Chris Ward - The Cold Pools

Simon glanced back at Marta and gave her his best don’t worry smile. She felt instantly relaxed. Simon was tall and thin with an androgynous face straight from an anime cartoon, all angular and smooth. He didn’t even seem to shave, his face clear of any stubble shadow. He was beautiful rather than handsome, a pretty boy that seemed more out of place than any of them, but he had a way about him that was calming, peaceful. He was a polar opposite of Switch, who was a ratty little man who’d never win any prizes for charm. Switch was a shameless asshole. He prided himself on it, wore it like a badge around his scrawny neck. But he was loyal. Switch would take your back in a street fight without hesitation, whether you were up against some stumbling drunk with a broken bottle or an armed unit of the DCA.

Marta broke into a jog along the platform. She reached Paul’s side as he was helping Dan to his feet. Paul was huffing like an old man trying to start a car, sweat standing out on his brow. For an instant she recalled just how little she knew about any of them. They congregated here whenever they could but they all had separate lives which they rarely talked about. No one knew what Switch did. Simon said he worked in a market, and Paul claimed to be a pickpocket. Overweight since he’d stopped riding, balding and with no obvious muscle, she found it difficult to imagine someone as slow and cumbersome had much sleight of hand. She knew what people did around Piccadilly at night and had her suspicions, but here you were as anonymous as the trains that roared past every eight minutes, if you chose to be.

Dan had been introduced to them as Paul’s friend. He had greasy black hair, and thick brows which pushed his eyes into a permanent frown to make him look nervous, suspicious. He had a deep authoritative voice that suggested he preferred to give orders rather than take them. He’d only hung out with them a few times, and Marta had harboured doubts from the start.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

Dan looked up and shrugged. He rubbed his hip and winced. ‘I don’t think anything’s broken… the fall just winded me. Shit, I can’t believe I missed the hook. I thought I had it.’ He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, one hand rubbing his forehead. ‘I almost died there, didn’t I?’

Marta looked away and said nothing. You didn’t tell someone new that if you messed up you could end up unidentifiable, a mangled, bloody chunk of meat which the next twenty trains would wipe away. She closed her eyes, and the image that appeared was of Clive, as always, his eyes desperate, his hands scrabbling uselessly against the broken tiles of the platform as he was dragged down into the gap between the platform edge and the train. There had been others too, but that one, that one was the worst. That they’d been dating at the time too… it was the closest she’d ever come to turning her back on the trains for good. The nightmares still haunted her.

He’s done , she thought. That’s it. No one who cares much about life lasts long .

Paul patted him on the shoulder, trying to be reassuring. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t ride the commuters for a while,’ he said. ‘Get some practice on the late night freights. They’re a lot slower.’

Dan shoved his arm away. ‘Don’t touch me. I’m all right.’ He squared up to Paul, who stumbled back out of his range. Dan glowered at them, his eyes flicking back and forth from one to the other. ‘I’m no chicken. I just missed it, that’s all. I was unlucky.’

‘Dan, it’s all right,’ Marta said, putting herself between them. ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

He turned away. ‘Leave me alone. I’ll be fine.’

Switch and Simon reached them. Marta glanced at Switch, the little man swaggering like a gunslinger after a kill. She gave him a little shake of her head, trying to steady his mouth.

He didn’t notice, or if he did, he ignored her. ‘Unlucky, man,’ he said to Dan, flashing a wild grin. ‘What did you score? Two hundred and twenty feet?’

Dan’s eyes blazed, fists coming up. He had wide shoulders and thick arms, and was at least double Switch’s weight. He probably thought he had a chance.

‘You want some, you crippled prick—’

‘Guys!’ Paul shouted, but too late.

Dan threw a sharp left at Switch, who backed into Simon as he tried to get out of the way. His fist would have missed but thanks to Simon’s intervention Switch was trapped and Dan’s blow slammed into Switch’s cheek, knocking him sideways. As Switch stumbled and tried to recover his balance, Dan nailed him again in the stomach. Switch doubled over, coughing, and Dan moved in closer to finish him off.

‘Help me stop them!’ Marta shouted.

Paul was no fighter, and even Marta outweighed Simon. Knowing there was little chance of any help, she tried to push herself between them, but Dan shoved her aside. He threw another punch but Switch, having recovered his balance, ducked away this time. His thin lips curled back, anger and excitement in his face. His bad eye flickered like an old movie reel.

‘So you wanna dance, is it?’

There was a flash of metal in the air.

‘Uh… uh… no—’

Dan staggered back, a hairline of red appearing down the side of his face from temple to jaw. Blood pooled and bulged, and the knife came to rest against Dan’s throat. The blade, barely longer than Switch’s index finger, reflected the emergency lighting above them, glimmering like a hospital light.

‘You never fuck with me,’ Switch said, good eye narrowed, face tight. ‘You fuck with me, you die. You got that, wankhead?’

‘Easy, Switch,’ said Simon, trying almost comically to muscle his thin frame between them and failing.

The knife vanished and Switch stepped back. For a moment his good eye fixed Dan with a dark stare, then he turned and stalked back down the platform towards the breakfall mattresses.

‘Don’t worry about him, he’s just—’

‘Fuck off,’ Dan said, turning away from Marta. He wiped a hand down his face, smearing away the blood from the shallow cut. He shook his hand and drops fell on the platform to mingle with the dust.

‘Dan!’ Paul shouted after him.

‘And you. You come near me again and I’ll fuck you up.’

They watched him walk up the platform towards the far stairs. He glanced back just once as he reached the foot of the stairs, and then was gone.

‘And then there were four,’ Marta muttered under her breath. ‘Good work, Switch.’ She turned around, but Switch was at the far end of the platform near the breakfall mats, bent down near the platform edge. For Switch, the dismount length — the distance from the end of the platform to where a rider landed — was everything. Now that Dan had gone the others couldn’t care less.

‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ Simon asked.

Marta gave a frustrated laugh. For a moment she felt like crying, but she shrugged it off. ‘What do you think? No chance now.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘He never really got into it, did he? He just didn’t fit .’

Paul looked away. Marta knew it was hurting him the most. Another friendship ruined. They were hard to come by these days, and like cracked glass, so easily shattered.

‘Worth a try,’ Simon said, and patted Paul on the shoulder. ‘But there’s still us, right? There are still Tube Riders while there’s the four of us.’

‘That idiot. If it wasn’t for him… honestly, sometimes I think we’d be better off…’ Paul’s voice trailed off. He ran a hand through the scant remains of his hair and pushed his glasses further up his nose. His face was flushed. ‘Dan wanted to be part of a gang. I didn’t want to tell him about us at first, but he seemed… seemed willing. Now he’s pissed off, angry with us and feels cast out. Where’s the first place he’s going to go?’