Underlife by Robert Finn (different e readers txt) 📕

>He said, “Yeah, well, that’s very nice, but I’m sure you’d get over it. Go on, at least try.”

She shook her head again. “Look, I don’t see that either of them,” she flicked her eye towards the cab, “are actually trying to hurt me. You go if you want,” she said and nodded towards Sebastian, “but someone should look after him.” Then she took the wadded tie from him and pressed it more firmly against Sebastian’s wound, adding, “It’s not like you’re very good at first aid.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking. He thought maybe she was trying; it was just difficult with all the adrenaline. He whispered, “And you are? I thought you swindled people for a living.”

She shrugged and said, “Well… before the swindling I had a year of vet’s school. OK?”

He didn’t bother to reply to that. He could see how anyone listening to them might think they were arguing. It certainly sounded like it. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt like they were agreeing to stay together for a little longer. Clipper was surprised at how much better that made him feel.

At the back of the carriage Warren was triumphantly pulling off his damaged boot. He tipped it up, allowing a thin trickle of blood to run out. Tossing the boot behind him, he stepped into the doorway of the rear cab. With one boot on and one off, he was walking like a peg-legged pirate, but the look on his face was serious enough.

With Warren blocking the doorway Clipper couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but a moment later there was another gunshot, the flash lighting up the dim cab, but not for long enough to let Clipper see anything, and then there was a rushing noise which didn’t go away — in fact a moment later it jumped in volume again. The train was suddenly much noisier and cold air was moving quickly through the compartment.

Clipper tried to peer past Warren to see what was happening. It looked like the door at the back of the rear cab was now open. Clipper was seeing straight out into the tunnel beyond and he could catch the occasional glimpse of Kieran flailing around. With a shock, Clipper realised he must be hanging off the rear of the train. Clipper caught a glimpse of him holding on with one hand, while the other struggled to clasp his briefcase to his chest.

Even though the train was travelling more slowly than normal, the steel rails were still sliding past at maybe thirty miles an hour and there was nothing either side of them but concrete. Without meaning to, Clipper found himself picturing what a collision with metal and masonry at that sort of speed would be like — never mind the six hundred volts of electricity crackling through the live rail.

He could hardly bear to watch. There didn’t seem to be any way back for Kieran; he had pretty much run out of options. His one hope would be to stop resisting and plead with Warren to help him back onto the train. Otherwise it would only be a matter of time. But it didn’t look like Kieran was going to do that. Clipper’s insides bunched at the thought of what came next.

And then, a moment later, his fears became real. Kieran pitched backwards and was snatched from sight, and Clipper could hardly stop himself from yelling out. He found he’d jammed the knuckles of his right hand into his mouth without realising it. From the glimpse he’d seen it was difficult to tell if Kieran had just lost his grip. It almost looked like he’d jumped. Clipper stared in disbelief for one very long second.

Then the moment passed and there was a bright spitting flash just beyond the rear of the train and fat, angry sparks filled the tunnel behind them. Clipper thought he heard a scream over the noise of the train, but he couldn’t be sure. Then there was a loud wooden slap as all the brakes came on simultaneously and at the same moment all the lights in the train went out.

In total darkness, the train pitched beneath them as screeching wheels tried to bring several hundred of tons of metal to an instant halt. Broken glass and unidentified debris tumbled forwards. Blindly, Rachel gripped Clipper’s arm in the dark and he reflexively grabbed onto her as they tried to avoid being flung across the carriage towards metal handrails and hard corners they could no longer see. She must have had hold of something solid because she was able to stop them both from being thrown around. Her unbreakable grip kept him from taking a dive headfirst into the dark.

Endless moments later the train had squealed and lurched to a final halt. And then, with the power off, it was abruptly silent — the sudden peace occasionally interrupted by pings, creaks and hisses as parts of the train cooled and contracted.

A few moments later emergency lights came on in the compartment and they could see again, though more dimly than before. It took Clipper a second or two to realise that his fingers were still digging deep into the flesh of Rachel’s arm. It must have hurt like hell but she didn’t show it. He released his grip and said, “God I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. I was just trying to hold on.”

“I know,” she said, simple acceptance in her voice. Then she looked around, peering towards the rear cab. “Did you see what happened in there?” she asked. “Did he fall? I couldn’t tell.”

“I think he might even have jumped,” Clipper said, “but I couldn’t see properly.” He realised how loud their voices sounded now.

Then he shrugged, without quite knowing why, and said a little more quietly, “I heard that you have a fifty-fifty chance of missing the live rail. We were going slowly; maybe he thought it was worth risking it.” What he didn’t add was that it really said something about Warren’s reputation if the people he chased were willing to throw themselves off a moving train to get away from him.

As he finished speaking, it belatedly occurred to Clipper to wonder what had happened to Warren. Was he busy with something in the cab? Or maybe he’d fallen too? It hadn’t looked like it, but perhaps Kieran had grabbed hold of him at the last moment and they’d tumbled onto the tracks together. Clipper couldn’t help hoping that’s what had taken place. But if Warren didn’t appear soon, Clipper really was going to begin edging the pair of them towards the door to the next compartment.

And where was the driver? Shouldn’t there be an announcement? Wouldn’t the intercom system work even on emergency power?

Or maybe there was a limit to the number of bullets you could fire into a tube carriage before you broke something important. Gary was always telling him things about the trains and the Underground, and encouraging him to find out more. Now Clipper wished he’d followed up on that.

Despite all those unanswered questions, he found his thoughts kept coming back to Rachel. He studied her face. “So, are you OK?” he asked her. She was busy checking Sebastian over. She looked up at him without saying anything and he found he couldn’t read her at that moment. Nevertheless, something about the feel of her eyes on his affected him, just like it had done when he’d first seen her. He found himself volunteering: “I’m sorry I ran off before, when we were outside.”

She was staring at him now and her hands had stopped moving, though her face still gave no sign of what she was thinking. He explained, “I got a bit scared,” and then he laughed, adding, “Seems silly compared to all this.”

And finally he said, “It was… really good talking to you. I meant to say that to you. Before.”

Rachel said nothing for a while and then spoke quietly: “I… know what you mean. You caught me off guard. It seemed like… there might have been… more for us to talk about.” She was obviously even more awkward about putting this it into words than him.

Clipper’s instinct was to make a joke: “But, you know, here we are. We got a chance to have another chat after all.” He did his best to give her a smile, so she’d know he was trying to cheer her up. She snorted in a way that he read as meaning a smile in return was expecting too much but she appreciated the effort. After a moment, she returned her attention to Sebastian.

The train had been stationary for a full minute by now and Clipper had begun to wish he’d being doing something useful instead of talking. If he’d got them out of that carriage straightaway they could have been half way down the train by now. Whether that would have done them any good, was another question.

Rachel had finished making Sebastian comfortable. He was barely conscious. He’d been shaken around as the train’s brakes had locked but Rachel had propped him up again, hoping to slow the bleeding a little, and was once more pressing the wadded tie to his neck. The pool of blood around him was ominously wide now. And splotches of it were starting to get everywhere — on their shoes and clothes. Rachel’s hands and dark blouse were streaked with it and a dark red smudge had somehow made its way to her forehead. Clipper tried to guess at the volume of blood. He found he had to imagine it was some more familiar liquid before he could even begin to work out how much you’d have to spill to make that much mess. It had to be more than a pint. Probably more like two.

“What do you think we should do?” Clipper asked. “I know he’s in a pretty bad state,” he nodded towards Sebastian, “but I really don’t trust these people. I still think we should make a run for it.”

Rachel was obviously working it through in her mind. After a minute she said, “Listen Matt, you don’t know what that guy Kieran had done or who he was. I don’t think I trust this Warren guy any more than you do, but he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone else. He definitely wasn’t the one firing in all directions: any of us could have been killed.” She looked down at Sebastian. “And you don’t even know who this is, do you?” He nodded, conceding the point. She said, “I need a pretty strong reason if I’m going to leave someone to bleed to death.”

He could see she was making up her mind as she was speaking. Now she nodded to herself, the decision made. “I think we should go and see what happened to Warren. And we have to do what we can for this guy.”

Clipper wasn’t so sure. It seemed fairly likely to him that Warren was going to cause them both some real trouble soon enough. If Warren had killed Gary then he was absolutely ruthless, because Gary wouldn’t have been a threat — he wouldn’t have talked or caused trouble. What reason would anyone have for getting rid of him, except to shut him up permanently? If that was a reason to kill, then Warren obviously considered those around him disposable.

On the other hand, if Warren was now dead — if he’d fallen onto the rails along with Kieran — then Clipper wouldn’t mind knowing that.

Slightly against his better judgement he said, “I suppose I should go and look. You can do more for this bloke than I can.”

Rachel shook her head as if to say that what she could do for him wasn’t that much — but she