The London Pride (14 page)

‘I am not ordinary,’ said Ariel eventually, as they rounded a long curve and saw the lights of a distant platform beckoning them.

She sounded out of breath and angry.

‘And I do not like running,’ she added. ‘It is much more tiring than flying.’

‘I was just trying to snap you out of it,’ said Jo. She was running lopsidedly, her leg screaming at her to stop and rest. She ignored it. ‘You went into a funk.’

‘A funk?’ said Ariel. ‘What is a “funk”?’

‘You slowed down. You got frozen in the headlights. You stopped thinking.’

Ariel snorted dismissively. But she didn’t have a ready reply. Maybe, like Jo, she needed every bit of breath to keep moving.

They crunched grimly onwards towards the light, which didn’t seem to be getting any closer. And then Jo’s knee gave way and she gasped and fell, her hand reaching out instinctively, trying to steady herself.

She fell straight towards the electric rail.

Snatching her hand back, she tried to corkscrew out of the way, but with only one leg it was hopeless. Her eyes screwed shut on reflex and then her arm was wrenched out of its socket and she stopped moving.

She opened her eyes. And saw the electric rail an inch from her nose.

Ariel pulled her slowly backwards, away from the danger.

‘That was close …’ Jo gasped. ‘Much too close. Thank you …’

Ariel smiled. ‘It wasn’t just close,’ she said. ‘It was extraordinary. The speed of my reflexes? Extraordinary … rather like me, no?’

The old Ariel was back. Conceited. Vain. Boastful.

Jo was surprised to find she had missed her. Then Ariel did a remarkable thing. She smiled and punched Jo on the arm.

‘I’m joking, fool.’

‘What?’ said Jo.

‘I’m saying thank you for snapping me out of it back there.’

This was new. Ariel sounded almost … normal.

‘I don’t work properly down here. You saw me crash-land on the escalator.’

‘I felt it,’ said Jo. ‘Remember?’

Ariel smiled grimly.

‘Well, I’ve never not worked before. I’ve always been able to fly. But I think that because I was made as a spirit of the air, I don’t work if I go back into the ground.’

‘I’m made of metal,’ she added in explanation. ‘Where does metal come from?’

‘Underground,’ said Jo. ‘OK. I get it.’

‘And me not being able to fly. Well, that’s like you not being able to walk,’ said Ariel. ‘You can’t imagine how that feels.’

‘Actually I can,’ said Jo. And without thinking why she was doing it she stopped, bent down and hiked up the leg of her jeans, shining the torch on the scars. ‘I couldn’t walk for quite a while. That’s why I run funny.’

Ariel peered at her knee. She opened her mouth to say something, and then her eyes shifted.

‘Jo,’ she said, and even as Jo got a small prick of pleasure from the fact that she had used her name for the first time, she got a bigger stab of alarm from the look that suddenly washed over Ariel’s face.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Look,’ said Ariel. ‘The lights are going out.’

For a moment Jo did not see what she meant. The lights on the distant platform were strong as ever. Her torch was unwavering. And then she saw what Ariel was referring to.

The small blurs of rat-shaped blue light scattered between them and the platform were blinking out, one after another, as if a wave of darkness was sweeping along towards them at track level.

‘Why’s that happening?’ said Jo. ‘Those are rats. Something’s snuffing out the rats.’

‘No,’ said Ariel. ‘No … I don’t think anything’s snuffing them out …’

And as the lights went out, there was a small but growing noise of tiny claws scrabbling on concrete.

‘I think they’re coming back to life.’

‘You think the city’s coming back to life?’ said Jo, her heart beginning to soar in relief.

Ariel pointed at the blue human shapes on the platform.

‘No,’ she said, beginning to back up. ‘I don’t think the city’s coming back to life. I think the rats are coming back for us. Run!’

Music may be magic but it fades with distance, and the further Will ran with Tragedy and Filax, the more he was aware that they were leaving the zone of safety that Wolfie was radiating from his violin.

Because of this he slowed again and began checking side streets before he crossed them, and it was thanks to this caution returning just in time that he caught sight of the two cheetahs.

Lions are one thing. Cheetahs, even bronze ones, are both lighter and somehow more immediately dangerous. A bit like the difference between a sharp arrow and a spear: the spear has more weight and heft, but if you had to choose between the two being pointed at you in anger, you have the nasty suspicion that an arrow will move much, much faster. Not that these cheetahs were, at the moment, moving very fast at all …

Nor were the cheetahs actually stalking them. In fact, the first time Will caught sight of them, they didn’t seem to have seen him at all. They were on a parallel road, also heading north, and as they padded over the cross street he happened to look east and see them. He instantly went very still, as did Filax and Tragedy. The cheetahs just ghosted on northwards and disappeared from view.

‘That was close,’ breathed Tragedy, and they jogged on for a couple of streets east to put some space between them and the two predators. It took them away from the direction Will wanted to go in, but sometimes he remembered his dad saying that the longest way is the shortest, because it gets you there, whereas short cuts can be dangerous. It hadn’t made much sense to him when his dad said it when they were out on a dog walk, but now he realised his dad must have been repeating something he’d learned in the army. There was no point taking the straightest path to Coram’s Fields if it walked them straight down the gullet of two very rangy-looking predators. More haste, less speed was another way his dad had of saying it. Thinking of his dad gave him the familiar ache; if only he was able to talk to either of his parents about all this. If only they were there with him. Having to do it all on his own, or all on his and Jo’s own, was horrible. He’d spent a lot of his life in a hurry to be grown up, and right now he’d much rather a grown-up would show up and make some sense of this nightmare he was trapped in.

Either there were four cheetahs, or the ones to the west of them were fast movers when they were out of sight, because it seemed only a couple of minutes before Tragedy held up a hand and stopped. Without moving his head, Will swivelled his eyes left, and sure enough, there were two very similar cheetahs standing in the cross street to their east. He had a sense that this time the cats saw them as they stood there, tails swishing back and forth in lordly disdain. He flinched as they stepped forwards, anticipating them blurring into a fast, running attack that would eat up the hundred metres that separated them. He knew cheetahs were the fastest animals on Earth, but in this case they neither sprinted nor moved towards them. Instead they just padded away, out of sight, this time heading south, away from them.

‘They must have seen us,’ said Will.

‘Yeah,’ said Tragedy. ‘I don’t like it.’

Filax growled.

‘Neither does he,’ said Will.

The next time they saw the cheetahs they were ahead of them, which forced them to go east a bit, until the animals appeared to their east again and sent them north. And the more Will caught glimpses of the cats, the more he felt there was something wrong, something deeper beneath the obvious fact that the cats were controlling them. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and he felt stupid because of it. Fear and exhaustion were beginning to fuggle his mind. He could certainly put his hand on that.

‘I don’t think they’re hunting us,’ said Will, though that wasn’t the thing.

‘No,’ agreed Tragedy. ‘I think they’re doing what cats do with mice. I think the bleedin’ things are playing with us, ’cos they definitely see us. I seen ’em looking out of the side of their eyes, pretending not to look.’

‘I think we’re being herded,’ said Will slowly. ‘I think they’re acting like sheepdogs.’

‘So what do we do?’ said Tragedy.

‘We don’t act like sheep,’ said Will, surprised at the grimness in his voice.

The next time the cheetahs appeared it was to their right, obviously intending to send them east again. Instead of doing that, Will waited until they had strolled out of view and then led Tragedy and Filax at a silent run straight towards the very intersection the cheetahs had just vacated. They paused to check the way was clear, and then ran on through it and sped up.

‘Come on,’ said Will. ‘Got to make up for lost time. We’ve been pushed too far east.’

They zigged and zagged west and north, from intersection to intersection, beginning to believe they had shaken off the cheetahs, right until the moment they came to a wide street of at least six lanes, which had the unwelcome bonus feature of two waiting cheetahs in the middle of it.

And then the herding began in earnest.

Whether the cheetahs were angry or just stepping up the tempo of the game, things began to happen quickly. There was no doubt that the cats saw them, because they snarled and ran at them.

And though they could clearly have leapt and attacked at any moment, they didn’t. Instead, just like the sheepdogs that Will had likened them to, they curved and ran round them, growling and snapping at their heels, so wherever they tried to escape to, there was always one or other of the animals there to intercept and push them back on course. And there was no doubt about it, there was a definite course and the cheetahs were absolutely pushing them towards something. The trouble with this – one of the many troubles with this, of course – was that once they were running scared (and Will was perfectly clear about the fact his legs were now being fuelled by pure high-octane terror) it was impossible to think straight or work out how to escape from the pell-mell rush towards their doom.

Filax did manage to turn and try and attack one of the cheetahs but the cat just swatted him away and jumped nimbly right over him, so that the dog found itself running rather ignominiously behind the main group, trying to catch up. Clearly the cats had little time for him and were concentrating on Will.

‘I think they just want me,’ he panted, looking sideways at Tragedy. ‘You should stop …’

‘I ain’t stopping for no one!’ gasped Tragedy. ‘They got big curved teeth on them like dirty great Arab daggers, in case you ain’t noticed.’

Will had noticed. It was hard not to, because of the snarling and panting as the cats chivvied them along the road. There was definitely something about the cheetahs that he should be able to put his finger on, but still he couldn’t.

He knew there was going to be something bad at the end of this run, and whatever it was, as exhaustion began to make him stumble instead of run smoothly, he hoped it would either give him a chance to talk, or be very quick. He was disoriented and wondered if he was being run straight towards the museum and the horrible cat. Well, that might be good. He might be able to plead, or explain. Not that he knew what he was going to explain, but talking …

Talking turned out not to be an option.

The cheetahs bounded in front of him, making him twist and career down a narrow mews passage. He was so busy keeping his balance that he didn’t realise he was about to crash headlong into the waiting gorilla until he hit it.

He bounced off the unmoving block of living bronze and sprawled, winded, at its feet. He looked up in horror.

The gorilla was massive above him, blocking out the night sky, a looming cliff of bunched muscle with a mouthful of seriously lethal teeth that made the cheetahs’ fangs look puny by comparison.

Will was stunned by the impact, but he could see that even more frightening was the fact that the gorilla had a second head sticking out of one of its shoulders, smaller than the massive main head, a more delicate human head with a waving topknot of hair on it. It was like something from a mutant horror film.

He was about to shout, or maybe scream, or maybe just roll into a ball and pretend none of what was about to happen was real, when he saw Tragedy leap over him and hurl himself at the mountainous primate.

He couldn’t believe his eyes, couldn’t think what Tragedy was hoping to achieve by this suicidal head-on assault.

And he certainly couldn’t understand the exultant whoop of pleasure Tragedy gave as he slammed into the gorilla and let it hoist him up into the air like a baby.

‘Put me down, you big old banana-breath!’ he chuckled, clearly not minding a bit.

As the gorilla held him up Will saw that it was not some freakish two-headed monster statue, but a terrifyingly huge but perfectly common or garden gorilla with a small bronze girl riding piggyback on it.

‘Put him down, Guy,’ said the girl. Her voice had a mild Indian accent that lilted gently and made her seem on the bubbling point of laughter.

‘Will,’ said Tragedy as the gorilla lowered him to the ground. ‘Will, this is AP, my mate. We call her ’Appy though, cos she always is.’

The girl slid off the back of the gorilla and grinned at Will. A bronze dove fluttered in from the shadows and sat on her shoulder.

‘Hello,’ she said, extending her hand rather formally. ‘I’m Happy.’

‘I know who you are,’ said Will, amazed. This was a statue he knew. She was from London Zoo. He’d been there three times. She was normally by a water fountain, reaching up for the dove. She was wearing a high-necked dress, but was barefoot, as if enjoying herself at a children’s party. ‘You’re from the Zoo.’

He shook her hand, which was warm and soft. She had a good firm handshake for a young kid, he thought, and she smiled right into your eyes without a smidgen of shyness. You couldn’t help but like her.

‘We all are,’ she said. ‘Me, Guy, the cats.’

He turned to see the two cheetahs were sitting calmly behind him, licking their paws as if they hadn’t a shred of interest in him. Filax stood between them, looking confused. Happy walked over and stroked him.

‘Hello, dog,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you yet.’