| |
16:07 Thursday 18 March 2077
Nobody in their right mind would choose to hide out in the sewers. But when you have hundreds of highly trained and ruthless Defenders looking for you on the surface, there are not a lot of choices. Put your head above the parapet – or in this case, out of a manhole cover – and you risk having it blown off.
The four fugitives had tried to hide out in various ‘safe’ houses, but the intensity of the manhunt was so great that they had only narrowly avoided being caught. To remain on the surface had become far too dangerous and the group had been forced to sacrifice daylight and fresh air for the darkness and putrid stench of the labyrinth of drainage tunnels that criss-crossed the city. Technology had come on in leaps and bounds but still nothing had replaced the sewers.
Rebecca gagged as a fresh turd floated past. She hauled her feet even further away from the river of excrement that ran alongside the thin shelf that she was precariously perched upon, drawing her knees to her chest.
“I can’t take this for much longer. I feel like puking. We’ve only been down here for a few days now. What food we have is running out, the batteries on our torches are almost dead. This isn’t living, this is more like camping out by the River Styx.”
Liam was surprised at this reference.
“How do you know about the River Styx? You’re seven years old.”
“I read books, dipstick. I’m a very good reader. I’ve been reading for almost as long as I could talk. I’m precocious. If you know what that means.”
She was right though. If anything came close to representing the myth that was Hell, then spending a week underground, breathing in the noxious fumes of human waste and almost tasting the nauseating stench of rotting faeces, had to be it.
They had ransacked a local supermarket before finding refuge in the bowels of the city’s sanitation system, scooping tins of food and bottles of water into their backpacks. Jazza had wanted to steal some beer but the others vetoed that, on the grounds that they all needed to stay alert. They were now down to their last tins of food; a tin of baked beans and a tin of alphabeti spaghetti. Fortunately, Liam had had the forethought to steal three tin openers and half a dozen packs of plastic spoons. Connor had wanted metal spoons – he liked the tangy taste of the metal on his tongue, but when confronted with the problem of cleaning the cutlery in a closed environment of piss and shit, he quickly changed his mind.
Connor returned from a spot about one hundred yards away, just beyond a curve, that had been designated the group’s toilet. There was nothing there, but at least the children could do what nature demanded away from prying eyes. The current took the new waste downstream, away from them, so they didn’t have to acknowledge that they were adding to the disgusting soup that ran alongside them.
Rebecca had had enough.
“We’ve got no choice. We have to go outside tonight. We need more food and water and, more importantly, some bloody fresh air.”
The other children agreed. They needed to escape their hellhole, at least for a while. Connor made a suggestion.
“I think we should all go together, you know, like musketeers, all for one and one for all.”
Jazza wasn’t so sure.
“Don’t you think it would be better for a couple of us to go on a supply run, and the other two to wait here?”
Rebecca interrupted.
“And I bet that you’d be one of those two who gets to go outside, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, it makes sense. I’m bigger than you lot. I can carry more.”
Liam nipped the argument in the bud.
“We’re all going. Rebecca’s right. We do need a breather. We need to stick together.”
Liam trusted his brother implicitly but he couldn’t be so sure of the other two. Yes, Jazz was a Recarn and, in a past life, had been a colleague and associate of Thomas McCall, but he had never completely trusted him then either. And as for Rebecca, what did they really know about her? She had a vicious streak and swore a lot. That was all. He couldn’t be certain that, once outside their smelly prison, they wouldn’t abandon the two who had been left behind. And what if they were captured or killed? The two who were left in the sewer would still have no food or fresh water, and their torches would soon run out of energy and leave them in pitch darkness. Considering the conditions that they had suffered during the past few days, zero visibility could perhaps be a blessing in disguise. But it wouldn’t hide the stench.
No, they would all go outside together.
Visually, they had no way of knowing if it was night or day outside. Time had become an abstract construct with nothing to relate it to. Bereft of sensory clues, the four would have had no way to make sense of the passage of time, had Rebecca not had the presence of mind to steal a wristwatch from one of the dead Defenders back at her grandfather’s house. She took the wristwatch out of her pocket; she had to keep it there as the strap was far too loose to fit her seven year old wrist.
“It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. That’s when we should move.”
The wait for darkness outside seemed to last an age. It wasn’t helped by the continual requests for time checks.
Finally, after waiting longer than the two hours that she had stated earlier, Rebecca felt confident that it was dark outside. The four gathered underneath the nearest manhole cover. Liam shone his torch over to where they had been sitting.
“Whose backpack is that?”
Jazz half-heartedly raised his hand.
“The rats got to it. There’s a chunk missing at the bottom.”
“OK. Can’t be helped, I suppose. We’ll just have to grab another one outside. Let’s get this bloody manhole cover open.”
The cover rose a little and slowly turned to the right. Then, four sets of eyes became visible as the children scanned the surrounding area for signs of life. The sewer where they had remained hidden was tucked behind a warehouse on a small industrial park, and the workers had all gone home for the night. Nobody was around.
Conner tugged on the sleeve of his brother.
“Can you see any security staff or cameras?”
Liam pointed at the buildings and the warehouse equipment.
“See what bad condition they’re in? This place is on its last legs. They don’t have the money for security staff or even cameras. This stuff is so decrepit nobody would nick it.”
“I hope you’re right. I’m still going to be extra alert.”
“We should all do that. It goes without saying.”
The manhole cover was hoisted completely clear of its seating and pushed rather noisily to one side. The four youngsters clambered out from their refuge and took large gulps of fresh air, interlaced with diesel fumes, as they stretched their stiffened limbs. Once sufficiently recovered they made their way to the perimeter fence, hunting for a weak point. To leave by the main gate would have been too dangerous. They had to be vigilant; a week had passed but there was no way that they were not still being hunted. Jazz hissed at Liam.
“We’re in luck. Looks like someone cut their way into this place sometime and the warehouse owners never bothered to repair the opening. I’ll just fold over the sharp bits of the hole and we can climb through.”
Jazz organised the break in the fence and the group scurried towards freedom. Rebecca sniffed the air.
“I need a shower. I stink. And so do you lot.”
There was no denying that, although they had physically left the confines of the sewer, the stench had accompanied them outside. It was trapped in the pores of their skin and the fibres of their clothes. Rebecca had an idea.
“Look. There’s a small shopping precinct next door to this place. My sister works in a shop there. We can probably find some clothes to change into there.”
The larger shopping malls were open seven days a week, until late evening, but Hodgeson Road shopping mall contained only about a dozen shops and it didn’t open on Sundays. The boys followed her to the shopping mall and they all tucked themselves behind a large wheelie-bin. Rebecca suddenly ran to the back door of a nearby shop. Jazz was about to call after her, but he felt the palm of Liam’s hand across his mouth, stifling any shout. Liam whispered in his ear.
“Don’t make a noise. We don’t want to attract attention.”
When Jazz was free to speak again, he pointed towards where Rebecca had run to and hissed at Liam.
“What does she think she’s doing, running off like that?”
“Shhhhh! A sound can be heard from any direction. To see us, someone would have to be looking in our direction. And there’s nobody around. It’s dead here. But, even so, we still can’t take any chances.”
Jazz didn’t argue. Liam was right; it was quite obvious really. Suddenly, Rebecca reappeared carrying a large bin bag. Connor was intrigued.
“What the hell have you got there, girl?”
“Call me girl again and I’ll kick you in the nuts so hard that you’ll be coughing bits of them up for the following week.”
“Sorry. What have you got, Rebecca?”
“Clothes. I have no idea what they look like. My older sister works in that children’s boutique three doors along. On Saturdays. On the second Saturday of each month, they put what they call ‘seconds’, that’s clothes that have something wrong with them, clothes that they can’t sell in the shop, they put them outside in a black plastic bag for collection by a charity. Well, we’re tonight’s charity.”
“Let’s have a look then.”
Rebecca unfastened the string that was holding the bag closed, tipped it up and let the contents fall to the ground between the four children. They sifted through a veritable goldmine of imperfect clothing pulling out six pairs of jeans; four pairs of boy’s jeans and two pairs of feminine cut. Jazz held up a pair of boy’s jeans and a pair of girl’s jeans.
“What’s the difference then? They both look the same.”
Connor held the legs of one of the pairs of jeans apart.
“They do look the same. Maybe there’s a bit more room in the boy’s jeans, for... you know.”
Rebecca disappeared again and quickly returned with a hosepipe dragging behind her. There was a constant stream of water coming from the nozzle; not enough to provide a jet wash but sufficient to remove the worst of the dirt and smell from their bodies.
“Right. You’re all going to take a shower.”
She put her thumb over the end of the hose to make the jet of water stronger and aimed the hose at her friends. To anybody watching the scene was one of four children having fun with a hose. And for a few minutes, that’s exactly what it was. Instead of murderers on the run, they were just a bunch of raucous kids. The three boys soaking wet, Connor wrestled the hose from Rebecca’s grasp and dealt her the same treatment.
Once they’d finished playing, the children dried themselves off using some clothes that they weren’t going to wear, put jeans on and pulled GAP fleeces over their heads. Jazz was particularly happy.
“Brilliant. A hoodie. I always wanted one but my mum wouldn’t let me. She said I’d look like a thug.”
Liam rubbed the top of Jazz’s head vigorously.
“Not everybody who wears a hoodie is a thug, Jazz, but you are. Remember I’ve known you for nearly two hundred years.”
Rebecca found the whole Recarn thing fascinating. Of course, she knew about reincarnation; it wasn’t kept secret from children nowadays, but she had never actually met any before. Not knowingly anyway. It was strange hearing them talk so freely about their past lives. Liam stood up and went to walk out from behind the wheelie-bin.
“Right. Let’s get out of here.”
Connor stopped him.
“The superhero costumes.”
“Already sorted. Rebecca stuffed them into the bin liner with the other clothes.”
Rebecca darted back to the rear of the shop and replaced the black plastic bag, before returning to her friends. Connor had a quick look around to check that it was safe to leave their hiding place and the group made their way across the car park and onto the main road, making certain that they kept to the shadows. Rebecca tapped Liam on the shoulder.
“So where are we going?”
“A safe house.”
“If you have a safe house, why the hell didn’t we go there first, instead of staying in that shitty sewer for a week?”
“I wanted to let the heat die down a bit first.”
Jazz interrupted.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“About three years.”
Jazz was confused.
“How’s that possible? Recarn memories don’t kick in until you’re seven years old. That would mean that you would have been just four years old when you first became aware of your past lives.”
“I’ve always been aware.”
“What? I mean, how?”
“Dunno. All I know is that I’ve always known about my past lives.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
Rebecca interrupted.
“I know what to say. And that’s ‘fuck me, that’s cool’.”