The Tube Riders

by Chris Ward

  Clayton looked up into the Governor’s eyes as the iron grip tightened, and in the seconds before blackness claimed him forever, he stared deep into those dark red eyes, and was sure he could see the face of the devil himself there. The devil appeared to be laughing.

  Clayton smiled back.

  #

  Marta had run a couple of streets when she heard someone shouting her name. Turning, she saw Ishael running towards her. She fell into his arms, crying.

  ‘Thank God,’ he gasped. ‘Quickly, you have to go. There’s a car.’

  Marta couldn’t speak. Her throat felt dry and cracked, and no words would come. Ishael kissed her forehead and dragged her after him. A couple of minutes later they turned a corner and found a car waiting in front of them, its engine idling. In the back were Carl, Owen and Jess. Paul sat at the wheel. Jin stood beside the open front passenger door, with the woman Marta remembered as Lucy next to him.

  Ishael didn’t say a word as he pushed her inside and shut the door. The window had been broken, so Ishael leaned down and kissed her quickly on the lips. ‘I love you, Marta Tube Rider,’ he said.

  ‘They took my brother, don’t you leave me too!’ she cried, finding her voice at last. She tried to hold on to his arm, but Paul pulled her back.

  ‘Marta, we have to finish this!’

  ‘You have to go now,’ Jin said. ‘The Huntsmen are all here. The tunnel entrance is clear.’

  ‘Ishael!’

  He pulled her hand off his arm. ‘I’ll see you very soon,’ he said. ‘In a better place.’

  Marta felt Jess’s arms around her shoulders as Paul steered the car away. From the back she could hear both Carl and Owen sobbing. Through the window, she saw Ishael standing beside Jin and Lucy, his arm raised. Then they turned out of sight.

  She tried to stop herself from crying, but she couldn’t. Tears rolled down her cheeks, cutting little channels in the grime and blood.

  #

  Dreggo opened her eyes to see the Governor’s bloody face leaning over her. His shirt, too, was soaked with blood, and had a burn hole near the shoulder.

  He reached out to pull her up.

  For a moment she couldn’t stand, but the Governor held her steady.

  ‘My Dreggo,’ he said, his rumbling voice containing a hint of sadness. ‘What has he done to you?’

  Dreggo looked down at herself. Parts of her clothing had been torn away, and the skin of her legs and chest bubbled with burn blisters. When she reached up to touch her face her skin was damp with blood and pus. Her whole body shook. She could still feel the shocks of pain coursing through her, and her vision seemed to flicker, as though her mind were switching on and off.

  Clayton’s bloodied body lay not far away. Beyond him was the body of a Huntsman, Lyen. Two others lay nearby.

  Things started to come back to her in flashes.

  ‘We have to go,’ the Governor said. ‘This finishes tonight.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Last Stand

  Switch heard the vehicle before he saw it and ducked out of sight, expecting it to signal the return of Clayton’s men. Instead, an unfamiliar car bumped into the clearing and skidded to a halt just short of the warehouse doors. Switch recognised Paul at the wheel, and he hesitated only a second before dashing from cover, shouting the names of his friends as he ran.

  Someone cried out in alarm and he saw a gun barrel appear at the rear window. He dived to the right as the gun went off, the muzzle flaring bright in the darkness. Rolling back to his feet, he remembered he was still caked head to toe in someone else’s blood.

  ‘It’s me, you idiots! It’s Switch!’ he hollered.

  Someone else pushed the gun barrel aside as it roared again, but this time the bullet embedded itself harmlessly into the ground.

  ‘Sorry!’ Owen shouted. ‘Can’t be too careful what with all these monsters about!’

  Switch smiled, recognizing Owen’s voice, and was unable to suppress a grin. The boy was like a twelve-year-old version of himself. Had he been behind the gun, faced with some screaming, blood-soaked man, he would have fired three times.

  Paul climbed out of the car. ‘God, it’s good to see you again.’

  ‘And you,’ Switch replied. ‘What happened down there?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘It’s difficult to explain . . . just carnage. Complete and utter carnage. Reeder is dead. Ishael stayed behind. One of the Huntsmen was Marta’s brother –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Sounds it. The Governor, Dreggo and the Huntsmen?’

  ‘Still in the village when we got away.’

  ‘Good, that gives us time.’

  ‘Switch!’ Marta shouted from of the car. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Never better, apart from the fucking smell. You need to hurry. You might have a head start now but it won’t last long. The tunnel entrance is inside the warehouse. You need to take the car down into the tunnel and start driving.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll be right behind you. I have work to do before they get here. To cover our backs, make sure they can’t follow. Just trust me, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t leave us!’

  ‘I’ll be right behind you. Unfortunately, so will the Huntsmen if I don’t cover our asses.’ He slapped Paul on the back. ‘Get in the car. I’ll get the doors open.’

  As Switch reached the warehouse doors and flung them open, he heard the first howling from behind him. He shook his head. God, they were relentless.

  After killing the guards, he had made sure the lights were still on, and then disabled the switches to make sure there was no way they could be turned off. He’d faced the Huntsmen in dark tunnels once before, and he had no intention of doing it again.

  As Paul drove the car through the opening, Switch lifted a hand to wave. Once again, he thought, it might be the last time, but for their sakes he hoped it wasn’t. If they didn’t see him again, they would all be dead.

  The car disappeared out of sight down the entrance ramp. Switch counted the seconds in his head. He had got up to around two hundred before he heard the sound of vehicles approaching. He ducked back into the nearest trees as a truck pulled into the clearing. Just one now, he observed. The battle had taken its toll on them, too, it seemed.

  The truck paused just long enough for the driver to see that the warehouse doors were open. Switch thought the Governor was driving, but it was difficult to be sure. The truck moved on inside, cautiously, as though expecting a trap.

  Good, he thought. Give the others a little more time to get a head start. Every second helps.

  Switch waited a few seconds before stepping out of the trees. He was about to head for the tunnel entrance when he heard movement behind him. He turned to see several Huntsmen burst out of the trees, sprinting for the warehouse entrance, cowls pulled over their faces and crossbows ready in their hands.

  Switch dived to the floor as death raced passed him, aware that any one of them might spot him and bring the whole wraithlike group his way. He would have no chance; you only got so many lives, after all. But they didn’t, his bloody disguise still holding true as they raced after the truck and down into the tunnel, moving at speeds unnatural for any normal human. He counted ten, the last of their host.

  He lay on the grass, holding his breath, until a couple of minutes had passed. No other Huntsmen came.

  Hoping his luck would hold just a little longer, Switch climbed to his feet and went into the tunnel.

  #

  Paul pushed the car hard as it bumped along the uneven tunnel floor. In the back seat, Owen and Carl had their guns pointing out through the broken glass of the rear windscreen. Jess sat on the left, directly behind Marta. Paul couldn’t hear what Jess was saying as she leaned forward, but Marta had calmed down since the flight from the village. Paul had never seen her so upset before, as though the events of the past few days had finally broken her. Jess, on the other
hand, seemed to have pulled through losing Simon and was growing in strength.

  The immense tunnel stretched away ahead of them. Paul took a path along the left side, because the centre was covered with dusty tarps and wooden boards, as though the floor had never been finished. Even along the side he constantly had to steer round outcrops of rock both from the walls and the floor, as though the drilling equipment had failed to break through some harder seams.

  For the first couple of miles the tunnel angled gradually downward before leveling out. The ceiling got lower and the walls closed in, but even after they had been driving for twenty minutes it was still fifty feet above their heads.

  ‘Can you see France yet?’ Owen shouted.

  ‘Not yet! About another half an hour!’

  ‘I’m hungry. Order me a baguette at the first café we get to!’

  ‘Will do,’ Paul said. His brother’s voice had taken on a slightly hysterical air, and Paul knew Owen was making a conscious effort to keep up the humour. If Owen let the events of the last couple of days get to him it might simply fry his mind. While Paul didn’t share his brother’s forced enthusiasm, he did feel like a weight had come off his chest for the first time in years. Almost there . . .

  The tunnel meandered gently back and forth. Paul could always see a mile or so ahead. ‘Any sign of pursuit?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. Whatever Switch did, it looks like he did a good job,’ Owen said.

  Paul nodded. Switch. He hoped his friend made it. He wouldn’t mind sitting in a café in France with him, sharing a few stories. Talking about their adventures –

  Paul’s blood went cold. His mouth dropped open and he stared, disbelieving.

  ‘Is that . . . what I think it is?’ Marta gasped from the passenger seat.

  ‘I don’t . . . I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘It’s blocked!’ Jess shouted. ‘They were wrong. They were all wrong. It’s not finished at all!’

  ‘He lied to me,’ Marta said. ‘He told me it was finished!’

  Paul slowed the car. Ahead of them they saw what they’d been dreading, the only thing that could possibly stand between them and safety.

  An impassable wall of grey rock.

  The tunnel ended abruptly. The construction work continued right up to the rock wall, the boards on the floor, and the piles of old scaffolding over on the far side. The rock face rose sheer out of the earth, stretching high over them to where it joined the ceiling above.

  ‘Here they come!’ Carl shouted, his voice breaking up. Paul thought he might be crying.

  Paul stopped the car a short distance from the end of the tunnel. His heart felt as heavy as lead. His legs sagged as he climbed out and looked back, seeing a black car bouncing along the tunnel floor towards them. He had never faced his own death so comprehensively before, and the way it made him feel was stunning, the most hollow, empty, helpless feeling he’d ever experienced.

  ‘Paul, get yourself together,’ Owen said beside him. ‘If this is it, we die like men, yeah? Not cowards.’

  Paul looked at his brother, and his heart burned with love for him. He put an arm around Owen’s shoulders and pulled him close. ‘I –’

  ‘Don’t fucking say it,’ Owen said, grinning. ‘Jesus Christ, what kind of a pussy are you? We’ve got fighting to do.’

  Paul started to laugh. A moment later Carl joined in. Within seconds they were all laughing, even Jess, united in their helplessness, but still, at the end, together.

  Marta took a deep breath. From her face Paul could see she was swallowing down hysteria and trying to stand tall as their leader.

  ‘Get behind the car,’ she said. ‘Here we make our last stand. The Tube Riders.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll write books about us,’ Owen quipped.

  ‘A stage play,’ Carl said, his voice trembling.

  ‘Whoever plays Paul will be a woman in drag,’ Owen said.

  ‘And whoever plays you will be a girl in a pink dress,’ Paul said.

  Owen raised an eyebrow. ‘Man, you suck at retorts.’ He grinned insanely. ‘Come on, let’s kill monsters!’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Yeah!’ A cheer went up from the others. Owen and Carl took up positions behind the car. Jess handed out knives to Paul and Marta, who pulled her pepper spray out of a pocket in her shirt, wondering if she would finally get a chance to use it.

  About fifty yards away, the car stopped. The engine cut off, and the doors opened. The Governor climbed out of one side, Dreggo from the other. Paul noticed that the human half of the girl’s face was all burned up. Beside him, he felt Marta tense.

  ‘I thought she was dead,’ Marta said. She turned to him. ‘Give me the gun, Paul. Give me the gun!’

  ‘Wait, just wait a minute.’

  ‘Now!’

  ‘Grab her, Carl.’

  Carl wrapped his arms around Marta as she tried to struggle free. Behind the car, Paul saw shadowy figures approaching down the tunnel. The last of the Huntsmen. He counted ten in all.

  Carl had managed to calm Marta enough to keep her quiet. Paul glanced up over the bonnet of the car just long enough to see the Governor take a couple of steps forward. Paul had seen him briefly from a distance during the Governor’s battle with the Redman, but now, seeing him up close, he felt overawed. This was the man who had built the perimeter walls, this was the man who had separated Britain up into sections and given the country a new name. This was the man in whose name the Department of Civil Affairs rounded up supposed dissidents and left them to rot in government cells. This was the man whose spacecraft crashed and burned into the streets of London, the man on whose hands was the blood of so many.

  This was their leader.

  Either the Governor didn’t know they had guns, or he didn’t care, because he had no cover. He spread his arms like a priest addressing a congregation.

  ‘Give up, Tube Riders,’ he shouted. ‘It’s over.’ Behind him, the last Huntsmen assembled behind Dreggo. With her consortium of wraiths the girl looked like the Gatekeeper of Hell itself.

  ‘We will spare your lives, if you give up without a fight,’ the Governor continued. ‘You have something that we want, that’s all. Standing your ground now is futile. You cannot escape, but you can die. And you will die if you try to fight, I can assure you of that.’

  Paul glanced at the others, but it was Jess who stood up, in plain view. ‘One day, you’ll get what you deserve!’ she shouted. ‘For everything you’ve done wrong, for everyone who you’ve killed and who has died in your name. You will see justice, you fucking ugly, milk-faced freak –’

  The Governor started to open his mouth, but confusion suddenly spread over his face. He looked from side to side, frowning, as though searching for something. It took Paul a moment to realise what it was, for at first it was something so familiar to him that he hadn’t even noticed it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Marta said. ‘Look!’

  Behind them, back up the tunnel, two huge headlights appeared, accompanied by a roaring, ocean of sound. It was a sound they all knew, one they had waited for a thousand times.

  A train.

  It rushed towards them down the centre of the tunnel, pushing a wave of splintering wood and flapping tarpaulin in front of it. Paul suddenly understood the mess in the centre of the tunnel: it had covered rails, rails that this monstrous, ancient freight train was now uncovering as it roared towards them, munching up the ground in front of it.

  ‘It’s going to crash!’ Jess shouted, but Carl, a sudden realization dawning in his face, picked a chunk of broken masonry off the floor, turned, and hurled it at the rock face behind them. It hit with a small thud, releasing a puff of dust and leaving behind a small crater in what they had assumed was a wall of rock.

  ‘Look! It’s fake!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not rock at all. It’s plaster!’

  Paul felt like someone had taken a foot off his chest. ‘Switch is in the train, he has to be! He knew all along! Get ready!’

 
Back up the tunnel, Dreggo screamed, ‘Kill them!’ and the Huntsmen surged forward. Marta, Paul, Jess, and Owen grabbed their clawboards as the beasts closed the gap between them, still fearsome but looking so, so tiny as the train bore down on them all.

  ‘Tube Riders, get ready to ride!’ Marta shouted.

  As the train reached them, Marta, Jess and Owen dashed forward towards the tracks. The Huntsmen turned in their attack to try to cut them off but it was too late; all three leapt forward and caught on to the wooden slats on the side of a cargo car.

  Paul looked back. ‘Carl!’

  In their panic they had forgotten the boy had no clawboard, Paul realised. After all he had done for them Paul would not let him be left behind, but when his eyes searched for the boy he saw Carl had taken the last of their guns and had turned to face the oncoming host.

  ‘This is for my father!’ Carl shouted, raking them with bullets, the recoil causing his body to judder. Behind the Huntsmen, Paul saw Dreggo and the Governor dived for cover. Several of the Huntsmen fell away, wounded. Others came on, crossbows rising. As the gun spat out its last bullets, Carl threw it aside and pulled a knife from his belt. ‘Come on!’ he screamed.

  Paul had seen too many people die; he wasn’t about to watch Carl join them. He grabbed the boy’s arm and swung him around, pulled him towards the train. He held out his clawboard, offering one strap to Carl.

  ‘With me!’ he shouted, starting to run, pulling Carl after him. ‘When I say, you jump for your life, Carl!’

  Ahead, the front of the train smashed into the fake rock wall with a deafening crash, sending chunks of plaster raining down on the roof of the cab.

  ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . jump!’ Paul shouted, and then together they leapt, the clawboard between them.

  The metal hook caught on a wooden slat of the passing freight car. Paul slammed against the side of the train. He was terrified the wood would break under their combined weight, and his feet scrabbled for a ledge somewhere. Beside him, Carl had found a hold with his free hand, and was struggling to find purchase for his feet. He glanced across at Paul, and flashed a smile. As Paul smiled back, he could only think how he wished Switch could have seen them.