The Terminus Read online

  The warden left Beetie to dress and make herself beautiful with an array of toiletries. All the time, struggling to fight off the effects of the injection, she held on to a vision of the boy; she begged him to speak inside her head and repeat to her those words of poetry she’d heard from the Chairman, some of which she had committed to her fading memory. A false mellow happiness overwhelmed her… a result of the injection. She became quite elated, but, strangely, this time the boy inside her became stronger, not weaker. He was far from disappearing! She got so desperate for him to be with her, to hold her and oh, to kiss her lips again, she closed her eyes and traced the imagined contours of his face. Using a finger she wrote ‘G-A-R-Y’ in the air then giggled. A little more eye shadow… just for Gary?

  On the warden’s return, Beetie was sitting dutifully in the chair in front of the computer screen.

  “Anything to tell me, girl?” asked the warden.

  “Oh… like I want to hug the whole world!” the girl tittered.

  “Hmmm! Might be enough! Anything else?”

  “I... I want… um…” Beetie put her hands on her knees, gazed upwards, starry eyed, and replied, “I want him to touch me a-a-a-all over! I want… I wish… oh, if only everything would come true!”

  “The Chairman?”

  “Aaaaah!” Beetie let out a long, doleful sigh. “Him! Oh him, him, him!”

  “I wonder! No time to give you another shot, anyway. He’s here!”

  The computer screen flickered into action, and Teeth appeared, his face stony-grave.

  “Are you ready for your preparatory lesson, Belinda?”

  “Oh, yes, yes... yes! Please! I can’t wait any longer!”

  She smiled prettily for the Chairman, and her smile was made strong by thoughts of a boy from the past whose image grew more real by the minute; a face now curiously solid inside her head. Beetie was as much the boy as she was herself. Together they were prepared for anything… including her first lesson.

  Chapter 8: To Believe or Not to Believe

  “One step closer and you’re a frozen duck!”

  Mike edged towards Blinker, his mag-stunner aimed at the other boy. Like a terrier, he’d defend his friend to the death. Being outnumbered, their situation was hopeless, although Gary did wonder why they hadn’t already both been zapped or speared. Standing defiantly beside Gary still sprawled out on the ground, Mike challenged Blinker.

  “Leave us alone, can’t you?” Blinker remained silent, a faceless shadow against the bright yellow light. “You lot have your stupid bloody prehistoric tablet… and a fat lot of thanks I got for all the work I put in getting the damn thing for you. Risked a bloody detention centre, even! Why can’t you let us flipping get on with our lives in the past now?”

  Blinker spoke:

  “So Redfor’s back in your place seeking out the real God?”

  “I don’t get it!” Gary said, painfully picking himself up. Mike put his hand out to help his friend. “Just kill us and be done with it... but bloody let Beetie go free!”

  “You left Redfor in the past to help God out, right?”

  “What are you on about, you bastard?” Gary asked tetchily. “Not sure I believe in your other God, anyway. The bearded man. Just tell me one thing…” He paused, narrowing his eyes to take in the features of the boy from the future. How he wanted to kill him as that last fleeting image of Beetie’s frightened face flashed across his mind. “Beetie... why? Tell me why!” he demanded.

  “It was all planned,” answered Blinker. “Between her and me.”

  Gary staggered to within punching distance of the boy from the future to see his face better.

  “What are you talking about? She hated you.”

  “Yes… and no. We fell out a lot, sure, but we were a team. Working for the real God.”

  “Which God?” Gary tightened his fist. He reckoned the other boy’s chin would make a perfect target.

  Knock his head backwards… hard enough for it to bloody fall off?

  “Gary, you of all people should know we’ve only one God! Problem is can we trust Redfor?”

  “Hang on! You said you’d planned this whole thing with Beetie... then had her carted off to the Hatcheries trussed up in a bloody net?”

  “She was gonna be sent there anyway. I found a way of intercepting Arthry’s tele-messages when we began to suspect him. She had to get there first… find out things… and you were supposed to rescue her, you dumb fool!”

  “Wait a minute! You two suspected Arthry? Of working for the Agenda? That’s not what Beetie told me! She had doubts about you… and as far as I’m concerned she’s been proved correct.”

  “You’ve no idea what’s going on!”

  “Did you touch her? Kiss her… or… or do things with her in that little cell?”

  The thought of anyone else making love to Beetie was unbearable.

  “Kiss? Never heard of the word!”

  “Don’t play games, you bastard! Were you and she lovers?”

  Mike grabbed his friend’s arm. He was only too familiar with Gary’s outbursts of temper.

  “Cool it, Gary!” he cautioned.

  “Beetie and I work for God,” continued Blinker. “But only I have actually met him since we came from the Hatcheries.”

  “Describe the real God!”

  “Like you told Arthry. White hair and a long beard. He understands how important Beetie is to The Agenda… and to us. He can’t stop them by himself. They’d destroy him and everyone else if he tried. As for Beetie and me being lovers, if you mean ‘coming together’… impossible! Shows how little you know about this place. We’re from the same Hatchery. Brother and sister, but never lovers!”

  “Promise?”

  Gary relaxed his fist... slightly.

  “All to do with what happened in the Hatcheries before we got let out, I guess. The way we were re-programmed. Gary, we both care so much about the world. And London.” Blinker’s face, being in shadow, was unreadable although the nervous twitch was visible. “Now that they’ve got the Pentatron Tablet, thanks to you, the Chairman’ll soon be taking Beetie on to the Terminus. With those other girls imprisoned in the Hatcheries. Well and truly messed things up, haven’t you!”

  “Hang on... you let them cart Beetie back to the Hatcheries then you blame me?” He was still haunted by an image of Beetie struggling in that net... and of Blinker’s laughter.

  “Not so much ‘let’. Couldn’t stop the girl from following this through. Beetie understood the risks but was passionate about saving our species.”

  “You’re lying! We’d planned for her to come back in time with me. After nicking the other time-specs. We were gonna track down God together and… hey, what…?”

  Beefor was chuckling. Gary’s fist tightened again.

  “I kinda doubt he would ever want to meet up with you. Anyway, we haven’t much time left ’cos you’ve gone and given Arthry and the Chairman the tablet. I’d planned to hold on to the thing myself… for God.”

  “Who the heck is the Chairman?”

  “In there with Arthry. The Agenda boss… Arthry’s too, it seems. The other God. The man the real God thought might one day help him protect London but who seems to want to destroy everything to save himself and a chosen few.”

  “Including Beetie?”

  “The Chairman and Arthry call her ‘Belinda’ now.”

  “Belinda?”

  “Uhuh! It’s complicated, but our God thinks only she can stop this from happening. ’Cos she’s special. Why God seemed so sure you could save the rest of us by helping her I can’t figure out, but I’ll say one thing… you’re persistent!”

  Gary didn’t like what he heard. Beetie one of the chosen few? Chosen for what… and as ‘Belinda’? He sensed his temper edge towards the touch line.

  “Okay then! I’ll go back into the Retreat and kick the shit out of Teeth and Arthry until they tell me what’s happening.”

  Mike’s hand had tightened around Gar
y’s arm. Blinker laughed.

  “You’d become gee-rat food! Knowing the Chairman, the process would be slow and painful. One of his main pleasures is to watch others suffer. He’d have you witness the rats eat each of your limbs one by one before throwing them the rest of your carcass. In fact, he sent me to fetch you and bring you back alive.”

  Was Blinker playing with him after all?

  “And will you?”

  “Believe what you like, Gary, but you’d do better getting to her now they have the Pentatron tablet. You should’ve given the thing to me like I’d planned with God and Redfor. At least Arthry thinks I’m with The Agenda. I’ll keep the pretence up… but they’ll have hidden the tablet. Only you getting to Beetie can stall the monsters.”

  “By shuttle-bus?”

  “No! From the past! Don’t you learn anything?”

  “St John’s Wood… in the other direction?” suggested Mike. “Afterwards, Jubilee line to Stanmore?”

  Gary scanned the slumped hump-shadows of gee-rats.

  “They’re not moving. It’s gone three minutes and they’re not recovering,” he said. “Why not?”

  “Oh, I have my friends,” replied Blinker.

  The two men behind Blinker held up spears tipped red with blood.

  “They’ve been busy whilst we were talking! There’s more where these creatures came from, though, so I guess Mike’s right. Go the other way. Hurry! We can only hold them back for so long.”

  Mike turned to head off into the tunnel, but Gary hesitated and stared at the dark figure of Blinker.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why put yourself at risk when you too could become one of the chosen few?”

  The silhouette chuckled.

  “If you were to meet the real God you’d understand why, but you never will.”

  Without a further word, Gary and Mike turned and ran on into the blackness, away from the light, the dead rats, Blinker and his friends.

  “You okay, Gary?” asked Mike. “Not giving your face much chance to recover, are we?”

  Gary couldn’t care about his stupid face. All he wanted was to get to St John’s Wood, onto the tube and…

  Oh shit… what then?

  ***

  Beetie fought against the urge to vomit. The things she’d been shown during her preparatory lesson were even more revolting than what she’d witnessed in the grey building, but no way could she show her abhorrence. To protect the boy called ‘Gary’, she faked delight at the awfulness of what the Chairman said he’d do to her, secretly clinging to a longing to be hugged, caressed and kissed by the boy... and only the boy! Her increasing revulsion against the Chairman strengthened the yearning to be with Gary… and be protected by him. She knew her one chance to achieve this was to lead the grotesque little man along a path of deception:

  “Oh, Chairman, how wonderful! I simply can’t wait. When will this happen?”

  “Belinda, my dearest, we’re now almost ready. I’ll escort you through to the Terminus myself as soon as we’re sure everything’s working. You’ve no idea how wonderful this is going to be. Those things you’ve seen, they’re as nothing compared with the reality of it all.”

  The girl could barely hold on to her forced smile as she stared at the Chairman’s loathsome grin, but she refused to let her eyes betray her inner secret.

  “Oh let it be soon, Chairman, please! And I don’t think I need any more preparatory lessons.”

  “The next lesson will be for real, Belinda. Here in the Terminus.”

  The Terminus? There had to be some other significance to the word. Terminus...Terminus...she repeated over and over to herself. Suspended somewhere in that vacuum created by the warden’s needles were ghosts of memories; none as tangible as the face of the boy from the past, but they were there...forgotten reasons for her to be in this beautiful place other than suffer torment as the Chairman’s plaything. The word ‘Terminus’ had something to do with the purpose of her presence in a false paradise. Perhaps the boy inside her would help her uncover the past as he’d helped to prevent her breaking down in the face of the Chairman’s revolting ‘lesson’. Surely he would know why she feared the Terminus so, despite all those pictures showing this to be a place of unbelievable splendour. She would rely on the mysterious boy in her head to quell her fears when the Chairman came for her. Gary would protect her from the evil that awaited.

  ***

  “How far from

  Baker Street to St John’s Wood?” Gary panted, keeping a sharp lookout for further holes in the ground.

  “Dunno. A mile… mile and a half? Difficult to tell on a tube train and never walked the tunnels before. I’ve been thinking, pal… perhaps we ought to… sort of … you know... via the hockey pitch?”

  “Bloody no, Mike! Only when we’ve got Beetie out of this mess. Afterwards you and that redhead can do what you flaming like. Go and live in a tent on the bleeding hockey pitch for all I care.”

  “Okay! Don’t get your futuristic knickers in a twist!”

  “Priorities, Mike! Right?”

  “Sure… but this future won’t have happened yet... then!”

  “Priorities (pant, pant)... okay (pant)?”

  Gary, the less fit of the two, was having difficulty running and talking at the same time, whereas for Mike jogging without delivering an incessant monologue was virtually impossible.

  “Think I’ll ask her out to the flicks, Gary. A little gift for helping me save the world. For being the chosen one. I’ve still got her hairgrip. Gotta hand it back some time. Not a proper thief, ay?” Mike turned and winked at his friend who only grunted. “As you say, Gary… strike whilst the iron’s hot! Think she’d like Sci-Fi, chick-flick, or what? Horror perhaps? I’ve heard some girls get pretty turned on by the gory stuff.”

  Mike’s verbal diarrhoea continued as he ran on effortlessly in the dark tunnel to an accompaniment of puffs and groans from his friend. A pinhole of feeble light ahead steadily grew...

  Likewise, a horribly familiar chattering sound behind them…

  “I thought he said they’d bloody killed ’em!” exclaimed Mike, increasing his speed and pulling ahead.

  Gary’s legs wouldn’t move faster. The rat-chatter swelled in the void behind. The hungry rodents would soon catch up and the tunnel entrance was at least a hundred yards away. Without Blinker’s protection those huge teeth would make quick work of him.

  “THINK… I’LL… CHOOSE… THE TRAIN... MIKE!” he called out. “KEEP … TO THE SIDE... SPECS OFF!”

  He didn’t wait for Mike to reply. Against a surge of terrifying chatter-chatter, he slipped off the time-specs. The tunnel and the darkness were the same, but, thank God, the noise had stopped, the only the sound being his shoes on the ground as he stumbled on, now avoiding live rails.

  “MIKE!”

  No reply.

  “MIKE! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

  Silence, until... a different, albeit familiar sound: a low-pitched rumble. Worse than gee-rats!

  From somewhere he discovered new energy. His legs pounded the ground as if independent of the rest of his body, frantically trying to go faster, though whether or not there was any increase in speed, he couldn’t tell. The rumble grew louder. Electrical sounds cut the air, accompanied by fiery flashes of white light.

  Underground trains are a bloody site faster than gee-rats! Specs back on? No time!

  The train was almost upon Gary and he was still ten yards from the station. His one consolation would be a quick death. The tunnel flickered alive with electricity and the blare of the locomotive’s horn threatened to burst open his skull. A sizzle of bright sparks lit up an alcove into which threw himself just as the train thundered past in a rush of air and a scream of noise.

  “Oh my God!” he gasped, drawing in his breath.

  With the train safely in the station, he crawled onto the platform.

  There was a commotion at the far end. He’d been spotted. Specs on and he was two hundred years in the future
on the same platform, now deserted. No Mike, but the chattering had returned; dark faces of the rats hung back menacingly, a few yards into the tunnel, uncertain.

  “MIKE!” he yelled, pointing his mag-stunner at the leading animals.

  “ZING! ZING! ZING!”

  They stopped moving, but a further wave of rat-chatter built up behind them. He pressed something on the specs and removed them, still in the future with the gee-rats. After making a small adjustment to one of the rings around the left lens, he put the time-specs back on his aching nose. St John’s Wood Station in the present; his… not Beetie’s.

  He hadn’t a clue what to do about Mike but there was no room in his mind for sentimentality; no time to worry about the guilt of getting his best friend caught up in this time-travel business… only for saving Beetie, London of the future and the human race. An incoming train − the one that almost killed him − slowed to a halt. He alighted and found a seat. Only forty-five minutes to work out how he might complete the task of rescuing Beetie.

  God, I wish Mike was here. He’s so much better at this sort of shit!

  “Hi, Gary! Where’ve you been?”

  Gary gaped in disbelief as the doors snapped shut behind Mike.

  “Mike! Thought the bloody rats’d got you! Didn’t you hear me call out?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Mike came over and sat beside Gary.

  “Had to give her back her hairgrip, didn’t I?”

  “You’re a bloody screw-case! That’s the last time I’ll worry my guts out about what happens to you, mate.”

  “Thought you’d object... so I went to the hockey pitch only minutes after I borrowed her hairgrip. Boy, you shoulda seen her face! They were all huddled in a group, like, discussing their out-of-this-world experience, when… WHOOSH… I’m back! Oh, that expression of hers! Priceless! I…” Mike frowned. “I told a bit of a porky, I’m afraid. Said her hairgrip had kinda saved the world of the future. Made no mention of the combination lock and the bloody great chain cutters I nicked. The way she made eyes at me, though!”