The UnTied Kingdom (38 page)

He turned to her with absolute hatred.
You did that on purpose, you cruel, stonehearted bitch.

‘Escort Major Harker to my office,’ said Wheeler to the man behind her, and he was horrified – but not surprised – to see that it was Sholt. He stepped forward, smiling oleaginously, and Harker got down from the wagon.

If I’m demoted and this creature becomes my senior I will have to kill someone
, he thought, and it plainly showed on his face, because Sholt’s smile faded slightly.

‘This way, sir,’ he said.

‘I know the damn way,’ Harker said, striding off, making Sholt and his men hurry after him.

‘What a pretty girl she is,’ said Sholt from behind him, and Harker felt his mouth twist. ‘And so very co-operative, I’m told.’

Harker spun around so fast Sholt walked into him, grabbed the hideous little man by his collar, and lifted him clear off the ground.

‘If you ever even look at her, you repulsive little maggot, I will cut you open and strangle you with your own slimy entrails. I am still your superior officer, do you understand? And you will go nowhere near Eve Carpenter.’

‘My superior officer for how long, sir?’ Sholt gurgled, and Harker gave serious thought to killing him there and then. But Wheeler walked past, gave him a disgusted look, and Harker let Sholt drop to the ground.

They left Sholt at the door to the Martin Tower, as Harker followed the General to her office, and was not offered a seat.

‘You are in so much trouble, Major, that I’m not sure I know where to start,’ she said, sitting down and putting on her glasses.

It begins with an alien falling into the river,
Harker thought,
and ends with her too
.

He stared into the abyss, and jumped into it.

‘Your trial will take place as soon as Lieutenant-Colonel Compton arrives from Leicester.’

‘Yes, sir.’
Wonder if Eve’s made it to St James’s yet? Wonder if she’ll have the same room? Can I still go and visit her? If Coop’s still on the gate, he might–

‘There has been massive fighting there, did you know?’

At St James’s? No, wait, what was she talking about? ‘Sir?’

‘You were born in Leicester, were you not?’

‘Yes, sir.’
Stop trying to hurt me more, you vicious cow, you couldn’t possibly
.

‘Any family there?’

‘No, sir. Don’t have any family now, sir.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ Wheeler said, as the door opened and Saskia came in. She gave Harker a look that was part sympathy, part anger, and part exasperation.

‘Major,’ she said.

‘Temporarily,’ Harker replied. He was starting to feel slightly giddy.

‘Captain Haran’s setting up the computer in the main office, where there’s more room,’ she said, ‘but he says he’ll need a telephone line.’

While that was being fussed over, with the General overseeing proceedings, Saskia took Harker aside and said, ‘I saw that out by the gate.’

‘Did you?’
I hope she’s okay, and they have a doctor there who can take care of her hand.

‘It was pretty cruel. She’s really, really angry with you, Will.’

‘I don’t care,’ Harker said, and at her look of annoyance he repeated, ‘I don’t. There’s not another thing she can do to hurt me now. She can lock me up, she can take away my rank, she can bust me back down to private, and I don’t care. And you know what? She knows that. And that’s making her even angrier.’

Saskia stared at him. ‘Will, have you gone mad?’

‘Possibly.’

‘She could have you shot at dawn.’

‘Yeah.’ He frowned. ‘Sask, will you do something for me?’

‘Well, right now, that depends.’

‘If I am shot, will you take care of Eve?’

Her eyes went wide. ‘You do realise you’re asking your ex-wife to take care of your girlfriend?’

‘Yep.’

Saskia shook her head in disbelief, but she said, ‘Yes, Will, I’ll do what I can. I said I would.’

‘I know. I just wanted to … make sure,’ he said, to Saskia’s departing back.

While Daz set up the computer in the main office, the rest of the squad were hanging about looking unsure, and Harker’s heart sank even further. Hadn’t Wheeler promised promotions all round? Poor Charlie would never get her captaincy now, and–

‘Ah, Major Harker!’

It was Wilmington, puffing up the stairs with a large box in his arms. Charlie offered him a salute, which seemed to confuse him terribly, since he had no free hand with which to return it.

‘At ease, Captain,’ Harker said. ‘How’s my company?’

‘Oh, fine, fine, sir, in tip-top condition!’ Wilmington handed the box to Banks, and added, ‘You’ll hardly know you’ve left them, sir!’

Ignoring this, Harker nodded at the box. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, it’s addressed to you, sir. It was sitting on your desk, but I took it to my quarters for safe-keeping. It arrived about a fortnight ago.’

Harker exchanged a look with Charlie. ‘Who’s it from?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

Harker thought about asking who’d delivered it, but from Wilmington’s pink shiny face he knew there was no point. Sighing, he took out his knife and sliced the top open.

Inside was a flat plastic box, about the size of a large book, and a piece of paper with what would have looked like nonsense to Harker a week ago. But thanks to Eve, he knew what it was and so, when he showed it to Charlie, did she.

‘A file address,’ she said, and when she looked up at him, her eyes were full of dread.

And Harker knew why. He knew that handwriting same as she did. Only one cockroach of a man wrote in capitals that were both rigid and slithering at the same time.

Harker snapped into life. ‘Right, thank you, Captain, very helpful, why don’t you pop in there and see Captain Haran work the magic of the computer? Go on, quick march!’

Looking confused, Wilmington did as he was told, and Harker picked up the little flat box. There was a power flex coiled beneath it.

‘What is it?’ Charlie said.

‘It’s a laptop,’ Harker said, dread mounting in him. And it’d been sent to him.

Two weeks ago.

Shoving the thing back in its box, he raced down the stairs and to the mess, where there was a plug point and no people. Charlie, thinking more clearly than Harker, posted Banks and Tallulah outside while Harker waited impatiently for the computer to start up.

The machine displayed a greeting.
Welcome, Major Harker
.

Harker carefully typed in the file’s location, and was rewarded with an image. A map of London. There were two arrows painted crudely on it, one pointing to the Tower, the other to a spot south of London Bridge. The first was labelled,
You Are Here
.

The second was labelled
Eve
.

             
Chapter Twenty-Seven             

‘Now, you’ve already been very useful,’ said the oleaginous voice in Eve’s ear. ‘If it wasn’t for you, Sergeant Harker wouldn’t be in trouble in the first place.’

Major Harker
, Eve wanted to correct him, but his hand was shoved in her mouth and she couldn’t.

So she bit his hand, and he yelped and slapped her, and bashed the side of her head with the butt of his rifle. Eve saw stars, but her vision cleared when Captain Sholt shoved a piece of cloth in her mouth and tied it as a gag.

‘Don’t want you screaming, do we, even if your voice is so pretty.’

He grabbed her injured hand, and the pain made Eve far too weak to struggle as he tied her hands behind her back, again with a piece of cloth that he’d ripped from the uniform of the dead soldier at their feet.

Sholt had intercepted the party escorting Eve to St James’s and demanded custody of ‘the prisoner’. The poor sod lying in the mud with a bullet in his head was the one who’d voiced an objection and been invited by Sholt in his oiliest voice to accompany them.

‘Come on then, pretty voice,’ he said now, his breath making Eve’s stomach curl. ‘Don’t you want to see your handsome Sergeant again?’

Eve gave him a death glare, but he just chuckled and continued to herd her through the thick mud edging the riverbank.

‘Very clever of you, pretty voice, to give them my name,’ said Sholt. ‘I set this up straight away when they emailed me, because I’m clever, too. I’ve been ever so helpful to General Wheeler since Sergeant Harker left, been telling her about all the times he’s held me back, ever so unfairly. Been just waiting for you to come back, I have. Couldn’t resist it when they sent me your picture. Sergeant Harker’s little bit of fluff.’

Eve, stumbling and frightened, swore at him through her gag.

‘Oh yes, pretty voice, you’re going to be very useful indeed. Because if your Sergeant doesn’t come after you, then he’s going to be in lots of trouble for possessing a computer in the Tower. One with lots of lovely emails from the Coalitionists on it.’

Eve stared at him, her eyes wide. Sholt chuckled again.

‘But don’t worry, pretty voice, because he’ll come after you. Doesn’t like to leave his men behind, you know,’ Sholt told her with mock solemnity. ‘You’ll see him again. Briefly.’

‘Sir, please,’ said Charlie as Harker strode across the dark courtyard. ‘You’re in enough trouble as it is.’

‘So a little bit more won’t matter,’ Harker said. His heart was pounding. At the back of his mind he knew Sholt had tried to frame him, but all he could think about was that the hideous cockroach had Eve.

He kept coming back, over and over again, to the image of Eve lying pale and bloody in that cell in Kirkstall, and mixing it with the deeply etched memory of Mary White, until a red mist descended and he didn’t even hear Charlie any more.

Should have killed him years ago. Bullet in the brainpan, heat of battle, no one’d know.

He’s got Eve
.

London Bridge was choked with heavy traffic, people and carts and animals forming a totally solid barrier. Harker fired his gun up through the narrow gap between buildings and yelled, ‘Move out of the bloody way!’

People turned, saw his face, and obeyed.

‘You don’t have to follow me,’ he said as Banks took point and Tallulah marched up beside him.

‘I know,’ Tallulah said.

‘You could get in trouble.’

‘I
know
,’ she said.

‘Your sister’ll bloody kill me,’ Harker muttered.

‘It’s not really up to her, is it, sir?’

‘Think she’ll see it that way?’

‘No one told me to come, sir,’ Tallulah said, in a voice that said it was final.

Fear gripped him as they searched the wasteland for any structure that Sholt could be hiding in. Charlie kept going on about it being a trap, but Harker didn’t care. He was fairly sure she was right, but he still didn’t care.

Got to find Eve, got to find her. Maybe that running away idea of hers has merit
.

‘Sir,’ shouted Banks, and pointed with his gun to a trap door, hidden in the cellar of a burned-out building.

Harker ran over. Scratched into the brick besides the trapdoor was an arrow and one word: Eve.

He grabbed the handle and flung it open. A dark tunnel was revealed. Harker took two steps, hesitated, and said, ‘None of you have to come, you know.’

‘That’s what you said last time,’ said Tallulah.

Last time.
Last time!

‘I am never letting her out of my sight again,’ Harker said, starting down the slippery steps into the tunnel.

It was dark, damp, and freezing cold. In places, it wasn’t much more than mud shored up with planks. Underfoot, the ground squelched. The darkness was so heavy and thick Harker wondered occasionally if he was going blind, but he knew striking a light would be like announcing their presence in loud tones.

They walked as silently as possible, weapons drawn, for about fifteen minutes, moving steadily downwards, and then the wall Harker was feeling his way along dropped away and the quality of the air changed.

Something rumbled. The ground shook. And it seemed … warmer.

‘If you come near me, I’ll bloody well kill you,’ said a voice, and Harker could have wept with delight, because it was Eve.

‘If you kill me, I’ll be really pissed off,’ he said, ‘especially since I’ve come to rescue you.’

‘Harker?’

He lit a lamp, and there she was, lying on the ground about thirty feet away, her hands bound behind her back and her clothes streaked with dirt. Behind her was a drop of a few feet, inlaid with dark metal pipes and rails. Harker ran towards her, but she was shaking her head rapidly.

‘Stop!’ And he did, automatically, wondering if there was a bomb or something he might trigger. ‘It’s a trap–’

‘I know it’s a sodding trap,’ he said, and started forward again, cautiously. But Eve shook her head urgently.

‘Harker, Sholt’s still here, he’s hiding, you have to go, he wants to kill you!’

‘Remember the last time you said that? I ain’t going any–’

– and a shot rang out. Eve’s eyes widened in horror, and Harker whipped his head around to see Tallulah fall, looking kind of surprised, dark blood blossoming on her jacket.

‘
No
,’ Banks said, and ran to her, but something exploded nearby and he was knocked off his feet.

Harker fired in the direction the bullet had come from, five shots in quick succession aimed behind Eve, and he heard someone fall and clatter against the metal pipes in the ditch behind her.

‘Is that where Sholt was hiding?’ Harker said, craning to see.

‘Oh God,’ said Eve, and Harker began, ‘Maybe–’ and she shook her head, pointing back to his side of the tunnel. ‘Charlie!’

Harker went cold.

Charlie lay on the far side of the tunnel, in the mud, almost out of the reach of the lamp’s light. But there was enough light, and Harker’s horrified eyes took a second to get the message to his brain that one of her legs was lying a couple of yards away.

‘Hell, Charlie,’ he mumbled, and ran towards her.

He glanced back, and Eve was struggling to her knees, wincing. The area of the tunnel behind her looked so different, the ground flat and hard, the curved walls covered in tiles, and he thought he saw a symbol under all the grime. A circle with a line across the centre of it.

‘There are bombs, charges or something, he was laying them. Will, he’s with the Coalitionists,’ she said, and Harker nodded, because he already knew that. ‘He’s had this planned for weeks. The tunnel’s going to come down. But listen, Harker, I know where I am.’

Charlie’s eyes flickered as he reached her. She focused blearily on him, then on the tunnel behind Eve. Something rumbled again, and an acrid smell hung in the air.

‘Is this hell?’ she mumbled.

‘No,’ Eve said. She pointed to the grimy circle. ‘It’s the London Underground. Harker, this is my world.’

He stared back at her, kneeling there on the hard surface, trying and failing to get to her feet.
My world
.

It smelled different, and there was some kind of heat and breeze in the air, and that strange rumble …

Then hands appeared on the edge of the ditch behind Eve, and he shouted, ‘Behind you!’ as Sholt appeared, bloody and grimy but most definitely not dead, grinning that horrible grin of his. Harker raised his gun, but Eve was in the way, he couldn’t get a clear shot. ‘Eve, get down!’

In the distance, a horn sounded. The rumbling grew louder. Bombs, Eve had said. Charges. The tunnel was falling down around them.

Then something – something big, and hideously loud, and incredibly fast, and lit up, glowing, something like a gigantic snake, shot past behind Eve, slamming into Sholt and ripping him apart as it screeched on the metal rails. Eve, still on the ground, stared in horror.

‘It’s the Northern Line,’ she croaked, watching the thing fly past. ‘It’s the bloody Northern Line!’

Another explosion shook the tunnel. Wet mud splattered Harker and Charlie.

‘We need to get out,’ he said, ‘before the whole thing collapses. Banks, are you okay?’

Banks didn’t answer. He was kneeling by Tallulah, who was still and pale.

‘She’s not breathing,’ he said.

Harker’s eyes met Charlie’s. ‘Is there a pulse?’

A few awful seconds passed, then Banks shook his head and started to cry.

Harker got to his feet. ‘Eve,’ he said, starting towards her, but as he approached the hole between his world and Eve’s, something went
boom
right near his ear.

When he opened his eyes, Eve and the platform were gone, and the tunnel was collapsing around them.

The train had stopped just ahead. Its light spilled out over the disused platform, illuminating with a dim glow the dirty rails that were now splattered with blood and bits of torn flesh.

The train had stopped because it had hit Sholt, she realised dimly, but she didn’t care about that, because something had exploded and she couldn’t see into Harker’s tunnel any more. The hole in the curved Tube wall had filled in with dirt, bits of wood, stone and concrete.

Heart pounding, unable to get to her feet, Eve crawled over, her leg throbbing and her eyes burning, and scrabbled at what had once been a platform entrance, and was now solid with mud.

‘No,’ she said, digging with her good hand, and then her bad one, too. ‘
No
.’

‘Is someone there?’ came a voice, and she shouted, ‘Yes, and you’ve got to help me!’

Footsteps sounded, electric torchlight blinded her, and then there was a man in a hi-vis jacket beside her.

‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’ll get you an ambulance.’

‘I’m fine,’ Eve said. ‘But we have to get through here. The tunnel collapsed and there are people there.’ Harker was there. He was right there.

‘There’s no tunnel,’ he said, and she stared at him as if he was mad, then looked back at the cascade of earth. She clawed at it, grabbed chunks of earth and rock and threw them away, gasping for breath and blinking away burning tears, because he was there, they were all there, just out of reach, right
there
–

The man in the hi-vis spoke into his radio, then put his hand on Eve’s shoulder and pulled her back. She stumbled, fought him, then fell to her knees and stared at the wall of earth.

I will see you again
.

‘There’s nuffink back there,’ said the man in the hi-vis. ‘No tunnel. This platform ain’t been used for years.’ He peered at the blocked archway. ‘Reckon there was a landslide or summink.’

Looking back at the train and the rails, he sucked his breath through his teeth. ‘Was there someone wiv you, love?’

‘Is he dead?’ she asked numbly.

‘Fink so. Sorry.’

‘I’m not.’

He frowned at her, and she said distantly, ‘He was not a nice man.’

‘Oi,’ said the man, peering at her. ‘Ain’t you Eve Carpenter? You went missing, dincha?’

There was no tunnel. No portal into another world.

No injured Charlie, no dead Tallulah. No Harker.

‘What the hell are you doing down here?’ said the man, and Eve whispered, ‘I don’t know.’