Tube Riders, The (4 page)

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 speaking to him would compromise 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 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 properly ignite.

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 briefly straightened, 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 often became distorted and exaggerated, 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 for, 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.

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?’

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 with the food shortages London often suffered from.

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. Once-stately Victorian buildings loomed over them from either side. Perhaps just one in three of the buildings they passed had windows, while many had been gutted by fire. 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.

‘Owen, get behind me,’ Paul said, shepherding his brother away from the edge of the pavement. They had come too far out into the open; the mob only had to look up to see them. There was an alleyway across the street, but Paul knew they would have to run. ‘Be ready, Owen. When I say…’

Up ahead, he saw one man toss a glass bottle at the mini-mart window. There was a loud crash and then flames burst out through the shattered glass, spitting at the approaching men who flinched back, laughing and shouting. As the flames eased, they started forward again. Several covered their faces and rushed inside. Paul heard shouts and cries, and then some of the men reemerged, arms laden with canned food, bottled drinks, and over-the-counter medical supplies.

A gunshot sounded inside, followed by a cry, then another shot. Moments later two thugs dragged a man who could only be the shopkeeper out into the street. Another man was trying to wrestle something out of the shopkeeper’s hand when the gun went off again and the looter went down. He screamed as blood pooled around him.

Frozen to the spot, Paul said, ‘Owen, don’t look!’

‘They’re setting fire to him! We have to stop them!’

Paul watched as two looters held the struggling shopkeeper down while another splashed something out of a bottle over the man’s clothes. The same man pulled a small box from his pocket and lit a match.

‘No!’ Owen screamed as the man dropped the match and the shopkeeper’s clothes ignited, engulfing him in flames. The shopkeeper screamed. The two looters jumped out of the way as the body writhed, burned. One man laughed as he batted at a spark that had caught on his jeans.

‘Hey look!’ someone else shouted. ‘Gapers!’

The man who had shouted pointed towards them. He shouted something incomprehensible over the screams of the dying man.

‘Owen, let’s go. Quickly now.’ Paul grabbed his brother’s arm and together they dashed across the street and into the alley as several of the looters gave chase. With their pursuers drunk and laden with weapons and loot, Paul knew they had a good chance of escape, but there was no telling what they might find around the next corner, or the next.

‘Where are we going? Home is the other way!’

‘Exactly!’

Owen’s school bag was slowing them down. Paul tried to keep it over his shoulder while pulling his brother with the other hand, but it kept slipping off. He wanted to jettison it, but the cost of replacing Owen’s books was more than he could afford. If he didn’t have the money, Owen couldn’t go to school. Paul didn’t know what the future held for either of them, but he was convinced Owen had far more chance with a little education.

But he was huffing. What he did at night to keep them fed and clothed was most of the exercise he got, and mostly he just closed his eyes and tried to blank things out. ‘Owen, I can’t run anymore. We have to hide.’

‘Where?’

The alley intersected with another smaller one and Paul dragged Owen down it. ‘Down here, we can hide behind those bins.’

‘Paul, no, are you stupid?’ Owen tried to protest as Paul hauled him along, deeper into the dark concrete crevasse, past upturned dustbins and piles of old furniture.

It was too late. Paul had fallen into the old alley trap. He had hoped to be out of sight before the looters spotted them, but the junk in their way had made progress too slow. They heard a couple of men run past, but another stopped and turned to follow.

It was the one who had set the shopkeeper on fire. His age was difficult to determine, his face scarred and soiled as it was. He might have been fifty or fifteen. ‘Well, look what we have here,’ he snarled, giving them a sour grin. He swayed drunkenly, a piece of metal pipe in one hand.

‘Get behind me, Owen,’ Paul said, closing on the looter, not giving the other man time to think, to formulate a plan. He wished he had his clawboard with him to use as a weapon, because even though he didn’t ride anymore he usually took it to St. Cannerwells with him as a kind of ceremonial memento, but after riding this morning he had gone home first. The others carried theirs everywhere like a badge, but Paul found the extra weight unnecessary, especially when he met Owen after school.

He reached out for whatever he could find, and his hands closed over the bent wheel of an old bicycle. He pulled it in front of him like a shield, unsure how much use it would be against the looter’s pipe.

‘You boys got any money?’ the looter said, voice slurring a little. He smacked the pipe into his palm. ‘That looks like a school bag you’ve got there. Hand it over and I won’t fuck you up too bad.’

Paul heard the sounds of sirens in the distance. ‘Back off,’ he said. ‘The police are coming, and probably the DCA. They’ll get you.’

‘Those fucking idiots? No chance. Not before you and your gay little brother here bite it.’

Paul’s heart was thumping. The bicycle wheel shook in his hands. He wasn’t much of a fighter; he had other means he used to get out of most trouble. He had no idea what to do if the man came for him, but so long as Owen got away...

Something grey flew past his face. The triangle of concrete hit the looter’s shoulder, throwing him off balance. He grunted and swung the pipe at Paul, who managed to half block it with the bicycle wheel. He stumbled sideways against the alley wall and the bicycle wheel fell out of his hands. He started to raise his hands in a useless gesture of defense, but then Owen was beside him, something metallic in his hands. His brother screamed a war cry and jabbed his weapon at the looter’s stomach. There was a meaty squelch. The looter gasped and stumbled, then Owen was stabbing him again. Paul grabbed the man’s metal pipe and landed a weak punch on the man’s cheek. The looter went down. His hands clutched at the screwdriver handle that protruded at an odd angle from a wet hole in his t-shirt.