‘Did it work?’
‘No idea. But that could be the best way to reach Donahue. Crawl through the walls.’
‘What about Galloway? He’s in there, somewhere.’
‘Some of these pipes run for miles. Should be able to avoid him, long as you don’t take any detours.’
They pulled paint tins and boxes from the conduit mouth. Tombes tugged the grille until corroded screws sheared and mesh tore loose.
He shone his flashlight into the dark aperture. Crumbling brickwork receded to shadow.
‘Worth a shot.’
‘Doesn’t look too stable,’ said Lupe. ‘That shit could cave any minute.’
Tombes gripped the lip of the tunnel mouth and hauled himself inside. He twisted round. Lupe passed him a section of rusted pipe.
‘Watch yourself. Galloway is in there, somewhere.’
He tucked the pipe into his waistband.
‘Catch you later.’
Lupe rehung the grille and stacked boxes against the mesh.
She took out her radio.
‘Donahue? Do you copy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Look around. There’s a grille, right? Some kind of vent in the office wall.’
‘There’s something high up, blocked with wood.’
‘Can you reach it?’
‘I’m a bit frigging preoccupied right now.’
‘Tombes is on his way. We think he can reach you via the air tunnels. All you have to do is sit tight, okay?’
‘I’m not sure how much longer I can keep them out. The lock is screwed. The door bends every time they hit.’
‘Is there anything else you can use for a barricade?’
‘I’ve thrown every last thing against the door. I’m holding the damned thing shut. I got my back to the desk.’
‘We’ll buy you time.’
Lupe ran to the plant room door.
‘Cloke. Get over here. Make some noise.’
Lupe began to punch and kick the door.
‘Hey,’ she shouted. ‘Hey, you fucks. In here. We’re in here. Come on. Fresh meat. Come and get it.’
Cloke pummelled the door.
‘Hey,’ they shouted. ‘Hey, in here.’
The door began to shake and rumble as bodies slammed into the wood from the other side.
They stepped back. They listened to the cacophony.
‘Guess we drew a few of them off,’ said Lupe.
‘Sounds like a pretty big crowd,’ said Cloke. ‘More of the bastards heading down the steps each minute. We should have hit them sooner. A lot sooner.’
‘We’re smart. They’re dumb. We’re fast. They’re slow. The trick is to keep moving. If you freeze, if you hesitate for a second, they’ll converge on your ass, and then you’re fucked. Go in hard. Be a whirlwind. Duck and weave.’
‘What have we got for weapons?’
‘Not much. A couple of sections of pipe. Plenty of stuff in the equipment pile out there in the ticket hall. Rescue gear. Axes, hammers, crowbars. But we have to battle our way through a crowd to reach them. Twenty yards of tough fighting.’
‘Got any matches?’ asked Cloke.
Lupe dug in her pocket. Galloway’s matchbook. Three strikes left.
‘What do you have in mind?’
Cloke led her to the back of the room. Stacked boxes. He tore away rotted cardboard. Rusted paint tins.
‘Should have thought of this a lot earlier.’
He hefted a tin, wiped grime from the Nu-Enamel label.
‘This sludge is oil-based. Thinned with turpentine. It’ll burn like phosphorus.’
They stacked tins by the plant room door. Cloke pried lids with his belt buckle. He recoiled from the fierce chemical stink.
Lupe shrugged off her coat and pulled her prison smock over her head. White bra. Big tattoo across her back:
She bit the sleeve of her prison smock between clenched teeth and tore strips. She pinned each strip beneath a lid to form a wick.
‘All right. Let’s napalm the bastards.’
Tombes crawled through the narrow pipe. His flashlight lit the brick-lined conduit ahead. Panting breath, and the scuff of boots, reverberated in the confined space.
He was spooked by darkness, and the sinister wind-whisper of the passageways.
A sudden conviction he was not alone. Something else in the tunnel system. He paused, twisted round and shone the flashlight behind him. Nothing. The brick pipe receded to deep darkness.
He turned back, and hit his head on the low brick roof. He winced and checked his scalp for blood.
Lupe’s voice:
‘How’s it going?’
‘Stinks like someone crawled in here and died.’
‘They probably did.’
‘I found Galloway’s boot. He’s around here, somewhere.’
‘Watch yourself.’
‘There’s a junction. I’m heading right.’
‘How far have you got?’
‘Hard to tell.’
‘We got paint tins. We’ll try to set the fuckers on fire, create a distraction.’
‘Hold on. I can see light up ahead.’
Tombes shut off his flashlight and tucked it into his waistband. He crawled forwards. A dust-furred grille in the floor of the conduit. The slats projected lattice light on the tunnel roof.
He took the radio from his pocket and reduced the volume.
‘I’m above the ticket hall. I’m looking down. Can’t see too well. I count seven infected. Probably more outside my field of vision. They look pretty far gone. Slow. Messed up. I reckon we could take them, if we move fast.’
The pounding stopped. Donahue remained braced against the desk barricade for a full minute, then slowly relaxed.
She wiped sweat from her face. She shook out exhausted limbs.
She shone the watch and inspected the door. The wood surrounding the hinges had started to rip and splinter.
A faint crackle from her radio.
Lupe’s voice:
‘Donahue? You there?’
Donahue crouched in the corner and whispered into the Motorola.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.’
‘How you doing?’
‘The door took a battering. The hinges are tearing loose. Surprised it hasn’t caved.’
‘Are they still trying to get inside?’
‘They seemed to have laid off, for now.’
‘We made a ruckus. A bunch of them are outside the plant room, trying to break in. Our door is solid. It should hold.’
‘Okay.’
‘Can you see the vent?’
‘Like I said, there’s a couple of chunks of wood screwed high on one of the walls.’
‘Can you shift them?’
‘Hold on.’
A couple of short lengths of wood secured by heavy screws. Donahue reached up, gripped the planks and pulled. She grunted and strained. She lifted her feet off the floor and hung by her arms, tried to wrench the slats from the wall using her full body weight.
‘They’re screwed directly into the brickwork. Can’t shift the damn things. I guess they could be blocking a vent. Hard to tell.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Tombes will kick them free from inside once he reaches the office.’
‘All right.’
‘Look, you have to do me a favour. I know it’s asking a lot. But I need you to draw these bastards away from the plant room door. We’ve got paint bombs, Molotov cocktails. We can burn those fuckers to a crisp, but we need them to back away from the door so we can get into the hall and hit them. Can you do that? Can you create a distraction?’