Tube Riders, The (35 page)

Instead, its teeth released their grip and it jerked him backwards, pulling him out from under the car. For a moment he saw the Huntsman silhouetted above him in the light of one of his own men’s spotlights, and then it dived at him, jaws snapping.

He closed his eyes.

‘Pull it off!’

Ishael opened his eyes to see the Huntsman spasm in the air above him, a terrible wailing coming from its open maw. It scrabbled at its neck, claws pulling the hood free. Ishael saw what looked like a human head behind its dog-like snout, wires snaking across its scalp. Then it slumped away from him, landing on its stomach a few feet away. Two men rushed to clamp its arms.

‘Well, well.’

Spotlights had come on again, pointed skyward now to leave the parking garage illuminated in a twilight glow, and Ishael could see the eyes of the man standing above him. Perhaps forty, his body was solid beneath the black suit, his jaw firm, unsmiling. His hair was flecked with spots of dust. Hard, dark eyes watched Ishael with contempt, but also, Ishael thought, with what looked like a hint of admiration.

The man waved his hand and two other DCA men came up behind him. ‘Secure the prisoner,’ he said. ‘And find me a room. We need to have a talk with him.’ As the agents moved forward, the first man glanced over his shoulder. ‘Vincent! Move the men forward on to the streets. Follow them down and kill them if you can’t take them alive. Find where they’re hiding the Tube Riders.’

‘What Tube Riders?’ Ishael groaned, but the man just shook his head as if to say,
don’t bother. We know
. Then he turned and was gone.

Ishael started to push himself up, but one of the agents stepped forward and kicked him hard in the face. Ishael was conscious just long enough to see the man lean down towards him, and then everything went black.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Departure

As the train rushed through the forest, picking up speed again, Jess inched her way along towards the front of the freight truck, her feet on a thin rail barely above the wheels, her clawboard sliding slowly along the water drainage rail above her. Occasionally it got caught on a piece of grit or caked mud, and Jess had to carefully remove one hand from the straps and pick out the obstruction with her fingers. Twice she had to hold on with her hand and lift the board over. Glancing down at the gravel and sleepers rushing past below, she was reminded just how close she hung to death; that a momentary slip would see her pitched off the train. She’d survived once; she didn’t fancy her chances of surviving a second time.

Simon was five trucks ahead. At the end of her truck, she painstakingly climbed down into the working area that fixed the two freight trucks together before climbing back up on to the drainage rail of the next one. Just at that moment the train started around a wide bend. The trucks arced away to the right and she saw Simon again, what seemed like miles away, hanging from the side of the train, his head lolling back and forth as though every second was a fight against unconsciousness.

She’d pushed him hard through the forest, and she’d got him this far. If she could just get to him before his strength gave out again then she could save him, she could hold on to him until they reached Bristol. She had no idea how far it was, but it couldn’t be more than an hour. She could do it; she could be the strength for both of them.

She glanced back down the train, and her heart almost stopped.

There, just three trucks back, a Huntsman was crawling along the top of the train.

Jess wanted to scream, but no sound would come out. As she watched it in horror, she felt all her last hopes fade away.

#

Dreggo stood beside Lyen on the platform edge as the train rolled away into the forest. The two Tube Riders had escaped again; with the help of the country bumpkin boy even the wounded one had managed to get on to the train. Catching them would be easy; a simple radio call to Clayton would have twenty agents and Huntsmen waiting for them when the train arrived in Bristol, but still she couldn’t shake the feeling of failure. Despite the tears, her hatred and anger were back, and being so close yet again only to have them escape made her feel weak and incapable.

The country boy, though, he impressed her. Not only had he killed Jacul, but he’d made a possibly suicidal jump on to the train. She would only know if he survived or not when she viewed his corpse in Bristol, but a leap like that had taken some faith, and lots of guts. Despite seeing her Huntsman cut down and pulled under the train, he had won her respect.

If Clayton could leave him alive, she’d enjoy killing him.

She pulled the radio from her pocket, intending to call Clayton and inform him of proceedings, and request he have the next through train stop for them. As she lifted it to her ear, though, she felt a crackle of static in her mind, the sign of a Huntsman’s internal transmitter. Lyen shifted beside her; he’d felt it too.

The voice that came into her mind was broken and indistinct, but still it could come from nothing else.

‘…
alive
…’

She glanced across at Lyen and he gave her a dark, feverish glare in return. Jacul wasn’t dead. Through whatever twist of luck and fate, he had survived being pulled under the train.

She sent Lyen to check the tracks. There were no signs of a body, mutilated or otherwise, which meant, of course, that Jacul was still on the train.

She put the radio away. There might not be a need to inform Clayton after all.

#

As Jacul felt his foot slip out from under him, he could only think of relief; that it was finally over, that he could rest. Then, as one arm reached out, his clawed fingers closing over something metal, he felt himself jerked away from the wheels of the train, and from the death that he would have so welcomed. The last vestiges of his human mind had prayed for the thundering salvation of the huge metal wheels, but the robotic part of his body, that which would obey orders until death, refused to let him go.

It was too late for his other arm. As he hung from the bottom of the train, he swung inwards, and struck the side of the nearest wheel. He reached out as a reflex to push himself away, and then it was gone, ripped off at the shoulder, his body filled with a thousand spasms of pain. He felt human blood, oil and fluids oozing down his side, mixed with those that bled from the crossbow wound. His mind was already drifting, and he estimated that he would be dead within half an hour. His human mind wanted to close his eyes and let him drift away, float back through the fragments of childhood memories that had survived his transformation into a Huntsman, but the machine part of him, the engineered part, knew there was a mission to complete, and that half an hour might be all he needed.

The Tube Riders, his prey, were on the train.

With his one good arm he hauled himself along the underside of the train, using his legs to support him while he searched for another hand-hold.

Inch by inch he made his way forward, the blurring wheels of the train never more than a couple of feet away. Then, finally, he came to the end of the freight truck, and saw daylight again above him.

Hauling himself up and over on to the mechanism that latched the two trucks together, he managed to stand, bracing his feet against the rocking of the train, hanging on with his one good arm.

There was a door in the back of the truck in front, but when he tore the lock free and pushed it open he found the truck packed full of crates, labeled with various food company labels. There was no way through, so he closed the door, and looked up at the top of the truck.

Fear wasn’t something that the Huntsmen felt. Like a lot of emotions, it had been erased by the technology used to develop the minds of the killing machines, but every now and then Jacul would feel a certain sense of otherworldliness, as if what he was about to do was more dangerous than usual. He felt it now, but as he glanced down at the ground blurring below him, he shrugged what was left of his shoulders and began looking for a way up.

#

It was scant relief for Jess to realise that the Huntsman was missing an arm and appeared to have been through a serious battle. Blood streamed down its canine face and dripped on to the roof of the train as it closed on her. She was half a truck ahead of it still, but it was gaining. She was still one truck away from Simon, who appeared to be hanging on desperately. The back of his shirt was soaked in blood, his head lolled from side to side, and his feet kept slipping from the rail below him.

In the back of her mind Jess wished now that she’d not given her crossbow to Carl. After what he’d done to help them, she had owed him, and just hoped he’d managed to get away. Now, the best weapon she had was a knife, but even one handed, the Huntsman would make short work of that.

Just as she reached the end of the freight truck and began to climb around into the gap between it and the next, she glanced back at the Huntsman, saw it shift its head towards her. Protruding from its neck and glistening in the sunlight was the shaft of a crossbow bolt.

Jess’s heart plunged. Carl had attacked this Huntsman, yet it still lived and was on the train. Did that mean Carl was dead?

She knew she might never find out. She squeezed her eyes shut against another wave of pain, and tried to concentrate on getting to Simon.

Then something slammed into her from behind.

She fell forward across the stubby metal joints between the trucks, felt them vibrating and shifting as they knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for breath, swinging her clawboard up instinctively. Something thudded into it, and she felt the inhuman strength in the Huntsman’s remaining arm as it then tried to pull the knife free. Jess screamed, her resolve failing her as she looked into its muggy, bloodshot eyes, and wondered how it had closed the gap on her so fast.

It jerked the knife out of the wood and almost overbalanced, its knife hand clutching awkwardly at a maintenance handle beside the freight truck’s door. Jess almost lost the clawboard, but managed to get it up between them again just as the Huntsman, using its legs for support, swung its knife at her again.

‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed.

As the clawboard deflected the slash, Jess struggled to hold on with one hand, the Huntsman’s strength pushing her back. It would be a short fight, she knew; if she moved for her knife she would lose her shield or her handhold, and she couldn’t survive without either.

The Huntsman’s eyes followed her impassively, its mouth torn back in a snarl that revealed yellowed, gummy canine teeth. The breath was pungent, like that of a dog’s, but the tongue was shorter, thicker than a dog’s but not quite as squashed as a human’s. Its nose, too, was thinner and paler than a dog’s might be.

‘Tube Rider!’ the Huntsman growled, and Jess wanted to scream at the nightmarish sound of its voice.

The knife slashed again. Jess swayed away, the blade missing her by inches. She tried to swing the clawboard up towards its face, but it was heavy, and her strength was leaving her. As she looked back at the Huntsman, her eyes filled with tears.

Then something moved in her peripheral vision, and there was another figure in front of her, crashing down on the Huntsman’s shoulders and knocking it briefly to its knees.

‘Simon…?’

Sweat drenched his face, blood drenched his shirt and his eyes seemed about to roll back into his head as he swung an arm around the Huntsman’s neck. ‘Run!’ he gasped, his voice slurred. ‘I heard you scream–’

The Huntsman, with Simon wrapped around its shoulders, stood up and slammed him back against the door, knocking the wind out of him. Jess bared her own teeth and rammed her clawboard into the Huntsman’s stomach, feeling an unnatural hardness there.
The thing’s half metal
, her mind shouted.
There’s no way we can kill it
.

Simon’s clawboard was still strapped to his other hand, and he pulled it up and across the Huntsman’s neck. The Huntsman growled and twisted its head, but it couldn’t use its hand to pull the clawboard away or it would lose its grip. Jess tried to reach the knife on its belt, but it kicked her in the stomach, doubling her over. She looked up, wondering how much longer Simon could hold on.

#

‘Jess, no!’

Simon smashed the clawboard into the Huntsman’s face. Its nose burst, spraying him with blood. With his other hand he reached up and tore at the wires and metal plates that covered the creature’s scalp, trying to disable it. It bucked at him but continued to hold on, so he stretched forwards, his fingers reaching for the creature’s eyes.

He heard Jess gasp as the Huntsman’s maw snapped at him, sharp teeth closing just out of reach. He grunted and thrust his fingers in through the soft tissue, squeezing as hard as he could, feeling the creature struggle as its eyeballs depressed and then popped like blisters, bathing his fingers in sticky fluid. Screaming now himself, he thrust his fingers deeper as the Huntsman thrashed, its free hand letting go of its hold, sending them both crashing back against the door. Simon hooked his clawboard behind the handrail to hold himself steady, even as his fingers pressed deeper towards the Huntsman’s brain. He felt it buck again, felt its arm slip behind it, pushing against his belly.

‘Die, you evil fucking
bastard!
’ he hollered, at the same time becoming aware of a new, acute pain somewhere in his midriff, a twisting coldness, and the sudden warmth of blood down over his stomach and thighs.

The Huntsman gave a final, shrieking roar and sagged against him, an expulsion of dead air exiting its lungs for the last time. Simon let go and pushed it away. Its eyes closed, almost in relief, and it slipped down between the joint mechanisms and under the train.

There was a bump, and then it was gone.

Simon sagged back against the truck door, one hand still attached to the clawboard stuck behind the handrail, the other going to his stomach, feeling the warmth there, the handle of the knife that stuck out, so, so little of it. Somewhere he was aware of Jess screaming, but the sound was hazy, unclear. His vision blurred just as someone else dropped into view, someone he recognised from his bedside. A young boy. What was his name?

What … what was his name?

Simon’s head lolled back.

#

Jess watched as the Huntsman pressed its knife into Simon with its last dying move, and then fell away under the train. She saw Simon slump back, the front of his shirt slick with blood, both his own and that of the Huntsman. His eyes rolled, his breathing coming in small gasps.

A figure appeared above her, squatting on the top of the freight truck. She cried out, pulling her clawboard up, before realizing with some surprise that it was Carl. Somehow he’d made it on to the train. He looked none the worse for his battles with the Huntsmen, but his eyes widened as he saw the blood that covered Simon.

‘We have to stop the train,’ Jess said to him. ‘Go to the front, threaten the driver, something, I don’t know. Anything! We
have to stop the train
.’