The Tube Riders Read online

  First one, then the other looked up. Shock registered on their faces. One of them pointed and the other started to stand up, saying something Switch couldn’t hear over the roar of the wind.

  He smiled, adjusted his grip just enough to give them the middle finger, and then he was off, kicking back and up, the clawboard coming free. The train moved away from him, accelerating even as he slowed, leaning back. The air wrapped around him, the mattresses coming up below him as he landed, feather-light, on his back.

  He looked up from the breakfall mattresses to see them, moving closer to the window, looking for him. He knew, though, that in the dark and amongst the reflections he was already gone, a wraith vanished into the dim emergency lighting of a station no one knew existed. Later, when they told their friends, they’d struggle to recall exactly where they’d seen the ghostly figure. A few sightings were all that was needed to maintain the legend, but it was important to keep St. Cannerwells a secret, which was why they rarely rode during rush hour. There were too many people watching, too many who might remember.

  Once, before those cross-jumping fuckwits had started to appear, they’d used several different stations, but most were too dangerous now. Had there been other Tube Riders, Switch would have welcomed an open turf war. But while Marta, sweet as she appeared, could be useful with pretty much any weapon she had to hand, Simon was just a pretty boy and Paul was a borderline fag. Neither would help in a fight. Switch had liked Dan’s attitude for the scrap even if he’d picked on the wrong guy, but he was a blip, over now. Back when there had been ten, fifteen of them, they could have fought, but while Switch could take one or two there were rumours of people cross-jumping in their dozens.

  Switch climbed up from the breakfall mattresses and glanced casually at the chalk marks on the platform edge. He’d made around twenty-eight feet, a pretty standard length. He always dismounted early the first couple of times, getting his range and timing right. He had gone up to fourteen feet safely. Twelve, still his record, had given him the twitch in his eye. Only one man – Marta’s brother, Leo – had dismounted under ten feet and lived.

  He jogged back along the platform, eager for the next ride. During the day the trains ran every eight minutes so he didn’t have long to wait before he heard the roar back in the tunnel again.

  This time he left his dismount length long as before, but when he kicked off, instead of tucking his arms in and falling backwards, he jerked the board around to the right as he sailed through the air, spinning his body through 180 degrees. The landing knocked a bit of the wind out of him, but he jumped up almost immediately, delighted with his success, and jogged back down the platform again, rubbing his sore stomach.

  He did a couple more one-eighties to the right, then one to the left, against the flow of the train. This was more difficult, and he landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle a little.

  He rubbed it for a while, watching a couple more trains pass. He didn’t care about the pain, only whether or not he could run quick enough for the mount. The others didn’t know about the tricks he did, and one day he hoped to just astound them with a stunning display of dismount moves. He wasn’t far off, but with an audience he’d have nerves to deal with too. And for his last move, he needed full concentration.

  The back flip. He’d done it twice without hurting himself, but didn’t trust himself to pull it off in public. Still, it was the last thing he needed to make his repertoire complete.

  He sprinted as the train roared out of the tunnel and leapt for it, clawboard stretching for the rail. He caught and braced himself against the side, peering in but without concentrating. Several people had seen him today, but he was thinking of his dismount too much to worry about cultivating their legend further.

  He quickly realised this wasn’t a normal commuter train, though. A group of men in dark suits stood near the window with their backs to him, and he recognised them instantly as the special police, the Department of Civil Affairs. They were the fuckheads who made people disappear, who rounded up heretics and dissenters and pretty much anyone else they didn’t like. He’d come across one drunk once and had cut the bastard up, carved the word “cunt” into the guy’s back and left him for dead. If the guy survived or not, Switch didn’t know or care.

  He was starting to think about an early dismount to avoid them seeing him, but then one moved slightly and through a gap in their bodies he saw a cloaked, cowled figure sitting down, facing him. Leather straps with metal chains threaded around them kept the figure’s arms at its sides. They were transporting a fugitive, it looked like, and he leaned closer to the window, trying to see the face under the cowl, wondering wryly if he might recognise the man.

  Then a roar over the top of the wind seemed to shake the window in front of his face. The cluster of DCA agents separated as though blown apart by the bound figure as it jerked into a standing position, straining against more bonds that held it down. To either side, more agents tried to restrain what Switch now realised was not a man but something else, something alien, something monstrous.

  As the wolverine face roared at him again, its sharp teeth bared, Switch recoiled in shock and his feet lost their purchase.

  ‘Oh, fuck –’

  For a second he hung loose from the side of the train, feet dangling just above the gaping hole between the train and the platform edge. He glanced forward and saw the end wall of the platform rushing towards him.

  He looked back into the carriage and saw the thing trying to reach him, its bound hands shaking, its jaw snapping, while a group of men tried to restrain it. He closed his eyes –

  And his feet gripped. He kicked up blindly, falling backwards, not caring about his dismount, just wanting to be away from that snarling, menacing thing. He plummeted through the air, hearing the sound of the train cut off early, way too early, and then he landed hard, the mattresses catching him, the clawboard striking his temple as he failed to control its momentum. He felt blood rush down the side of his face, but he was safe, he was off the train, he was away from that thing.

  As the train vanished into the tunnel he rolled on to his side, dismayed to see blood dripping on to the mattresses. He untangled himself from the clawboard and wiped his face, holding a finger over the gash in his forehead to stem the bleeding. The pain barely registered as he looked up at the empty tunnel as though the beast might still come back for him. Despite the muggy heat in the station he shivered.

  So the rumours were true.

  He remembered the furry, dog-like muzzle, the sharp, dripping teeth. He also remembered the metallic shine of wires protruding out of the creature’s neck, the sacking hood that covered the top of its head, its eyes. The body and eyes of a man, the face of a dog, the mind of a machine.

  The Huntsmen were abroad.

  Switch could only hope it was being transferred from one secure location to another. He knew the stories, everyone did. Into your house at night, stealing you from your bed, letting you live only if its orders said so, and even then only if it chose. Otherwise it was death, slow, fast, torturous or just plain painful, whatever its misfiring mind decided.

  The Huntsmen had been gone for fifteen years, since the government last brought them into service to end a rebellion in the Manchester GUA. Switch had heard the horror stories of slaughters after dark, the malfunctioning Huntsmen rampaging, tearing apart whole communities irrespective of their loyalties. The rebellion ended voluntarily to stop the killing. In return for laying down their arms, the government vowed to take the Huntsmen out of service, shut them down, and never again let them loose on the streets. The Huntsmen were a liability, the remnants of a scientific greatness and knowledge that Mega Britain had let fall into dereliction and decay. The Huntsmen were too dangerous, too unpredictable, and now almost uncontrollable.

  There were rumours, of course, there were always rumours, but no confirmed sighting of a Huntsman had been made in the fifteen years since the uprising.

  Until now.

  Switc
h picked up his clawboard and walked back up the platform. He’d planned to do a few more rides, but his enthusiasm was gone. Seeing that thing, that monster, straining at its bonds, wanting him, wanting his blood, made him tremble. Switch feared no man, but there was no humanity left in the Huntsmen.

  The knife appeared in his hand, and he turned it over, considering it, letting the light reflect off the sharpened blade. It was nothing if one of those things came after him. Nothing.

  At the top of the old escalator Switch hauled up the shutter of one of the old newsstands. Behind the door, the light revealed a little den: a sleeping bag and a few blankets, a handful of torches, a small table. Switch went inside, switched on a battery lamp and pulled the shutter back down.

  This was where he made his home. St. Cannerwells Underground station was the obvious choice: riding the trains was the only time he felt pleasure so it made sense to live close to what he loved. The others didn’t know, and he didn’t want them to. Part of him felt like a guard, protecting what was theirs, watching over it. Another part just felt at home underground, in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath London.

  He pulled a can of cola out of a twenty-four can tray he’d stolen off a delivery truck and popped it open. The carbonated water fizzed down his throat, stinging him, and he gulped most of it back before he felt any better.

  In a bag on the table he found some tobacco and a small packet of pot. He rolled himself a joint and lay back on the blankets to smoke it. He’d removed one of the metal rungs near the top of the shutter to act as a chimney, and now the smoke drifted up and out into the station. As he reflected on what he’d seen, he realised his hands were shaking, and even the weed wouldn’t make them stop.

  Chapter Four

  Owen

  Paul waited outside the school gate. Nearby, two burly guards armed with assault rifles watched him impassively. He had tried to start a conversation with one, but the man hadn’t seemed interested. Five days a week Paul waited here at this time and the guards rarely changed, but even so, they shrugged off any attempt at conversation, as though to do so would be compromising their positions. He had no particular desire to talk to them anyway; he just liked to pass the time.

  In the distance he heard a huge lethargic rumble, what might have been a bomb caught in slow motion. He turned towards the sound, guessing correctly that it came from the east. A few seconds later, with the roar decreasing to a low, even growl, he saw it.

  The spacecraft rose up into the air at almost a ninety degree angle. Even at this distance he could tell the craft was huge and oval-shaped, slightly thicker at the back end, certainly too large to fly well. It looked like an eraser, a piece of gum, white and featureless. Flickers of fire from a rear thruster darted out like the tongue of a snake. For a while the craft held its upwards trajectory, a perfect straight line up into the smog, until it disappeared from sight, becoming just a flickering orange glow behind the clouds.

  Then came a groan from the distant engines. Paul sighed in spite of himself; he didn’t care about the government’s spaceships but there was an inevitability to the situation that pained him, as if it reflected outwards everything that was wrong with society. Please make it, he found himself thinking.

  The orange glow grew bright for a moment. The growl of the engines became a drone and then the craft appeared again through the clouds, plummeting towards earth. It flipped end over end, the boosters spraying occasional bursts of fire like a firework that had failed to ignite properly.

  He couldn’t look. He turned away and saw the guards had done so too. One scratched at some non-existent stain on his shirt, a pained expression on his face, while the other peered at a fingernail as if the secrets of the world were etched there. At the last moment, though, Paul couldn’t help himself. He glanced up to see counter thrusters had been activated at the craft’s front end, trying to slow it, trying to keep it from a destructive impact. It straightened briefly, wobbled on its axis and for a second Paul thought its bomb dive might be reversed. Then there was another explosion, the counter thrusters flickered and the craft returned to its spiraling descent. A moment later it fell behind the line of the houses and was gone. Paul listened, but heard no indication of its fate. Still, obliterated or just damaged, he knew that somewhere across London people were dying now, in a mess of wreckage, fire and rubble.

  It was always the way. The government launched their spaceships from Southend, on the east coast outside of London GUA. He had seen six others. All fell. He’d heard that the launchers aimed the craft out over the sea so that the inevitable fall resulted in less destruction, though he knew of one that had fallen in the Thames, destroying part of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. More than a hundred civilians had died, and there were other reports of whole streets being flattened. News passed by ear became distorted and exaggerated, he knew, but he’d seen enough with his own eyes to know that part of what he heard was truth.

  A few weeks would pass while the dust settled. Then the next massive craft would be pulled out of its hanger and the whole sorry process would begin again.

  No one knew what the space program was attempting to achieve, nor who piloted each doomed flight. Speculation said stolen people. Marta’s brother Leo had disappeared off the street three years ago, and so the spacecraft were never discussed in her presence. But in reality, the only truth was that the truth could be anything.

  Simon claimed it was bitterness; that Mega Britain once had supremacy in space and colonies on the inner planets, but the Americans had shot down all the craft and taken over the settlements. Now, a bankrupt Mega Britain was stealing money and its own people to try to revive past glories. Everyone knew that if there was a war it would be fought in space; the land was just territory to be claimed later, and Mega Britain, so Simon claimed, was practically defenseless.

  Behind him a bell rang. A cheer went up from inside a low building behind the gate, and a horde of children rushed out into the playground. Around Paul, parents, wards, foster-carers and one or two other brothers and sisters waited. He watched as the kids poured past the guards and then him, out on to the street like human water trickling away. He looked over the sea of heads, searching for Owen. As always he started to panic until at last he saw his brother, ambling across the playground, a school bag slung across his shoulders. Owen’s head was lowered, his face sullen, and Paul recognised this as a sign of wellbeing. His twelve-year-old brother loved school; they got on well but Paul always felt school was the only thing that truly made his brother happy. Inside those walls Owen was safe within his learning. The violence and the struggles of life in Mega Britain didn’t figure, and it was as though he was just a normal school kid, working at his studies with the future bright ahead of him.

  ‘Hey,’ Paul said, as his brother came up to the gate amidst the last trickle of children. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Hi, Paul.’ Owen handed Paul the bag. It was Paul’s job as big brother to carry the luggage. As always he was surprised how heavy it was, loaded down with the science and math textbooks that his little brother loved so much.

  ‘You just missed one of the spaceships,’ Paul said as they turned away from the school and headed for the nearest bus stop.

  ‘Did it make it?’

  Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think?’

  Owen smiled. ‘Don’t worry, one day I’ll show them what to do. I’ll make sure they all stay up, and we can all go and live on Mars.’

  ‘I hear the weather’s pretty good there,’ Paul said.

  ‘There’s a whole industry in dust baths,’ Owen quipped.

  ‘Yeah, well, water’s overrated, don’t you think?’

  Owen punched his brother on the arm. ‘I want to go to the ocean, someday,’ he said. ‘I was reading today about tropical reefs and all the fish you can see –’

  ‘Talking of fish, how about we go get fish n’ chips for tea?’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Owen smiled. ‘Do you have enough money for takeaway?’

&
nbsp; Paul patted his pocket. ‘Yeah, of course.’

  It was more of an estimation than a lie. If they had no extras and he only bought a small portion, he could afford for Owen to feast. Paul, twenty-one and thirteen stone, didn’t need to grow anymore. He’d gained weight since he’d given up active tube riding, something that was difficult to do these days when there were often food shortages.

  They headed out of the school grounds and turned up the street. Ahead of them the intersection was clogged so Paul led them across the street and down a road heading right. Stately Victorian buildings loomed over them from either side. Paul could only wonder how beautiful this city had once looked. Only one in three of the buildings they passed had windows, while one in five was burnt out. For a while they would walk on clear, tidy pavement, then a moment later they’d be negotiating their way around a heap of garbage or an abandoned car, holding their noses against the stench of something rotting, or stepping through potholes where the tarmac had been torn up.

  ‘I hate this shithole,’ Owen was saying. ‘There are so many nice places in the world, Paul. Why are we stuck here?’

  Paul shrugged. He didn’t know whether Owen should believe what he read in books anyway. For all they knew, the rest of the world was as bad as London GUA.

  ‘Look, Paul! What’s going on over there?’

  They had just turned a corner and a short distance ahead a group of men were approaching a small mini-mart. They swaggered rather than walked, probably the result of illegal homebrew, and the assurances of the knives and bits of wood they carried. Paul had seen their kind a thousand times before: anarchists, rioters, troublemakers. Wasting away the day in a dark, basement bar somewhere, they’d got drunk and riled each other up, wound themselves tight like a coil. They’d convinced themselves that this was right, that going on a rampage was what the city deserved, what the people needed. In truth it meant most of them would be dead before the end of the day, but probably not before taking a few innocents with them.