Exile: The Tube Riders, #2

By Chris Ward

Having narrowly escaped the Governor's savage Huntsmen, Marta Banks and the other surviving Tube Riders are on the run in northern France. Trapped inside a government-assigned quarantine zone, they search for a way out of a bleak countryside littered with abandoned worker robots and haunted by sinister monks, while at the same time a far deadlier threat than any they have faced before is searching for a way in ...

 

From the towering spires of Mont St Michel through the dark horrors of the Paris Catacombs to the treacherous peaks of the French Alps, The Tube Riders: Exile is an epic continuation of Chris Ward's Tube Riders series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AMMFA Publishing
• Release date: Nov 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519956675

Book preview

Exile

(The Tube Riders Trilogy #2)

Having narrowly escaped the Governor’s savage Huntsmen, Marta Banks and the other surviving Tube Riders are on the run in northern France. Trapped inside a government-assigned quarantine zone, they search for a way out of a bleak countryside littered with abandoned worker robots and haunted by sinister monks, while at the same time a far deadlier threat than any they have faced before is searching for a way in...

The Tube Riders: Exile

Copyright © Chris Ward 2013

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The right of Chris Ward to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

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This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

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Tube riding is a fictional activity and should be considered highly dangerous. DO NOT attempt to recreate any of the stunts described in this book. The Author holds no responsibility for any injuries that may occur.

Also by Chris Ward

Head of Words

The Man Who Built the World

Saving the Day

Ugly Thirteen

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The Fire Planets Saga

Fire Fight

Fire Storm

Fire Rage

Fire Flare

Fire Hunt

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The Endinfinium series

Benjamin Forrest and the School at the End of the World

Benjamin Forrest and the Bay of Paper Dragons

Benjamin Forrest and the Lost City of the Ghouls

Benjamin Forrest and the Curse of the Miscreants

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The Tube Riders series

Underground

Exile

Revenge

In the Shadow of London

Genesis: The Rise of the Governor

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The Tales of Crow series

The Eyes in the Dark

The Castle of Nightmares

The Puppeteer King

The Circus of Machinations

The Dark Master of Dogs

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The Tokyo Lost Mystery Series

Broken

Stolen

Frozen

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Also Available

The Tube Riders Complete Series 1-4 Boxed Set

The Tales of Crow 1-5 Complete Series Boxed Set

The Tokyo Lost Complete Series 1-3 Boxed Set

The Endinfinium 1-3 Boxed Set

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.

www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net

Contact

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If you would like to chat to Chris, visit his Facebook page at

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Chris Ward (Fiction Writer)

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or go to his website at

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www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net

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For my grandmother

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Evelyn Mary Ward

Exile

Part One

Brittany

1

Halo

The crushing force of the wave forced his mouth and eyes open. His vision blurred as salt water pressed down into his lungs, dry and abrasive. Dragged back under, he tumbled over and over, caught in a death roll as sharp rocks lacerated his clothing and split open his skin.

For a brief moment there was air, and he howled like a dying man as water burst out of his throat in a gushing, suffocating rush. Then the next monstrous wave crashed over his head, forcing him back down into its freezing depths.

He thought of his family, of his mother’s arms. He remembered how she had kissed him in the days before, told him how much he was loved.

The water battered him again, and he saw himself being torn away from his family by strangers in white coats with rough leather gloves and hard, durable boots, taken down into a black mine of hell that would turn him into a monster with a dark, cancerous hatred in his heart.

The Governor jerked awake. His car, accompanied by a three-car Department of Civil Affairs convoy, bumped along a potholed lane that arced its way through sparse, untended woodland. Through the trees up ahead appeared glimpses of a grey perimeter wall topped by barbed wire and gun emplacements, patrolled by soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders.

He wiped sweat from his brow and took a deep breath, relishing the air in his lungs, remembering the suffocating press of the sea water.

Too many memories. Too much pain.

He had been lucky. Whether or not the Tube Riders had come out on the other side of the tunnel that began at Lizard Point in Cornwall he didn’t yet know, but aboard the train they’d had a better chance than him, and he had managed to survive. He had clawed his way up out of that seething, churning mass of destruction and clung like a barnacle to the wet, cold rock while the waves caused by the collapsing tunnel had battered the cliffs below.

The front car of the DCA convoy ahead of him pulled up at the gate checkpoint. A uniformed guard emerged and leaned down to the car window. An arm appeared, impatiently flashing an ID card. The guard nodded and marched back into the gatehouse, and a moment later the gate swung open.

From the front, the building could have been any other manor house left over from the purge of Britain’s nobility, which the Governor had ordered shortly after assuming power. Unlike many great leaders of the past, while the inhabitants had been slaughtered in their garages and basements like unwanted dogs, he had been selective with his destruction of the buildings themselves, instructing the demolition of only those he had considered likely to act as a standard for the disaffected. In a reordered context, such buildings had proved useful. The gothic pillars and tall, ornate windows gave Talhale House an air of classical beauty, but behind the tinted glass were bricks and steel, a series of alarm-triggered storm doors and enough guards to take out a small army. The gun emplacements and the dozens of mines scattered throughout the forest were precautionary; realistically no one could get in or out without authorisation.

Once home to a noble line of upper class British gentry, Talhale House was now a prison, housing some of Mega Britains most dangerous criminals.

‘How have the years been, my old friend?’ the Governor mused, as Wohfel, one of his three Personal Guard, held the car door open for him, and another of them, Stark, shielded him from the sun with a large parasol. The third, Adilin, was somewhere among the closest trees, following on foot, keeping watch, staying invisible.

He tried to hide his limp as he moved. He had once told the traitor Leland Clayton that generosity could inspire people to follow you, but he had found that only through coercion and intimidation could you ensure absolute loyalty. Clayton’s own bullet still kept wrapping on his shoulder, while the battle with the Redman had drained his strength, and the final confrontation in the tunnel off Lizard Point had left his body battered and bruised. Under his trousers he wore a brace on his leg. Smote against the cliff face by water surging from the collapsed tunnel, the femur bone in his left leg had broken in three places, and while it would heal in time, he was physically the weakest he had ever been.

The less people who knew it the better.

The door opened and a man in a dark blue suit came down the steps to meet them. When he saw the Governor, his eyes gave a double take and a look of horror danced across his face. Suppressing a gasp, he sank to one knee, his head bowed.

‘My Lord Governor, I am Ronald Welch, Director General of Talhale House Maximum Security Unit. It is an honour—’

‘Get up,’ the Governor snapped. ‘I don’t have time for this. Did you wake him?’

Welch looked up. ‘Yes … sir. Halo is awake.’

‘Good. I need to see him immediately.’

‘Um, sir, he’s not in the best of condition—’

‘I wouldn’t expect him to be after forty years in this hellhole. Would you be?’

‘Um, no, sir. I—’

The Governor waved him aside and started up the steps with his guards flanking him. Welch shouted to his men to open the doors. The Governor felt a sense of satisfaction at the fear with which they still seemed to behold him. My influence still holds true, for now.

He glanced back as they went inside. Several DCA agents had left their vehicles and were standing around by the gates in a gesture of security. The Governor still had a bitter taste in his mouth after what had happened with the DCA in Cornwall, and while the order to turn their guns on the Huntsmen had been given by Leland Clayton, his trust in the DCA as an organization was lost. Clayton’s replacement as Commander in Chief, Farrell Soars, was a solid man and respected by the lower ranks, but the Governor had to ensure no such situation happened again.

‘Wait here,’ the Governor told the Personal Guard. ‘I need to see this man alone. Do not allow anyone else into the building until I return.’

Stark and Wohfel both nodded, their eyes hidden behind their visors, and took up positions just inside the door. The Governor glanced outside once more at the DCA agents, then followed after Welch.

An elevator took them down a couple of floors below ground. The Governor emerged into a cramped, low corridor where he was forced to follow Welch in single file. They made a couple more turns and then descended another flight of stairs. Double storm doors made a barrier through to the Maximum Security wing, and the Governor waited patiently while Welch let them through one using a coded keypad, locked it again and then opened the other. The Governor wondered for a moment what might happen if Welch suddenly decided to go turncoat, sacrificing his life to keep the Governor trapped down here. The man would die, of course, but did the Governor have the strength to break out of a place like this?

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Don’t let the paranoia overcome you. I am still strong, and they still fear me.

‘He’s in here, sir,’ Welch said, indicating a solid steel door, its former shine now grimy and stained, flecked with rust.

‘Is he chained?’

Welch actually smiled. ‘Of course, sir. He’s always chained.’

The Governor nodded. ‘Good. Open the door.’

He stood back while Welch operated a series of locks and then dragged the heavy door open, grunting and straining under the load.

The Governor peered inside. A dark form was slumped on a wooden pallet in the corner. It took a moment to identify the amorphous shape as a man curled up in a foetal position. The stench of weeks-old sweat and feces collided with the dry dusty scent of grain sacking, and the Governor wrinkled his nose in disgust.

‘Get up,’ Welch barked.

The sacking shifted a little. A grimy foot poked out from the folds and rubbed against the edge of the wooden pallet. Then chains clinked as the foot withdrew into the folds.

‘Hello, Halo,’ the Governor said. ‘It’s been a long time. Are you ready for some fresh air?’

There was a barely perceptible shift in the brown, formless clothing covering the figure. As the Governor’s eyes began to adjust to the gloom, he made out the long white hair and beard that covered the figure’s head and face. He felt like he was looking at some hellish version of Jesus who now lay in a grey purgatory, somewhere between crucifixion and rebirth.

‘Get up, old friend. Let me take a look at you. You served me well once, and I have use of you again.’

A rasping, crackling sound rose from under the figure’s clothes. At first the Governor was unsure what it was, then he realised it was laughter.

‘Ha, ha … ha. My … my,’ intoned a gravelly, parched voice. It sounded like the man hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. ‘Is that a familiar face … I spy?’

‘Halo—’

With a rattle of chains, the figure leapt up from the pallet, hands curved into claws as they stretched forward. A single dirty fingernail scraped a layer of skin from the Governor’s cheek before he jerked back out of range. Behind the beard and beneath the hair the man was unrecognizable from the one the Governor had known so many years ago, barring one thing—the black, dead eyes. Now they were as wide as sinkholes, as empty as a dead soul, and they bored into the Governor’s own with undisguised hatred.

‘Cale, you bastard, I’ll tear out your throat!’

‘Now, now,’ the Governor said, feeling the door pressing into his back. He tried to keep the unease out of his voice, but he had seen how the chain fixtures in the wall had loosened, seen how the shackles around the man’s wrists had bent. The Huntsmen were powerful, but none of them could bend steel. It was beyond even him.

‘It’s good to see you’re alive, Halo,’ the Governor said. ‘I will send a team to bring you up. I imagine it’s been a while since you last saw natural light.’

Halo had slumped to his knees. He reached down and began scratching against the stone floor. ‘Little piggy, little piggy … I’m so hungry so.’

The Governor stepped out of the cell. ‘Lock the door,’ he said to Welch, who was waiting outside in the corridor, a forced smile failing to hide his fear. As Welch replaced the locks, the Governor asked, ‘When did he last eat?’

‘Six days ago, sir,’ Welch told him. ‘He lives mostly on water with vitamin supplements. If we feed him more often he gets too strong and breaks his chains. Then we have to starve him until he’s weak enough to be sedated. Sometimes it takes weeks.’

‘Good, good. Bring some men and instruct my team on how best to restrain him. I want him brought up to the surface and cleaned up. I have need of him.’

‘Sir, are you sure? He’s dangerous.’

The Governor gave a cold laugh. ‘You say that word as if describing a rabid bear or a starved tiger. You have no idea how dangerous that man can be. But … he can be controlled.’

As the elevator carried him back up to the surface, however, his mind was plagued with doubts. There were too many people around him whom he could no longer trust. Once, Halo had been closer to him than anyone, a surrogate son, and he knew the man had the skills he needed. But after forty years underground, what was he releasing? A man … or something else?

Still, the situation had reached a critical level. His empire was on the verge of collapse. He needed to know if the Tube Riders lived, and whether the secret they carried had survived. Halo might be his last chance to avoid all-out war, both from without and within. He closed his eyes, searching for peace, but found none.

It was a risk, he knew. But it was one he had to take.

2

Gravedigger

My best friend.

He’s my best friend and he’s dying.

Sitting at the table in the living room of the abandoned farmhouse, Marta lifted the tiny memory card between her thumb and forefinger and angled it so it caught the afternoon light streaming through the wide bay window. She turned it over to examine it as she had done several times before. On one side was a tiny depression with the worn, unreadable remains of a manufacturer’s label. The other side was smooth. At one end was a silver port where it had once attached to a camera.

The whole thing was no bigger than her thumbnail.

She put it back down on the table. Nearby stood a tall, cut-crystal vase that contained the dried, brittle remains of several flowers. Marta lifted it, feeling its weight, and held it above the tiny memory card.

All she had to do was open her fingers.

‘Marta, what are you doing?’

She turned to look over her shoulder. Paul stood in the doorway, the shadows of the dark hallway at his back. One hand went to his nose, rubbing by habit the spot where his glasses had once rested, then moved up to trail through the thinning remains of his hair.

‘I’m wishing I could destroy the damn thing.’

He smiled. ‘Again?’

‘Every day.’ She shrugged and put the vase back down. ‘Wouldn’t do any good, would it? Wouldn’t bring them back.’

He shook his head. ‘But it would make you feel better.’

‘Huh. For about five minutes. Then I’d realise that I’d just crushed our only bargaining tool.’ She tried to smile, but couldn’t force one out. She shrugged again and slipped the card back into an inside pocket of her tunic.

‘Switch was asking for you.’

‘Really?’

She stood up and followed Paul into a small bedroom across the corridor. Switch lay beneath a floral patterned duvet on an ornate, iron-framed bed that might have once been someone’s proudest possession, but was now tarnished and dulled from years of abandonment.

She leaned over him, grimacing at the familiar sight of his pale face, the eyes that wouldn’t stay still, the lips that trembled with each breath.

‘Marta, that you?’ he muttered, his bad eye flickering, his gaze darting from her to the ceiling and back again. The corner of his mouth curled up in a half grin, only to vanish again as he squirmed beneath the covers, fighting pain Marta could barely imagine.

‘I found some of these in a kitchen cupboard,’ Paul said, holding up a little plastic bottle and shaking it. Pills rattled inside. ‘They’re antibiotics, so I gave him a couple, although they’re six years out of date.’

‘How can you be sure what they are?’

‘I also found a dictionary.’

As Marta finally found cause to smile, Switch muttered, ‘Throw me in the river, damn you all. Leave me behind.’

‘Shut up and go back to sleep.’

‘No,’ he answered, but his eyes were already closing, his head lolling over to the side, his breathing deepening.

Marta pulled the duvet up to his neck, checked his forehead for fever, and returned to the living room. She went over to the window, pushed the thin drape aside and peered out at the coastal road that passed by the house, at the top of a short gravel drive now choked with weeds.

‘Ten, twelve days? How long has it been?’ she said, mostly to herself. She glanced westwards, back the way they had come, following the line of the coast towards the east. They’d found maps in several of the houses and knew Paris was to the northeast. Paris was where they would find the government.

So far, though, they’d found nothing at all.

‘Where did they go?’ Paul said at her shoulder. ‘Why did they all just leave?’

For days they had been wandering through one abandoned fishing village after another. Some houses were almost untouched, while others had been ransacked and emptied as if their occupants had been fleeing an advancing army. It had been easy enough to find food. Many basements had contained boxes of emergency supplies: canned goods and more dried pasta and noodles than any of them had ever seen back in Mega Britain, while long-ago-seeded carrots, cucumbers and potatoes had sprouted among the weeds in dozens of forgotten vegetable gardens. Plenty of water flowed in the little streams cutting through the villages, and the abandoned houses provided comfortable, if creepy, shelter.

They had everything they needed to survive, except what for Switch was most important: medicines.

Every morning Carl would scout ahead while Owen, Marta and Paul took turns keeping watch, preparing food and taking care of Switch. A pain in his chest that might have been a fractured rib made it painful for Paul to walk, but at least he had his senses. They had splinted the wrist Dreggo had broken on the roof of the train, but Switch’s fever and delirium ebbed and flowed with each passing day. He drifted in and out of consciousness, and even in his sleep he would toss and turn, muttering and sometimes cry out.

Marta shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure they have gone, you know? Don’t you get that feeling?’

Paul gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I don’t know about you, but after all we went through to get here, I think this peace and quiet is pretty nice. Creepy, but nice.’

‘At least in Britain we knew what was after us.’

‘I suppose we should feel grateful,’ Paul said. ‘It’s so nice to sleep in a real bed again, even if it’s like sleeping in someone’s grave.’

‘Maybe, I don’t know.’

‘Hey, guys.’

They looked up as Owen walked in. Battle-scarred and world weary, Paul’s little brother looked years older than his twelve, Marta thought. Not long ago he had been all gung ho and enthusiastic. Now his body looked toughened, but his eyes had a guarded look as if he was haunted by what he had seen.

‘You find anything interesting in the cellar?’

Owen grinned and held up a box of candles and a pack of dog-eared playing cards. ‘Entertainment for tonight is sorted. How’s Switch?’

‘He’s sleeping again,’ Paul said. ‘Those pills we found seem to be helping a bit.’

‘He needs a doctor,’ Marta said. She slapped a hand on her thigh in frustration. ‘Where is everyone in this fucking country?’

‘It’s like there was a plague or something,’ Owen said. ‘Who knows, we might all be dead in a week. I really don’t think we should be eating anything that isn’t in cans.’

Marta shrugged. She looked at Paul and Owen in turn, and saw the way they looked back at her. They wanted leadership, she knew.

‘I say we eat anything we can damn well find,’ she said. ‘I think we’d have seen a few more bodies if there was a plague.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Owen said, giving her a brief, resigned smile.

Two days later they saw the lights for the first time.

Every night they changed where they slept, moving east along the coast, often walking by the rugged coast path that snaked up and down France’s cliffs. They had all agreed it was better to stay off the roads where possible until they knew what had happened to the people. They had seen a handful of abandoned cars, but when they had tried to start one or two they’d been empty of petrol.

They stopped at the abandoned farmhouse midway between two villages to rest for the night. While Paul could limp along, Switch needed Carl, Owen or Marta to support him, meaning progress was slow, little more than a couple of miles per day. It was a million miles from their days of hanging off the sides of moving London Underground trains. At times Marta pined for those days as much as she lamented the deaths of her parents and brother. Despite the danger, those days in St Cannerwells had possessed a familiarity about them, a sense of home.

Often, as they walked, Marta would look down at the clawboard she held in her free hand and wonder why she didn’t just drop it in the grass at the roadside. It was nearly useless, but when she looked around she saw the others still carried theirs. Paul held his in his hand, while Switch’s was sticking out of Owen’s rucksack alongside Owen’s own, taking up space that could have been used for food. Only Carl didn’t have one. Sometimes she felt they were being stupid, holding on to a past that had been swept away, taking with it several of their friends. The clawboards held much more than memories, though.

They were their identity.

They were the Tube Riders. The label gave them meaning, gave them strength and unity, and right now they needed that more than ever.

In the kitchen at the farmhouse they had found a gas cooker with an external canister that still worked, so as night fell Marta set to work preparing a meal from some cans of luncheon meat and boiled vegetables that they had brought with them from the previous house. The electricity was off, but one of the candles Owen had found now burned beside her on the kitchen worktop, its light flickering over her hands as she levered the cans open with a rusty tin opener.

‘If Switch was okay, it would be tempting, wouldn’t it?’

Marta turned to see Paul behind her. ‘What would?’

‘To just stay here.’ He spread his hands. ‘These houses are comfortable, and what food we couldn’t find I’m sure we could grow.’

Marta thought of Simon and Jess, of John Reeder and Ishael, of her brother Leo, found and lost again so quickly. Even Dreggo’s mutilated face flashed into her mind. ‘You know it wouldn’t work, Paul,’ she said. ‘We can’t just disappear.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because things aren’t finished.’

‘And why is it up to us to finish them? I never asked to get involved in any of this.’

She felt a bloom of anger. She hacked at a carrot as though it was the Governor’s throat and the tip bounced on to the floor. ‘None of us did, but we are anyway.’

‘All I want is for Owen to be safe. I don’t care what happens in Mega Britain.’

‘He’ll never be safe—none of us will—while that motherfucker and his Huntsmen are in control of our country. Do you know how it felt to see my brother as one of those things?’

Paul looked down. He kicked the tip of carrot out of sight beneath the table. ‘No. I can’t imagine.’

Marta jabbed the knife into the chopping board, the blade snapping off with a metallic crunch. She turned and threw the plastic handle away across the kitchen. ‘It felt like someone had put their hand down my throat and ripped out my heart. I’ll kill that bastard and I’ll kill anyone else who stands with him. I’ll kill—’

‘All right, all right.’ Paul pulled her forward, wrapping his arms around her. ‘And I guess we’d get bored with no trains about, wouldn’t we?’

She hugged him back for a moment, then grinned and pulled away. ‘Better get me another knife.’ She pointed. ‘That drawer over there.’

‘What are you making?’

‘Soup.’

‘You always make soup.’

Marta smiled again. ‘I don’t know how to cook anything else. I’d make a crap housewife, wouldn’t I?’

Paul opened his mouth to reply but stopped and looked around. The sound of running feet came from the hall and then Owen appeared at the door.

‘You might want to see this.’

‘What?’

‘Lights on the cliffs.’

They followed him through into the lounge. The room stood in darkness but Owen had pulled the curtains back to reveal a magnificent view of the last vestiges of a sunset over cliffs that bucked and reared off to both east and west.

‘There,’ he said.

A succession of lights was bobbing up the coast path towards a rocky headland silhouetted in the distance. Marta counted seven. They looked like lamps or torches, but she guessed they could just as easily be fire.

‘What do you think they’re doing?’

‘Searching for us, maybe?’ Paul said. ‘Better make sure all the candles are out until they’ve gone.’

‘Where’s Carl?’ Marta said.

‘He went out to get a closer look.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yeah, he said he used to track animals and stuff, and that it would be just like that.’

‘He’d better hope so,’ Paul said.

They watched the lights while waiting nervously for Carl to return. Eventually the flickering procession reached the crest of the headland, passed over and disappeared out of sight.

‘I’m hungry,’ Owen said at last.

‘We’ll have to wait,’ Marta said. ‘What if they come back?’

Owen shrugged. ‘After those Huntsmen, I’d be inclined to invite them in for some tea.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe they’ve got baguettes.’

‘More likely they’ve got guns and knives,’ Paul said.

About half an hour later they heard the sound of running feet and then Carl appeared, breathless, out of the gloom. Marta unlatched the front door and let him in.

‘Well?’ Owen said, as Carl gasped to get his breath back. ‘Who were those guys?’

Carl shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They were up on the cliffs and I couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were saying without being spotted.’ He grinned. ‘I did get a look at what they were wearing, though. Uniforms. Like they were soldiers or something.’

‘I guess that means we’d better avoid them,’ Marta said.

‘It also means we could already be under surveillance,’ Paul said, glancing up at the ceiling as if expecting to see cameras there, tracking them.

‘We aren’t,’ Carl said. ‘If we were, I think we would know it by now.’ He paused, and thoughtfully rubbed his chin with a finger. ‘No, they weren’t looking for us. They were searching for something, though.’

Marta found it difficult to sleep that night, despite being in a better bed than she’d ever slept in before, one with a soft but firm mattress and big, spongy pillows. Paul was on watch until midnight, supposed to sit by her window looking out at the road in front of the farmhouse, but at half past eleven she offered to relieve him. He gratefully accepted.

In the room across the hall, Owen and Carl were supposed to be taking shifts watching the woods beyond the back garden, while at the same time keeping an eye on Switch. The sky had clouded over, so Marta couldn’t see anything at all outside except darkness. Who were those people with the lights? And who were they looking for?

In London, she had felt in control. She’d grown up in the city, she had adapted to it. In the countryside she felt lost. In the city she had been in danger almost every day, but she felt far more spooked in the countryside.

Perhaps it was the complete absence of lights. In London, even during the blackouts there had been some form of lighting: private generators, car headlights, fires. Out here there was just … nothing. It didn’t help that she wasn’t even in England. There was no telling what lived out there in the dark. After the Huntsmen she figured nothing ought to scare her, but did they have bears in France? Wolves?

After less than an hour she found her eyelids starting to droop, so she opened the window to let in the cool late-autumn breeze. The only sounds were the distant roar of the English Channel, and the occasional rustle of the wind blowing through the hedgerows that lined the coastal road.

And something else, something that made a clop, clop, clop sound.

She sat bolt upright. Footsteps were coming towards the door, making no effort to disguise themselves.

What if it was the soldiers? Think, Marta.

Paul was wrapped in a duvet on the bed, snoring quietly. She thought about waking him, but while he was in better condition than Switch he was still hurt, and it was safer not to risk him making himself worse.

She looked around. Her clawboard stood at the end of her bed, the pepper spray can that an old friend had filled with something far more unpleasant lying beside it.

She leaned closer to the window and heard someone trying to open the front door, rattling the handle. Something struck her as strange; their potential intruder was behaving as if the door was supposed to be open, as if it was a surprise that it was not.

Could it be the owner of the house?

She heard a sharp crack followed by a splintering sound.

The person downstairs was forcing the door. Marta gasped. The door was solid wood. No one could just pull it off its hinges unless they were—

She scrambled across the room, grabbing both her clawboard and her pepper spray. She wished they had more weapons, but in the train crash they’d lost almost everything. All they had were kitchen knives and Carl’s catapult.

Marta crept out on to the landing. Downstairs, she heard the sound of wood cracking again. Was it possible a Huntsman had survived the tunnel’s collapse and come after them? The sound came again, followed this time by a thud as the door swung open and struck the wall behind it. Once, Marta guessed, this house had been owned by an older couple, because the upper floor was carpeted in a soft cream pile all the way through, with frilly curtains over the windows and prints of Parisian café scenes hanging above the stairs. The lower floor, though, had varnished pine floorboards, and now she heard the clump of footsteps as the intruder came inside.

She crept across the landing to the room occupied by Switch, Carl, and Owen.

‘Carl!’ she hissed, knowing he should be on watch. ‘Quick! There’s someone downstairs!’

‘Huh?’ she heard him say groggily from the darkness. A moment later he appeared in the doorway, one hand rubbing his eyes. In the gloom she could just make out the easy smile on his face. ‘Sorry, I dozed off. What’s happened?’

‘There’s someone downstairs.’

‘Oh, bloody hell.’

Marta saw a light flicker across the bottom of the stairs. The intruder was moving around, looking for something. Her hopes started to rise. Perhaps the intruder wouldn’t come upstairs. Perhaps he would find whatever he wanted and leave.

Carl pushed a torch into her hand and took his catapult off a clip on his belt. ‘If they come up the stairs, shine the light in their eyes and give me a clear shot. I’ve got some rocks which should knock them out cold. If they keep coming, spray them with that stuff or whack them with your clawboard. That should deal with the sucker.’

Even after all the death and destruction they had witnessed, Carl still gave off a happy-go-lucky façade which infuriated her. She wanted to scream at him: It’s not a game, but she knew it was just his manner. He had watched his father die and left his mother behind to perhaps meet her own gruesome fate. He had lost as much, if not more, as any of them.

‘Let’s hope that will be enough,’ she whispered. ‘What we really need is a gun, or at least a knife.’ What we really need is Switch.

‘The knives are all downstairs,’ Carl said. ‘Perhaps I could sneak down—’

‘No, it’s too dangerous.’

The light flashed across the stairs again, and the footsteps became louder as they approached.

‘There goes our damn surprise,’ Marta said. ‘He’s already got a light.’

They shifted back out of sight as the intruder started up the stairs.

As the light flickered off the ceiling above them, Marta glanced across at Carl, crouched against the wall on the other side of the stairs. Maybe it was just the light, but he looked terrified. Her own heart was hammering. She understood running, she understood flight. Stuck here in this house she felt like a cornered animal.

‘Now!’ she screamed, jumping up, swinging the torch around. A figure was standing halfway up the stairs, beams of light blazing out of its eyes. Then Carl was beside her, releasing the catapult. The rock struck the figure in the forehead and bounced off with a metallic clang as if the person were wearing a helmet. Marta fingered the release button on her pepper spray. Beside her Carl was reloading. The figure took one faltering step back down the stairs, then the lights dimmed and the beams angled down towards their feet.

‘It’s a robot!’ Carl hissed.

‘Y at-il des cadavers?’ the figure said.

‘What?’ Marta’s French was limited to hello, goodbye, and shit.

‘He asked, Are there any dead bodies?’ Carl said.

‘Tell him no!’

‘Non!’

The figure fired off rapid French in their direction. Its voice sounded altered, not quite human but nothing like the chilling, grating voices of the Huntsmen.

‘He says he’s the Gravedigger. He’s searching for bodies and he says not to lock the door, I think. Something like that.’

‘Tell him we’re sorry!’

Carl said something back. The Gravedigger nodded and lights danced in its eyes. Then it turned and went back down the stairs. A few seconds after it disappeared from sight, they heard the sound of the ruined door being pulled closed.

Marta’s legs were shaking. She sat down with her back against the wall and switched on the torch. In its dim glow Carl looked as shocked as she felt.

‘What just happened here?’ she said, not sure whether he could answer. ‘What was that thing?’

Carl shrugged. ‘A local.’

She gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m impressed by your French.’

He grinned. ‘I was a real swot in class at school because the French teacher was kind of pretty. That robot’s accent was really clear. It was like a class listening test. I didn’t get all the words, but I got enough.’

Marta had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘I think we’d better be out of here by first light.’

‘Are you worried it’ll come back?’

She took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the wall. ‘It’s a robot. It has to belong to someone. I’m worried about who it might belong to.’

3

Underground

Lionel Buckingham didn’t fear the robots, but neither did he have any love for them. They were just there, wandering around Brittany’s countryside, doing whatever they had long ago been designed to do without fuss, but they had a certain wraith-like quality that made him nervous whenever he encountered one during a patrol. Just yesterday he had come across a construction-borg repairing potholes in the road that led south towards Rennes, seemingly unaware that the whole area was quarantined and that no cars had passed that way in five years or more. Last week he had seen another painting the wall of an old bank, ignoring the boards nailed over the windows and door.

It’s spreading, he thought. Whatever is wrong with Britain is spreading elsewhere. It’s like the whole world is turning to shit.

Life inside the Zone de Quarantaine was comfortable enough. The French authorities knew they were here, of course, and provided them with everything they needed except weapons. There was the town of Chamquec too, where they could get medical care if necessary, reluctant though the locals were to interact with the deserters. The day they lifted the quarantine though, would be a day of celebration. Still, until that day … Lionel and the rest of the soldiers in the Brittany Command filled their long days by looking for other deserters who made it across the English Channel, while observing with wry bemusement the strange robots as they carried out their pre-programmed tasks.

The Gravedigger stood there, on the edge of the light thrown out by the tunnel entrance, its head cocked towards him. Lionel wasn’t sure what to make of it; it looked part human, part machine. Its face was made of cream-coloured synthetic skin stretched over metal. Its eyes were glowing orbs of light that could glare as bright as the headlights of any car, or fire tiny explosive charges strong enough to break rocks. Its nose was undersized and too pointed to look human, while its mouth was a silver oval filled with two rows of porcelain teeth. It wore human clothes reduced almost to rags, but its arms were over-long and its hands resembled crab pincers—one wide, thicker claw used, he assumed, for shoveling, and one shorter curved one reminiscent of a human thumb that he imagined had to do everything else.

‘Reward?’ it said, in perfect King’s English. He knew from experience that they spoke several languages, and this one had learned to use English around the men of the Command.

‘That’s not for me to say,’ Lionel answered. ‘It depends what you’ve found.’

‘People,’ it said. He refused to think of the Gravedigger as either man or woman, although he knew that somewhere in there was a synthetic but functioning organic brain.

‘How many?’

‘Gravedigger saw two.’

‘Where? What did they look like? Weapons?’

The Gravedigger gave him some coordinates and an address, and repeated the details it had already told him. Lionel scribbled them down on a piece of paper, but he knew the house the Gravedigger meant. It was about three miles east, not far from the coast. They could be there in an hour.

‘Reward?’ the Gravedigger said again. Its voice had a cheerful, optimistic tone which would have made Lionel laugh had the machine not been so damn creepy. He’d known of some to go haywire after years of neglect, some that were more human than machine. The trails of death and destruction they left before they were either destroyed or their batteries ran down were no laughing matter.

Lionel shrugged. ‘Fine. What do you want?’

‘Pig?’

‘You’re a damn robot. What do you want meat for?’

The Gravedigger cocked its head almost to its shoulder, its eyes twinkling. ‘Pig,’ it repeated.

Lionel shrugged ‘All right, whatever.’ He called inside for one of the younger men. ‘Hey, go get me a side of pork, would you?’

The man nodded and disappeared down the corridor.

‘That enough?’

The Gravedigger’s eyes flashed. ‘Enough.’

‘All right. You just wait here.’

‘Wait.’

Lionel closed