Tube Riders, The (46 page)

‘They say they’re not Wildmen, and they’re not spies. Which begs the question, why are they here?’

‘We have to get to Lizard Point,’ Marta shouted.

The others had grouped up behind her. Carl and Ishael trained their guns on the darkness behind them. Jess had a knife in each hand. Paul and Reeder hovered at her shoulder.

‘Please!’ Marta shouted again. ‘We’re on the run from the government!’

‘Forget these people,’ Paul said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘We need to get out of sight.’

Others had appeared further down the street. Doors opening, people stepping out to see what was happening. One or two started running towards them.

‘Oh my God, what in Heaven’s name is
that?
’ Reeder said, and for the first time since they had met him Marta heard real fear in his voice. She looked up, and understood why.

Something huge and dark was loping down the street, head hung low, arms almost scrapping the ground. It looked like a human hunched over, but it was the biggest human Marta had ever seen. Even with its head slung forward it towered over the people that it passed.

‘Who is after you?’ the woman demanded.

Marta spread her arms, and for a moment the answer seemed hysterical enough to make her smile. ‘Everyone!’

The man looked at the woman and nodded. He moved past them down the road, ducking into the hedge a few feet beyond them.

‘What’s he–’ Paul began, just as a loud siren wailed and a chain of spotlights flicked on in a ring extending out into the darkness around the houses. The road out of the town lit up, and there, rushing towards them, they saw a motley group of Mistakes.

‘Aim for the legs!’ Ishael shouted.

‘No!’ the woman cried. ‘Gunfire makes them worse! Take your people and follow Jin!’

Jin had to be the man. Appearing from the trees again, he waved at them to follow him back up the street, towards the approaching giant. Owen, Paul and Reeder didn’t hesitate; Carl and Ishael looked around but seemed reluctant to move from their positions. Jess was standing stock still, eyes on their attackers, knives gripped tight.

Then something burst from the trees just a few feet away, leapt over a garden fence and dashed up the road towards them. Carl, closest to it, screamed in terror and spun towards it. His gun went off, and the top of the Mistake’s head exploded, jerking it around. It gave a guttural, metallic howl, then tumbled backwards to the ground, where it twitched and writhed for a few seconds before falling still.

‘No!’ the woman screamed.

A huge cacophony rose from the forest.

‘I told you about guns, you idiots!’

Carl’s mouth fell open. He looked ashamed that his fear had overcome him, endangering them all. Marta felt awful for him, but understood. After the terrible things they had witnessed over the last couple of days, they were all starting to lose control.

‘Go!’ the woman screamed again.

Marta turned, just as the giant man reached them. He was massive, maybe twelve feet tall, his body a thick mass of muscle, his chest covered only by a thin waistcoat which revealed the enormous shoulders that hung on to overlong, muscular arms. His face was a mass of scars, his mouth lopsided, one eye lower than the other. He roared as he rushed at them, arms swinging like scythes.

‘Redman, the Wildmen are coming!’ the woman shouted.

The giant barely seemed to notice her, but his course veered slightly right and he passed by where the Tube Riders crouched, rushing headlong at the phalanx of monsters that came at them down the street. In his wake others came too, some recognizably human, others that resembled Huntsmen, still others who could be one or more different creatures combined, not all of them human.

Jin said, ‘Hurry! We’ll be swamped in minutes. There are far more of them than us.’ He looked back at the woman. ‘Lucy, I’ll take the kids. Be safe.’

She reached up and touched his face. ‘You too. I’ll be there soon.’

He looked at her a moment, then turned and headed up the street, the Tube Riders following him, while around them others moved in the direction of the battle. More cries came from the wilderness beyond the ring of spotlights.

A screaming Mistake who looked mostly human leapt into view from between two houses, dashing into the road in front of them. Jin leapt straight at him, what looked like knives in his hands. The man turned on him, and Jin buried the knives into his chest. The Mistake screamed and collapsed to the ground. Jin barely pushed him off before he started running again. Where knives had been, his hands were human again.

‘This way,’ he shouted back, taking a street heading left. Marta glanced back once before she followed, and saw the Redman in the midst of the battle, huge arms flailing, Mistakes flying through the air like thrown toys. She shivered at the sight of it, but at least it was on their side.

‘Come on,’ Ishael shouted, tugging at her arm. She’d been lingering back; the others were all far ahead now.

They passed through a town square. People dashed back and forth, some involved in little skirmishes, others running away. In the midst of battle it was difficult to tell who were Wildmen and who were not.

‘In there!’ Jin shouted, pointing at a two-floored building ahead of them. Double doors were open, flanked by two men who were ushering others inside. The windows on the lower level were bricked over, while the higher level windows were barred. She saw from the faded sign that it was an old police station.

An explosion came from nearby, followed by a howl. Jin shouted something back that she didn’t hear, just as a group of Mistakes raced into the square through an alleyway. Spears sailed through the air and three of them went down, only for them to climb back up off the floor and move on. One of the children pulled what looked like a pipe out of his clothing, turned and raised it to his mouth. Marta heard a whistling noise, then the nearest Mistake screamed and dropped to the floor, clutching at its eye. The child dashed after Jin.

Mistakes were all around them now. In front of Marta, Jess slashed the neck of one who reached for her, while Carl punched another in the face as Ishael grabbed it and hauled it back. They were just a few yards from the doorway. A hand fell on her shoulder and she swung her clawboard up and around, striking something birdlike in the face. It fell away, screeching.

Carl and Owen had reached the door, Ishael close behind. Paul pushed Jess away from a group of Mistakes grappling each other and dragged her towards the door. Marta was just behind them when she remembered Reeder.

She looked back.

John Reeder lay on the ground, something that looked half amphibian standing over him. His face was covered with blood.

‘No–’ She took a couple of steps towards him, but a strong arm closed around her waist and hauled her back.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Jin said, dragging her towards the door.

‘John!’ she screamed, as the creature lifted a metal spear and thrust it down into Reeder’s chest. The man’s face twisted with pain as his head slumped back. His eyes fell on her for a second and his mouth shaped the word,
go
.

Marta gaped as the creature jerked the spear out of his body and flung it at her, just as Jin pulled her sideways through the door. The spear missed her by inches, hitting the wall behind where she had been standing, clanging to the ground.

Marta stared at the carnage outside. Reeder was just one of a number of bodies that lay scattered around the square. Small groups still fought, battling with sticks or bare hands. Then the door slammed closed, and a huge deadbolt slammed across. Marta closed her eyes and collapsed back into Jin’s arms, tears of anger and frustration stinging her eyes.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Tunnel

As the convoy rolled past, heading upslope towards the top of the rise, Switch lifted his head. His neck ached from maintaining the position, keeping the guise up while Clayton, the Governor and Dreggo talked just a few feet away. It had been a risk to get so close, but he’d been right that the stench from the garbage would be too much even for the Huntsmen to differentiate him from it.

After separating from the others, he had hidden the jeep out of sight and then headed back to the gate to see what the Department of Civil Affairs would do when they reached the sabotaged checkpoint. As he’d suspected, they didn’t cut through the fence for fear of letting out the Mistakes, but rather headed north towards the next one. Once he realised their plans, he moved ahead of them quickly as the road took them away from the fence, their trucks slower over the old roads. At the next checkpoint he’d found a place to hide the jeep and been in position near the gate long before they arrived.

He rubbed his neck as he moved off towards where he had hidden the jeep in a stand of trees. He’d been able to shift position a little, but they’d still taken far longer than he’d thought necessary just to get the gate open and their trucks underway. He’d sensed that a changing of the guard was in order when Dreggo had disappeared with the Governor and come back wearing a DCA uniform. The man identified as Clayton had obviously suffered some sort of demotion. It was all conflict that might prove useful later, as was the brief conversation he had been waiting so long to hear.

So, the Governor knew where they were going. That in itself erased all need for stealth because they were no longer being tracked, but that the Governor said the tunnel was sealed raised a bigger problem. Letting the Tube Riders run into a trap was the plan; let them head into the tunnel only to find it went nowhere except back, into the waiting teeth of the Huntsmen.

He frowned as he climbed up into the jeep and pulled off, heading due south-west, a map of Ishael’s on the seat beside him, Lizard Point highlighted in red. Out of the field, he turned on to a small road that would take him around and ahead of the DCA, his jeep able to take routes their bigger trucks couldn’t. He pushed the jeep up through the gears, picking up speed, not caring as the small vehicle lurched and jumped through the potholes of the old road. He took a certain delight in driving, something he hadn’t done since he was about fifteen, in the days when there had been enough cars on the roads for it to be worth stealing them. It was no tube ride, but it was fun. Perhaps in another life he might have been a rally driver, he thought.

One of their radios had been lost during the fight in Exeter, and the rest of the Tube Riders had taken the other to stay in contact with William if necessary. The jeep was his only hope now, and he prayed it could handle one last journey. Getting to the tunnel and his friends before the DCA did was his only concern. He had to stop them going into that tunnel.

#

Dark was falling when he finally stopped the jeep at the top of a thin lane and climbed out. His body ached from the rough journey, and his stomach felt queasy. The knife wound in his side was sticky beneath the bandages, as though the rocking and jerking of the jeep had broken open some of the stitches Reeder had redone. He hoped it would hold just a little longer.

From here he could hear the roar of the sea and the grumble of the waves as they battered the cliffs. The damp air was thick with the smell of salt, and Switch breathed it deeply, tasting it back in his throat. He’d never been remotely near the sea before, and he found the smells and the sounds intoxicating. Perhaps, he wondered, he’d also been a sailor in another previous life.

Up ahead of him was a clearing. A wide avenue had been cut through the trees, and a large warehouse stood at the end of a long stretch of tarmac, wide enough for four vehicles shoulder to shoulder, in the lee of a steep hillside silhouetted against the evening sky.
Mickelson Packaged Goods
read the faded sign above the warehouse door.

This building, he was sure, disguised the entrance to the tunnel. Up the hill to the right another trail led away, and there, at the top of the cliff, were a cluster of huge windmills, their blades beating against the night sky. Below them, where he had just been, was a large shed housing several generators which still hummed with life.

The power was on.

A mile back down the road, he’d come to another fence, another gate. The padlock had been thick with rust, suggesting the place was abandoned. He’d had to break it open, and he’d left the gates wide, figuring that to put back the broken padlock would be a ruse gaining him a few seconds at most. In the entranceway, he’d left the bodies of a couple of Mistakes he’d killed, to try to give the DCA the impression that the gates had been broken in a long time ago.

There was no sign of the other Tube Riders. He had expected them to be here by now, so perhaps they’d encountered further problems. He had faith in them to make it, but their chances of getting here before the Governor and the Huntsmen were slight now. He had a couple of hours on them at most.

He looked up at the warehouse façade, the wide road in front of it, his curiosity rising. The Governor claimed it was sealed, while Ishael thought it went right through to France. Who was right? If the Governor was right, he had to head the Tube Riders off before they got here. But if Ishael was right…

Curiosity got the better of him. He had to know for sure. He had to get inside, and find out for certain whether the tunnel was finished or not.

He approached the huge warehouse doors. They were maybe twenty feet high, tall enough to permit any kind of large cargo or military vehicle.

They were unlocked.

Switch slid them back on metal runners, the doors squealing as years of rust and dirt was scraped away. Sweat poured from his brow, and his throat was dry. He was hungry, thirsty and very, very tired, but he knew that whatever was going to happen was just hours away. First William, and then the streets, had raised him tough; he would last.

Inside, a cavernous darkness awaited him. He pulled a torch from his pocket and flashed it about. At least there were no Huntsmen or DCA agents that he could see. In fact, there didn’t appear to be anything except a thirty foot wide stretch of tarmac, flanked on either side by bare earth.

The whole warehouse looked rather temporary, erected just to cover over something not yet finished but which was best kept secret. He shone his torch to either side, and located a set of switches. Flicking them brought high strip lights reluctantly into life, and the warehouse revealed itself.

At the back a rock wall faced him, broken only by a huge tunnel entrance at the end of the tarmac. A hundred feet high, it angled gently down into darkness. The tunnel looked finished, the roof rounded and polished smooth. Dim emergency lights reminded him of St. Cannerwells, and he could only reflect on how long ago those days seemed now.

Near the entrance was a single floored brick building. Inside, Switch found a dusty computer console and a bank of switches. He flicked a couple to see what would happen. One brought a gust of damp, musty air flowing out of the tunnel, and he knew he’d started up some sort of fan system. He flicked a few more. One, terrifyingly, caused scratchy piano music to boom out. He switched it off quickly, and tried another. This time he got lucky, and a flood of light burst out of the tunnel as huge overhead strip lights came on.

Switch went outside and looked down the slope of the tunnel. It was just an entrance ramp, because a hundred yards further on the tunnel opened out.

He jogged down to take a look. The tarmac stopped at the bottom of the ramp, yielding to bare hewn rock. Lights and fans hummed overhead but the floor of the tunnel wasn’t quite finished, wooden boards and occasional piles of rock debris showing how work had abruptly ceased. To the right of the ramp were a series of huge storage garages built back into the rock, and Switch wondered what was inside. Cutting or clearing vehicles he imagined.

To the left though, was as impressive a sight as he’d ever seen. The entrance was nothing compared to this monster, the tunnel at least two hundred feet wide, and angling downwards below the ocean floor, stretching away as far as he could see. He expected it began to rise at some point, up towards the French side. There was no sign of an end from here, but it could be fifty miles long or more. Slight curves or angles would easily take it out of view.

So, it existed. Now he just needed to know how far it went. Who was right, the Governor or Ishael? Did it stop halfway across the Channel, or was it complete?

He hurried back to the Jeep.