There had to be one somewhere. It should be part of the geography of this part of the City. Every urban area had its grey area on the edge of the inner city. Derelict housing, old warehouses, dead industry, waste land, football grounds, railway sidings, gasholders, canals. Brownfield sites, interzones, edgelands.
I pictured the football ground. I imagined the splash of green under the floodlights. I imagined being led to the middle of the pitch — and then what? Would there be a gibbet? A trapdoor? A guillotine? A simple post and a firing squad?
Then I saw what I wanted, glinting like a seam of jet in redundant rock. A narrow, oil-black canal threading its way between the backs of two streets. The street we were on would go over it in fifty yards or so. Not a bridge as such, the width of the canal hardly merited it, but there was just a chance. In my position the slightest chance was worth taking. If I fell to my death at least I would have chosen the manner of my going, which was preferable to whatever execution the authorities had planned for me in the stadium.
Right at the last moment the truck that was pulling the trailer seemed about to turn off into another street away from the canal. My mouth filled with the acid taste of fear. But the truck bumped onwards. I looked at the guards. They were watching the flow of humanity in the streets. The trailer was drawn past the last row of houses before the canal and past the back entry whose cobbles shone in the orange light like fat little fish. I jumped.
In the air my arms came free. The plastic tie had been cut clean through. Only a razor would have produced such a clean cut. I didn’t have time to protect my face or hold my nose before striking the water. It went up my nostrils as I sank deeper and felt my leg hit the bottom. Thinking my head was about to burst I turned and headed under the road, swimming underwater. I couldn’t open my eyes but I heard the bullets that tore through the water on either side of me. I dived deeper and swam along the bottom for as long as I could before I had to come up for air.
Despite the desperate need to empty my passages and breath fresh air I surfaced slowly and quietly.
I found myself in total darkness. I could hear a far-off rumble and clamour, the thump of my pulse, and a constant drip, presumably from the ceiling of the tunnel. I cleared my throat, took a few deep breaths and swam on. The taste of the canal water in my mouth was bitter and nauseating. My boots were slowing me down but if I got rid of them I knew I’d regret it later. I put everything into moving my arms and legs, thrusting forward and pushing water behind me, kicking back as if there were dogs snapping at my heels. Just when I was beginning to think I couldn’t swim another stroke, I saw light up ahead. I listened but couldn’t hear anything apart from my own echoing splashes.
Even with the tunnel exit in sight it was the cold that now got to me. My limbs felt as if they had been packed in ice and I had started to shiver violently. I forced myself on by willpower, thinking of Annie Risk. If she was in danger I had to get back for her sake as well as mine. The distraction of her image gave me a few more strokes.
Ten yards from the end of the tunnel, I dived and swam as far as I could, then veered to the left-hand side and broke the surface. Water dripped off my nose.
The tow path and nearby streets were empty. I clambered out and sat on the bank, taking off my boots and emptying them. A minute later I set off again, trotting along the tow path, looking for what I guessed I would come across sooner or later. Only two hundred yards further on I found what I wanted: a railway bridge. I climbed up the side and walked onto the line. Nothing was coming from either direction.
I had to choose: left or right. It wasn’t quite fifty-fifty. My instinct said left because that way lay the stadium to which they had been taking me. Left would take me deep into the grey area where I would most likely find any sidings or depot. These wouldn’t be far from the stadium, because of the difficulties of transporting the executed men from the football ground to the railway line without any of them escaping. To some extent I was busking it, making assumptions based on comments made by Gledhill — when he had talked of maintaining a presence in the grey areas along railway lines and canals — and Maxi, who had referred specifically to the dead lying down only when the train passed over into my world.
She had been on my side at the end, when it mattered, so I had to trust her information.
I shivered in the raw night air. The oily canal water was still making me slip as I skipped from sleeper to sleeper. The line was built on relatively high ground and I could see the City’s lights spread out on the left. On the right lay darkness broken by a few scattered lamps. I was tempted to make off in that direction but resisted. I knew the City too well now to believe I might escape that way. The darkness would be thick with snares. I had come to understand that the City was everywhere and if you were inside the City looking out it stretched to infinity. If you were outside looking in, as I had been, it simply didn’t exist in physical terms at all. Somehow it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, as Gledhill-the-patient had said of the Dark.
I noticed movement in the streets on my left. At least a mile away lights were gathering around a central point. Then, as I continued running, they started to disperse in all directions, thousands of lights. People carrying flaming torches perhaps. Presumably curfew had been cancelled and all loyal citizens sent out to hunt me down. The thought lent speed to my flight. Some of the lights were heading for points further up the line. I had no choice but to continue running, convinced now that this was my last chance.
When I hit the sidings the lights were still half a mile away, bobbing and converging as they narrowed the gap. I listened hard and heard what I wanted — the chug-chug of an engine ticking over. The smells of diesel and grease were sweet after the foul stench of the canal. Floodlights positioned at the corners of the depot meant I had to proceed with more caution, but the engine noise was easy to locate. I picked my way over the tracks, ducking beneath lines of idle rolling stock and freight wagons. The velvety darkness beyond the sidings was dotted with coloured signals. The train with the live engine which I was now approaching appeared to be waiting for a red signal to go green. The locomotive was painted grey and red.
The wagons were old cattle trucks with wooden, slatted walls. I stopped by one and pressed my ear to the side. All I could hear was the persistent chugging of the diesel. I peered in between two vertical slats and what I saw made me look away and double up to be sick over the oily chippings.
In the semi-darkness of the wagon I’d seen ceiling-filtered light from the high floods falling across bare dirty-white thighs and torn shoulders, twisted, wasted arms and shaved heads.
These were the dead. And they were standing up.
The idle of the locomotive took on a different, higher tone. I looked up the line, vomit still burning the inside of my mouth, and the light flicked to green. The locomotive revved and a great cloud of diesel exhaust billowed into the floodlit night. The trucks were jerked into life in a long domino line and I reached for the catch on the gate. At first it wouldn’t give and the loco gave its first real tug on the wagons. I had to jump and fiddle with the catch while walking sideways. Suddenly it fell open and I opened the gate just wide enough to squeeze in. I fastened it after me and stared out through the gaps in the truck wall at the receding lines of carriages and, jumping between them, the dancing flames of the late King’s loyal avengers.