Magnus heard his own breath, loud in his head. The soldiers’ footsteps came closer. The dead woman lay still beneath the folds of her orange sari and the yellow wires of the youth’s headphones remained coiled around his neck. There were rats in the tunnels, rats and inky darkness that might be split without warning by the electric rush of a subway train.
The footsteps were very close now. The soldiers would be with him soon. Magnus wondered how they could be bothered to chase him in the face of so much death. Why they did not simply dump their uniforms and escape while they were still alive. But perhaps he already knew the answer. The only way to avoid going mad was to go on. Following orders was an enviable profession.
Magnus ran along the platform to a maintenance ladder and climbed down on to the tracks. The live rail glinted silver and tempting on his right. He marked the distance between it and him and ran northwards. A voice shouted behind him but Magnus ran on, into the dark.
Sixteen
Pitch-blackness folded around Magnus. The soldiers were still out there, somewhere in the dim-bright. Something scuttled through the dark and he imagined the same fat rat that he had seen on the Underground platform.
Between the ages of ten and seventeen Magnus and his cousin Hugh had spent many idle days shooting barn-rats with air rifles, competing for the highest score. Hugh had usually won, but they were well matched and Magnus was generally a close second. Magnus bent over in the dark and tucked the hems of his jeans into his socks, the way his father had instructed him to, to stop the rats from climbing up the inside of his trouser legs. He felt a sudden suspicious fear that they might somehow know how many of them he had murdered and decide to get their revenge.
Magnus stretched out a hand and walked into the blackness. Every atom of his body resisted, but he pressed on, humming the ghost of a song beneath his breath to give himself courage.
Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome tae yer gory bed,
Or tae victorie.
Now’s the day and now’s the hour…
Something touched him and he sank on to his haunches gasping for breath.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Jeb hissed.
Magnus would have liked to have punched him, but Jeb was a voice in the darkness and Magnus was finding it hard to breathe. He filled his lungs, trying to calm his hammering heart. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
He saw a flash of white in the dark and realised that Jeb was smiling.
‘Don’t worry. They won’t come down here.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Would you?’
‘No, but I wouldn’t join the fucking army in the first place. They have lights on their gun sights. They’re wearing stab vests and helmets and I’m willing to bet they’ve eaten recently. They can take us no bother, if they want to.’
‘They don’t have our motivation,’ Jeb said. He was standing in a hollow in the tunnel wall, Magnus guessed. A recess where track workers had sheltered from passing trains, sucking in their bellies as carriages rushed past. ‘Soldiers are pack animals. These guys looked like ordinary squaddies to me. They won’t go far from the rest of their crew without orders. It makes them nervous.’
As if on cue, two pinpoints of light appeared in the blackness of the corridor. Jeb pulled Magnus into the recess beside him. It smelled of piss, mortar and loamy earth, a graveyard scent. It was a tight fit and Magnus felt Jeb’s body against his, warm in the dampness. Jeb moved a hand to his pocket. Magnus knew he was taking out his penknife and resisted the urge to grab Jeb’s wrist, for fear of feeling the sharp edge of the blade penetrate his side.
The lights came closer, no longer pinpoints but two fans of brilliance, illuminating the tunnel and revealing its red-brick walls, the high curve of its roof. The lights revealed rats too, larger than any that had graced his father’s barn. Fat enough to make a good meal for a starving man, Magnus thought, disgusted by the eager way his belly responded to the image. He wondered if the army would feed them or if Jeb was right and they would be summarily executed; worse than dying would be to die hungry.
The lights were edging nearer and it would not be long before they exposed their hiding place. Magnus shrank against the wall. He felt Jeb’s body tense, muscles bunching, readying for combat. There was a good chance that they would die here, wearing strangers’ clothes and carrying other men’s IDs. Magnus heard the sound of the soldiers’ boots, crunching against the gravel, and felt sad that his mother would never know what had happened to him. He heard something else too, phlegm hacking in one of the soldiers’ throats. Light ricocheted around the walls, bouncing across the roof of the tunnel in crazy circles and Magnus guessed that the soldier had bent over to be sick. He felt Jeb holding his breath, and realised that he was holding his own too.
‘Mike, are you okay?’ he heard a voice ask. The answer was low and unintelligible and the same voice said, ‘Do you think you’ve got it?’ The answer must have been a negative because the voice said, ‘I think you’re wrong, Mike. I think you’ve caught it. You’re boiling up, man. You should have told me.’ The voice sounded young and full of more regret than a young voice should be able to hold. It had a Liverpool accent, both soft and harsh, like a war ballad. ‘You should have told me, Mike,’ it repeated. Whatever Mike whispered next made the voice sadder. ‘I’m sorry, Mike,’ it said. ‘Sorry, man.’
Jeb must have guessed what was going to happen next because a shudder ran through him. There was the sound of a gun being cocked and someone — Mike — shouted something that was all fear and panic, not a word at all, but unmistakable in its plea. There was a crack of gunfire, a flash in the dark, brighter than the lights on the gun sights that had led the men there. The soft Liverpudlian voice said, ‘Sorry, mate.’
There was a moment of not quite silence, a sound of rustling and Magnus guessed the soldier was stripping his dead companion of useful kit, then the light resumed its stare down the tunnel. It puddled inches from where their feet stood, side by side in the recess.
They were dead men. Jeb’s penknife was a child’s toy, effective against a half-starved convict, but useless against an armed professional. Magnus wished that he could pray. Now was the time to commend themselves to their maker.
‘Don’t worry, lads.’ The voice was stronger, as if the act of killing had fortified it. ‘I’ve had enough. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.’ The soldier paused as if he were waiting for a reply, but speaking would give away their position, and Jeb and Magnus kept their silence. ‘Okay.’ The voice sounded at a loss. ‘I guess there’s nothing much to be said, except that I’ve got a gun for each hand now, so go the other way, if you want to keep on going.’