CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

TRACK NINE

 

 

THE WAR BAND picked for the foray onto Track Nine and into Hansa Pack territory were the strongest and fittest scrappers at Friedrichstrasse.

Many of them were Zoo Pack; the Hacker Pack had been fighting the Rathaus Pack for too long and most had injuries of one kind or another. Those who did not were tired and had been living in less than ideal conditions for weeks. They needed rest and food. It would boost their morale to feel normal for a spell.

One or two of the lieutenants and a few of the most able beta dogs and dams, including Evelyn War, refused to be left behind. They were declared fit.

Ben Gun was excused duty. He protested loudly and long – it had been his idea, after all – but Ezra Pound was firm on the matter. Ben was surprised how relieved he felt when he realised that he would be able to remain in the relative safety of the Hacker fiefdom with his friend Walter Sickert.

Dorothy Barker was fit. She had not suffered so much as a pinprick since the fight with her own pack dams back at Old Zoo, and those bruises had healed. She was growing in stature as a scrapper with every battle she joined, and she relished the task ahead of her.

Oscar so Wild was passed fit, but Robert Browning had taken a heavy blow during the battle against the Rathausers. The rib he had cracked in his fight with Wild after the massacre at Warschauer was causing him some pain.

A party of twenty Aux was finally assembled, with Ezra Pound at its head. It included fourteen Zoo Pack and six Hacker scrappers.

Them could make two sentries disappear, but not twenty scrappers, armed and hunting Them down.

Having been selected, the twenty scrappers were led to a room at the end of one of the service tunnels, several hundred metres north along the track.

Dorothy touched the arm of the huge Aux walking alongside her. He had his head down, concentrating. He looked up at her.

“Armoury,” he said by way of an explanation.

The Zoo Pack didn’t use an armoury. They carried and cared for their own weapons.

The room was divided into two. The left-hand side was piled with metal boxes stacked on their sides with the lids removed, acting as shelves. The whole place smelled of rust, and the grease that protected the weapons from corroding.

The right-hand side of the room was full of racks of weapons. Dorothy assumed that they were weapons, because there were blades and crossbows of various kinds, but there were other things that she did not recognise. Things with tanks, feed lines, nozzles and tubes. There were no rifles.

Dorothy concentrated first on the left as the Hacker Aux and the Zoo Pack scrappers they had buddied up with headed for the weapons. Evelyn was quick to join her.

Immediately on their left were the smallest garments, including gloves, hats, gauntlets and boots. Further along they found vests, jackets and coats, and then pelts.

There were more boxes stacked beyond them. They began to lift familiar things out of the boxes, the sort of leather armour that the Zoo Pack sometimes wore. Then they found harder, heavier things.

Dorothy Barker held up a protective vest and knocked on it with her knuckles, making a sharp rapping sound.

“That, it’s strong,” said Evelyn. “Blades, them won’t cut that.”

“This, it’s heavy, too,” said Dorothy, weighing the armour in her hand. “The Hacker, them have good body armour, better than the Zoo Pack.”

Dorothy Barker did not know what Them were, but she was afraid. They were all afraid. Them were legend. Gene the Hackman, the great Aux scrapper, had got whet, had killed Them, deader and dead, but Gene the Hackman was a legend, too.

Dorothy Barker stripped down to her shirt and trousers and found body armour that fit tightly around her torso. Evelyn did the same, and they both added elbow and knee guards.

They looked for jackets to fit closely over the top. Dorothy found a long brown leather jacket that fit snugly over her hips and fastened across her body, right up to her throat. She felt good in it. Safe. Evelyn found a looser jacket in heavy quilted nylon.

They also rummaged around among the headgear, and Dorothy found a close-fitting leather cap. It had no peak, but it had a reinforced skull cap in its lining that would protect her head. Evelyn found a bowl-shaped hard shell cap with a peak.

Satisfied, Dorothy Barker and Evelyn War left the armoury. They were comfortable with their own weapons. They knew the grips and weights of their blades, and how to sight their crossbows for precise targeting.

All of Zoo Pack left the armoury with a change of clothes and with new armour. Some were almost unrecognisable.

The biggest beta dog, Frank Brangwin, emerged in a long leather apron, blackened with grease and scarred with scorch marks. He was wearing gauntlets and a black headpiece that came down over his face, with a blue glass panel across his eyes. He also had a pair of metal cylinder tanks on his back.

It was one of the weapons that Dorothy had seen on the racks in the armoury. She didn’t know what it was. She hoped he knew what he was doing.

The Hacker scrappers looked much as they usually did, but one of the big dams was also dressed in a leather apron with a tank array on her back. She had lifted the visor of her mask and reached over to do the same for Frank Brangwin. He smiled sheepishly at her, and Dorothy smirked at Evelyn.

“Me, I hope Frank Brangwin, him knows how to use that weapon,” said Evelyn.

“Me, I hope his crush on that Hacker dam doesn’t get us all into trouble,” said Dorothy Barker.

The jog from Friedrichstrasse to Leopoldplatz was an easy one. It was a little over four kilometres of tracks and tunnels, and the scrappers were comfortable. They were armed and ready. They were also confident that Track Six was safe. The Hearer had said so.

They made the distance in a little over thirty minutes.

Leopoldplatz was quiet. Oscar so Wild and a Zoo Pack dam called Singer Sargent scouted the platform. They also ventured some way towards outside, but they saw and heard nothing. The remainder of the war band then waited while the two Aux descended to the Track Nine platform

Wild and Sargent stood on the platform for two or three seconds, listening intently. Nothing.

Oscar so Wild nodded, and they dropped down onto the track. They waited for another two or three seconds. At his second nod, they began to walk away from each other along the track.

Singer Sargent walked the short length of Track Nine towards its terminus. The track was derelict and had never been used. She heard nothing but the ping and plash of falling water.

Singer Sargent turned back to Oscar so Wild, and shook her head. He shook his in return and they both jogged back to the platform.

A few moments later, twenty Aux scrappers were making their way along Track Nine towards Hansaplatz.

Progress on Track Nine was slow. They were stalking. They were on unknown ground, hunting down an unknown foe. Hunting a monster of legends.

They changed formation regularly so that fresh ears and eyes were always to the fore, but Frank Brangwin or his new mate Vanessa Hell always held a flank, him on the left, her on the right. One backed off as the other stepped forward.

Ezra Pound remained solid in the second rank, always in a position to lead. There was no talking, and orders were given with gestures, although there was little need for them. Check and cover procedures were adopted for service tunnels and for blind curves along the track.

Listening was the key. Listening was always the key.

Every twenty metres or so, the war band stopped to listen. As experienced as all the scrappers were, there was little they could do about the gravel beneath their feet. They moved slowly on their soft-soled boots, but forty Aux feet would always make some sound on the loose stones. Stopping and checking was the only way to know for sure that they didn’t miss a whistle or its echo if it came.

Amrumer Strasse was only seven hundred metres from Leopoldplatz, but it took the twenty Aux almost two hours to reach the station. They were still three kilometres from Hansaplatz, and two from the periphery of Hansa Pack territory. They were in no man’s land.

Half of the war band rested on the platform. Two pairs of two walked the track in each direction and took up four sentry positions. Oscar so Wild and Singer Sargent scouted the route outside.

Nothing.

Ten minutes later, they were back in formation, walking the track, heading to the next station, eight hundred metres and another two hours further away.

There was no evidence that Them had been above ground. The Dammed and the Rathaus Pack had been driven out of the tunnels by Them. The Dammed had gone blind and died at the hands of the Zoo Pack. The Rathaus had grown ever more feral and died at the hands of the new alliance. The Warschauer had perished underground in their own fiefdom.

No one had heard a whistle outside. No one had seen a footprint, or other marks in the ice. No one had gone missing outside. Everyone had been accounted for at the end of every battle fought in the open.

Them were in the tunnels. The tunnels were cold, had always been cold, but never as cold as outside. The tunnels had always shown the breath of the Aux, but not now. Where the Aux gathered, the warmth of their bodies drove the temperature up above zero. Where the Aux gathered, they shed their clothes, unused to the heat. The Time of Ice had ended underground before it had ended outside.

Them had survived the Time of Ice. Them had survived hundreds of years of hibernation. Now Them were waking up, and Them were waking up underground.

The war band walked the track, stopping regularly to listen, changing formation as they walked, ever watchful.

They checked service tunnels, but they saw nothing and they heard nothing. They hadn’t spoken a single word to each other for four hours. The only sounds were the crunch of gravel and stones shifting beneath the soles of their boots, the faint rustle of the two heavily armed Aux’s leather aprons and the ping and plash of falling water.

There was no sign of Them. There was no blood and no fresh wounds in the walls of the tunnels. There were no recently broken blades or bent crossbows. There was no rent cloth. There were no bodies.

There were never any bodies.

The war band stopped at the Track Nine platform at Westhafen. They remained diligent. They set up sentries on the track while most of the Aux took a short rest on the platform. Dorothy Barker and a Hacker called Austin Spar checked the station beyond the platform and listened for sounds outside.

All was clear.

The four-hour trek had been exhausting, so Ezra Pound gestured that, since they had the all-clear, the war band should extend the halt to take some rations onboard.

Some Aux preferred not to eat on the hunt; they liked to travel light. Others disliked the distraction of hunger. Evelyn couldn’t eat. All took the time to drink, taking advantage of the camelbacks carried by four of the scrappers. Sentries were switched out and twenty minutes passed.

Finally, when ration packs had been stowed, Ezra Pound gave the order with a flick of his hand, and the war band assembled on the track for the next leg of the long walk.