“Serves you right for being such a short-arse,” said Melody. “JC, how the hell are we supposed to control a hell train? One that presumably works for, and takes its instructions from, the same Intruder that’s trying to drown us all in blood?”
“I’d bet Happy’s and Natasha’s minds against a hell train any day,” said JC.
The two telepaths looked at each other.
“Might work,” said Happy.
“Agents of the Institute and the Project, working together in common cause, against a common enemy?” said Natasha. “If word of this ever gets out, I’ll never hear the end of it. Still, needs must when the Devil vomits in your shoes. Let’s do it. But I want a piece of the Intruder just as badly as you do. If we get out of this alive, we go after it together. Fair shares for all. Yes?”
“Works for me,” said JC.
Happy and Natasha forced their way through the blood, to stand facing each other. The vampire sharks were still circling, drawing steadily closer as hunger drove them on. Erik stabbed at one of them with his pointing bone, and the creature immediately rolled over onto its back and sank beneath the waves. Blood churned and frothed around it as the others moved in. Melody gaped at Erik.
“How did you get that bone out of my pocket?”
“Heh-heh,” said Erik.
“We can call the hell train,” Happy said to Natasha. “But will it come? I don’t think we have the power to compel it, even working together.”
“You want power, I got power,” said Erik. “Or rather, my marvellous machine does. Excuse me . . .”
Another vampire shark blasted up out of the blood, rising high into the air to crash down on the group from above. Erik shot it down with his pointing bone, and it was already dead in mid air when JC backhanded the body away. It landed some distance away, and several of the creatures went after it.
“How can they still be hungry?” said Melody.
“Flesh is good, but it doesn’t satisfy,” Happy said absently. “They want blood. Our blood. Hot and spurting, right from the source.”
“We’ve killed enough of them! Why don’t they take the hint and go away?”
“Feel free to ask them,” said JC. “Erik, get your damned machine out.”
“Way ahead of you,” Erik said smugly.
He eased the cat-head computer out of his back-pack. The pack was soaked in blood, but the machine was untouched. Erik held it carefully out before him, above the surface of the rising blood, and turned it on. The three Institute agents watched with varying degrees of horror and disgust as the cat head opened its eyes wide and howled miserably.
“It’s crying,” said Happy. “The whole thing, not only the cat head. It’s alive and crying all the time.”
Erik smiled modestly, as though he’d been paid a compliment.
“I do good work. Now, pay attention. Happy, Natasha, reach out with your thoughts and locate our elusive hell train, and the computer will boost your strength, for a time. Make you powerful enough to compel the train to come here and pick us up. But don’t take too long, or you’ll burn out the box. Or yourselves. We’re working in unknown territory here. Come on, come on, shake something useful. You don’t want the nice cat head to explode, do you?”
“Ignore him,” said Natasha. “I do, as much as possible.”
The two telepaths leaned forward until their foreheads were almost touching, and their thoughts jumped out and meshed together, joining with the cold machine thoughts to form a single gestalt consciousness, far greater than the sum of its parts. The wildly moving parts of the machine blazed up, blindingly bright, and Happy and Natasha and the cat head howled together like a crazed animal. Erik looked thoughtfully at his machine and wondered if he truly understood what he’d created.
Three minds in one reached out through the miles of underground tunnels and quickly found the hell train, hiding in a side tunnel that didn’t properly exist. It screamed briefly as they took hold of it, and pulled, and the hell train erupted out of the far tunnel-mouth, pushing a great bow wave of blood ahead of it. Vampire sharks made harsh grunting sounds as the train ran them over and crushed them under its great weight. The hell train ploughed more of them under as it slammed though the blood, finally slowing to a halt beside the platform. The blood rose half-way up the cars, steaming and boiling where it touched the steel sides.
The car doors nearest the telepaths jerked open. Blood immediately gushed into the empty space. JC led the way forward, broaching the still-rising blood with his chest, forcing his way through the sheer weight of it. The others pressed in close behind him. Kim drifted above the surface, murmuring encouraging words and keeping an eye out for attacking vampires. By the time all of them had struggled through the doors, Erik carrying his computer on top of his head, the car was half-full of blood. The doors moved jerkily forward, tried to close, then stopped abruptly. JC and Melody grabbed a door each and forced them together. One last vampire shark threw itself against the closed doors, and they shuddered under the impact. The vampire fell away, still snapping its great jaws. The blood surged up, rising above the door, as though angry at being cheated of its prey.
JC turned to Happy and Natasha. “Right, we’re all in. Get us the hell out of here!”
The train surged forward, throwing them all off-balance. The blood in the car rolled heavily back and forth. And then the train picked up speed, driven on by the three joined minds. The blood finally filled the station, but the train was off and moving, plunging into the tunnel, through the blood and out into the darkness beyond.
The train roared on through the dark, the car lurching heavily from side to side as the blood slowly drained away. The five agents waited until the seats reappeared, then collapsed onto them and relaxed as best they could. Happy and Natasha sat shoulder to shoulder, the same radiant expression on their faces. Melody watched them warily, her machine-pistol on her lap. Erik cuddled his computer on his lap and spoke comforting nonsense to the cat head, which ignored him. Kim couldn’t actually sit down, as such, but she did her best, floating a few inches above the seat next to JC. He smiled, to show he appreciated the effort. They were all soaked in blood, to varying degrees, and the smell was appalling. Melody frowned suddenly.
“Excuse me. This may be a silly question, but who’s driving this train? And do they have any particular destination in mind?”
“We are driving,” said Natasha, not looking round, her voice disturbingly far away. “We are in control. And a little less distraction would be fine by us. This isn’t easy, you know.”
“The train is fighting us,” said Happy. His voice sounded eerily like Natasha’s. “It isn’t really a train, you know. It’s something the Intruder brought with it and made over into a train. So it could abduct commuters without being suspected. The Intruder has a use for commuters.”
JC leaned forward. “What use?”
“The train doesn’t know,” said Natasha. “It doesn’t ask questions. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it’s sentient, but it’s as close as dammit. A living construct, something the Intruder made to love and serve it.”
“So the enemy can make real things,” said JC. “Not only illusions.”
“It’s growing stronger all the time,” said Happy. “The longer it stays in our world, the stronger it gets. Our world . . . is just something for it to play with. To change and manipulate as it chooses.”
“What is it?” JC said urgently. “Can you see what it is?”
“Old,” said Natasha. “So very old, and wild, and horribly powerful. It’s come here to kill us all. Isn’t it all simply too exciting for words?”
“Ignore her,” said Erik. “I do, as much as possible.”
“Take us back to our original base, on the southbound platform,” said JC. “You said you needed your equipment, Melody.”
“Damn right.” She looked at Happy and leaned forward to stare into his face. “Are you all right? Your face is flushed, and the sweat is pouring off you. Have
you been . . .”
“Don’t need them,” said Happy. “For the moment. I’ve never experienced power like this. It’s like running in a top gear you didn’t even know existed.”
Melody checked the pulse in his neck, then laid her hand briefly across his sweltering forehead. “Happy, you’re burning up! Your body isn’t designed to operate under such pressure!”
“Nothing we can do,” said Natasha. Her face was flushed and perspiring heavily, too. “If we lose control of this train, even for a moment, it’ll turn on us. But don’t worry. This really is quite exhilarating.”
“Yes,” said Happy. “Lovely.”
Melody moved to sit at JC’s other side, so she could lean in close and whisper. “They’re spending too long locked together. They’re already acquiring each other’s speech patterns. God knows what information she’s picking out of his brain, or what nasty habits he’s picking up from her. We need to separate them while we still can.”
“We can’t do anything until the train gets us where we’re going,” said JC. “You have to work your instruments, find us a way to fight back.”
“Oh right; load everything on me.”
“We all do what we have to,” said JC. “Now concentrate. The first thing we need is some idea of who or what our unseen enemy is. We need a name, an identity, some indication of its powers and limitations. And, hopefully, its weak spots. Next, we need to nail down its exact physical location in the Underground. It used the energies created by Kim’s murder to open a portal onto this plane, and now it’s using her continued ghostly existence to maintain its presence in our world. That makes it vulnerable. So we have to find and face the Intruder, hurt it enough to weaken it, then break the bonds that connect it to Kim so we can drive it out of our world and slam the door shut behind it.”
“Oh,” said Melody. “Is that all?”
“Isn’t he wonderful?” said Kim, beaming. “He’s got a plan for everything!”
“Not necessarily,” said Melody. “It could be that the only way to banish the Intruder from our world . . . is to remove the focal point that holds this haunting together. Which is you, Kim. Your existence makes the Intruder’s presence possible. To get rid of him . . .”
“We don’t know that for sure,” said JC. “There’s a lot of things we don’t know for sure yet.”
“But could you sacrifice her?” said Melody relentlessly. “If that’s what it takes?”
“He won’t have to,” said Kim. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary to save my world.”
“Isn’t she wonderful?” said JC.
“You poor damned fools,” said Melody. “There’s no way this can have a happy ending.”
She turned her back on JC and Kim and wouldn’t look at them for the rest of the journey.
The train brought them back to the southbound platform without incident. The car doors opened, a little blood leaked out, and everyone disembarked. Melody ran straight to her waiting equipment and did her best to embrace them all at once.
“Babies!” she said, not caring who heard her. “Mommy’s back, and everything’s going to be fine again.” She straightened up suddenly. “All right, who’s been messing with my equipment? These aren’t the settings I established. Somebody had better speak up right now if they like having their testicles where they are.”
“It was me, I admit it!” said Eric. “I was very careful, and very respectful.” He looked at Natasha. “And I think I’m going to hide behind you for a while if that’s all right with you.”
Natasha’s head snapped round suddenly, looking behind her. Happy’s head turned, too, at the exact same moment. Everyone else turned to look and found that the hell train had vanished, without a sound. Natasha let out her breath in a long sigh and shook her head slowly. Happy mopped sweat from his face with a handkerchief and smiled sickly.
“Wow, what a rush . . . Can’t say I’m sorry it’s over, though.” He glared at Natasha. “That woman has a mind like a bucketful of boiling cats. Sharp and vicious and downright nasty.”
“You loved it,” Natasha said calmly. “Your mind isn’t exactly a luxury hotel. I’ve never lived in such a small place. Though there were many interesting new chemical flavours . . . It’s a wonder to me your synapses still function.”
Happy looked at JC. “Don’t ever ask me to do that again. There aren’t enough pills in the world to flush that woman’s thoughts out of my head. I may put in for compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“You were born with that,” said JC.
“True.”
And then they all stopped talking to look at Kim as she advanced slowly but remorselessly on Erik. He backed away, clutching his cat-head computer to his chest. There was something new about Kim, something different, and disturbing. As though she wore the cold presence of death like a cloak. Erik swallowed hard as Kim drifted down the platform after him.
“What . . . what do you want?” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “I’ve been good. I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me.”
“Put down the computer,” said Kim.
Erik clutched the machine tightly. “No. It’s mine. I made it. I dreamed it up. I made it real.”
“Put down the computer,” said Kim. “While you still can.”
Erik looked into her eyes, and whimpered. He put the box down on the platform and scuttled quickly backwards. Kim knelt and peered into the cat head’s unblinking eyes. It tried to purr for her.
“Poor little kitty,” said Kim. “No more screaming, no more crying. Sleep.” She extended her ghostly hand down through the cat head and into the glowing workings of the box beneath; and the whole computer shuddered. It turned and twisted unnaturally, imploded, and was gone in a puff of displaced air. The cat’s head was left behind on the platform, quite dead. Kim smiled and turned back to face the others.
“It’s at peace now,” she said.
Melody looked at JC, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.
“Work your equipment,” he said. “Find me the answers I need to take the fight to the enemy. I want this over with.”
He walked off down the platform, and Kim drifted after him. They tried to walk arm in arm, but their arms kept passing in and out of each other.
NINE
LITTLE BILLY HARTMAN GETS HIS REWARD
Unknown to all the agents in the Underground, there was someone else down in the station with them. Lost and alone, little Billy Hartman went scurrying through the empty corridors like a rat in a sewer. Not very big, never very big, Billy stuck to the shadows, hiding behind corners and peering warily through entranceways. No coat, only a grubby sweater and stained jeans, and a pair of knock-off trainers that had never been fashionable. Half out of his mind with fear and panic, driven on by rage and resentment, tormented by horror and loathing for the awful thing he’d done, little Billy spied on all the other people from a safe distance. None of them noticed him, but then, no-one ever did. He was far too small to be noticed by such powerful people.
And besides, Billy was protected.
He heard them speak, heard them argue, heard of the Carnacki Institute and the Crowley Project; but these names meant nothing to him. He listened to the great people, as they spoke of theories and fears and intentions, and didn’t care about any of that, either. He only had thoughts for himself and what might become of him. He’d done something, something big and important that no-one could ever put right again. If they knew, if they only knew . . .
The day before, Billy Hartman had murdered Kim Sterling. Even though he had no real reason, no motive, no idea who she was. He’d never killed anyone before, never really wanted to. He wasn’t a murderer, wasn’t a beast or a monster. He was a little man with a little life and less ambition. A small cog in a small wheel in a small company that no-one else gave a damn about. But he woke up that morning with murder on his mind, and he couldn’t seem to shift it. He wanted to kill a beautiful woman . . . like all the ones who’d laughed a
t him, or spurned him, or worse still, ignored him. He wanted to hurt one of them the way they had hurt him. To strike back, just once, and let them feel the pain.
So he took a big knife from his tiny kitchen in his shabby little flat and went out into the great big world, humming cheerfully. He descended into the Underground, and travelled up and down the lines, switching from platform to platform until finally . . . he saw her. And knew immediately that she was the one. He’d thought it would be a hard thing, a difficult thing, to actually kill another human being; but when the time came, he walked up behind her, stabbed her once in the back, and walked away. No-one saw or suspected him. Why should they? He was far too small and unimportant to be noticed. He went back to his flat, still humming cheerfully, made himself a meal-for-one in his little microwave, watched television, and went to bed.
To dream of how it felt when the blade went in, and he twisted it, before withdrawing. He didn’t enjoy it. It felt like someone else’s dream.
But this morning, a new feeling had driven him from his bed. The feeling that something had gone wrong. The morning news said that Oxford Circus Tube Station had been shut down, and serious news presenters said the word murder in their serious voices. And suddenly Billy knew he had to go back, that he had to go back down into the Underground and make sure there was no evidence left to link him to the crime. He couldn’t have anyone finding out what he’d done. That would be awful.
Sneaking back in had proved surprisingly easy. On any other day the massed forces of uniformed police and security guards would have intimidated him into a frozen panic; but not that day. He walked right past them, and they never saw him. Partly because he was, after all, a small and insignificant person, but also because Someone was looking out for him. He could feel it. Someone big and powerful was protecting him.
He walked right past them, right under their noses, and they couldn’t see him.