Tube Riders, The (44 page)

She looked at him. Again came that urge to be frank. ‘I don’t know. Everywhere I look I see suffering, and in your name I cause more of it.’

‘Everyone has to suffer in order to find peace. I’m still searching for mine, but let me try to help you find yours. I knew I would need to earn your trust to bring you on to my side. So I brought you a gift.’

Dreggo frowned. ‘You brought me a…?’

The Governor pointed through the trees. There, back off the road, out of the sight of anyone further down the valley, was another parked truck. The front seats were empty.

Dreggo frowned. ‘What’s that? You brought me a truck?’

The Governor chuckled deep in his throat, a sound like wooden balls jostling together. ‘Your present is inside,’ he said. ‘I left the vehicle there, out of sight, because the gift is rather a personal one for you. Go on, go inside.’

He waved her forward. Dreggo hesitated a moment before starting towards the truck. Was this a trick? A joke? The Governor didn’t come across as a particularly humorous man, but what could there possibly be that she might want? All she’d ever wanted for as long as she could remember was to shed the blood of others, and now she’d had her fill of that.

The back door of the truck was open, a metal step folded down. The inside was dark.

Dreggo paused for a moment. She glanced back at the Governor, standing near the front of the truck. A shadow hung across his face. As she watched, he gave a slight nod.

Dreggo stepped up into the truck.

To her human eye it appeared empty, but the motion sensors on her robotic eye picked up something near the far wall, radiating heat, moving slightly. She switched off her robotic eye and let her human eye adjust to the dark, using her ears and nose to create a picture of the room. There was a stench inside, not of rotten food, but of feces. And the sound of sharp, short breathing, and sobbing. She stared into the dark as her eyes adjusted, and let herself see what the Governor had brought her.

There, no more than five feet in front of her, bound to a metal chair that was fixed to the floor, was a man she hated more than any man in the world.

Dr. Karmski.

He whimpered like a child, and she knew the smell came from his vacated bowels. His mouth was bound with duct tape, and the blood that dribbled over it showed how he had cut his mouth trying to wriggle it off.

Dreggo’s knees sagged beneath her, and she looked away from him, eyes darting around the inside of the truck, unable to make eye contact. Beside him, on another chair, was a flat screen television.

She sucked in a breath. ‘Oh God, no…’

She looked back at Karmski, and he was shaking his head, his eyes so wide she thought they might pop out of his head.

She still woke up sweating, the cold touch of clammy hands a lingering, faceless memory. The dark recesses of her mind knew what had happened, but just in case she couldn’t remember, the Governor had brought it all here for her.

She reached out and switched the television on.

The first video was grainy, a shot of a laboratory from above, an empty operating theater. A young girl was brought in on a stretcher and lifted up on to the metal surface of the operating table. Her head lolled in unconsciousness. The camera zoomed in on the girl’s face, and a lump caught in Dreggo’s throat. A name came back to her, one she hadn’t realised she still remembered.

‘Deborah … oh no…’

Karmski made a sound like a whistling kettle, and without thinking Dreggo reached out and clubbed his face with the back of her balled fist. Stunned, his head slumped forward.

The scene cut, but the same camera kept the view, only now it was dark, and the girl was sleeping. From the bottom right, a man came into view, and Dreggo recognised a much younger Karmski. He fussed around for a few seconds, before coming close to the girl and leaning over her face. Dreggo saw his tongue licking at her cheek, and she wanted to kill him there and then. Only a compulsion to see what happened kept her from tearing off his face.

A few moments passed and the girl didn’t stir. As Dreggo watched, horrified, Karmski climbed up on to the operating table. His hands reached down to pull off the girl’s hospital garb.

Dreggo had the best seat in the house, and the Governor hadn’t spared her anything. Within seconds Karmski was fucking her unconscious younger self, his back heaving with the exertion.

Tears filled Dreggo’s eyes, and she sobbed openly as the scene cut. Then it began again, a different room but a similar view, the same unconscious girl but with her hair cut short now, what looked like bandages around her wrists. Karmski appeared again, and again he mounted her. Dreggo cried openly, but this time the scene cut off early, moving to yet another a few months later.

Dreggo held her head in her hands as the scenes flicked past. Some were in colour, others in black and white, some from a distance, others close up. From the digital time displays in the corner of some of the videos, she watched a couple of years pass. Then there was a gap of several years, and the final, last video.

Dreggo, older now and with the memory of Deborah long gone, was carried by orderlies on to a similar operating table as before. Her body was bloodied and still, her face ripped open. She shivered, as though watching her own death on tape. Men came and went as the tape sped up, performing operations on her, repairing her body, inserting tubes into her arms and attaching metal plates to her skin. For one brief moment she thought she saw Clayton in the theater. Finally, the scene darkened as a light was switched off, and the video moved forward in quick time, stopping again as the doctor appeared in shot. As before, he approached her unconscious body, one hand running over the metal plate that covered half her face.

When she watched him pull off the surgical robe that covered her midriff, something inside her snapped. With a roar she punched through the television screen, the image exploding in a mess of colour and then vanishing. She stood up, breathing heavily, and looked around.

Karmski’s rabbit-wide eyes watched her with terror.

‘I hate you,’ she growled. ‘I want you to die.’

Karmski frantically shook his head, eyes wide. Dreggo felt a strange compulsion to hear what he had to say. She reached out and tore away the duct tape, amused to see it take some skin. Karmski screamed and spat a mouthful of blood on to the floor.

Dreggo backhanded him again, but not hard enough to knock him out. She wanted him to die knowing she had caused it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he cried. ‘I loved you, Deborah.’

‘Don’t call me that. I was barely a kid when you started, you sick, sick man.’

‘I made you beautiful,’ he said.

‘You made my soul black. Everyone I have killed was because of what you did to me.’

‘That’s not true. Please, I’m so sorry.’

Dreggo stared at him. The Governor said she could end her suffering. But how was that? By killing him? Or by
forgiving
him?

‘
I love you
–’

She couldn’t take any more. With a roar that was all her rage and resentment pouring out of her in a flood, she gripped Karmski’s neck and began to squeeze. She couldn’t look at his desperate face as his skin tore and his neck caved in with a sudden rush of warmth. She screamed again as his arteries emptied over her hands, and then heard a thunk as his head lolled over on to one side. She gritted her teeth and gripped tighter, wrenching until his spinal cord snapped and at last his head thumped to the floor, where it rolled and lay still.

Dreggo staggered backwards, turned and fell against the side of the truck before pushing herself up and lurching down the steps into the sunlight. The grass came up to meet her as she fell, and she put out her hands to stop herself hitting the ground. A moment later, a stream of vomit soaked the grass below her.

She choked, hot bile stinging her throat, gasping for air.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Mistakes

Carl sat at the rear edge of the Land Rover’s open back, cradling a shotgun in his arms. He still felt a little strange around real guns – air-rifles had a lighter, less powerful feel. In the opposite corner, Owen sat, holding a handgun.

The hillside rolled away under them as the Land Rover joined up with an old road, the surface far better than anything Carl had ever seen inside Reading GFA. It was as though the government hadn’t bothered to implement any movement restriction measures here once they’d moved the people out. The tarmac was almost complete, obstructed only by the overgrown hedgerows as they spread out and encroached on the road.

‘Pretty quiet out here,’ Carl said to Owen. ‘We haven’t seen any of those things in a while.’

‘Yeah, keeping their heads down, eh. I imagine most of them die.’

Carl nodded. John Reeder had told them what he knew about the area, but Carl had wondered why the failed experiments weren’t just killed. Reeder didn’t know, but Ishael thought it was in case the government wanted the technology again in the future. The lab cells were full, and it was safer to keep the Mistakes out of the city. They also made a convenient guard for the tunnel, although so far none had bothered them.

‘They don’t even know we’re here,’ Owen said as they passed what might have been a woman sitting back in the hedge, head slumped forward against her knees. She didn’t react as the Land Rover sped by, even as it splashed her with water pooled on the road.

‘I wish the rain would stop,’ Jess said behind them. Carl glanced back at her, but the girl was staring at the floor, as though her words had been for her alone. Carl grimaced, wishing there was something he could do for her.

Reeder’s Land Rover didn’t have an awning in the back. The light rain that had started shortly before they broke through the checkpoint was beginning to worsen. Paul was sitting beside Jess and holding a small piece of tarp over both of them, but Owen and Carl, who had both volunteered to sit at the back, had nothing. They were wet through.

‘How far is this place we’re going?’ Carl asked.

‘Ishael said about forty miles,’ Paul told him. ‘The problem is that the government pulled up all the road signs. He’s guessing from old maps but he has no real idea where we are.’

‘Typical,’ Owen said. ‘So much for revolution.’

Paul gave him a tired smile. ‘Don’t worry, kid. You’re first in line to start the civil war.’

‘Damn right.’

The Land Rover began to slow.

‘What’s going on?’ Owen asked.

Carl and Owen stood up, looking forward over the top of the Land Rover’s cab.

‘Oh, shit, there’s one in the road,’ Carl said.’

Owen cocked his gun. ‘Let’s blast it.’

Reeder leaned out of the cab and called back, ‘Hold steady. We might be able to circle around it.’

‘What
is
that?’ Jess said.

As they came closer they realised it wasn’t a human at all. It looked more like a bear, curled up in the road. Thick hair covered its body. Thin, human-sized legs were bunched up under it, and its face was buried in its arms.

‘Perhaps it’s dead,’ Paul said.

Reeder closed to within twenty feet of it, and then started to turn the Land Rover to the right, trying to find a way around the creature without touching it.

‘Ah,’ they heard him exclaim. ‘There’s a ditch on this side. It’s going to be a little tight. Hold on.’

‘Keep your gun on it,’ Owen said to Carl.

Carl pulled the heavy gun up to his shoulder, aiming the sight at the furry creature as it came up on their left. It still hadn’t moved, but it was almost close enough to touch.

‘We’re going to hit it!’ Paul said, leaning forward to look over the side of the Land Rover. The creature was directly below them, barely inches from the front wheel as the Land Rover moved forward in fits and starts, the wheels spinning in the mud to the right of the road.

The Land Rover inched further forward. The back wheel came level with the creature. A couple more feet and it would be behind them.

‘Come on, Reeder,’ Paul muttered, wincing.

The Land Rover jerked forward. Carl let out a deep breath as the back wheel moved past the creature. ‘Just a little more,’ he heard Owen whisper beside him.

Then everything went crazy. Reeder gunned the engine, only for the back wheels to spin, one in the mud, the other bumping into a pothole. Muddy water sprayed the creature, and the tire grazed against its side.

The monster leapt up with a grating roar, a scarred, scabby, blinded human face rushing up towards them. Thick, furry arms gripped the rear side of the Land Rover and the creature swung up into the back. Furry human hands raked at them and black, jagged teeth snapped at their necks as breath as thick as engine oil pulled vomit up into their throats.

‘Oh, fuck!’ Owen screamed, firing but missing.

Carl staggered backwards as the creature reached for him. Its claws were almost on his neck when it suddenly spun round, hands clenching into fists to knock a struggling Owen off its back and down into the road.

Paul leapt forward but the creature’s arms came back up, knocking him down. He gasped as blood spurted from his nose.

Carl heard shouts and screams behind him as he swung the gun around and fired point blank into the creature’s stomach, just as the Land Rover braked hard, throwing the creature forward into Jess, knocking them both down on top of Paul. Beneath blank eyes her knife slashed and hacked at the creature’s back and neck.

Carl twisted himself, trying to get a clear shot. Just as he pulled the gun up the creature roared again, and this time the faint sound of replies echoed back from the trees and fields.

Carl fired into the creature’s back and it jerked upwards, its monstrous face contorted with pain. Marta jumped into the back and smashed her clawboard into the creature’s face, shattering its scarred nose to pulp.

Still it came on. The Mistake reached out for Carl, one eye hanging by a thread, broken teeth hanging from tendrils in its mouth. Jess stabbed it in the neck, and Ishael, behind her, almost severed a hand with a hack of his knife. The creature wailed and jerked backwards. Jess and Carl pushed it over the side and into the ditch.

‘Where’s Owen?’ Paul shouted, pushing himself up, spitting blood out of his mouth.

Carl looked around. The Land Rover had bumped forward, and Owen was some way back down the road, lying motionless.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Ishael exclaimed.

The creature which now lay motionless in the ditch beside the road had awoken others with its screams. They came in a rush now, a dozen, perhaps more, some running, others on all fours, one even appearing to slide along the ground. Not all of them were obviously humanoid, and some bore closer resemblance to insects.

Owen lay in the road, thirty feet from the Land Rover, seemingly unconscious. The Mistakes were barely two hundred feet beyond him, closing fast.

‘Owen!’ Paul tried to shout, his voice barely more than a gurgle.

Carl didn’t stop to think. He hurdled over the side of the Land Rover and sprinted down the road towards Owen. He grabbed the boy and hauled him into a sitting position, amazed how heavy even a kid was as a dead weight. Owen was breathing, but his eyes were closed.

‘Come on, get up!’ Carl shouted, slapping Owen across the face. He looked up to see the nightmarish host closing in amid a cacophony of calls and screams, just as a bloodied Paul reached his side and grabbed one of Owen’s arms. Behind them, Carl caught a glimpse of Ishael standing in the road with a gun in his hands.

‘Get him up!’ Ishael shouted, and then stepped in front of them, between Owen and the approaching creatures. Machine gun fire rang out as he raked the Mistakes with bullets. Several screamed and fell away, but most still came on as Carl and Paul dragged Owen back towards the Land Rover. Ahead of them the Land Rover started to back up, Jess and Marta leaning down to help lift Owen over the side.

‘Ishael!’ Paul shouted as Carl jumped up to help the girls lift Owen. As they got him over the side the first of the creatures reached Ishael, who threw the empty gun aside and ducked sideways, ramming a knife into its side.

‘Die, you fucker!’ he screamed as the creature swung a huge hand at him. Ishael ducked again, trying to hold off a face that was doglike, all human shape gone. The creature’s jaws snapped at him as Paul slammed his clawboard down on its back.

Carl grabbed Ishael’s arms and pulled him up. The Land Rover started to move, just as something arced through the air and clanged against the metal floor just inches wide of Jess and Marta.

A metal pole, about the length of a man’s arm, sharpened at one end into a point.

‘They have weapons!’ Carl shouted as the Land Rover pulled away, the nearest creature leaping after it. Its claws caught the back of the Land Rover and a screeching, ape-like face gnashed at them. Carl thrust his knife into its maw and ducked back, relieved as the creature fell away, taking the knife with it. For the first time in what felt like hours he let himself breathe.

His respite was momentary. ‘There are others ahead!’ Reeder shouted back. ‘Hold on!’

Marta, Jess and Paul ducked low as the Land Rover smashed into something and bounced. Carl used one hand to steady himself as he reached for a rifle.

‘We need to clear the road,’ Ishael shouted.

Carl pulled himself to the front of the Land Rover and stood up behind the cab. Ishael climbed up beside him, holding Owen’s handgun. Several Mistakes rushed towards them down the thin road. Hitting them was unavoidable, but the Land Rover wasn’t built like a battering ram; eventually something would break, leaving them stranded.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, Ishael and Carl fired at the approaching creatures, trying to clear a path through. Blood sprayed from the Mistakes’ bodies as their bullets found targets. Some collapsed into the road or fell into the verges, while some came on unaffected. One or two just stopped running for no reason, and slumped down into a crouch like the first creatures they had seen.

‘We’re clear!’ Reeder shouted, as they swung round a bend in the road and sped down the remains of a slipway that joined on to a wide highway, the Land Rover bumping through potholes and bashing through tall weeds grown up through the cracks in the tarmac. There were no other Mistakes ahead of them, while behind them their last pursuers had lost interest and turned away.

Reeder drove hard for a few miles, then slowed the Land Rover down, picking his way more carefully through the potholes as before. In the back, the others crowded around Owen.

Paul, his face bloody, cradled his brother’s head. Owen had a gash on his forehead which Marta wiped with a piece of rag.

‘Is he all right?’ Ishael asked.

Paul looked up at him, his eyes distraught, his face tight with worry. ‘Come on, Owen,’ he said.

Without opening his eyes, Owen smiled. ‘I’m waiting for you to cry, big brother.’

There was a gasp of relief from the others. ‘What the hell happened to you?’ Owen said, looking up. ‘You look like I just kicked your ass in a bitch fight.’

The others moved away to give them some space. Carl sat down at the back of the cab beside Ishael as Marta helped Jess into the front.

‘We were pretty lucky there, weren’t we?’ Carl said.

Ishael nodded. ‘We were. We’re almost out of ammunition now. If we get attacked again we’ll have problems.’

One glance told Carl how scared Ishael had been. The man’s bruised and swollen face was pale, and his top lip trembled.

‘They were human, too, weren’t they? Just like the Huntsmen.’

Ishael pulled his knees up to his chest and rubbed at a tear in his trousers on his thigh. ‘I keep telling myself that they have to die, that it’s the only way to save the lives of others. If we get across to France–’

‘They might do nothing. They might send us back.’

Ishael grimaced. ‘With each additional bullet I feel less of a man and more like one of them. If we ever get there, who will we be?’

Carl had to think for a moment. He understood what Ishael meant, but he had no answer. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess we’ll have to worry about it when we get there.’

‘If.’

Carl looked at him. ‘
When
.’

Ishael stifled a laugh. ‘The confidence of youth.’

‘The pessimism of late middle-age.’

‘I’m barely thirty!’

This time they both laughed. It was a welcome sound. Owen looked over, wondering what all the fuss was about. Even Paul smiled.

The soft thump of the plastic partition window sliding back broke up their party. ‘Sorry,’ Marta said. ‘Reeder says we’ve got another problem.’

‘What?’ Paul said.

‘It seems the battery of the Land Rover is running down. Reeder says we have to find a settlement and try to locate a recharging station or find another battery that works.’

‘Aren’t we close enough to walk yet?’ Owen said. ‘How far is it?’