Underground: The Tube Riders, #1

Part I

London

1

Breakfall

The roar in the tunnel grew louder.

It came from far back in the dark, building from a low, distant rumble into a rolling, thundering crescendo like a thousand hurricanes colliding, tearing each other apart. Marta Banks, squatting in a sprinter’s crouch, closed her eyes as she always did, concentrating, seeing in her mind something monstrous, untamed. She let out a slow breath, looped her wrists through the leather safety straps and closed her fingers over the cold metal handles of the wooden clawboard.

Bring it on.

She smelt engine oil, heard the hum of the vibrating rails on the track below. She grimaced and shifted her wrists as the straps rubbed against the old marks on her skin.

Seconds, just seconds…

Come on. I’m waiting.

The roar was almost deafening now. Marta’s eyes flicked open, her concentration sharp. Muscles tensed in her legs and arms. Her fingers clenched so tight she thought they might break. She glanced up at Paul standing further down the platform, one arm raised into the air.

Marta waited. Three … two … one—

‘Go!’ Paul screamed, as the wind rose to wrap itself around her. His arm dropped, and the fear, the exhilaration, the sheer adrenaline rush struck her like a hammer.

She dashed for the platform edge, while behind her, she heard Simon, Switch and Dan—the new boy—fanning out as they followed. She hoped Dan made it, of course, but in the moment of the ride it was only herself that mattered.

Racing across the cracked, dusty tiles, Marta pressed her wrists against the leather straps and squeezed the metal handles until her fingers ached. The wood creaked, and she prayed today wasn’t the day the clawboard failed her.

She held the board up, the metal hooks on the outward surface angled down.

The train exploded out of the tunnel, its glaring headlights blasting through the dust curtain that hung over the station’s pallid emergency lighting. The engine roar filled the air. Marta looked up as it came level with her and then rushed ahead, one, two, three carriages clattering past. She saw the thin metal drainage rail that ran along the top edge of the nearest carriage, and she steeled herself for the mount.

‘Now!’ she screamed, a war cry partly for herself, partly for the others behind her. Then she was leaping at the train, the clawboard arcing in towards the rail. Her heart slammed against the back of her ribs, until she thought it might burst out of her chest. Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, she stared into the blurred, rushing wall of metal and glass, which in these moments was the Reaper, was Death. Don’t fuck up, her mind reminded her. You fuck up, you die.

The metal hooks, two of them, four centimeters wide, dropped towards the outer lip of the drainage rail. Marta’s feet brushed the side of the carriage, and for a second she was flying. Then the hooks caught, a massive jolt shuddered through her shoulders and upper arms, and Marta had won. This time.

Her scream rose over the rushing wind: ‘Yeeeeeeesssss!’

With her feet apart, she braced herself against the side of the carriage. Her battered, often-repaired trainers left tread smears in the oily dirt coating the metal. In front of her, from the carriage window, a reflection of her own face stared back, thick dreads of hair billowing out around her like columns of smoke.

Behind her Marta heard two metallic crunches as first Simon and then Switch caught. In a group ride you rode in order of seniority. That was the rule. I’ve survived the longest so that makes me the leader. She listened for Dan, but there was only the roaring of the train, and the rapid clattering of the wheels over the rails.

Something had gone wrong.

She glanced back, terrified of what she might see. Dan should have been exactly one second behind Switch, but he was still running towards the train like a commuter who had overslept, his movement jerky, out of time. He hesitated! Shit, he lost his nerve and now his timing’s all screwed up.

‘Pull out!’ she tried to scream, but her lungs, still empty, failed her, and the words trickled out like the last rains of a flood. She stared helplessly as Dan lifted the clawboard, jaw set, eyes hard. His pride was driving him on. When pride was all you had it was difficult to give it up, but down here where the trains roared it could get you killed.

Dan tried to leap. Going far too slow, he was way out of position. His clawboard fell short of the drainage rail, and his body slammed against the side of the train. The motion of the carriage spun him around in the air like a demented ballerina, eyes wide in terror, arms and legs flailing. He ricocheted off, a staccato, barked scream escaping his throat a moment before he landed hard on the platform. Momentum rolled him; the gap between the platform’s edge and the rushing train loomed close. Don’t end up like Clive. Please don’t. I can’t handle that again.

Dan got lucky. The straps of the blocky clawboard still circled one wrist, and the board arrested his roll, inches away from the edge. He rolled back as the train thundered past, and the clawboard finally spun loose.

‘He’s hurt!’ Simon shouted as the train sped on, carrying the others away.

‘Wait!’ Marta shouted back as the braided dreads of her hair buffeted her face. ‘Wait for the mats! Okay … three, two, one—’

She kicked off from the side of the train, pushing forward and up as she’d done a thousand times before. The clawboard released its hold on the rail—reluctantly, as always. Marta leaned backwards as she fell, pulling her arms in and ducking her head forward. She grimaced as the pile of old mattresses and blankets at the end of the platform came up to meet her.

The fall knocked the wind out of her. Coughing, she glanced up to see Simon dismount after her, followed by Switch. They landed on the breakfall mats beside her and came to an untidy stop.

As the train roared away into the tunnel and the noise receded, all three climbed to their feet and dusted themselves down. Marta rubbed at her hip where she’d landed on a mattress seam.

‘Fuck yeah,’ Switch muttered. He shook the straps off his wrists and turned the board over, checking for abrasions. ‘Paul, you fat chump, what’s my score? Paul?’

‘Forget your score!’ Marta shouted at him. ‘Dan failed the mount. He could have died, you idiot. Didn’t you see it?’

‘Ah, whatever. Live and die by the trains, ain’t it just?’

Marta gave him a scowl that said just sod off, then looked back up the platform to where Paul was crouching next to Dan. Dan was curled up on the ground, hugging his chest. He tried to stretch his legs out, then grimaced, sweat glistening on his brow. His voice floated back down the platform towards them, echoing off the high rafters. ‘Ah fuck, I think I busted my hip. Shit, that hurts.’

Switch cocked his head and gave Marta the kind of smirk a cheeky kid would give a scolding teacher to say he didn’t really give a shit. ‘Fuck that clown,’ he said. Looking back towards the platform edge where chalk lines marked the distance in feet back from the end of the platform, he grinned. His bad eye flickered. ‘That must have been sub-twenty feet for sure. Eighteen? What do you reckon, Si?’

‘Don’t be a cock, Switch,’ Simon answered. ‘Let’s go check he’s okay.’

‘You pussy. Just because you can’t get no distance now you’re getting ass, but whatever.’ Switch rolled his good eye at Simon and went over to the platform edge.

Simon glanced back at Marta and gave her his best don’t worry smile. She felt instantly relaxed. Simon was tall and thin with an androgynous face, all angular and smooth. He didn’t even seem to shave, his face clear of any stubble shadow. He was beautiful rather than handsome, a pretty boy that seemed more out of place than any of them, but he had a way about him that was calming, peaceful. He was a polar opposite of Switch, who was a ratty little man who’d never win any prizes for charm. Switch was a shameless asshole. He prided himself on it, wore it like a badge around his scrawny neck. But he was loyal. Switch would take your back in a street fight without hesitation, whether you were up against some stumbling drunk with a broken bottle or an armed unit of the DCA.

Marta broke into a jog along the platform. She reached Paul’s side as he was helping Dan to his feet. Paul was huffing like an old man trying to start a car, his cheeks red with exertion. For a moment she recalled just how little she knew about any of them. They congregated here whenever they could, but they all had separate lives they rarely talked about. No one knew what Switch did. Simon said he worked in a market, and Paul claimed to be a pickpocket. Overweight since he’d stopped riding, balding and with no obvious muscle, she found it difficult to imagine he had much sleight of hand. She knew what people did around Piccadilly at night, but here you were as anonymous as the trains that roared past every eight minutes, if you chose to be.

Dan had been introduced to them as Paul’s friend. He had greasy black hair, and thick brows which pushed his eyes into a permanent frown to make him look nervous, suspicious. He had a deep authoritative voice that suggested he preferred to give orders rather than take them. He’d only hung out with them a few times, and Marta had harboured doubts from the start.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

Dan looked up and shrugged. He rubbed his hip and winced. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken … the fall just winded me. Shit, I can’t believe I missed the hook. I thought I had it.’ He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, one hand rubbing his forehead. ‘I almost died there, didn’t I?’

Marta looked away and said nothing. You didn’t tell someone new that if you messed up you could end up unidentifiable, a mangled, bloody chunk of meat which the next twenty trains would wipe away. She closed her eyes, and the image that appeared was of Clive, as always, his eyes desperate, his hands scrabbling uselessly against the broken tiles of the platform as he was dragged down into the gap between the platform edge and the train. There had been others, but that one … that one was the worst. That they’d been dating at the time too … it was the closest she’d ever come to turning her back on the trains for good. The nightmares still haunted her.

He’s done, she thought. That’s it. No one who cares much about life lasts long.

Paul patted him on the shoulder, trying to be reassuring. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t ride the commuters for a while,’ he said. ‘Get some practice on the late night freights. They’re a lot slower.’

Dan shoved his arm away. ‘Don’t touch me. I’m all right.’ He squared up to Paul, who stumbled back out of his range. Dan glowered at them, his eyes flicking back and forth from one to the other. ‘I’m no chicken. I just missed it, that’s all. I was unlucky.’

‘Dan, it’s all right,’ Marta said, putting herself between them. ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

He turned away. ‘Leave me alone. I’ll be fine.’

Switch and Simon reached them. Marta glanced at Switch, the little man swaggering like a gunslinger after a kill. She gave him a little shake of her head, trying to steady his mouth.

He didn’t notice, or if he did, he ignored her. ‘Unlucky, man,’ he said to Dan, flashing a wild grin. ‘What did you score? Two hundred and twenty feet?’

Dan’s eyes blazed, fists coming up. He had wide shoulders and thick arms, and was at least double Switch’s weight. He probably thought he had a chance.

‘You want some, you crippled prick—’

‘Guys!’ Paul shouted, but too late.

Dan threw a sharp punch at Switch, who backed into Simon as he tried to get out of the way. Dan would have missed, but Simon created a human barrier trapping Switch in front of him, and Dan’s blow slammed into Switch’s cheek, knocking him sideways. As Switch stumbled and tried to recover his balance, Dan nailed him again in the stomach. Switch doubled over, coughing, and Dan closed in to finish him off.

‘Help me stop them!’ Marta shouted.

Paul was no fighter, and even Marta outweighed Simon. Knowing there was little chance of any help, she tried to push herself between them, but Dan shoved her aside. He threw another punch, but Switch, having recovered his balance, ducked away this time. His thin lips curled back, anger and excitement in his face. His bad eye flickered like an old movie reel.

‘So you wanna dance, is it?’

There was a flash of metal in the air.

‘Uh … uh … no—’

Dan staggered back, a hairline of red cutting a trail down the side of his face from temple to jaw. Blood pooled and bulged, and the knife came to rest against Dan’s throat. The blade, barely longer than Switch’s index finger, reflected the emergency lighting above them, glimmering like a hospital light.

‘You never fuck with me,’ Switch said, good eye narrowed, face tight. ‘You fuck with me, you die. You got that?’

‘Easy, Switch,’ said Simon, trying almost comically to muscle his thin frame between them.

The knife vanished and Switch stepped back. For a moment his good eye fixed Dan with a dark stare, then he turned and stalked back down the platform towards the breakfall mattresses.

‘Don’t worry about him, he’s just—’

‘Fuck off,’ Dan said, turning away from Marta. He wiped a hand down his face, smearing away the blood from the shallow cut. He shook his hand and drops fell onto the platform, mingling with the dust.

‘Dan!’ Paul shouted.

‘And you. You come near me again and I’ll fuck you up.’

They watched him walk up the platform towards the far stairs. He glanced back just once as he reached the foot of the stairs, and then was gone.

‘And then there were four,’ Marta muttered under her breath. ‘Good work, Switch.’ She turned around, but Switch was at the far end of the platform near the breakfall mats, bent down near the platform edge. For Switch, the dismount length—the distance from the end of the platform to where a rider landed—was everything. Now that Dan had gone, the others couldn’t care less.

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ Simon asked.

Marta gave a frustrated laugh. For a moment she felt like crying, but she shrugged it off. ‘What do you think? No chance now.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘He never really got into it, did he? He just didn’t fit.’

Paul looked away. It was hurting him the most. Another friendship ruined. They were hard to come by these days, and like cracked glass, so easily shattered.

‘Worth a try,’ Simon said, and patted Paul on the shoulder. ‘But there’s still us, right? There are still Tube Riders while there’s the four of us.’

‘That idiot. If it wasn’t for him … honestly, sometimes I think we’d be better off—’ Paul’s voice trailed off. He ran a hand through the scant remains of his hair and pushed his glasses further up his nose. His face was flushed. ‘Dan wanted to be part of a gang. I didn’t want to tell him about us at first, but he seemed … seemed willing. Now he’s pissed off, angry with us, and feels cast out. Where’s the first place he’s going to go?’

It wasn’t a question because they all knew the answer. Simon cocked his head. ‘We have to hope he doesn’t tell them about this station.’

‘I’m sorry, guys. I just wanted him to be one of us.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Marta said. ‘St. Cannerwells is off their turf. The Cross Jumpers rarely leave Charing Cross East.’

‘What about the rumours?’

Paul and Marta were quiet for a moment. The Cross Jumpers didn’t ply their trade in secret like the Tube Riders did. Word got around quickly, and that word was that the Cross Jumpers had a new leader.

‘Why would he want to start a turf war?’ Paul said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘They don’t like us. They want us finished.’

‘What for? There are only five—shit, four—of us left. We’re hardly worth the effort.’

Marta gave them a grim smile. ‘It’s not about how many of us there are. It’s about our legend.’ She put her hands on her hips and gave them her best rock star pose, the thick dreads of her hair hanging against the sides of her face. ‘We’re the mighty Tube Riders, baby.’

They’d often talked about it, grinning with amusement. In squats, underground clubs and illegal bars all across London GUA, there were hushed mutterings about the ghosts that appeared at the windows of the Underground trains. There were a thousand rumours about what the newspapers had dubbed Tube Riders, a name the original gang had gladly adopted. They were only half-jokingly considered wraiths or demons disturbed by all the noise, or the ghosts of generations of kids who had committed suicide down in the dark tunnels by throwing themselves under the trains. Only a month ago, Marta had found an article in an illegal magazine that claimed the entire London Underground network was haunted, and that it should be shut down.

Simon grinned. ‘It is kind of cool.’

‘The Cross Jumpers don’t like it because no one gives a shit about them,’ Marta said. ‘They’re scared to ride like we do and everyone knows it. That’s why they want a turf war.’

Simon glanced back down the platform. ‘You know Switch will want to fight,’ he said. ‘Pitched battle and all that? Tally ho, charge of the bloody Light Brigade.’

Marta watched a trickle of sweat meander its way down Paul’s face. ‘Well, he’s on his own,’ Paul said. ‘How many knives can he hold at once?’

‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t feel like riding anymore today.’

Marta looked down the platform. ‘Switch! We’re going!’

The other man looked up and then jogged over.

‘I reckon that was seventeen feet,’ he said as he reached them, grinning inanely. His bad eye twitched at them as though he was trying to suggest something. ‘I hit that third mat out, near the front edge. That’s about the seventeen feet mark, isn’t it?’

‘Not bad,’ Marta said, feigning interest. ‘That beats my best.’

‘And mine,’ Simon said.

‘Ah, we all know you’re a pussy.’ Switch tried to wink with his other eye, but it just made him look epileptic. He patted Paul on the shoulder. ‘Only Paul has better, eh. And that’s why you don’t ride anymore, isn’t it? Don’t need to now you’ve proved your point, eh?’

‘Okay, leave it out,’ Paul said, looking down at the platform.

‘Come on man, don’t cry! That ride was awesome! A Tube Rider legend!’

‘Switch, can it,’ Simon said, and although Switch gave Paul a lopsided grin he shut up and began picking grime off the hooks of his clawboard instead.

Marta remembered the day Paul had made twelve feet. His clawboard had got jammed in the rail, maybe by a small piece of gravel caught in the railing or an accumulation of packed dirt. He’d managed to free his hands just in time, but he’d landed bad and been left with three broken ribs and a fractured collarbone. That wasn’t the worst, though. Marta could still remember his screams when he realised the board was stuck. If there were ghosts down here, that had been the sound of one of them possessing his body. That spine-splitting shriek had been no sound a man should make. It made her shiver even now, two years later.

They headed back towards the stairs, their clawboards slung over their shoulders. The escalator had stopped working years ago, and now its metal teeth were rusted and gummed up with litter and dirt. They climbed up into darkness, emerging on to the old ticket corridor. A couple more emergency lights helped them past the old turnstiles, some boarded-up newsstands and an old donut store. Another staircase at the end led them up to the surface. Their feet rustled through piles of leaves blown in by the wind, while all around them the smell of unwashed bodies and the decomposing remains of takeout food hung in the air. They weren’t the only people to use the station; at night it was common for tramps to bunk down behind the metal barrier of the entranceway. They rarely went far inside, though. Mega Britain’s illegal magazines had seen to it that only the desperate or the very brave went into abandoned London Underground stations.

Marta went out first and waited for the others. It was a cold October day, the sky a leaking grey bucket that spat rain on her leather tunic and ripped jeans. St. Cannerwells backed on to a bleak park, a rusty iron fence separating them from a slope of untended grass, a cracked, root-rippled concrete path and a small pond filled with litter. Supermarket trolleys protruded from the brown water like half-submerged wrecks; paper-cup boats floated amongst the icebergs of old cardboard boxes while around them trees clacked their bare branches together in mocking applause.

‘See you tomorrow?’ Marta asked.

‘I’m working but I’ll come over when I’m done,’ Simon said.

‘I have some stuff to do but yeah, I’ll try,’ Paul said.

‘Switch?’

The little man was tapping the palm of his left hand with the index finger of his right, muttering under his breath.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

As the others said their goodbyes and left, Marta stood for a moment, looking out across the park towards the huge elevated highway overpass that rose above the city to the south. Half finished, it arched up out of the terraces and housing blocks to the east, rising steadily to a height of five hundred feet. There, at the point where it should have begun its gradual decent to the west, it just ended, sawn off, amputated.

Years ago, she remembered her father standing here with her, telling her about the future. Things had been better then. She’d still been going to school, still believed the world was good, still had dreams about getting a good job like a lawyer or an architect, and hadn’t started to do the deplorable things that made her wake up shivering, just to get food or the items she needed to survive.

He had taken her hand and given it a little squeeze. She still remembered the warmth of his skin, the strength and assurance in those fingers. He had pointed up at the overpass, in those days busy with scaffolding, cranes and ant-like construction workers, and told her how one day they would take their car and drive right up over it and out of the city. The government was going to open up London Greater Urban Area again, he said. Let the city people out, and the people from the Greater Forest Areas back in. The smoggy, grey skies of London GUA would clear, the sirens would stop wailing all night, and people would be able to take the chains and the deadlocks off their doors. She remembered how happy she’d felt with her father’s arms around her, holding her close, protecting her.

But something had happened. She didn’t know everything—no one did—but things had changed. The government hadn’t done any of those things. The construction stopped, the skies remained grey, and life got even worse. Riots waited around every street corner. People disappeared without warning amid tearful rumours that the Huntsmen were set to return.

Marta sighed, biting her lip. Her parents and her brother were gone. Marta was just twenty-one, but St. Cannerwells Park was the closest she would ever get to seeing the countryside, and the euphoria of tube riding was the closest she would ever get to happiness.

She gripped the fence with both hands and gritted her teeth, trying not to cry. She was tough. She had seen and done things that no one her age should have to experience. She had adjusted to Mega Britain’s harshness, was accustomed to looking after herself, but, just sometimes, life became too much to bear.

As the rain began to get heavier, tears pressed from her eyes and rolled lethargically down her cheeks.

2

Jessica

‘G et out of my fucking seat!’

Simon lifted his head from the window, but the shout wasn’t aimed at him. Further up the bus, a burly man with a tattoo across his face was picking a fight with a man wearing a baseball cap. Simon watched with only a passing interest as Baseball Cap nodded cordially and stood up, moving back into the aisle. Tattoo Face growled something as he went to sit down, but as soon as he looked away Baseball Cap put two big hands on his back and shoved him hard against the window.

Tattoo Face’s head slammed against the thick glass with a resounding crack. Baseball Cap shoved him again and this time the window shattered, showering the street below with little diamonds of safety glass. The bus swerved in towards the curb, and Tattoo Face lost his balance and fell out into the street, landing on the bonnet of a car trying to cut up on the bus’s inside.

Gripped by a rage drawn from the cloud of misery that seemed to hang over Mega Britain, Baseball Cap jumped out of the window after him, screaming obscenities. The two men grappled on the car bonnet with Tattoo Face taking some heavy blows until he pulled a long knife from inside his coat and rammed it into Baseball Cap’s side. Baseball Cap cried out in pain and fell backwards, blood clouding out around the wound, turning his blue shirt a dirty brown. Tattoo Face saw his chance and shoved Baseball Cap off the car just as the bus began to move again. The driver, hollering something incomprehensible over the top of the screaming people, tried to steer the bus back into traffic, only for it to roll over Baseball Cap’s body, the wheels crushing his chest with the sickening crunch of bones.

The bus ground to another stop. The driver jumped up and climbed out, shouting at someone out on the street, arms gesturing frantically. Tattoo Face had fled, no one in the growing crowd making an effort to stop him. Sirens were already wailing in the distance, but what disturbed Simon most was how little people cared. There were a few gapers on the pavement, but there was as much laughter as there were looks of horror. A couple of people further up the bus had got up to watch, but behind him two middle-aged women were continuing a conversation as though nothing had happened.

This country’s screwed up, he thought. No wonder some of us like to hide underground. It’s safer and you don’t have to deal with the people.

He stood up, crossed the aisle, and jumped out of the open back door. With the growing number of abandoned cars left along the streets it only took a little trouble to cause a jam, and now the bus was boxed in. Simon had hoped to make it a couple more stops into central Fulham, but he was close enough to walk from here. He headed across the street, away from the commotion, and slipped down an alley. He emerged on to a residential street running parallel to the main road which was so quiet in comparison that it spooked him. He looked around for people, but saw none. It was as though he’d stepped through a portal into a ghost town.

Then a muffled explosion sounded, pulling him back to reality. The bus had gone up. He increased his pace, aware that within minutes there would be a full riot happening. It was always the same. Then, in twenty minutes or so, the police or the Department of Civil Affairs would show up and start killing people.

Hate, anger, and resentment fueled people now. Food was in short supply, and the last oil was almost gone. The streets were becoming clogged by abandoned petrol-powered cars and the few who owned electric vehicles could barely afford the spiraling costs of the recharging stations. At night there were often electrical blackouts; those times were the most dangerous of all as looters took to the streets in large gangs.

Simon’s father had set up an illegal internet connection, so Simon knew what other countries were saying about Mega Britain. None of it was good. His father, a wannabe revolutionary who in reality did little more than sit around their flat bitching about the state of society, had fallen victim to his own attempts at understanding.

Simon had been riding when the DCA came a month ago. Treason was the usual charge, punishable by life imprisonment or death. And, like so many people taken away by the government’s thugs, there had been no word of his father since. For all Simon knew, his father had been blasted into space aboard one of the government’s doomed hulks. Whatever, it seemed unlikely Simon would ever see him again.

The DCA had seized his father’s apartment and possessions. To go back there was to walk into a bugged, wired hornet’s nest. He had lost what little stuff he had, some of which could be used to trace him. Now, he feared that the DCA would come for him too, but there was nothing he could do except keep his head down.

And there were other things to live for.

He was almost there now. He turned down another residential street and headed uphill, past terraced houses which defied the failing world with their tidiness. Some areas weren’t so bad. Groups of heavily-armed residents kept order in a feudal way, working in shifts to protect the streets from the kind of riffraff that looted shops during the blackouts. You couldn’t see them, of course; they waited in alleys, behind curtains, inside the dirty windows of abandoned cars. But they were there.

At the top of the hill he turned right on to a road called Denton Avenue. At number fourteen he stopped outside the little red gate and looked up at the windows.

He looked at his watch, an old Lorus that he’d been wearing the day the DCA showed up to take his father. Three fifteen. He’d said three, but she knew what the traffic—or lack of it—was like.

He looked up at the house again, the top window on the left, wondering whether he should shout. Then the curtain flickered, jerked back. Simon felt his heart jump in his chest. A face appeared. It was difficult to make out the features at this distance, but Simon knew them well: the thin, delicate cheekbones, the tight bob of hair curling in around the jaw line, the small lips and the bright blue, defiant eyes.

‘Jessica,’ he murmured, as always relieved to see she was safe.

The curtain dropped back.

He waited. Thirty seconds later the door opened and the same face peered out. ‘Okay, I’ve deactivated it,’ the girl called. ‘You can come through now.’

Simon reached out for the gate, still tentative after the first time he’d visited. The red should have been a warning, but he had been thinking about other things. He remembered the paralysis and the intense pain as the electricity had surged through his body, leaving him a writhing, frothy-mouthed wreck on the ground. Jess’s father worked for the government and had access to security technology most people didn’t. Everyone their family considered a friend knew to call ahead or use the buzzer beside the gate. All other people were regarded as potential enemies, and as such the electrified gate was a suitable deterrent. As he reached the door she pulled it wide and stepped out, almost falling forward into his arms.

‘I missed you,’ she said. ‘More each day.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’ Simon pulled her close and breathed in the sweet smell of her hair. He closed his eyes, feeling her heart beat against his chest. There were few reasons to live in London GUA but he had found one.

Jess was eighteen and worked in a used bookstore near the market where Simon sold pirated movies and antiquated music CDs on a stall owned by an old friend of his father. Simon felt a hundred years older than his twenty. The weight of his fear for her safety kept him awake at night. If he could, he would keep her by his side, but neither her parents nor Jess herself would allow it. As she constantly reminded him, having grown up in the same city, she was streetwise too. And with a father who worked for the government, she had to be even more careful.

‘Did you ride today?’ she asked.

He hesitated. He knew Jess didn’t like him to ride the trains, but she understood.

‘Just once,’ he said. ‘The others had stuff to do.’ He didn’t mention Dan’s close call.

She drew away, and looked up at him. For a moment he thought she was going to scold him again. It’s the trains or me, Simon. You can’t have both. It’s your choice. When she did speak, her request surprised him. ‘I want to come,’ she said. ‘I want to try it too.’

‘I’ve told you I don’t want that. It’s too dangerous.’

‘So why do you do it then?’

‘I—I—’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s … my thing, I guess. My identity. It’s all I have left.’

She put her hands on his cheeks and pulled his face towards her. ‘Not anymore,’ she said, and kissed him. ‘Not anymore.’

She was right. He should quit tube riding and look after her. He’d met her just six months ago, but in these fractured times that could be half a lifetime. He couldn’t imagine giving her up, and he hated every moment they were apart, but the Tube Riders—Marta, Paul, even crazy Switch—they were his family. He couldn’t give them up either. Until he had met Jess, riding the trains was the only thing in his life that had mattered. He had found companions there, people like himself.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said. ‘Off the street.’

Her family was out—as always—when he visited. Jess’s father was a government official—a position he neither talked about nor entertained questions about—and her mother worked for the MBBC, the Mega Britain Banking Corporation, the country’s only bank.

‘Did you find out anything about my father?’

Jess closed the door before she answered. ‘No, I’m sorry. I tried to ask Dad, but it’s difficult to do it without him becoming suspicious. He asks so many questions, without answering any. I tried to make it look like I was interested in the newspaper story about it, but he just spouted some propaganda about heretics earning their rewards.’ She shrugged. ‘To be honest, he probably doesn’t know.’

‘You know I had nothing to do with it, don’t you?’ Simon said, taking off his shoes. ‘I wasn’t involved with anything my father did, any of those leaflets he used to print out. I just looked at his internet a couple of times. That’s all.’

She cupped his face with her hands again. ‘I know, Simon. But I wouldn’t care anyway. Sometimes I think these so-called heretics…’

‘I want to take you away, Jess,’ Simon said, kissing her. ‘If we could only get out of Mega Britain, get over to France … it’s different there, you know. They have a government who gives a shit, there aren’t any of those fucking perimeter walls … God damn this place.’

They climbed the stairs up to her bedroom. ‘There’s hope,’ she said. ‘There’s an ambassador over from Europe, Dad told me. He came today for talks between the European Confederation and Mega Britain. Dad said the Confederation wants to open up trade again. End the blockade.’

‘Do you think they will?’

Jess sat down on her bed. ‘I don’t know. They might have to. The country is bankrupt, Dad says, but the government doesn’t listen. People are starving, there’s hardly any oil, there are riots everywhere…’

Simon put a finger on her lips. ‘Okay, stop now.’ He leaned forward and kissed her again.

Jess sighed and pulled him backwards onto the bed. Simon closed his eyes and let her take the troubles of the world away.

Later, dressed again and lying next to her on the bed, Simon said, ‘I’m going down again on Sunday. Around lunchtime, after I finish my morning shift.’ He stroked her face. ‘You can come if you like. I mean, if you haven’t got work and you’re not busy.’

‘Really? You want me to ride?’

Simon shrugged and gave her a non-committal smile. ‘I don’t know about that. Maybe just watch at first? New people have to practice on the freight trains, because they’re much slower. You can almost walk alongside. The commuter trains slow down when they go through each station, but they’re still pretty fast.’

Simon had talked about tube riding before, but Jess seemed endlessly fascinated. Until Simon had revealed his secret to her a couple of months after they had met, she had believed the ghost stories too.

‘Sounds difficult,’ she said, eyes lit up with interest.

‘Not so much.’ He grinned. ‘Not when you know what you’re doing.’

‘And you use this?’ She lifted his clawboard up off the floor and turned it over in her hands. It was a piece of sanded hardwood about two feet long. On one side, bolted to the wood with a series of little screws, was a long piece of curved metal, scratched and dented from use. On the other side were two thick leather straps, again fixed to the wood. The board itself was sprayed black. It looked like there had once been a design on it, but time had worn it away.

‘What the hell is this thing?’ she said wistfully, only half to him.

‘It’s called a clawboard,’ he said. ‘We made them ourselves, although some of them get handed on by people who … quit.’

‘Quit?’

‘Um, yeah. Some people get scared, you know? Other people just don’t want to do it anymore.’ He didn’t mention the deaths. There was no need to scare her.

‘And you made it?’

‘Yeah, this one, I did. The metal hook thing used to be part of the fender of a car. Some of the other guys have two or three smaller ones instead. The leather is horse leather, which is stronger.’

‘Where did you get it?’ I haven’t seen a horse since I was a kid.’

‘Junkyard. Told you it was strong. I think it used to be part of a guitar strap, something like that.’

‘And you painted it black?’

‘Yeah, you know.’ He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘To personalize it. Switch—that’s one of the other guys—got some friend of his to paint a dragon on his board. Kind of suits his personality.’

‘But, black?’ She touched his arm and smiled. ‘That’s like the opposite of your personality, Simon.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he grinned. ‘I guess I was in a mood or something at the time.’

She wrapped one of the leather straps around her wrist and tugged. ‘I bet this hurts.’

Simon pulled something out of his pocket and held it up. ‘Sometimes we wear these,’ he said. ‘It’s like a wrist guard.’ It looked like a tube of rubber, a thick bracelet. ‘It’s an insulator for a water pipe. It was Paul’s idea, before he stopped riding. You don’t need them, but if you ride regularly you get burns on your wrists from the straps, particularly if your timing isn’t all that great.’

‘And you just hang from the train?’

‘On most trains there is a rail that runs along the top of the carriage, just above the level of the door. It’s for water runoff, I think, so that the windows don’t get stained by dirty water.’

‘What if there’s no rail?’

He smiled. ‘We pull out. Otherwise we’d just slide off.’

‘Where does the water come from? There’s no rain in the Underground.’

‘Most of the trains run above and below ground. The network goes right out into the suburbs, and some of those trains run in the open air.’

Jess nodded, grinning. ‘Of course it does. I’m such a moron.’

Simon smiled back. ‘Anyway, as the train arrives, we start to run. It slows down as it comes into the station, but it’s still traveling about fifty miles an hour.’

‘Doesn’t it pull your arms off?’

‘Ah, you see, when the board catches the rail you slide a bit. It jerks, of course, but not as much as if you caught on a solid fixing. Sometimes the rails get rocks or dirt jammed in them, though. That can hurt.’ He grinned.

‘What happens if you miss?’

‘We don’t.’

‘Never?’

‘Not if you know what you’re doing.’ He hated lying to her. He’d missed once, early on. Like Dan this morning, he’d been lucky. He had suffered some bad bruising, but nothing serious. He remembered Clive, though, caught in the gap between the platform edge and the train. He’d been mangled, mashed up. They had tried to revive him, but just ended up with blood all over themselves. Marta and Clive had been a couple at the time, and Simon couldn’t believe she still came back after seeing that. There had been a definite darker look in her eyes after Clive’s death, as if whatever innocence she’d had left had been blown out of her. He had stayed away almost two weeks himself, but when he’d finally given in to the urge, he’d found them—Marta, Paul, and Switch—down there as if nothing had happened.

Clive had been given a traditional Tube Rider burial, laid across the tracks for the trains to claim. It was pretty gruesome, but that was the Tube Rider code. Clive had been a homeless runaway, he’d had no family, and taking his body to the police would have only created more questions.

‘And at the end of the platform you just jump off?’

‘Kind of. You brace your feet on the side of the train, push the board in and up, and kick back. We use old mattresses to land on, but if you know how, it’s possible to land on the platform and roll without hurting yourself.’ Much, he didn’t add. It hurt like hell, you just didn’t break anything if you did it right.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said.

‘If you’re careful you’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘It’s almost five. Your parents will be home soon.’

‘Okay,’ she said, standing up and smoothing out her clothes. As she led him out on to the landing and down the stairs, she said, ‘I’ll meet you in the market after your shift. You can take me then.’

He smiled. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘I want to stay here with you.’

‘Yeah, whatever. Stop being such a sap.’ She punched his arm, but he saw a dewy look in her eyes. He swallowed, desperate not to get tearful in front of her. Every time he left her, he felt like he would never see her again.

‘You know,’ she said, pointing at the clawboard, tucked under his arm. ‘It’s a wonder no one ever gets suspicious of that thing. You carry it around everywhere like an advertisement above your head. Look at me, I’m a Tube Rider.’

He shrugged. ‘People just think it’s a kind of skateboard,’ he said. Or a weapon, he didn’t add. Enough people carried those. ‘No one really takes any notice of me, because I just look like a girly skater kid.’

She touched his arm. ‘Well, you just carry on not being noticed, and keep yourself safe for me.’

‘I’ll try.’

He kissed her and said goodbye. Jess tapped in a code on a keypad by the door to deactivate the front gate, and Simon headed down the path, glancing back every few feet to make sure she was still there.

‘Bye,’ he said again as he stepped out on to the road. ‘Be safe.’

She stepped forward. ‘Wait a second.’

‘What?’

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver box. She lifted it and pointed it at him.

Simon frowned. ‘Is that a—’

‘Digital camera? Yeah. I just want a picture of you to look at while you’re not with me.’

‘Where did you get it?’ He hadn’t seen one in years. You needed a license for any electronic product. That included televisions, computers, and mobile phones.

‘Dad gave it to me.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s government loot. Go on, smile.’

Simon had barely opened his mouth when Jess pressed a button and a little click sounded. She peered at a small screen on the back. ‘There. I’ll make you a copy.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, not really caring either way. ‘Anyway, you’d better get inside.’

She smiled and winked at him. As the door closed, Simon felt that familiar despair welling up in his throat. He turned away and gulped it down as he headed off along the street. Light rain still hung in the air beneath the grey sky, and he zipped up his jacket to the point where the zip got stuck on a broken tooth about halfway up. It was a long way back across London to the burnt-out ruin of a bedsit some shark was renting him now.

He wondered if inviting her to meet the other Tube Riders was a good idea. The first ride would get her hooked, and that would be his fault. He felt like a drug pusher—he knew what it would do to her, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted her to share his life, but at the same time he knew it might destroy her.

The wind got up, ruffling his hair. He grimaced at the cold, pulled a beanie hat from his pocket and slipped it over his head. Then, with the clawboard tucked safely up under his arm, he headed off towards the cold little room he now called home.

3

Huntsman

After leaving the others, Switch headed off across the park, cutting past the junk-filled pond and up the hill on the far side. One or two grim-faced couples eyed him warily, and he matched their glances with his own flicking stare until they turned away. Confrontation was his key to survival. Hide from people chasing you and eventually they would track you down. Face them, stand and fight, and you got them off your trail.

A couple of streets away he found a rundown fast food joint and bought a burger, which he ate back out on the street. In a bin he found an old newspaper from two days ago, but there was little of interest. Most of the news concerned crime within the city: murder, robbery, arson. The only mention of the world was from opinion columns