Down Station

2

The sparks from the angle grinder were intense and alive, as captivating as a firework. The noise was incredible, though; a singing wail that cut through skin and bone as much as it did the ear defenders that Dalip was wearing. He held on to them, in case they fell off and he became deaf. Outside in the marshalling yards, it was just about bearable. Inside the tunnels, conversation was reduced to simple signs and anticipation.

The bullet-headed man lifted the grinder from the broken rail and inspected his cut with a practised eye. He nodded with satisfaction and put the machine aside, holding it easily in one hand where Dalip struggled to use two.

He pulled his own ear defenders off and shoved them down around his neck. He mimed for Dalip to do the same.

See? The man who’d been introduced as Stanislav gestured to the rail, expecting Dalip to bend down and appreciate the skill involved. Dalip dutifully did so, admiring the thin bright slice taken out of the rail. When he straightened up, Stanislav mimed, Now we lift the failed section and take it away.

He bent down and scooped up two long metal bars, each with a hook at one end. He passed one to Dalip, and started to twist free the metal keys that held the rail to the sleepers. The top half of his boilersuit was tied around his waist, and his bare arms, slick with grease and sweat, bulged with muscle as he leant into each action. He made it look easy when it was anything but.

The track was replaced when it was necessary◦– and the keys had been forced into place by big men with big hammers. Releasing the rail again was a matter of leverage and technique, and Dalip had neither, relying instead on brute force that was too often beyond his meagre strength.

They were supposed to work as a team, each side of the rail, and match the other’s movements. Stanislav watched the young man struggle and clench his teeth, swinging on his iron bar like it was a piece of gym equipment, before shaking his head and resting a gauntleted hand on the lever. He leaned close and shouted over the din.

‘No. Use whole body. Lean out, arms straight, turn from shoulders.’ He demonstrated and the key turned smoothly. ‘You see. We are tool users, yes? Not brutes. Now you try.’

Dalip did his best to emulate Stanislav’s technique, but he jerked at it. The older man frowned, and started to step in.

‘No. No, I’ll try again.’ Dalip could feel the effort, the strain in his forehead where it was tight against his turban. This time, smoothly and cleanly, the bar an extension of his arms.

The key turned, and he felt the rail rise. He grew giddy with delight.

‘Very good. Now the other fifteen.’

His smile slipped. This was what it was always like. An achievement made, a skill acquired, an exam passed: always a stepping stone to the next goal, and never a moment to bask in the joy of simply succeeding. And Stanislav was just another man in the role of teacher, to be respected and learned from.

Dalip nodded, and applied himself to the next key. It came out more easily. Perhaps it was easier, perhaps it was the looser rail. Perhaps he was doing it right, but that didn’t matter, because there would be another thing along soon enough that he couldn’t do, and would have to be taught, there in the dark and the dirt and the noise.

The rail was finally free. Eight men, stripped to the waist, carried it away with pairs of giant pincers, and brought a new one, whole and gleaming under the yellow lights. They lowered it into place with brief, shouted commands and started to knock it in, fixing it back to the sleepers with rhythmic blows of their lump hammers.

Dalip watched them and envied their nonchalant expertise. Oh, it wasn’t like he was going to spend his life fixing broken rails◦– he was going on to make trains that floated above, rather than ran on, rails◦– and this was just a placement, the first of many, to give him some idea of what engineering was supposed to achieve at the sharp end. How the whole infrastructure of the Underground◦– tunnels, trains, ventilation, pumps, stations, even the movement of people from above to below and back again◦– had been designed and built.

There was so much to learn, he despaired sometimes.

Stanislav carried the first part of the rail welder to the site of the join, dumped it by the side of the track and jerked his head to indicate that Dalip should follow him.

He did so, obediently, like he did everything else asked of him. There was a shovel, an oxyacetylene torch, the gas tanks to go with it, and a reaction vessel with an outside so burnt it looked like a cinder. Bags of dust. Wet sand to seal the casting. All of it needed to be moved.

It was hot enough in the tunnel already. It was the hardest work Dalip had ever done, and he was barely an hour through. The thermite reaction they were setting up would fill the tunnel with acrid smoke and thick yellow flames, making the harsh conditions worse, and yet these men, hard-muscled and terse, laboured in it day after day. He couldn’t cope. He’d faint and fail. He didn’t belong there.

And whether Stanislav had spotted the panic in the boy’s eyes and realised he needed reassurance, or whether it was simply well-timed: he clapped Dalip on the back of his orange boilersuit, hard enough to rock Dalip on his feet, and gave him the thumbs-up.

It was enough to steady his nerves. He was here to learn, not to be humiliated.

The whole tunnel shook as if struck. Dust hazed the air, and the lights flickered. The whole work crew stopped in mid-swing.

‘What—’

Stansilav put an oil-smeared finger to his lips, and listened to the noises with wary attention.

They were a long way under London, and there should have been nothing else down with them but other tunnels. If something had happened above, on the surface, it would have had to have been immense to reach them. A bomb? A building falling down? An aircraft crashing? All three?

There was nothing to compare with the initial concussion, though a low groan of pressure creaked through the walls.

Their supervisor walked along the rail bed, making sure he was seen, exchanging words with his crew. No one else moved.

Along the tunnel wall were two bare wires running parallel to its length, suspended on clips at about head height. The supervisor clipped the terminals of his phone to the wires and pressed the call button.

He pressed the earpiece against the side of his head, and waited.

When he had to press the button again, there was a collective shifting of posture, of gently laying down the tools they were still holding, getting ready to move in whichever direction they had to go, and quickly.

He pressed the button for a third time, and stood, head bowed, praying for an answer.

When none came, he swiftly unclipped the phone and pointed east.

‘We’re evacuating. Green Park. Go.’

Everyone else had trained for this. Dalip had had an hour’s talk. Stanislav took a handful of Dalip’s boilersuit at the shoulder and didn’t let go.

‘With me. We walk. Watch your feet.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘We do not know.’ Stanislav half-shoved, half-dragged Dalip in the direction of Green Park. ‘That is why we are leaving. If it is nothing, we will come back and carry on. If it is something, we can find out what it is. If it is a bad thing, better we are not here, between stations.’

It started off as a low rumble which slowly reached a crescendo, and then it faded away again. Rather than Stanislav holding Dalip up, there was a mutual bracing of each other against the shaking ground.

‘Is that a bad thing?’ asked Dalip.

Stanislav gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘Not good.’

Everyone quickened their pace.

‘Does this happen often?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to let go of me?’

‘No.’

The lights winked out, and it was utterly black for a moment. Torches were already in people’s hands, and bright blue beams cut through the dusty air like searchlights. Dalip stumbled, and was held up long enough to find his feet again on the rocky ballast. Stanislav swept his torch across the tunnel roof and floor.

‘Get yours and put it on. Put your hand through the strap and tighten it to your wrist.’

Men were walking past them in pairs, keeping an eye on each other, making sure no one was left behind.

Dalip fumbled his torch on, and fitted it around his hand as he’d been told, still with Stanislav maintaining a death-grip on his boilersuit.

‘Okay?’

Dalip nodded, realised that he couldn’t be seen, so mumbled, ‘Yes.’

‘Stay with me. Whatever happens, stay with me.’

They moved back up through the column of men and as they turned the slight corner, the green emergency lights on the platform of Green Park came into view.

Dalip remembered to breathe again. He was soaked with sweat, his face slippery, his first attempt at a beard prickling with the heat. Less of a dream, more of a nightmare, but at least the station was ahead. As was a fiery red glow in the distance, beyond the sickly light of the platform, where the tunnel headed east under the centre of the city.

He started to pull back even as Stanislav propelled him on. But he knew that he didn’t want to get closer. The red was thickening, growing more real, like looking into the heart of a furnace. He twisted and struggled.

Stanislav picked him up, one handed, and slammed him against the tunnel wall.

‘What?’ he roared, ‘Do you want to die down here? Do not fight me, boy. Do not ever fight me.’

Dalip tried to push the man away, the torch around his wrist dancing as he slapped at Stanislav’s chest.

‘We don’t want to go that way!’ he finally managed, just as Green Park’s lights failed with a sigh.

It wasn’t dark, though. Everything was suffused with red, and as the rest of the work crew reached the edge of the station, the first one burst into flame. His boilersuit caught with spontaneous ignition, starting at the front, rolling around him in a sheet until he was a candlewick, stumbling and tripping, arms holding the fire aloft. And another.

Bulbs popped, tiles cracked, plastic melted, metal warped and started to drip.

Stanislav’s clothing was smoking. So was his own.

Now they were going west again, and they ran with no pretence at calm. The air was thick, alive with shadow and rippling with heat, the soles of their boots sizzling on the ballast, the rails cracking like whips as they expanded.

There was a ramp up, like the ones that led to platforms, except that they hadn’t gone as far back as Hyde Park. Dalip lifted his torch and saw a brick wall, and that the wall had a door, and that the door had twisted out of its frame and was open just a crack.

He had no idea where he was, just that the infernal heat was behind him and the incredible noises were ahead of him. He turned aside and ran at the door, digging his fingers into the gap and pulling against the warped wood that seared the flesh from his hands even as he brought his foot up to gain leverage against the wall.

Stanislav used his own savage strength, and hinges squealed in protest. The door resisted, then gave, spilling them both to the baking ground. The older man was up first. He took Dalip’s collar and dragged him through the doorway, throwing him on to his back in the tiny room.

The red heat outside grew and grew. The paint on the door began to blister. Stanislav pulled his sleeves over his hands, gripped the door handle firmly, and bellowed his defiance.

The door banged against the jambs, and still the paint bloomed and puckered. Dalip thought he was going to die there, watching the door burst into flame, waiting for the wall of heat to ride over him, his clothes igniting, his hair turning to brief, bright lights and his turban a fiery crown. He would wear the same silent expression of sudden, violent death as the rest of the work crew had done, his mouth making momentarily a hollow circle before his flesh scorched and his muscles grew rictus tight.

He scrabbled back as far as he could go, until he realised he was against another door, and it was cold metal.

He leapt up, pulled the handle. The door opened easily and cleanly. It was dark on the other side, but that didn’t matter for the moment.

‘In here,’ he said, just as the paint blisters burst with blue fire. Stanislav pushed past, and Dalip closed the door smartly behind him.

Stanislav slumped against the wall and coughed until he vomited, turning his head at the last moment to splatter the ground with acid bile.

Dalip’s eyes burned from the fumes and the heat. His throat was raw, his head hurt, his skin was sore and he couldn’t stop shaking.

The others had died, right in front of him, lighting up and lurching around on the rail track until they fell. He felt his own stomach tighten, and he tried to swallow, but he was parched.

‘Where are we?’ he managed. He fumbled for his torch and tried to make sense of the discordant images he was seeing. Two more doors. A series of grey cases and switching gear, also grey.

‘Down Street.’ Stanislav wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘Disused station.’

‘We must have gone past it the first time.’ Dalip tried the door in the long wall; all that lay beyond was a rusted bath tub, no taps.

‘There is no one here. No one to get help from. That is why we went to Green Park.’

‘The others. They’re—’

‘Dead. Yes.’ Stanislav pulled himself upright on the painted switch-gear. ‘You saw them. They could not have lived. We must work hard not to join them.’

Dalip scrubbed at his eyes, which felt like they were full of grit. Work hard, the bullet-headed East European had said. He knew how to do that. He’d done nothing but, even though it was a different sort of work to this. He recognised that he should be curled in a little ball in the corner somewhere, mind numb, but instead, despite being out of breath, in pain, half-roasted, barely able to see or speak, he was unnaturally calm. Presumably, the shock would hit later, when he was back home, sitting at the kitchen table with his mum and dad and a cup of tea.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Can we get out of here?’ He put the back of his hand on the door they’d come through, and jerked it away. Too hot.

‘I believe so. We must find the exit.’ Stanislav shone his torch at the remaining door, opened it and peered through.

The next room was dominated by a tall case, also spray-painted in the same grey colour. Beyond that, another door, a narrow corridor, and suddenly the space opened out. Their torch beams picked out a broad junction, and an arrow on the wall◦– a modern one, with a stylised symbol of a running figure heading through an opening. When they investigated, they found stairs going up.

‘Up is good, right?’ Dalip stood at the bottom of the steps: at the top, the corridor appeared to turn to go back over the tracks.

‘Up is the only way, whether it is good or not. Come.’

Stanislav walked carefully up the broad stairs, torch beam scanning ahead. Dense white smoke curled in the curved roof space and reached tendrils down towards them. He crouched to keep his head out of the worst of it, and Dalip ducked down, too.

The portion of the corridor that bridged the rail track below was melting. The floor seethed and swam, and the tiles that had clung to the walls throughout the Blitz were spalling off, cracking and falling into the slurry below.

‘That way is out. It may take our weight, it may not. It may kill us anyway.’ Stanislav spat on to the ground, and it hissed. ‘Who goes first?’

Dalip wanted to nominate himself. The bridge wasn’t going to last. If he didn’t go now, he’d not do it at all.

‘Together.’

They ran through the molten bitumen, side by side, sending up splashes of black liquid. Their thick overalls helped protect them from the worst, even though the distance was something they might have jumped if they’d had clearer heads and more time.

They were out and through, and in the darkness and smoke, it was easy to miss that the corridor turned sharp left. There was suddenly a wall rearing up at them, and a moment’s confusion as they swung their torches to see which way to go.

Stanislav fell, tripping on a raised concrete plinth that jutted out into the corridor. Dalip was past him before he realised, and came back.

Words were impossible. Every breath was like being stabbed. He knew he wasn’t strong enough to drag him, let alone lift him. All he could do was tug urgently at the man’s sleeve and shine a light in his face.

Stanislav’s already flattened nose dripped blood, running over his top lip and into the corners of his mouth. He spat, and spat again, and dragged himself up. Their faces were very close together and, despite their situation, the one thing that struck Dalip at that moment was the look of utter, snarling determination on the other man’s face.

Stanislav roared at the fire, giving it his pain and anger and frustration, and it was enough to carry them both to the next door. They threw themselves through, heaving it shut behind them.

A stairwell. They were in a stairwell, with a narrow caged lift running up the middle of a metal spiral staircase. The air was thick with dust, and it was blessedly cool.

Now they were no longer running, no longer living from one heartbeat to the next, they both stopped. Dalip knelt on the ground in amongst the dirt and debris and pressed his turbaned head against the gritty floor. He could still feel the intermittent vibrations, dulled by the thickness of the cloth, and hear the drawn-out groans of tortured rock and iron.

Stanislav patted his shoulder. ‘Come. We must make a report. To someone.’

Dalip ached. Everything that wasn’t red raw was bruised. ‘Okay.’

‘You did not need to come back for me.’

‘I◦– I did. You looked after me more than I did you.’ Dalip sat up and used the end of the stairs to stand. With their torches dangling from their wrists, expressions were unreadable.

‘You are just a boy. You have the rest of your life. And I… I. Ah well. What does it matter?’ Stanislav slapped him on the back again. ‘Come. We must climb.’

‘What do you think’s happened?’

‘I do not know. It is big, whatever it is.’ He started slowly up the stairs, and Dalip’s torch caught the other man’s boots. The soles were baked black like the bottom of an oven.