Adrift 2: Sundown (10 page)

The absence of light made the noise all the more terrifying; a high-pitched scream that shredded Adam Trent’s nerves like a hacksaw.

He froze, the wrench in his hand forgotten, and stared into the blackness. The cone of illumination cast by the light mounted on his hat dissolved after a few feet. Beyond it, the darkness was an abyss.

Sometimes the tunnels could play tricks on you—especially when you were working near an active line. The shriek of metal on metal could sound otherworldly in the dark, and most of the staff working the lines had let their nerves get the better of them at least once. It took some getting used to, working down there in the pitch black, tending to the roots of the city. The darkness and the isolation; the musty air and the dislocation from reality. It all took its toll, especially on those who were new to the job.

Yet Adam had been working maintenance on the London Underground system for ten years and counting. He was no rookie.

And that isn’t metal-on-metal.

The noise which Adam heard, ricocheting around the cavernous tunnel, was a twisted fusion of terror and pain. Definitely
not
mechanical; it was unmistakably the sound of someone screaming. It rang out clearly over the clanging noise of Roni hammering at a stubborn section of the rusting track a few feet to his left.

It sounded like it came from a distance down the tracks, somewhere around the curve of the tunnel. Even if there had been light in that direction, Adam doubted that he would have been able to see what had caused the noise, and maybe, he thought, that was a good thing.

The scream spoke to him on an animal level, and his senses shifted into a state of high alert.

It lasted for maybe five seconds, rising in pitch.

Ending suddenly.

And then there was thunderous silence.

The two-man sub-team’s work—routine repairs on a section of the
Northern Line
—ceased immediately.

Adam turned to face Roni, and flooded his colleague with light.

“You heard that?”

Roni nodded slowly, but both question and response were unnecessary: Adam knew that he hadn’t imagined the noise as soon as he saw Roni’s eyes; painfully wide, darting with incomprehension. He looked as unnerved as Adam felt.

Adam took a hefty flashlight from his belt, and aimed it down the tunnel. The other sub-team—Colin and Tarpey; good guys, whose easy banter generally made the long hours pass quicker—were a few hundred feet further down the line, working their way back towards Adam’s position.

The scream had come from their direction.

It had to have been one of the two men that screamed, but Adam had no idea what could prompt a man to make such a noise.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.

He tried not to notice the beam of light jerking as his hand trembled wildly. The flashlight’s bulb was a good deal more powerful than the one attached to his hat, but it, too, was eaten by the void before it revealed anything out of the ordinary.

He saw nothing.

Heard nothing.

“You think one of them is hurt?” Roni hissed, and Adam flinched at the sudden break in the oppressive silence.

As it happened, yeah, Adam
did
think either Colin or Tarpey was hurt. Maybe even worse than hurt. He couldn’t see how a man could scream like that and
not
be in terrible agony. Men had been injured in the tunnels before, plenty of times, and Adam had rushed to their aid without hesitation, tending to injuries that ranged from concussion to electrocution to—on one particularly horrible occasion—dismemberment. It was, he thought, part of the job description. He imagined that it had to be the same whenever people worked in places that were so inherently dangerous. You developed a bond, even with the colleagues you didn’t much like. An unspoken code.
Look after each other down there
.

Further down the tunnel, it sounded like somebody needed looking after, all right, but this time, Adam found his feet unwilling to move and his skin prickling. Suddenly, he felt terribly afraid at the prospect of calling out to see if everything was okay. Frightened that he would draw the attention of something; some awful creature out there, sharing the shadows with them.

He wondered if he should shut off the light, and hope whatever was out there could not see him.

Sweat beaded on Adam’s forehead as his mind ran to dark destinations. Whatever was out there, it had surely killed Colin and Tarpey, and it was crawling toward him at that very moment, unseen in the dark, licking its lips…

He willed his legs to move.

And then the whimpering started up; faint, but audible. The soft, gurgling cries of a man suffering terrible pain. The sound was somehow even worse than the screaming.

“We have to help him.”

Roni’s words.

High-pitched and breathless; the voice of a man out of his mind with fear.

Adam swallowed hard and nodded almost absently, his eyes fixed on the section of tunnel that he could not see. Someone was still alive, and they were hurt. He
had
to help. He lifted the wrench above his head, brandishing it like a club. Roni acknowledged the gesture, but there was no question in his eyes, and Adam knew, then.

It wasn’t just him. Not his imagination
.
Roni felt it, too
:
the air in the tunnel, suddenly thick and syrupy; laced with danger. A nagging certainty that there was another presence in the tunnel with them, something foul and dangerous.

Adam advanced slowly, his heart hammering painfully, the wrench raised.

Ready.

Click.

He froze again, and this time the message his nerves tried to send was
run
, but fear had tangled the wiring in his brain. He felt like he was standing in quicksand.

He remembered listening to Tarpey talking about the time when he had seen a train heading straight for him in a tunnel which he had believed was inactive, and about the grey area between fight or flight; that rabbit-in-the-headlights paralysis.

Tarpey had called it
fight, flight or shite
.

It had been funny. Adam had laughed.

Click, click.

He swallowed painfully.

The noise was heading toward him, getting louder. Advancing a little and pausing. It sounded to Adam like the cautious movement of an animal. But there weren’t any animals in the London Underground, not really. Rats, of course; maybe the odd stray dog. Yet the sound he heard wasn’t made by any rat or dog. It skittered and tapped, and struck Adam as more like the noise an insect might make.

Yet for the noise to be that loud, it would have to be huge.

Or very close.

He felt his heartbeat ratchet up in intensity until he was sure his chest would burst open.

The shuddering beam of light gave up nothing. He frowned, and felt a dry panic squeezing his bladder. The noise sounded close enough that he was sure he should be able to see
something
.

Click, click, click, cli—

So loud
, Adam thought.
Like it’s right on top of us.

Oh.

Shit.

Adam knew that it would be there even before he jerked his jaw up and illuminated the roof above his head with ghostly light. Some crazy intuition told him before he saw it.

Bursting from the shadows toward the two paralysed men, bewildering and obscene.

A creature born in a fevered nightmare.

It came at them fast, scuttling along the ceiling like some horrific spider; humanoid in shape and yet somehow insectile at the same time. Glistening skin that seemed to absorb the light. Angular limbs whirring in furious motion, eating up the distance at extraordinary speed.

Glowing red eyes.

Teeth.

It shrieked as the light spilled across it, and launched itself down onto Roni before he could react, opening up his body from shoulder to groin as it fell, cleaving him in two almost casually with a talon as long as a pocket knife.

Adam heard a tragic, surprised gasp followed by a wet
splat
, impossibly loud in the enclosed space, and realised with numb horror that the noise was Roni’s
blood
. It sounded like there was so
much
of it, raining down heavily on the ground. A grisly downpour that fell not from storm clouds, but from an unfolding nightmare.

Blood, Adam decided distantly, made a
horrible
sound. It was a noise no human being should ever have to endure.

Roni’s eyes flickered with piercing awareness for an instant as his guts began to slide from his abdomen. The oozing dark mass of innards looked almost alive in the bleak light, and the awful sight of his colleague’s pulsing organs made the last functioning part of Adam Trent’s mind shriek loud enough to break the spell.

Go!

The creature began to turn to face Adam even as he turned away, pounding his legs forward.

He only managed to take a couple of frantic strides before something impacted heavily on his back.

Searing pain.

Falling.

Adam crashed into the ground, and the air blasted from his lungs.

The light on his helmet smashed, plunging him into pitch-black darkness.

He rolled over onto his back, feeling something flapping around the base of his spine, and realised in horror that it was his own flesh, drawn apart like curtains. He gagged.

Hauled himself to his feet.

Heard guttural breathing in the void.

He tensed, trying to ready himself for the next attack.

It came from his left, delivering another tearing blow, and this time Adam was conscious of the fact that he was sailing through the air moments before he clattered into a wall with a dry and terrible
slap.
His skull rang, and for a moment he just laid there, with his eyes shut and his head spinning, waiting helplessly for the end.

Waiting.

Nothing.

His left side felt like it was on fire, and he dropped a hand to find that a sticky chasm had opened up in his love handle, a hole that felt gigantic to his probing fingers.

Again, he rose to his feet and began to stumble away, and again he felt the talons raking him, lifting him and tossing him away like rotten meat. Another hole. Another
leak.

Another pause.

It was during that pause that Adam slipped into a dreamlike trance, and thought about his neighbour’s cat; about the way he had once watched it idly batting a mouse around the garden, letting the poor creature believe it had a chance to escape, only to drag it back for another round of
fun with claws and teeth
at the last moment.

It’s playing with me.

This time, Adam couldn’t even bring himself to stand. He rolled onto his back and heard it moving toward him slowly, like it was savouring the moment.

“Please,” Adam slurred, a bubble of blood and saliva popping on his lips, “please…just kill me…”

The thing laughed, and Adam let his head drop against the ground. He closed his eyes.

Prayed for oblivion.

And felt it crawl directly over him.

Tasted the rotten stink of its hot breath; blood and ancient decay.

He opened his eyes, and found the hideous face just inches from his own, terrible eyes burning like torches in the darkness.

Adam stared directly at those sickening crimson pools and felt something in his head snap; something that made his skull ring with a dull and nauseating permanence.

His sanity began to evaporate, making room in his mind for something else; worse than the pain had been; than any pain could
possibly
be.

The creature took what was left of Adam Trent’s mind then, and in his final moment, he understood the terrible truth.

It wasn’t going to kill him at all.

Growling.

Increasing in intensity.

Filling the dark space like the sound of idling American muscle.

Cornelia Stokes glanced at the rear view mirror and saw light brown eyes staring directly back at her. The rising growl became a bark.

Conny grinned and returned her eyes to the road, steering the van along Mornington Crescent toward Euston. Her day had been mapped out, and it was supposed to provide little in the way of drama: she and Remy had spent the early part of the afternoon in Regent’s Park—keeping an eye on a rain-soaked and peaceful protest which certainly didn’t
look
like it might turn nasty—when she got the call to respond to an emergency at the train station.

Remy barked again, louder.

To anyone who didn’t know better, it might have sounded like the dog in the rear of the van was going crazy; growling and barking at nothing. But Conny had been Remy’s handler for four years—most of her career with the British Transport Police’s
Dog Unit
—and knew him better than she knew herself. The chaotic noise was his routine; his own way of preparing himself for the work he knew was to come. When he was placed in the van and the sirens began to wail, that meant only one thing for Remy. Time to put on his game face.

Time for action.

Conny couldn’t have silenced him even if she had wanted to.

Remy’s specialty was crowd control. Controlled aggression was his purpose, and he was the best police dog that Conny had ever seen, let alone worked with. Smart and obedient and completely harmless…ninety percent of the time.

The
other
ten percent of the time Remy was a snarling weapon, and on each and every occasion that the German Shepherd was called into action, Conny found herself astonished at the impact his bristling presence could have on a crowd of people. Even those who were armed
themselves
shrivelled in fear at the sight of him. A weapon with teeth, she concluded, reached right into the primitive part of a person’s brain in a way that no knife or firearm ever could.

Remy represented a primal fear that could not be ignored, and often merely the sight of him—eighty-five pounds of coiled muscle, propping up snapping jaws full of sharp trouble—was enough to calm even the most aggressive of suspects. Conny had a long-standing love affair with firearms, but once Remy had given her his complete, unquestioning loyalty and trust, she wouldn’t have traded the dog for a full-auto assault rifle. Guns jammed; they got misplaced or ran out of ammunition. Remy never did.

She swung the small police van onto Hampstead Road, nodding acknowledgment at the afternoon drivers who pulled aside to let her through, and Euston Station loomed ahead of her
.
She stepped on the accelerator.

Conny and Remy had been asked to provide backup to the security staff at the station: to help break up a scuffle which had broken out among several commuters waiting at one of the Underground platforms. In Conny’s experience, most fights broke up as soon as Remy started to bark, and she expected that this occasion would be no different.

Her day could have been a lot worse, she thought. She could have been one of the poor bastards dealing with the massacre which had taken place in south London just a few hours earlier: a junkie who’d gone berserk in a supermarket, killing three people and wounding two others before taking his own life. When local police had responded to the incident, they had discovered the bodies of a further nine homeless people torn to pieces under a nearby bridge.

There was no weapon to deal with something like
that
, no shield that could keep the damage at bay, either. Sometimes, the world just erupted into madness and violence that was impossible to comprehend, and somebody out there had to face it.

This would be nothing like that terrible incident, though. The fight at Euston was almost certainly nothing more than a few commuters getting steamed up over having to wait too long for a train and lashing out. A typical London flashpoint. It would probably all be over in less than thirty seconds.

She glanced in the mirror again as she pulled the van to a halt outside the station’s main entrance and killed the siren.

Remy was now dead silent, staring at her calmly with expectant, hopeful eyes. The siren had stopped wailing. The time for preparation was over.

Conny opened the door and began to step out of the van when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out, and a dreadful sickening sensation unfurled in her stomach. She sat back down heavily, staring at the
unlock
screen. Afraid to swipe her thumb across it. As much as possible, she tried to compartmentalise her life; to leave the personal stuff at home and focus only on the job when she was on shift. Anything else would be failing in her duty as a police officer. She rarely carried her phone with her while she was in uniform.

Today was different, of course.

The screen on her phone glowed for a moment before falling dark.

You haven’t got time to just sit here, Con.

She unlocked the screen, and felt a scream building inside her, desperate to be free.

A text from Logan.
The
text. Just two words, steeped in bitterness which punched her in the gut like a professional boxer. No matter how much she had tried to prepare herself for seeing them, the words inflicted damage that she already knew would never heal.

Confirmed. Huntington’s.

Conny placed the phone gently on the dashboard, face down, and stared through the rain-flecked windscreen at the exterior of Euston Station for several long moments, until Remy huffed impatiently.

You’re on duty.

She blinked away the tears that gathered in her eyes, and set her mouth in a firm line. Remy was right.

Time for action.

*

At ground level, Euston Station was a huge, functional square space lined with overpriced shops, and a bar in which unoccupied seats were as rare as reasonable rent. Toward the front of the building, where the departure boards displayed the latest information for each of the eighteen platforms, a few hundred passengers clustered, waiting for the signal to board the trains that would take them toward the north of England.

Conny headed left, aiming for the escalators that would transport her down to Euston’s separate Underground station, and glanced down at Remy. The dog remained silent and focused, his watchful eyes scanning, ears pricked up. She gripped his heavy chain leash tightly, as her own training dictated, but she would have been confident in unleashing him, knowing that he would have kept pace without the restraint.

Below ground level, the short escalator led to a small area filled with ticket machines and electronic barriers which barred the path to the subterranean platforms that were yet another level further down. There was no sign of a disturbance in the ticketing hall, but the tension in the space was palpable. The barriers to the platforms had been closed by staff, and the resulting crowd which formed simmered with uneasy frustration at
yet another delay on the Tube
.

Conny heard a loud voice informing passengers that there was a ‘security issue’ down on the platforms, and that delays of around fifteen minutes were expected.

Not if Remy has anything to do with it
, she thought, and headed toward the barriers, letting Remy carve a path between groups of commuters who parted silently to let them pass. When she reached the barriers, a portly and stressed-looking security guard waved her through with a nod, gazing warily at Remy.

The dog ignored him, his gaze focused on the next escalator. Much larger than the first; it speared down into the earth, providing access to the Northern Line’s north and south platforms.

He growled softly.

Conny nodded, and quickened her pace. They were close enough now that Remy could probably hear whatever was happening down on the platform. Maybe he could smell blood and danger on the air.

The escalator had been switched off, so Conny and Remy took the steep metal steps leading down at a brisk pace.

When she was halfway down to the next level, she could hear the shouting at last, and Remy finally began to strain at his leash.

*

The fight looked like it was still ongoing.

Conny stepped onto the platform that served southbound trains, moving past some onlookers who had retreated to a safe distance, but couldn’t bring themselves to actually leave and miss the excitement. Far to her right, at the very end of the platform, she saw a mass of bodies milling around, a couple of whom wore the distinctive hi-vis yellow jackets which marked them out as staff.

She broke into a trot, reaching the perimeter of the fracas in a few seconds.

Remy’s growl grew louder; a rumbling thunder that cut cleanly through the noise of the scuffle. Several faces turned toward Conny and her partner, their eyes widening.

Once she had pushed past a few gawkers, Conny saw that there were a couple of people on the platform lying face down, unmoving. At least one of them was bleeding heavily, and both were either unconscious or dead.

She hesitated.

It looked a little more serious than just some fight.

Several other people had staggering away from the tussle, nursing minor injuries, and the two staff were struggling with a man who screamed and thrashed, resisting their attempts to pin him to the floor. Conny watched the man shrug off one of the staff and swing at him with what looked like a length of rebar, and decided she had seen enough.

She unhooked Remy’s leash and pointed at the weapon.

“Go.”

Remy approached steadily, barking furiously, and the two staff rolled away from the thrashing man, their eyes wide and fixed on the dog. Isolated with Remy, the man leapt to his feet, and Conny expected that he would immediately drop the weapon and either attempt to flee or surrender.

Instead, the man—who Conny noticed in surprise was also wearing a torn hi-vis jacket, its bright colour dulled by dirt and bloodstains—took a step toward the dog and lashed out, swinging the heavy metal in a savage arc.

Conny’s breath caught in her throat as Remy took matters into his own hands, darting underneath the intended blow. He struck before his attacker had even finished swinging, leaping forward and clamping his teeth onto the guy’s forearm.

Twisting.

The rebar hit the floor with a clatter.

And Conny’s mouth dropped open in amazement as the man lined up a
punch
with his free hand, striking Remy in the neck. The dog clearly decided that enough was enough. It pulled hard on the man’s forearm, twisting its thick neck violently to unbalance him, and brought him down hard onto the platform. He hit the floor face-first with a sharp
snap
that Conny thought had to be his nose valiantly attempting to cushion his fall.

Yet
still
he struggled.

Conny had never seen anything like it. Remy had brought plenty of people down over the years, and not once had anyone even tried to get up when the dog was looming over them.

The stricken man heaved himself back to his feet with the German Shepherd still attached to his arm—blood flowing freely around Remy’s powerful jaws—and he began to stagger to his left.

Conny recognised what was happening immediately. The man—maybe drugged, who knew—clearly wasn’t feeling the pain of Remy’s teeth as he should be, and was using his superior weight to drag the dog across the platform.

Toward the tracks.

The live line
, Conny thought in horror.

“Remy, release,” she yelled sternly, and Remy obeyed instantly, glancing back at her with something like chagrin in his eyes.

When Remy withdrew his teeth from the man’s forearm, he lost all balance. He might have fallen onto the tracks anyway, carried there by his momentum, but as Conny watched the man in the torn hi-vis jacket dive off the platform onto the deadly waiting track with a wince, she couldn’t help but think that it looked, for just a fleeting moment, like he
wanted
his life to end.

Had he continued to struggle with Remy because he wanted the dog to
kill
him?

For several long seconds, a pregnant hush descended on the small crowd of people gathered on the platform, and Conny stared down at Remy, seeing her own confusion reflected in his big brown eyes.