The Terminus Page 15

  He referred to the large silver pipe that connected the grey building with the Terminus. Mike ran between the rows, slashing away on both sides. Each severed tube swung loose making a sucking sound like a vacuum hose before going limp. Some of the freed surfacers sat up, removed helmets, rubbed their heads and surveyed the scene. Others, too far gone, twitched aimlessly and waved feeble limbs still attached to bodies.

  “Life-Force!” Blinker informed Mike after they’d met up again in the middle of the hall. “I’ll explain later, but this is why God and the Chairman fell out. Hey... you lot!” he added, addressing the doll-eyed live surfacers. “Kill the big men when they return. Use the knives hanging on that wall. Feed the bastards to the gee-rats!”

  “So where’s that ruddy great thing lead to?” Mike asked when Blinker got up onto a slab and began hacking at the silver tube.

  “The Terminus. Why?”

  “Well… the Terminus is where we wanna go, mate. Seems wide enough to me.”

  Blinker stopped hacking.

  “You must be mad. Get sucked along with the Life-Force?”

  “Anyway, you’ll never cut into that with these things,” observed Mike. “We should make a rope from all those old tracksuits.”

  “A rope?” Blinker looked puzzled.

  “Like you said. No time to waste!”

  Blinker raised his eyebrows, grimaced and followed Mike to the other end of the hall. Within minutes they’d tied strips of discarded tracksuit material into a long length of tough rope which Mike tested between both hands.

  “Seems strong enough. How many of those zombies are still upright? A hundred or so?” Blinker grinned.

  “Mike, you’re brilliant!”

  “Funny, I keep telling myself the same thing. Veronica too… when I get the chance. ‘You’re in the presence of a true genius!’ I said to her. Get those guys lined up, Blinker, and I’ll thread the end of the rope round the pipe where it’s attached.”

  Soon, over a hundred surfacers were pulling at both ends of the tracksuit rope looped round the silver tube.

  “ONE… TWO… THREE… HEAVE!” shouted Mike, waving his machete about as if conducting an orchestra of ghouls. “ONE… TWO… THREE … HEAVE!”

  The tube groaned under the strain before snapping free from the ceiling, buckling.

  “PULL! PULL! PULL!” urged Mike.

  The downward curvature of the pipe bowed until, with a hollow bang, a crack opened up.

  Alarmed by the noise, three heavies appeared through the swing doors, their forearms caked in dried blood. The surfacers had the benefit of surprise. The large men stood gaping, machetes dangling. In an instant twenty surfacers were onto them flailing their own weapons. Several got injured, but by dint of numbers they soon over-powered and hacked down the heavies. Some began slicing off the dead men’s arms.

  Mike, sickened, averted his gaze.

  “God, you lot are badly in need of proper civilisation! One bunch here’s as bad as the next! Come on guys… PULL! PULL! PULL!” he commanded.

  The crack in the tube yawned wide before splitting apart with a metallic rip, the nearer end falling onto a slab and crushing a half-dead surfacer. A ‘whoosh’ like a reverse belch disappeared up the end that led to the Terminus. Mike looked from the fragmented pipe to Blinker. The other boy’s face gave away nothing.

  “Where else can we escape to?” Mike asked. “We’ll be outnumbered when Arthry and the others show up ’cos Teeth’ll be wondering what on earth you’re doing. Seems you wouldn’t last as long as a flea on a monkey’s backside when he discovers you’ve double-crossed him. Particularly if he doesn’t get Beetie back… and I’m telling you, Gary ain’t gonna let her go again. He never gives in. Me neither. Could be why we remain good friends even when we’re pissed off with each other. And another thing!” He grinned and winked at Blinker. “Once or twice in my life I’ve actually been serious!”

  “Guess you’re right,” agreed Blinker, staring at the gaping severed tube. “Okay, I’ll climb onto your shoulders first… then pull you up. I don’t like this, though. No idea what’s at the other end. Only that The Agenda are using Life-Force for something… the reason God fell out with them. He and the Chairman were once friends. Did Gary never tell you?”

  “Nope!” replied Mike as the other boy climbed onto his shoulders and grabbed the edge of the tube before swinging himself up and into it. “Told me virtually nothing! P’raps that’s a good thing. Allows me more objectivity, ay?”

  Blinker reached down, and, with the boys’ arms gripped together, Mike was pulled up… and not a second too soon. Crouching on all fours, they’d only crawled a few metres before a burst of shouting echoed in the hall below. Reinforcements had arrived and evidently the surfacers were putting up a fight.

  “Bit of a kerfuffle, eh?” whispered Mike.

  “A what?” Blinker blinked at him.

  “Kerfuffle! Good word!”

  They slowly wriggled further into the tube, Mike in the lead. The kerfuffle below had subsided and he became aware of another noise: a deep, heavy rhythmic sound, like the beat of a gigantic heart pulsing in the darkness ahead.

  ***

  “Who are you talking about, Mum? This is Beetie, not Belinda.”

  “I’m sure he said Belinda. Such a nice man. Said you’d be along any minute. Oh, you poor wee thing. You’ve no shoes on!”

  “Red hair? In Mike’s clothes?”

  “No! A black man. Big build. Such a kind face.”

  “When?”

  “He’s still here. Gave him a cup of…”

  Gary grabbed Beetie’s hand and yelled, “RUN!”

  “Hey... Gary!” Mrs O’Driscoll shouted after her son. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Lock the door, Mum! You didn’t see me! Hold him back… make any excuse! I’ll phone later!”

  Gary ran with Beetie away from his home, the one place where he felt sure she’d be safe and find peace at last, more determined than ever to get answers from God and desperate to get Mike back from the future. They ran up the hill towards Finchley Road Tube station. Half way he stopped, panting for breath.

  “Christ… bloody close!” he gasped. “So Arthry… must’ve tortured Mike… got his specs… and my address… for The Agenda.”

  “The Agenda?” Beetie repeated. “I remember! Things are coming back to me. The Chairman... the man with the big teeth and the bad eyes... he’s in charge, isn’t he? Things are happening where he was gonna take me. The Terminus. Where the flowers and streams and mountains are, only…”

  “Bloody lies, Beetie! Whatever’s going on the other side of the wall has nothing to do with flowers or mountains or streams or pretty waterfalls. I promise you.”

  “I believe you,” the girl said. “Don’t know why, but I believe you and I was certain you’d come for me. Yeah! Awful things were going to happen in the Terminus. The Chairman tried to tell me they were good and that he’d specially chosen me… but…”

  Tears reappeared. This time she let Gary softly stroke her cheeks with the back of his hand.

  “Did the Chairman touch you in that way?” he asked again, his anger barely suppressed.

  Beetie shook her head.

  “He was going to. He told me in the preparatory lesson. Showed me what... ugh… I couldn’t bear the thought of him near me, let alone doing... doing that! Not with you inside my head.”

  Gary kissed her hand. She smiled.

  “Kiss? Your word ‘kiss’… I remembered… I thought…”

  “Thought I meant ‘kill’?” Gary chuckled. “D’you remember your cell in the Retreat?”

  “With you? One night? No... I mustn’t say.”

  “Say what?”

  Gary’s grin broadened.

  “I remember all right! I so wanted you with me. On my side! In my bed! All night I ached for you to hold me close. I couldn’t think how to tell you. Hardly slept!”

  Gary felt confused and embarrassed. The idea that the girl h
ad experienced similar feelings to him that night had never occurred to him. Saying nothing, he walked on and, thank heaven, they weren’t being followed.

  “Why didn’t we escape from Arthry at your house by using the time-specs?” Beetie asked.

  “Arthry? You remember him? Soon you’ll remember everything.”

  “I remember trusting a big black man called Arthry. He was so good to me. I can’t believe he’s with The Agenda. But you never answered my question.”

  “A thought occurred to me, Beetie. The two pairs of time-specs might be linked in some way. If so, we’re in a trap. Putting ’em on could be like saying, ‘here we are Arthry! You can come and get her! I’m taking no chances.”

  “So?”

  “First… proper clothes for you… and shoes! Something to eat too. I borrowed money from Dad’s wallet earlier.”

  “What’s money?”

  “Rules our lives here in the past. You’ll soon see. And the food’s a whole load better than that rat crap of the future. We’ll share a pizza. There’s a place up on the

  Finchley Road. But shoes first. Then we’ll find a lady’s clothes shop somewhere. And afterwards Hampstead Heath. We’ll take the bus. Safer than the tube. No links to the future.”

  They continued on up the hill.

  “A shuttle-bus?”

  “Bit different. More of a snail bus.”

  “What’s Hampstead Heath?”

  “Well… remember the trees we talked about?”

  “Like big flowers?”

  “Not quite. Big green plants... like the one over there. Only loads of them. You’ll love trees. They won’t come looking for us amongst the trees. We can sleep out in the open. Anywhere else, and we’d get hunted down. Friends, relatives… no good. God, I wish Mike was with us. He’s the strategy guy, is Mike… even when he gets on my nerves. I don’t fancy having to work this thing out alone.”

  “You’re not alone!” insisted Beetie, frowning. Gary squeezed her hand.

  “Nope! Sorry! You’re right. Not alone!”

  “Thank you, Mr Clever Head!”

  And they laughed together.

  Gary found a shoe shop along the

  Finchley Road and bought Beetie a pair of trainers. In the clothes store he had difficulty persuading her to buy sensible stuff like jeans and a top instead of another pretty dress, but she was strong-willed, as he was slowly discovering, and in the end they ended up with both. As for the underclothes, Gary hid in a corner of the shop whilst the girl purchased her smalls. Finally, they ended up in a pizza parlour. Beetie had never before tasted anything as delicious as pizza.

  “This is nothing!” said Gary. “Wait till you try fish ’n’ chips!” Beetie’s expression betrayed ignorance of the nation’s favourite dish. “Lived under the sea all your life and never had fish ’n’ chips?”

  Gary chuckled. He felt deliriously happy despite seeing no easy way out of the mess they were in. His best mate was stuck in a future where they chopped up living people, he and Beetie were on the run from fiends who threatened her with a fate worse than death, and yet in that pizza parlour with Beetie he felt happier than he’d ever felt before.

  What a curious first date. After cleaning her face and changing into jeans and a blue blouse in the toilet, Beetie asked Gary where she could buy toiletries; he hadn’t a clue. For him and Mike, how girls made themselves pretty was a total mystery… something to do with bottles and lotions and creams and powders that took place in ladies’ toilets or girls’ bedrooms. He counted through the remaining banknotes ‘borrowed’ from his dad’s wallet. Surely there was enough. How could he deny a girlfriend what she needed? But the toiletries cost a lot more than he imagined. Sometime he’d have to talk to her about money; explain things as gently as possible... but not yet.

  They took a number 82 bus to Golders Green and walked up North End Road towards Whitestone Pond, Gary carrying bags full of girl’s clothes and toiletries, with Beetie hanging on to his arm and exclaiming excitedly about anything that caught her attention.

  “Gary, another tree… look! And another! Oh… it’s got flowers on! See?” A tug at his arm, and: “Wow! That man’s balancing on two funny wheels and moving along. Over there! Like magic!”

  “A bicycle, Beetie. Bike.”

  The girl bubbled over with enthusiasm at these things. She’d got so used to talking to the boy inside her head at the Hatcheries she merely carried on as if he had no eyes of his own:

  “Her hair’s so short. Nearly bald!” and “Gary! That girl’s hair comes down to her bottom. How does she sit down? And what if she needs to… erm…?” And Gary and Beetie laughed at the shared thought of some poor girl struggling with her long hair in the toilet.

  “Flicks it round to the front, I s’pose!” the boy suggested.

  What affected Beetie most were the children. Several played noisily beside Whitestone Pond. ‘Little people’, she called them, and she seemed curiously disturbed by their shouts and laughter which brought tears to her eyes. She told Gary she wanted to run up and touch and talk to them and he had to restrain her. Such behaviour would attract attention, but he was troubled to see her so upset. Things from the future, her past, buried within her subconscious, must have caused her to react so bizarrely.

  “Do you remember nothing of your own childhood in the Hatcheries?”

  “When I was a little person? Was I ever like them?”

  “Everyone was. Even those without parents… no mum or dad… like you were a test-tube baby. Yes, Beetie. You were once a little person.”

  Tears glistened the girl’s cheeks and as Gary held her close he seethed against The Agenda erasing her childhood. What right had they to do such a thing?

  “Didn’t you even hear children when you were staying in your cell in the Hatcheries? Before Mike and I came for you?” Beetie shook her head. Gary appeared puzzled. “You can always hear them from a long way off. It’s the way they shout. So where are they all in London of the future? Were you and Blinker the last kids to leave the Hatcheries? Did its purpose change after Teeth took over from God?”

  Beetie shrugged her shoulders again. Gary could tell talking about children distressed her so he decided to steer clear of the subject, but he wondered, and was able to arrive at only one conclusion: children no longer existed in twenty-third century London. Was the unbearable true? He’d seen what was going to happen to surfacers. Would the children go the same way? Was whatever they sucked from peoples’ heads even stronger in the young ones? Some sort of mysterious energy? Had The Agenda only kept alive a few of the pretty girls, like Beetie, for their own pleasure... and to procreate? Build a new mixed race of Homo sapiens and Atlanteans? If so, what about Blinker? Surely, being Homo sapiens, he’d not align himself with The Agenda!

  Gary rested his arm protectively across Beetie’s shoulders. She nestled her head against him. He spotted a phone booth. After explaining to the girl how this would allow him to contact his mum, he called home. His heart sank when his dad answered. He and Dad didn’t always see eye-to-eye. They were too alike… both short-fused.

  “GARY, WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?” the man yelled down the phone. If only he had an answer.

  “May I speak with Mum?” he asked quietly.

  “She’s very upset! What’s all this about a girl called Belinda? The black guy was still here when I got home from work. He’s gone now, but I thought he’d break every bone in my body when I told him we hadn’t a clue where you were. Have you done something really stupid, Gary? Tell me, son! He’s even threatened us with the police.”

  Oh shit!

  “Calm down, Dad. You’re not helping! Put me onto Mum, please.”

  “Huh! Me? Mum? What’s the difference?”

  The phone went silent.

  “Wait till he finds out I nicked a load of money from his wallet,” he whispered to Beetie on the side whilst tenderly combing his fingers through her silken hair.

  “Gary?”

  Mum... tha
nk God!

  “Mum, the black guy, Arthry. He’s dangerous. But nothing compared with Teeth.”

  “Teeth?”

  “Teeth. The big boss. Chairman of The Agenda.”

  “Gary, none of this is making any sense at all.”

  “I was gonna show you the time-specs. Explain. Even take you on a little time-travel yourself. You might’ve understood. Mike was sceptical at first. Until…”

  “Where is Mike? His mum’s phoned me.”

  “He’s… erm… he’s in the twenty-third century… and in... like... big trouble. And I mean planet-sized big!”

  “Oh Gary! Please don’t mess me around!”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone. Has Arthry left? You and Dad mustn’t stay at home any longer. I have to meet up with you somewhere secret. There’s another guy called Redfor. Says he’s working for God but I don’t believe him. Been to our house as well.”

  “God? Oh Gary, dear…”

  “Here we go! Had the same bother with Mike. God the Man, Mum! Not Him in church… or wherever. You and Dad should decamp to a B&B immediately. Don’t tell anyone… and I mean no one… and come alone with money, some proper clothes for me, a blanket and pillows…” He glanced at Beetie. “…And girls’ stuff. Things they might need… I dunno… cosmetics... whatever. Whitestone Pond, six o’clock. Okay? Tell nobody else. Not even Dad.”

  “Gary, this is all so crazy.”

  “Mum, I love you. Dad as well. You’ve no idea what these guys are capable of if they take you back as hostages. I promise I’m not messing around. Get the hell out of the house. NOW!”

  This was followed by a period of silence at the both ends of the phone. Like Mike, his mum was well aware of his temper.

  “Mum?”

  No response.

  “You still there, Mum?”

  “Oh my God, Gary, I’ve just seen something on TV. Breaking news. About the theft of a priceless antique tablet from the British Museum. You and Mike! Caught on security camera in those funny costumes. Oh, Gary… is this why…?” She was in tears. All he bloody needed! “I tried so hard to bring you up properly,” she continued. “You were doing well at school... top in most subjects... and now... oh, what’ve you gone and done, Gary?”