London Under Midnight (10 page)

    'No. It isn't.' He hugged his brother so hard the kid's shoulder dug into his chest. 'Electricals are safe. They don't hurt no one.'

    'Electric chair. Arc. Danger of death.' Mickey had begun to mutter his litany again. 'Voltage, volts, voltmeter. Amp, ampage. Power points, live terminals.'

    'Mickey, look… hey, look at this. I'm painting your tag here.' He shook the aerosol; the bearings inside rattled. 'There… M for Mickey. Then I write mine. P-E-D. Then I put the wall around, keeping us safe inside. You see, Mickey?' He painted the initials in fluorescent green then circled it with a band. 'All safe inside, Mickey. No electric can touch us there. Nobody else, either.'

    'The Electric Man?'

    'We've been through that before, Mickey. There is no Electric Man.'

    'He stood in the doorway watching me last night.'

    'That was Ma's new bloke.' Ped shook the can. 'Mickey, I'm going to blast our tag on these bridge panels. We're going to be famous, bro. Tomorrow morning all those commuters are going to see your initials. Thousands and thousands of people. Keep watching me, Mickey. That's it; see how I form the letters - a big M; like I'm painting two mountains side-by-side.'

    In the distance a church clock struck eleven. The lights of the city blazed all around them. Office blocks rose in shining pillars of light. From the kebab house on the high street the spicy odors of Levantine fast-food drifted on the sultry night air. Meanwhile, Ped talked to his brother; the tone always reassuring: they'd be safe; electricity couldn't reach Mickey up here. Ped glanced at his brother to make sure he was watching him aerosolling the steel bridge panels. Mickey turned twenty last week, and for the first time since he left school there was a chance he'd land paid work at the community farm. Ped had gone with him for the interview to make sure that he wouldn't get jerked around. Mickey had always been tormented at school, if not downright bullied. It's like this: once the kids found out that Mickey had this thing about electricity they'd use it to torture him. He'd get called names; sometimes kids would chase him with batteries. Just silly stuff to them but Mickey was really terrified. Once some thugs had held him down while they touched those metal nipples of a nine-volt battery against his lips. Okay, it only tingled, but Mickey had screamed the school down. So Ped did what he could to protect his younger brother.

    'Electric Man,' Mickey said.

    'No such thing, bro. Now let me work.'

    'Electric Man!'

    'You're stopping my arm, Mickey, I can't draw the circle.'

    Mickey grunted with fear as he dropped to a crouch beside Ped; there he wrapped his arms around one of Ped's legs.

    'Hey, Mickey,' he hissed. 'Do you want to throw me off this thing?'

    'Electric Man!'

    'Heck, bro, you nearly toppled me.'

    His brother's frightened grasp felt close to snapping his knee.

    'You're going to get your fingers burned doing that.' The stranger's voice made Ped look up from where he stood on the gantry, which in turn ran along the bottom of the bridge. A guy with a shaved head glared down at the pair of them. He was joined by three more men, each with shaved heads; as well as the shorn scalp they all shared an expression of hatred.

    One said, 'Are you the bastard who's doing this Vampire Sharkz stuff?'

    'No.'

    'Because that bastard went and messed up our logo. And you don't slash our work round here.'

    Ped kept his voice conversational to avoid antagonizing the men. 'I'm just doing tags. Nothing heavy.' Glaring down at him were fellow graffiti artists but there's no fraternity among wall daubers that over-paint another guy's work. Do that and you're in danger, pure and simple.

    'This is our bridge.' The man angled his shaved head so he could see what Ped had inscribed. 'You've no friggin' right.'

    Another of the guys peered over. 'Hey, who's there with you?'

    'Just my brother.'

    'What's he doing?'

    'He gets scared sometimes.'

    One of the shaved heads tilted to one side. 'Hey, I know him. It's Sparky.'

    Ped shook his head. 'That was at school. His name's Mickey.'

    'Sparky Lectric. That's what we called him. He's scared of batteries and plug sockets, anything to do with electricity.'

    'I don't care what the fuck they call him.' The gang leader's eyes blazed with fury. 'They've messed our logo.'

    'Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to slash your piece.'

    The leader pointed. 'You? I'm going to break your arms. Your brother? We're taking him down to the track to fry his dick on the live rail.'

    'We'll go home. We didn't-'

    'Get them!'

    The gang weren't listening. Ped knew that he and his brother were in for a kicking at least.

    'Come on, Mickey. On your feet!'

    'Electric Man.'

    'If we don't get away they're going to hurt us, Mickey. Move!'

    Ped noticed that the gang split into two. One pair to block the end of the gantry, while the others would trap them at the other side, then work into the middle. Ped bundled Mickey along the gantry as a train hummed beneath them. Electric contacts shot sparks from under the carriages. Mickey groaned with fear.

    'Mickey, listen. We're going down the ladder. Then we cross the track. See the canal at the far side? There's a path we can use.'

    As much as mapping out the route it was a way of distracting his brother from what would be the biggest obstacle. Mickey would have to step over the high-voltage rail. Just to see that gleaming band of steel was enough to scare the bejesus out of him. To get close would freak him out. 'It's either that or get pounded,' Ped grunted. 'I'll go down the ladder first. Follow me. But fast, okay?'

    In the gloom he could see the gang members, who were going to seal one end of the gantry, had already climbed over the bridge wall, then they'd jump the last five feet on to the steel pathway. Down the ladder was the only exit.

    'Keep following me, bro,' Ped called. His brother obeyed. The kid might be cursed with a phobia but he wasn't simple. He knew the gang wanted to hurt him, so the two brothers clanged their way down the ladder that was fixed to the wall. Soon they descended into a deep cutting where the trains clattered.

    Ped glanced up. The gang had reached the top of the ladder. One of them was pointing down, so they'd spotted their prey. 'Keep moving, bro!' He climbed down another dozen rungs to where a light was fixed to the brickwork alongside the ladder. Ped zipped by it without a second thought, then he noticed his brother had stopped just a couple of feet above it.

    'Come on, Mickey. You can't stop now.'

    'I'm going back up.'

    'No!'

    The steel ladder convulsed under his hands as the gang swarmed on to it; they descended with their boots clumping against the rungs. In ten seconds they'd reach Mickey; then what? Stamp on his hands until they made him fall the twenty feet to the tracks below?

    'Mickey,' Ped hissed. 'Hurry up.'

    'Can't.'

    'What's wrong?'

    'Light.'

    'It's just a light.'

    'Red for danger. Danger of death. Electricity.'

    'Damn.' Ped eyeballed the bloody light. It was nothing special; merely one of those signal lights that festoon the London Underground. Only to Mickey it represented danger. It
was
danger. Mickey saw it as a pulsating reservoir of electricity - a swarming hive of amps, volts and watts that were waiting to attack him. The kid probably imagined the light would fire a jet of crimson electricity at him that would blast through his body to make his bones pulse with that same blood-red light before burning the flesh from him. Mickey panted with sheer panic. Above him, the skinheads were descending fast. Soon the first boot would smash down on his brother's head.

    'Mickey. It can't hurt you.'

    'Red for danger. It'll burn.'

    'No, it won't. Look.' Ped slapped the flat of his hand against the light. It wasn't even hot, but try telling his brother that. Mickey just moaned and closed his eyes.

    One of the thugs shouted, 'Hey, Sparky? Sparky Lectric! We're gonna take you down to the live rail. You know something? A million volts go shooting through it. If you drop a rat on that it explodes. Boom!' The skinheads laughed. 'We're gonna pull your dick out of your underpants then stick it on the electric rail. Can't you just see what's going to happen to it? Just get that picture in your mind's eye. Your prick touching all that electricity. It'll go black. Shrivel up! Then your balls are going to get hotter and hotter… then
boom
!'

    Mickey's scream echoed along the cutting.

    Ped yelled up at the gang. 'Shut up! Can't you see he's scared?'

    The gang could easily have reached Mickey now, but they were laughing so much at his terrified screams that they had to hang on to the ladder as they roared with hilarity. This gave Ped a chance. He pulled the aerosol from his jacket pocket.

    'Mickey. Watch me. Please, open your eyes. See what I'm doing. I'm putting a circle around the light.' He sprayed a ring of florescent green round the red light. 'See, bro. I've closed it in. I've trapped it. Now it can't hurt you.' He reached up and yanked his brother's ankle. 'Now move!'

    Mickey stared at the red light with the gleaming boundary of green. In his eyes the paint had become the protecting force field. The magic shield that stopped electrons streaming from the lamp to sear his face. Gulping repeatedly, he quickly descended; so fast, in fact, that he stepped on Ped's fingers.

    'That's alright, bro. You can stand on my face if you want to. Just keep moving. That's beautiful. Yeah, beautiful, Mickey. You're doing the business.'

    Seconds later they reached the gravel base of the cutting. Across the rails he could see the gleam of canal water. Nearly there. He glanced up. The skinheads' anger at being thwarted from simply booting Mickey off the ladder had killed their fit of laughter. Now they were hell-bent on catching their victims. The ladder shook as their boots clattered on the rungs. The clatter became a thunder. It was so loud it made the ground tremble. For a moment he believed it was the force of those feet crashing down the ladder. Then a flicker of light raced across the horizon. 'Great,' Ped muttered, 'all this and a thunderstorm, too.'

    He grabbed Mickey by the elbow. After a train had passed, all lights as it clanked forward in the darkness, he urged his brother to move. Mickey's legs froze as he saw the dreaded live power rail in front of him. Running between the two rails that accommodated the wheels of the train, it was a thick continuous band of iron that even for Ped appeared to pulse with ominous energy.

    'For God's sake, step over it when we cross. Don't touch it.'

    But Mickey had clearly decided to go nowhere near it.

    'C'mon, Mickey. We've got to cross over the rails. It's the only way we can escape those guys.'

    Mickey shook his head.

    'Don't worry. I can make it safe.' Ped leant over the track. He'd use the aerosol to spray two parallel lines. Then Mickey could walk through with the protecting lines on either side of him. Okay, its protective power only existed in Mickey's imagination, but it would be enough. He painted the first green line across the live power line. However, as he tried to spray the second, only a hiss of propellant emerged from the atomizer. Not so much as a drop of green. Behind him, the thugs reached the bottom of the ladder.

    One shouted, 'We're going to fry your dick, too!'

    A train roared down the track. Ped saw its lights in the distance. Another twenty seconds and this wouldn't be a healthy place for two very good reasons. The gang, or the train, was going to leave their mark, and Mickey had locked up tight with fear. His eyes bulged as he stared at the electrified metal bar that fed the motors of the approaching train.

    Ped shook the aerosol and tried again. Just that fizzing sound. No paint. No way of creating a magical pathway for his brother.

    'I'm going to have to drag you across.' He seized Mickey, but the kid seemed to have embedded himself in the gravel. No amount of wild horses, nor desperate siblings, were going to haul him across the line of living death. As Ped tried to wrestle the man forward he felt a hard cylinder in his brother's jacket pocket.

    'Why didn't you tell me you had a can!'

    Mickey merely stared at the electrified rail without uttering a word. Ped dragged the can from his pocket.

    As he sprayed the green line across the track, he shouted, 'See what I'm doing? I've sprayed you a magic road. The electricity can't hurt you.'
As long as you don't touch the live rail,
was his unvoiced thought. 'Okay, Mickey. Run.'

    Mickey leapt over the rail like a gazelle. Ped followed.

    Behind him, those booted feet clattered over the gravel. To his right the train roared down at them. It was nothing less than a hell-storm of light and noise and movement. Twenty tons of electric-driven locomotive that would splatter any human standing in its way. Ped could swear that the carriage-work brushed a heel as he raced after his brother. Mickey didn't stop now. He leapt over the fence then ran down the slope to the canal towpath.

    Five seconds later he stopped. In the light falling from buildings across the canal three figures stood in their way. To one side of them were the glistening waters, on the other side ran a high fence.

    'Hell!' Ped screamed. 'There's more of them.' The gang must have sent some of its members down here. They had the foresight to appreciate that their victims might try to escape this way. The figures didn't move. They were purely silhouettes of ominous intent. Silently, they stood there, blocking the path as effectively as a brick wall.