Tube Riders, The (39 page)

Chapter Forty-Five

Bloodlust

Dreggo stood by the canal bank with a group of Huntsmen clustered behind her. The handlers stalked around them like lion tamers, their hands guarding the leash remotes. She was beginning to realise just how damaging the neuro-stunners could be: several of the Huntsmen twitched erratically or rolled on the ground, their faces shielded. One, back at the station, had failed to get up from a series of stuns. The others had watched the assault cautiously, their eyes flicking to Dreggo as though willing her to bid them attack the men who tortured them in the name of control. Despite their frayed, irrational minds, they were beginning to trust her.

She looked at the canal bank, at the scrapes in the earth where the Tube Riders had gone down into the water. Her Huntsmen had checked the other side, and found no evidence that they had ever got out over there. The canal, Clayton had told her, was part of a route built in the early years of Mega Britain as an alternative freight line between Exeter and London, to be used in the event of serious fuel shortages on the railways. Despite his assurances that it was no longer in active use, that there were no boats on it, she knew he was wrong. The Tube Riders had found something to take them away.

The scent had gone, of course. Even Huntsmen couldn’t track through water, but Dreggo had no doubt it would be easy to cut the Tube Riders off. Two Huntsmen were already in pursuit, and unless the Tube Riders had found something with an engine, the Huntsmen would run down their quarry within an hour. There was no direct road that followed the course of the canal, and Clayton’s plan was to get in front of the Tube Riders and lie in wait.

‘You can take them back now,’ Dreggo said to the handlers. ‘Take them to the train station and get your orders from Clayton there.’

‘They went downriver?’ one of the handlers asked.

‘Unless they flew away.’

The man grunted. He barked orders at the other handlers and they started to move off, the Huntsmen clustered between them.

Dreggo sighed. She looked out at the water, and despite the conflict she felt inside she could appreciate how peaceful it was. There was another time, perhaps, another life, in which she would have sat down by the canal side and drifted off to sleep as the sun warmed her face, and the birds sung in the trees. Not now, though. There was too much blood on her hands, too much hate in her heart.

The radio fizzed in her pocket, startling her. She took a step backward as she dislodged a loose rock with her foot and sent it tumbling into the water.

The call was from Clayton.

‘What do you want?’

‘You’ve sent the Huntsmen back?’

‘The others, yes. The two I sent to follow the canal have orders to report any sightings of the Tube Riders or wait in Exeter if they find nothing. I’ll keep in contact with them.’

‘Good. I hope you chose the Huntsmen wisely. I don’t want them going haywire out in the countryside.’

Dreggo thought of the slaughter she herself had initiated in the Reading GFA. ‘They won’t,’ she said. ‘What have you done with Leo?’ She found it impossible not to use the Huntsman’s real name.

‘Nothing. We’re keeping him safe. I have a feeling he might come in useful.’

Dreggo said nothing. On the other end of the line she heard Clayton shouting at someone.

‘Dreggo? You still there? Jesus fucking Christ. We’ve had another setback. Meet us by the gate the Tube Riders broke out of. We have to go by road because the others blocked the railway line.’

‘How did they do that?’

‘Don’t ask. We’ll meet you by the gate in twenty minutes. If you want to make yourself useful, get the Huntsmen to sort out the scrap by the gate. We have a bit of a situation there. A few civilians tried to get out while the gate was down. All the obvious rebels were killed or chased off, but a group of the general populace thought it would take the opportunity to have a goddamn picnic. I want the uprising quelled and the gate secured.’

Dreggo’s heightened awareness sensed an extra tenseness in his voice. ‘Clayton, what is it?’

She heard him sigh. ‘It looks like we’re going to have company. The Governor himself is coming down. He’s going to meet us in Exeter.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. So just get the job done.’

Before she could say anything else, Clayton cut the line. Dreggo frowned. If the Governor was coming, that was bad news for Clayton. She suppressed a little smile. Maybe, just maybe, she might have a chance to take them both out.

The faint sound of a gunshot broke the tranquility of the canal bank, reminding her of the world she lived in. A mile away, just inside the city gate, people were starting to die, and later, perhaps, their blood would be on her hands. With her face set in stone, she headed back through the trees, following the trail left by the Huntsmen and their handlers.

#

Outside the gate, Clayton grimaced. With Vincent’s death, things had started looking up. Now that brief glimmer of hope had been quashed by the news that the Governor himself was coming to meet them.

‘Get ready to roll out,’ he shouted, as his men climbed up into the back of a battered old removal truck. They’d arrived by train and didn’t have time to wait for reinforcements from London so Clayton had been forced to use what road transportation he could find. The underfunded Bristol branch of the DCA had come up with a serviceable land cruiser for himself, but his men had to make do with the hard wooden floor of a vehicle designed for carrying tables and sofas.

The Huntsmen, though, had fared even worse. The third of Clayton’s commandeered vehicles was an old freezer truck with the coolant system turned off, and a hole broken through the back for ventilation. The creatures whined like cattle being sent off for slaughter as they were loaded up and sealed inside.

Not for the first time, Clayton cursed his country’s lack of forethought. Tearing up the roads might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but he was faced with a tough, three-hour drive to Exeter.

‘They’re ready,’ Dreggo said from behind him.

He turned to look at her. Back through the gate, a group of his men were setting fire to the piled bodies of the rioters. Her face was flecked with blood, her expression grim, and he knew she had unleashed the full horror of the Huntsmen. He wondered how she felt now. Most of the rioters had fled, but more than fifty were dead, their bodies torn apart.

‘I guess you could call the gate secured,’ he told her with a wry smile. ‘Blocked with bodies.’

Her single human eye watched him impassively. ‘He will kill you, you know,’ she said.

Clayton felt a flash of anger at her bluntness and his fingers closed over the remote device in his pocket as he took a step closer.

‘Not before I kill you first,’ he said.

‘Those people, and the others, and the ones yet to die,’ Dreggo made a sweeping movement with her arm. ‘It’s all in your government’s name.’

‘You gave the order,’ he said. ‘You’re more of a beast than they are, more of a beast than I’ll ever be. After all, I stand for the principles of this country, such as they are. I live to protect it.’

‘Good for you.’ She turned and stalked away. Clayton watched her climb up into the back of the removal truck with his men.

‘Animal,’ he said bitterly, but as he turned to follow her he wondered whether he should be referring to her or to him.

#

As the truck bumped along the cracked and torn up tarmac of an old highway, Dreggo didn’t look at the men who sat around her, their weapons resting on their knees. She sat right at the back, and as darkness fell outside she tried to let it drown out the pain in her head, the buzzing in her limbs, the low humming of fourteen hurting souls suffering inside the old freezer truck. Killing hurt the Huntsmen too, more than anyone knew, but like an addiction it just drove them on while their souls steadily died. The killing frenzy at the gate had sucked another layer away from the remnants of their sanity. It would not be long before they had nothing left to give.

Dreggo had given no order to attack.

She’d walked slowly back through the woods, her heart heavy, and had reached the gate just as the short battle was coming to a close. The handlers, anticipating her orders, had shocked the Huntsmen into a blind rage and then set them loose. She’d reached the gate to find her charges practically ankle deep in blood.

She tried to close her eyes, but all she could see were a thousand sickles swinging out of the darkness towards her.

Chapter Forty-Six

Crossed Paths

We’re coming up to Exeter,’ Ishael said, glancing back at Jess and Carl. The girl was sitting in a corner, her chin on her knees. Carl was leaning out of the window, the wind blowing his hair back over his face.
Neither should be part of any of this
, Ishael thought.
They’re both too young. They didn’t need their lives ruined
.

‘What happens there?’ Carl asked.

‘The line ends. We look for some other way to continue.’

‘Where are we going?’

Ishael watched him. Carl looked more than tired, and despite the pain Ishael had suffered from the beatings, he knew that Carl was hurting worse. He was being braver than his years, and Ishael wondered how long it would be before cracks started to appear.

‘We’re going into Cornwall,’ he said. ‘We think there’s a way to get across to France from there.’

‘How?’

He wasn’t keen to tell Carl what he knew until he’d managed to speak to William back in Bristol. So far, he’d had no luck with the radio, and he feared for his old friend’s safety. ‘I’ll tell you as soon as I know,’ he told Carl. ‘In any case, Cornwall gives us a better chance because there are no people there.’

‘None? Why not?’

‘The government emptied it. Quite why, I’m not entirely sure, but the rumours cover everything from a military testing ground to a “play area” for government tourists. One person I spoke to years ago said that in Cornwall there were golf courses as far as the eye could see, and barely a soul using them.’

‘Well, I’d prefer that to a military shooting range any day,’ Carl said.

‘Me too. I guess we’ll find out soon.’ Ishael dabbed at a deep gash on his cheek with a piece of gauze they had found in a medical kit in the train’s cab. He’d told Carl earlier that he’d hit his face on the ground after his captors had pushed him. He didn’t know why he’d lied; after all it appeared Carl had seen many terrible things himself, but something about the look in that DCA man’s eyes as he’d dragged the piece of broken glass across Ishael’s face like he was slicing butter, his dark eyes never once flickering with concern or guilt or regret, haunted Ishael enough to set that one aside, cover it over with fallacies and hope it stayed buried. Their pounding fists and kicking feet had been anger and resentment, but the glass, a piece from a broken window, had been pure callousness. Most of his wounds would heal and fade with time, but that one would stay forever.

‘Can you do something for me?’ he said, holding the radio out to Carl. ‘The buttons hurt my fingers.’

‘Sure. How does it work?’

Ishael showed him how to use it. ‘We gave Jess’s friends a radio. We need to try to arrange a rendezvous point. Your contact is called Switch. This frequency should work, but we’re not getting through so see if you can pick up something else. Also, listen out for anyone trying to contact us from Bristol.’

‘Okay, no problem.’ Carl started to fiddle with the radio, but something else caught his attention. ‘Wow! Look at that!’

The railway line made a gradual incline into a copse that stood at the bottom of a gentle valley. Evening was closing in, but the clouds had cleared just enough for them to make out the land around them, all disused farmland, the fields overgrown with shrubs, bracken and nettles.

Beyond the copse, the spires of a tall cathedral were lit up against the night.

‘That’s Exeter Cathedral,’ Ishael said.

‘Can we go take a look?’

Ishael gave him as sympathetic a look as his battered face would allow. The boy seemed to have momentarily forgotten the situation they were in. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Exeter Urban Area is closed off like all the rest.’

Carl nodded to show he understood. Rising up beyond the copse a few miles distant he saw the grey barrier that kept people out of the city – Exeter UA’s perimeter wall. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said.

‘We’re not going inside. Our pursuers may have radioed ahead, depending on what back-up, if any, resides in the city.’

‘What do they do in Exeter?’ Carl asked.

‘Textiles,’ Ishael said. ‘They make our clothes.’

‘It’s clever, really, to put all the same industries in the same place,’ Carl said.

‘I guess,’ Ishael said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. Much as he liked Carl, he wondered what naivety was breeding out in the GFAs. ‘I imagine that the idea was to focus people’s efforts.’

Carl looked back at Jess. ‘Are you okay?’

The girl took an age to look up at him, but when she did she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When are we getting off?’

‘In a couple of minutes,’ Ishael said. ‘Any luck with that signal, Carl?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Keep trying. Okay, I’m going to slow us down now.’

A few minutes later the train had slowed to a crawl. Carl and Jess picked up their things.

‘Aren’t you going to stop it?’ Carl asked.

‘No. I’ll let it run right on into the station. If Exeter UA has been notified, then a runaway train will certainly focus their attention for a while. Not too fast, though. Enough people have died today as it is.’

Carl nodded. For such a young boy his face looked weary, haggard. ‘Yeah, I noticed.’

‘Okay, get ready to jump. I imagine this is going to be a lot easier for you two than it is for me.’

As he looked up, Jess actually smiled. ‘We’re barely moving,’ she said, and stepped out on to the ground.

‘Yeah, well,’ Ishael muttered, thinking at the same time how good it was to see the girl smile.

Carl jumped down after her. Ishael tapped a new speed into the train’s digital control and jumped down last, landing in a heap just as it began to speed up. He rolled over, feeling the press of a dozen welts and bruises. The train moved away from them towards Exeter UA, slowly picking up speed.

‘Okay,’ he said. Let’s get clear of the tracks. Preferably to somewhere where we can see people coming in case we need to move quickly.’

Carl pointed. ‘Top of the ridge?’

‘That’s good.’

#

The fizzing sound was coming from Switch’s bag.

‘What’s that?’ Marta said, looking around. ‘Paul, can you grab his bag?’

The fizzing noise came again. Paul, still playing monopoly with Owen, pulled Switch’s bag over. He unzipped it and rummaged around inside. ‘God, he’s got a lot of stuff in here! Knives, guns … ah! What the hell? He’s got a damn radio!’

He pulled out what looked like a large mobile phone but with less buttons.

‘It’s a walkie talkie,’ Owen said. ‘We had some of them in school. In science class we used to use them to call each other from different rooms.’

‘Do you know how to answer it?’ Marta asked.

‘Press the red button,’ Owen said.

‘Hello?’ Paul spoke into the mouth piece.

‘Stevie? Is that you?’

Paul held up the phone to Marta and Owen. ‘It’s William,’ he said, somewhat bemused.

Owen hit Paul with a pillow. ‘Well, answer him then!’

#

‘This way,’ Ishael said, leading Carl upslope towards a thin stand of trees on the hilltop. Jess had gone on ahead, and was now sitting with her legs pulled up to her chin, facing away from them. Whether her eyes were scanning the surrounding countryside for the canal or just staring vacantly into space where the memories of Simon and her parents waited, Carl couldn’t tell.

A few minutes earlier they had finally managed to pick up a signal, this one from Ishael’s friend William, back in Bristol GUA. ‘From what William told me, this supposed canal should pass by the southern side of Exeter,’ Ishael said, sounding a little more positive now he knew his friend was safe. ‘We should be able to see it from the top of the rise.’

‘Jess doesn’t seem to be getting too excited,’ Carl said. ‘Maybe William was wrong.’

‘Let’s hope not. We’ll try to get back in contact when we reach the top.’

‘You know,’ Carl said, his voice wistful as he led Ishael up towards Jess, ‘I used to dream of something like this happening. Going on an adventure and all that. Like in a storybook. Except now that I am, I’d so much rather be back at home. Doing homework, even.’

Ishael tried to smile. ‘When you dream of adventure, you never see the blood so red,’ he said.

They continued up the hill. Back to the right Carl could see over the perimeter wall of Exeter, see the rows of houses built on a hillside, the spire of the cathedral poking up from among them. He could see the railway line where it passed through the perimeter wall, could even see part of the track on the inside before it disappeared among the houses. He wondered what had happened to the driverless train engine.

They reached the ridge summit. Jess didn’t look up at them as they put their bags down. ‘See anything?’ Ishael asked her.

‘No water,’ she replied.

Ishael cursed. ‘Damn it, there should be a canal passing by somewhere along here. That’s what William said. Carl, please try the radio again.’

Carl began to flick through the frequencies. Then he had a thought. He stood up, scanning the valley below them.

‘What is it?’ Ishael asked.

Carl turned to him. ‘You said it’s a canal, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s no longer used?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Canals aren’t like rivers, you know. They take maintaining. A continuing water supply, dredging, that kind of thing. If no one uses them, they tend to go to seed.’

‘You mean–’

‘It could be silted up, overgrown. It could be right in front of us but we can’t see it because there’s no water at this end.’

‘William said the canal went right to Exeter.’

‘It probably does. But that doesn’t mean it can be navigated that far by boat.’

Jess stood up. She pointed towards a line of trees. ‘There.’

A thin line of trees arced through the middle of the valley and then swung around the rise below them, angling in the direction of Exeter. They hadn’t noticed because of the rest of the forest in the valley, but now that Jess pointed it out, it was easy to see the slightly darker green of the fast-growing coniferous trees that had been planted along the canal side. Where they could see between them in places was just a belt of green, like an old forest trail.

‘I thought it was an old railway line,’ she said.

‘Grab your things. We have to go,’ Ishael said. ‘We need to find where the others landed before it gets too dark to see.’

‘The Huntsmen will be on our trail,’ Carl said. ‘Even if we find the others, how are we going to escape?’

Ishael patted him on the shoulder. ‘One problem at a time, please. Come on, let’s go.’

#

‘I thought you said it went right to Exeter.’

Reeder glanced back at Paul as they climbed off the boat. ‘It does. You just can’t go that far by boat. It’s a nice cycle ride, however. In the unlikely event that you happen to have a bicycle.’

For the last mile or so the canal had made a thin course through swampy green water, reeds and other water plants pressing in from either side, leaving only a thin navigable channel in the centre of the canal. Eventually Reeder had docked them at a section of bank he told them he had cleared himself. Beyond it the canal was completely closed off by vegetation.

‘Don’t worry,’ Reeder said, leading them through the woods. ‘You’ll meet with your friends as planned.’

Owen, directly behind him, stopped. He put out a hand and Switch walked into it.

‘Hey, kid, watch out!’

Owen turned to the others. ‘I think we should stop trusting this guy,’ he said. ‘How do we know he’s not been paid off to turn us in?’

Marta sighed. ‘Owen, quit it. We’d either be dead or in a lot of pain by now if it wasn’t for John.’

‘He’s nuts!’

Paul and Switch took one of Owen’s shoulders each. ‘Come on, kid,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll get you some comic books as soon as we can.’

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot. Are we going to walk all the way to Falmouth, wherever the hell that is?’

Reeder turned around. He had a wide smile on his face. ‘He’s a bright one, your brother,’ he said to Paul. ‘Perhaps the rest of you should be less trusting of a kind hand. Something to consider as your journey continues. However, while I might live on a boat, from time to time I need to get around on land. Follow me.’

Marta raised an eyebrow at Switch who just shrugged as they followed John Reeder along a thin path cut through the woodland. Owen stood his ground a while, hands on hips, before giving up and following, cursing under his breath. As he dragged his feet along behind the others, Paul turned around. ‘Don’t get left behind,’ he said with a smile.

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll have more chances to be a hero later.’

Owen just wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

#