Tube Riders, The (42 page)

Ishael shook his head. ‘That’s what everyone thought. The old government
didn’t
finish it. The French did.’

‘Now, how on earth did you figure that out? Where’s your proof?’

‘It was in the contract drawn up between the two countries. The British and the French were both to drill to the midpoint. The British finished their section before the coup, but sealed up the entrance to hide the tunnel’s existence.’

‘Are you sure they didn’t destroy it entirely?’

‘No. The plans we stole weren’t the originals, they were plans updated by Mega Britain Officials. In a footnote it was stated that the tunnel had potential as a future invasion route to Europe, should the need arise.’

‘They were going to finish it off and send an invasion force over to France?’ Reeder scoffed. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

Ishael nodded. ‘I don’t think they ever planned to do it. They were just acknowledging the tunnel’s potential.’

Marta touched his arm. ‘How do you know the French finished it?’

Ishael looked at her, and then back at Reeder. Behind the bruises his eyes looked a little uncertain. ‘We have strong reason to believe that the French would have kept their part of the bargain for the same reason.’

Reeder slapped a hand against his forehead with a resounding snap. He rolled his eyes. ‘“Strong reason to
believe
”? So, you don’t know.’

Ishael cocked his head. ‘We’re about eighty percent sure.’

‘That’s just a number, my friend. Ninety-nine percent won’t be enough if that tunnel proves to be a dead end. In the event we make it that far, it sounds like a coffin to me.’

‘The ports are all sealed or closed. There’s not an inch of water within three miles of the coast that’s not covered by machine guns. It’s our only chance.’

‘But it’s not much of one! You’d be better off setting up a couple of gun outposts and trying to pick them off as they surround us. It’s crazy.’

‘I think it’s worth a try. If we get there with enough of a head start, we’ll have time to turn around and get away if it doesn’t work out.’

Reeder didn’t look amused. ‘Let’s assume this tunnel is complete. That’s the least of your problems. You do know it’s behind the Fence, don’t you?’

Ishael nodded. ‘The sealed section of Cornwall. The area reserved for government officials to take a little holiday.’

Reeder laughed. ‘Is that what you think? Is that really what you think?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I take it you’ve never been as far as the Fence?’

Marta said, ‘What’s behind it?’

Reeder nodded towards the Land Rover. ‘Get everyone on board. It’s time to leave. As for that accursed fence, my friend, in a couple of hours you’ll know exactly what’s behind it, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it one bit.’

Chapter Forty-Nine

Menace

Clayton scowled through the broken windscreen as the sun began to rise behind them, bathing the dirt track they were traveling along in pale sunlight. After more than three hours of laboured progress along the thin, overgrown lanes, the land cruiser’s battered suspension and the cold early morning air were starting to get to him. Dreggo’s Huntsmen were still tracking the Tube Riders’ scent, while his men had been searching maps to try to find shortcuts to reduce back their quarry’s time advantage. The Tube Riders’ single vehicle could move much faster over the terrain, so only by second guessing them would Clayton’s men haul them in. The problem was that half of the roads on the map were overgrown or otherwise impassable. They had been forced to backtrack several times, and all the while the Tube Riders got further and further ahead.

A small force had been dispatched to Falmouth to cut the Tube Riders off, but as Clayton had suspected, the scent trail was leading away from there, angling much further north. Falmouth was most likely a decoy, a town spat out at random in an attempt to buy them some time. Fortunately for Clayton’s men, though, the Tube Riders were running out of places to go. Deep into Cornwall now, Clayton had ordered fresh reinforcements from London to move in and cut off the major routes out of the area, should the Tube Riders and their little band try to double back. They were heading for the sea. There were no active ports in Cornwall, neither were there any air strips. It occurred to Clayton that the resistance force they had battled in Bristol might have an ocean-equipped vessel hidden away somewhere in an abandoned fishing port, but it was unlikely. Even if they could get out to sea, the government’s coastal defenses would easily pick them off.

Beside him, Dreggo twisted. He had brought her up to his vehicle in order to more quickly relay his instructions to the Huntsmen, but it made him nervous to have her so close. It was difficult to concentrate with one hand pressed into his pocket, fingering the little remote that would screw up her nervous system.

She looked at him and pouted. ‘Are we there yet?’

‘Shut up.’

Dreggo grinned and glanced out of the passenger window at an overgrown field they were passing. ‘Where are all the people?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m sure you do but you can’t be bothered to tell me.’

‘That’s right.’

Dreggo leaned her head against his shoulder, close enough that he could smell the distinctly metallic odor of the inserts in her face and head. He tensed, and saw her smile as a result. ‘You know, Mr. Clayton,’ she began in a childish, saccharine-soaked voice, ‘if I didn’t hate you with every inch of my body, and desire your death with every part of my will, I would probably find you attractive. In a grandfatherly kind of way.’

‘I appreciate the compliment.’

‘I would probably sleep with you, if I thought I could bring myself to touch you without wanting to tear you apart.’

‘Give it a rest, would you?’ Clayton tried to shift away, but the gearbox and the driver’s seat blocked his escape.

‘I haven’t been with a man – willingly – in a long time, Mr. Clayton. Even though the pond scum you work with filled me up with bits of metal, underneath it all I’m still a woman. I’m a woman with needs.’

Clayton scowled at her. ‘Just shut up, will you?’

Dreggo looked about to reply when a crackle of static burst from the car’s internal radio.

Clayton leaned forward. ‘What is it?’ he barked.

‘Mr. Clayton…’

Even Dreggo shivered at the sound of the Governor’s voice. Clayton glanced at her before he answered. ‘Sir? Yes, sir?’

‘I trust you cannot yet confirm the capture of the Tube Riders?’

‘Sir, I–’

‘I thought not. Clayton, your incompetence is beginning to annoy me.’ Beside him, Dreggo smiled.

‘Sir–’

‘It appears you have developed a stutter. I suggest you put your breath to better use by more accurately briefing your men. In the meanwhile, we will rendezvous at Fence Checkpoint Three in approximately two hours. I assume you have surmised that the Tube Riders plan to go inside?’

‘They won’t get far, sir.’

‘You told me that back in London, and you told me that from Bristol, yet here we are taking a vacation in Cornwall with an unnecessary trail of bodies behind us.’

The radio clicked off. Clayton glared at it.

‘Sounds like you’re in trouble,’ Dreggo said.

‘Shut up.’

‘You know,’ she said, voice suddenly turning serious. ‘We could start a revolution of our own.’

‘What?’

‘The Governor is coming to Cornwall. He’ll be unguarded. We have your men, and the Huntsmen–’

Clayton lifted a hand. ‘You talk of treason. I should kill you for those words.’

‘Do it, I dare you. But with my last command to the Huntsmen I will order your death.’

Clayton’s eyes narrowed. ‘There’s not time.’

With a slow smile Dreggo lifted a hand and touched her forehead. ‘It’s already done.’

‘You bitch.’

Dreggo reached out and touched his knee. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I control the Huntsmen, Clayton. Through a little kinship and a lot of cruelty on behalf of your men, they trust me. We have enough to practically sack London. We can fight him.’

Clayton shook his head with resignation. ‘You have no idea what the Governor can do.’

Dreggo fingered a piece of metal that protruded from her upper arm and bent over her shoulder as a kind of armour. Where it passed through the skin was a stretchy plastic membrane that had been fused with her skin tissue and melded to the metal. She reached out and put her fingers on the truck’s dashboard, pressing against the plastic. For a moment she appeared to strain and nothing happened. Then Clayton heard a creak and a fracture opened up in the plastic. His eyes widened. It would have taken a hammer to do the same amount of damage.

‘I’m pretty sure I can imagine,’ she said, wiping sweat from her hand off on to her shirt.

‘You can’t imagine it,’ Clayton said, regaining his composure. ‘Unless you’ve seen it.’

Dreggo closed her eyes. ‘Well, pretty soon I’ll have a chance to, won’t I?’

Chapter Fifty

Breaking and Entering

Reeder stopped the Land Rover on top of the rise. Ahead of them the dirt trail headed down into the valley, snaking through abandoned, overgrown farmland and into a thin thicket of woodland which spread across the valley floor. They could see it again as it broke out of the copse, angling up the hillside to where it ended at a small car park, a low brick building at its rear. A short distance beyond the building they could see a tall fence that stretched away for as far as they could see in either direction.

‘Is there anything they haven’t fucking enclosed in this country?’ Switch said, climbing out and spitting on the ground. ‘What the hell is behind
this
one?’

Reeder climbed out beside him and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He scanned back and forth. ‘There. There’s one.’

Ishael had climbed out beside Switch. Paul, Owen and Carl had jumped down from the back. In the front, Marta and Jess were both sleeping, their heads close together.

‘What is it?’

Reeder handed the binoculars to Switch. He pointed towards a stand of trees on the slope just beyond the fence. ‘Look there, just to the right of those trees.’

Switch put the binoculars to his eyes and scanned back and forth. ‘I don’t see anything…’

‘Use the button here to focus it.’ Reeder tapped the top of the binoculars.

‘Ah, okay, got it. There! What the fuck is that?’

‘What is it?’ Ishael asked.

‘It looks like a man. Sitting down, head slumped over. Is he dead?’ He passed the binoculars to Ishael and glanced back at Reeder.

‘He’s not dead,’ Reeder said. ‘Just resting.’

‘I thought there were no people in there,’ Ishael said.

‘It’s not a man. It’s a Mistake.’

‘No,’ Ishael said. ‘He lifted his head. It’s definitely a man.’

Reeder shook his head as Ishael passed the binoculars first to Paul then Owen and Carl in turn. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘That’s what people call them. Mistakes.’

‘Mistakes?’

‘They used to bring them down here in truckloads. These days, so I’m told, they come in trickles rather than floods. Their experiments must be improving.’

Owen said, ‘That’s not a man. His face isn’t right. It’s furry, like a dog. Like one of those things. Are there more of them in there?’

John Reeder nodded. His face, smooth and youthful when they first met him, was now etched with worry lines. Even his neatly curled moustache had bent out of shape. He looked to have aged ten years overnight.

‘Them, and worse, maybe,’ he said. ‘In varying states of repair. What you see before you, gentlemen, is Mega Britain’s live experiment junkyard. In every failed experiment, if the test subject doesn’t die, it ends up here.’

Switched cursed under his breath and looked around at the others. Paul took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, while Carl sat down on a rock and ran a hand through his hair. Ishael’s face was unreadable, while Owen lifted the binoculars and swung them back and forth across the far hillside.

‘So to get to this tunnel we have to get through a whole country of fucking broken down Huntsmen?’ Switch said. ‘This just gets worse.’

Ishael pointed. ‘I saw a sign on the gate saying Fence Checkpoint Three. Is it manned? I don’t see anyone.’

Owen swung the binoculars round. ‘Can’t see any vehicles, but that building is quite big. There could be a garage or something round the back. There’s another one. Leaning against the fence. They gonna cause us any problems?’

Reeder shrugged. ‘They might do. I don’t know.’

Can we get through that fence somewhere else?’ Ishael asked. ‘Cut through?’

‘It’s electrified.’

‘It can’t be,’ Owen said. ‘That bastard creature is leaning against it!’

‘Maybe it’s dead,’ Paul said.

‘It was moving!’

Reeder gave the others a wry smile. ‘Quite possibly it’s
feeding
. Let’s not think about it too much. Hopefully it’ll leave us alone.’

They went back to the Land Rover. Reeder turned them around and they backtracked down the hill before turning right and cutting through the fringes of the forest. Soon they were deep into the trees. Reeder slowed the Land Rover down and jagged the vehicle back and forth, following a route close to the road up to the checkpoint but just out of sight. A short way back from the edge of the copse, Reeder pulled the Land Rover to a stop and they climbed out.

‘We have to go up there and see if the gate is guarded,’ Reeder said. ‘If it is, we then need a way to get through.’

‘I’ll go,’ Switch said. He handed a gun to Paul. ‘Paul can come as lookout.’

‘I wanna come too!’ Owen said.

‘Stay here, kid,’ Paul said, patting his brother on the shoulder. ‘They’ll be plenty of fights for you yet.’

Owen scowled, but didn’t try to follow as Paul and Switch headed through the copse towards the building. As it appeared through the trees they could see it was bigger than they had first realised. At least the size of a small bungalow, the featureless concrete building hung low to the ground. There was an entrance in the front wall, and what looked like a window. There was no way from their angle to tell if there was a garage around the back or not.

At least fifty feet of open, grassy hillside separated the trees from the building. With the exception of some patches of longer grass there was almost no cover.

‘This would be a whole lot easier at night,’ Paul said.

‘We don’t have time. They’ll have caught us by then.’

Paul looked at his watch. It was 6.40 a.m. It was only going to get lighter, and Paul felt like he’d been awake forever, despite catching a couple of hours sleep while they traveled. Their only hope was that the checkpoint hadn’t been alerted to their approach.

Switch pointed left. That way the hillside dipped more, giving them more cover. ‘We can get closer to the fence, come in from the side.’

Paul fingered the gun Switch had given him. He didn’t want to use it; he hoped the checkpoint was deserted. Switch, though, in front of him, carried a knife in each hand, his whole body tensed, ready for immediate action. Paul wondered how much of this Switch thought was real, and how much was a game.

Switch went ahead, dropped in a crouch, inching up the slope towards the blank side wall of the building. There was no sign of any security cameras or lookout points. The whole place had an air of neglect and abandon.

‘Cover me,’ Switch hissed without looking back. Paul held the gun out in front of him as Switch rose up and ran low towards the side of the building. Paul, hands shaking, pointed the gun at the roof, at the corners, everywhere except at Switch.

Switch ducked down by the wall. He waved Paul forward. Paul steeled himself, then jumped up and dashed across the open space to join Switch at the wall. Breathing hard, heart pounding, he looked back at the trees. The others were out of sight.

‘Round the back,’ Switch whispered, the hint of a smile on his lips.

Without waiting for Paul, Switch dropped to a crouch again and moved quickly along the featureless side wall of the building. They had seen the door on the other side, but here there was nothing, no doors, windows, or vents. Paul just prayed it wasn’t the entrance to an underground bunker, one housing a whole garrison of men.

‘There’s a way in,’ Switch said, disappearing around the corner.

When Paul followed, he saw Switch standing at the entrance to a parking garage. Inside, an army-camouflaged jeep was parked at the back. The window was down. Switch leaned inside and pulled a set of keys out of the ignition. He held them up to Paul and grinned.

‘Just got ourselves another ride.’

‘Let’s just get on with this.’

Switch nodded and slipped into the shadows at the back. Paul heard a door click open.

‘Through here,’ Switch said. ‘Hardly big on their security, eh?’

‘They probably don’t get many guests.’

Paul followed Switch into a thin, grey corridor. Several doors branched off, all of them shut. At the end, a double door loomed. Above it, a sign announced:
Control Centre
.

Switch ducked down by the door. Paul stayed further back down the corridor, the gun covering Switch as the little man reached up and pulled down the handle. The door inched inwards.

Switch glanced back at Paul and waved him forward, one finger to his lips. Paul hesitated just a moment then crept up to the door. Switch pointed at the gun, then at his own back. Paul tried to glance inside, but the room was dark, and all he could see from this angle was the black metal edge of a table.

Switch gave the knives a little shake then slipped through the door.

#

With Paul covering his back, Switch crept forward towards the low sofa at the front of the room. Ahead of it, he could see the top of a television set, switched off. On the sofa, judging from the neatness of their haircuts, were two men; the tops of their heads all he could see. He moved towards the centre of the room, arms out wide, knife blades glistening. He would take them both at once, before they even knew he was there.

One of them shifted, and for a second Switch saw the top of a book. From the posters on the walls and the small kitchen units to his left he knew this was a recreation room. Did that mean there was a guard on duty somewhere else? He knew silence was his best weapon. If one of them saw him, he and Paul would have a real fight on their hands.

He crept closer, just a couple of feet from the sofa’s back now. He lifted his arms wider, the knives ready to arc in and slice the guards’ throats. He prayed his feet didn’t slip.

‘Hey!’

Switch jerked forward at the sound of a voice behind him, knives slashing. The man on the left was too slow. Switch raked the knife across his throat and felt warm blood wash over his hand.

The other man, though, was quicker, the blade catching just strands of hair as he rolled forward on to the floor. Behind him, Switch heard a dull thud followed by a grunt from Paul.

He turned to see a man by the door, wearing loose grey clothes that could have been pajamas. His eyes looked sleepy but his hand was strong as he slammed a fist into Paul’s face, sending Paul sprawling forward, his glasses spinning away across the floor. The man reached for a rifle standing near the door. Switch glanced back at the third man, saw him now at the back of the room, reaching for a gun holster hung on the wall. He tried to get around the sofa but the man was too fast. The handgun trained on him.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the man by the door said, his rifle moving back and forth between Switch and Paul, who was crawling across the floor, blood dripping from his nose. ‘Drop your knives, kid.’

‘Jesus, Matt, he killed Ray,’ the other man said, in a voice that revealed that
he
was a
she
, her hair cut short in a crewcut.

‘Oh fuck, oh fuck,’ the man said, rubbing his free hand through his hair, messy from sleep. ‘I get up to this…’

Switch backed away against the wall, hands in the air.

‘Drop the fucking knives you jippy-eyed little prick!’ the woman shouted.

Switch did.

‘What do we do now?’ the one called Matt said, his rifle trained on Switch. Paul was crawling across the floor, patting the carpet as he looked for his glasses. Switch had never seen him left blinded before. He had no idea how well Paul could see.

‘Ray’s dead! I say we return the favor!’

‘My glasses…’

‘Shut up!’ Matt stepped forward and stamped on Paul’s glasses, crunching them underfoot. ‘Kelly, you do it.’

‘A pleasure. You’re first, you squinty little bastard.’

As Kelly cocked her gun, Switch was sure he’d run out of luck this time. She was too close to miss.

But it was Paul who moved first. Crawling on the floor just a couple of feet from Matt, he lunged forward and grabbed the barrel of the gun, jerking the butt backwards into Matt’s groin. The big man grunted and doubled over. Paul twisted the gun in the direction of Kelly and pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Kelly in the chest and she staggered backwards into the wall, dropping to her knees. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open in an expression of shock and dismay. Then she tumbled forward, head striking the floor with a sickening crunch.

Paul looked back at Matt and rammed the butt of the gun into the man’s dumbstruck face.

‘That’s for my glasses,’ he said through gritted teeth, as Matt grunted and fell to the floor.

Switch jumped across the sofa and took the gun out of Paul’s hands just before Paul dropped it, his arms going limp, the wall holding him up as he stumbled a few steps backwards.

The smell of blood filled the air, thick and pungent. One of the two dead guards, Kelly or Ray, had vacated their bowels on death, the stench of feces mixing with the smell of blood.

‘You all right, Paul?’ Switch said, touching his friend’s shoulder. Your glasses, man.’