Tube Riders, The (31 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ambush

Dreggo and the three Huntsmen were crouched behind a low wall that bordered the back lawn of the manor house. Dreggo was still, concentrating, but the Huntsmen fidgeted, their lips curled back, their eyes darting around them. They were hungry, but there was no time to eat now. They had found the Tube Riders.

Well, one of them at least. Following the trail had been easy. Not expecting pursuit, the men who had taken the injured Tube Rider had battered their way back through the forest, leaving a path of broken vegetation she could have followed in the dark, even if the scent trail had gone.

They had circled the house earlier, and found no scent leading away. The boy was still inside, hopefully laid up with his injuries. And if he was, Dreggo doubted he would be guarded.

Easy pickings.

But that was just one. Leading away from the same spot by the railway line, the trail of the Tube Rider’s girlfriend had been fresher but less clear, because she had been alone and moving fast. However, her trail had become erratic, doubling back on itself, even swinging round to cross over the same path again.

She had got lost trying to follow her boyfriend. Dreggo and the Huntsmen had followed her trail until it finally emerged from the woods in the corner of a field, but at this point, Dreggo had turned the Huntsmen back around and they had backtracked to the other trail, following it to the house. The girl would come, Dreggo knew. She was after the boy, too, and the best way to trap her was to use the boy as bait.

Behind her the Huntsmen stirred. A whine escaped from Jacul’s lips, while Meud and Lyen bobbed their heads like hyenas, tongues lolling.

‘Be quiet,’ she muttered.

‘Eat…’

Dreggo grimaced, as she always did when she heard one of them speak. Their canine muzzles and tongues weren’t designed for speech, but they still had human larynxes. What came out was a low, cheese-grater voice that sounded like a metal file scraping away human skin, and each time they spoke it reminded her of how close she’d come to ending up as one of them.

Dreggo would have problems soon. She was overriding their orders by keeping them here; their natural instincts were to break into the house and kill the boy. Then, with the Tube Rider dead, their reward would be his flesh.

She didn’t need their mind-link to sense their uneasiness. She had to keep them happy or she would lose control.

‘Come on,’ she hissed, and led them away from the house and through a cluster of farm outbuildings until they reached a barn. Dreggo heard the shuffling of cattle inside.

‘Just one,’ she ordered them. ‘And keep it quiet.’

Meud’s eyes widened and his jowls pulled back over his teeth. He looked crazed, rabid. ‘Eat…’

The other two had already moved towards the barn. ‘Listen to your transmitters,’ Dreggo told them. ‘Be ready when I call.’

They nodded, but she knew they weren’t paying attention. She hoped their hunger would outweigh their thirst for mindless slaughter.

She headed back towards the house as the sound of something heavy dropping to the ground came from behind her. To their credit, it sounded as though they’d chosen an isolated target, for the rest of the cows continued their slow shuffling, their occasional moo. The Huntsmen knew stealth as well as any assassin; they just rarely chose to use it.

She resumed her vigil at the same place as before. Dreggo felt sure the girl would come from this way; she would be thinking like a fugitive, and would take what she believed to be the safer way in, around the back.

Unsure how long she would have to wait, Dreggo let herself drift for a while, thinking back on her childhood, back when Mega Britain was young and the perimeter walls weren’t yet finished, when people could go out into the countryside and sit by rivers and under trees, eating sandwiches and drinking juice in the sun. She remembered the journey out of London into the tranquil fields and the rolling hills, but she also remembered the streams of people heading in the opposite direction, in towards the city, the suitcases and the weary faces, the armed guards lining the roads, the cranes rising up above the trees and the groan of heavy machinery.

It had left conflicting impressions on her, and she realised that through it all she hated the countryside and the people who had been allowed to remain here, hated its illusion of safety. Her parents had never again taken her outside the perimeter walls, and her life had spiraled downhill until her eventual capture and abuse at the hands of Karmski and his government toads. Now, coming back here, she felt the urge to shatter the apparent tranquility that these people lived under. She had to live in Hell, so why shouldn’t they?

She was still lost in reminiscence when a girl slipped out of the bushes not fifty feet from her and darted towards the back of the house.

Dreggo ducked down behind the wall as the girl reached the back of the house, turned and looked around her. Dreggo had no doubt that this was the Tube Rider; although the girl was wearing different clothes Dreggo could see the girl’s hanging board poking out of her rucksack, and in her hands she held a Huntsman’s crossbow.

Dreggo smiled. She would enjoy turning the stolen weapon on the thief.

The girl climbed a set of steps to a porch and peered in through a dirty window. Dreggo could only assume that around the back of such a large house were the servants’ quarters. After a moment the girl cracked open the door and slipped inside.

Dreggo waited just a few seconds and then hurried across to the door. She too glanced inside and saw what looked like a kitchen pantry: shelves packed with cans and jars, hanging sides of meat, great sacks labeled as corn and flour. She gave a brief wistful smile at the storybook air of the house, and then slipped inside. Through an arch in the far wall wooden stairs led up.

Dreggo had taken just a few steps when she heard the girl above her on a higher landing. She was trying to be quiet but Dreggo’s advanced hearing had no trouble picking up the creaks and shifts of her footfalls as she crept up along the wooden floor and up the next flight of stairs. Dreggo was tempted to kill her immediately because she knew the other Tube Rider was inside, but a sadistic part of her wanted them to die in each other’s presence. Let them think everything was going to be all right, and then take it away. Wasn’t that what life had done to her? Wasn’t that the way it always was?

Someone opened a door below her. Above her, she heard the girl freeze, then tip-toe quickly away, open a door and slip inside. Glancing around a corner behind her, Dreggo saw a woman dressed in a white apron start up the stairs. Dreggo hurried on and slipped into an alcove in the wall a few feet from the top of the stairs. The woman came up behind her, quietly whistling to herself. At the top of the stairs the woman had a choice of right or left.

If she chose right, she would see Dreggo and would die.

She chose left.

Still whistling to herself, she walked along the corridor, past one of the doors behind which the girl was hiding, and disappeared out of sight.

Dreggo waited a few moments and then, as she’d expected, a door opened and the girl stepped out on to the corridor, looked both ways and then hurried on up the stairs towards the next level of the house. Dreggo gave her a few moments and then followed.

Just as she reached the landing halfway up, where the stairs turned back on themselves, she heard another door opening below her. She froze again, listening for the creak of the stairs.

Nothing.

The girl had reached the corridor above. Dreggo climbed to the top of the stairs and peered around the corner of the wall. The girl was about halfway along the corridor, peeking through a keyhole.

‘Simon?’ Dreggo heard the girl whisper. ‘Where are you?’

Dreggo felt a brief pang of guilt for what she was about to do, but she brushed the feeling away. Why should they live? Why did they deserve it more than her?

The girl had reached a door near the end of the corridor when Dreggo saw her expression change. Relief crossed her face as she opened the door a crack and leaned in. A moment later she slipped inside and closed it behind her.

Dreggo trotted down the corridor and leaned close to the door. Inside, she heard their voices.

From her belt she pulled a long, serrated knife.

#

Simon was lying on his back in the bed, his eyes half closed. Jess felt her heart race at the sight of him. He was a little beaten up, his face crisscrossed with band-aids, but he was breathing. That was enough.

A blanket covered his body but one arm was exposed, a tube attached to a drip bag feeding into his arm. He also had bandages wrapped around the ankle. Her heart sunk; if he couldn’t walk they would have a problem.

‘Is that you, Jess?’

Jess started. He had been watching her the whole time she had been staring at him.

‘Simon, oh thank God…’

He smiled weakly. ‘I’m
so
happy to see you.’

She smiled. ‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Come closer.’

She moved around to the side of the bed and he lifted up his hand to take hers. ‘I didn’t know if I’d ever find you,’ she said.

‘You came after me? Where are the others?’

‘In Bristol now, I hope. Simon, we’ve got to go–’

Even as she spoke his eyes widened, but before he could speak Jess felt something cold at her neck, and a strong arm wrapping across her chest.

‘Isn’t this sweet?’ Dreggo sneered, her mutilated face close to Jess’s. ‘A lover’s reunion.’

Simon tried to rise, but his body was weak from the medication and his injuries. ‘Let her go–’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll be joining her soon.’ Dreggo jerked Jess’s head back. The girl struggled, one arm trying to reach Dreggo’s belt, but Dreggo hauled her backwards across the room.

‘I gave you a choice, and you chose wrong. You’ll pay for what happened to me. All of you will.’

Jess squirmed again. She tried to twist away, heedless of the knife at her throat. She figured that Dreggo was going to kill her anyway, so she had nothing to lose. Twisting back towards Simon, she tried to reach for Dreggo’s belt again. As she looked down, she saw the bottom of the door shift forward an inch.

‘Stop struggling, bitch,’ Dreggo spat. ‘I wanted your boyfriend to enjoy this, but I guess I’ll have to make it quick–’

Dreggo screamed and jerked backwards. Her arm dropped away and Jess fell forward towards Simon’s bed. She twisted round, reaching for her crossbow, and saw a boy, maybe no more than sixteen, jabbing a long metal pole into Dreggo’s back.

‘Get Simon and run!’ the boy shouted.

‘Who…?’

‘Carl,’ Simon muttered. There was something wry in his voice, as though Carl’s sudden appearance hadn’t surprised him at all.

Jess looked towards him. ‘Can you walk?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘
Try!
’ Carl screamed, jabbing Dreggo again with the metal pole, this time in the neck. Jess heard a crackle of electricity, and Dreggo screamed as she tried to roll out of range. She groaned, twitched, and was still.

‘Come on!’ Jess pulled the tube out of Simon’s arm and pulled him upright. ‘We have to go, Simon. We have to go
now
.’

She hauled him up out of the bed and pulled one arm over his shoulder. He was wearing his own spare clothes, but there was a mound of padding around his shoulder where someone had patched up his crossbow wound.

The boy, Carl, took Simon’s other arm. ‘He’s drowsy from the medication,’ Carl said. ‘We weren’t expecting anyone to come and pick him up so soon.’

Jess glanced at him. The boy appeared to be smiling. ‘Um, thanks.’

‘Are you Jess?’

‘Yes, but how did you–’

‘He talked about you.
A lot
.’

Jess found herself smiling back. ‘We have to hurry,’ she said as they reached the stairs and started down.

‘What on earth is that thing back there?’ Carl jerked a thumb back over his free shoulder. ‘I saw it –
her
, whatever – outside. Obviously she wasn’t after me or I’d be dead now.’

‘Her name’s Dreggo,’ Jess said. She didn’t say that they’d left Dreggo for dead. ‘I don’t know what she’s doing here, but–’

They stopped as a howl that sounded like metal scraping on metal echoed through the house. Jess’s blood seemed to run cold. Her heart hammered in her chest and she wondered just how they were going to get out of this. One nightmare kept being replaced by another.

‘What’s
that?
’ Carl gasped.

Jess started to walk again, forcing her legs to move before they turned to jelly and failed all of them. ‘I don’t think you want to know, but I’ve got a terrible feeling that it came with her.’

‘That cyborg woman?’

Jess had noticed the metal on Dreggo’s face. Someone had taken her away and fixed her up like the Huntsmen, and it was obvious who. That they should be here together could hardly be coincidence.