The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

  As the train rolled on into the trees, Carl turned and walked a little way along the fence. It was lower here where the slope was steeper. It was to keep people off the tracks, that much was obvious, but here, with only his family’s house within a couple of miles, Carl thought it a little unnecessary. The trains were infrequent, just a handful each day and less at night, rumbling on towards Bristol GUA and back again towards London.

  He had borrowed a pair of his father’s wire clippers and cut a hole once. He had pushed his bicycle through and ridden along the tracks, all ten miles back to the perimeter wall. Movement over the gravel and sleepers had been sluggish but the weather had been fine and the ride enjoyable, until the hulking grey perimeter wall had risen up in front of him like the end of the world. Above it the sunshine had been sucked away while grey clouds rolled and toiled, trying, he had thought, to get out.

  Beneath it all, a dark tunnel had sloped down into the beast itself, breathing out cold, damp air that had made Carl shiver and put his discarded sweater back on. And there, from deep down in the dark, twin eyes had appeared, catching Carl in their stare. Rushing towards him with a roar like a rising storm, Carl had been able to leap out of the way only at the last second before the train rushed like a dragon out of the tunnel.

  Looking back from the side of the track where he had fallen, he had seen the mangled remains of his bicycle lying in the train’s wake. Unfixable, he had left it on the opposite tracks for the next beast to drag down into the earth, a burial of sorts.

  His parents hadn’t fallen for the story that his bike had been stolen. Crime was rare, and even a small thing such as that was treated seriously. His father had taken the belt to him in a bid to discover the truth, and Carl had almost given in and told him, his father quitting the assault perhaps two welts short of a confession. Still, rather than risk embarrassment in the local community his parents had glossed over it. Scapegoating one of the lower house servants or farm hands would have been possible, but they would still struggle to find a motive. After all, most roads were gravel these days and the bike had hardly been new.

  So now Carl just walked everywhere.

  Glancing up, he saw the sky was beginning to lighten, the sun to come up. He loved the mornings best, often hunting in the forest before school, but Mother would go mad if he was late for breakfast. He put the catapult into a belt bag and turned to head off. Just as he did, he heard a low moan coming from further along the tracks.

  He paused, hand reaching for the catapult, afraid it might be some boys from school come to ambush him, administer a beating. It had happened once before so he never traveled unarmed now. Although the catapult, like his air rifle, was little more than a way of distracting them long enough to give him a decent head start, he felt safer carrying it. He shuffled forwards, trying to see.

  The moaning came again. Carl felt sure it was a person this time, and whoever it was sounded hurt. He knew it could be a trap but doubted the boys from school would bother, especially at this time of the day. Most people just left him alone.

  ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ Carl moved forward a few more steps. There he saw, lying on the other side of the fence, leaning against it as though he’d been thrown there, a man.

  Carl sensed the man was badly hurt and hurried forward, leaning down. ‘Are you all right?’ he said through the fence. He couldn’t see the man’s face very well but he didn’t look that old after all, maybe in his early twenties, maybe the same age as some of the farm hands. Carl was sixteen but often felt younger; over twenty still made the injured person a man.

  ‘Jeh . . . Jes . . . Jess . . .’ he moaned. There was blood on his shirt around his shoulder, a large patch that stained the light blue fabric dark. Carl might have mistaken it for sweat except that it had dried hard, and had that distinctive smell he knew well from helping his father prepare meat for market.

  Carl tried again to talk to the man, but he appeared lost in delirium. Carl had no idea how long he’d been lying here, but if he was badly hurt there was a chance he could die.

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ Carl said, then turned and sprinted off into the trees.

  #

  Back at the house he found his father in the upstairs study, reading a book while the television flickered with the sound down in the corner behind him. A bowl with the milky dregs of cereal in its bottom waited on a table nearby.

  ‘Father, can you come with me please? I found a man in the forest. He’s hurt.’

  Roy Weston slammed the book shut and looked up. The grey shadow of stubble matched the colour of his cold eyes. He stared at Carl for a moment and then put the book aside in a slow, laboured movement. Carl knew it as the first sign of trouble, and stepped back out of range in case his father’s hands darted forward.

  ‘Please, I’m not playing games,’ he said, grasping for courage for the injured man’s sake. ‘He might die if we don’t get help for him soon.’

  ‘Heaven help you if you’re messing with me, boy,’ Weston growled, standing up, still a head taller than Carl, who had his mother’s lighter build and height. A thick chest looked ready to throw bombs, and Carl backed away across the room, fearing a storm. He had the door behind him, though, and would run if necessary. In the past, his father’s anger had often been diffused by time, though Carl had scars on his back as a reminder of the times it hadn’t.

  ‘I think he fell off the train. He’s inside the fence.’

  ‘Okay,’ his father said slowly. ‘We’ll go and see what you’ve found.’

  Downstairs, his father called a hand from the stables and instructed the man to bring some wood to fashion a makeshift stretcher if required, and some wire clippers to get through the fence. With Carl leading, the three men headed back down into the forest.

  ‘Carl, if this is some prank of yours there’ll be trouble,’ his father growled, stumbling over a root as they made their way through the ruined village and the irregularly angled trees.

  ‘It’s not! He’s just up here, not much further at all.’

  The man was still there, curled up by the fence. He wasn’t making any noise now, and Carl at first thought he had died. Leaning closer, though, he saw the low rise and fall of the man’s chest.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ his father exclaimed. ‘Where did he come from, then?’ Directing the stable hand, he said: ‘Okay, let’s get that fence open and get him up to the house.’

  The stable hand cut through the fence and they carefully lifted the man’s body on to it. The hand then took the front of the stretcher, Carl and his father the back. It was nearly a mile back to the house and they had to stop to rest several times. When they finally got back they waited in the kitchen while Carl’s mother and Jeanette, clucking loudly, as Weston would have put it, prepared a room on the third floor.

  Carl’s mother insisted on old sheets being put on the bed before they laid him down, despite Jeanette’s protests to the contrary. Carl believed his father would have agreed with the housekeeper, but despite his temper and liberal use of corporal punishment, in the house Carl’s mother ruled, and so the unconscious man was laid on the floor while the bedclothes were replaced. Meanwhile, Weston dispatched the stable hand downstairs to call for a doctor.

  Jeanette, with no children of her own, quickly took charge of tending to the man’s wounds. With Carl’s father’s help she stripped him down and began to mop away the dried blood that stained his skin almost to his waist. Carl’s mother held a hand over her mouth at the sight of the wound itself.

  ‘Goodness, what is that?’ she exclaimed, and they all peered closer to make some sense of the object imbedded into the man’s right shoulder.

  ‘Some kind of knife?’ Carl ventured.

  ‘Looks more like a thick tent peg,’ said his father. Then, in a poor attempt to make a joke, he added, ‘He have a bloody camping accident or something?’ No one laughed.

  Jeanette, who had spent most of her life in a kitchen, said: ‘It’s like a metal chopstick, but it’s too t
hick. I’d say it’s a bolt of some kind.’

  ‘Well, don’t touch it until the doctor comes,’ Carl’s father said, and went to the door. Leaning out, he shouted down to the stable hand to tell the doctor to bring his surgical equipment.

  A while later, with the stable hand dispatched back to his duties in the yard and Carl’s mother gone to an engagement with friends, Carl, Roy Weston, and Jeanette stood and watched while the doctor, Rhodes, did his work.

  ‘Weston, on my advice, this lad should go to hospital for care,’ Dr. Rhodes, a gruff, bearded fellow in his late fifties, told Carl’s father. ‘He’s lucky, that’s for sure. The injury is bad, but not life-threatening unless it gets infected. He’s also sprained his ankle, but I’ve splinted it and he should be able to limp about in a few days.’ He turned and pointed to a drip bag suspended from a metal frame which the doctor had rigged up to the bed. A plastic tube disappeared into the man’s arm just below the elbow, the insert covered with a plaster. ‘Refill this with the solution I gave you every two hours. He’s been out there for ten or twelve hours, I’d think, got a touch of dehydration. And give him those tablets, two after each meal for two weeks. I still think he should go to hospital, though.’

  ‘The nearest hospital’s fifty miles, Rhodes,’ Weston said, dismissing it as though it were a stupid idea. ‘Over these goddamn roads that’s a three-hour bloody journey in the car. At least.’

  Carl knew his father was right, but also thought that the real reason was so his father could keep an eye on the man. After all, no one came out of the cities, and if he had been thrown from the train as was how it looked, he surely wasn’t a very savory character. Other people might want him as far away as possible, but Weston, who had made his fortune in his youth as a cruiserweight boxer, had an unusual fascination with the folly and misfortune of others. And if it turned out the man was a fugitive, Weston would be certain to want his reward.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Weston said. ‘I’ll see to it that Jeanette gives the boy the correct doses as and when necessary.’

  Rhodes held up the metal bolt and grunted. ‘Where the hell did he get that, I wonder? Where did you say you found him?’

  ‘In the woods,’ Weston said. He made no mention of the train tracks. ‘I don’t know him, so maybe he’s not from round here.’

  ‘I should say so,’ Rhodes grunted. ‘From a neighbouring farm, perhaps? You positive you don’t want the police involved, Weston? Boy could be a fugitive.’

  ‘Papers have nothing,’ Carl’s father replied. ‘We’d know if someone was on the run. Most likely a bunch of boys were playing bow and arrow.’

  Rhodes shook his head, a wry grin on his grizzled old face. He put the metal bolt, cleaned of blood now, down on a bedside table. ‘Where those boys got a goddamn crossbow from is anyone’s guess.’

  After Dr. Rhodes had left, Carl’s father took Carl down into the kitchen. ‘What have I told you?’ he said, pushing Carl’s shoulder. ‘Keep away from the damn train lines! You have no idea who that kid could be! He could be, I don’t know, a bloody spy?’

  ‘Who from? Who would spy on us?’

  Too late to take back his insolence, his father cracked him around the side of the head with the inside of his clenched fist, making Carl’s ears ring and his vision momentarily blur. ‘Don’t talk back to me, boy,’ he growled, and Carl shrunk back, aware just how weak he was in comparison. A couple more years of filling out and he might be capable of fighting back, but his father was still too lean and the memories of a strict childhood were still too close.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, looking at the floor.

  ‘I don’t want you playing near the tracks again, do you understand me?’ Carl’s father poked a finger into Carl’s chest as though to ram home the point.

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Good.’

  Weston stalked off. Carl was left to wonder about the man upstairs. Who was he? Had he fallen from the train, or had he been pushed? Carl had watched the trains many times, from outside the fence, from the branches of nearby trees, from the platform of the old station itself. They didn’t have windows, of that he was sure. They were cargo trains; they didn’t carry passengers. And the man upstairs certainly wasn’t dressed in anything that could be considered a worker’s uniform. So who was he? Where had he come from?

  Carl could guess some of the answers at least. He’d come from inside London GUA. But London was closed up, people didn’t go in without a permit and people certainly never came out, not dressed like the man was and covered in blood. He was running from something, Carl was sure, but from what he couldn’t even guess. All he knew was that the metal thing that Rhodes had taken from the man’s side had come from the weapon of someone who had got very, very close to their target.

  Despite everything, Carl found himself smiling. The intrusion of the man into his life was a spark of excitement in a world of boredom barely sustained by his imagination and his adventures amongst the ruins in the forest. The man was a stranger, and a mysterious one at that. Carl could only guess at the stories the man had to tell, but he sure as hell planned to find out as many of them as he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Newborn

  What remained of Dreggo lay upon the cold metal operating table in the middle of the science laboratory. A group of technicians and doctors huddled around her, working hard to repair the damage, both physiological and mechanical. As Leland Clayton entered, his nostrils filled with the scents of formaldehyde, ferrous steel and blood, while the low hum of generators, the clack of needles, and the buzz of drills hung in the air around him.

  A poor night’s sleep had followed several hours of cleaning up the mess he had found in St. Cannerwells. Adam Vincent had been treated at a government hospital, and the families of the dead men had been notified. Not for the first time, Clayton cursed the decay that had set in over the land; getting the simplest of tasks done often proved a major headache. The Department of Civil Affairs, while brutal and unflinching in the face of duty, was a failing organization, fallen into stagnation after too many years of personnel and budget reductions. Even the men were suffering; below the higher levels of the organization the training was inefficient, and many of his men were less than useful in a fire fight. Vincent was a prime example of how worthless, backstabbing idiots could now rise up into the higher echelons of the department when fifteen years ago they would not have been allowed in. The future was bleak too; new recruit numbers were falling, with many of the agents he needed to put trust in little more than thugs dressed up in silks.

  As Clayton grimaced at the smell and took in the sight of the girl’s ruined body, he couldn’t help pulling the phone from his pocket and glancing quickly at the display. He was waiting for a call from Bristol GUA regarding the arrival of the Tube Riders. He had fully expected them to jump the train at the earliest opportunity and try to hide among London’s slums, and he had wasted valuable hours having his men check stations further down the line. The Huntsmen, though, had come back with the information that the Tube Riders had ridden right out of the city, hanging from the train as it exited under the perimeter wall from one of the sewer-like tunnels. Where they were now was anyone’s guess, and while he would have liked to have followed them immediately he dared not go above the Governor. They had a meeting later today, but the Governor was holed up in meetings all morning regarding the staged assassination of the EC Ambassador by so-called terrorists. Clayton couldn’t help but think that a noose was tightening around Mega Britain’s diseased neck.

  At the head of the operating table stood Dr. Karmski, rubbing his chin with one gloved hand while he watched his team work. Clayton noticed an unnatural level of concern on the face of the usually sadistic doctor. He looked like a father overseeing an operation on his own child.

  Clayton looked down at Dreggo’s body. Half her face had been torn away and there were deep lacerations all down the front of her torso, but he could still see she had once been a woman. Not
a normal one, though; metal inserts were evident in her arms and legs, as well as what looked like some kind of plastic body-frame, now scored with deep claw marks. Clayton wondered whether, had it been absent, there would be much of her left.

  ‘So,’ he began, trying to sound authoritative. ‘Where exactly did it come from?’

  ‘Her, Mr. Clayton. Not “it”, if you please.’

  Clayton scowled. ‘Her, whatever. It’s a Huntsman, I presume?’

  Karmski smiled. When he spoke, his voice was almost wistful, as though he were speaking to no one but himself. ‘She was the first of a new breed.’

  Clayton opened his mouth to reply, but Karmski continued, ‘She’s been gone over a year. At the expense of her tracking skills we left her more human. With it she kept her beauty.’

  ‘Okay, Karmski, enough of your crackpot perversity. Can you fix her or not, and if so, what good is she to us?’

  Karmski smiled. ‘Fixing her is easy. We can make her stronger, we can make her better. Mr. Vincent claimed she knew those others, the ones you hunt. As requested we are readying more Huntsmen for release, but these others . . . some of them are . . . flawed. Barely controllable. Yet, she . . . my Dreggo, she is one of them and also one of us. She can lead them.’