The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (15 page)

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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis
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The light towered nearer, as high as the beacon on a castle wall. Under the light was the shape of nothing, the black ship itself. The thump of the engines grew still louder. The bow wave began to race backwards, against the tide, rushing across the surface of the river and travelling faster than the boat that had made it, as if the laws of nature did not exist.
The Borribles wanted to scream with terror but could not. The engines were beating in their ears, robbing them of all thought. The waves rose; the voices of men called to one another through an empty
space and behind the tug came a solid mass of barges, a floating town half as wide as the river itself.
With a courage and an energy that were born of desperation the Adventurers worked their paddles faster and faster, but a terrifying force dragged the waters from beneath them and suddenly they were paddling air. The rafts had been flung skywards until they were vertical. Now the Borribles did scream, clinging to one another in panic. The rafts staggered, nearly toppling over backwards, then, with a crash that could hardly be heard in all that din, the bow wave rushed on and the rafts fell deep into a pit and shook and shuddered. Then another wave surged under them and up went the Borribles again and they screamed again, but this time when they fell they were in a calmer place. The bow wave had carried them out of the main current although not out of danger; the barges were still to come.
Napoleon knew this. ‘Don’t stop,’ he shouted. ‘Paddle on, paddle on.’
The Borribles did as Napoleon ordered and each blow of their paddles thrust them away from the middle of the river and towards safety. The line of barges was now behind them and the bright lights no longer dazzled their eyes, but the river was still in turmoil. Its waters were moving roughly from side to side and up and down, chopping and slapping. There was a great swishing and swirling of crosscurrents too but the noise of the tug itself gradually grew less and less and, at last, like a monster crawling into its lair, the rigid flotilla of boats disappeared under Waterloo Bridge.
‘That was a close one,’ said Twilight. ‘We did well to get out of that.’
Napoleon grunted and then added to the water surrounding him by spitting into it. ‘At least no one was seasick,’ he said. ‘That’s something I suppose.’
The very last bridge of all was Blackfriars and the Adventurers navigated it with no more danger or alarm. Then they cut away from the current once more and headed for the north bank where, according to Knocker, they would find the old disused wharf going by the name of Queenhithe Dock.
‘We’ll have to find it without torches,’ said Napoleon, ‘in case anyone’s watching.’
The Borribles floated right in against the embankment; a sheer wall covered in green slime without a step or ladder. There was no way up that.
‘Just paddle along a bit,’ said Napoleon. ‘It’ll be along here.’
It was. Suddenly the cliff of the embankment fell away and there was a shelf of sloping mud running back and up into darkness. The Borribles struck out for it and the rafts ran aground on gravel and sludge.
‘Hold steady,’ said Napoleon. ‘I’ll get off and pull yer in.’
He leapt ashore and immediately sank to his waist in cold mud, soft like a sucking jelly. He ignored it; after all he was a Wendle and Wendles were used to mud. He grabbed the ropes, pulled hard and slowly the rafts edged into the beach and stuck there.
The other Adventurers stood, threw their rucksacks towards Napoleon and then jumped after them. Lacking the Wendle’s expertise they fell and floundered, covering themselves in a vile and sticky coating of filth.
‘Mud,’ said Vulge. ‘I should cocoa. What a pen and ink!’
Knocker got his arms into the straps of his rucksack and plodded forward. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a move on.’
While Knocker went looking for a way out Napoleon cut the rope that bound the two rafts together and shoved them back into the current. ‘Don’t want ’em found too near,‘he explained. ’Southend would be close enough.’
He sheathed his knife and Knocker’s whistle came from above. The Adventurers gathered their belongings and began to squelch up the slope of the shore, no easy task. Their feet slithered and sank at every step, churning the mud into a green slime, and the sewer stench that was everywhere became stronger, escaping as steam from below and crystallizing like hot breath in the cold air. But at least the Borribles left no trace of their passing. As they pulled their legs from the clinging slurry it oozed back in an instant to fill the gaping holes they had made. In no time at all the surface of the shelving bank was as still and as smooth as it had been at any time during the previous hundred years.
So the Adventurers waded forward until they came up with Knocker, who was waiting for them near the bottom of an iron-runged,
weed-covered ladder. ‘I had a good look at the map before leaving Brixton,’ he said. ‘I reckon we can make King’s Cross before daylight.’
‘Why do we have to go to King’s Cross anyway?’ That was Ninch’s voice in the dark.
‘Because,’ said Napoleon, answering for Knocker, ‘King’s Cross is a main line station and behind main line stations you always find derelict land, goods yards, empty carriages, old factories, places to hide. Any old Borrible should know that. That’s why.’
‘Well whatever we’re going there for,’ interrupted Scooter, ‘do you think we could get out of this mud? It’s right up to my armpits now and it smells like a dustbin.’
‘Okay,’ said Knocker, ‘but remember, we run fast, single file and we don’t stop. This is the City of London we’re in and there ain’t too many places to hide.’
 
The night was long and arduous. What with the stint from Brixton to Nine Elms and the river trip with its frights and tensions, the Adventurers were exhausted even before leaving Queenhithe Stairs. Now they had to run again and just as far as they had before.
Knocker led them at a cracking pace, leading not because this was his part of London, it wasn’t; but simply because he had studied the map and memorized it, and knew which road went where and which would bring them to their destination with the least trouble.
They ran silently and fast, spread out for safety, but they encountered no one. Occasionally a lone car bounded through the emptiness, its headlights dashing the tarmac with gold, or a lorry ground its way to a distant market. But the Borribles kept to the back streets where the lamps were separated by great stretches of nothing and where the pools of gloom were long and deep.
Tall buildings rose on either side of the runners like the hollow cliffs of abandoned cave dewellings, their roofs at one with the endless dark of the sky. Not a light shone in the skyscrapers or in the many-tiered, honeycombed car parks. Almost the only sounds the Borribles heard were the soft footfalls of their own feet and the jingling in the harness of their rucksacks.
They crossed an open piazza under the shadow of St Paul’s, up Amen Court where the frost was hard. Down Newgate and Giltspur Street they ran, past Smithfield Market where a thousand slabs of cold beef hung in rows. Along Cowcross and Turnmill, running parallel to Farringdon Road all the time, heading slightly west of north, bending over the top of London as the roads bent.
At Clerkenwell Knocker stopped and the others stopped too, crouching behind him, regaining their breath, looking left and right, forward and back for the slightest sign of danger. At last, reassured, they darted across the open space and raced on through Back Hill and through Rosebery Avenue; flitting black shadows in a town that was as black as they.
As he hastened onward Knocker thought of Sussworth, asleep somewhere, flat on his back, his mouth tightly closed, his moustache like a venomous moth waiting for the dawn, waiting to lay venomous eggs. And Hanks too, his belly spilling out beyond his body, snoring, his spittle dripping on to his pillow and forming an ever-widening stain of thick saliva as he dreamt, smiling, of the breakfasts he had eaten and the breakfasts that were to come.
Somewhere too, in that vast city, was Sam the horse, locked in a stall of some slaughterhouse, the smell of death flooding into his soft nostrils and filling him with dread. Bound by tail and alter to rings in a wall so that he could not move or rest, his eyes wide with fear, expecting only the bullet in the brain and the sharp wide knife that would slit his throat and then spill his entrails on to a sloping concrete ramp, already wet and slippery with the blood of millions gone before to catsmeat.
These thoughts spurred Knocker on and he quickened his pace, always going west of north, across Mount Pleasant and down Phoenix Place; past the Royal Free Hospital, and here in the high windows there were lights shining and nurses moved behind the curtains and lifted people up on their pillows so they might breathe their last breath more easily. People dying and never been Borrible. The thought filled Knocker with terror; he ran harder and his legs ached and the weight of his rucksack chafed his shoulders. But the pain only made him grit his teeth, and his companions, following, ran harder too and cursed
Knocker with all their hearts until, glancing up at the sky, they saw the greyness coming and knew why he ran so fast and far. Before daylight they must be well hidden at King’s Cross.
The streets went on: Frederick, Acton, Swinton and Wicklow. Finally the Adventurers came out on the Euston Road, just where it meets Pentonville, and they sped towards the awesome pinnacles of St Pancras and those pinnacles towered over the tiny figures like the turrets of an evil castle, a castle inhabited by giants whose only work it is to lie in wait for vagabond children in order to crack their bones and grind them into bread.
One by one the Borribles crossed the main road, heading into the quiet between the two great railway stations, into Pancras Road, aiming at the dead land that lay beyond. Knocker rounded a corner and leant against the wall. The railway arches began here. The road was cobbled, and further on there would be gasworks and rubbish dumps; their smell was heavy on the air.
Knocker could not resist a smile as he pressed his body back against the bricks. They’d done it. How good it was to be alive and to know you were; to feel your own existence as a separate thing, iridescent and jubilant. Yes, they’d done it. The trip from Brixton, across the river and then from Blackfriars to King’s Cross, had been accomplished without loss and without disclosing their whereabouts to the SBG. Things were looking up.
It was daylight. Knocker could see clearly the lines between the cobblestones at his feet. He could see too the sooty red colour of the bricks used to build the high arches that kept the railway lines aloft. One by one his companions joined him. One by one they leant against the wall, resting after the long night’s exertions.
‘We’ll follow this, line of arches,’ said Knocker. ‘We might find an empty one; failing that we’ll get into the goods yard.’
They set off again in single file, only this time at a walk. At the entrance to each archway, and there were scores of them, Knocker stopped and tried the huge semicircular gates that kept them locked and private.
‘Shut,’ he said again and again. ‘Garages and workshops most of ’em.’
After a hundred yards or so the road bore to the right, near some traffic lights. The arches continued into the distance, some with well painted and heavily barred doors, others with splintered shutters that lay awry and awkward on their hinges. A few cars passed and commuter trains rumbled overhead, more frequently now as the rush hour began to get into its stride. Quickly the Adventurers moved on, Napoleon bringing up the rear, his eyes everywhere. The Borribles had to get off the streets.
As if to add urgency to this thought there came the howl of a police siren from far away on the Euston Road. Then came the sound of another, immediately, almost like an echo, from over on the Caledonian Road.
Knocker bore right again. More arches. He stepped down to one, stumbling on a cobble. He raised an arm to save himself and pushed against the central plank of a door. The plank gave, swivelling on a central pivot as if it were meant to. Behind it was complete darkness. Knocker pushed with more force at the swivel plank and put his head inside the door. He could see nothing. He listened intently but the noise of the trains overhead made it impossible to hear anything else but them.
He pulled his head into the open.
‘It’s so dark I can’t see a thing,’ he said. ‘Smells like dead rats in there. I’ll go in and scout it out.’
At that moment the sound of the police siren came again, closer. Tyres squealed on cobbles. A patrol car had turned into the bottom of Pancras Road.
Napoleon peeped round the edge of the archway. ‘It’s coming this way,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to get out of sight until it’s gone, whatever we do.’
Again Knocker pushed the plank aside and wriggled through the gap while the others followed as quickly as they could. Napoleon went last and shoved the plank back into position. Inside it was as dark as Knocker had said and the racket of the trains, when they passed, was deafening. The only thing the Adventurers could distinguish clearly was the smell. That was too strong to be ignored; a combination of foul breath, dried urine and the gunge that ferments between human toes.
‘Blimey,’ said Sydney, ‘what an Aunt Nell.’
No sooner had the girl spoken than things began to happen. Strong bodies moved behind the Borribles, passing between them and the wooden doors. Shapes pressed against them in the dark and the fearful smell came closer, thick and tangible, suffocating.

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