“Even if we do that,” said Emmie, exasperated, “we have to ring your dad and let him know what’s happening in case he can help us somehow. He’s going to find out about this pretty soon anyway.”
Finn conceded that was a good idea, but there was one problem. “I think I dropped my phone running for the train,” he said, patting his jacket.
“We’ll use mine,” she sighed, taking it out to make a call.
“Excuse me,” said a thin voice behind them.
Finn and Emmie kneeled over the back of their seats, peering over them to see a man in a blazer, reading a newspaper, fingers to his lips.
He pointed at the sticker on the window. “This is a Quiet Carriage,” he said. “You’re not allowed to use phones in it.”
“We won’t be on it for long,” explained Emmie.
“It’s the rule,” said the man. “You can’t break the rules.”
Finn didn’t need to look at Emmie to know she was on the verge of throwing the phone at the man’s head.
Finn motioned to the end of the carriage and together they walked up the aisle to the door between carriages so they could make their call in peace.
Emmie held out her phone. “Let’s be honest, Finn. We can’t stay on this train for ever.”
Finn looked at the phone for a little longer, eventually took it from her. “I’ll call him, but it doesn’t mean we’re running straight back to Darkmouth. I’ll tell him we’re going to Slotterton. He’ll know what to do.”
Then, from where they had been sitting in the carriage, there came the sound of glass cracking.
That caught Finn and Emmie’s attention. The man with the newspaper noticed too. He craned his neck round the back of their seats to see what was making the noise.
“Shush,” he said.
There was some creaking. Growling too, perhaps.
“Shush,” insisted the passenger.
“Finn,” said Emmie, an idea dawning on her. “That stuff in the bottom of the bag, was it juice?”
“Not sure,” he admitted.
“Finn,” Emmie said. “You saw a cage in the Dead House. Maybe they’re bringing Legends back to life for some reason. So is there any chance that the leaky stuff could be Reanimation fluid?”
Slowly, Finn nodded.
“Oh no,” said Emmie, resigned.
“Oh no,” echoed Finn.
“And the crack in the jar …?” said Emmie.
“Not good,” said Finn. “Not good at all.”
“What about the Legend? Do you really think it’s Broonie?”
Finn shook his head. “It could be. Or it could be … something else.”
Glass smashed.
“It had better be Broonie,” said Emmie.
Then a Griffin burst into life in the carriage.
The man who had shushed at them screamed. He screamed very, very loudly.
Half eagle, half lion, the Griffin glared at him as he scrambled away on hands and knees, then turned back to Finn and Emmie while sniffing the air, calculating who to attack first. Its front legs had talons that looked ike they could shred the carriage itself. Its back legs were those of a lion, a shiver running up through its muscles, through its feathers, to a quick shake of its curling beak. Its eyes opened, black pupils narrowing against the white of the iris.
The shushy man screamed again.
The Legend opened its beak and gave a long, brain-rattling scree to match the screech of the train’s wheels as it plunged into the blackness of a tunnel. In strobing light, the Legend spread its wings, punching the windows on either side with an ugly thud.
It decided to go for the man, lunging at him as he scrabbled away.
Finn wanted to get out of there, to run the length of the train. But if he did that the man would be the Griffin’s starter. And the rest of the passengers would be the main course.
Beside him was an emergency axe behind clear plastic. He punched the cover, took the axe and, with no time to aim, flung the tool at the Griffin. The axe’s blunt wedge hit its shoulder and simply bounced off the layers of feather, muscle, bone and fur.
The train left the tunnel, daylight flooding the carriage again.
Emmie held a fire extinguisher. Unloading it, she almost lost her balance as it sprayed foam at the Griffin’s neck, until she switched tack and just smashed it across its back instead.
But still the Griffin kept on going, heading for the cowering shushy man.
The man held up his briefcase, as if it had any hope whatsoever of stopping the claws from tearing his head from his shoulders. As if the flimsy leather case full of papers and lunch would be enough to stop this furious, hungry, living weapon. He pushed himself backwards and squeezed himself into the luggage rack.
The train threw itself along the tracks, shunting, shifting, seeming like it might topple over at any moment.
Suddenly it braked.
The train screamed, then jolted violently, skidding along on suddenly static wheels.
The Griffin was thrown back off its claws, sliding along the aisle, while Finn and Emmie clung hard to the door in an effort to stay standing against the sudden force of the stop.
The Griffin was briefly stranded, on its back, stuck between seats, struggling to get upright again.
Finn had an idea, grabbed his backpack and took a bottle from it. “The Shampoodle,” he shouted, handing it to her, followed by more bottles. “Mix it with this Flea-Be-Gone.”
He started to make his way up the carriage. “Then add three drops of Fabulous Fish Fun Formula – only three drops – and a splash of Pet Poop Hardener. My dad showed me the recipe. It had better work.”
Emmie was at it straight away, trying to mix the bottles as the train began to move, the driver speeding up the train to hurtle again along the track.
“Throw it to me when you’re done,” said Finn, edging forward.
The Griffin righted itself as Finn got close.
“Finn,” Emmie called, closing the lid on the mixture and raising a hand to toss it to him.
The train jolted again, and she stumbled, dropping the makeshift Desiccator fluid.
It rolled away under a seat as she dived for it and missed.
“I dropped it!” she shouted from the floor, worried that the fluid might desiccate nothing but upholstery and discarded crisp packets.
The Griffin loomed over Finn, screeched so loudly he felt his eardrums would split.
Oh no, Finn thought.
Behind the creature, the man with the briefcase was trapped at the far end of the carriage, his eyes shot through with fear. There was nothing either of them could do now.
The train curved sharply at a bend, sending the Legend and humans falling to the right. Emmie’s Desiccator bomb rolled back across the aisle, nestled under the far seat.
The Griffin was lifting itself up again, clawing at the floor, gouging marks across it, and seemed to decide it was time to attack Finn now.
“This had better work,” Finn said as he climbed up the back of a seat, clambered into the luggage rail above it. Pushing himself along the tight space as the Griffin tried to claw him out, he found the umbrella loose there. The Griffin roared. He thrust the umbrella into its beak, pressing the button at the last moment so that it opened suddenly, jamming open the creature’s mouth. Spokes snapped, metal bent, but the umbrella stayed in place, wedged in tight.
The Griffin stopped, fought with it. Finn pushed himself back out of the luggage rack.
“You,” Finn said to the businessman, “stay there if you don’t want to become a human football.”
The train lurched sharply to his left, throwing him off the rack. He landed painfully on the ground, elbow pushed hard into his ribs, just as the Desiccator bomb rolled across the aisle, by his head. He reached out and caught it.
The Griffin stretched down.
Finn impaled the bottle on an umbrella spoke in the Griffin’s open mouth, then tumbled backwards, clipping his head off a table on leaping up. He
had no time to feel the pain, instead followed Emmie through the open carriage door, shutting it closed before the Griffin got to them.
The Legend bit down on the umbrella, bottle, spokes, everything.
“Any moment now,” said Finn.
The Griffin had blood running through its feathers, umbrella spokes sticking from its beak.
“Any moment now?” asked Emmie.
The Griffin turned around towards the horrified man at the back of the train.
“I hope so,” said Finn.
The passenger screamed again.
“I really, really hope so.”
The Griffin raised its wings, and imploded in a spectacular moment, like a bubble popping, into a hard sphere, rolling to the passenger’s feet.
The man screamed again. And screamed. And didn’t stop screaming.
“Told you it would work,” said Finn.
Emmie sighed.
Behind them, an entire carriage full of people was watching them.
“Pet,” said Finn, pointing unconvincingly towards the rear carriage and the panicked man in there. “Someone in there brought a pet. On board.”
“A dog,” said Emmie.
“A really big dog,” agreed Finn.
The train pulled into a station. Even if it wasn’t their stop, it was time to get off.
Before they left the train, they grabbed the computer from the floor where it had fallen, quickly put it in Finn’s bag with the desiccated Griffin, the stolen map and the letter. They then jumped on to the platform, keen to get away before they were grabbed, questioned, lectured, fired, jailed or all of those things.
With a walk that they hoped looked casual but which was really just short of breaking into a sweaty run, they made their way towards the exit of the small station while ignoring the calls of the driver, the shouts of the ticket inspector and the continued screaming of the businessman.
They ducked under the turnstiles of the unmanned station. Outside was a recycling bin, a large metal container with a small round hole into which bottles could be pushed.
Finn went to shove the desiccated Griffin into it.
Emmie looked at him, unsure.
“Do you have a better idea?”
Emmie didn’t have a better idea.
He dropped the Griffin into the bin, the clank and crack of bottles echoing inside as it rolled its way down the dark, unseen glass slope within.
The driver had appeared out of the station door and there was nothing for it but to run away from the building before any questions were asked. They charged up a short slope of tarmac, out through the open gates and on to a country road.
“Which way?” Finn asked.
“Right,” said Emmie, as Finn went left.
They stopped, waiting for someone to make a decision and then, realising Emmie had already made one, Finn followed her. They were on a country lane, a long curving stretch of road with a sliver of footpath on the train station side. Weeds grew through cracks in the concrete, dangling briars reaching out to snag them as they ran past.
As they turned out of sight of the station, they heard a siren coming from the unseen road ahead of them. They dropped back into the bushes, let a police car flash by. Finn had no doubt as to its destination.
Once sure that the vehicle was gone, they popped out on to the path again, Finn pulling a thorny branch from his sweater and moving fast in the opposite direction.
“That man on the train was very, very lucky,” Finn said, as they ran. “If he’d been closer to that bomb, he’d have been a ball in a tiny, shiny suit.”
Emmie stopped, forcing Finn to double back to her.
“He’s lucky?” she said, aghast. “Finn, we’re lucky. No, sorry. We’re not lucky. Not really. After all, we’ve just reanimated a Legend on a moving train with civilians on it. We’re on the run with stolen property. We have a maths project to do, which I had completely forgotten about until now. So, we’re not really lucky. But if there’s even a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of luck for us it’s that we didn’t kill that man. That’s what we would have done, without that glimmer of luck. Killed him. We’re lucky that didn’t happen. But as for the rest of it, no luck. No luck at all. We’re in huge trouble.”
“Are you finished?” asked Finn.
She stared at him, incredulous.
At a nearby gate, a curious cow wandered over.
“What’s happening to you, Finn?” she asked. “I know we’ve done some incredible things before, but you’ve never been this reckless.”
“I’m not being reckless,” he said, wounded – and conscious that a cow was staring at him.
“What else is this but reckless?” Emmie said, waving a hand around at the countryside. The cow flinched.
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Finn, walking on again.
“What? That’s …” She struggled to find a word to do her feelings justice.
Finn had gone walking around the bend, and she was forced to follow him.
“That’s just … You know that’s not true. This is my problem too.”
“OK, sorry. You do understand,” said Finn. “Which means you understand the only way to get Darkmouth back is to uncover the experiments in Slotterton, to reveal what’s been going on.”
“This plan isn’t working, though,” said Emmie. “We know they’re trying to open the gateways. They’re experimenting. They’re causing havoc. We have that proof – the papers you took, maybe the computer too. Let’s just go back to Darkmouth and show them.”
“We don’t have any real proof,” said Finn. “Just our word against theirs. A scrap of a map, a few things written down, that’s all,” he said, marching further up the thin path.
“We still have to call your dad for help,” she said, scrolling through her phone.
“OK,” he conceded, “but only to tell him the time and place of the experiment. Maybe we shouldn’t mention the whole escaped-Griffin thing just yet.”
“We have to,” she said.
“No, we don’t,” he said.
The phone rang. They looked at it like it was the strangest object in the world.
Private number.
She answered it, putting it on speaker.
They heard only breathing. Calm. Unremarkable. Patient.
“Let me guess,” Lucien’s voice said eventually. “Birdsong. Quiet.” The cow mooed. “You’re in the countryside.”
“We’re not coming back,” said Finn, and Emmie stared at him in disgust for being so quick to crack.
“I believe there was a little problem on the train. An unwanted passenger.”
They did not respond.
“The police were called,” continued Lucien. “Naturally, the first thing the police did was to contact us. They don’t want to deal with any of this, trust me. They want us to deal with it. To quietly neutralise the problem.”
Finn did not like that word: neutralise. It sent a shiver through him even in the afternoon warmth.
“It is not too late to come back to Darkmouth,” Lucien said, his voice turning soft. Finn knew it was an act. “Finn, you’re young. You are allowed to make mistakes. This does not have to go any further.”
Finn didn’t want to believe him, but he felt the tug of home, the promise of this all being over by dinner time. But he knew it wouldn’t be. Just knew. A sense, a warning signal pulsed strongly in his mind. He had to finish what he’d started. Reveal the plot. Get Darkmouth back. He looked up and down the stretch of road. One way was back. One way was forward. He couldn’t be sure either would end well, but he had to choose.
“And, Emmie,” said Lucien, “you got wrapped up in all this. We’ve talked about that already. You know I understand it’s not your fault.”
Finn shot Emmie a glance. She refused to look back, but he could see her face tighten, that she felt caught out.
“You should come home,” continued Lucien over the phone. “Even if Finn doesn’t. You’re in no trouble at all.”
Finn grabb
ed the phone from her hand. “We’re not coming back. We’re going to tell everyone what you’re up to.”
“Then it will not end well for—”
Finn lobbed the phone high and away into the field, where it plunked and sank into a cowpat.
Emmie stood, open-mouthed. “My phone!”
“Look, Emmie,” said Finn, stepping up so close to her he practically knocked her back off the path. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for dragging you into all of this. I’m sorry that we’re now out here, in the middle of nowhere, with half the world looking for us. And I’m actually sorry I threw your phone into cow poo like that – it was kind of stupid.”
He stepped back, allowing her some space on the path.
“But I’m begging you,” he carried on, “this one last time, to trust me. Please. They have taken Darkmouth from us. They’re doing something really dangerous with dust and gateways, and we don’t know what else might be happening that we haven’t even seen yet.”
The cow wandered off to see what had plopped in the field.
They heard a car approach from the direction of the station, and stepped off the path, crouching down at the entrance to the field.
“What they’re doing is going to get people killed unless we stop them, Emmie. Maybe a lot of people. Maybe the whole world. We have to stop them. I have to stop them. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. Please.”
The warm breeze pushed and pulled at the briars. A few insects hopped about between colourful weeds. Emmie looked blank. Finn tried to guess what was going on in her mind. Wondered if she’d push him over. Walk away. Scream.
“So what now, O chosen one?” she asked, unimpressed – but Finn knew he’d convinced her. For the time being.
He stood, stepped back on to the path. “I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done before …” he said.
They could hear the sound of a car approaching from the far direction, the high rattle of an old engine.
“What’s that?”
“Hitch-hike.” Finn stuck his thumb out.
Emmie threw her eyes up, shook her head and pulled him away from the road, then took his place, thumb out as the car came closer. “You look like you’ve been in a fight with, well, a Griffin, as it happens.”
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