The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  The top of the little guy’s head was ten feet down already and showing no sign of slowing. Jesus, how deep did this thing reach? Well, fuck it. Here goes nothing. Frankie swung himself around onto the ladder and followed the rungs down, his torch beam tracking the Tetris of wet brickwork as he went. Left him feeling horribly out of body, out of mind, like he was nothing but another slow-falling brick himself, like none of this was real or could be real, and was just part of some crazy computer game dream, in which he was doomed to be trapped forever. He fought the urge to scream.

  Be cool. Be cool. This will pass. Jesus, please, just let it be so. And don’t fight it. So what if it feels like a game? Run with that. Yeah, whatever gets you through. That this is just some dumb video game . . . where everything you can see . . . the bricks . . . the rungs . . . none of this is real . . . and this isn’t you, it’s just a game character . . . nothing really bad can happen to you . . . nothing bad at all . . .

  His heartbeat slowed. Christ, he suddenly realized how much it had been pounding. Was that what this was? A panic attack? A friggin’ heart attack? He hauled air into his lungs. In, out, in, out. Bloody hell, had he not been breathing at all? He even risked breathing in through his nose. And could it be . . . ? Yes, the stench seemed to be fading. Because of what? He was getting used to it? Christ, a new low indeed. Getting used to this . . .

  ‘Wowzer,’ Rivet said from below, his voice echoing up, suddenly sounding like a character on a TV playing in another room.

  Frankie had gone down fourteen rungs already. Fifteen . . . sixteen . . . shit, he’d caught that counting bug off Rivet . . . seventeen . . . eighteen . . . when ouch. His knee jarred. Looking down, he saw he’d reached the bottom. A flat black brick floor. Looking up, he saw Bram’s giant plastic yellow butt about to squish into his face, and quickly stepped back out of the way.

  He tensed, half expecting to crack his head against a wall, but instead he found himself stepping backwards through a red-brick arch. He felt the space around him opening up, almost before he saw it. And Rivet wasn’t kidding. Wowzer, indeed.

  The main sewer tunnel was huge, way bigger than he’d been expecting. Its roof was cylindrical. A half-pipe, like the skater kids rode under the Westway. Only upside down, of course. And dripping with piss. The whole thing was at least twenty foot in diameter. The sewage channel running beneath it was dry, thank God, not the thick slick tarry gloop sliding past, like Frankie had dreaded. It was black and kind of shiny and almost looked spotless in a weird way. You could’ve driven a Ford bleedin’ Mondeo through it and not even got a spot on the wheels.

  ‘You OK?’ Rivet asked.

  ‘Uh-huh. Cold.’

  Rivet checked his schematic. Keeping his torch beam down to stop him from blinding them, Frankie turned to check that Bram and Lola were behind him, and saw that they were.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ Rivet said, setting off along the raised walkway that ran up alongside the sewage channel.

  Frankie followed, dead ahead, Rivet counting down a minute over what felt like about the first hundred or so yards. But then the going got slower with each step. Wet slime on the ground. Twice Frankie nearly came a cropper. The second time it was only Bram grabbing him by the shoulder that stopped him lurching off their ledge and into the tunnel below. He’d started spotting little flashes of movement all around. Rats.

  ‘Whoah, check it out,’ Rivet called back, pointing down into the now frothing, bubbling, slow-flowing channel below.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘A fatberg.’

  ‘I refer you to my last question.’

  ‘An iceberg . . . only made of fat.’

  ‘But fat from where?’

  ‘Fat that’s been flushed?’

  ‘Flushed?’

  ‘Down the john. Or poured down the drain.’

  ‘Poured? There’s no fucking way that was poured anywhere.’ Frankie couldn’t take his eyes off the disgusting thing. ‘How about you guys go collect a sample?’ Frankie said. ‘You know, to remind you of our little trip.’

  Bram flipped Frankie a sign. A universal one that even he recognized. A middle digit pointing upwards, nail-side towards him.

  ‘Yeah, fuck you too, Bram,’ Frankie said.

  Bram grinned. The stink was almost overpowering now. It wasn’t just the reek of fresh shit either. That was more like just the icing on this whole disgusting cake. Frankie was going to need more than a soak in the tub to get rid of this. More like a hose down. Hey, maybe he should suggest that this is what they should do next? Move from impersonating water board employees to joining the fire brigade.

  Concentrate, dammit. Just focus on what’s ahead. And ignore the damn squeaks of those rats. He followed his feet. One step at a time. Rivet called out another minute. And another, as the tunnel began curving slowly round to the right. At least he thought it was curving. Hard to be sure. Time felt weird down here. Breathing, everything, felt out of synch.

  A breeze. Frankie felt that too now. How weird was that? Here, underground. But, according to Bram, this system they’d just entered ran for hundreds and hundreds of miles. From all around came the sound of dripping water. Plink-plink, plonk-plonk. Like some pisshead on a piano late at night. Frankie shivered, pulling the zip of his hoodie up tight to his throat. He pulled his hood up too as something unspeakable splashed onto his head.

  ‘Gross,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Frankie’s own voice was echoing now, like he was on a mic. He was half tempted to start belting out ‘One nil to the Arsenal’ to the tune of ‘Go West’ by the Village People. But, for one thing, he doubted any of the others would get the joke – even though it was really good, because they were actually heading west. And, for another, the further he looked down that gaping black tunnel ahead – and now here to the left and to the right as they approached what looked like a junction, with great brick arches separating the four tunnels where they met – the less funny any of this seemed. And not just here, the bloody horror of all this, and the stink now rising stronger by the second as that cold wind picked up again . . . but what was waiting for them at the end of the tunnel, at the top of the ladder they’d go up.

  He nearly walked smack into Rivet’s back as he stopped dead in front of him. Frankie could hear water – or liquid, anyway – running clearly now. He looked down into the channel crossing theirs at a right angle, but at a lower level, and yeah, sure enough, there it was, the sludge, an actual active main sewerage channel – and the stink hit him then too, like a shovel to the face. Even Frankie’s tarnished old ex-smoker’s nostrils snapped shut like fucking mussels, with a mind of their bloody own. He jerked his mask onto his face, but within four or five breaths, it had steamed up so much he couldn’t see, so down it came again.

  Rivet consulted his precious schematic again for a few seconds, before heading right, so that they were now following the course of the new ‘wet’ channel. Typical. And gross. The old pongometer stepped up sharply pace by pace. Like it wasn’t even air they were breathing, more some kind of foul, gloopy liquid instead. Bile rose up inside Frankie. Shit. What was happening? Was he about to puke?

  He started breathing through his mask every few seconds, then taking it off so he could still see. Rivet was doing the same. Frankie’s whole body was sweating now, his heartbeat gibbering ten to the dozen. Breathe in, breathe out, fucking shake it all about. Frankie wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest classical music fan, but even he recognized the tune that Rivet was now whistling. ‘The Hall of the Mountain King’, from Peer Gynt. Frankie still remembered listening to it at primary school with his eyes shut, after his teacher had terrified the shit out of his whole class with tales of murderous trolls.

  ‘Half a mile,’ Rivet grunted back.

  OK, cool, so just think on that. Half a mile. Sod all. A tenth of what you run nearly every bleedin’ day. Half a mile was all it would take and then they’d be there, according to Bram’s time schedu
le, coming up under the RA, with the hardest bit of Bram’s precious bloody plan already under their belts. So long as they didn’t get lost, of course. Oh yeah, because there was still the possibility of that.

  Frankie flinched as something showered down from above. Dust. He glanced up at the tunnel’s arched roof, the torch beam on his head tracking wherever he looked. So what the fuck had that been? The street? A lorry? The number 14 bus? For the first time, he wondered where the hell he was. Well, down in a sewer. Obviously. But where in London? Which street? He tried to work it out as he carried on walking. But everything seemed back to front and upside down. Thank God for Rivet’s schematic, because Frankie might as well have been stuck down a tunnel on the moon.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Rivet said.

  But then all Frankie could hear was his heart in his ears, pounding and pounding away. They reached another junction, and this time branched off along a – thank God for that – dry channel.

  Rivet’s footsteps carried on crunching up ahead. Crunching. Looking down, Frankie saw the ground wasn’t slimy any more. Ten yards on and hang on. Aye-aye. He caught a blast of cool, clean air wafting down from the tunnel ahead of him on the breeze.

  But that’s when he heard it too. A low rumbling noise. So low that at first he thought it was his stomach. But it rose, and kept rising. First Frankie’s feet and then his whole body started to vibrate. Rivet must have felt it too, because he’d stopped dead in his tracks and was reaching out with his right hand to support himself against the tunnel wall. Frankie did it too, adrenaline rushing through him. The whole wall was buzzing, felt like something was trying to break through. Oh, shit. What the fuck was happening now? He’d have tried shouting out, but he knew there was no point. But then, just as fast as it had come, the noise began fading, and then went. And as Rivet turned to face him and grinned, Frankie too worked out what it must have been.

  ‘The metro,’ Rivet said, at the exact same time that Frankie said, ‘The Tube.’

  ‘Then I guess this must be our stop,’ Rivet said, consulting his schematic a final time, before shining his head beam at the glint of a metal ladder rising up through a vertical tunnel in the ceiling ahead.

  16

  ‘Shhhh,’ Rivet hissed down.

  He’d reached the top of the ladder, but instead of opening the manhole cover he’d come up against with the hook handle tool Frankie had just handed him, he remained stationary, with his radio earpiece clamped into his ears.

  ‘Twenty seconds . . .’ he said, ‘ . . . ten . . . zero . . . Jesus, where the fuck is he?’

  Frankie peered back down the ladder from where he was holding on, his torch beam lighting up Bram’s huge, ghoulish face. Any sign of nerves? Nope. Just the usual blank slate.

  Then a crackle of static from above.

  ‘OK, we’re good to go. The alarm’s down,’ Rivet hissed. ‘But time’s still of the essence. The alarm company will probably be sending maintenance out tonight, not tomorrow like we were hoping. Our priority’s still to get in and out of there as quickly as we can.’

  Frankie watched him shuffling around up above him for a second, then heard the clank of metal on metal, as he wedged the hook handle tool into the manhole cover’s pick hole. A squeak. A grunting of effort. A curse.

  ‘Damn thing won’t fucking budge,’ Rivet growled.

  Frankie felt a flash of hope inside him. Because if they couldn’t get out, then they’d have to turn back, right? Without it being his fault either, meaning there was nothing that Dougie could do.

  More grunting. Another curse.

  Please, please let it be jammed.

  But Rivet was stronger than he looked.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Frankie muttered, as he heard the lid finally give.

  A rush of cold air. Light. Bloody hell, actual moonlight flooded down from above.

  ‘What did you say?’ Rivet asked.

  ‘Er, brilliant,’ Frankie said. ‘I said brilliant. You know, for getting it open. Well done, man. Good on you.’

  Rivet was already moving. He slithered up through the opening and disappeared from sight. Frankie climbed up the ladder after him and poked his head out and looked around. The sewer exit was in the corner of some kind of an enclosed outdoor space that was thick with plants. High, windowed walls jutted up on every side into the moonlit, starry sky.

  ‘Turn your goddamn flashlight off,’ snapped Rivet, who was already crouched in the shadows of a nearby wall. ‘You look like a goddamn lighthouse.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I feel more like a bloody rabbit,’ Frankie said. And not a happy little bunny either. More like one of those poor little bastards from Watership Down, doomed to get its head chewed off by a dog.

  ‘Rabid?’ Rivet said, screwing up his face, as Frankie clicked off his torch.

  ‘Yeah, that too.’

  Frankie hauled himself up out through the hole and crawled over next to Rivet. He could hear a squeaking sound coming from somewhere nearby. Couldn’t see what it was.

  ‘So are we in the right place?’

  Rivet smiled grimly. ‘Of course.’

  Yeah, right. Because of the goddamn plan. Rivet turned his back on him and shuffled up beside the nearest door. A jangle of keys, or picks, or something Frankie couldn’t see. Rivet started breaking in.

  A grunting noise behind them. Frankie turned to see Bram’s head sticking up out of the manhole. But that was it. He just stayed there. Then started flailing one arm around and going purple in the face. Shit a brick. He was stuck. His massive shoulders were still wedged tight inside the hole.

  He signed something at Frankie, one-handedly. Didn’t take a genius to work out that it was probably ‘Help’. Frankie crawled back over and took a hold of him under the armpits – well glad he’d already just pulled his gloves for heading inside on – and started to pull. Nothing. Bram didn’t budge an inch. From down below he heard the sound of muffled shouting. Must have been Lola pushing from her end. First bit of luck Frankie had got all day, not being the one down there having to deal with that. He hauled harder, but again it was no good. The big bastard really was wedged tight.

  ‘Shit,’ Frankie said, ‘I reckon we’re just gonna have to leave you here until you lose a few pounds.’

  Bram looked furious for a second. But then his eyes started to water. His whole face went purple. He even started to shake. For a second, Frankie thought he was literally about to explode with rage. But then he realized he was actually laughing. Or trying to, at least.

  And a good bloody thing too, it turned out. Because that’s all it took – a little shuffle of those thick ribs inside that enormous body of his – and suddenly he was moving. Come on, come on. Frankie continued to heave, half expecting him to actually pop out of there any second now like a friggin’ champagne cork – and, oh yes, wagon or no wagon, if he made it back safe and sound after all this, he was going to get just as bloody leathered as he had done last night as soon as he got home.

  Frankie flopped back as Bram finally came free. The two of them crawled over to where Rivet now had the door ajar. Frankie could still hear that sodding squeaking sound from somewhere out here nearby.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he hissed.

  ‘The bunny,’ Rivet told him. ‘Quick, go get it.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The bunny, man. The bunny. Over there on that drainpipe,’ he said, pointing. ‘Right in front of that sensor just there.’

  Frankie sighed. Could this get any weirder? He crawled over to where Rivet had said – and, sure enough, there was a toy rabbit wedged up against the drainpipe. And, not only that, it was the source of the squeaking too. Its legs and arms were rotating either side of the pipe it was wedged behind, like it was desperately waving for help.

  ‘You got it?’ hissed Rivet.

  ‘Yeah, I bloody got it,’ Frankie hissed back, jerking the bunny free and fumbling around in the moonlight until he located a switch up its arse and shut it down. What the hell? So much for thinking
this couldn’t get any weirder. He stared open-mouthed at it in his hands and saw now that it was one of those Duracell Bunnies off the TV ads, the ones that just went on and on and on. And what’s more it was wearing a Blackburn Rovers football strip of all things. Had to be some kind of limited-edition toy.

  ‘What the fuck is this doing here?’ Frankie said, wriggling back over to where the others were waiting.

  ‘Just bag it. It mustn’t be found.’

  ‘Why? What’s it done? Robbed a bank in Toy Town?’

  ‘Just fucking do it,’ Rivet snapped. ‘It’s done its job now anyhow.’

  The first time Frankie could remember him losing his temper. Okey-dokey. So things were getting serious now. Frankie did as he’d been asked.

  ‘What job?’ he said.

  Rivet ignored him. Frankie saw that Lola was smiling. Bram too. Or more like beaming in his case. Kind of with pride.

  ‘Just tell him,’ Lola said. ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘It’s what triggered the alarm.’

  ‘What? For real?’ Frankie looked between them, but yeah, it looked like they were serious, all right. ‘Your fifth columnist . . .’ Wasn’t that what they’d called their inside guy?

  ‘Yeah, the guard, he stashed it there and switched it on . . . and cleared away just enough of the foliage there so it was in view of the sensor . . . but wouldn’t be seen by anyone looking out.’

  And so it had then kept triggering the alarm over and over again, until the inside guy’s boss became convinced that the whole alarm system was on the blink . . . and so had switched it off, just as Big Bram’s plan had required.

  ‘It’s clever,’ Frankie finally said. ‘Funny.’

  ‘Clever and funny. You hear that, big guy? Uh-oh,’ Lola said, holding out the palms of her hands like she was sitting in front of a fire. ‘Feels like the big man’s starting to blush.’

  ‘OK, well, enough of this jibber jabber,’ snapped Rivet, ‘let’s move out, people. Now. Let’s go.’