The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (38 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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‘Yessir,’ said Hanks, ‘but what to do now, sir?’
‘Good question, Hanks. We must take evasive action. Instanto. I have no wish to do a Husskinson.’
‘Nor me, sir,’ said Hanks, the sweat beginning to trickle in his armpits, ‘whatever it is.’ The sergeant made as if to turn and he stumbled. ‘Oh dear,’ he cried. ‘May the Lord save us.’
‘Back to point A,’ said Sussworth. ‘That train sounds as if it is moving fairly slowly so we shall move rapidly. In other words, Hanks, run for your life.’
The men set off immediately, their feet stamping down on the loose ballast that lay between the sleepers. Sussworth ran with a single-minded determination, a determination that brooked no obstacle and admitted no alternative. Hanks, on the other hand, already breathless, ran in despair, as if his fate had been decided on the very morning of his birth. His breath ripped through him. He could feel a blunt bowsaw tearing his lungs to shreds. His huge stomach wobbled so violently from side to side that it threatened to pull him off balance at any moment. His knees lost their tension as his fatigue overcame him; his head rolled in panic and his bowels loosened with terror. There was something wet and nasty forming in his trousers, but worst of all, Sussworth was leaving him behind. Twenty yards now separated the two runners.
‘Oh, Inspector,’ called Hanks, stretching out an arm before him, ‘wait for me.’
Sussworth stopped and turned. He placed his hands on his hips and stared in scorn as Hanks continued to pant along behind his stomach.
‘I’ll wait for you back on the platform, Hanks,’ cried the inspector, and he turned again to continue his run. At that moment the driverless train entered the far end of the tunnel, and the vague rumblings of it became a mighty roar as all the separate sounds were squashed together into one sound and pushed along before the front carriage, like a load of broken bricks and clanging iron bars.
The two halves of Sussworth’s moustache twitched forward like radio antennae. The message was not good; the train was picking up speed.
Hanks wailed like a banshee and his fear gave him an energy that all the lorry-loads of food he had eaten in the past never had. He became light and tense, his muscles contracted into coils of steel, and before Sussworth could even sense his danger, let alone resume his flight,
Hanks was upon him and had grabbed the inspector’s right arm with both hands.
Sussworth, who hated being touched at any time and especially by anything as large and ugly as Hanks, tried to pull himself free, using all his strength and pushing against the sleepers with his booted feet.
‘Hanks,’ he screamed, ‘let go! D’you hear? That’s an order. Cease this dereliction of duty. I’ll have you court-martialled.’
Hanks took no heed. He was beyond listening and his grip was for ever. His whole being was filled with the sound of the advancing train. That one great burst of energy had finished him; he could run no further but he would not be left alone either. He hung on to Sussworth’s arm as if to life.
‘Don’t leave me, sir,’ he pleaded. ‘Take me home, I need my mother.’
Sussworth lashed out with his feet and kicked his sergeant hard. He pushed and pulled, he cajoled and he shouted. None of it was any good. Hanks held on and the noise of the train rolled round the tunnel’s curve and grew and grew, and filled the whole space from side to side and from floor to roof. Sussworth was screaming now to make himself heard above the din but Hanks clung on and begged and pleaded to be saved and yet all the time he was preventing the escape he so dearly desired.
With a sudden surge the wave of sound rose higher and through the curve swept the train itself, tall, long and fiery like some dragon storming from its cave, breathing light and fire from a fearsome head. On it came, imperiously, its windows gleaming in silver and gold.
Hanks raised his voice again and bellowed like a whale, and the cry was so loud that it reached the ears of Officer Blume on the platform at Swiss Cottage and curdled the water in his bladder.
‘Oh my God,’ sobbed Hanks, wise too late, ‘we must get out of here.’
‘You moron!’ shouted Sussworth, who would gladly have killed his sergeant had he possessed a weapon. ‘Get off the track, find an alcove; it’s our only chance.’
Having delivered this advice Sussworth attempted to put it into practice by pulling Hanks to the side of the tunnel nearest him. Hanks,
his mind working like scrambled egg, thought that his side looked nearer and yanked Sussworth off his feet, dragging him backwards across the railway lines.
Now Sussworth panicked. He knew that Hanks was heading in the direction of the live rail, but Hanks was aware of nothing beyond the animal instinct to survive. ‘Hanks, no,’ shouted Sussworth.
It was too late. Hanks threw himself out of the way of the charging monster, still holding Sussworth’s arm and almost breaking it. He lurched, blinded and confused by the bright lights that were bearing down on him. He saw the conductor rail and recognized it for what it was. He jumped up and over and landed safely on the other side and gave a yell of triumph that never left his throat. Sussworth whimpered and knew his fate. He tried to arch his body up, to levitate himself even, but he could not. Hanks hauled him on and the inspector’s leg just brushed the dreaded rail and that was enough.
Electricity loves the human body. In a split second it can romp through every vein and tissue you possess; singe every hair and make the toenails glow like neon signs. Electricity that can drive some sixty tons of train will make a frolic of legs and arms, and so, on that day, it leapt into the inspector’s frame with mirth and pleasure, not noticing the obstacle of his flesh and unaware of the tiny life it quenched. It burnt his blood, it broiled his lungs and scorched his heart down to the consistency and shape of a lump of coke. And still it was eager, and swept on looking for more mischief and found the small but proud moustache, and grilled it to a crisp and dirty cinder that curled on Sussworth’s charred and blackened upper lip.
And in that same instant the current touched the hand of Hanks, where he still gripped his leader’s arm, and it rejoiced and into Hanks it raced and burnt and broiled and scorched all over again, and all his layers of fat seethed and bubbled. And six hundred and thirty volts sought out the flowering bogeys in the dark recesses of the sergeant’s nose and cooked them till they coiled and writhed like hot bacon rind.
And when this lark was over the current sped away, searching for yet more space to fill with power, and it left behind it a strange and smoking sculpture: Sussworth and Hanks, desiccated husks, welded together. But the great train came on and smashed the sculpture down.
Sussworth and Hanks were dead, nothing more than warm black ashes mingling with an old and worn-out dust.
 
Waiting on the platform at Swiss Cottage, Officer Blume heard the distant grumblings of a moving train. He heard too some high-pitched shouts and screams of terror. He clasped his hands behind his back, in imitation of his inspector, and glanced at the group of SBG officers who were standing near him. Blume hesitated and wondered what to do. Obviously there was something wrong, very wrong. A great deal of noise was coming from the tunnel and it was getting louder every second.
Blume started to walk up the platform towards the opening into which Sussworth and Hanks had disappeared. Perhaps he should go to their assistance after all, despite the orders to wait for the DAC. Blume’s brow creased with worry, but he need not have concerned himself. The decision was made for him.
There was an enormous roar and in a cloud of light the driverless train burst out into the open at top speed, swaying madly from side to side. Officer Blume staggered, surprised, and tripped over his feet, tumbling backwards to land heavily on the concrete surface of the platform, damaging his elbows. He lay where he fell, watching helplessly as the train charged past him.
Now liberated from the confines of the narrow tunnel the train began to buck and sway. The carriages bashed against one another and were jostled and nudged from behind, clanging into the tiled wall and bumping along the edge of the platform itself.
In a second or two the front carriages gave way under all this shoving and reared up high. They scraped against the station roof and tore a long section of it down. More carriages left the rails and tried to turn left and right but only smashed harder against the walls or tipped over on to the platform. Their windows shattered into smithereens; their doors bent, and buckled, sprang free. Wheels flew from their mountings and ripped the tracks apart.
The noise was deafening; a tearing and banging and groaning of metal enough to break the eardrums. The din rose like a tornado, a noise that would never stop, a noise to drive men mad, and the officers
of the SBG turned and fled, pushing each other out of the way in order to gain the safety of the nearest flight of stairs; anything to escape being crushed to a bloody pulp beneath this splintering, rolling avalanche of iron and steel.
Officer Blume sat where he was and made no attempt to regain his feet. He covered his ears with his hands but it was not over yet. The broken carriages ground their way along to the very end of the platform and, sliding sideways on, crashed against the opening of the far tunnel. Then came an explosion of sound even louder and more terrifying than before and the carriages telescoped one into the other in rapid succession, mounting higher and higher as if trying to climb upwards to freedom, then gradually, finding no way out, they slid backwards and rolled over into stillness, exhausted and demolished, while huge red and yellow flashes of flame made arcs of current across a thick black smoke and gave the station the look and smell of hell.
 
Knocker and Chalotte heard the noise of the crash but to them it was a distant thunder and they could not be sure what it was. They stood behind a large pile of old bricks and other builders’ rubbish and listened as the great rolling sounds died away. Chalotte stared in front of her, listless and dejected. She had not spoken since leaving the cabin.
‘The law will be along soon,’ said Knocker. ‘We’d better get inside with the others; let’s hope this idea works.’
He advanced a step or two. It was odd here; he was in a wide cavern with a sloping roof and just where the roof met the floor Knocker saw what Sydney had discovered: an old doorway from which the wooden jambs had been torn. Strewn over the ground nearby were all sorts of tools, lengths of rough timber and sacks of cement. One of these sacks had been torn open and a small pile of freshly made mortar, a bricklayer’s trowel in the middle of it, gleamed in the fluorescent lighting.
Moving closer to the doorway Knocker was able to see that it had been bricked up, almost to the top, leaving only just enough room for a Borrible to scramble through. The new cement between the bricks glowed wet and bright and showed exactly where the old doorway had been. Something would have to be done about that.
Knocker went up to the wall and made a step with his hands. ‘Come
on, Chal,’ he said, making his voice sound cheerful. ‘You go first, I’ll follow.’
Chalotte nodded, came forward and placed her right foot in Knocker’s hands. He gave a push upwards, she lifted herself high and Stonks appeared behind the gap and pulled her out of sight.
Knocker bent then and placed some spare bricks one upon the other and climbed up on them so that he could look into the hole. The face of Stonks stared at him.
‘You’d better get in here,’ said Stonks, ‘and we’ll finish the wall.’
Knocker’s heart was heavy. The enormity of what he was about to do suddenly struck home. He felt lonely, very lonely. He lowered his voice. ‘I can’t come in, Stonks,’ he said. ‘Just imagine what it would look like out here: a pile of bricks where I’d climbed in, a load of cement, a trowel and fresh mortar between the bricks.’
Bingo’s face popped up beside Stonks’s. ‘I heard that,’ he said. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Someone,’ explained Knocker, ‘has to hide the evidence out here. It’s obvious that the coppers will turn this place inside out. Someone has to hide that cement, finish off the wall from this side, but above all he has to dirty the mortar … It’s your only chance otherwise they’ll find you and it’ll be ears clipped before you can say Barnardo’s.’
‘You’ll be took,’ said Bingo. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’
Knocker tried to laugh in derision. ‘Don’t say that!’ he said. ‘I’ve got more than an even chance. I can lead ’em away from this place, maybe slip past ’em. I’ll be in Neasden before you lot. You wait and see if I’m not.’
Knocker could tolerate no more of this conversation. He wasn’t too sure how strong his resolve was. He loved his friends as much as life itself and did not want to leave them. He jumped from his pile of bricks and snatched up the trowel, loaded it with cement, took a brick and climbed back up again. He laid the cement on the next course, good and thick, and pushed the brick into position. The faces of Stonks and Bingo stared at him. They said nothing and Knocker got down again for more cement and another brick. He repeated this action several times and little by little the hole at the top of the doorway
grew smaller until at last Knocker knew that three or four more bricks would close the gap for ever.
He hesitated. He cocked an ear but from the direction of danger came only silence. He went to smile a goodbye at Stonks and Bingo but suddenly their faces swayed and disappeared; they had been roughly pushed and pulled from whatever perch they had been standing on. In their place stood Chalotte, her green eyes dull, her cheeks still smeared with Napoleon’s blood.

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