Urbis

Crispin and Josie were waiting in a tunnel for the word to move forward, standing astride their bicycles, clad in breastplates, lug-soled boots, gloves and helmets. Under their breastplates they wore light rappelling harnesses. Each had taped to the helmet a torch wired into the cycle’s hub dynamo. Crispin had a light sidearm in a holster on his belt, being mainly encumbered with coils of rope for scaling walls, and a rocket powered grappling iron. He had also slipped into his belt his old hunting knife. Josie, meanwhile, carried a powerful long-range laser rifle. Glowing dimly over her sleeve was the green LED of a wrist compass.

From up ahead came an agitated murmur as some message was passed back down the line. The necessity of removing the Breathaid to speak made all verbal communication an inconvenience, and it took a frustrating length of time for a message to be passed. As Crispin and Josie watched the word travelling back down the line toward them, it became clear that it was not the word to advance, as no one was moving.

Charlie, waiting with Mina in front of Crispin and Josie, turned to pass on the word. “The reactor’s blown its stack,” he announced. “The cloud’s heading this way. Should be here in an hour or so. There’s no point in advancing. Pass it on to the folks behind.”

Crispin passed the message on. Then he turned to Josie. “What do we do now?”

Josie shrugged. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice. We sit down here for a few weeks until it’s safer to venture out. If we haven’t starved in the meantime. Before long, the air outside will be deadly.”

“Before long?” said Crispin.

“A couple of hours at most,” said Josie. “The station’s about 55k from here.”

She shot him a glance. He was looking straight ahead. In the darkness, she permitted herself a broad smile. She found it took next to nothing to work out what he was thinking. Knowing that, she had to decide what to do herself, but she knew that, in fact, that decision was already made.

Behind them, the rearmost members of the troop had turned their bikes around and were starting to make their way back to the warren they called home. Crispin and Josie did likewise as soon as there was room to turn.

As they cycled, Josie saw Crispin’s face in the light from her torch. His jaw was set firmly, and she recognised the solemn expression he adopted when he was mulling over some radical notion.

“I’m coming with you,” she said softly.

He gaped at her idiotically, almost affronted that he was so transparent to her. Had he slammed on the brakes as it was is first instinct to do, he would have caused a monumental pile up of the other cyclists coming behind. It took all his presence of mind to keep pedalling.

“How did you know what I was thinking?” he gasped.

“It’s not hard. You wouldn’t take kindly to hanging around down here for weeks, would you? A country boy like you.”

“No,” Crispin admitted. “Especially if this was going to end up as my tomb, after everything we’ve done.”

“But do you realise the risk you’ll be taking out in the open?” said Josie.

“If I’ve got to die,” said Crispin, “I want at least to die with the sun on my face. We’ve been getting - what do you say? - psyched up to die for months now. I couldn’t face a long slow decline.” He paused. “Do you really want to come with me?”

Josie reached out her hand and placed it over his as he gripped the handlebar. I want to be with you. We will die together, whether it’s down here or on a mountainside.”

He turned to her and smiled with relief. “Thank you,” he said.

When the remnant of the Sector Three Underground regrouped at their headquarters, Crispin announced that he and Josie were going to try and cross the mountains, as it seemed futile to simply sit and wait to die.

To his surprise, seven others decided to make the same journey. They included Charlie, Simone and Mina. There were two gay friends, Ralph, who was lean and tall, and reticent about his homosexuality, and in sharp contrast, his constant companion, big Nick, tubby and moon-faced, who wore his sexual inclination like a loud suit. There was a quiet man named Keith, who had recently joined Sector Three after his own sector had been infiltrated and broken up, and who would volunteer for any boring or unpleasant job to shore up his own need to feel accepted. And there was a man in his forties named Ted, who hovered shyly on the fringe of the group, and about whom most of the others knew relatively little. All in all, a very mixed bag of travelling companions.

“We’re none of us well equipped to survive the cold,” Crispin told them. “But I guess you’d all know how to shoot an animal if you saw one. There’s not much I can say, except to wish you all luck.”

There were some hasty, tearful embraces. And then those who were leaving mounted their cycles and moved off, following their compass readings in a westerly direction, as far as was possible. Josie, with the compass, took the lead.

The lightweight machines ridden by Crispin and Josie rapidly outpaced the heavier, slower machines of the others. They were almost silent, with just the faint swish of their tyres on wet paving slabs being amplified by the sepulchral acoustics of the tunnels. Only when they crossed the pontoon bridges at intersections was there much noise, a loud metallic rattle which lasted for a few seconds as they flashed across.

Some stretches of the tunnel were illuminated, others were in blackness. They finally passed out of the last lighted area into total night, where only the beams of their torches shone. Almost as soon as they passed beyond the lights, Josie came to a sudden halt, and Crispin had to brake violently to avoid cannoning into the back of her.

He was about to ask why she had stopped when he saw for himself what had seized her attention. In the velvet night ahead, they saw hundreds of little pinpoints of red in pairs. But even as they looked, the red vanished, and there was the sound of countless scuttering paws echoing on the concrete.

“Rats!” said Josie with disgust.

“But they’re probably as scared as we are,” said Crispin. “They will have sensed the shock wave from the power plant. They know there’s something wrong.”

“But we’ll have to pass through them,” Josie moaned.

“Nothing we can do about that,” said Crispin. “Let’s go.”

They hurried on, and in moments their torches picked out the black rumps and whiplash tails of the backmarkers of a horde of rats. The rats skipped aside slightly as they sensed the speeding wheels close behind them. Frequent splashes were heard as many of the frantic rodents lost their footing and fell into the water.

And then, up ahead, the splashes became a continuous cascade. Josie and Crispin slowed cautiously, then came to a stop as they reached the mouth of a tunnel entering from the right. Some of the rats were moving down the new tunnel, although they appeared to be doing so with reluctance, as if they sensed that evil was coming from that direction. Most of the rats, having failed to stop in time at the mouth of the tunnel, and being pushed over the brink by their fellows coming up behind, were now swimming.

There was no pontoon, so their human fellow-fugitives had no choice but to dismount among the milling animals, some of which, taking offence at having their tails trodden on, bit the synthetic leather of their boots, but were unable to strike through. Crispin lifted his bike high in the air and jumped off the path. He landed waist deep in the foul effluent, with unspeakable sludge sucking at his boots. Cursing under his breath, he waded the three metres to the far side, where the pathway was mercifully rat free, put his bike up on the track and hoisted himself up.

Josie came after him, the water almost up to her breasts, holding her bike as far out of the water as she could. Crispin took it from her and stood it against the wall of the tunnel, then grasped her outstretched hands and helped her out of the muck. They remounted their bikes and set off again.

They had to repeat the exercise three more times during the next forty minutes, as they reached more tunnel intersections. At one point where the tunnel they were following forked, they simply followed the right fork to avoid a further drenching in stormwater.

There was a last long uninterrupted stretch, where the pipes feeding into the main tunnel were smaller and issued below the level of the path. The two riders were able to put on an essential spurt.

And then they found themselves in a kind of rotunda. A circular pond formed the source of the subterranean river they had been following, with pipes pouring into it all around. A slowly rotating device in the middle of the pond, with arms extending like spokes to its rim, created a current that would flow to the sea.

Crispin and Josie stopped and dismounted, scanning the domed ceiling with their torches.

“End of the line,” said Josie. “But I don’t see any way out.”

Crispin turned his beam back into the tunnel. “There. On the other side of the tunnel.” His light picked out the skeletal shape of a ladder. They walked around the rotunda to it.

Josie glanced back at the bikes leaning against the wall. “Well,” she smiled, “if we’re ever back this way, they’ll come in handy. If they don’t rust.”

Crispin said nothing. He began to climb the ladder. Josie came close behind him. It was a long climb through a featureless coal-black tube, and Crispin was panting by the time his torch reflected off dull metal above his head. At the top of the ladder, he hooked his arm round a rung and pressed the other forearm against the metal overhead and pushed. The metal refused to budge. Again he pushed. It gave only fractionally. Another shove shifted it more decisively. Crispin felt his arm and shoulder about to give way. Josie edged up behind him, wedging herself in tightly behind his back, and added her own hand.

“On the count of three,” said Crispin. “One, two, three.”

The two of them heaved together, and the access cover rose from its seating. Brilliant sunshine dazzled their light-starved eyes. Their heads swam and they both had to tighten their grip on the ladder to keep from falling.

Crispin pushed the steel cover aside, and waited till his vision cleared. When it did, he found that he was looking at a pair of Security Commission issue boots and the business end of a Security Commission issue blaster.

“Up!” commanded the fresh-faced young Security man, trying to sound authoritative.

Slowly and deliberately, Crispin made his way out of the manhole and straightened up. The Security man took Crispin’s blaster from its holster and thrust it into his own.

He stepped back a pace as Josie climbed out, his eyes darting uneasily from one to the other of them. “Lay the gun on the road, nice and easy,” he said. Josie obeyed.

He waited for more people to emerge, and when none came, he looked at them suspiciously. “Just the two of you?” he queried. “Oh well, I guess it’s a start.” He pulled a communicator out of his top pocket. “Sierra Romeo 232 to control.”

There was a crackle of static, then the reply. “Control to Sierra Romeo 232, what’s new?”

“Control, I have apprehended two suspects emerging from the drainage system, both armed.”

“Roger, 232, we have your position tracked, we will be with you in five.”

The Security man put away his communicator and pulled out handcuffs, which he tossed to Josie. “Cuff him to you,” he ordered.

Josie snapped the handcuffs on her own left and Crispin’s right wrist. They stood waiting, while the Security man watched them, growing increasingly edgy as minutes passed.

A helicopter passed in the distance. Josie glanced anxiously past the Security man’s shoulder. “Looks like they’re here already,” she hissed into Crispin’s ear in a very audible whisper.

The Security man turned his head involuntarily in the direction in which Josie was looking. In the same instant Josie’s right hand moved with lightning speed and struck a savage blow to his neck. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

“What did you do?” gasped Crispin as Josie fumbled over the man’s body for the key to the handcuffs.

“Probably exploded his carotid artery,” said Josie tensely. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled the key out of a cartridge on the dead man’s belt and unlocked the handcuffs.

“Wasn’t that a little risky?” said Crispin.

“It was a gamble that he’d fall for such a hoary old trick, certainly,” Josie conceded as she relieved the man of Crispin’s blaster and his own Security issue gun. She returned Crispin’s weapon to him and pocketed the Security blaster herself. “But not so great as you might imagine. See this insignia?” She pointed to a badge on the Security Commission tunic. “Security Reserves. And the callsign, Sierra Romeo, that’s the Reserves’ callsign. So it was a safe bet that this guy was green to the gills.”

“How do you know all this?” said Crispin.

Josie winked. “Just a few wrinkles that I’ve picked up over the years. Mostly from talking to contacts within the filth.”

A helicopter rattled in close. Josie grabbed the laser rifle and they ran for cover, but they had already been spotted.

“Give me covering fire,” she commanded. “Let me see if I remember where the fuel line is on one of those.”

As Crispin pumped fire at the cockpit of the approaching chopper, causing it to swerve, Josie put her eye to the sight of the more powerful rifle and eased the butt into her shoulder. A single shot was sufficient to turn the aircraft into a fireball that sent the two of them diving for cover as it plunged over their heads and burst into the side of a nearby house.

It was only as they stumbled dizzily to their feet and looked past the pall of smoke from the devastated house that they saw how close that other cloud had come, carrying with it the potential to turn the city into a charnel house of unimaginable proportions.

“Quick,” said Josie. “Take your breastplate off and put it on your back. It might afford a little more protection that way.”

She helped Crispin pull the coils of rope over his head so he could free the breastplate he wore. They ran from the scene, looking like a pair of chromium-plated tortoises.

As they turned into the next street, Josie’s attention was caught by dozens of little square shapes scattered about on the ground. She grabbed Crispin’s arm to stop him, stooped and picked one up.

“Josie!” Crispin wailed. “We don’t have time!”

“I think we can make time for these,” she said quietly. The packet she held in her hand was a blister pack containing some white pellets. The pack was labelled, `Potassium Iodide: For Emergency Use Only’.

Josie pulled a glove off with her teeth and began ripping open the pack. “Take one,” she grunted. Crispin looked at her quizzically and obeyed. She swallowed one herself, and pocketed the rest of the pack.

“They might just be the saving of us,” she sighed as she pulled her glove back on. In moments they were hurrying towards the nearest grassy slopes, leaving the city behind them.

End of ‘Urbis’.