AT THAT EARLY HOUR, there was very little traffic in the Hampstead streets as Drake drove past St. Edmund’s Hospital and up Rosslyn Hill. He swung the Range Rover into Pilgrim’s Lane, racing down its full length until he reached the end and slowed to a crawl. He parked next to a strip of the heath known as Preacher’s Hill, where the long grass and few trees were rimed with frost, making them appear as though they had been sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.
He reached for the key to turn off the engine, but paused as a report came on the radio about the Ultra Bug. The announcer was talking about how all the missed work days had cost the economy many millions.
“Hah! They’re always worried about the money!” Drake said scornfully, his eyes closing as he leaned back against the headrest. “They just don’t get it.” He yawned. He hadn’t slept properly for days, snatching the odd hour in the car when he’d had the chance, and it was catching up with him. He allowed his head to slide over until it touched the window, and all at once he fell into a half sleep.
Drake was suddenly brought back to wakefulness as a cell phone began vibrating in the bag on the passenger seat.
Drenched in a cold sweat, it took him a few moments to remember where he was. The car engine was still running, and as he listened he realized he’d missed the rest of the Ultra Bug report.
“Get your act together,” he growled, furious with himself. He was still swearing as he checked the phones inside the bag until he found the one that was buzzing. He pulled it out and answered it, turning off the ignition with the other hand to silence the radio.
“Hello,” he said, rubbing his face roughly to force himself fully awake.
A woman spoke, although she didn’t identify herself. “Hello?”
“Yes,” Drake said.
“I’m calling on behalf of—”
“No names,” Drake interrupted sharply. “I know who you are. Why isn’t he calling me himself?”
The voice was sad, hollow. “He’s … he’s unavailable.”
“Oh dear God,” Drake exclaimed, knowing exactly what the woman’s words really meant. His contact was either dead or missing. So far, not a single person he’d got in touch with from his old cell was still active. His network had been dismantled.
The woman’s voice became harder and more emphatic. “And don’t go to the Hill Station.”
“Why?” Drake asked, clenching the phone so hard that the plastic casing creaked.
“It’s off-line,” she said, then hung up.
Drake looked at the phone for several moments, at the small bars on the display that fluctuated with the strength of the signal. Then he flipped the phone over and removed the back, sliding out the SIM card. As he got out of the car, he dropped the card onto the pavement and ground the heel of his boot into it. He scanned the road and the area of open parkland as he went to the tailgate and opened it. From a black case he took out a handgun, quickly tucking it into the back of his waistband. Then he locked the car and strode across to Preacher’s Hill. As he made his way up the slope, keeping behind the few straggly bushes, his boots left prints in the frosty grass.
Once on higher ground, he paused to survey the area again, his eyes finally settling on his destination. The Hill Station, as it had been known to the members of his network, was a large Edwardian house at the end of a row of similar properties. Drake left the grassy slope and returned to the road. Although he’d just received an unequivocal message from the caller, he had to see it for himself. But he had to be careful — they might be watching. So he walked straight past the house, apparently giving it only a casual glance. It was sufficient for him to take in the barricade across the entrance to the driveway and the sign that read KEEP OUT — STRUCTURE UNSAFE, and to see that all the ground-floor windows had been boarded up. He continued along the street for several houses, then glanced at his wrist-watch as if he were late for something, and doubled back.
Upon reaching the entrance to the driveway, he effortlessly vaulted the red-and-white-striped barrier. He kept close to an overgrown box hedge along the side of the gravel drive, making for the side of the house. As he came to the entrance to the basement, he saw there was no longer a door — just a charred frame. He opened his greatcoat and took out his handgun.
He stepped cautiously through the scorched doorway, covering all angles with the gun. All that remained in the basement were the metal skeletons of desks and small pools of melted plastic from the banks of computers that had been on top of them. Everything else was reduced to ash. The walls were blackened from smoke, and the ceiling had collapsed in several places where the joists had burned through. The whole area looked as if it had been engulfed by some sort of localized firestorm.
He knew it was a waste of time to check if any of the equipment or records had survived. He backed out of the basement and returned to the car.
The Styx had been characteristically thorough: While he had been in the Deeps, the whole network had been dismantled. Drake felt a crushing sense of helplessness. The only course open to him now was to try to get in touch with one of the other cells that operated independently across the country, the risk being that he might prejudice them in the process.
But he was desperate.
“Wales it is,” he said wearily, and started the engine.
“I can take her if you want,” Chester offered as Will went to lift Elliott.
Will shook his head. “Doesn’t make much difference, does it? It’s not as if she weighs anything down here.”
Chester swung the three rucksacks over his shoulders. Back on the surface, carrying such a burden would have been unthinkable, but now, as he jumped up and down several times, he was hardly aware they were there. He stooped to pick up his rifle between his thumb and forefinger, and held it out at arm’s length. “Yeah, isn’t that amazing? It’s as light as a pencil. You’re right — nothing weighs very much down here!”
With no idea where they were going, except that the cave seemed to penetrate farther into the wall of the Pore, they began to follow it.
Even after several miles, they found they were still walking on the springy surface of the fungus, which coated every inch of the tunnel around them.
Then they turned a corner and were confronted by a vertical wall of fungus. “Dead end … not mushroom in here,” Chester joked.
“Very funny. It’s not a dead end, anyway,” Will muttered, pointing at the opening above their heads. “Dim your light for a second,” he said as he put Elliott down. He flicked the lens over his eye to investigate. “Looks like it goes some ways,” he informed Chester, “but I can’t see what’s at the top.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” Chester replied, disheartened.
“You’re forgetting something.” Will took a short running start and leaped straight up the wall. He took off, disappearing from sight. Not to be left behind by his new master, Bartleby sprang after him.
“Oh, great, just leave me here by myself,” Chester muttered, peering around the pitch-black. He clicked his lantern up and began to whistle to comfort himself. After a while there was still no sign of Will, and he became anxious. “Hey!” he yelled. “What’s up there? Don’t leave me alone down here!”
Will floated back down and landed lightly beside Chester. “There are several openings we can try. Let’s go!”
“So now we can fly,” Chester said. “All in a day’s work, I suppose.”
They encountered more of these vertical seams, and despite the fungal growth that obscured nearly everything, Will began to recognize that there was a pattern to them. They seemed to be arranged in a series of concentric circles radiating out from around the Pore. He pictured it as the geological equivalent of a pebble dropped into a pool of water, the ripples spreading out from it, and wondered if rapid cooling of the bedrock had given rise to the circular fractures.
“So the earth isn’t solid at all,” Will had said to Chester as they were walking. “It’s more like one ginormous Swiss cheese — full of holes.”
“Do you have to talk about food?” was Chester’s rejoinder.
But Will was beginning to suspect that there might be, in fact, a great deal more of these seams hidden from sight, and that over the centuries they had been invaded by the rapacious growth of the fungus. It filled him with a sense of wonder that the fungus was probably one huge organism, stretching for hundreds of miles, both in a sheath inside the Pore and also through the surrounding rock.
“Do you know, we could actually be inside the biggest plant in the world,” he mused on another occasion, but Chester gave no response.
They eventually came to a place where the tunnel before them split into three. They stopped to decide which fork to take.
“Well, we’re really spoiled for choice this time,” Will was saying.
His friend hummed in agreement.
“Look, Chester, quite honestly, I don’t care which way we go,” Will said. “Makes no difference to me — they all look pretty much the same, don’t they?” He scrutinized the tunnels again: They were all of a similar dimension and each appeared to continue horizontally, although who knew what lay just around the corner? The boys had already been forced to turn back several times, when the way had become impassable due to excessive fungal growth or because it pinched down to crawlways too narrow for even the most determined ant to get through.
“I picked last time. It’s your turn,” Chester threw back at him.
“Actually, no, you didn’t. Bartleby chose the last one,” Will reminded him.
“Well, let him do it again,” Chester suggested.
They both turned to regard Bartleby, whose head was high in the air as he sniffed, his tail swishing briskly.
“Go on, Bart, take your pick,” Will urged him.
“Bart?“ Chester asked. “Where did that come from?”
“Cal,” Will said quietly.
“Oh, right, yes.” Chester stole a glance at Will, wondering how he was dealing with his brother’s death. But Will seemed to be entirely focused on moving through the network of tunnels, as if he had some sort of plan in mind. If he was as concerned about their current predicament as Chester was, it certainly didn’t show. From the discovery of the nets on the fungal outcrop, at least they knew that there had been people down here, even if they weren’t still alive. But apart from this, there was no getting away from the fact that he and Will were just wandering aimlessly along. However, Chester wasn’t about to challenge his friend about it, because they had to do something.
“If you can’t make up your mind, I’ll decide which way,” Will said to the cat, who seemed to be in no hurry as he continued to sample the air. Then Bartleby scampered into one of the tunnels. He had gone a little way down it when he came to a sudden halt. Following close behind, the boys pulled up just as abruptly.
Will gasped as the odor of decay hit him. “Something big died in here!”
And Chester noticed the sound his boots were making as he stepped across the tunnel. “There’s gooey stuff on the floor. It looks pretty rank.”
“Over here,” Will whispered as he caught sight of a number of structures along the wall.
There were four wooden benches in a row against the side of the tunnel. Resembling something that might be found in a butcher’s shop, they were sturdily built, their legs and tops made of thick pieces of timber. The abattoir impression was further enhanced by the fact that the benches were bloodstained and covered with what seemed to be scraps of old, dried meat, in some places a solid inch deep. A huge hatchet was buried in the top of one of the benches, as if its owner had swung it down hard, and was expecting to come back and use it again.
“Oh no!” Chester swallowed as soon as he laid eyes on the hatchet. He gave Will a horror-stricken glance.
Will’s first thought was that they could have stumbled upon a tribe of subterranean cannibals, although he wasn’t about to share this with his already-petrified friend. As he took a step back from the benches, he lost his footing in the debris covering the floor. He landed on his knees, just managing to keep a grip on Elliott. It gave him an opportunity to see more closely what they had been treading in.
It appeared to be a mass of hacked-off body parts, but there was nothing Will could immediately identify. “Bits of animals?” he said as he noticed a huge compound eye and the sections of shiny black articulated legs covered in bristles almost the width of his little finger. “No, insects … giant insects?” he croaked in disbelief. The largest intact body part he could see consisted of ten or so glossy black insectoid segments, all with legs sprouting from both sides. It could have come from some colossal centipede, but because each individual segment was two feet long, he wondered how big the whole creature had been.
“We are getting out of here. Right now,” Chester said in no uncertain terms as he helped Will to his feet. “And as far the freak away as we can.”
They raced back to the intersection again.
Chester was pointing down one of the other tunnels when a piercing screech made them leap out of their skins. “What the heck was that?” he whispered in the ensuing silence.
All three of them, the boys and the cat, immediately looked up, noticing for the first time that there was a wide fissure right above their heads. The screeches began again, sounding like fingernails being dragged down a very long chalkboard. Apart from the fact that the boys had no idea what was making them, the sounds themselves were painful, tearing at their nerves.
Then the echoes of the screeches died away once more.
In the lull, Chester spoke very quietly. “That’s not rocks cracking or something, is it?”
Will didn’t answer immediately, observing how agitated Bartleby had become.
The nerve-jarring calls came again, louder than before.
“No,” Will whispered, “it’s not geological. Maybe it’s got something to do with all those insect parts.” He continued with urgency. “Chester, get the rifle ready. And the stove guns.” He began to take Elliott into the left-hand tunnel ahead of them. Bartleby was slouched low to the ground and so close to Will’s feet that he nearly tripped over him.
As he trod backward from the intersection, Chester fumbled with the rifle, trying to work the bolt. He finally managed to cock it, ramming a round into the chamber. Still walking backward, he undid the flap on the pad on his hip, in which two stove guns were stored.
The sound of a rope whipping through the air took all three by surprise. The world turned upside down as Will was whisked off his feet. He held on to Elliott, desperately trying not to drop her. Something closed around him from all sides. He caught a glimpse of what it was — mesh similar to what he’d seen on the edge of the fungal outcrop. He’d been trapped in a net.
Bartleby hissed and bucked as he was bundled against Will, who found the more he struggled, the tighter the net became, until he was hardly capable of any movement at all. Over the sound of his own cries and the creaking of the net, he was certain he caught a metallic noise, as if empty tin cans were rattling against one another. With Elliott’s shoulder pushed hard in his face and Bartleby writhing against his legs, he was in no position to tell if Chester had been responsible for this noise. He tried to see where his friend was and whether he’d been caught in another trap, but the net was spinning him around so quickly that everything was a blur.
The moment Chester registered that Will was in trouble, his first impulse had been to go over to help him. But he could tell Will was very much alive from his shouts, and he was more concerned by what was happening in the fissure in the tunnel roof. Rocks and soil were falling from it, as if they were being dislodged, as if something was coming. And the screeches were even louder and more numerous than before. He dropped the rucksacks from his shoulders, took a few more paces back toward Will, then trained the rifle on the opening in the roof.
It was fortunate he did.
Through the rifle scope, he saw something drop from the fissure. It fell without any noise whatsoever, like a shadow flitting across a wall. He quickly sighted on where he thought it had landed.
“What the …?!” Chester spluttered.
It was approximately ten feet across, with more legs than Chester could take in at first glance. These leathery legs extended from the thick circular disk of its body. On the area of the body facing him were three patches that sparkled as if they were studded with bike reflectors. But the most striking aspect was a long stalk that protruded from above its “eyes” with a glowing tip of muted yellow light.
As he watched, the creature seemed to sink lower to the ground, the glowing appendage bobbing gently. Then it slowly began to rise on its multiple legs.
Chester gripped the rifle. He couldn’t abide anything that crawled, even at the best of times, but this monstrosity was like a physical manifestation of his worst childhood nightmares. He shuddered as wave upon wave of revulsion swept through him. “You’re dead meat,” he growled. “I hate —” His words froze on his lips as the creature suddenly dropped its body back down to the ground — a prelude, Chester thought, to launching itself at him.
“SPIDERS!” Chester screamed, jerking the trigger and firing. The single shot tore straight through the creature, cleaving it in two.
He watched as the halves toppled to the left and right, the legs going into a mad paroxysm of movement. With all the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Chester gave a hysterical laugh that sounded nothing like him.
Then there were no more screeching calls, just Will’s shouts from the net.
Chester had just straightened up when another of the creatures landed with a soft flopping noise, precisely where the first had been. His instincts taking over again, Chester cocked the rifle, then pulled the trigger.
He was met with a sound that made his heart stop.
There was a hollow click as the round failed to go off. He desperately tried to work the bolt again, but he couldn’t shift it — it seemed to be jammed. The beast was slowly rising up on its segmented legs. Knowing it was a waste of time, Chester tried to fire the rifle again.
In sheer desperation, Chester did the only thing he could in the situation. He slung the rifle at the beast with all his might. The beast raised a foreleg and fended it off with a single deft flick. Chester glimpsed the rifle spinning away and heard a dull thud as it came to rest on the fungus-coated floor, out of sight.
Then it was just the creature and him. Chester’s stricken gaze locked on to its eyes, malevolent crystal spheres that glittered under the beam of his lantern like large droplets of water. There was the faintest hiss as it opened its mouth, revealing a row of vicious white fangs, each as thick as his thumb.
“Oh no!” he gulped, falling onto his back as he struggled to get a stove gun out of the pad on his hip. He was still watching the creature as he managed to pry one out, dropping the second in the process. He cursed as he tried to recall what Drake had taught them about using these weapons. “Hold it in the palm,” Chester said to himself, first making sure he had it pointed in the right direction. He was just curling a finger around the firing lever when the creature launched itself at him.
Chester hooked the lever straight back and released the firing mechanism. The stove gun bucked in his hand, the blast catching the monster in midair. Chester would have been hard-pressed to miss, as the beast was barely more than a few feet away from him. At such close range, its body was blown to smithereens, splattering Chester with blood.
“Barf! I am so about to hurl,” Chester croaked, wiping his face and staring at the pieces of the dead creature scattered all over him. A couple of the limbs lay across him — and they were still moving. They looked like the spindly legs of a giant plucked chicken, but covered in dark callused skin and spotted here and there with coarse black bristles. Chester thought he was going to be sick as he pushed them off. Then he back-pedaled along the ground, trying to get away from the scene of the carnage. Babbling incoherently to himself, he was on the brink of paralysis, and in no shape to respond to Will’s muffled, frantic calls. The only thing that kept him there and in the present was the thought that he had to rescue Will and Elliott from the trap.
Then he heard another plopping sound.
He didn’t need to look to know what was waiting for him.
“NO! NOT MORE!” he yelled. In an instant he was scrabbling around on the ground in a mad effort to locate the second stove gun. But with all the body fragments and the unevenness of the fungal floor, he couldn’t find it anywhere. He forced himself to look. The body of the creature was quivering slightly as it bobbed on its legs. It’s about to attack, Chester told himself.
Then it leaped, coming straight for him.
There was a hiss as something fiery struck the beast. With amazing speed, the whole creature was consumed by flames. It thrashed about, screeching at an intolerable pitch.
Stunned, Chester got to his feet. He was staggering over to where Will and Elliott were caught in the net as yet another of the monsters appeared. The air seemed to sizzle as a second fiery projectile speared through it. It passed so close to Chester’s head, he thought he was its target and threw himself to the ground. But in the next moment he saw that a fourth spider had been hit and was instantly engulfed by fire, falling beside the still-twitching remains of the first one.
Chester was so completely transfixed by the sight of the two burning, crackling animals that he couldn’t move.
A shadowy form stepped through the smoke.
“Styx?” Chester said simply, staring up at the figure before him. It was aiming what appeared to be a crossbow of some description, with another flaming bolt already in place. But this time, it was pointed straight at Chester.
The figure moved toward him.
“But … but you’re a mere boy,” came a woman’s gruff voice. She was wearing a long tattered coat, with a scarf of lighter material covering the lower half of her face.
“Are you a Styx?” Chester got out.
“What a dreadful thing to say,” came the sharp response.
With a high laugh, the woman unwound the scarf. She blew out the burning tip of the bolt and lowered the crossbow to her side.
Chester took in her wavy red hair and her full, generous face. It was a kindly face, her cheeks crinkled into a smile. Chester couldn’t tell how old she was, but put her somewhere in her forties. Apart from her clothes, she could have easily passed for one of his mother’s friends.
“You’re lucky it was my day to check the traps, or you’d be spider-monkey fodder by now,” the woman said, extending a hand to Chester. “Up you get, love.”
“You’re not Styx, then?” he asked hesitantly, looking into her eyes.
Will’s mumbled cries came as she answered, “No, not Styx. Besides, I’m not the one who was trying to blast spider-monkeys with a Limiter rifle.” Her voice was a little croaky, as if it wasn’t used very often.
“It isn’t mine … I mean …,” he stuttered as he tried to explain.
“Don’t worry, dearie, I can see you’re not a White Neck.” She gazed back into his eyes. “Ah, you don’t know how good that is,” she said.
“What is?” he asked, taking hold of her hand and allowing her to help him up.
“To lay eyes on another person!” she replied, as if the answer to her question was obvious. She was still clasping his hand when Will shouted again.
“Um … my friends need help,” Chester reminded her, tugging his hand away.
As Chester continued to stare at her in dumb amazement, the woman slung the crossbow over her shoulder. Taking some sprigs of what appeared to be dried plants from the thick belt around her ample waist, she lobbed them on top of the heap of burning creatures. An intense but not unpleasant smell instantly permeated the air. “That’ll stop any more of these beggars coming,” she informed Chester as she bustled over to the tunnel where the net hung. Releasing a rope somewhere in the darkness, she lowered the twitching bundle of Will, Elliott, and the cat gently to the floor.
“Don’t you worry — we’ll have you out of there in two shakes,” she said, pulling at the top of the net to loosen a tie.
Bartleby was the first to emerge, growling and baring his teeth at the woman.
“A Hunter,” she said, dropping the net and clapping her hands together in delight. “Well, I never thought I’d see a Hunter again!”
Deciding she was no risk, Bartleby slunk past her, giving her a curious sniff on the way. He was much more interested in the spider-monkeys, as the woman had referred to them, and circled cautiously around their remains.
With no help from the woman, Will had extricated himself from the net. He scrambled to his feet, then rubbed his thigh. “Stupid cat bit me! Chester, what happ—” He stopped short as his eyes alighted on the woman. “Who are you?”
“Martha,” she answered. “But people call me Ma.”
“Martha?” Will said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Ma?”
“Yes, Ma. That’s what they used to call me,” she said as she studied Will. “Well, look at you. White hair and those lovely pale eyes. No question you were born under grass.”
“What does that mean?” Chester asked, mystified.
“It means that I was born in the Colony,” Will told him. “You know — under the grass — in the earth.”
“Oh, right, I get it,” Chester said.
Martha had noticed Elliott’s unmoving form in the net. “There’s another of you! What’s the matter with him?” she asked, her brow crinkling with concern. “I do hope he didn’t get hurt by my deadfall.”
Will snapped out of his bewilderment and immediately bent to unravel the coarse netting from around Elliott. Then he lifted her out.
“Why, it’s a young woman!” Martha exclaimed as she saw Elliott’s face. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Well, er, Mrs., er, Ma … Martha,” Will began, launching into an explanation of how they had been hunted by the Limiters and then blasted into the Pore by their artillery.
Her arms crossed, she listened intently to him for a minute, and then raised one of her small hands to silence him.
“I’m sorry, dearie, I have to tell you, I’m not taking any of this in,” she admitted, shaking her head. “Do you know when I last heard another voice?” She abruptly uncrossed her arms and, slipping her hand inside her coat, scratched vigorously at an armpit in a most unladylike manner.
“A very long time ago?” Will said, watching askance as she finished scratching herself, then put her fingers into her mouth and sucked them.
“You got that right, dearie,” she said. “You had all better come with me, but I’ve got to collect all this food first. Looks like we’re going to need every last bit. More mouths to feed now.”
Will and Chester exchanged glances as she unhitched a sack from her belt, muttering something about not having any time to trim the meat off.
“So are those yours?” Will asked, pointing in the direction of the gruesome butcher benches.
But the woman didn’t answer him, instead inclining her head and beaming affectionately at Chester. “You’re a big, strapping lad. You remind me ever so of my son.” She sighed deeply. “Would you mind holding this open for me, luvvy?” she asked as she passed Chester the sack. Then she set about gathering up all the pieces of smoldering spider-monkey and putting them inside it.
Chester mouthed, “Food?” at Will, holding the sack at arm’s length and curling his lip as if he were going to be sick.
But Will didn’t respond, his mounting curiosity evident as he ran his eyes over what was left of the creatures.
“It’s odd. They seem to be insects or … or maybe arachnid, but are those shiny white objects teeth?”
“Yes, fangs,” the coarse old woman replied as she continued to toddle about the place, picking up the grisly remains. “Along with that light they have on a stalk, they use them as lures for catching their prey.”
“Fascinating,” Will muttered, sticking his head without any hesitation right over the sack that his friend was finding so repugnant.
“Here we go again,” Chester grumbled to himself.