Streets of blood

14

The group was assembling into a marching order as the last ork down pulled the trapdoor shut behind him and fastened the array of huge bolts. Looking around her, Rani saw that they were in an old, low-ceilinged brick tunnel with a pair of parallel rails running down the middle. It was too dark here for low-light eyes of any use, and so some of the group were lighting up simple flash-tubes and pointing them down the curving tunnel. It was a tight squeeze for the orks in the group, who ducked their heads low under the brickwork ceiling. As the last dwarfs scuttled down the steps, an ork male at the front of the group yelled them to attention. Aside from his flash tube the ork carried a pistol that made a Ceska look sophisticated.

“We got an hour to get the stuff back to the Ratskinks. Let’s move it."

No one said anything to Rani, seemingly unconcerned by her presence. Ducking her head, she followed the single-file column up the tunnel.

Bang it, she thought, I’m in the Undercity! That realization shouldn’t have been so startling, but perhaps her amazement spilled over from the fact she’d just shot two attackers. The adrenaline still pumping through her blood fueled a string of fantastic thoughts. She’d always dreamed about this city under the streets of London, fantasizing about adventures down here. Tough men and strong women, living wild. No shuttered windows and barred doors. No street Nazis. No Lord Protector, Templars, baggies, no one telling her she was only a girl and had to stay at home. No White Lightning telling her she was a piece of worthless ace that had no right to live.

Rani was elated, not even registering the throb of pain from her left ear.

"Where are we?” she said to the figure in front of her. It was the same female ork Rani had plowed into on the stairwell.

“Shut the rakk up and just keep moving,” was all she got. Her head bowed even further and her spirits sank. Stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket, she trudged silently along.

Just before they reached the old Tube station, Rani realized she was in the company of the birthday group from the Toadsiab. That meant they must also know the surface world, and must sometimes walk the streets of Spitalfields and the rest of the East End. Maybe she could talk with them after all, given half a chance.

As she took her turn stepping through a hole in the wall, Rani joined the others on the platform of a long-abandoned underground station. The rails beyond the crumbling edge of the platform were awash with stinking water, and any identifying station signs had long ago flaked off the walls. Random heaps of bricks and rubble littered the ground. A pair of ragged brown rats dived into the water as the first ork in the group swung a lazy boot at them. It looked like one of those ancient trid scenes of London during the Blitz, whatever that was.

She joined the group splashing along the new tunnel, relieved to find the water only a few inches deep and her boots high enough to keep her feet just about dry. The line of orks and dwarfs were silent, marching along in silent determination. At one point the bodies ahead obscured the light from the flashtubes, causing Rani to slip and turn an ankle on the hidden metal rail. All that kept her from falling were a pair of great arms grabbing the back of her jacket and hauling her back to a standing position.

“Move it, girl. We’re already late." For a group that had saved her life, these people didn’t seem to have much sympathy for her now. But she held her tongue, which seemed the best policy at the moment.

When they reached the next access point, the front marchers were lined up beside another gaping hole in the brickwork and they ushered the middle of the group to the front to lead on. Rani was now near the front, able to see what was ahead of her before she stumbled over it. She began to smell the entrance to the ancient Victorian sewer long before they reached it, her nose crinkling with disgust. Mercifully, the flow didn’t seem very deep. As the group fanned out to double file, the dwarf marching next to her began to speak.

“Watch Smeng," he growled, pointing to the new leader. “There're some deeper pools at the junctions. He knows where to put his feet. Follow him exactly or you’ll get a faceful of upper-class drek." He grimaced and held his nose. She looked down at him with a sudden thought: I’ve got a real advantage being an ork here. If I were a dwarf, I’d be two feet closer to kissing the turds. Perversely pleased with possessing that advantage, she followed close behind the hulking ork at the front.

A dwarf behind her had just muttered the words “Nearly there” to no one in particular when a creature looking like it had dragged itself straight from the depths of hell reared up out of the filth in front of them. As it leaped forward, a slow wave of stinking sewage broke over the leading ork, who reeled to one side as he took a full faceful of muck. As the flashtubes behind her illuminated the monster in garish, underlit neon, as Rani grabbed frantically for her gun.

The beast looked vaguely like a troll. It was about the same size and shape, and had arms, head and a torso in roughly the right proportions. Its skin was as thick as a troll’s, too. But around its neck suppurating gill fronds heaved and disgorged a foul, reeking acid, and its clawed hands showed fused, knotted fingers tipped with keratinous claws longer than steak knives. A great tooth-ringed sucker slobbered where its mouth should have been, and its eyes were red-raw and pupil-less, pulsing wildly below a forehead whose bony nodules were encrusted with ordure and mucus. Huge muscles stretched across the thing’s body, veins as big as telecom cables bulging out as the creature flung aside the retching ork and extruded a serrated, cartilaginous tongue from its sucker-mouth.

Not finding her gun, Rani grabbed at the aerosol can of ammonia complex as the people behind began to panic. ‘‘Mutaqua!” someone screamed. ‘‘We’re goners!"

It was eight feet away. In a blind panic, Rani pulled out the aerosol can and sprayed wildly before her, looking away from the thing. It was a crazy thing to do, but she was as terrified as everyone else.

A scream like someone burning alive exploded through the tunnel, half-deafening her, and then she heard a thunderous splash. Peering over the arm she had flung over her face in a vain attempt at protection. Rani saw the creature clutching at its face in horror as skin and membrane peeled away. Dripping folds of blood-soaked flesh hung limply from the mutant’s visage. It opened its mouth and howled in sheer agony. The flesh around its mouth tore like melted cheese, revealing gums and muscle beneath the strings of flesh.

By the time the mutant turned and began to thrash blindly down the tunnel away from them, bare bone was showing through what remained of its disintegrating face. It staggered a few paces before the massive body collapsed face-down into the churning sewage. The thing convulsed once or twice, tried to raise itself up on its fists, then slumped into the muck. It did not move again.

Rani held on to the can as if her life still depended upon it. She didn’t move a muscle either.

The leading ork was getting to his feet now, wiping muck off his face and hands. When he looked at her, it was with a very different expression than before.

At first he just stared, and Rani stared back. They remained so for a second, ripples of water from the monster’s final spasms lapping against their legs, their breath coming in shallow heaves. Then the ork bowed his head, and bent just a little from the waist.

"Life saves life saves life," he said simply. A gentle hubbub rose from the others. “You are more than you seem. This I do not forget." He spoke slowly, putting his whole being into the emphasis on the not. “Come now. We can talk later. We have business first. Nearly home.”

Indeed, it was not far. They went a few more yards, past the motionless body of the dead thing that had tried to ambush them, then came to the secret entrance leading to the caverns of the Undercity beyond.

"Where are we?"

Rani was astonished. After a couple of miles of progressively more disgusting sewer tunnels, and an unwanted soaking in sewer effluent, this cavern was clean, though bare and unmarked. The dusty, dank air was not so good, either, but one could live in such a place. Orks and dwarfs were using buckets of water to clean the filth off their boots.

"Old Civil Defense underground,” the leading ork said without looking up. "Hundred years old, maybe more. Abandoned them when they built deeper and bigger bunkers to save the nobles in case of a nuke attack. Good place. Easy to defend. Our home.” It was plain that they finally trusted Rani enough to give her some information. “Sometimes we get trouble with the Gleedens from the deeper tunnels, but they’re slim from all the dumpchutes down there, and we do business with the Ratskinks anyway. Keeps our patch safe.” She had no idea what Gleedens or Ratskinks were, but she didn’t like the sound of either one. This certainly was another world.

“The, um, mutaqua? Get many of them down here?” She tried to sound nonchalant.

The ork handed her a bucket and some rags. “Not many. They usually don’t make it up this far from the deeps. Mutated dzoo-noo-qua-no one knows how they got down here, but they’re motherrubbing dangerous. Don’t know what you have in that can, gopi, but it was tailor-made for the job.”

Rani merely nodded. She didn’t have any idea exactly what it was that had turned the mutaqua’s face to bloody jelly, either. In a sewer, it could hardly have been the ammonia. She wondered whether she’d grabbed a can of sornething else from the kitchen in her haste. At the back of her mind, a little plan was hatching about the fortune to be made selling the stuff to the population of the Undercity. She was just congratulating herself on her canny presence of mind when she realized these orks were not likely to be what you called rich. Oh well. That’d teach her to start thinking like her brothers.

A powerfully built dwarf came over and handed a black plastic package to the ork with whom she’d been talking. Whatever was inside slithered and squirmed a little. She knew better than to inquire about the contents.

“All right, peeps,” the ork said. “Kurak’s waiting. Let’s go. Fun-time’s over for the evening.”

She was suddenly aware that it was very late, and after the tension of dealing with Mohinder and the fighting of this night, her muscles were beginning to feel very heavy. Her eyelids drooped and it was a real effort to put one foot in front of the other as she walked along.

"Sorry, gopi, uh, sorry again. Hey, what’s your name?” The big ork grinned at her. She told him, and he said, “I’m Smeng. Yeah, Rani, we’re going to have to blindfold you now. Should have done it before, really. Make sure you don’t see what you shouldn’t. Nothing personal, you know.”

Without complaint she let them bind a thick, smelly cloth tightly across her eyes. As they marched her along, she was really too tired to try to figure out how far they’d gone, dimly thinking they might be back-tracking at some stage as guttural yells to sentinels got them past blocks and checks.

By the time they removed the blindfold, Rani was almost dead on her feet. She looked dazedly around at a large chamber with strange faded maps posted on the walls and dim lamps suspended in arrays along the ceiling. She blinked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

"We take a little juice off the electricity cables. Service ducts aren’t too far away. We do a little freelance rewiring from time to time.” Smeng grinned at her again. Maybe it was just the lateness and exhaustion, but she was beginning to like him a little.

“Rani, I got business to take care of." He held the black package protectively to his chest. “Got to figure out what to do with you, too. Sleep on it, huh?" He unlocked a side door and ushered her into a little four-bunked cell. She’d have slept in a radioactive bomb crater if he’d put a bed in it. She could hardly take another step.

Maybe it was the excitement of the night, maybe some premonition, maybe just exhaustion that kept her awake an extra few minutes after Smeng had locked her in. She struggled to pull off her befouled clothes, then snuggled under the gray blankets smelling of naphtha. She lay there awhile, her mind racing too fast for sleep. When she heard murmurs and saw the light grow brighter in the crack under the door, she draped the blanket around her and crept through the dark to listen.

There was laughter, a few chinking sounds that could only have been glasses or mugs brought together to seal some bargain, then the stray word caught here and there. She didn’t hear her own name mentioned, but she heard Smeng speaking and other higher-pitched voices raised in reply. One word, though, sliced through her confusion and fatigue to jolt her fully awake.

Pershinkin.

That gave her something to think about! Rani managed five seconds’ thought before her body told her she’d pass out on the floor if she didn’t get back into the bunk. She settled for the latter.