips of cloth torn from her skirt to bind her wrists and ankles. It was hard for her to talk; her lips were swollen and her lower jaw throbbed with pain. Her left eye had also closed up.

  ‘Got to take a shit,’ he told her with a grin. ‘Don’t want you running off on me. I haven’t finished with you yet.’

  She wondered dully what else he could possibly think of to do to her. Not that she particularly cared any longer. She was past that stage. She wouldn’t even mind now if he killed her. In a way, she realized, he had already killed her. The Robin Carey who had talked into the toilet less than forty-five minutes ago was no more. She was dead and gone. So he might as well kill her physical body as well.

  Sitting in a growing puddle of blood and urine on the cold tiled floor she watched him go into one of the cubicles, lower his trousers and pants and sit down. He left the door open so he could keep an eye on her. She wanted to tell him not to bother - she wasn’t going to try to escape - but she couldn’t summon up the energy.

  Pleased with himself he smirked and said, ‘Not so high and mighty now, are we, darlin’? You know, if you’d just been a bit friendly-like in that blood room I would have handled you different, know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a tired, slurred voice. ‘You’d have just raped me without battering my face against the floor and . . .’ She couldn’t go on. He laughed at her. ‘Darlin’, we’ve only just begun. Plenty of life in the old feller yet. See!’ He lifted up his penis to show her. It was already getting hard again. She closed her eyes. His jeering laughter echoed round the toilets . . . and then turned into a shrill scream.

  She opened her eyes again. He was writhing on the toilet seat, struggling to stand. The muscles on his arms and torso bulged with the effort and a great vein stood out on his neck.

  She watched almost disinterestedly as his efforts to get off the seat grew more frantic. She wondered vagu
ely if he was having an epileptic fit. Maybe he would swallow his tongue and choke to death . . .

  His scream died away to a gurgle and he suddenly slumped back. Then Robin saw something remarkable happen. His body began to sag as if all his muscles had gone completely limp, but at the same time he seemed to grow smaller. His tee-shirt, which had been stretched across his broad chest, now hung loosely.

  She looked into his eyes. They stared back into hers imploringly, pleadingly . . . Then his face crumpled like a paper bag being screwed up by an invisible hand. Slowly his shrivelled body disappeared down into the toilet, leaving just the empty sacs of his deflated legs hanging over the edge of the bowl. She noticed they were very hairy.

  A tiny voice whispered in her mind, I’ve gone insane.

  But then the door of another cubicle exploded off its hinges and she saw a thick, black tentacle emerge. It swayed back and forth for a few seconds then began to move in her direction . . .

  24

  In the fourth car down Cox-Hayward had gone beserk. His patience had snapped as he’d tried to push his way into a particularly tight log-jam of petrified bodies and he’d started to hack at them with his machete. Thomas had watched horrified as the heavy blade had lopped off arms, legs, heads . . .

  But at the same time he was relieved to see that the cocooned bodies didn’t contain flesh and blood. Instead it was a thick, yellow liquid that had spurted into the air as the machete blade hacked and sliced. This finally laid to rest his suspicion that the bodies might be in a state of living paralysis; their internal organs had already been predigested by the creature’s enzymes.

  Though revolted by Cox-Hayward’s actions Thomas soon saw they made sense. It was the only way they were going to make it down the entire length of the train. And when Cox-Hayward had exhausted himself Thomas had, reluctantly, taken over the lead, wielding his machete to the same ghastly purpose.

  And now, finally, they were in the front carriage and only feet away from the driver’s compartment. Cox-Hayward, in the lead again, hacked through the last remaining obstacles. His formerly white suit was now yellow with the fluid from the mutilated corpses, as was Thomas’s and the suits of the other two men.

  As the SAS lieutenant struggled to get the door open Thomas peered out into the darkness beyond the cracked windows. He couldn’t see anything. What lay beyond the front of the train, he wondered. A tunnel leading down to the creature? Or a dead-end of collapsed earth?

  Cox-Hayward disappeared into the driver’s compartment. Thomas followed him, climbing over the cocooned body of the driver. He still couldn’t see what lay ahead; all the windows were starred with cracks. Cox-Hayward leaned his head out of the window in the driver’s door, which had been completely shattered. ‘Fuck me!’ he cried.

  ‘What is it? What can you see?’ Thomas asked anxiously.

  ‘Nothing. And that’s the problem. Here, take a look.’ He stepped back to allow Thomas access. Thomas put his head and shoulders through the opening. All he could see in any direction was blackness. He twisted round so that his lamp was shining back along the side of the carriage . . . and got a shock.

  The front half of the carriage was protruding out of a sheer cliff face. Suddenly he realized they were hanging suspended over the side of a vast, empty space. He clutched at the side of the door. Was it his imagination or was the carriage teetering beneath their feet?

  The other two men were crowding into the compartment now, to Thomas’s alarm. He feared the extra weight might be enough to make the carriage slide forward . . .

  Cox-Hayward explained the situation to his men, as best he could. ‘We’re in some huge cavern - near its ceiling, I guess. Nothing below us but a long drop.’ He turned to Thomas. ‘Doc, do you think this is a natural cavern?’

  ‘No. A cavity this big right under London would have been detected long ago. The creature made it.’

  ‘But how? I mean, what does it do with all the earth? Eat it?’

  ‘In a way it does,’ said Thomas. ‘It leaches silicates out of the rock and sediments, causing the subsidences. The bigger it gets the more silica it absorbs. Its intake must be enormous by now considering the rate it’s growing its tendrils.’

  ‘So if this is its cubby-hole, where the hell is it? demanded one of Cox-Hayward’s men.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ confessed Thomas.

  ‘Maybe it’s lurking at the bottom of this damned pit,’ said Cox-Hayward grimly. ‘Let’s see if we can nudge it into showing itself.’ He unhooked a grenade from his belt.

  Thomas regarded it worriedly. ‘You think that’s wise? The shock waves could cause a cave-in, or at the very least shake us loose.’

  ‘I’ll throw it way out ahead of us. In the meantime get ready with your box of tricks, doc.’

  ‘Alright,’ he sighed. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing.’ As he opened the metal case and extracted one of the boxine vials Cox-Hayward pushed open the driver’s door and leaned out. ‘Tell me when you’re ready, doc.’

  Thomas hastily loaded the gun. ‘Right,’ he said.

  Cox-Hayward flung the grenade. ‘Five second fuse,’ he said. There was a distant flash and a muffled crump. Thomas waited tensely, clutching the compressed-air gun in his gloved hands. To his relief the carriage remained firm in its rock setting. ‘Can you see anything?’ he asked Cox-Hayward.

  ‘Not a thing.’

  The next instant a black tendril whipped itself around Cox-Hayward’s waist and he was jerked out of the doorway and into the darkness.

  Thomas was too stunned to react for a time. He just crouched there listening to Cox-Hayward’s screams in his earphones. They seemed'to go on for a long time.

  One of Cox-Hayward’s men, swearing, tried to push by Thomas to get to the doorway but Thomas blocked his way. ‘I need a clear shot!’ he cried. Warily, the dart gun held ready, he leaned over and looked out of the doorway.

  The blackness absorbed the beam of his lamp. Nothing moved. He wondered whether to fire a dart blindly into the void. No, he might not hit anything . . .

  Then he saw it. At the end of his feeble beam of light. A movement.

  He swung the beam. It was everywhere. It was vast, huge . . . and it was rising up out of the pit towards him.

  Robin tore at the knot at her ankles. She broke three of her fingernails but the knot gave. She leapt up. The sight of the tendrils erupting out of the cubicles jolted her survival instinct back into being. She couldn’t allow herself to die the way Kevin had . . .

  With her hands still tied she got to the door and wrenched it open. Something cold touched her on her bare back. She screamed and hurled herself out into the corridor. She slipped and fell, hurting her knee, then got up again and ran.

  Then she heard screaming ahead of her. It was coming from the boiler room. She rushed into it and stopped. The tendrils were everywhere, pushing their way up through the floor. Patients too badly injured to even crawl away were helpless as the tendrils attacked them. Some were being killed in their beds - their life being sucked out of them in the same way that Kevin’s had -while others were being dragged towards the numerous gaping holes in the concrete floor.

  Robin remembered the children.

  She charged into the nightmare. She ducked, weaved and jumped her way through the tangle of flailing limbs and questing tendrils. She had to reach those children.

  A nurse, impaled on one of the tendrils, grabbed desperately at her as she passed. Robin shook herself free of her hand and kept going.

  Then she was out of the boiler room and heading down the corridor to the creche. She flung open the door. Thirty or so expectant faces turned in her direction. Then, after a moment’s silence, a little girl pointed a finger at her and said accusingly, ‘You look rude, lady.’

  Robin almost laughed. She’d forgotten she was naked. But now what? The tendrils hadn’t got here yet but they probably would soon. How was she going to get these kids to safety?

  As she stood there wondering w
hat to do there was an ominous crack and suddenly a section of the floor buckled upwards, the concrete splitting apart as easily as if it was cardboard. A great tendril thrust itself upwards into the room . . .

  The children screamed. Robin screamed too. But then, still screaming, she rushed unthinkingly forward and flung herself at the thing, grabbing hold of its slimy thickness with her bare hands. As soon as she felt its awesome strength she knew she had no chance, but she continued to wrestle with it. If she could just keep it from the children for a short time, just long enough for them to get out of the room. ‘Run!’ she screamed at them. "Run! . . .’

  It was translucent. A huge translucent dome. The surface of it glistened, and beneath the surface he could see shadowy forms and shapes pulsating and moving about as if with a life of their own. Clumps of black tendrils sprouted out from the bulbous membrane like growths of hair on a giant head. The whole thing reminded Thomas of a vast, spongy jellyfish.

  Fear and nausea overwhelmed him as it continued to rise upwards out of the darkness towards him. He was so awed by the sheer mind-numbing size of it that he almost forgot to fire the gun.

  But when several of the tendrils began to uncoil in his direction he regained control of his body. He pulled the trigger. Then, with shaking hands - while the two SAS men stood frozen behind him - he reloaded the device and fired a second dart into the approaching jellied mass. And a third one . . .

  The thing stopped moving. Its curved, pulsating membrane was less than twenty feet away. One of the tendrils was gripping the front of the train. Thomas felt the floor of the cabin shift slightly beneath his feet. He fired the last dart.

  Another tendril - grey in colour - snaked towards him. He was helpless now. There were no more darts. He felt a warm, wet sensation spreading down his thighs and realized he’d pissed himself.

  The grey tendril suddenly collapsed. He watched it fall back to the surface of the creature’s main body. Then he saw a massive shudder ripple through the translucent membrane. The pulsing of the obscene shapes within the membrane became more agitated. The other tendrils briefly whipped at the air in a short frenzy before they too fell motionless.