Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

Clipper was trying to remember what else he knew about underground trains besides the words ‘traction current’. He knew one of the reasons the door on the back of the train folded down to make a set of steps was to evacuate passengers if something went wrong. And obviously London Underground didn’t want people to be electrocuted as soon as they stepped off the ramp. Yeah, that was it: there was a locker full of emergency bits and pieces in the cab somewhere. He was trying to think what the item he needed was called. His brain kept insisting it was a JCB, but he knew that wasn’t it. Then he had it: an SCD. Short circuit device. It was like a long clamp that fitted across the rails. He’d never seen one, but he knew about them. If the electricity came on, the SCD sent it straight into the other rails and sort of blew the fuse.

Clipper was nodding reluctantly now. “OK. I know there’s a gadget in the cab we can use to make sure the power stays off,” Clipper said, “I just need a bit of rope maybe. To lower it onto the track.”

Warren looked at him questioningly.

Clipper said, “Look I’ll do what you say, but I’m not going to dab my finger against the live rail to see if it’s on. There should be a short-circuit thing in the driver’s cab and then we just need a way to lower it down so that I can tell whether the juice is on or not.”

“Fair enough,” Warren said, sounding impatient. “Get your short-circuit whatever-it-is. I’ve got some line here.” He slipped his backpack off and unzipped one of the compartments. Reaching in, he pulled out a bunched coil of black rope. It was no thicker than clothesline, but it had an expensive satiny sheen to it that suggested it might be a lot stronger than clothesline, maybe some kind of superfibre.

Warren undid the coil of rope and produced a metal multi-tool gadget from one of his pockets. He thumbed open a wicked looking knife blade and held it up.

“How much line do you need,” Warren asked. As he spoke, the tip of the knife drifted close to Rachel’s face; it was almost absentminded, but Clipper was sure it was intentional. All part of helping Clipper picture what would happen if he legged it away down the tunnel instead of doing as he was told.

“I dunno, about ten feet,” Clipper said. And then an idea like a snap of static electricity popped into his head. Bam. There it was.

It was more than a little bit crazy and right away he wondered whether he should forget about it. On the other hand, there was a chance it would work.

Warren was parcelling out the rope, getting ready to cut it, and waving the knife around near Rachel’s skin. That clinched it in Clipper’s mind. He didn’t have to go through with his idea, he just had to set it up. He might need something up his sleeve if things with Warren really turned bad.

Half distracted, trying to think it through, Clipper said, “Nah, don’t worry about cutting it.” He reached out and Warren shrugged and handed him the rope.

Clipper was putting the steps together in his mind, ticking off the order of events.

“What’s so funny?” Warren asked suspiciously. “Are you high or something?”

Clipper realised he’d been smiling. The idea that was even now unfolding itself in his brain had originally come from something Gary had said. It felt like one last gift from his old buddy, exactly when he needed it most. And that had made him smile.

“No,” said Clipper, “It’s just been a strange day, you know?” Warren gave him a look that suggested he thought Clipper was insane.

Setting the rope down on the seat nearest him, Clipper said, “Let me get the short circuit thing.” He walked away from Warren and into the dim cab. As soon as he stepped into the gloom he started violently, having forgotten that Sebastian’s corpse was waiting in there, leaning against the wall in the dark, legs out in front of him, staring into forever.

Doing his best to ignore the dead man’s gaze he looked around for anything that might be an equipment locker. It was easy enough to find; he undid the lock and opened the hinged cover. Inside he could see a shovel and an ice scraper, a folded tarpaulin and a long complicated looking metal rod that had to be the SCD. He wrestled it free of its clips and closed the cover.

The idea that had popped into his head a moment before was still there, occupying part of his attention, and as it assembled itself he was able to see it from different sides. At that very moment, he spotted a problem and just as quickly realised the answer. Before he could change his mind, he set the SCD aside and crouched over Sebastian’s corpse. He’d just watched Warren fetch out a bundle of rope from his backpack. As swiftly as he could, he checked the same compartment in Sebastian’s pack… and came up with an identical bundle of silky futuristic-looking line. Hastily he tossed it out onto the track, throwing it as far as he could and hoping that Warren wasn’t watching. Then he tried to prop Sebastian’s corpse back up, so that it was just as Warren had left it. Arranging the heavy limbs felt horribly wrong and Clipper had to avoid looking at the dead face or brushing against any bare skin. He did the best he could and left it. Then he grabbed the SCD and stepped back into the passenger compartment.

Warren was closer now that he had been; probably coming to investigate. Clipper held up the metal device and picked up the rope.

“You any good at knots?” Warren asked, sceptically.

Clipper knew a few. Like he’d told Rachel, he’d worked at a stables for a little while. You couldn’t be around horses for long and not learn a bit about tying a knot. He shrugged noncomittally.

Warren interpreted that as a ‘no’ and took the SCD from him. He expertly wrapped a couple of turns of line around the centre of the device, did some clever looping and threading, and then pulled the whole thing tight. The SCD was now dangling from a little cradle of rope at its centre.

“Now get on with it,” Warren said, handing the whole thing back to Clipper. “I want his bag and all his personal belongings. Make sure you get any paperwork or computer stuff: disks, memory cards. Don’t miss anything.”

Clipper nodded and then looked across to Rachel to see how she was doing. She looked like she wanted to say something. Clipper was half expecting her to say ‘hurry back’ or ‘see you in a minute’. Then again, maybe she still wasn’t sure he would return. So he said it for her: “I’ll be back as quick as I can.” She nodded, like she was doing her best to believe him.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Warren impatiently and followed Clipper as he made his way to the rear exit steps.

Clipper got as far as: “I’m going to need…” half turning to say it, when Warren handed him a maglite, one of the little ones, about as long as his hand. “Right,” Clipper said, taking it from him and turning it on. Then he stepped down to the last rung of the ramp and began lowering the SCD towards the live rail.

He wasn’t quite sure what he expected to happen — a loud bang, a spark like a bolt of lightning, maybe the SCD would fly up in the air — but the reality was an anti-climax. He dangled the device, making sure it linked the live rail to the others and still nothing happened.

So he hopped down onto the level of the track and fiddled with the SCD until he had it fitted tightly into place. Then he dragged in a deep breath struggling against a chest that felt far too tight and started walking down the tunnel, away from the train and into the dark.

*

Rachel caught glimpses of Matt’s flashlight beam as it bobbed and swung, gradually receding into the gloom of the tunnel. She was sitting on one of the rows of passenger seats just outside the driver’s cab. Near her right toe was the bullet hole and splash of blood where Warren had been hit. To the other side of her, in the open space by the double doors, was a broad dark layer of drying blood within which Sebastian had died.

She sat now with her hands in her lap, the nail of one thumb fidgeting against the cuticles of her index finger, her mind fretting just like her hands. Turning her head, she could look over to where her bags lay among the seats, beyond all the blood, just as she’d left them. All ready to go. She tried to imagine for a moment how this nightmare could be sorted out, how she could still find herself on a plane in a few hour’s time. The thing was, she could easily picture herself queuing to check in, shuffling those bags forwards a few feet at a time, frustrated that it was taking so long. She could see herself a little later, sitting on hard seats at the gate, among noisy families and sprawled teenagers in headphones, waiting for the announcement to board. Then she’d be on the plane. By midnight, she’d be drowsy and warm, her head propped on a tiny pillow, leaning against her business-class window, watching the faint thread of lights miles below and the occasional flash of moonlight from iced-over lakes. It was easy enough to imagine, and the idea comforted her, but it wasn’t real. None of it was going to happen. Right now, it was difficult to believe she was even going to get off this train.

This disaster of a day was not just outside her experience, it was outside of what she had ever expected to experience. She knew bad things happened to people out there in the world, and like anyone who’d ever seen cable news, she’d thought about them happening to her — but not anything like this — not the impossible things she’d seen. They somehow made this ordeal seem… she wanted to say ‘unfair’. It wasn’t a word she ever used, but there were enough horrors in life you had to prepare for without the world free-associating new nightmares on the spur of the moment. What she’d seen shouldn’t have happened.

Nevertheless, here was Warren. Only a few minutes ago he’d trapped the air in her lungs and held her arms pinned to her sides using only — so far as she could see — an angry look. And a few minutes before that she was pretty sure a bullet aimed right at his chest had lost its way and ended up in the ceiling of the train. Warren was a glaring error, a blatant mistake in her understanding of the world.

And yet she’d lived twenty-eight years without encountering anything like him. Her previous life had given no clue to the existence of anyone like Warren. And that left two possibilities. The first was that the world made no sense: it could spontaneously flip into some new mode that ran on different rules, and everything you thought you knew could just slide into chaos. The second possibility was that Warren, and anyone else out there who was like him, were a very tiny part of the world — so tiny that most of humanity went their whole lives without an encounter like this. That was the only explanation that made sense, the only way