Tube Riders, The (40 page)

They were halfway down the hillside when they saw the convoy. A land cruiser followed by two trucks, bumping quickly along a dirt road that swung down through the valley from the north. Full darkness was less than half an hour away, but still the vehicles had no lights on.

‘We run, now!’ Ishael shouted. ‘The Huntsmen are in there!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as I need to be! Come on!’

Moving in an awkward, shambling gait that reminded Carl of some of the old men who sat outside the village pub on a Sunday afternoon, Ishael led them down towards the woodland and the dried up section of canal. The road ran parallel along the opposite side of the valley. As they reached the trees they heard the sound of the trucks as they passed by, less than three hundred feet away.

‘Pray they’re shut up tight,’ Ishael said. ‘They smell us now, we’re dead.’

Carl glanced back towards Jess. The girl wore her rucksack on her back, the clawboard sticking out the top. In each hand she held a knife.

Through the trees they heard the sound of a vehicle slowing down.

‘Faster!’ Ishael hissed.

They dashed through the trees, trying to follow the course of the dry canal. Ishael went first, Carl behind him, trying to shepherd Jess. The girl seemed intent on being last, or perhaps the first to die should the Huntsmen capture them, Carl thought.

In front of him, Ishael tripped on a root and tumbled to the ground. Carl hauled him up again but Ishael’s injuries were starting to slow him down. As they moved off again, Jess continued to bring up the rear, eyes scanning the forest behind them.

‘Come on,’ Carl heard her whisper.

Ishael looked around them. They had moved away from the dry canal because of a thicker area of trees. Now, in the falling darkness, he looked disorientated.

‘Shit, which way were we going?’

Carl pointed. ‘I think it’s back that way.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Wait.’ Carl looked around for a rock. Testing its weight in his hands, he threw it hard up into a tree to their right.

With a collective cry a small flock of roosting birds rose and flew off to their left. Carl pointed in the opposite direction. ‘That way is Exeter. Which means the canal is ... over there. Come on.’

As they moved Ishael cocked his head at Carl. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Birds never fly towards a settlement,’ Carl said. ‘Just one of the things you learn from spending the majority of your childhood in a forest.’

‘Listen!’ Jess shouted. ‘Another truck.’

They squatted down low and listened. Through the trees they could hear the sound of another vehicle coming towards them.

‘Do we go back?’ Carl asked.

‘No, we’ll be surrounded. We have to try and get around it before it stops and unloads its men.’

They moved on through the trees, more cautiously now. The ground beneath their feet was getting soggy, so they had to be close to the canal again. Maybe here they would find Jess’s friends.

Again they heard the grumble of a truck engine, behind them this time. They quickened their pace through the trees, swatting aside the low hanging branches and leafy foliage that clawed at their faces.

And then Carl bumped into Ishael, who had stopped in front of him. Jess almost ran into them both, looking up just in time to stop herself.

‘What do we do now?’ Carl said.

The woodland had ended. In front of them an open meadow stretched away alongside the clogged waters of the old canal. To their right the valley side rose, with barely a tree for cover. There was nowhere to hide.

‘We have to hurry,’ Ishael said. ‘If they unload the trucks it won’t take the Huntsmen long to find our scent. We have to stay close to the canal. If necessary, we can wade through the reeds to the other side and double back. Come on.’

They jogged down to the canal side and headed along the remains of what had once been a cycling path, the tarmac now cracked and barely visible through the rampant weeds.

‘They still use this for pasture,’ Carl said. ‘Otherwise it would be overgrown.’

‘A pity it isn’t,’ Ishael said. ‘It would make tracking us just that little bit harder.’

Carl glanced back at Jess, but the girl had vanished. He looked around. ‘Ishael! Where is she?’

Ishael pushed through the weeds into the meadow. He squinted into the gloom. ‘Over there! Good God, what’s she doing?’

Jess stood in the middle of the field, a knife in each hand, facing back towards the forest.

‘Jess!’ Carl shouted, but the girl didn’t answer.

‘It’s suicide!’ Ishael said. ‘They’ll kill her!’

‘She thinks she has nothing left to live for,’ Carl said. ‘What do we do?’

‘We can’t just let her give her life away. Come on!’

They hurried through the grass towards her. Carl got there first, Ishael some way behind. Carl grabbed Jess’s arm. ‘No!’ he shouted, trying to twist her around. ‘They’ll kill you if you stay! They don’t want us alive!’

‘They killed my mother … my father … Simon … it’s their turn to die.’

Carl glanced at Ishael. The other man nodded.

Taking one arm each, they began to drag Jess backwards towards the canal.

They had gone only a few feet when lights appeared through the trees back in the direction they had come from. A vehicle was making its way slowly through the undergrowth, the headlights on full beam now as the last light trickled away over the horizon. The sound of spinning wheels followed the groan of a powerful engine hauling it through the soggy earth, guiding it between the trees.

‘Look, up there! It’s the others!’ Carl pointed. The land cruiser and the two other trucks were negotiating a dirt path down into the meadow. They too had their lights on now.

‘Take out your guns,’ Jess said. ‘We stand and fight.’

‘We’ll be cut down!’

‘There’s nowhere left to run. Better to die with their blood on our hands.’

Carl glanced at Ishael, and saw the defeat in his face. The beating Ishael had taken had left scars more than skin deep. He had found out first hand just how ruthless the government could be. If the DCA took them alive, death might prove a mercy.

‘We might take a couple of them with us,’ Ishael said reluctantly, but if it comes to it turn the guns on yourselves. Don’t let them capture you.’

Carl’s gulped. Less than two days ago he’d been a happy-go-lucky country boy playing in the forest, shooting at signs and birds with his catapult–

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Lower your guns. Save the bullets.’ He pulled the catapult out of his bag. ‘With this I can take out their headlights, and they won’t hear a thing. Now run at them! Angle right, back towards the canal!’

Ishael dragged Jess as Carl loaded the catapult with a rock he found in the grass at his feet. If he could take out the headlights, maybe the dark would give them enough cover to get back into the woods.

The closest vehicle – the land cruiser – closed to fifty, forty, thirty feet. Carl lifted the catapult and took aim.

Ishael put an arm on his shoulder. ‘Not the light, you’ll never break it. Aim for the windscreen. It will surprise them more.’

Carl nodded. The truck closed to twenty feet and began to slow down. He closed one eye, aimed, and fired.

The rock struck the windscreen and Carl heard a loud crack. The vehicle jerked to one side, the lights swinging away from them, momentarily leaving them in darkness.

‘Now, the canal. Go!’ Ishael shouted as the truck started to come back around. Its lights swept in a wide arc towards them. The cover of the reeds was just fifty feet ahead, but there was something there, something standing in front of the canal, waiting–

Jess slumped to her knees, just as the truck’s lights came around to light up the field around them. Ishael turned to help her up, but she hadn’t fallen. She’d seen the robed figure standing by the canal, waiting for them. Shock had felled her, the fight draining away.

Carl lifted the catapult, feeling utterly pathetic. It was useless against the Huntsman, but the gun was in his bag; he would never get to it in time.

They heard the audio click of a loudspeaker behind them. ‘Stay where you are!’ a man’s voice boomed. ‘Do not move!’

The two trucks came to a halt behind the land cruiser. Glancing up, Carl saw the Huntsman still standing by the canal. Little more than a shadow in the gloom, beneath the hood was a black pit of darkness. The creature started to walk towards them, robe wrapped around its body like some ancient druid. Carl felt his blood run cold.

Behind them, Carl heard the sound of the truck door slam.

‘Well, well, it’s a surprise to see you again,’ a man’s voice said.

Carl saw Ishael flinch slightly as he looked up. ‘Take me, let the others go,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

‘Hmm. Bargaining. Well, considering that we have all three of you already, what makes you think I would consider your offer?’ the man said. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t die until we have your friends. You are meeting them here, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know–’

‘Oh,
we
do. We intercepted your radio transmissions.’

‘You bastard.’

The man gestured at the DCA agents pooling behind him. ‘Secure them, get them into the truck. We’ll take cover until the others get here. You, get away. Dreggo?’

The Huntsman by the canal had come closer, its hood hung low. Carl heard ragged breathing as though it were hurt or out of breath. Ishael had told him how these creatures were unstable, how they could tear you apart in a second regardless of their orders.

‘Dreggo?’ the man shouted back at the trucks. ‘Get out here and call it off!’

Ishael put a protective arm around the shivering, trembling Jess, while Carl squatted down beside them. His heart thundered in his chest.

Then the Huntsman by the canal roared, and the cloak fell away. The earsplitting sound of machine gun fire filled the meadow, and for a second before the headlights were shot out of the DCA vehicles Carl saw two men where the Huntsman should have been, one standing tall, another squatted down. A third dashed out from behind them to where Jess, Carl and Ishael had ducked down.

But it wasn’t a man at all. ‘Hurry!’ the girl hissed as the two men sprayed the trucks with bullets.

‘Marta?’ Jess stammered, surprised, the first real emotion Carl had heard in Jess’s voice since Simon had died.

The girl called Marta led them down the slope towards the canal. Behind them the sound of breaking glass and tearing metal filled the air. Then the gunfire abruptly stopped, and Carl heard running feet, together with the confused shouts of the Department of Civil Affairs men trying to reorganise themselves. One shout hung above all others: ‘Release the Huntsmen!’

Beyond the reeds more headlights flicked on, and an engine burst into life.

‘Quickly!’ Marta shouted. ‘Get into the back!’

Carl saw a Land Rover, not unlike one his father’s friend owned, but this one had clearly been tampered with to make it even better equipped to handle the rough terrain. The chassis had been jacked up, the wheels enlarged.

A young boy waiting in the open back helped to pull him up alongside the others. As the smaller of the two men vaulted over the side, Marta punched the metal back of the cab and shouted, ‘Reeder, go!’

The Land Rover bumped off down a thin lane that ran along the top of the old canal, shielded from sight by a thin, reed-filled channel alongside the meadow which they had come from. A moment later it bumped up over the old edge of the canal and began to thread its way through the trees, following an old road or trail. Soon they were out of the wood and on the gravelly remains of a proper road, the Land Rover’s headlights on dip but given additional shielding with metal flaps that hung over the lights, making them harder to spot from a distance.

Carl looked around the open back of the Land Rover as it bumped along. Two men in their early twenties and a young boy sat with their backs against the cab. Marta had got into the front.

One of the men was round-faced, prematurely balding and a little overweight. He wore spectacles and gave Carl a warm, fatherly smile. The other was wiry thin with a pinched, ratty face and short-cropped hair. This one appeared to be winking at Carl. The boy was thinner but clearly resembled the bigger of the two men, although he had a lot more hair. All of them, he noticed, were avoiding looking at Jess.

The girl lay by the edge, sheltered by the raised metal side of the Land Rover, one hand under her head, one hand over her stomach.

Her eyes were closed, but Carl was sure she wasn’t sleeping.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Past Lives

‘I told you, I didn’t know.’

Clayton glared at Dreggo. ‘How the fuck could you not have known that wasn’t one of yours?’

She shrugged. ‘They didn’t respond to me. I assumed they were too busy following the trail.’

‘You lying bitch.’

‘I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.’

Clayton scowled and walked off. Dreggo gave an inward grin. The two Huntsmen she had sent to follow the trail had taken a detour into a field of sheep not far outside of Exeter. There was nothing she could do to reel them in now. She had to wait until they were done and hope they didn’t find any human settlements to raid on the way.

Perhaps she should have mentioned it to Clayton. He had just seemed so busy …

‘God damn it!’ he shouted, turning back towards her. ‘We have three dead and four more injured. How the hell did this happen?’

He was talking mostly to himself so she didn’t answer. Instead, she said, ‘I’ll send two more Huntsmen to follow the trail. Get a map and find out the best way to cut them off. The radio transmissions said they were heading down into Cornwall.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Clayton looked flustered as he rubbed his head. His eyes were shadows in the dull glare of the convoy’s one remaining headlight, but she could see the stress painted in dark lines across his face. ‘Fuck, how could this happen?’

‘To Falmouth,’ Dreggo said. She’d been awake while a DCA radio operator had intercepted one of the conversations between the men back in Bristol and the Tube Riders on the boat. They’d probably known their open frequency would be easy to intercept, so they’d not given away many details. Falmouth, she thought, could have been a slip brought on by pressure, or a dud to deliberately throw them off, but it was the only lead they had. In any case the Huntsmen would lead them to the truth.

Despite Clayton’s obvious panic at yet another near miss, Dreggo was quite enjoying the chase. The Tube Riders had proven wily, slippery prey, and it would make their eventual capture even sweeter. They were still running, of course, but heading into the open wilderness of Cornwall was probably a mistake. They were running out of land, and there were no active ports in Cornwall. If it was an airstrip they had their sights on, it would be easy to spot and dispose of with the rarity of flight these days. No, the chase was coming to an end, but it had certainly been an interesting one.

Cornwall. Clayton had said it was mostly empty. The bottom half was sealed off by a fence, what lay inside unknown to anyone outside the higher levels of the government. The northern part, from the River Camel up, was still used for grazing cattle and milk production. From the River Camel down, though, Clayton had just shrugged.
Empty
, he said.
Everyone moved to work elsewhere.

She was certainly getting to see the country. The more she saw, however, the more she hated it. She hated the dumb violence of the cities, the blissful ignorance of the GFA people. She hated the way the government had torn up the roads, pulled down the signs. Everything stank of delusional, misguided leadership that was slowly tying the country into a knot. If you didn’t clean or oil or check a car it would continue to run for a while, but soon its performance would begin to wane. Eventually, it would just stop dead. It was happening to Mega Britain, and a large part of her was pleased.

‘He’ll be angry,’ Clayton said, brushing one hand through his thinning hair. ‘We had them cornered, and they outsmarted us. They got away again.’

‘They were lucky,’ Dreggo said. ‘That’s all. One mistake and they might all be dead now.’

‘But they’re not.’

‘Which is why we need to get moving.’

Clayton nodded. ‘Okay. We roll out in five.’ He gestured at one of his agents. ‘You got me that map yet? We need to know how they’re going into Cornwall. What’s the quickest way? Which roads are still there, which aren’t? Be quick about it.’

He pulled another hand through his hair. As the truck with the working headlight began to swing round, Dreggo caught a glimpse of his eyes.

They looked as bloodshot as the Huntsmen’s.

He’s suffering,
she thought.
Finally, after everything, he’s starting to hurt too.

#

In the back of the frozen goods truck, sitting in the dark a little apart from the others, Lyen’s mind toiled. He had smelled her; she was near.

‘Marta.’

The photograph had sprung a leak in the sealed tank of his memory. Disconnected from his past, he was starting to remember small sequences, images, voices. The girl in the picture was Marta, but who was Marta? He knew her. How did he know her?

What had he been before this?

Lyen listened to the shouts and the gunfire outside. The sounds of violence, of war, and his tongue lolled from his jaws, the need to maim, to kill, rising up inside him.

The other Huntsmen shifted. Hoods fell back, some stood, others scratched at the walls of their prison. Lyen pulled the crossbow from his belt and fingered the mechanisms. How he knew to use it he no longer remembered, but the weapon was as much a part of him as his own hands. He had killed many men with it, and he hoped to kill many more. The blood in his veins wouldn’t run warm without the blood of others on his hands.

Several of the Huntsmen had moved to the door and were pawing at the steel, whining like hungry dogs. Lyen stayed where he was, though, his eyes closed, trying to remember how he had known that the girl in the picture – the girl they were chasing – was called Marta.

#

The Governor’s car, with its enhanced suspension, gave a surprisingly comfortable ride across the countryside, and he looked out of the tinted windows with interest at the towns and villages that they passed. Behind them, the small container truck that made up the second half of his convoy was having less luck, bumping heavily through the potholed remains of the roads, graveled over only on more common routes. It didn’t matter; there was nothing important inside, not to him at any rate.

As always, when faced with the results of his policies, the Governor felt pangs of uncertainty. Had his GFA policies worked as they should? Was production up or down? Had pulling up the roads really helped focus people’s attention on their work?

Until dark shut off the outside to everything but his own reflection, it heartened him to see the bales in the fields, the huge parked trailers laden with grain ready for transportation into the GUAs. He had seen farm workers laughing and joking as they went about their work. At least in the GFAs people looked happy.

Happiness, though, for the Governor, was of no importance other than to maintain productivity. He didn’t care about their state of mind as long as the country still produced, still rolled on, with the end result being the finances for and the tools to build his spacecraft. As long as the country kept producing the spacecraft, and his spacecraft got gradually closer to their goal, the Governor, while not happy, was content. That was enough.

Turning away from the window, the Governor set his thoughts on the task in hand. These kids, these so-called Tube Riders, were running across the country with their proof of the ambassador’s assassination, slipping between the fingers of the Department of Civil Affairs and the claws of the Huntsmen alike. On the one hand he admired them for their resilience, and thanked them for exposing some of the flaws of his system. How easy it was to get out of the cities through the railway tunnels! He had never considered it. And the Huntsmen, his pride, his success, had been shown up as unpredictable, unstable. Clayton had warned him, of course, but Clayton was a fool. Mega Britain ran so smoothly that Clayton had never had more to do than interrogate a few political prisoners. Faced with a real crisis the man was a fraud. It was a shame that Clayton’s second was dead; Adam Vincent had shown ingenuity the older man lacked, but there were others in the lower ranks of the DCA who would welcome the chance to replace Leland Clayton as soon as this mission was over.

The Governor flicked down the sun shade above him and studied himself for a moment in the small mirror on its reverse side. His skin, milky-white, was in contrast to the dark sunglasses he wore. The texture of his skin was coarse and thick, but he was perfectly albino, just one of his many abnormalities but probably the most useless. An inverse effect was that it made direct sunlight intolerable. Vampiric, some might suggest, but it wouldn’t kill him, not in short bursts at least. Merely irritate, at worst burn. It was more the fear of it that kept him out of sight these days, and the memories of the cruel experiments that had seen him exposed to measure its effects. He still had the scars.

All in all, he looked in good health. His face suggested a man in his late thirties or early forties, but Maxim Cale was a hundred and twenty-three years old. Extended life was just one of the many gifts bestowed on a shy, quiet little boy abducted from an innocuous Algerian village in the 1950s and locked away in the dark hell of a Soviet research facility in the wastes of Siberia for almost twenty years.

Night by night the screams had filled the dank, chilly corridors. Stern men in white coats marched back and forth, clipboards in their hands, sharp instruments in their pockets. That little boy was just one of dozens who saw their faces and bodies change with each passing day. As he grew into a man the changes to his body more apparent, until one day they gave him too much power, enough to escape from that icy hellhole just a couple of miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Many years later, his mind now as dark and as murderous as those who had abused him, he went back to that place to uncover the details of what had happened to him. He had found the place in ruins, all the records and artifacts and information taken away.

Where?

Someone somewhere knew, had noted down what had happened, knew where the technology had gone. It took him another ten years of searching, interrogating, and killing, to find out.

Afraid of the technology falling into the hands of the Americans or worse, the scientists had hidden it in the one place they thought no one else would ever be able to get at it.

Space.

The Governor wanted that technology back. He wanted to understand, wanted to know his origins, where his power had come from and why. And then he wanted to make use of it.

Maybe he should use these Tube Riders as his first test subjects. They were clever; their genetics were strong. He could give them power almost as great as his own, and then use them like he did the Huntsmen, turn them into killing machines to brush aside his enemies. All of Europe could fall, and after it, the former USSR. How he so wanted to make them pay for their crimes…

The Governor leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes, enjoying the soft reverie of world domination.