The Relic Hunters

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

By that time he’d seen the extent of the pit and understood exactly what lay below. It was still a long way to the bottom, but a pile of debris had built up that, whilst risky, was better than staying up top to be crushed or impaled.

Bodie leapt into space, clearing the ragged edges of the hole with ease. Twelve feet and he hit the top of the pile, absorbing the impact with his knees. Spears of pain shot top to bottom, jamming his nerve receptors and making him cry out in pain. The rubble pile shifted, blocks, fastenings and stonework falling away. A metal brace tore at his palm, drawing blood. He held his balance precariously atop the pile.

A small brick struck his back. Knowing it could just as easily have been a giant concrete ingot, he took his life into his hands, felt his heart soar into his mouth, and started to slip-slide down the sharp, uneven slope. A concrete block slowed him, a saw-tooth-edged pillar ripped his jeans and flesh. He bounced further down, still fifty feet off the floor of what he now knew was the Piccadilly underground line. He’d seen the maps when they were still intent on infiltrating the house; knew the tube ran under here somewhere. Now the entire house was blown from below, creating at least two holes all the way through the foundations and down to the well-traveled rails. Bodie only hoped the authorities knew.

A noise above and he glanced up to see that another Hood was on his six.

“Bloody bollocks, don’t you wankers ever give up?”

This Hood appeared to have a personality. “You try to be Jason Statham? Action hero? I show you what we do to action heroes.”

He plucked out a heavy block and tossed it down at Bodie. The Londoner scrambled to the other side of the pile, gripping rough edges to stop from tumbling. Around he went and then looked up again. The Hood was climbing down with little regard for safety, coming fast. Bodie dropped quicker, sliding down the pile on his side, one leg at full stretch, displacing dust, rocks and wreckage. Twenty more feet and he looked up. The Hood was just above him, boot coming down.

Bodie took it on his forehead, absorbing and ignoring the pain. He reached up fast, grabbed the ankle, and yanked hard. The Hood fell, suddenly beside him. Bodie sent two quick elbows to his face, both men lying sideways on the fifty-foot-high rock pile, surrounded by shifting death and rained upon by collapsing pieces of house. The Hood was bloody, one cheekbone broken. Bodie was finding it hard to breathe and could feel blood flowing from several wounds. He let the Hood come at him, then brought a hand full of rock smashing around straight into the man’s face. The body flinched hard, the hands lost their grip. Bodie kicked out and sent him flailing down the rest of the pile, faster and faster and end over end until he struck the tracks below.

And then Bodie heard it.

The shrieking horn of an approaching train.

Bodie felt raw fear, not only for himself but for the passengers on board. They would have no clue as to what was coming and had set about their business in all innocence today. Unable to help them he chose to help himself, sliding again down the rock pile, ignoring the bumps and rasps and scratches, skimming the side until he hit the bottom.

Down here, the house looked a long way up. The train’s brakes were screeching, the horn still blaring. Bodie saw its lights coming along the track, speeding straight for the blockage. He had come down on the wrong side of the pile then, the dangerous side.

The train sped at him. Bodie moved away from the rock pile as several more lumps cascaded down all around him and bounced away. An entire wall must have caved in then, for a tumbling cascade plunged down, the noise nightmarish and deafening. Bodie found himself pushed toward the train even as it rushed at him.

Brakes burned hotly. The screech was a death knell, a keening cry of desperation. The light became blinding. Bodie didn’t want to turn away, just shield his eyes. His new thought was to turn and run back to the pile, try to run up to get away from the train’s impact, maybe even jump onto its roof.

But it was too close.

It was upon him.

And then stopping, brakes holding, drifting closer and closer until he had to take two steps back and its front end rested against his chest, the rock pile pushing up behind.

Desperately, he squeezed out and edged his way down the side, ignoring all the scared faces pressed to the window, found a ledge and used it to clamber atop the roof.

That way, resting dazedly atop the underground train, he waited for rescue.