Spiral (14 page)

Having collected his Bergen and a couple of bags of equipment for Drake, Will didn’t have time to say good-bye properly. Giving his mother a quick hug, he turned to Elliott, but she was too busy getting herself ready to notice him. Then he and Drake rushed from the hallway and down the corridor to the kitchen. To Will’s surprise, Drake left the lights on in the room as he crossed to the back door, and even switched on the outside light.

“You’re going to wave this about once we’re mobile,” Drake said, handing him a powerful searchlight. “We want them to see us.”

“We do?” Will asked.

“Didn’t I tell you we’re the hare?” Drake said with a chuckle. “We’re going to draw the Styx after us and give Parry a chance to slip quietly away in the Bedford.”

They went toward the rear of the house, where there was a shed that Will had never bothered to investigate. As Drake swung the doors open, Will smelled gasoline, and in the small amount of moonlight, he could make out an angular vehicle. It had a windshield but no roof.

“My old jeep,” Drake said, throwing his equipment into the back. “Had it since I was a boy.”

“Whoa!” Will recoiled as a bizarre face loomed at him from out of the darkness.

“Keep your pants on, laddie,” Sweeney growled. He turned to Drake, who was already behind the steering wheel. “Heard our guests coming up the drive. Caught snatches of something I didn’t recognize — might be words, but it sounded bloody ugly.”

“They’ll be speaking Styx,” Will said. “That’s what their language sounds like.”

“Ah,” Sweeney said with a rumbling laugh. “The Stickies talk funny, then.”

“Both of you get a move on. Jump in!” Drake ordered. He was about to start the ignition, when he hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Sweeney sighed, pulling his hat down over his ears. “Vehicle electricals aren’t too painful for me, although the current in the alternator puts my teeth on edge something rotten.”

“No, I wasn’t thinking about that,” Drake said. “Why would Limiters speak during an operation? They’re too adroit, too good for that.” He shrugged, then started up the jeep, turning the headlights on full beam. “Time to shine that searchlight around,” he told Will.

Revving the engine to make as much noise as possible, Drake backed the jeep out of the shed, then raced around to the front of the house and onto the drive. The wheels were churning up the gravel as Will pointed the strong beam down the hill where the Styx would be advancing.

“That should do it, Will. No way they’ll have missed that!” Drake shouted above the roaring engine. He threw the jeep down the other side of the house, flooring the throttle to ensure it cleared a drainage ditch. Landing with a crash on the other side, they cut across several fields until Will saw a fence up ahead. But Drake didn’t stop, slamming straight through it and down an incline. “That’s the new north gate,” he laughed. “Lights out now, Will. Time to go dark.” He flipped his lens down at the same time as he extinguished the jeep’s headlights. “Silent running from here on in, chaps,” he said.

Everyone filed after Parry as he swept down the flight of stairs to the basement. He hurried through the dimly lit and dusty corridor, taking them past the gym, the wine vaults, and finally the armory. As he came to a door of reinforced metal plate at the end of the corridor, he stopped to check that everyone had kept up.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asked as Colly poked her head out from behind Mrs. Burrows.

Not waiting for an answer, he turned back to the door and, from across it, lifted out an iron locking bar laced with cobwebs. “I might need some help with this,” he said to Chester, indicating the grips on the side of the door. As they both heaved, it wouldn’t budge. Then, on the second attempt, the door burst open with a scatter of rust and dirt. Chester was greeted by a blast of damp air, and as Parry’s flashlight beam cut into the darkness beyond, he could make out some kind of brick duct.

“This chute leads down to the main drain. But mind yourself — it’s a mite slippery at the best of times,” Parry advised Chester, then gave him a hand through the opening. “Just slide yourself down it, nice and steady,” Parry added to the boy.

Chester found himself on a slimy incline of around forty-five degrees. With his bulky Bergen on his back and his Sten hooked over his shoulder, he shone his flashlight into the pitch black below as he edged down on his bottom. He hadn’t gone very far when the slope became so wet and slippery he couldn’t control his descent. He tried to lean back and dig his heels in to slow himself, but it was no use. He skidded down the slope, building up speed until, with a large splash, his feet hit several feet of water.

“Oh, just brilliant,” Chester grumbled, wiping the foul-smelling water from his face. As he straightened his Bergen on his back, his flashlight beam fell on a huge brown rat. At Chester’s cry of alarm, the rat took fright and scampered off. Parry had heard the cry and was calling to Chester.

“Are you all right?” he shouted down the chute.

“Why do I always
always
end up back in places like this?” Chester asked himself with a shiver. He shone his flashlight up at Parry, shouting, “Yes, I’m fine!”

Then, as the others slid down the chute, he helped them, making sure they didn’t injure themselves as they landed. It didn’t seem to present any problem to Mrs. Burrows, who was using her new supersense. Parry came last, speaking to them as soon as he touched down. “This is the main storm drain connecting the lake to the river — nice example of Edwardian hydroengineering. But now we need to get our skates on.” He immediately began to jog through the muddy water.

They all followed him, their lights ricocheting off the sides of the old tunnel built of ancient brick. Since he ran with a limp, it was clear that Parry found it taxing to move at speed. But Mr. Rawls was just as slow, losing his footing several times and falling into the water. Chester was there to help him up each time.

In less than ten minutes, they’d reached the end. The wind chilled them in their sodden clothing as they emerged into a culvert, its almost vertical sides overgrown with ferns and other vegetation. Some twenty feet away, as the culvert widened out, Chester spotted the dark outline of a truck. With his shotgun in his hands, Old Wilkie appeared from around the side of the vehicle, and he and Parry immediately began to talk to each other in hushed tones.

As the others approached the canvas awning over the back of the Bedford, Stephanie suddenly poked her head from under it. They were all soaking wet and splattered with mud, and for a moment, she regarded them with a look of consternation. Then she saw Chester. “Hi, it’s you! Gramps didn’t tell me you were coming, too.”

“Er . . . yeah,” Chester replied.

“Isn’t this sooo exciting! Nothing cool ever happens in this dump, and I, like, so adore this spy stuff. Guns and top-secret journeys in the night. It’s like being in a movie!”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Elliott inquired.

Chester was halfway through some mumbled introductions when Stephanie noticed Colly and gave a small whoop. “You found your dog thing!”

“Keep it down back there,” Parry growled.

“Ooooh, sorry,” Stephanie replied, just as piercingly, clapping her hand over her mouth as she made a silly face. “I’m always getting myself into trouble with my loud voice.”

“It’s not
the
dog thing,” Chester told her. “It’s the . . . er . . . the other dog thing. There are two of them.”

Stephanie nodded, aware that Elliott was staring up at her.

“Anyway, I want you to come and sit next to me. I want my skier next to me,” Stephanie said. “Whoosh, whoosh!” she added, moving her hips and laughing brightly.

“Whoosh?” Elliott repeated, frowning.

“Skier?” Mr. Rawls asked.

Chester gave them a helpless look, then swung his Bergen into the Bedford, and clambered up after it.

“And I’m not, like, sitting anywhere near those dead pigs and cows,” Stephanie said adamantly. Now that he was under the awning, Chester saw that against the rear of the truck cab a dozen or so crates and blue plastic drums had been stacked. And above them, animal carcasses wound in some kind of cloth had been suspended. “Ewwww! See what I mean,” Stephanie burst out as she pointed at the gently swaying carcasses. “They might drip something totally yuck on my coat.”

“No . . . yes, they might,” Chester agreed, wondering exactly how much she’d been told about their current situation.

“Are we leaving now?” Colonel Bismarck asked Parry as he came over.

“Yes, everyone needs to get in the Bedford. After a couple of hundred yards, the culvert drains into the river, which is running high for this time of year. So we’re all going to get wet,” Parry told them. He addressed the Colonel. “And I’d like you to ride shotgun.”

“
Ja.
Of course,” the Colonel replied, patting his assault rifle.

Once they’d all loaded their kit on the truck, and the tailgate had been secured, they arranged themselves along the benches on either side. Joining Old Wilkie in the cab, Parry fired up the engine, and they rolled down the slope until they’d fully emerged from the culvert. Then Parry dropped a gear and everyone was thrown around as the truck climbed over a gravel bank and into the river. Although it was difficult to see anything much in the darkness under the canvas awning, they could hear the water washing over the bed of the truck and slopping around their feet.

“Ohhh!” Stephanie gasped dramatically, lifting her boots up as she gripped Chester’s arm.

Drake drove the jeep off the track and a short distance into the trees. Then he used a machete to lop off some branches, which Will helped him to lay over the vehicle to conceal it.

They both returned to the track, where Sweeney had been waiting. The earflaps of his army hat were tied up, and his head was angled to one side as he faced the direction they’d just come from. “Nothing yet,” he told Drake, opening his shoulder bag. “Brought some welcoming gifts for your Stickies.” He took out a massive foot-long combat knife, gripping it between his teeth like a pirate as he continued to rummage in the bottom of the bag.

“You don’t carry a gun,” Will observed.

“Never been big on them,” Sweeney said, a grin just visible behind the knife in his mouth. He held out one of his huge hands and closed it as if gripping a throat, his knuckles popping like champagne corks. “Prefer to work with these. I can be more creative with them.” Then he found what he’d been looking for in his bag. “Ah, here we are.” He held up a pair of grenades. “Fresh pineapples.”

“Thanks,” Drake said, taking one as casually as if he was accepting a bar of chocolate. Then he and Will positioned themselves on one side of the track, Sweeney on the other, and they lay in wait. Drake had told Will he should concentrate on the area beside the track because any Limiter worth his salt would never approach straight down it. So, with his Sten gripped in his hands, Will kept careful watch. The tree trunks and shrubs were orange hued through the lens over his right eye, which allowed him to see the surroundings as clearly as if they were in daylight. He wondered how it looked to Sweeney with his enhanced vision.

After an hour of listening to the patter of rain, Will’s excitement had dulled. At the beginning, his heart had been thumping with anticipation at the prospect of catching the Limiters on the hop, but the damp was penetrating his clothes and making him very uncomfortable. Will suffered another two hours of this misery until Drake finally led him back to the path.

“Still nothing?” Drake asked as Sweeney appeared.

The huge man shook his head. “Not a flippin’ sausage.” He gave Will a passing glance. “Except for young laddie here yawning and shifting about on his rump like he’d sat on an anthill.”

“Sorry,” Will mumbled.

“They’ve had plenty of time to catch up,” Drake thought aloud, looking down the track. “There’s no way they could have missed us as we left, so they certainly knew which direction we’d taken.”

“Perhaps they’ve dug in around the house, hoping we’d be stupid enough to go back,” Sweeney suggested.

Drake examined the grenade Sweeney had given him. “Maybe,” he said.