“You think?” said Finn.
Looking back to see if another was coming, he could see Estravon again. The careful, pedantic man who had once accompanied them to the Infested Side had slowed, dropping behind Lucien’s choppy stride. He looked as shocked by the use of the Desiccator as Finn and Emmie were.
The rest of the posse of assistants kept striding up the hill after them.
Finn and Emmie left the brow of the hill, dropping out of view on the other side.
Above them, the assistants appeared, piling over the crest of the hill to slide after them.
“I can’t believe they fired,” said Emmie as they began to scramble down the slope. “They could have desiccated us.”
“I think it was just a warning shot,” said Finn, feet in a delicate balance somewhere between falling and skidding. “I hope it was anyway. We don’t want to give them a chance to fire another. They could hit us.”
Finn and Emmie were quicker down the slope than their pursuers, more agile and reactive, seeing where to place their feet on ground that was determined to trip them up. But they were heading for open fields – no buildings, no shelter. Just a train track cutting through the land.
“There’s our way out,” said Finn.
“Where?” asked Emmie, breathless.
Finn pointed.
Making its way serenely through the countryside beyond Darkmouth was a train.
There is no train station in Darkmouth.
The crest of hills that squeeze the town against the coastline always made it difficult to get into the heart of the town. A long tunnel would have been needed. A lot of planning and engineering and effort. Not that it wasn’t suggested at various times in the town’s history. It would be good to have a train platform, people said, from which passengers could alight and enjoy the salty air, stroll the promenade and slurp on an ice cream while gazing out at the waves smacking the steep slopes of the rocky island called Doom’s Perch.
For very obvious reasons, the idea never got very far. It was generally thought best not to direct busy locomotives through a town that, at any given moment, might see a passenger pop their ticket into a machine before themselves being popped into the jaws of a passing Legend.
So the train track did not go through the town. Instead, in a long tranquil valley on the far side of those Black Hills that separate Darkmouth from the rest of the world, there is a track along which a train passes a couple of times a day. It has stopped only once in fifty-six years, during a period of Darkmouth’s history sometimes referred to as the Brief Lull.
The Brief Lull was just that: a few months during Gerald the Disappointed’s time when, for reasons never explained, Darkmouth had no Legend invasions. It was the summer, and a glorious one at that, when families took walks along the beach and kids frolicked in the shallows and everyone dared believe that this freedom might last for ever.
The government decided to send an inspector, someone to examine this unusual state of affairs, but he didn’t drive, so made arrangements for the train to stop at a convenient field outside Darkmouth, where he would take the short stroll into the now-tranquil Blighted Village. Sure enough, the train stopped, the official climbed down and the train chugged up the line again with an agreement to pick up the official when returning in four hours.
The appointed time came. In the cool of an evening that had been spectacularly sunny all along the coast but then turned strangely wet, the train’s driver noticed three things:
1. Smoke rising from not one but five separate locations on the town side of the hills.
2. Something framed against the smoke that he could have sworn was a dragon.
3. The official. Sitting on the tracks. Eyes fixed, clothes tattered, his briefcase sporting a long diagonal tear that revealed his uneaten sandwiches.
The official was shivering and incoherent with shock, so all the driver could do was bundle him on to the train, take him home – and help himself to a sandwich while he was at it. And that was the last time the train was asked to stop at the field outside Darkmouth.
Until now.
The driver of the train passing the fringes of Darkmouth was sucking on a strawberry milk while wondering what he might have for his tea tonight when he spotted two people running crazily towards the tracks. Instinct caused him to pull hard on the brake lever, so that the train screeched and whined, while its passengers gripped tight to their seats.
He watched the two youngsters running towards him, waving. It was a girl and boy. The boy had a bag in his arms; she had one on her back. The girl’s hair bounced like it was barely hanging on. The driver had heard rumours about Darkmouth, had heard that it was a strange town. This wasn’t dispelling those rumours. But these two young people seemed very keen to get on board, so he kept pulling at the brake until the train was almost at a complete stop.
Then he saw a gang of people – all in grey suits, two with what looked like armour over their shirts – appear at the far end of the field. They were shouting and waving, and at least one of them was sporting something that looked like a vacuum cleaner.
He looked at the girl and boy.
He looked at the chasing pack.
One of the people in armour lifted the vacuum cleaner and sent something shooting from it. But normal vacuum cleaners did not spit some kind of liquid fire that ate up the ground.
The driver released the brake, pushed down the accelerator lever.
The girl slapped on the side of a rear carriage, calling at him to stop.
Another arcing, glowing spit hit the ground beside them. If it had hit the train, a passenger or three might have been lost. The driver pushed harder on the accelerator and the train began to match the speed of the two kids running alongside. The gang of suited people were almost there now too, only a few seconds away from reaching them.
As the train picked up speed and moved on past the hills beyond which lay Darkmouth, the driver kept his head out of the window until it had pulled away and the running kids were lost behind it.
He felt a little guilty, and discomfited, but more than anything he felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to explain all this to his boss. He would, he decided, tell no one about how he had left a girl and boy behind to be chased down by people with highly dangerous vacuum cleaners.
Finn had often watched this train pass, wondering what it would be like to stop it, to step on board, let it carry him somewhere distant and exotic. Or just anywhere. Close and boring would do.
Now they were waving and calling and running after it with a frenzied appearance that had clearly freaked out the driver. But the train began to scream and brake anyway. Until a spit of Desiccator fire landed not too far off their heels, quickening Finn’s pulse and legs, and encouraging the driver to speed up the engine and get out of there.
Still they ran, and Finn felt carried along in Emmie’s slipstream. Her determination to make it brought them to the train while it was still slow enough to run alongside, Emmie battering the carriage exterior while passengers watched, bemused, from inside.
A head appeared.
“You OK?” a woman asked. “Did you miss the train?”
“Open the doors!” shouted Finn.
“I can’t. I’ll get into trouble.”
A second Desiccator shot almost took a corner off the carriage. The train juddered as it accelerated further and began to ease away past the chasing duo, the passenger shrugging her shoulders in a “Well, this is all a bit weird for me so I’m going back to my seat” sort of gesture.
There was a door at the back of the rear carriage. A narrow step to it that could be jumped. If they were willing to take the risk.
“Come on,” Emmie encouraged Finn, and somehow – to Finn’s growing astonishment – she caught up with the back of the train, reached for the rail and hauled herself up in one fluid movement.
Emmie held out a hand to him.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Olaf the bald guard with his weapon raised, a final
warning shot that might hit him this time.
He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t make it, that his legs wouldn’t get him there, the bag was heavy, the ground uneven and his lungs burning. But he saw a look in her eye when she focused on him again that told him she would not take no for an answer. Finn found one last reserve of energy, somewhere in the very depths of his panic. Reached out, grabbed her hand and allowed himself to half jump, half be pulled on to the rear of the train.
Emmie yanked open the door and threw herself into the carriage.
He stumbled in after her, turning to kick the door shut.
Suddenly, the chaos of engine noise and shouting and firing Desiccators was replaced by the relative peace of the train’s interior.
They couldn’t hear the assistants shouting in anger as they gave up the chase, but they could see them falling away, slowing, Olaf deciding against one last shot at the departing train and instead shooting in anger at the ground, gobbling up a hole in the field with unheard violence.
Lucien watched from the centre of the tracks, chest heaving with the effort, thin hair wild, cleaning his glasses with his sleeve.
Estravon was there too, eyes wide, mouth open as he watched them disappear down the track.
Emmie and Finn turned. A handful of people stared back from their seats, their books drooping unread, earphones in their hands so they could hear what this was all about.
At the far end of the carriage, a door opened. A large man in a dark uniform stepped through. Everyone swivelled in his direction. He examined this unusual sight, narrowed his eyes, pulled at the collar of his jacket.
Finally, snapping the tension like a karate chop, the man spoke.
“Tickets please.”
Emmie paid for the tickets, rummaging through the pockets of a school uniform now stained with grass, dirt and diesel fumes.
The ticket inspector stared at them, unsure of what was going on.
The smattering of passengers in the carriage watched him punch the details into his ticket machine, wind it, pull a ticket out and hand it to Emmie. No one mentioned how she and Finn had ended up on the train. It was as if the passengers had collectively decided to pretend it hadn’t happened.
When the inspector finally turned and left to walk up the rest of the train, Finn and Emmie sank into a pair of seats, saying nothing for a couple of minutes while they got their breath back, calmed their heart rates and let the weight of their new situation settle. Finn stared upwards, watched an abandoned umbrella roll around the luggage rack above him, while he tried to comprehend what kind of mess he’d ended up in this time.
He was lost in his warring thoughts as the train pulled into a station out in the countryside, where a couple of the carriage’s passengers disembarked. Finn glanced around, nervous of who might be waiting for them at the stop. But the only person to get on was a man with a briefcase in one hand and a newspaper under his arm. He sat behind them.
“What do we do now?” Emmie asked as the train slowly pulled out of the station. “And what were we thinking in the first place?”
“I didn’t expect everything to go so wrong,” said Finn.
“We should always expect everything to go wrong,” she said. “Everything always goes wrong.”
“I told you that you didn’t have to come.”
“I couldn’t let you go it alone.”
“We’re going to have to explain all this to my dad,” said Finn.
“We’re going to have to explain all this to everyone when we get back.”
Finn said nothing.
Emmie turned in her seat to glare at him. “We are going back, aren’t we? I mean, we’ll figure out what to do, but we can’t just stay on this train for ever.”
“We can’t go back,” said Finn, fields passing by outside the window, opening up into a glistening estuary. “They could have desiccated us. They’ll catch us before we get to my dad or to anyone we can trust.”
“Finn, I like getting into trouble as much as you, but only if it’s worth it. What’s this going to do but get us all kicked out of Darkmouth?”
“Which is why there’s no point in going back,” concluded Finn.
“So, where are we going?” she asked.
“Slotterton.”
“Slotterton?”
“We know Lucien is ordering experiments in Slotterton as well as Darkmouth. That’s dangerous. The opposite of what Legend Hunters are meant to do. We’re supposed to guard against gateways, stop Legends coming through. Not go around trying to open them ourselves. Who knows what could happen? They could trigger another all-out invasion. If we can’t stop them, at least we can catch them in the act in Slotterton, show the rest of the world what’s happening. Everyone will have to believe us. We will get Darkmouth back.”
Frustrated, Emmie ran her hands roughly through her hair, shook her head.
“Finn, they nearly caught us,” she said. “We’re in trouble. Your dad’s in trouble. I’m in trouble. Which means my dad’s in trouble. Which means I’m in trouble with my dad when he gets back. Basically it’s just trouble. Huge trouble. We’re better going back and sorting this out now.”
“What’s wrong with you, Emmie?” Finn asked, genuinely irked. “You used to be the one pushing me on.”
“What’s wrong with me? I’ve not gone crazy, that’s what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s so much going on …” Finn clammed up again, trying desperately to keep quiet about what had happened to him on the Infested Side.
The train had picked up a lot of speed already, swaying and juddering through the countryside.
“Something else is happening, and you won’t tell me what it is,” said Emmie.
“Just trust me,” said Finn. “I’m coming up with a plan.”
“And stealing whatever you stole is part of this brilliant plan, is it?” Emmie asked.
Finn lifted the bag on to the wide table in front of them and began to pull out objects. First out was the computer.
“You stole a computer,” she said, not impressed.
“I didn’t steal it,” he replied, offended. “It was mine in the first place. Well, my family’s. It had pictures of us on it. Nice pictures of how things used to be. It’s not theirs. It’s ours. Besides, there must be a lot of evidence of Lucien’s conspiracy on it.”
She pulled something else from the bag. “A nice-smelling candle?”
“That was already in there, I guess.”
“Some sticky tape,” she said, going through pockets.
“I just grabbed the nearest bag,” explained Finn, defensive. “I didn’t know what was in it.”
“Is that half a bar of chocolate?”
“I said I didn’t have time to be picky.”
Emmie took the chocolate out, snapped off a piece of it and put it in her mouth as she rummaged in the bottom of the bag.
“What is this?” she asked, pulling a large object free.
The jar had a crack in it, running from base to rim, but had remained otherwise intact. Inside the jar was a hairy ball. With wings.
Emmie looked aghast. “Is this a Legend?”
“It could be,” he said. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“What were you thinking?”
Finn needed an answer. “There was a cage in the Dead House and some desiccated Legends. I thought they might be reanimating them and maybe this could be Broonie. That we could rescue him.”
“This doesn’t look at all like Broonie did when he was desiccated and we’ve seen him that way enough times.” She examined it. “You sure it’s him? You took it without really knowing, didn’t you? We are in such big trouble now.”
“Look, I panicked,” Finn said, and he was being truthful now. “I lifted it and it set the alarm off. I just kind of ran after that.”
“Ugh,” she said, reaching the bottom of the bag. “Something broke in here. A bottle of juice or something. It’s all sticky.” She wiped her hand on her skirt, wrinkled her nose in disgu
st. “Look, Finn, we can get out of this situation. We’ve been in worse.”
Finn pulled the map from his pocket, opened it up on the table, flattening out its creases. The corner of the map told them this was Slotterton, the town shown at detailed scale, with criss-crossing streets, highlighted buildings and landmarks.
A “1” was written in red ink over one spot beside a place marked as Old Hall.
A “2” sat beside three small crosses – a graveyard, Finn presumed. 8pm was written next to it.
“This is Slotterton,” he said, pointing a finger at it. “The letter said they’d experiment at Site Two, which must be … here. And in the chip shop one of those scientist assistants said they’d be doing it tonight. That must be what the 8pm means, only a few hours from now. The one must be the headquarters Lucien mentioned in a note that I found.”
Emmie lifted the map to examine it, and for the first time Finn noticed that on the back of the page was a series of pictures. One was of an old building, set back behind a wall and foreboding gates. The other took Finn a moment to figure out. “Does that look like a rollercoaster to you?”
“Maybe,” said Emmie with a shrug, taking a quick look at the images. “Anyway, now we know all of this we’ll call your dad, get him to pick us up and we’ll tell him everything.”
“We’re fugitives,” said Finn. “There’s no way he can leave Darkmouth on his own without Lucien using it as an excuse to get rid of him.”
“You’re giving Lucien a pretty good excuse right now, Finn.”
“They’ll send assistants to arrest us instead, and we’ll never hold on to the evidence that way. No, we’ll go to Slotterton.”
The world zipping by outside, Emmie looked at the map of stations on the carriage wall. “But this train doesn’t go to Slotterton.”
“No, and that’s good because it means they won’t expect us there,” said Finn. “Instead, we can get off at the nearest station and look for a bus to Slotterton.”
Hero Rising Page 7