by Chris Ward
Then the road vanished as a figure at his window blocked his view and a dark shape pressed close against the glass, hands that looked only vaguely human cupping around a face hidden in shadow.
Frank’s nerve failed him and he screamed in terror as a dog-like snout pressed forward out of the shadows under that cowl. He staggered back across the room at the same time as the creature roared and the glass shattered inwards, the demon out of his nightmares climbing into the room, its savage teeth bared, maw snapping towards him as its clawed hands brushed away shards of glass like bits of paper.
Frank felt the edge of the open door press against his back and he rolled sideways, pulling it shut at the same time as the creature leapt forward. Years ago, out of precaution and paranoia he had replaced all the old doors of his house with stronger, fire-resistant ones. He had also installed deadbolts on all of them, for what event he’d never been quite sure. Now, he reached up and pulled the bolt on the living room door across, just as the creature thudded against the other side. Frank saw the handle rattle wildly, heard it creak and groan beneath the strength of hands no longer human. He backed away through the junk in his hallway, eyes searching for a knife, knowing it would be useless in a few seconds when that door broke through.
A loud thud announced the creature’s first attempt, and Frank turned and ran, darting through the piles of junk and up the stairs. He gritted his teeth as his old heart pounded in his chest, his body long past its prime for such exertion. Even in his terror he had to pause a few steps from the upper landing, just long enough to see his living room door burst open amidst splintering wood and the creature lurch forward into the hallway.
Frank froze as it stood there, the cowl fallen away from it’s face, and he looked down on the monstrous hybrid creature that the government named as Huntsmen. Human eyes looked over a bestial, canine snout, while wires and scar tissue crisscrossed its bald scalp. Around its neck, as it breathed he saw the sharp angular shapes of metal implants under the skin, shifting and writhing like sinews beneath a metal, dog-like collar.
The Huntsman didn’t look up at him. Instead, it turned right towards the front door, its nose twitching as saliva dripped from its teeth. It growled once and then turned away, taking a couple of steps back towards the surgery. Frank heard a low moan and then the rasp of what sounded like words. Then it leapt forward, disappearing from view as it barged through the door into his surgery. He listened for a moment, hearing the jangle and crash of his operating table and a desk being turned over, their contents emptying across the floor. That was the last he let himself hear, though, as his legs found their strength again and he stumbled up the remaining stairs to the upper landing.
He hurried into a room he used as a study, slammed the door and pulled across several more deadbolts. There was a desk in the middle of the room, piled high with papers, various ornaments and antiques he had collected over the decades. He walked around it and went to a cupboard in the corner.
There, on a shelf above several hanging jackets, was a small handgun. He took it down, cocked it, and checked the chambers for rounds. He had just two bullets left. Years ago, he’d used it to scare off a couple of kids who’d tried to break in through the back, and he’d never replaced the rounds he’d used. Still, two would be enough. If the creature came up, he would use the first on it. If he missed, he would use the second on himself.
Frank took the gun and crouched down behind the desk, squeezing into the space for the chair, his back against the cold wood. At his size there were several cubbyholes Frank could make use of, but he knew that if the Huntsmen came upstairs there were none small enough to save him.
He waited that way for a long time, listening to the creature rampaging through his house. Then, after what seemed an eternity, he heard a louder sound than any of the others, a crunching noise like a door breaking off its hinges. After that, there was just quiet, but even so, Frank didn’t move. He just sat right where he was, legs crossed over, the gun on his lap with both hands around it, two wrinkled old fingers on the trigger.
He was dimly aware that he had pissed himself; the warm dampness soaking through his trousers and making a little pool on the floor between his legs. But still he didn’t move, holding his position as he listened for sounds that the Huntsman was still downstairs, too terrified to even shift his body as his limbs started to seize up, barely daring to even breathe. In his mind he saw its grotesque face, its human eyes, its snapping, canine jaws, and heard its growl, the rasp of its voice. The words he remembered clearly, two of them, and he wondered just what those kids had got themselves into to have Huntsmen on their trail.
‘Tube Riders,’ he whispered aloud, rolling the Huntsman’s words across his tongue.
Chapter Seventeen
Loss
The few street lights that still worked were blinking on as the Tube Riders made their way through London towards Jessica’s house. They stayed off the main streets in an attempt to keep as low a profile as possible, but the sounds of the general chaos made up a rumbling background noise all around them. Sirens mixed with squealing tires, shouts and cries with thuds and crashes. Even the occasional gunshot split through the evening as if afraid of being left out.
The Tube Riders walked quickly but in near silence, the journey across the once-grand city sobering them up to the reality of their situation. Things looked bleak. By now they were probably being tracked through the streets by the government while Dreggo and her Cross Jumpers hunted them through the London Underground. Only if Jess’s father proved honest – and indeed brave enough – to help them, was there hope.
‘It’s not far,’ Jess said, as she led them left down a smaller residential street. A complete absence of cars made it look deserted. ‘Maybe another ten minutes.’
‘Okay.’ Marta trailed at the back. She had tied her matted hair back out of her eyes, but all she wanted now was to take a shower and then sleep. The likelihood of either was remote. Ahead of her, Simon tried from time to time to take Jess’s hand, only for the girl to pull it away, and Marta could only imagine what he must be feeling now. Behind them, Switch and Paul walked side by side, the smaller man limping a little with just the one shoe. He winced with each step, and Marta hoped what Frank had told them was right, that the knife wound wasn’t as bad as it looked.
‘It’s at the top of this street,’ Jess said, pointing up the hill. Marta, following Jess’s hand, saw a row of tall Edwardian houses curving round out of sight. It could be any time of the last two hundred years, she thought, if it wasn’t for the lack of cars, the occasional boarded up window, and a couple of collapsed street-front walls, soil and overgrown sods of grass spilling down into the road.
Marta felt a sudden bloom of sadness. Her own family was long gone, the last being her brother, Leo, the first Tube Rider. Her parents were fading into memory, the images of them brushed aside by her unwavering focus on survival. When she wasn’t tube riding she was finding money however she could, struggling to pay her contribution to the rent for the apartment she shared with a revolving door of other street roamers, rent paid to a gang who didn’t even own the building she squatted in. Sometimes she found a few days of work, other times she did what she had to do. The handful of creased and torn notes they offered every week kept the roof over their heads, a dirty water mains attached and an illegal electricity connection switched on. On those weeks when the money didn’t add up, the women and even some the men would draw lots on who would pay the rent with other means.
In another time, she might have lived in a house like this with her family. They could have been happy, could have done family things, like visit Big Ben, eat picnics in Regent’s Park, walk around London Zoo. In another time, another world . . .
‘You all right?’ Paul asked, as Marta choked back a sob, her hand covering her mouth and forcing it out as a half-cough.
She cleared her throat, kept her eyes averted. ‘Yeah, yeah . . . no problem, just . . . dust.’
Paul nod
ded. ‘Cool, that’s . . . cool.’
‘There,’ Jess said, stopping up ahead. ‘That’s my house.’
She was pointing at an Edwardian terrace house across the road at a small intersection ahead of them. The house looked quiet, unoccupied, but otherwise safe. Just a normal terraced house for a normal family.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Jess said suddenly, her voice rising. ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong!’
‘What?’ Simon turned to her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The gate’s open! The gate’s never open!’
‘Jess, there could be danger, wait –’
Too late, Jess was sprinting up the road towards the house. Simon paused just a second before giving chase. Marta looked at the others. ‘Live together, die together,’ she said, breaking into a run.
‘Let’s go,’ Paul said, and set off after them.
‘Easy for you to say,’ Marta heard Switch mutter behind her as he limped in pursuit. ‘Neither of you got stuck with that whore’s knife.’
They saw Jess pause by the gate, saw her reach out a hand to tentatively touch it. A moment later she cried out again. ‘The security’s down!’
‘Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake!’ Switch growled, but Jess was already at the front door, pushing it inwards, broken locks giving no resistance.
Marta had a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach. Something was wrong here, badly wrong.
Jess was inside the house, Simon close by the door. Paul, just ahead of Marta and Switch, was on the path when Jess cried out again.
This time was by far the worst. She sounded as though all of the world’s despair had just landed on her shoulders, a terrible, high, lingering wail that seemed to rattle the windows. Marta wanted to cover her ears and cry with her at the same time.
‘Noooooo . . .’
‘Oh my fuck –’
Simon was inside too. The others were close behind.
Marta went through the living room door a moment after Paul, a few seconds before Switch. She took one glance and turned away, a hand over her mouth.
From the scene Marta could tell Jess’s parents were middle-aged, smartly dressed, not overweight, of average height. To give any more description she would need to look at photographs. Both were dead, but quite how they had initially died was difficult to say. The blood that covered the bodies and hung in thick red swathes across the walls made it impossible to tell. Much as it repulsed her, Marta had to look again.
Simon was consoling Jess in a corner. The girl was hysterical, screaming and struggling against his arms as he held her. Marta understood her pain; most of them did. Families were rare and their worth was increased by the sheer number of people around you who had no one. Marta had been there, of course, but that took nothing away from Jess’s pain. Marta’s parents hadn’t been murdered like this.
‘Get away from me! All of you leave me alone! You did this! You caused this!’ Jess shrieked, and Marta heard the sound of running feet. She looked up to see Jess sprint past her, out into the hall and up the stairs. A few seconds later a door slammed shut and the sound of hysterical screams cut down through the ceiling.
Marta tried to take it all in. She glanced around at the bodies of Jess’s parents. She’d seen plenty of death before, of course, but nothing this brutal. This was even worse than Clive, perhaps. Jess’s mother lay backwards over the end of a sofa, head touching the ground. In the centre of her forehead a thin metal pole protruded out of a bloody gash. Her neck had been torn open and her face ripped up. The smart office suit she had been wearing was ripped and stained with blood, but there was no sign of sexual assault. For that, at least, Marta was grateful.
Jess’s father lay across the floor. One arm had been torn off his body and lay underneath a television in the corner. A scattering of books lay across his body, from where he’d pulled a shelf off the wall as he fell. Several lay open, the pages swollen with blood.
Marta didn’t want to look at his face but she did anyway. What she saw there terrified her. His right cheek and part of his jaw had been torn off. The red flesh that hung off his face appeared to contain bite marks, like that of a dog.
Simon rushed past her and out into the hall, making her flinch. She’d been so transfixed by the bodies that she hadn’t even seen him coming. She heard him run up the stairs and knock on Jess’s door. The girl’s sobbing grew louder for a moment then quieter again as he went inside.
Switch was sitting on a sofa by the window, looking out. Paul was outside somewhere. Marta wrinkled her nose. The smell of blood shared airspace with feces and urine; as their muscles relaxed and their body systems stopped working the dead tended to vacate their bowels.
‘The blood’s not even dry,’ Switch said quietly. ‘Whatever did this might still be around. Holy shit, this is nasty.’
‘Whoever did this.’
Switch raised an eyebrow. ‘Come on, Marta. You know what was here, same as me.’
Marta closed her eyes. ‘I can’t think about that. I just don’t want to think about it.’
‘Her parents are dead because of us. Because of what we saw. If she’s right about that murdered guy being an Ambassador, then we’re wanted right now. We call the police, they’ll fucking take us in. If we don’t call the police, we’ll get tracked down and ripped up into dog meat like this.’
Marta went to the sofa and sat down next to Switch. She leaned close to him, and felt his hand go over hers. She looked at him but his eyes were on the bodies. In his other hand he held Dreggo’s throwing knife, his only comfort. She noticed a slight sheen in his eyes that on any other occasion would have surprised her but as her own choking despair welled up again she realised that some situations went to a new level, sucking even the hardest of people into the darkness.
‘I don’t want to die, Switch,’ she said, in a soft voice. ‘I don’t want to end up like that.’
He nodded. ‘Shit, no. We have to run. All of us. You know this was a Huntsman, yeah? You can see what those motherfuckers can do. They can track like bastards, too. It will find us unless we haul ass the fuck out of here right now.’
Marta closed her eyes. ‘And I thought the Cross Jumpers were bad.’
‘We need to wise up. In some ways we’re lucky it was a Huntsman. Those DCA chumps would have left a guard behind in case we came back. The Huntsmen don’t work like that. They’re tracking, killing machines. It followed her scent back here, found her parents. The scent was obviously similar enough to make it kill them, or else the Huntsman got pissed off about something.’
‘How did it get here, Switch? How did it do it?’
He looked at her, and she saw something there that surprised her: an unflinching graveness. When he spoke the sudden maturity in his voice was unnerving, as though the Switch she knew was gone forever, his body possessed by some long-dead military commander. ‘Huntsmen can follow a scent anywhere,’ he said. ‘Even one that’s weeks old or left by someone moving at speed. They have an enhanced sense of smell, partly animal, and partly computerized. They hunt day and night until they find what they want. Then they kill it.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I asked people, anyone I ever met who knew anything. I always figured the day would come when I might get into more trouble than petty crime. I killed a man today, and that wasn’t the first time. I always figured there might be a time when I’d have one of those hybrid pieces of shit come after me.’ He shrugged. ‘The only way to beat your enemies is to know them better than they know you.’
‘Where can we go? Where can we hide?’
‘We have to leave London.’
Marta stared at him. ‘That’s impossible. How?’
‘We’ll go down to St. Cannerwells, wait for one of the freight trains and ride it right out of London. I have an uncle in Bristol GUA who might help us. If he’s still alive. But we can’t waste time. We have to go tonight.’
‘Is it wise to go back to St. Cannerwells?’
�
��They’ll have found it by now, if they’ve sent a Huntsman. It’s the last place they’ll expect us to go back to. After all, it’s just an abandoned London Underground station. The DCA will assume we’ll head for the perimeter walls, try to find a way through the gates, but Huntsmen don’t work like normal police because they’re partly animal. They follow a trail and run down their prey. If we can keep ahead of them we’ll have a chance. St. Cannerwells, back at the start of our trail, could be the safest place for us.’ Then, as though to remind her of the man she knew so well, he added, ‘Fuck, this sucks ass.’
Marta sighed. Tears clung to her cheeks. ‘How can we escape from a Huntsman?’
‘From what I’ve heard of them, they’re kind of junk. They don’t work properly, keep fucking up and going haywire. We have to keep our eyes open, watch for them coming. Stay out in the open.’
‘What if it’s still here?’
Despite everything, Switch actually laughed. ‘The Huntsmen don’t do stealth, Marta, at least not that I heard. If one was here we would be fucking mincemeat by now.’
Paul stepped into the room, and Marta knew he’d been listening. His face was grey, his glasses steamed up. He’d been crying too, and there was a dried crust of saliva around his chin from where he’d been vomiting.
‘I have to find my brother,’ he said, voice stony. If a Huntsman really is after us like you say, I have to get to Owen before they follow my trail back to him. He might already be dead for all I know.’
Marta nodded. ‘We should split up, spread the trails and just hope they’ve only sent one. Go home, grab what you can and hope it’s not too late. We’ll meet in St. Cannerwells at midnight, and do what Switch says. Take the first train we can out of this shit fucking city.’
‘Jess won’t leave.’ Simon stood in the doorway.
‘She has to,’ Marta said.
Simon’s face was drawn, his words heavy on his tongue. ‘She says . . . she wants nothing to do with us. She blames us, she says she wants us all to leave, me included. I don’t know . . . don’t know what . . .’ he trailed off. As the others watched, he ran one hand through his hair and rubbed his face. Then he slid to the ground as though someone was sucking the air out of him from the bottom up.