Tube Riders, The (41 page)

Part Three

Cornwall

Chapter Forty-Eight

Respite

Marta stood on the hilltop looking east across Bodmin Moor in the direction of London, from where the sun would soon rise. Nothing moved out there, no people or cars, not even sheep or cattle. Reeder had told her they used to run wild, but had long ago been herded up by the people of the GFAs. Now, only rabbits lived up here, invisible among the grass that whipped back and forth like hair in the wind.

From her vantage point Marta could see almost to the edge of the moor, some ten miles east. The open grassland rolled away, punctuated only by a few rocky outcrops and some gnarly trees bent like old men by the incessant wind. It was pretty in a desolate kind of way, with the shadows stretched long across the hillsides, turning the valleys into lakes of dark water. She squinted, looking again for a house, but saw none.

She heard a sound and glanced back. Jess was coming up the hill towards her. Jess’s shoulders were slumped, her eyes downcast. The change in her was as remarkable as it was tragic. Gone was the pretty innocence, the bright, sunny look. Gone, too, was the violent hatred that had replaced it. Now she just looked bleak, weary, her eyes struggling to focus on anything. Her cheeks were pale, and her mouth hung slightly open as though it took too much effort to close it.

‘So little time,’ Jess said, her voice barely audible over the wind. ‘So little time, and they’ve all gone.’

Marta could say nothing to ease her pain. She continued to scan the moorland, half watching for pursuit, half waiting for the sun to show itself above the distant hills. She didn’t want to think about Simon; it hurt too much.

‘I thought I’d got him back … I thought I’d got him.’ Jess shook her head as she came to stand beside Marta.

Marta put an arm around her shoulders. She expected Jess to push it away, but instead Jess leaned in towards Marta like a child might to her mother. ‘I might not have loved him in the same way that you did,’ Marta said, picking her words carefully, ‘but he was dear to me. He was dear to all of us.’

‘I know.’

‘I want this nightmare to end.’

‘No, no,’ Jess said in earnest, and at first Marta wondered what she meant. Then Jess shook her head again, the fervour briefly returning. ‘It can’t end. Ever. Too much has happened. We might win, or whatever, but my parents, Simon … this nightmare will never be over for me.’

Marta looked down as Jess’s voice rose. She felt guilty that Jess had to be a part of this. It wasn’t her own fault; Simon had brought Jess to St. Cannerwells, but Marta knew he would never have made her come. But now Simon was gone, killed by the Huntsman; who was left to shoulder the blame? Her brother had started tube riding, and in the last few days she had graduated, reluctantly or not, to be their leader. The death of Jess’s parents and now Simon should rest on her shoulders, surely?

‘I’m sorry,’ Marta said.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Jess replied, but Marta could feel the emotion behind the words, hear the unspoken second line:
but I want it to be. I need someone to hate
.

Behind them, Reeder was cooking up some fish and potatoes for breakfast, the smell drifting upslope towards them. Marta welcomed it like an old friend, her stomach growling in anticipation.

John Reeder, for all his eccentricities, was proving a valuable ally. His old Land Rover, adapted for the harsh terrain, and his experience of living on the fringes of GFA society, had been invaluable. Without their chance discovery of his boat, they might all be dead. Certainly Jess, Ishael and the boy, Carl, would be prisoners, maybe all of them. They’d managed to outwit the Huntsmen and the Department of Civil Affairs again, but she wondered just how long they could stay half a step ahead.

It had been Owen’s idea to disguise themselves as a Huntsman in order to trick their pursuers, an idea so simple only a child could think of it. They had gambled that Huntsmen had been loosed on their trail, and that the DCA would be fooled into thinking one had kept with them long enough to appear at the right moment to trap them. Using guns that William had given Switch, again without their knowledge (‘If you get caught, what you don’t know you can’t tell,’ had been his familiar response), it was a case of shoot before being shot while dragging the others to safety. Paul had insisted they just aim for the lights, use the confusion and the surprise to get away, but despite his agreement, Marta knew Switch had aimed straight for the truck windows. Switch didn’t have the same qualms about killing people that Paul did.

Jess moved away from her, wandered a few feet down the slope and sat down on a rock, her eyes drifting across the valley below. There was nothing that could be said to make her feel better, so Marta turned and headed back towards the group.

Reeder had begun to dish out the food and most of them were eating. Paul sat together with Switch on a flat rock, while Owen and Carl were sitting on a tarpaulin spread out by the side of the Land Rover. Reeder smiled and handed her a plastic dish, then set about preparing his own. She looked around and saw Ishael standing alone, looking out towards the west. As she went over to join him, she realised how happy seeing him again had made her, even though at first she had barely recognised him behind the ruins of his face. Whatever horrors she’d seen, the thought of the DCA agents going to work on him like thugs made her sick inside. There was a case to excuse even the human-made Huntsmen, she reasoned, but any man who could commit such atrocities towards another with willingness and zeal was inhuman.

After they had stopped, Reeder, his field skills seemingly without end, had produced an old first aid kit, the plastic wrapping on the band-aids and bandages hardened and cracked with age. Using tweezers boiled sterile, he had reopened the half-scabbed gash on Ishael’s cheek, cleaned it with antiseptic, and stitched it up. Then he had fixed up a gash in Ishael’s scalp where his hair had literally been torn out, dressed his fingers where the fingernails had been torn away and applied an antiseptic lotion to terrible welts on the soles of Ishael’s feet and to teeth marks on the back of one calf muscle. Ishael was at least recognizable now, and Reeder claimed he would eventually look ‘better than new.’

Switch had been next, his knife wound re-stitched and dressed. Jess, Carl and Paul had been treated for minor cuts and scrapes. Only Owen and Marta had so far escaped unharmed.

‘Hey,’ Ishael said, as she came up beside him. He looked down at her food. ‘Eat it while it’s hot.’

‘I intend to.’ She prodded a potato with a plastic fork. ‘I’m, um, glad you made it. We didn’t know what happened back at the station. I thought maybe you…’

‘Nearly.’ He shrugged. ‘It depends how lucky you call this,’ he said, gesturing at his face. ‘Whatever, I owe Jess and Carl my life.’

Marta nodded. She had heard a version of events from both Ishael and Carl, who had told her what he knew of their flight and Simon’s death because Jess wasn’t talking to anyone much. ‘It’s lucky they found you.’

‘It’s kind of hard to say, but if Simon were alive now, I’d probably be dead. I’m not sure how to describe how that makes me feel. On the one hand I feel happy, but on the other so desperately sad.’

Marta glanced at him. His bruises made it difficult to read his expression, but she could guess at the turmoil there.

‘Do you think Jess resents me because of that?’

Marta shrugged. ‘Jess is hurting. We’ve all lost friends and family over the years, but most of us have had time to grieve, to come to terms with it. Jess has lost everyone close to her in such a short time. We’re all she has left.’

Ishael nodded. ‘For years, all I wanted was for the UMF to come out from the underground, blow this whole thing wide open. You know, just get on with it. I never realised how much it would hurt to see so many people in pain. The dead, at least they have closure. It’s the living who are suffering the most. Jess, Carl too. The Huntsmen killed his father, maybe his mother too.’

Marta nodded. She hadn’t had much chance to speak to Carl herself, but Paul had taken him on as a second younger brother. Paul had told her about the attack on Carl’s house. To Marta, not knowing was perhaps even worse. She felt terrible that Carl, like Ishael, had been dragged into this mess, and she knew how he felt; she had suffered with Leo’s disappearance for years. Time could dull the pain, but it could never fully erase it.

Marta reached across and felt for Ishael’s hand. He let her take it, and then squeezed hers in his.
Am I safe?
she wondered.
Can this battered man protect me? Can
I
protect
him?

She thought of Jess, of Simon’s death, and of the pain Jess must be suffering. A sudden pang of guilt struck her. Ishael let go of her hand.

‘What’s wrong? I’m … sorry. I shouldn’t have–’

‘It’s okay. It’s just…’ She couldn’t finish, but his small nod told her he understood. He squeezed her hand again, and she let her body relax.

‘I hope that some good comes of all this,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

They sat on the ground for a while. Marta finished her breakfast. It was good, even though she had let it get cold after all.

Carl and Owen were talking quietly. Paul was eating. She caught Switch’s gaze for a moment before he quickly looked away, not for the first time since they’d rescued Ishael and the others last night.

Surely not … but she wondered. He had saved her life more than once over the last couple of days. In between she’d felt him edge closer to her, as though he had appointed himself her personal protector. He spoke to her in a kinder, less abrasive way than he spoke to the others.

It made sense. They had always been like siblings, but difficult circumstances had a way of pushing people closer. She had no feelings for him other than the same brotherly love she’d felt before, and now as she watched the back of his head as he dipped to eat, she felt nothing new. They were close, but there was nothing deeper there.

With Ishael though, just his presence made her feel good. She found him attractive, too, beneath his bruises. If anything, what he had suffered made her feelings stronger; that she’d come close to losing him before anything had ever happened. Could something happen between them?

Marta stifled a sigh. Maybe, if circumstances were different. On the run from the Huntsmen, homeless, maybe lost, was hardly the time to start building a relationship. In another time, another place, maybe. She swallowed down a lump in her throat.

‘Come on,’ Ishael said at last. ‘We have to get moving.’

Just down the hillside from the camp, Paul, Carl and Owen were washing up the breakfast dishes. Switch had climbed to the top of the rise and was sharpening a knife in the shadow of a crooked tree. Jess stood nearby, gazing out at the view.

Reeder was tinkering under the hood of the Land Rover. He looked up as they approached.

‘Any trouble?’ Ishael asked. ‘Maybe I can help. I know a little about engines.’

‘No, she’s fine. I’m just worried, as always. It’s almost impossible to replace parts these days. I’ve not changed the oil in nearly a year, so the engine isn’t working too great, but our biggest problem is fuel.’

‘You don’t have enough?’

‘I think we can make it to Falmouth.’

Ishael forced a smile. Instead of heading south, Reeder had purposely taken them far further north-west than necessary in order to gain some time on the government men. The DCA’s vehicles couldn’t cover the ground so fast, and if they were using the Huntsmen to track them on foot, every mile opened up the gap further. Of course, they knew the DCA had intercepted their radio broadcasts, so there was a good chance the government would head straight for Falmouth to cut them off. However–

‘We need to change course,’ Ishael said. ‘We’re not going to Falmouth.’

Reeder raised an eyebrow. ‘Are we not?’

‘No. We knew they might listen to our radio transmissions. We had to throw them off. We need to go further south-west than that.’

‘Where?’

‘Lizard Point. It’s a rocky outcrop into the English Channel. You know it?’

Reeder looked grim. ‘Yes, I know where you mean.’

‘Do we have enough fuel to make it?’

‘What do you need there?’

Ishael took a deep breath. ‘There’s a tunnel there.’

‘A tunnel?’

Ishael nodded. ‘It was built back in the days before Mega Britain. It was originally planned as a second public tunnel to France, but the government changed its plans and downgraded it to trade and military uses only. Then, during the coup, the remnants of the old military sealed over the entrance. A few years ago, we broke into an old government bunker in Bristol. We stole some plans, hoping to find out more about the perimeter walls. Among them, we found details of the tunnel.’

Marta stared open-mouthed. ‘You mean–’

Ishael nodded. ‘That’s how we’re getting you to France.’ He smiled. ‘We’re going underground.’

Marta started to speak, but John Reeder lifted a hand. ‘Wait, don’t get carried away, young revolutionary. I have a few more years on you, my friend. I remember hearing of that tunnel. The government never finished it. Got about halfway in, and then the coup came.’