The City of Fear

by Andrew Beasley

  Jonas felt his marrow turn to ice. It was the voice of Mr. Sweet, addressing them through a speaking trumpet.

  “Have you forgotten my promise…? Attack my city and your queen shall die.”

  There was a collective intake of breath from the soldiers at the mention of Her Majesty.

  “Throw down your guns immediately or I shall give the order to my executioner. One, two, three…”

  Reluctant orders rang out down the line. “Ceasefire!”

  Jeers went up from the Legionnaires on the Wall, filled with cruel obscenities.

  Jonas made to cover Molly’s ears but the girl was gone.

  “Molly!” he called. “Where are you?”

  “I’m out here,” Molly replied. “Clover ran off and I went to get him.”

  She had crawled out through the hole in the wall, Jonas realized. The girl had wandered into the death zone.

  “Stay there,” said Jonas firmly. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Conscious that the Legion might shoot them any time they chose, Jonas got down on his hands and knees and climbed out after Molly. His heart was racing. Sweet’s men had littered the death zone with traps; they were both risking their lives for the sake of a dog.

  “I’ve found him!” Molly called. She looked delighted in spite of the fact that she was drenched to the skin again.

  Jonas made his way across the rubble towards her. She was a full twenty feet away, standing absolutely exposed on the ruins of another house.

  Suddenly, the expression on Molly’s face went from joy to terror.

  “I think I’ve done something wrong,” she said softly.

  “It’s alright, Molly,” Jonas reassured her. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “I am,” said Molly. “I stood on something and now it’s going tick, tick, tick…”

  Ben fell. The naked blast of exploding fuel drums washed over him, a hot wave that sent him sprawling. Moon and Lucy’s distraction had worked all too well – the fire from the initial oil tank explosions had spread across the yard, igniting everything it touched. Ben threw his hands out to save himself, but he wasn’t quick enough to stop his forehead from slamming into the ground. Dazed, Ben climbed back onto his feet. He was distantly aware that his hands must be bleeding but he didn’t feel the pain. He stumbled another ten yards, then another fuel drum went up and Ben fell again, the heat of the explosion washing over his body even through the cold rain. His ears were ringing, a single piercing note which blocked out all the chaos of the night. Ben stood up one more time and felt the depot yard spin drunkenly around him. His vision started to blur…

  The Liberator. Pa. Molly. Going up in flames…

  Images kept hitting Ben’s mind, like a boxer hammering at a punchbag, leaving him numb.

  Ghost. Moon. Lucy. Captured by the Feathered Men…

  Ben shook his head vigorously, sending droplets of water flying, as he tried to regain his senses.

  “Over here, Ben!” A voice cut through the clamour. At first Ben couldn’t locate where it was coming from, then he spotted a figure with a claw for a hand, beckoning him with urgency. Carter was waiting for him in the shadows with Nathaniel and Valentine. Ben lurched towards them, his feet skidding on the gravel. With every step he heard the hungry howling of the Feathered Men in the distance, getting closer all the time. He was about to fall again when a hand clutched his arm hard enough to make him wince.

  “Come on, boy. We need to run!” hissed Carter. “You’re the Hand. If you fall, we all fall.”

  It was the truth and Ben knew it.

  At that instant the scarlet eye of a signal flare winked open in the sky. It was the sign that Ben had been praying for. Pa made it!

  With that rush of relief, Ben found new reserves of energy. The hole in the fence where they broke into the yard was just ahead and he burst into a sprint towards it. They needed to get through the wire and away from the Feathered Men that were already bounding across the yard and would soon be snapping at their heels.

  Ben pushed Valentine and Nathaniel through the hole first, then burrowed after them, the barbs of the wire snagging at him. Carter brought up the rear.

  “I’ve brought a little something to throw our feathered followers off the scent,” said the professor, pulling hunks of raw meat from his pack and tossing them to the ground. “It’s poisoned, of course,” he grinned. “There’s enough sedative there to knock out a bull elephant mid-charge.”

  Over his shoulder, Ben caught a glimpse of the Feathered Men tearing into the slabs of flesh.

  That could have been me, Ben thought.

  The four Watchers ran for their lives.

  Beyond exhaustion, beyond pain, by twists and turns, bedraggled and bedevilled, the Watchers somehow managed to put some distance between themselves and the Legionnaires, who were still struggling to drag the Feathered Men away from their tainted feast.

  “Lucy…” Ben gasped in between ragged breaths. “Ghost… Moon… Did you see where the Feathered Men took them?”

  “They flew in the direction of St. James’s Park,”said Carter.

  “Oh no.” Nathaniel’s words came out as a low moan. “That means…”

  “The detention camp,” said Ben. A place of misery and pain. “We have to rescue them!” He almost shouted the words.

  “Naturally,” said Valentine, “but can we see about getting ourselves out of this scrape first?”

  “Which way?” asked Nathaniel as they reached a crossroads. Every second that they spent out in the open was perilous. All it would take was one pair of beady eyes… “Any ideas?”

  “This way,” said Ben, leading them west down Marylebone Road. “I know a place. There’s a loose window round the back. We can shelter there.”

  “Are we going where I think we’re going?” said Valentine.

  With a certain amount of pride Ben took them round the back of a forbidding building and presented the window. He flexed his fingers with a flourish, put them to the wooden frame and pushed. Nothing happened. Embarrassment flushed his face. He tried again, applying more force this time.

  “I think it must have been mended,” he said eventually. “It opened alright last time.”

  “Let me,” said Carter, stepping forward. From one of the pockets of his long leather coat he withdrew an oddly shaped piece of rubber, which he then proceeded to lick. “Watch and learn,” said Carter, pushing the suction cup against the pane until it stuck fast. He held the rubber with his good hand and then, using the tip of his claw, traced a circle on the glass. Carter pulled and, with a rasping sound, the glass came free. Then he reached in, flicked the clasp and drew the window wide. “Let’s get inside,” he said. “We’ve lost them for now, but they’ll keep looking for us.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Ben.

  “If I were still in the Legion, I wouldn’t stop until you were dead,” Carter replied.

  There wasn’t much that Ben could add to that.

  “We’ll have to go carefully,” he said when they had all clambered inside. “There’s probably a night watchman doing his rounds.”

  “If there is, I bet he’s asleep,” said Nathaniel. “I don’t have much good to say about the Legion, but the curfew pretty much guarantees that even the criminals stay off the streets at night, at least if they know what’s good for them.”

  “We’ll have a quick look-see anyway, make sure there’s no one around,” said Ben. “Then we can make our plans. We have to break the others out of the detention camp, they’re vital to Revolution Day.” And to me.

  Ben lit the stump of candle he always had hidden in his pack. They had only turned one corner when the light fell on a figure standing sentry.

  Treading carefully so that his wet boots didn’t squeak on the tiled floor, Ben approached, moving closer until his candle was level with the man’s unmoving face.

  “Blimey,” said Ben. “Ugly geezer, ain’t he?”

  “Steady on,” warned Valentine. “Keep your voic
e down.”

  “He can’t hear us,” said Ben, rapping his knuckles on the man’s forehead. “He’s made of wax.”

  “I know,” said Valentine through gritted teeth. “We’re in Madame Tussaud’s, everything is made of wax, but…let’s go quietly anyway. Discretion is the better part of valour, and all that.”

  Silently they trooped down the hallway. It was an unnerving experience to be surrounded on all sides by lifelike figures, frozen in time. As they passed, the light from Ben’s candle reflected in a dozen glass eyes and he couldn’t shift the feeling that there was dark intelligence lurking behind their unmoving features.

  He had felt so pleased with himself when he brought his friends here, but it was starting to feel like a mistake. Like so much that had been pleasurable in London before Sweet rose to power, all the joy, all the beauty, had been stripped away. When Ben had sneaked in before he had been delighted to see the statues of the great and the good. There had been waxworks of noble men like George Washington and Benjamin Disraeli. Ben remembered standing in front of Napoleon and giving the Frenchman a two-fingered salute. He had stared at Queen Victoria for a full five minutes, imagining himself knighted by Her Majesty for services to the realm. He had smiled himself silly at the likenesses of the actress Ellen Tree and the singer Jenny Lind, the so-called “Swedish Nightingale”.

  There had been one room that made the ladies shriek: the Chamber of Horrors. Bloodthirsty stuff it had been too. Victims of the French Revolution. Heads in baskets. Executioners with axes. Ben had played the big man, but he hadn’t lingered. The waxworks really were uncannily realistic.

  But the museum they were now touring in the dark seemed like one big Chamber of Horrors. In line with Mr. Sweet’s terrifying new reign, Madame Tussaud’s had been entirely devoted to London’s new fashion for the grotesque. Here the monstrous was celebrated and murderers idolized. Ben felt himself go cold as they walked the gauntlet of inanimate killers. Then they turned a corner and he saw that the worst horror had been saved until last.

  “I shouldn’t have brought us here,” said Ben, unable to drag himself away from the appalling diorama.

  He felt an arm around his shoulder. “Come on,” said Nathaniel, with a sudden tenderness. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Each statue in the museum, each scene, had a small plaque so that the visitor knew what they were looking at. The sign beneath these figures read simply: The End of the Watchers.

  Ben would have recognized these characters even without it. One of them was him. The face wasn’t right, but the ginger hair was spot on. Beside him was a girl, with an eyepatch and honey-coloured hair. Next in line was an old man with a fierce expression and white marbles for eyes.

  There was no mistaking those heads.

  Ben couldn’t comment on the bodies, because these heads were on sticks.

  And standing over them was a huge Feathered Man.

  “We need to get out of here, and get out now,” said Carter.

  “I’m alright,” said Ben.

  “You’re not the reason,” said Carter.

  The Feathered Man blinked.

  Ben reacted too slowly, his own gaze still fixed on Lucy’s wax head.

  The Feathered Man lunged forward with a shriek, its beak wide. Fortunately, Nathaniel still had his wits about him. He grabbed the back of Ben’s collar and yanked his brother out of the path of those deadly jaws. Ben and Nathaniel both went sprawling and the Feathered Man’s beak closed on empty air with a bone-snapping clack!

  Carter dived forwards, putting himself between the foul creature and the young Watchers. The two circled each other warily, the fallen angel hissing. The Feathered Man spread its huge wings in a display of savage authority, sending the wax statues tumbling in the process, the heads rolling across the floor. Then it opened its mouth and gave a scream full of fury and hate.

  An ordinary man would have turned and run in the face of such pure anger and vicious intent. Claw Carter, however, chose that instant to jump closer to the creature. Before the Feathered Man could react, Carter had it in a neck-lock and wrestled it to the ground, as if he was a cowboy taming a wild bull. The Feathered Man struggled, fighting back with all of its sinuous strength. But Carter’s grip only tightened, starving the creature of air and sending a tremulous vibration through its great wings. Carter was unrelenting. Without loosening his vice-like hold, Carter reached out with his good hand and managed to pinch the gaping beak shut. Ben saw the shuddering that had started in the wing tips spread to the fallen angel’s arms and legs, and still Carter squeezed. The Feathered Man’s eyes appeared to bulge as its body cried out for oxygen and then, with a final pathetic flapping of its wings, it lost consciousness and collapsed.

  Carter raised his claw to finish the job—

  “No,” said Ben, stopping Carter’s arm in mid-air. “You’ve done enough. We’re Watchers. We have to be different to the Legion, otherwise what’s the point?”

  Carter obeyed, although his face was lost in shadows and Ben could learn nothing from his flat tone. “Whatever you say, Ben.”

  They moved on without another word.

  There were no human guards in the museum and eventually they found a back room away from the gaze of the unseeing eyes. Carter tore down some curtains to act as blankets and they each tried to find a comfortable place on the floor. Without warning, fatigue overwhelmed Ben. It was a tiredness stronger and heavier than even his concern for the captive Watchers, pushing him down into a sleep he was unable to resist.

  What felt like minutes later, Ben woke with a gasp, his forehead clammy with sickly sweat. The feeble light at the window told him that dawn was breaking.

  “Lucy!” Ben blurted, the word escaping from his dream and into the waking world. Nathaniel and Valentine were beginning to stir, disturbed by his outburst. Claw Carter was already awake. Ben wondered whether the professor ever slept at all.

  “A tunnel,” said Ben.

  “What?” said Nathaniel, scrubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “We’re going to dig a tunnel.”

  Nathaniel still looked blank.

  “Valentine,” said Ben. “You know the Under better than anyone – could you get us beneath St. James’s Park?”

  “Where the Legion take their prisoners,” said Carter, catching on.

  “Precisely,” said Ben. “We’ve got three days till May 1st, and we’re gonna need Lucy, Ghost and Mr. Moon there with us.”

  Carter stroked his long chin. “We go under the park and dig straight upwards into the compound.” He sounded quite excited by the prospect. “I haven’t been on an archaeological excavation for years. I have one question though…”

  “Go on.”

  “Do we really have to rescue Moon?”

  “We need to talk, Ben,” said Nathaniel Kingdom.

  For the last hour or so, Claw Carter had been guiding their small party. A secret trapdoor in the basement of Madame Tussaud’s opened onto a stretch of cobwebbed tunnel, which in turn had connected them to the main hub of the abandoned Under. By the swaying light of his lantern, the professor’s face was intermittently flung into stark relief. They could both see the broad smile on the man’s long, lean face, the occasional flash of teeth in the darkness. Somewhat disconcertingly, Carter appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

  “I don’t trust him,” whispered Nathaniel, when Carter and Valentine seemed far enough away. “He’s even humming to himself! What sort of man hums when he’s trying to break into a heavily armed detention camp?”

  Ben paused and heard Carter’s tune for the first time. It did sound very jolly, all things considered. “We need him,” said Ben. “How else could we navigate through the Under?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Stop being so naive, will you? We have no idea where he is taking us. He could be leading us into a trap for all we know.”

  “I trust him,” said Ben flatly.

  “You’ve always thought the sun shines out of
his backside, Ben,” said Nathaniel angrily. “When we were just nobodies, back on Old Gravel Lane, you were always running off to see your precious professor. It made Pa and I feel like we weren’t anything to you—”

  “Don’t bring Pa into this,” snapped Ben.

  Nathaniel had jabbed a deep wound and Ben felt the urge to hurt his brother back. What Ben wanted to say was that Nathaniel had always had the lion’s share of their father’s affections. That Ben had felt lonely in their family of three, always the odd one out. Was it any wonder that he had enjoyed speaking to Carter? At least the professor had treated him as if he was worth listening to. Instead Ben clenched his teeth and kept the words inside; if Mother Shepherd had taught him anything it was to think before he spoke. Life and death is in the tongue, Ben. Every man speaks his own destiny, for good or for ill.

  “Carter is my friend,” said Ben; it was the only explanation that he could give.

  “Exactly,” retorted Nathaniel. “The man who tried to kill our father is your friend. Think about it.” Nathaniel drew his finger across his neck, and Ben chilled at the memory of Carter’s claw making that same journey across Jonas Kingdom’s throat. “You’re some sort of chosen one now,” Nathaniel continued, “the one the Watchers have been waiting for—”

  “You’re a Watcher, too,” said Ben.

  “Yes,” said Nathaniel, “for about four months, the same as you. That hardly makes us experts, does it? Anyway, as I was trying to say, I can go along with the idea of you being a hero – you’re my brother, after all…” Ben was relieved to see the spark of warmth returning. “I can even cope with Carter being forgiven, which is sort of what the Watchers are all about – everyone deserves a second chance an’ all that. But what I’m struggling with, what we’re all struggling with, is how you can make the sworn enemy of the Watchers your right-hand man.”

  Ben could see that Nathaniel was trembling slightly. It was clear that he had been bottling these feelings up for some time. Although he was younger than Nathaniel, Ben knew that it was up to him to be the bigger man – that was part of what being the Hand was about. He put his arms around Nathaniel, and although his brother resisted at first, they soon melted into a hug.