Tube Riders, The (33 page)

‘Uncle!’ Switch hissed, a plan formulating in his mind. ‘Move to your left and knock over that stack of chairs. Draw their line of sight.’

‘Sure thing, kid, but I hope you know what you’re doing.’

William crept through the shadows and stood up behind a table stacked on its end. He lifted a chair and tossed it twenty feet into a pile of others near the far wall.

There was a crash as the stack of chairs collapsed. The two guards rushed to the door and blindly opened fire in the direction of the sound. With their attention diverted, Switch pulled out a little metal star out of his coat, its edges honed sharp. Moving out of cover, he flung it in the direction of the guards.

His aim had the precision of long hours of solitary practice. The star hit the nearest guard in the eye, and the man went down screaming, blood spurting from the wound.

Switch was on his feet before the other guard could turn, a throwing knife in his right hand. He took a couple of steps closer as he gathered his aim, only to feel something shift under his foot, a broom handle or an old ashtray, maybe even a dead rat, stiff with rigor mortis. It took his balance, sending him sprawling to the floor, the knife landing tamely in the wooden wall beneath the window.

Switch looked up as the man raised his gun, only to see a flying chair slam into the man’s face.

As the guard grunted and felt backwards, William leapt out of the shadows, a broken-off chair leg in his hands. One sharp thrust and the man lay still beside the other.

William helped Switch to his feet. ‘I ain’t a goddamn freedom fighter for nothing,’ he said, a smile lighting up his face. ‘But I’m glad to see my boy’s growing up. Nice work with that shuriken there.’

Switch returned the smile. ‘I learned everything from you, Uncle,’ he said.

William’s face fell grim again. ‘Glad to hear it boy, but we’d better get out of here. Two ain’t much to deal with, but in about ten minutes there’ll be half an army outside.’

William led them through the mess of fallen furniture and out of a door at the back. A dark stairway led up, and from there they crossed an old floor where only rats and spiders danced now, pushed through another door and out on to a fire escape. They emerged on to a quiet lane behind the warehouse.

At the end of the lane they climbed up a grassy bank and over a wall into an overgrown garden around the side of the cathedral. They waded through it and jumped over a metal railing fence as shouts came from the waterfront behind them.

Running low behind a wall surrounding a fountain, they crossed the square and ducked into the doorway they had come out of before. Inside, William leaned back against the wall, breathing hard.

‘Phew! Close one!’

Switch was about to reply, when he heard a muffled explosion followed by the distant sound of gunfire. It didn’t come from the waterfront, though, but further away, back across the city, in the direction of the train station.

William gave him a grim smile. ‘Ah, Stevie. I hate to lose you again so soon, but I think you’d better get back home and pack. Sounds like a train from Hell just pulled in over at Temple Meads.’

Stevie sighed and nodded. The Huntsmen had arrived in Bristol.

The chase was on again.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Escape

The jolt from the cattle prod had messed with the electronic part of Dreggo’s brain. She gradually began to regain control of herself, but as she tried to run down the stairs after the two Tube Riders and the country boy, while her mind felt clear, the receptors in her arms and legs were still misfiring, causing her to stumble and fall.

When she finally emerged from the house to find the group of men there, with their heavy, inaccurate shotguns trained on her, a red mist descended over her mind. All her life she’d been persecuted and abused. She didn’t deserve any of her suffering, but it had happened anyway. Why should she suffer while these country fools lived in peace and prosperity?

Her heart was heavy as she ordered the Huntsmen on them, and somewhere inside her heart, another little piece of her lingering humanity died.

It was over in less than a minute. She walked over to the cars, their bodywork and windows now stained red. There had been eleven men in total, all of them now dead or dying, their bodies ripped up and torn open, their faces nearly unrecognizable. A couple of low moans came from those not yet expired. Of her Huntsmen, Meud was dead; a shotgun fired point-blank into his face had left him beyond any hope of repair. The others had picked up minor injuries, but nothing their enhanced tissue regenerative genes couldn’t deal with over a few days. Now they waited, their bloody hoods lowered over their faces, for their next orders.

Instinct made Dreggo look up at the house, at the tall, vine-covered walls. A woman’s face pressed against a window on the second floor, looking out, watching them. Her mouth was agape, and with her computerized eye Dreggo could see her lip trembling, her cheeks stained with tears.

A shock like an earthquake rocked through her heart, and she staggered beneath a sudden, overwhelming guilt for what she had done. This woman was now widowed, as no doubt were many others in the local area, their husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons, slaughtered like the cattle her Huntsmen had fed on.

Just two days ago her friend Maul had been killed by that Tube Rider with the bad eye. Maul had loved her, and he’d been murdered without thought. Regardless of the situation they had been in, the Tube Rider with the bad eye had cut him down.

‘Why should it be any different for you?’ she muttered under her breath, still looking up towards the woman. ‘No one spared mine. Why should I spare yours?’

The woman was openly crying now, her hands held up to her cheeks. Dreggo dragged her gaze away to the Huntsmen. ‘Into the woods,’ she ordered. ‘Find them, and kill them.’ Realizing she was about to cross another bridge that would subsequently fall behind her, she added: ‘Kill the boy too.’

Lyen and Jacul raced off across the lawn. Dreggo followed at a walk, her head hung low.
I will not cry
, she told herself.
I will not
. But it was too late. From her one good eye tears flowed down her cheeks, and sobs jerked what was left of her heart.

#

Carl dashed through the woods after Jess and Simon. He hoped Jess had followed his instructions, because it was easy to take a wrong turn among all the poorly-planted trees.

He tried not to think about the slaughter he had just witnessed, the ripping, tearing claws of the terrible creatures. Mercifully he hadn’t seen his own father die, because Roy Weston had fallen down behind one of the cars, but the claws had flashed over there too. There were no signs of pursuit, but it was surely underway by now. Running hard, he knew he would catch Jess and Simon soon, and he could only hope that their passage wasn’t obvious enough that those creatures could follow.

Huntsmen,
Jess had said. Carl had heard of them, but in the GFAs they were a myth, a legend. The kind of thing mothers told their children would eat them if they didn’t go to sleep right away. They were monsters in the closet or under the bed, a child’s nightmare.

He reached a small river and bounded over it in a single leap. The terrain started to rise again, and Carl followed a rough path up through the undergrowth of what had once been natural forest. The ruined town began a few hundred feet ahead.

Under one arm he carried something he’d found years ago in the ruined town, down in an old basement. It wasn’t dissimilar to the boards that Jess and Simon had, except it was longer and had little wheels on one side. When his parents were out, he sometimes took it out and rode it up and down the hallways of the house, but there was nowhere outside he could use it because all the roads had been torn up and replaced with gravel.

The first ruined houses appeared to his left, and he veered in their direction to take him up through the old town. Why, he wondered, as he passed several old houses and the collapsed ruins of a corner shop, a rusty ice cream sign still outside, had the government felt it necessary to do this? To relocate so many people and then try to cover over any trace of them ever having been here?

He’d asked his grandmother about it, the only person prepared to say anything at all. She had told him that the government didn’t think the countryside needed so many people, that it was easier to get things done with more empty space about. They’d chosen those best for the task, and left them behind.

Those best for the task? Like his
father?
Roy Weston had certainly been good at raising cattle and crops, but as a father he hadn’t proved the best at anything. Carl swallowed a lump in his throat as he remembered that his father wouldn’t get a chance to make that right now. He could only hope that Dreggo and the Huntsmen had spared his mother and Jeanette. He wanted to go back and check, but that was suicide.

‘I can’t go back,’ he said aloud as he jogged up the half overgrown road that lead to the old station. ‘Whoever you are, Jess and Simon, I’m with you now.’

He saw them then, up ahead, leaning against the overgrown steps that led up to the platform. Simon was doubled over, clutching his ankle and wincing in pain, while Jess was fiddling with a silver object. As he got closer he recognised it as a crossbow, the same kind that those beasts had carried. As he didn’t think she was one of them, he guessed that meant that at sometime before he met them, one of the Huntsmen had ended up dead. The thought gave him some hope.

‘Don’t stop, Carl,’ Jess said as he reached them. ‘Get across the train line and up into the woods. Simon can’t run anymore, so we make a stand here.’

Carl shook his head. ‘You have no chance against four of them.’

‘There’s no way we can get Simon on the train. They trail us by scent, so running’s no good. They’re not after you. You might still get away.’

Carl held up the board. ‘We can use this to push Simon along the platform when the train comes.’

Jess took it and turned it over in her hands. ‘A skateboard? Where did you find it?’

‘Skateboard.’ Carl tested the name. ‘I found it in one of the houses here. We don’t have them out in the GFAs.’

‘A tool of anarchy,’ Jess mused. ‘Who would have thought they’d ban skateboards?’

‘Train,’ Simon muttered.

Carl and Jess both looked up. From back in the woods came the low rumble of an approaching train.

‘Quick!’ Carl said. ‘Up on to the platform.’

Jess turned to him. ‘Carl, we can never thank you enough for this. After we’ve gone, please just run as far from here as you can. They won’t follow you because we’re too important to them, but just in case, make sure you get away. We’re forever indebted to you.’

He forced a smile. He didn’t have the heart to tell them what the Huntsmen had done to all the men back at the house. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you,’ he said. ‘I just hope that wherever you’re going, you manage to get there.’

Jess grabbed his arm and pulled him close, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Be safe, Carl.’

‘And you.’

‘Huntsmen!’

Simon’s single chilling word broke up their leave-taking. He was too weak to point but they could see anyway. No more than a few hundred feet away, two Huntsmen bounded through the trees towards them. One of them held up a crossbow, and they heard the fizzy ping as its quarrel loosed. Too late to move, they were lucky as it slammed into a wooden board not ten feet from where they sat.

‘Up, quick!’

Together, Carl and Jess hauled Simon up the steps to the platform. Carl felt Simon’s legs sag, and knew that however Jess had managed to get him to run, it had taken the last of his strength.

‘Come on, Simon, I won’t lose you again!’ Jess screamed, practically dragging Simon along. Behind them, they heard the building roar of the oncoming train, and above that, the wail of the pursuing Huntsmen.

Up on the platform, Jess wrapped the straps of his clawboard around Simon’s wrists, and then took hold of her own. Carl noticed how she avoided looking at him; her concern for his safety was there, but so was the knowledge that they were leaving him behind.

‘Stand on this, Simon,’ he said. ‘I’ll push you. Can you jump?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Just one more time, Simon!’ Jess screamed into his face. ‘Just
one more time!
’

Carl supported Simon on the skateboard. The Huntsmen had closed to less than two hundred feet.

‘Leave me the crossbow,’ Carl told Jess. ‘I’ll try to hold them off.’

Jess stared at him. The hardness in her face dissolved for just a second. He thought she would refuse, then she held out the weapon. ‘Carl–’

‘Save it. Get him moving!’

Together, they started to push Simon along on the skateboard, gradually picking up speed. The train had reached the edge of the station. It had slowed down as it passed between the platforms, but was still moving faster than Carl’s father’s car at full speed.

The train rose up on them like a giant metal snake, a piercing roar and the puffing of its oily breath filling the air around them.

‘Faster – now … jump, Simon!’

Simon cried out and jumped, pushing up off his good ankle. He lifted the clawboard, gritting his teeth as the stitches in his shoulder broke and blood began to soak through his shirt. Carl didn’t think he’d make it, then the metal claw clunked down on the water drainage rail and he was jerked away from them, the train already passing them. Jess looked back at Carl.

‘Go, Jess. It’s a long one, you still have time.’

She stared at him again. Her eyes flickered between his and the crossbow in his hands, already wound and fitted with a quarrel. ‘Carl … thank you,’ she said, her eyes glistening. Then in one motion she turned and sprinted down the platform. Carl watched her angle in towards the train, then leap up and catch on the rail, as graceful as a leaping deer.

He turned away. The train was still lumbering past. He had just seconds before the first of the Huntsmen was on him. He remembered three from the slaughter at his house, but there were only two now, and one, maybe injured, lagged behind. He thought perhaps he had a chance if he could disable the nearest one, but then he saw
her
, back in the woods, the half-metal leader who’d ordered the slaughter of his father and his father’s friends. She wasn’t even running, just walking calmly towards him. He only had time to loose one bolt, but he wished it could be for her.
Another time
, he promised himself.

He stood his ground. He had always been a dreamer, and he had a plan. But for it to work, he had to be quick. Once the train was gone he was finished, but what he hadn’t said to Jess was that he had no intention of being left behind. He’d have to trust his luck just a little more, was all.

He’d practiced for this. He’d ducked and rolled and dived, firing his catapult or his air gun at targets both stationary and moving; old signs and shop windows, rabbits, birds, foxes. He’d hit with a good level of accuracy, and his target now was a lot bigger.

The Huntsman closed on him, its own crossbow coming up. At the last second, Carl dropped and rolled sideways towards the platform edge. The Huntsman’s crossbow bolt fizzed through where he’d been standing and embedded itself in the wooden side of a freight truck. As Carl came up into a crouch just behind the Huntsman, he fired his own crossbow into the back of its head.

The Huntsman roared and tried to turn around. As it did so, Carl picked the skateboard off the floor and swung it at the monster’s face. It hit the Huntsman just above the eye, and with another roar, it staggered backwards, right into the moving train.

Carl saw it lose its footing, saw it sucked into the gap between the train and the platform, saw it disappear into the dark shadows where the thundering wheels rolled.

The train was almost past him. Without thinking, he started to run alongside it, trying to time his spot. If he missed, he died, but if he stayed, he would die anyway. The woman and the other Huntsman would show him no mercy.

There were just three carriages left. As the next space between two rushed towards him, he counted down from three and jumped.

Metal hit him in the stomach and then he felt something hard slam into his back as the train’s momentum rammed him against the front of the last truck. He cried out and hung on for his life, wrapping his arm over a dirty, sticky tube that stuck out of one truck and fed into the next. His back and ribs screamed at him, but he was on the train, he was safe.