One
Breakfall
The roar in the tunnel grew louder.
The noise 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, 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 adrenalin rush struck her like a hammer.
She dashed for the platform edge. 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, the rush of adrenaline so great she thought it might burst out of her chest. Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, she stared down what in these moments was the Reaper, was Death. Don’t fuck up, her mind screamed. 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 fanning 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. And I’ve survived the longest so that makes me 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 just a second 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 in pain. 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 cos 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 straight from an anime cartoon, 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 with
out 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, sweat standing out on his brow. For an instant she recalled just how little she knew about any of them. They congregated here whenever they could but they all had separate lives which 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 someone as slow and cumbersome had much sleight of hand. She knew what people did around Piccadilly at night and had her suspicions, 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 too, 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 left at Switch, who backed into Simon as he tried to get out of the way. His fist would have missed but thanks to Simon’s intervention Switch was trapped 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 moved in closer 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 appearing 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, wankhead?’
‘Easy, Switch,’ said Simon, trying almost comically to muscle his thin frame between them and failing.
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 on the platform to mingle with the dust.
‘Dan!’ Paul shouted after him.
‘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. Marta knew 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 sm
ile. ‘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.’
In squats, underground clubs and illegal bars all across London GUA, people talked in hushed tones 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’d 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 claiming 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’re prepared to start a turf war. If they can find us, of course.’
Simon glanced back down the platform. ‘You know Switch will want to fight them,’ he said. ‘Pitched battle and all that? Tally ho, charge of the bloody Light Brigade.’
Marta noticed a trickle of sweat meander its way down Paul’s face. ‘Well, he’s on his own,’ he 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 any more, 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 with them, 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 dust. 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 separated 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. With his other arm 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.
#
Here ends this sample of The Tube Riders, which is now available from Amazon as an ebook or a paperback.
Also by Chris Ward and available now
Novels
The Tube Riders
(Part One of the Tube Riders Trilogy)
The Man Who Built the World
Collections
Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories
/> Short Stories
Benny’s Harem*
Forever My Baby*
Going Underground*
Joyriders*
Ms Ito’s Bird*
Saving the Day*
The Ageless*
The Cold Pools*
(* = found in the collection Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories)
Castles Made of Sand
Death Depends
Forks
The Tree
About the Author
A proud and noble Cornishman (and to a lesser extent British), Chris Ward ran off to live and work in Japan back in 2004. There he got married, got a decent job, and got a cat. He remains pure to his Cornish/British roots while enjoying the inspiration of living in a foreign country.
He is the author of 33 published stories and the novels, The Tube Riders and The Man Who Built the World.
Facebook - Chris Ward (Fiction Writer)
Twitter - @ChrisWardWriter.
Blog - https://amillionmilesfromanywhere.blogspot.jp/
Thanks for reading.
CW
Sept 2012
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