Tube Riders, The (17 page)

Then Switch was jerking her arm, pulling her away through a door on to the building’s roof. A cold wind struck her face and she recoiled, shutting her eyes. Rough hands pushed her hard from behind.

Switch’s voice was filled with frustration. ‘
Quickly
, Marta!’ He was doing another job on the door. The handle was round, and he kicked it hard, once, twice, knocking it out of shape so that it wouldn’t open easily. There were few objects on the roof but he managed to find what looked like a rusty metal clothes-horse and jam its stubby legs into the thin gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.

Marta spun around in a circle, seeing the high rooftops of London rising like dark concrete islands out of a sea of twinkling lights. She could only admit that it was beautiful, but as she turned to see the adjacent building rising up some fifty feet to the right, it only helped to press home the desperate enormity of their predicament.

‘Switch, we’re trapped up here!’

He appeared at her shoulder, breathing hard. ‘Get over to the edge, on the main road side. Quickly, go! The door won’t hold for long.’

‘Is there another fire exit or something?’ she asked, leaning over the edge of the roof.

‘Look there.’ He pointed over the top of her shoulder. She did, but all she saw was the road. There was no way down except to jump, and that was suicide.

‘What are you looking at?’ she shouted, frustration getting the better of her. Behind her something slammed against the stuck door, making it rattle.

‘About ten feet down, you see it?’

She squinted. ‘I see a wire of some kind.’

‘That’s it!’

‘What good’s that going to do us?’

He pointed across the street. ‘We ride it. It attaches to that building over there, the lower one. To an antenna mast on its roof. We get off there, it breaks the scent. The Huntsman can’t follow us. It’ll take ages for it to find our scent again, by which time we’ll be well ahead.’

Marta tugged on a loose braid of hair at her neck. ‘We can’t ride–’

‘If you can jump on to a moving fucking train you can jump on to a stationary fucking wire!’ he shouted. Marta stared, shocked, but as the creature slammed against the door again behind them, she knew he was right. ‘Now get your ass on that damn wire!’ he yelled, shoving her towards the roof edge.

She wrapped her hands through the leather straps on her clawboard and felt a sudden energy pulsing through her arms and legs, that fire that she so loved. It was the board that did it. Always.

She turned back to Switch, flashing a wild grin. ‘If this goes wrong, I’ll see you wherever.’ Then, with the clawboard held out in front of her, she jumped over the edge.

For a moment she was in freefall, with the ground racing up towards her, then the hooks caught on the wire that connected the two buildings, her shoulders jerked and she was hanging there, her feet dangling high above the road.

She had worried that the wire would be too weak to hold her, or otherwise too elastic and would bounce her right back off, but it was thick and it felt strong. It had a little flex but not enough to throw her off, but as she hung there, a hundred and fifty feet off the ground, she realised they had another problem.

‘Switch, I’m not moving!’ she shouted. ‘It’s thick rubber casing. It’s got too much grip!’

‘Shit,’ he muttered, leaning over the edge above her. Then: ‘The downward slant should be enough. Swing your legs back and forth, get some momentum.’

Marta kicked her legs out and felt herself move forward a few inches. ‘It’s working!’

‘Hang on. I’ll try to help you.’ After one last glance back towards the blocked door, he climbed over the edge, hanging on by one hand, his clawboard in the other. He jumped, hooked the wire behind her with his board and held on to a metal fixture that held the wire to the wall with his other hand. He leaned his back against the wall then pushed her with his feet. She slid forward a few inches, and then slowly began to gain speed. ‘You have a bit more weight than me, so you should have more momentum,’ he shouted.

‘You’re an asshole,’ she told him. ‘But thanks.’

Switch grinned and kicked her again, just as she swung forward. She felt the rubber casing losing its resistance and she began to slide. Switch shouted something, but she was too far away now to hear clearly. The building in front rose towards her as she slid down, and she started to plan her dismount. It would be slower than from a train, at least.

‘Watch out, Marta!’

She heard him this time, and she twisted herself around to see Switch hanging maybe fifty feet behind her, moving much more slowly. His slight frame wasn’t helping him gain much speed, and he was jerking back and forth trying to move himself forward. And there, above him on the building’s roof, stood the Huntsman.

Marta couldn’t see it any more clearly than they had before. It was just a dark silhouette against the night sky, but she could see something in its hand, something metallic, something that glinted against the glow of the streetlights below.

Thang!

‘Whoah!’ Switch shouted, and Marta saw him twisting wildly again. ‘It’s shooting at me!’

Marta remembered the metal bolt she had seen in Jess’s house. It seemed ridiculous, but it looked and sounded like a
crossbow
.

She heard another
thang
followed by a thud across the street where the bolt hit, then a whizzing, winding sound as the creature loaded the next.

Marta was still looking back when she crashed into the antenna of the opposite building. With a cry of pain she twisted her clawboard off the wire and dropped to the ground. Rolling over, she managed to regain her footing and make it to the building’s edge in time to see Switch still crossing over, some way behind. He was putting on a show of mid-air acrobatics, jerking forwards and back, swinging his legs up and down.

‘Get
down
, Marta!’

She had been so transfixed by Switch’s skills that she had almost forgotten the Huntsman. A metal bolt thudded into the antenna housing just a foot wide of her, and, aware of her fortune, she dropped to the ground just as Switch bundled over the edge.

‘It can’t get across,’ he said, breathing hard as he crouched beside her. ‘It’s not stupid. It knows if it tries I’ll just cut the wire. Our biggest problem though is getting out without meeting it on the way up.’

‘How do we do that?’

She sensed rather than saw him grin in the dark. ‘We run like rabbits with fire crackers up our asses. And then some.’

He was on his feet before she started to laugh, moving away from her to look for a way down into the building. As she heard him kick a door in and call for her to follow, she wondered if this was what madness felt like.

She glanced back across the street at the other building. The Huntsman still stood there, a darker shadow against the night, watching her. Perhaps confused by their escape, perhaps amused by its prey’s wiliness, perhaps merely considering what to do next, it was observing her calmly, the crossbow that hung idly by its side glinting in the light of the street below.

There was no way to tell what was going through its mind, but going through her own was the realization that she had just cheated death, and that she was probably going to have to do it again in the days to come.

She turned away and hurried after Switch.

Chapter Twenty

Escape

Paul was off the train almost before it had stopped, pushing through the crowds and up the stairs to the ticket gates. Out on the street he found a bus had just pulled in, and he jumped aboard even though it was barely half a mile to his house. He was so tired he could barely move anymore, but it was also another chance to throw them off the scent.

He jumped off again five minutes later outside the building in which he lived with his brother. Once, 14 Monument Square had been their family home, and Paul could still remember having good times here before the air darkened, the perimeter wall gates shut permanently and the guns appeared on the streets.

The day after the Governor passed the law prohibiting anyone to leave the city without a permit, Paul had watched from his bedroom window as tanks rolled into Monument Square, dispersing hordes of protesters. Eight years old that day, still a year and a half before Owen came into the world, Paul saw his first death, a young man with dark hair and glasses, wearing a student-friendly anti-war t-shirt and an old pair of jeans. Even through the glass Paul had heard the crunch as the body went under the tank.

The boy had been his older brother, Gareth. Just sixteen, he was killed outside their front door. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one that mattered that day to Paul’s family, and their lives, until then peaceful, were shattered.

Owen fulfilled some of their mother’s desire for a replacement, as his birth was the only thing that ameliorated her sorrow. That she saw her dead son in the eyes of her newborn was probably one of the reasons why, when Paul was just thirteen and Owen four, she chose suicide as a way out.

Their father too, was dead by the time Paul was fifteen. Weighed down by loss and sorrow, he was unable to cope with two young boys. Paul came home from school one day to find his father had gone. A suitcase was missing from the cupboard in his parents’ bedroom, as were some of his father’s clothes. There was no note.

Paul had let Owen believe their father might still be alive, but he knew otherwise. There was nowhere to go and their father had been weak; he hadn’t had the strength for adventure.

The first few weeks afterwards had been a struggle. That day had proved Paul’s last at school, and his next had been part begging, part petty theft. He had lacked the skills for it, getting beaten up, chased by the police and by his intended targets. Then one day he had been caught trying to lift someone’s wallet, and the man pressing a knife to his throat had offered him two ways out. One was death. Paul chose the other. He found there was a demand for this kind of work, and he quickly got good. With his face pressed against a concrete floor in an abandoned building or on his knees in a dark alley with rough hands gripping the back of his head, the money came. And the money meant food and clothes for him and Owen. Sometimes, you did what you had to do.

He pushed in through the door and hurried up the stairs to the third floor landing. The whole building had once belonged to their family, but his mother’s death had prompted his father to downsize, splitting the house up into three, making some renovations and subletting out the two lower sections as self-containing flats. It was the last genuinely useful thing his father did, and despite a succession of short-lived tenants on the middle floor, a long-term tenant in the bottom floor flat who paid rent on time was a godsend.

‘Owen?’ he shouted. ‘You home?’

His brother didn’t respond. As he reached their door Paul prayed he wasn’t too late. The flat was unlocked. He dropped his clawboard by the front door and burst in.

‘Owen? Owen! Where are you?
Owen!
’

He crashed through into the kitchen, the door thudding back against the wall. On the table in the centre of the room were a half-eaten sandwich and quarter of a glass of orange cordial. There was no sign of a struggle.

He heard a sound behind him and spun on his heels.

‘What’s with the door slamming and the shouting?’ Owen stood in the doorway, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. His arms were folded. ‘I was just watching a movie, all right?’

At the relief of seeing his brother alive, unharmed, and as cocky as ever, Paul’s legs sagged. He gripped the edge of the table for support. ‘Thank God you’re okay,’ he said.

Owen just gave an adolescent’s nonchalant shrug. ‘Of course,’ he grunted.

‘Listen. You have to get some stuff together. Spare clothes, money if you have any, and anything essential or that you can’t bear to part with. Keep it small, keep it light. Just one rucksack.’

‘But I’m watching a movie! It’s only halfway through!’

Paul slammed a hand down on the table. ‘This is important, Owen. We’re in danger. We have to go away for a while.’

Owen raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s after you?’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to know. But if you don’t hurry up, you might find out.’

Owen grinned. ‘Are we going on an adventure?’

‘Yeah, I guess you could call it that.’

‘Cool.’ Owen turned and rushed off to his room. Paul did the same, picking through the cupboards first for some lightweight packets of dried food: fruit, noodles, soup, as much as he thought he could carry while running. He had no idea when they might eat again. Then, with the food and some basic toiletries stuffed into a small bag, he rushed through into his bedroom and filled the rest of the bag with spare underwear and another sweatshirt. From under his bed he grabbed an old clawboard Owen might need, and jammed it into the bag behind his clothes. Rummaging through the drawers of the bedside tables, he found what little money they had left, enough to buy them food for a few days. Then, hauling the bag up over his shoulder, heavier than he’d hoped, he turned back to the door.

An object on the desk to the right caught his attention. He moved closer, his heart caught in his throat. He reached out and picked the object up.

Out of the photo frame his parents smiled at him, his father with his arm around his mother, who was holding an infant Owen in her arms. Paul, age twelve, stood to his father’s left, a big grin on his face, a mop of light brown hair sprouting out of his head, blue eyes still unobstructed by the glasses he had started wearing at seventeen.

Above their heads, big white capital letters read, LONDON ZOO.

Thinking back, it must have been less than a year before the zoo closed, and it was the last happy time Paul could remember, before his mother slipped into depression. Had Gareth been there it would have been perfect.

He opened up the picture frame, took out the photograph, and stuffed it into his bag.

In the kitchen he found Owen waiting. ‘I’m ready!’ his brother announced with a huge smile, as if had been waiting for this chance all his life.

‘Christ, Owen, don’t you have a coat or something?’

‘It’s by the door.’

Paul nodded. ‘Right, let’s go.’ He led the way to the front door. As he picked up his clawboard and pulled open the door, he looked back at his brother. ‘Owen, I said one bag.’

His brother had one bag over his shoulder and was dragging another one along the ground. ‘Ah, come on. It’s just some comic books and a few movies. I don’t want some bastard looting the flat and getting all my black market stuff.’

‘Owen, we have to travel light.’

His brother looked about to argue back, then his expression changed. His eyes had drifted past Paul, out into the stairway. ‘Er, Paul, there’s some guy down there. How the hell did he get in? Did you forget to lock the bottom door?’

Paul felt a chill pass through him as he looked down the stairs to see the Huntsman standing outside the door of the middle flat, facing up the stairs towards them. Under its hood its eyes were shadowed, but its dog-like mouth seemed to grin.

‘Tube Rider…’

Paul reached back, grabbed the bag of Owen’s loot and flung it as hard as he could down the stairs. The Huntsman lifted its arms to fight off a hail of books, DVDs, Blu-Rays and ancient VHS tapes. One heavy volume that Owen loved, something about a boy wizard, struck it square in the forehead. The Huntsman howled and slumped to its knees.

As Owen was gasping, ‘What the
fuck
is that?’, Paul was slamming the door, pulling the deadbolts and a larger anti-theft bar across to buy them some time.

‘You got weapons? Is there another way out of here?’ Paul shouted.

‘What? Just a screwdriver, couple of kitchen knives. I’m just the kid, you’re the hero!’

‘Let’s hope so.’ Paul tried to think quickly. ‘Okay. Back into Mum and Dad’s room, we can get out the window.’

‘We’re fifty feet off the ground!’

‘I know, but I’ve seen what that thing can do! I’d rather jump than stay here. Now go!’

They rushed through into the bedroom. Paul heard the Huntsman pound on the front door a couple of times, heard the handle rattle, then silence, followed a moment later by a loud crack. The handle shook. The Huntsman had shot it with something and broken the lock, but the deadbolts still held it shut.

‘Come on, Paul!’

Paul realised he’d been transfixed, while in the meantime Owen had pulled the window open and thrown his bag down on to the street.

‘How am I supposed to get down?’

‘The drainpipe,’ Paul said. ‘Climbed a tree before, haven’t you?’

‘Trees have a bit more grip, though!’

A splintering sound came from behind them. Paul tossed his bag out of the window, watched it fall a frightening distance and then land with a loud crunch.

‘Hurry!’

Owen was already out on the pipe, trying to twist himself around and get a decent grip before starting his descent. He looked irritated rather than scared, which was how Paul felt.

‘Hurry
up
, Owen–’

The front door burst open and something stumbled in, too fast for Paul to see clearly. It was off-balance and limping.

‘…Rider…’

It veered towards them, one furred, wiry arm loose of the robe, wires beneath its skin clearly visible. The other hand was clutching at something at its waist, something that gleamed metallic under the kitchen light.

It reached the bedroom doorway then jerked sideways as it collided with the doorframe. It staggered across the room and the hood fell back from its face. Paul’s mouth fell open as he saw the jumble of wires snaking back and forth across the creature’s scalp, above one blind eye and another that oozed blood. He had got lucky. The Huntsman had an old war wound, and Owen’s book had hit its remaining good eye. It pursued them now by sense of smell alone.

Owen was still struggling with the drainpipe. Paul watched as the Huntsman dropped into a crouch, the claws on one hand scraping at the carpet, the other still fumbling blindly at a weapon beneath its robe. Its bloody eye flicked back and forth. Its teeth were bared and its nose wrinkled as it sniffed the air.

Paul couldn’t breathe. His whole body tingled as though his heart had stopped and he was caught in the moment between life and death. He stared at the Huntsman as it crouched by the door less than ten feet away.

As Owen shouted ‘Paul!’, the Huntsman leapt at him.

He reacted instinctively. One hand was curled around the leather strap of the clawboard at his side. As the Huntsman flew at him he jerked it up, swinging it round as though he were trying to swat a fly.

The clawboard struck the Huntsman square in the face. Its momentum carried it forward on to him and his nostrils filled with a pungent mix of blood, animal, and machinery. Then it fell past him, rolling across the floor into the corner.

‘Is it dead? Shit, is it dead?’

It took Paul a moment to collect himself and realise
he
wasn’t dead. ‘I don’t know. Get down the fucking pipe!’

‘I’m going!’

Paul backed away towards the window as Owen started down. The Huntsman had fallen in a heap, and at first didn’t seem to be alive. To kill one of the legendary abominations so easily didn’t seem possible, and as he hooked one foot over the window ledge it shuddered and began to turn back towards him, body low to the ground, arms caught underneath it. As he watched, one arm freed itself and rose towards him. Gripped in its clawed fingers was a small metal crossbow.

Paul ducked as a quarrel slammed into the window frame less than five inches from his face. The Huntsman growled, then began to fumble with another bolt in the mechanism. Paul glanced down, saw his brother standing below him holding both rucksacks, then quickly shimmied down, his clawboard still attached to him by one leather strap, tapping against the plastic pipe as he went.

‘You okay?’ Owen asked, as Paul jumped off the drainpipe and staggered over to him.

Paul tried to smile. ‘I’m still alive, that’s good enough.’ He pointed up at the window. ‘I’d say we have about a minute before that thing is back on its feet and after us. Let’s make it count.’

‘Where to?’

‘The station.’

They started off in a run, rucksacks slung over their shoulders. Paul held his clawboard under one arm.