Tube Riders, The (12 page)

‘And you.’

Switch followed Simon and Jess out into the hall. Frank turned to Paul. ‘How’s your brother?’

Paul shrugged. ‘Still there. Starting to raise hell.’

Frank nodded. ‘Good, good. Keep him alive, he’ll be leading the revolution one day.’ He patted Paul’s shoulder and started to laugh again.

‘Thank you for your help,’ Marta said to Frank in the doorway.

‘No problem, young lady,’ he said. ‘I just suggest that whatever you were doing for that to happen you try to avoid it in the future.’

‘We’ll try,’ Marta said. ‘If only it was that easy.’

Frank gazed off into the distance. His eyes grew suddenly wistful. ‘Don’t give up on this country just yet,’ he said. ‘Keep your heads down, one day them dark clouds are gonna clear.’

‘We hope so,’ Marta said.

Frank nodded. He looked at Switch. ‘You. Come here.’

Switch sauntered closer. ‘Yeah, what?’

Before Marta could blink, Frank’s hand had gone to Switch’s throat, the throwing knife held there, hard against the skin. Switch’s good eye went wide. There was a collective intake of breath, and then Frank gave a gap-toothed smile and cackled a laugh. He dropped his hand. ‘You’ll need this metal more than I will, I think,’ he said, holding out the knife, handle first. ‘A present from an
old
man.’

Switch took the offered knife and tucked it under his shirt, his composure once more unruffled. ‘Thanks. I don’t suppose you have any spare shoes around?’

Frank pouted. ‘I doubt we’re the same size, kid.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Now, if I can give you kids some advice, stay on your guard. Don’t trust anyone.’ He cocked his head and flashed a smile. ‘Except me.’

With that he nodded goodbye and went back inside. The door slammed behind them without sentiment, and several latches thudded back across.

‘On our own again,’ Paul said. ‘Right, let’s go.’

As they headed down the steps back to the street, Marta heard Switch muttering in front of her, ‘Damn, must be getting slow…’

Chapter Thirteen

Lab

The DCA car stopped outside the warehouse and Clayton got out. He barked a quick order at the driver who turned the car around and sped away, leaving Clayton standing in the street. Around him the air had chilled. The wind maintained a wintry howl that it lacked in other, busier parts of London. Across from him a stand of trees swayed, their branches pressing against a chain-link fence, causing it to creak and groan.

The road was empty. A drink can lay by the curb, half the red label scratched off. The old warehouse rose behind him, a grey box, unmarked, unnamed. Clayton watched it warily and was pretty sure that somewhere hidden up on that plain grey building a camera or two watched him back.

Inside, he knew, was where nightmares began. He’d been free of them a while, but now his turn had come again.

He walked down an overgrown driveway to the building’s entrance, a small metal door which showed signs of attempted forced entry: scratches near the hinges, grazes on the large, reinforced steel chain padlock that held it shut.

If only they knew what was inside, Clayton felt those prospective burglars would not have come within a mile of the place.

He stopped within a few feet of the door. He made no attempt to open it, nor knock on it. Instead, he looked up at a tiny spyhole in the corrugated wall a few feet above the door.

‘It’s Clayton,’ he said. ‘Code 3715J. You’re expecting me. Let me in.’

A sudden rumbling sound made Clayton step back a few feet. The whole building shook, then an entire section of the wall detached itself from the building and swung up to reveal a white-tiled corridor about ten feet wide, gradually descending into darkness. The padlocked door was just a decoy; nothing but concrete lay behind it, part of another door eight inches thick. Inside this unmarked, unnamed building was what remained of Mega Britain’s high technology. No one on the outside knew everything that it housed, certainly not Clayton, and he doubted that even the Governor knew all its despicable secrets. The place was quite literally a production line of misery masquerading as science.

He went inside and the door swung shut behind him. Inside the air was cool, fresh, air-conditioned. Artificial strip-lighting flicked on to illuminate his way and behind the smooth walls he could hear the hum of generators. He shivered and moved on downwards, towards an elevator that waited at the end.

He took the elevator down to floor 15B. The entire research complex was underground. Down here were numerous government agencies, everything from medical research to torture chambers. Clayton had been to the former a number of times, the latter only once, and as an observer. Even now, some years later and after everything he’d done, the memory still made him sick.

As the elevator opened, a sign welcomed him to the
Mega Britain Security Research Program
.

He sighed under his breath. The MBSRP was yet another over-funded department of an under-funded country.

He walked through into a reception area. A few grim men and women in lab coats strode back and forth, on errands he could only guess at. Most ignored him, but one man was watching him intently, waiting.

‘Mr. Clayton.’

‘Dr. Karmski.’
You nasty little bastard
. Clayton nodded a reluctant greeting to the blond man. Karmski was in his middle forties, but his pallid skin showed few signs of aging. Clayton considered it both a result of Karmski’s mole-like existence and from self-experimenting with his own research projects.

‘I trust you found your way without difficulty? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.’

‘Not nearly long enough,’ Clayton replied, to which Karmski smiled. ‘This way,’ he said.

As Karmski led Clayton deeper into the facility, Clayton said: ‘You know why I’m here, of course.’

Karmski nodded. ‘What you have ordered is …
unwise
.’

‘It is a matter of national security.’

Karmski held up his hands. ‘Oh, don’t think for a minute I plan to disobey you.’ He raised one eyebrow and tapped his nose in a way that made Clayton want to lay him out cold. ‘No skin off my pecker,’ Karmski said, and uttered a bird chatter laugh. ‘After all, down here
I’m
quite safe.’

‘The orders are from the top.’

‘Of course they are. No one else is insane enough to let out the Huntsmen.’

Clayton’s breath caught. Were Karmski’s words to be reported, he’d be killed. ‘That’s treason,’ Clayton said.

Karmski smiled. ‘Like I say, I fully intend to comply with the order. But off the record,
fuck you
, Leland Clayton.’ His beady little eyes were dark and soulless. ‘With my brain I’m more immune than you are.’ Karmski rubbed his hands together. ‘Hmmm. I’m quite looking forward to the results, actually.’

Clayton promised himself he’d put a bullet in the man’s back one day. He said, ‘Are they prepared?’

Karmski laughed. ‘As well as they can be, I suppose. Come this way.’

They went down a flight of stairs and through a heavy metal door reminiscent of an airlock. Behind the door, plain stone tunnels replaced the manicured corridors of the facility’s upper levels. Armed guards patrolled beneath thin strip-lighting wedged into cracks in the walls. Clayton felt like he’d stepped into the middle of an archaeological excavation.

‘Are we near?’

Karmski just smiled. ‘Nervous?’

‘Aren’t you?’

Karmski cocked his head. ‘Like any man who handles an exotic pet … familiarity eventually overcomes fear.’ He stopped. ‘Through this door.’ He pulled it open and stepped back. ‘After you, Mr. Clayton.’

Clayton glared at Karmski and went through. On the other side the door, he found himself on a circular balcony overlooking what looked like a small gladiatorial arena, complete with straw-covered floor and metal rings in the walls to hold chains. From inside the pit, high stone walls allowed no escape, and only shadows cast by the poor lighting allowed cover.

Karmski put a hand on Clayton’s shoulder, making the other man jump. ‘Jesus Christ, don’t do that.’

‘Behold, my children.’ Karmski waved an expansive hand towards the pit.

‘Where–?’ Clayton began, but he’d seen them. Each of them standing nose-close to the perimeter wall, cowled heads bent forward, snouts just showing as pointed lumps of shadow. From fifteen feet above them it was difficult to see how big they were, but Clayton estimated they were closer to seven than six feet tall. They were lithely built, but he knew their strength and agility, altered both by genetic and biotechnological means too advanced for him to begin to comprehend, made him weaker than a small child in comparison.

The greatest and the worst achievement of the last surge of technological advancement were now barely sustainable in this staling age. What had begun as the development of the ultimate war machine had ended up as this: a handful of barely controllable, psychotic super-tracking monsters, their fragile internal setups corroding more as each day passed. But for now they were still fearsome.

Infused with the mind of a man, the tracking ability of a bloodhound, and the physical strength of a cyborg, here they were. Mega Britain’s ultimate invention: the Huntsmen.

Clayton leaned over the pit, terrified but as ever fascinated by them. He counted twelve in all, but he knew there were more, locked away in cells further underground. This was what Karmski called the exercise yard, but no matter how long they stayed on the dirty sand and straw of the pit, they didn’t move from the walls; dark, twisted wraiths wanting only to get out.

A drop of sweat beaded on his forehead and dropped into the pit.

‘
Daaaaaaaaaaayaaaaaaaa!
’

The nearest Huntsman howled like a dying animal and leapt at him, jumping higher than any man should, frothing, rabid jaws snapping towards his face. Even as it dropped back to the floor, having got no closer than five or six feet, Clayton staggered backwards into the wall, mouth dropping open, hands unable to support him. He slipped and tumbled to the ground, a low moan coming from his throat. His eyes rolled and he felt an uncomfortable warmth in his groin area. He would have lost consciousness if Karmski hadn’t slapped him hard across the face.

Recovering his composure, Clayton pushed himself up against the wall, eyes darting about.

‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ The scientist grinned into his face. ‘Oh dear!’ Karmski wrinkled his nose. ‘Had a little accident, did you, Mr. Clayton?’

‘Get me out of here,’ Clayton growled.

Karmski called forward a couple of guards and they helped Clayton to his feet. Back in the pit he heard the snarling of one of the Huntsmen, the hideous scrape of its clawed hands scratching at the pit walls.

Clayton excused himself and a guard showed him to a crude bathroom. After he’d cleaned himself up under a single hanging bulb, he stared at himself in the mirror above a dirty sink. He was dismayed at how different sanitary standards were down in these lower levels, but they were the least of his worries. It was madness to let those beasts out on to the streets. If one of them got loose the slaughter could be unimaginable, but within hours they would be in his charge.

Back out in the corridor, Karmski said, ‘I apologize for Craul’s behavior. I’m afraid you upset him.’

‘Fuck, Karmski, you have names for those monsters?’

The doctor rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, you don’t leave a litter of kittens unnamed, do you? And they are at least partly human.’

Clayton just shook his head in disbelief.

‘We have handlers for them, you know,’ Karmski said. ‘The Huntsman can be restrained using various means, until of course they have the scent. Then, in order to get the job done, we release them.’ He smiled. ‘They are capable of following orders, but how closely they stick to them is uncertain. They tend to become … how would you say?
Incensed
… by certain situations.’

‘How many of those vile things do you have?’

‘Currently, in an operational condition, almost one hundred. We have countless others in various states of, um, repair, as well as a number of other prototypes in various stages of development. Some, my dear Mr. Clayton, would astound you.’

Clayton sighed. ‘We have five targets. They may or may not be closely related and they may or may not try to run. We have a starting point for their scent, an abandoned Underground station. As we speak I have DCA agents moving back along the rail line to find out which station they came from. That should give us all the scent we need. Now, tell me, can we make it clear to those monsters who we want dead and who we don’t?’

Karmski grinned, and Clayton’s blood chilled. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘We can instruct them which scents to chase, but once we set them free they will eliminate anyone they feel is a threat. Anyone harboring the quarry, anyone assisting them in any way…’

‘Good God, Karmski, what is it you’ve created down here?’

‘The Huntsmen were designed as ground infantry. To be dropped behind enemy lines with the orders to wreak destruction on all the enemy they encountered. They were designed to hunt and kill until death.’

‘They have weapons?’

‘Of course. Physical and mechanical.’

‘Guns?’

‘We prefer something a little more …
classical
. We give them crossbows.’

Clayton raised an eyebrow. ‘Why the fuck do you give them crossbows?’

‘Let’s just say that if you give them automatic weapons the death toll could match a small war.’

Clayton shook his head. ‘This is madness.’

Karmski flashed his eyes. ‘When do you want them released?’

Clayton took a deep breath. ‘Immediately.’

Karmski smiled. ‘As you wish.’ He pulled a radio from his belt and barked an order into it with a sharpness of tone that surprised Clayton. A moment after he put the radio back on his belt there was a cacophony of noise from behind the door. Clayton flinched.

‘Don’t worry, they’re just being brought in from the exercise yard. They’ll be briefly sedated, then implanted with newer tracking chips and given their orders.’

‘Can you imagine what would happen if one of those things escaped?’

Karmski shrugged. ‘Oh, sometimes they do. We usually recapture or eliminate them pretty quickly. They don’t get far when they leave such a wide trail.’

‘Good God.’

‘That’s what happens when the government cuts security spending.’ He grinned. ‘Still, none have got out for a couple of years.’

‘That recently?’

Karmski cocked his head. ‘The one that escaped was safe, though. Not fully integrated, still mostly human.’

‘Should I be relieved to hear that?’

‘It won’t matter to you, Mr. Clayton. For the next few days at least, you’re going to be much closer to the Huntsmen than me.’ Karmski grinned. His teeth gleamed. ‘Enjoy.’

‘I swear, Karmski, that one day I’ll gut you like a stray dog,’ Clayton said through gritted teeth.