Tube Riders, The (30 page)

How sweet,
she thought.
He fell, and she came after him
.

She ordered one of the agents to call Clayton. A moment later he came jogging back down the track, Adam Vincent hobbling along behind him.

‘We’ve got two of them out here,’ she said. ‘One is definitely mobile, the other could be dead. We can’t tell. I’m pretty certain he’s hurt at least. They shouldn’t be difficult to track down.’

‘Just two? So the others made it to Bristol?’

Dreggo nodded. ‘I’ll take three Huntsmen and track the two out here. You take the rest to Bristol and pick up the scent there. The handlers can control the Huntsmen for you.’

Clayton turned pale. One hand absently touched the mark on his cheek where she had slashed him. It was still bleeding slightly; he brushed the blood away with his finger and wiped it on his trousers.

‘I can’t leave you out here. How can I trust you?’

She pointed. ‘That little thing in your pocket? You have a choice. We split up and follow both trails while they’re still fresh, or we risk losing the Tube Riders. They escaped your pathetic attempts once. In Bristol they could disappear like rats down a drain.’ She smiled. ‘Of course, if you’d rather we stick together, I’m happy to take nineteen Huntsmen on a little outing in the country. I’m sure we could have lots of fun, out here, where the standards are … higher.’

‘She’s right,’ Vincent said. ‘We’ve wasted enough time already.’

‘Okay.’ Clayton turned to Vincent. ‘Order the handlers to secure the Huntsmen. When we get to Bristol we take only as many as we need, until she gets there. And you –’ he pointed a finger at Dreggo, ‘You stay in constant radio contact. As in every thirty minutes. I want to know exactly where you are. If you sight them, you call me. If you
think
you sight them, you call me. In fact–’

‘Okay, I get you. If I just want a little love chat, I call you.’

Clayton glared at her for a moment. Then, with a grunt of annoyance he turned on his heel, and they all headed back towards the train, Jacul at the back with the agents’ guns trained on him. The rest of the Department of Civil Affairs entourage waited near the train. Clayton told her a sweep of the area had found nothing but a ruined village. He offered to print her maps of the area from his laptop, but she refused.

‘The only map I need is the one the Tube Riders left behind,’ she said, tapping the side of her nose. ‘Don’t worry. I expect them to be dead by nightfall.’

‘Good.’

The men opened up the Huntsman’s freight truck again and Dreggo selected two more to accompany her in addition to Jacul. Several of the handlers who had also traveled with them as backup in case something happened to Dreggo, climbed up into the freight truck to secure the remaining Huntsmen.

Within fifteen minutes, the train had pulled away, rumbling on down the track, leaving Dreggo and her three Huntsmen behind. As the train rolled out of sight she turned to look at them.

Jacul was crouching by the hole in the fence. The other two, Meud and Lyen, were waiting for orders. She looked at them and nodded. Together they made their way through the hole in the fence, and away from the train tracks into the forest.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Government Policy

Marta found Ishael in an old dressing room not far from the room where they’d been allowed to sleep. He was standing by a wall that was covered in maps and charts, newspaper clippings, photographs and memos. He appeared to be studying a map of the city centre.

He smiled as she entered. ‘Hi, Marta. Did you sleep okay?’

‘Yes, thank you. Apart from the dreams.’

‘I can imagine.’ He looked uncertain for a moment, and his eyes flicked from her face to the floor and back. ‘Sorry about the interrogation yesterday,’ he said. ‘Times are hard, and it’s difficult to trust people.’

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘Especially those who walk in your back door unannounced.’

‘I guess we’ll have to lock it next time.’

She watched him as he turned back to the wall. He was maybe thirty, and while his face had the hardness of the streets his eyes still radiated kindness. She found herself wanting him to turn back, wanting him to look at her.

‘I especially enjoyed the shower,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘I haven’t felt clean in a while.’ Immediately she felt like an idiot.
What are you saying, Marta? You don’t want him thinking about you being dirty.

‘No problem.’ He turned back towards her, and Marta tingled with nervousness.
What the hell is wrong with me? I feel like I’ve met a film star.

‘This is our command room,’ Ishael said. ‘Really, you shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I forgive you.’ He smiled at her again. ‘From here we organise all the revolutionary activities that we don’t do.’

She laughed, glad to be back in control of herself. ‘Still waiting, huh?’

He nodded. ‘The time will come. Probably a little sooner than we were expecting, with the sudden appearance of you and your friends.’ She noticed how his smile dropped, as though he’d just been told the family he loved and cared for wouldn’t be coming home again.

‘How are the others?’ he asked.

‘Switch went off to spend time with his uncle. Paul and Owen are still sleeping. I think they’re exhausted just from looking after each other, not to mention everything else.’

He took a step closer. ‘And you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re their leader, aren’t you?’

She shook her head, felt her cheeks redden. ‘I don’t know. I think they look to me because my brother was the first Tube Rider. They think that makes me leader by default.’

‘It’s hard being a leader, sometimes. Knowing that what you ask of others might put them in danger.’

She nodded. So, he understood.

‘What happened to your brother?’

Marta looked down at the floor, seeing Leo’s face there in the dirty tiles. ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘He disappeared a couple of years ago.’ She looked back at Ishael. ‘There were rumours he’d been taken. That he ended up on one of those space ships.’

Ishael closed his eyes for a long moment. When he looked at her again she saw only regret. ‘A lot of people have died because of what this country has become. Here, we’ve been building an underground army. We planned to start a rebellion, but I think we all knew it would never be enough. We might sting the bastard, but he’d still swat us away.’ Ishael tapped his finger against a photograph fixed to the wall. It showed a strange-looking man taken over a distance. The man was facing the camera, his mouth slightly open in a look of anger, his eyes wide in shock. Marta saw they were dark red, like clotted blood.

‘Is that him? The Governor?’

Marta knew very little about the Governor, only that he had been in power since before she was born. She had never seen him because he never appeared in public or on television. There were rumours, of course, but no one she knew had ever seen his face. He was like a dark lord in a tower, controlling Mega Britain through hundreds of lower ministers and officials while he hid away from public view. Most rumours said he was disfigured, scarred by fire, perhaps, or mutilated in an accident. The most common rumour she had heard was that his skin was abnormally pale, as though he lived underground, but there were other less believable ones. Some people thought he was nine feet tall.

Ishael nodded. ‘The man who took this picture is dead. It’s the only picture I’ve ever seen of the Governor’s face. He was being transferred to a new government office, and the photo was taken at long range.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘We’re not sure. We think his skin colour is due to albinism, but there are rumours that there are other strange things about him. Albinos have no fear of light, yet he is almost never seen outside. A former government worker who defected to us once reported that the Governor’s quarters were kept at a higher humidity level compared to everywhere else in the building.’

‘Why?’

‘We guess it has something to do with his skin. Some other defect.’ Ishael frowned. ‘People say he’s the result of a scientific experiment gone wrong. Or, perhaps, spectacularly right.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The man had no proof, but he had heard rumours from the other staff that the Governor … he could
do
things.’

‘What things?’

‘Move stuff around. Hurt people.’ He shrugged. ‘With his
mind
.’

Marta felt a shiver run across her back. ‘Telekinesis?’

‘I didn’t like to use that word, but yeah, that’s what the informant said. He also said there were rumours that the Governor was from a different place entirely.’

‘He’s not human?’

Ishael shrugged again. ‘There were rumours that the space program is an effort to contact someone or something. That it has nothing to do with Europe or America at all.’

Marta cocked her head. ‘People in London believe the Tube Riders are the ghosts of train suicides come back from the dead. But they aren’t. It’s just us. Me, Paul, Switch, and Simon. And, as of yesterday, Jess and Owen. Hardly legends, are we? The Governor is probably just a normal man with a couple of allergies.’

‘Maybe. But looking at that photograph, do you really think so?’

Marta felt cold inside as she studied the picture, the red eyes seeming to know she was watching. Ishael moved nearer to her and put a hand on her arm. Normally, if a man she’d known only a day tried to touch her, she’d have knocked his arm away, but with Ishael it just felt right. She leaned against him, feeling more like a child than she had for years.

‘We’re going to help you,’ he reassured her. ‘We’re going to find a way to get you over to France. And I’m sorry that we can’t do more for your friends, the ones out in the GFA.’

Marta felt a sudden pang of regret. ‘Did we abandon them?’ she asked him. ‘Should we have gone after them? The others call me their leader, but I don’t know how, I can’t lead ...’

Ishael shook his head. ‘You’re doing fine. The others, this ... Jess? You have to trust her. You have to trust that she’ll find her boyfriend and find you.’

‘He was hurt bad.’

‘Put yourself in his situation. Would he want you to come after him?’

Marta thought for a moment. ‘Simon … no. He’d tell us to go on. He’d tell us to see this through.’

‘Then that’s what you must do. You have to trust them to make it, and if they don’t ... you have to honour their memory by finishing this.’ He smiled in a way she thought was supposed to reassure her. ‘We’ll help them any way we can,’ he said. ‘I’ll post men to watch for them, and if they make it to Bristol, we’ll find them. And if they still have that memory card, then we’ll make sure they get it to you.’

Marta closed her eyes. Jess’s desperate shout as she leapt off the train into the dark echoed inside her head. She opened her eyes again, the memory too painful. ‘How can it end?’ she whispered in a quiet voice. ‘How can we end all this?’

‘I don’t know.’ He forced a grin. ‘Everything pans out in the end,’ he said. ‘One way or another, it’ll work out.’

‘But which way? The right or the wrong?’

Ishael said nothing. Marta knew there was only so far he could reassure her without it sounding false. They’d grown up in the same country. They both knew the way things were.

Ishael pulled away from her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’

‘Where?’
Don’t leave me
.

‘I have to go the station and oversee our defenses. I can’t ask my men to do what I won’t do myself. If you can wake your friends, one of my men will come and drill you on how we’re getting you out of the city. We have a plan in place.’

Marta bit her lip as she realised this man was putting his life and that of others on the line for theirs. When the Huntsmen came through the station there was no guarantee anything could stop them. And Ishael would be standing in the front line.
Don’t beg him to stay
, her mind screamed at her.
You barely know this man. Don’t show such weakness.

Something in his eyes made her feel he could read her mind. He reached up and ran a finger down the side of her face, his touch as gentle as a breeze.

‘It’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘It’ll work out.’

Marta’s lip trembled. She didn’t trust herself to say anything. Ishael flashed a smile, turned, and was gone.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Friends, Enemies

‘Thank you very much, but I really should get going.’ Jess started to stand up, but the old woman shook her head.

‘Good heavens, girl, after what you’ve been through, you ought to have a shower at least.’

‘Well, I guess. If that’s all right?’

‘Of course it is.’

The old woman led Jess up the stairs at the back of the living room and showed her into a pretty bathroom, all frilly drapes and flowery patterned towels and mats.

After the old woman had left, Jess stripped off and climbed into the bath tub. She switched on the shower and squeezed her eyes shut as the hot water doused over her, wishing she could cleanse more than just her body. The horrors of the last day were still so fresh in her mind that she couldn’t imagine ever being without them.

She hadn’t meant to talk to the old woman, but sitting across from that kindly face she’d been unable to help herself. The woman reminded her of her own grandmother, dead some ten years now, with soft, caring eyes, and an easy smile.

She hadn’t told the woman everything, but she’d still said too much, maybe. She was looking for her boyfriend, she had said, fallen from the train, but carried away before Jess could get to him. They had been heading for Bristol, looking to start a new life away from the troubles in London, but some men had started a scuffle in their carriage, and Simon had been pushed through an emergency door. How much the woman knew about the trains, she hadn’t said, but she had nodded carefully while Jess spoke.

After ten minutes Jess switched off the shower and climbed out of the tub. She dried herself and dressed in spare clothes she had brought from London. Her other clothes were so ripped and soiled that she stuffed them into a waste basket, hoping the old woman wouldn’t mind.

She was feeling a lot better as she picked up the rucksack containing her weapons, the clawboards, and the last of her leftover food, and went back down to the living room.

She was humming to herself as she pushed through the door into the living room and found a bulky middle-aged man standing next to the old woman.

‘Ah, Jessica dear. I hope you feel better now.’

Jess took a step back. The man, too, looked alarmed.

‘This is my son, Roy, the one I was telling you about. Roy Weston.’

The man stared at Jessica with barely disguised hatred. ‘You–’

‘Roy was telling me they found a boy. It sounds like your Simon–’

‘Mother!’

Jessica took a step forward, one hand going to her forehead as though she might faint at any moment.
They had Simon!

‘He’s alive? Where is he?’

Roy Weston didn’t answer. His eyes moved to her rucksack. Jess watched as he stepped across in front of the old woman and glanced behind him, looking for something hard to hold on to. He settled on a large quartz bowl and lifted it in front of him.

‘Roy, what are you doing?’

‘Be quiet, Mother! Girl, I don’t know who you are, but I want you out of here right now, or Heaven help me…’

Jess followed his gaze. The crossbow she had stolen from the Huntsman was half exposed at the top of her rucksack.

‘The boy was seriously hurt, Mother,’ Roy said. ‘Someone had tried to kill him, and my guess is it was this little bitch here.’

‘Roy!’

‘No, I didn’t – it’s not mine!’

‘You get a two minute start, girl, and then I’m coming after you with a shotgun.’

Jess knew he didn’t actually
have
a gun, otherwise it would be trained on her now, but she didn’t wait for a second warning. Grabbing her bag, she turned and bolted back through the door into the hall, looking for another way out. Behind her she heard the old woman shouting over her son’s angry demands for a telephone.

He’s going to get a gang after me
, Jess thought.
Whatever serves for law enforcement out here in the damn woods is now officially alerted to my presence
.

She went through into a small kitchen, past a little terrier dog that watched her with confusion from its basket. A door led out into a quaint garden which Jess sprinted across, vaulting over a wall at the end into an adjacent field. A few moments later she heard shouting from the garden behind her, but she was already climbing over another hedge into the next field along.

As she ran alongside the hedgerow towards a distant gate, her mind was a confusion of bitterness and sadness. The old woman had shown her genuine kindness, only for her buffoon son to charge in and throw his accusations around.

Still, Weston’s entrance had solved one problem for her: she now knew where to find Simon. Before her shower, the old woman had talked with pride about how her son was the biggest landowner in the village. All Jess had to do to find the biggest landowner was to find the biggest house, and that was easy.

From where she stood, the field dipped away into a valley, and there, at the top of the far rise, overlooking the whole village, stood a large manor house, glinting white in the sun.

And somewhere inside it, if she could get there before Roy Weston and his lynch mob, she was sure she would find Simon.