The Terminus Page 3

  Again, he stood on that rail-less track. Ahead beckoned the gaping entrance to the tunnel.

  Chapter 2: Beetie

  Gary stared into the blackness of the tunnel, reminded of death. Beetie’s... or his own? Arthry, Blinker and accomplices had all intended to kill him, and if they didn’t the gee-rats would, yet he was returning to this awful place. Completely unhinged, as Mike had suggested! He thought of Beetie, her unbelievably beautiful face, her eyes and the looks she’d given him; her soul-piercing scream still ricocheted inside his skull and the pain of this tore at his brain. Who wouldn’t go mad at the thought of her being dead? Gary swore he’d wring Arthy’s bloody neck should the brute so much as touch the girl this time, if she still lived.

  He took off towards the tunnel but halted... because of voices, one a girl’s – soft and gentle. Out of the darkness emerged a boy and a girl each wearing a tight-fitting blue tracksuit. Both had pudding-basin hairstyles, hers blond. On seeing Gary standing alone, his face aglow with relief, she stopped talking. Lovely beyond description, she stared at him with those amazing eyes and his heart took off at a canter.

  “Thank God you’re alive, Beetie!” he said. Beetie’s jaw dropped as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “What’s God got to do with you showing up here, whoever you are?” Blinker asked suspiciously, blinking. “Anyway, where is he? You don’t fit Arthry’s description of him but you’re wearing his specs!”

  Gary realised he’d arrived in the future before his first meeting with the ‘brother and sister’. It would be his one and only chance to try to put things right… to prevent Beetie from getting stabbed, find out more about the Retreat and whether there might be a modicum of truth in Arthry’s story. Something told him Arthry wasn’t such a monster although the man had tried to kill him and, in all probability, had killed Beetie in a different future. He had to think and act quickly.

  Play it by ear, mate, his head suggested. Imagine you’re Mike... bullshit your way outa this!

  “I rescued the specs,” Gary announced hurriedly. “God’s returned to the past. A small guy with a long, grey coat pinched them. Face like a skull. Ginormous teeth. Guess we should call him ‘Teeth’, huh? Someone must’ve reckoned I’d be coming along the path in Regent’s Park. One of God’s dudes, I suppose. Must’ve put the time-specs on a bench for me... hoping the guy in the coat, Teeth, would follow him instead… perhaps to get the other pair back. Only didn’t quite work out. With Teeth hiding behind a tree...”

  “A what?”

  It was Beetie. Never seen the sky or a tree? He paused a few moments, staring at the girl whilst his mind took her back with him to Regent’s Park, the sky and the gardens with those Himalayan Blue poppies.

  “What’s a tree?” repeated Beetie, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

  “Um... a big plant. Whatever! Anyway, the point is, he tricked me, grabbed the specs and ran off, but I guess he got hit by a taxi. Vanished, at any rate.”

  “Taxi?”

  “Like a small shuttle-bus only ten thousand times slower. I picked the specs up off the street and, well, here I am. Must see Arthry... and... er...”

  Gary looked warily at the twitching boy who reached out for the specs.

  “No! Gotta keep them on. God said, and we can’t go against God, huh?”

  Blinker’s expression hardened. Gary glanced at Beetie. Something in her eyes showed she agreed with him… wished to play along with whatever ideas entered his mind. Thank heaven she’d no access to his empty brain!

  “I’m Gary, by the way,” he said, grinning, aware he’d not officially met them before. He offered his hand. Blinker merely stared coldly at it, but Beetie smiled and she held out her hand. Inside, Gary melted. No one like Beetie had ever before smiled at him in that way. He shook her hand till his arm tired but she showed no sign of wanting to withdraw... so soft, so warm and so alive in his grip.

  “It’s what we do… er… did… in the past,” Gary explained. “Shake hands, like!” Christ, he had to prevent what had already happened to Beetie in the future. He swore from then on he’d risk his life to protect the girl. “Must tell Arthry about Teeth,” he added. “Lead the way, please.”

  Blinker and Beetie turned and headed back into the tunnel. Gary followed. On noticing Beetie lag purposively behind her ‘brother’, he caught up with her.

  “We need to talk in private. Soon! Some place in the Retreat?” he whispered.

  “No. I’ll have to…”

  She stopped mid-sentence. Blinker, a dark shadow in the blackness ahead, had halted.

  “What about the gee-rats, Blinker? You don’t seem to have any protection,” Gary called out. Blinker took something from his pocket and waved it in the air.

  “A mag-stunner!” Beetie explained. “Don’t you have them in the past?”

  Gary shook his head.

  “Got Tasers. Deliver a 50,000 volt shock… but probably not the same. What about spears?” Gary asked, remembering his previous escape from the Underground.

  “Not for gee-rats… skin too tough. Use them mostly against the enemy. Agenda spies. To kill!”

  So he’d been considered a ‘spy’ in that other future he prayed would never happen. It would be up to him to sow seeds of doubt in Arthry’s and Beetie’s minds about Blinker and his accomplices who’d chased him in the tunnel. Beetie would be his only chance of staying alive but no way was he going to land her in the shit again.

  Beetie allowed him to take hold of her hand when they continued on into the blackness. Sheer bloody heaven! He’d only ever imagined doing such a thing before… and with Emma Pearson.

  “There’s a spy in the Retreat,” he whispered. “He or she must’ve been passing messages on to Teeth. You’ve gotta warn Arthry... and we simply must talk alone.”

  She gave his hand a gentle squeeze and that was enough. Their secret language. He understood.

  Blinker halted, tapped, a door opened and a dazzling yellow light flooded the tunnel. Gary instantly let go of Beetie’s hand and they followed Blinker into the Retreat along a familiar corridor where people in colourful tracksuits busily gazed at computer screens on the desktop that ran the length of the wall. He noticed, this time, that they were causing the monitors to respond merely by silently mouthing things as he passed by unnoticed in his Spurs strip and jeans, his shaggy brown hair uncombed.

  They reached a door on which was written in red ‘R31267’. Arthry’s office. Blinker entered first, the other two following. Arthry sat at his desk, busy over a computer, his broad shoulders confronting Gary. He turned and stood, and Gary felt sure he was even bigger this time.

  “So you’re the messenger! You’ve got the specs, too. What about God?”

  He held out a large hand for the time-specs.

  “No! Gary must keep them on! God said!” Beetie quickly informed her boss. “He’s our only link with God.”

  Gary glanced uneasily at the knife holder in Arthry’s belt. The man fixed the boy with a gaze that seemed to penetrate all protective barriers whilst giving nothing away.

  “But…?” Arthry seemed hesitant.

  “God sent Gary, Arthry. Please believe me!” The girl’s breathtaking eyes flashed at Gary. “Remember how I seem to know things you lot don’t? I’m telling you, Gary’s okay. He’s with us. God’s probably got something to sort out in the past. Maybe it’s gotta be fixed before he can return to the future.”

  “Beetie’s right. He’s stuck there… and they’re after him,” Gary added, without having the faintest idea what he was talking about. “He wants me to keep these on till... um… till it’s safe. When we know what’s... erm... happening.”

  Arthry grinned. Gary, proud of his Mike-style bullshitting, felt more relaxed.

  “Hungry?” the man asked.

  Gary thought of gee-rat steaks and wondered how on earth he’d be able to eat in the Retreat without emptying his guts all over the place.

  “Well, not exactly…”

  “Of cou
rse he is!” interrupted Beetie, nudging the boy with her elbow. “Blinker can get something from the kitchens.”

  She narrowed eyes at her ‘brother’ who reluctantly left the room. With the door closed, Beetie addressed Arthry:

  “You have to believe what Gary says because he’s speaking the truth. Listen to him, please... and we must protect him at all costs. He’s so important to God.”

  She sneaked a smile at Gary, causing the boy’s insides to dance like crazy. Arthry scrutinised him, too, his expression oscillating between a loyal belief in Beetie and an innate distrust of anyone unfamiliar. Gary offered his hand.

  “Where I come from we do this when people first meet. If they trust each other.”

  Hesitantly, Arthry raised his large hand and they shook.

  “Are you certain we’ve not met before?” he asked, his stare peeling at the layers that covered the boy’s fear.

  “Only in the future!” laughed Gary. The time-travel thing had him confused.

  “Gary’s got something to tell us,” Beetie insisted. “Remember what you said at the meeting yesterday? Well, hear Gary out! Please, Arthry! And he only tells the truth.”

  Correct, apart from that little blip of bullshitting, but she’d said this twice within the space of a minute. Gary glanced at the girl and she nodded. A tense moment, for in the ensuing few seconds his life… and Beetie’s… hung in the balance. Would he say the right thing? He glimpsed the handle of the knife, noticed how the man’s powerful arm muscles bulged the sleeves of his red tracksuit, tensing, preparing for sudden action.

  Oh God, I’m gonna have to rely on yourself, the real God. The one they talk about at chapel on Sundays. Have to pretend I actually met this other God. God the guy. ‘Tells the truth,’ Beetie said. Holy shit!

  Sure, he did almost always tell the truth. No saint, heaven forbid, but, as his dad had often told him, lying catches up with the liar at the end of the day and is a total time-waster. Preventing Beetie’s death, though? This was no waste of time!

  “There’s a spy in your midst…” he began.

  “Did God tell you?”

  Gary nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘yes’.

  Arthry’s eyes transformed into slits.

  “Describe God!”

  Oh, what would the heck look do you look like, God?

  “Got a white beard,” he answered.

  Fearing God the Man had a face clean and smooth as a baby’s bottom he prepared for a quick death. Arthry chuckled, clapping Gary’s shoulder.

  “He sent you to warn us, huh? With the time-specs! So he’s stayed behind in your world though he was supposed to go on to the future. Must’ve gone back to find something from the past, right? Something we’re gonna need. Yeah, he did kinda forewarn me. Something they require, too, I reckon. For what’s going on in the Terminus. The Agenda obviously got wind of this. All falls into place… and the spy theory of yours and Beetie’s. God told me to beware…”

  “Arthry, remember how you got followed the other day,” interrupted Beetie. “At the last meeting you said someone trailed you and you had to abort your plan. Someone in the Retreat told them you wanted to go on to the Terminus pretending to be a lost surfacer.”

  Arthry sat down and stared vacantly at the floor; a man who bore the burden of the future of the whole world upon his broad shoulders, for this strangely altered, under-sea London seemed to Gary to be the only habitable place left.

  “Who? Why?” he asked wearily.

  Gary turned to Beetie. She nodded slightly… and for his eyes only.

  “Someone close,” the boy suggested.

  Arthry looked up. Gary froze... another split second moment of decision. Might he have been wrong about Blinker and those other two?

  “Perhaps more than one person,” he added.

  “He’s right,” Beetie chipped in. “Maybe…”

  Her expression told him she should warn Arthry about Blinker. She went up to the man and whispered in his ear. His eyebrows crinkled, revealing disbelief. He shook his head.

  “I understand your reluctance to tell me, Gary,” he said. “He’s like my right hand.”

  The door opened, and Beetie quickly stepped back from her boss, avoiding her ‘brother’s’ darting eyes when he re-entered carrying a tray with four square plates and rectangular glasses that looked as if they’d been made from re-cycled window panes.

  “What’s going on?” Blinker asked, breaking the silence when he’d placed the tray on Arthry’s desk.

  “Nothing! Bit upset she’s gotta share her cell with Gary,” the big man lied.

  Gary blushed crimson at the thought of sharing anything with a girl a thousand times prettier than Emma Pearson. Blinker eyed him icily.

  “With Gary?”

  “A precaution, Blinker! You’ll sleep in here… although we all realise we can trust Gary, don’t we?”

  Blinker said nothing as he handed Gary a plate heaped with lumps of differing shades of brown. Gary’s stomach turned like a cement mixer. The darker, leathery bits he recognised as meat, and he knew only too well what sort; the rest was a mix of putrid brown-green vegetables, and the resulting mound smelt like shit. The other three began to eat hungrily using fingers whilst Gary fought to control his urge to puke as he prodded the food. Arthry spoke in between mouthfuls. Concentrating on what the man said helped the boy to suppress the retches:

  “I suppose they’ll go to any lengths to prevent me, or any of us, from reaching the Terminus. In their way of thinking, if God returns, he’ll only do so with s–…”

  He stopped abruptly and stared at Blinker in the same way as he had at Gary in a future now unfolding so differently. He seemed to be looking for a response on the other boy’s face. Nothing! Gary could see these people relied hugely on the expressions of others. Beetie’s face had already told him things beyond anything he could put into words, yet sometimes she switched off all expression, like the surfacers above and as Blinker was now doing.

  “Eat up, Gary!” insisted Arthry. “You must be starving!”

  Gary managed a weak smile as he bravely chewed on the meat. Though the taste wasn’t bad, the thought of its origin slowed him down. He tried to imagine it was the dried beef jerky he’d tried out in Florida when his family visited Disneyworld three years back.

  He remembered how boring the holiday had been, and how fed up he got with his moaning little sister, Cathy, before her accident. He’d been big time into ‘anti-girl’, but some pretty drastic things had happened during the previous two years: he’d got taller, his voice had broken, hair had sprouted in previously hairless places, and, most of all, he couldn’t take his eyes off Emma Pearson in class. Now, having met Beetie, he wouldn’t think about giving Emma a second glance. As for sharing a cell with the girl… oh wow... his legs turned to jelly as he visualised themselves alone together all night long! He crossed them, trapping the swelling firmness in that important piece of anatomy that responded to pretty girls.

  “A drink?” Arthry asked when it was painfully obvious the lump of meat going round in Gary’s mouth was getting no closer to its final destination. He pointed to the rectangular glasses of murky fluid. Gary reached for one, trying to ignore the brown floating flecks. After a couple of gagging gulps, he tried once more to swallow the meat. The liquid tasted strangely sweet.

  “Treated sewer-juice,” Arthry explained proudly, grinning.

  Gary spluttered out a brown mouthful onto his lap and wiped his sleeve across his lips. He looked with horror at the glass in his hand.

  “Er… treated?”

  Arthry laughed.

  “Don’t you treat yours in the past?” he asked.

  “Never... um... had the stuff before,” replied Gary, longing for a refreshing glass of Coke. Nevertheless, thirst was beginning to overwhelm him and, not wishing to appear a wimp in front of Beetie, he overcame his disgust, sipped the ‘juice’ and began picking again at the dried rat meat.

  Once finished, Ar
thry turned to Beetie.

  “Show him to your cell,” he told her. “Find out what he needs. Blinker can store his things here whilst Gary’s with us.”

  Of course, the real reason behind him and Beetie being put together was for Arthry to keep Blinker within his sights. Gary wondered how long he’d be staying in the future… and whether he should begin to worry about his parents’ worrying… but the past had already happened. He decided that his parents, Mike and Regent’s Park would have to wait because of Beetie. Forget soccer practice! Anyway, he was only tolerated in the team because Mike had put in a good word.

  He followed the girl out of Arthry’s office and along another corridor lined by doors. Beetie halted outside one of these.

  “Our private place now,” she whispered, opening the door with a card key. “I’ll ask Arthry to get Blinker’s key back. Wouldn’t do for him to come creeping into our cell when we’re asleep, ay?”

  Gary’s face felt on fire. Beetie’s closeness and the thought of them sharing the night holed up in a tiny room was playing havoc with that increasingly focussed piece of his body. He prayed the tenting of his jeans didn’t show in the dim light.

  The cell seemed little more than a prison... at least, how he imagined one to be. Two bunk beds along each of the longer walls, with shelves and a cabinet at the far end.

  “Your bed!” Beetie announced, pointing to one of the bunks. “Sit down. We’ve a lot to discuss. There’s so much you must tell me about God.”

  She sat on the other bed and grinned happily. Her proximity made him so shaky that to sit down was his only option. But separate beds? How would he survive the night without going completely crazy with desire? He smiled back, guiltily nurturing lustful thoughts.

  “Must be honest,” he said. “I’ve never met God. Haven’t a clue what he’s like. In fact, I…”