by Fiona Shaw
Jake felt his face flush with shame. It would have killed her. Jarred her small body so hard with its violence, her heart would have given out, and then Swift’s heart would have given out too. All his bravery since then was like dust when he thought of the danger he’d put Cass in.
Swift was on her feet, her face a mask of contempt. –In fact, don’t bother telling us, dog boy. I’ve had it. If Tunnel Sixty-four, and Bond Street Tube, is the only way out, then I say we leave the two of you here and head there now. You and Ollie: you’re gonna have to take your chances, and good luck to you.
Somebody gasped – Jake didn’t see who – and the gang was on its feet, and everybody saying different things. Swift saying to come on, they should get their stuff, leave now, and Davie drumming with his fingers like no tomorrow and calling out – Go! Go! Go! And Martha saying no, and Poacher calling –Sit down. Sit down.
Jake stayed sitting, one hand on Jet’s back, and he could feel Jet shaking; Ollie had his head in his hands. Chasing through Jake’s mind was a single sentence: I’ve killed the gang. And he wished that the ground would open up and swallow him.
Then Swift shrugged, and zipped up her parka. Her face was all lines: mouth tight, eyes narrowed, cheekbones sharp. But as she bent to pick up Cass, Cass slipped beneath her arms and now the little girl was climbing down the steps, one small hand up to the rail to steady herself. Two steps, then a third. Swift stared at her little sister, mouth open. Then stopping on the step above Jake’s, Cass hunkered down and put her arms out round Jet’s neck and leaned into him.
Jake kept his eyes on his dog, and he waited for Swift to be there, loosening her sister’s hold, putting her arms around her, lifting her away.
But Swift stayed where she was. Sat down again, dropped her head into her hands. Everybody fell quiet. Even Davie stilled his fingers. When at last Swift looked up, Jake noticed the black rings below her eyes; noticed the exhaustion written across her face.
–All right, we stay, she said, –and whatever comes next, we face it together. All Outwalkers. One gang.
When everyone was quiet, Martha asked her question again. –Jake? What were you missing so much?
And he would’ve hugged her right then, except it would be embarrassing. But because he knew she would understand, he answered her.
–Raisins, he said.
Silence.
–Raisins? Poacher said.
Jake nodded. There was more silence.
He looked at his knees and waited. Someone made a strange noise, a kind of snorting noise, and he looked up. It was Swift. She was choking; no, she was laughing, and the others were joining in, Ollie too. All of them sitting there and laughing so hard, they were crying, and finally he was laughing too.
–So we nearly lost our cook – an’ we nearly lost our climber … Poacher spoke between his gasps … –on account of raisins. On account of some dried fruit.
–Not a good raisin fer anything, Ollie said, and it was so daft that everybody laughed, even Cass, chuckling silently into Jet’s fur. When Jake caught Martha’s eye, she winked at him, like she wasn’t only laughing at him. Like she understood him too.
Finally they quietened, and Martha passed the water bottle round. Swift turned to Ollie and Jake.
–There’s stuff you need to know down here, about the other people.
–We thought we saw others, Ollie said. –And heard them. In the shadows.
–They’re not Outwalkers, far as we know. They’re illegals. Loads of gangs. Call themselves lowlifers. Grown-ups, mostly. And they aren’t trying to get anywhere. This is it, for them.
–They live down here? Jake said.
–There’s kids born down here, Poacher said. Long as you stay down deep enough, you can’t be got, cos hubbing doesn’t work down here. They say there’s one who’s been down since the Faith Bombings. Got skin white as milk, hair white as snow. They’s all kinds o’ weird, Davie’s seen ’em. He’s bin our scout so far …
–I only know about the ones near us, Dave said. –Catchpitters, Friners, Line Kings, Eelers. Catchpitters got the best gear cos they make it out of stuff they scavenge from the catch pits. Rubbish, mostly, that people drop when they’re waiting for Tube trains. Food wrappings, bits of plastic, hats, gloves, jewellery, whatever they can find. Some o’ them is party people from above, but most is down here fer good.
–Catch pits? Ollie said.
–Trenches between the Tube rails, Davie said. –To catch the leapers.
–Leapers? Jake’s head felt fuzzy with all this new stuff.
–You know. People who … jump. You know! Davie said impatiently. –To kill themselves? But it doesn’t always work. An’ mostly the catch pits catch the stuff people drop in there, sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose. Different gangs control different territory. So round here is controlled by the Circus, he continued. –But up near Kings Cross Tube, where we gotta get to next, it’s a different gang, calls ’emselves the Line Kings. Then there’s the Friners going east. They’re on the run from interning. Europeans, mostly. They got a name for eating bugs. Cooking ’em up in oil. Lots of cockroaches and yellow scorpions from the tunnels on the Central Line.
–Enough detail, Davie, Martha said. –Ollie’s going to be sick.
And it was true, Ollie had gone very pale, and he was shaking his head.
–You don’t look so brilliant, either, Martha said to Jake, sitting down beside him, putting her hand on his forehead.
Her hand made him jump.
–You all right? she said, and he nodded, but there was this lump in his throat because the last time anyone did that, it was his mum. Then Martha took her hand away and rummaged in her rucksack, and though it made his throat ache and his eyes ache, he wished she would put it back.
She brought out a small plastic bag with some dead leaves inside.
–You’ve still got a temperature, she said. –Chew one of these. Stop you feeling so hungry too.
Jake sniffed. –Mint?
She nodded.
He leaned back against the escalator side and chewed. The mint was comforting.
–He needs to lie down, Martha said, –else he’ll be ill again. And you, she said to Swift. –If you don’t sleep now, you won’t be able to look after Cass.
–Prob’ly ain’t gonna be our easiest day tomorrow, Poacher said. –An’ we should all sleep if we can.
Twenty-five
It was like coming home. The thought took Jake by surprise. It was a feeling he hadn’t had for a long time. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know how to get out of here, let alone how to get to Scotland, it was still like coming home, and not just to Jet. It didn’t even matter that the gang had so nearly split down the middle. What mattered was that it hadn’t, and now it was even stronger.
Dizzy with tiredness and hunger, he lay down on the cardboard in the abandoned room below the abandoned escalator. Behind him was an oily, dusty mass of machinery and cogs. He could smell it as he lay. Turning around three times, Jet lay down at his side. If Jake moved his fingers, he could touch Jet’s paw, feel the soft leather of its pad. On the other side of Jet lay Cass. She was tucked into a cocoon beside her sister, beneath the escalator cogs, just one hand out, resting like a blessing on Jet’s back. The others slept close by. His gang, in their den, for now.
Above them hung the two vast barrelled engines that Swift said had once driven the escalator round, those steps climbing and dropping, climbing and dropping. And stretched out above the engines, like a strange silver sky, was the escalator belt, slanting from high up on the left down almost to the ground beyond Jake’s feet on the right, little dashes of light coming through the slats. They looked like stars, Jake thought.
No daylight, hundreds of lowlifer gangs with no laws to stop them, and they were on the run from the Coalition. But this was their place, their burrow, just for now, and at last, despite his hunger, he fell into a deep sleep.
Jake started awake. He was stiff from the hard grou
nd, and cold despite the fuggy warmth of the Tube station. He felt clear-headed again, and very hungry. It was a hollowed-out kind of hunger, like his fever had consumed everything in him, but that wasn’t what had woken him. He listened: Jet’s paws were twitching, making small scuffling noises on the cardboard bed – dreaming of rabbits, that’s what his mum used to say – but it wasn’t Jet either. Then there it was: a steady beat, like a drumbeat. Footsteps? He listened on. The sound was getting fainter now and he lay back. But as he closed his eyes again, it began to get louder, and still louder, a thump-thump noise, till it sounded like it was directly overhead.
He got to his knees. Who was on watch? He should wake Poacher. What if it was a hubber? What if they had come down here, after all? It could be the woman hubber with the scar. She’d recognize him straight off. She had a baton, and a Taser, and she’d be able to call in support. More hub police, armed to the teeth. The gang wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d shovel them into a van and lock them up to rot in a Home Academy, one with lots of safe rooms, and they’d each be put in a different one, locked away on their own. And Jet would be sent into kennels, or shot, or …
–Stop it, Jake, he whispered to himself. Because it was probably nothing. Just the weird sounds in this place. Probably mice, or rats. And the gang was tired. Everybody needed sleep. He lay down again and shut his eyes.
Above his head, the thump-thump went on. But it wasn’t rats or mice. It wasn’t just the creaky sounds of a dead escalator. Last time, he’d been too late to warn the gang. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. Feeling in his rucksack for his penknife, he flipped the main blade open, and with a whispered ‘Stay’ to Jet, clambered round the sleepers, pushed open the door into the escalator hall and crept out.
Crawling along the side of the escalator, he looked across the hall to the far side. It was empty, as far as he could see. Above him, the drumbeat noise continued. It was getting quieter again, moving away up the escalator steps. That meant whoever it was, it was only one person. And whoever it was, was going up at the moment, so probably had their back to him at the bottom. So Jake should look round the corner now, before they turned to come down again.
Knife in his hand ready, Jake peered round. No hubber, no secca. Just a small figure in wellington boots, scruffy donkey jacket reaching nearly to his knees.
–Davie!
From the top of the escalator, Davie turned and grinned. –Listen up, he said. –I got a plan!
The dust lay thick on each step and Jake swept it with his arm and sat down, Jet beside him. Poacher sat above him, bleary-eyed. He’d been hard to wake.
Something rattled in the lining of Jake’s jacket, and feeling with his fingers through the pocket hole, he found a little box and pulled it out. Cass’s pink raisins. The box was bashed about, the pink gone grey, the writing worn off. He’d give them to her when she woke, watch her face.
Davie’s plan was simple: find a gang he called the Surfers. Parley with them. Pay them a passage fee. Escape.
–That’s it? Poacher said. –It ain’t much.
And Davie shrugged. –What choice we got? No more food nearly.
Which was true, Jake thought. No choice.
–Stop with the pacing, Poacher said. –Yer gonna wake everybody.
Davie looked wired. He looked like he was about to do something crazy. He stopped pacing but started drumming with his fingers, a small thub-thub sound.
–So what’s with Surfers? Poacher said. –Cos you talked about other gangs, Catchpitters, Line Kings, Friners, but you ain’t said next to a thing about Surfers before.
–It’s the gang we gotta be cool with, Davie said. –They got a leader, he’s a legend. Been down here for ever, that’s what they say. Fearless too. Surfers is the ones see everything, know everything.
–Yeah, but what are they? Poacher said. –Like, why they called Surfers? An’ why you ain’t spoke of ’em before? He sounded cross, but Jake reckoned it was only because he’d got woken out of his sleep.
Davie’s eyes were shining. –Surfers ride the Tube trains. He made a movement with his arm like a wave. Lie flat on the Tube roofs. Toughest of the lot, an’ crazy, an’ scariest too. That’s what I bin told. I ain’t talked about them before cos they got no territory, no patch, so I reckoned they ain’t no use to us. But most all o’ the gangs let ’em through, long as they don’t stay long. So – I bin thinking. Then I got it. The answer. The Surfers are the only ones know the whole place. All of it, not only the Tube tunnels, but the other tunnels too: water tunnels, electric tunnels, tunnels fer shit, tunnels where the rivers go. They’re cool with danger, cos surfing, you can get sucked off, or hit by cables, walls, signals. And they get high on it. I heard tell, when a Surfer gets killed, they do ’em a final journey, an’ they strap ’em, their body that is, to one of the Tubes, ride with ’em all the way from one end o’ the Tube map ter the other, then they have a bonfire.
Poacher shook his head. –So cos they know it all, they’re gonna help us? He didn’t sound like he believed any of it, but Davie didn’t seem to notice.
–Yup. Listen. There’s a meet gonna happen.
–A what? Jake said.
–A meet. All the gangs are gonna go, be in the same place, same time. There’s gonna be music, an’ food an’ booze. It’s what they’re all telling about.
–So what? Poacher said.
–So with loads o’ them out the way, I figure that’s our chance to get out. Now we got Jake and Ollie’s food, we got passage fees. Not much, but enough ter pay one gang. So we go an’ parley with the Surfers, just them, cos they could get us the whole way out … Davie did a little drum roll against the escalator side.
–But if they’ve got no patch, how are we gonna find them?
–I bin told where they’re hanging. It’s a hard climb, but it ain’t far from here. ’Cept they ain’t gonna be there long, cos they ain’t any place for long, so …
Davie’s pause hung in the stale air. Poacher had his head in his hands, fingers pushed into his dreads, thinking, and the others waited. Then he put his head up.
–So if we go, we gotta go now, Poacher finished up.
–Yeah, Davie said. –Only thing is, Jake’s the climber an’ I’ve got the info. It’s gotta be just me and him.
Poacher woke Swift and she went and sat with him in a huddle halfway up the escalator. She didn’t like the plan, Jake could tell. She was up and down, looking away and looking down. But by the time they stood up, she’d agreed to it.
–Now you gotta eat, Poacher said, and he fetched food.
–Took us hours to find, Swift said, a warning in her voice, so Jake kept quiet. It was horrible, festering food scrounged from the bins on the Tube platforms, picked out from the stuff thrown out by the food stalls in the stations. But he was so hungry, he wolfed everything: ham gone shiny-green at the edges, a squidgy black banana, two hamburger buns, bled with ketchup but no burger, cold noodles orange with sweet ’n sour, squashed to a solid block. But it didn’t stop him imagining the Cheddar cheese and the chocolate and the tins of fruits packed into their rucksacks for the Surfers.
–Last Supper, Davie said, and Poacher told him to shut it.
–Listen now, Poacher said. –This ain’t pretty but if one of you gets— He stopped and looked down at his feet, like he was embarrassed. Jake listened to the distant thrubs and tick sounds coming from somewhere above, or below them. Poacher cleared his voice and went on. –Yeah, so if one o’ you gets hurt, anyway, then the other one’s gotta go on. Cos it’s the only chance we’ve got of getting out. Any of us …
–And if you two aren’t back here in two hours, we’re coming looking, Swift said.
Twenty-six
Davie took the lead. He knew the way to the Surfers’ den. Least, he said he did. A lowlifer had told him where it was this week. He’d drawn a map on the wall: an arrow on the slant, another pointing straight down. That was it. It didn’t make much sense to Jake.
A few minut
es into their journey, the only feeling Jake had about it all was a bad one. It seemed like they were travelling to the centre of the Earth, and that was not a place he wanted to be. Course he knew they weren’t, not literally. He’d done the Earth with Miss McCarthy in geography. He knew the Earth’s crust went on for miles. He knew they were only walking through tunnels made by men. But down here, underground, with the bricks and concrete and soot and cables, in the hot, dead air, he felt very scared. He felt like the weight of the whole city might come crashing down on them at any minute. What if they never got out again?
But hardest of all, much harder than his hunger, or his fear of being so far underground, was leaving Jet. As they’d walked away, Jet had set up barking, the kind of shouty bark he did when he was unhappy. Jake had looked back once and wished he hadn’t. Because Jet was leaning forward, braced against his lead, and Poacher was yanking him back.
Then Davie took them through a door and down some kind of service tunnel, and Jet’s barking got fainter and fainter, till Jake couldn’t hear anything beyond his own breathing. Deeper they went, and the hot air smelled of earth and metal, till they came to another riveted door. It had a sign on it: a picture of a figure falling backwards and in big letters the words: WARNING: RISK OF FALLING.
Davie had his hand on the door lever. –You ready? he said. –Cos I reckon we got to the straight-down arrow bit. And before Jake could reply, he’d swung the door lever, and they stepped through.
The sight made both boys gasp.
Coming from above them and dropping away below them was the biggest hole Jake had ever seen. It was lit with dim electric lights, but when Jake looked up, he couldn’t see the top of the hole and when he looked down, he couldn’t see the bottom. It was as wide as a house – his old house, anyway – and its curved sides were banded with riveted metal that gave off a greeny gleam. There was a smell of metal in the air; metal and damp. Down one side stalactites dripped from shining crystals and glistened in the flickery light.