Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

A noise from up ahead.

Healy shone the torch into the darkness at the end of the corridor. It kinked right at the end, past four unmarked barrels. As we moved forward, towards the third window, the sound of static increased. Healy directed the light upwards. Three feet above us was another speaker, pumping out sound. A constant, unbroken wall of noise like someone had hit a dead TV channel.

We reached the third window.

In the centre of the room was a hospital bed. A white mattress and white bedclothes on top of that, the bedclothes half covering the legs of the woman lying on it. She was semi-conscious and dressed in a pale blue night dress, lying on her side in the foetal position. One of her hands rested on her stomach. After a while, her fingers started moving gently across her midriff, even as she slept. Tracing the roundness of her belly. The swell of her pregnancy. Eventually she shifted position on the mattress, her head tilting in our direction.

It was Megan Carver.

Chapter Sixty-six

There was no door into the room from the corridor and the glass was a one-way mirror. Reinforced. When I tapped on it, it made almost no sound: just a dull whup. We need to call the police. We need a medical team. I took out my phone and flipped it open. There was no signal this far underground. It would only take me a couple of minutes to get up above ground and make the call - but I needed to get to Megan first. I wasn't going to leave her. Not now.

We moved quickly forward, into the gloom of the corridor, torchlight swinging right to left in Healy's hands. When I glanced at him, I could see the desperation building. Sweat was forming on his hairline, even though it was cold in the corridor. His shoulders had tensed. His muscles had hardened. Up ahead, the barrels started to emerge more clearly in the darkness, all four unmarked except for a serial number at their base in Cyrillic. Healy angled the torchlight across them.

Then the torch cut out.

He bashed it against his hand, trying to force new life into the batteries. But they were gone. I got out my phone and flipped it open again. The blue light from the display crawled across the walls and floor, lighting our way for about ten feet. I nodded to his jacket, telling him to remove his mobile. 'One of us needs to move ahead,'

I said, keeping my voice low. 'We need to stay six feet apart, then we can light more of the corridor.'

He nodded, discarding the torch on the floor. Then he raised the gun, placed his left hand under the bottom of the grip and put the phone between his teeth. The keypad faced out, the light from the display faintly orange in colour. His face was a mix of nervousness and dread.

We both broke into a jog as we moved around the corner, footsteps echoing, carrying along the corridor like a muffled drumbeat. There were two doors at the end: a heavy one with rivets facing us, and a second submarine-style hatch on the right. When we got to the one on the right, I reached down to the handle. Healy's eyes snapped to a speaker above us and back to me. We both felt it. A chill. A deep sense of unease. Then I gripped the handle tighter and pushed the door the rest of the way.

On the other side was a long, narrow room, running for seventy feet. The stone walls were uneven and the ceiling was low, as little as ten feet in places. It was cold. Under our feet was green linoleum, and above our heads were strip lights. The room was completely empty apart from a hospital bed in the centre. Circling it was a full medical set-up: an ECG, a catheter, an IV tube and saline bag, and electrodes looped around one of the bedposts. There was a metal trolley off to the side, instruments laid out on top: surgeon's scissors, scalpels, a mallet, retractors, forceps. The medical area was absolutely spotless and brightly lit. The rest of the room looked like something from the Middle Ages; a snapshot from the ruins of a medieval Castle.

I edged further in and could make out three white doors, partially obscured by the shadows. None of them had handles. Only keyholes. The nearest to me was the one Megan was in. I darted towards it, glancing back over my shoulder at Healy. Except he wasn't there. Back in the corridor, he'd opened the door with the rivets on. In front of him was a wall of solid blackness; a huge dark mouth.

'Healy, wait.'

He just stared at me. He looked dazed, like he suddenly wasn't sure what he was doing. His finger wriggled at the trigger of the gun.

'Don't go in alone.'

His eyes drifted to the black space in front of him and then back to me. He knew I was right. He knew it was better to wait, to go in with support. But he didn't wait. Instead he raised the gun, put the phone between his teeth and stepped through the door. Within a second, he was swallowed up and all that remained was the glow of his phone.

Shit.

I turned back to the room housing Megan. It was locked. The door moved in its frame when I pressed a hand against it, and had a cheap, hollow kind of feel; like two slabs of wood either side of an empty space.

I retreated a few steps, then glanced back into the darkness Healy had just passed through. I needed to get to him. I needed to back him up. But I needed to get to Megan more. Healy could handle himself. Megan couldn't. She'd been gone six months and now all that separated us was a piece of wood.

I took another step away from the door.

And then I shoulder-charged it.

It cracked away from the frame, swinging full force into the wall. Megan didn't even stir.

'Megan?'

I moved around the bed so I could see her face.

'Megan?'

Nothing. She was heavily sedated, her breathing soft. I put my phone between my teeth, stepped up to the bed and lifted her off. She wasn't heavy, even eight months into her pregnancy. When I brought her in towards me, her head rolled against my chest and I could feel the swell of her belly.

I moved quickly, out into the white room and back into the corridor, pausing for a moment at the door with the rivets. In the darkness, nothing came back. No sound. No light. No movement. I almost called out to Healy, but felt his name stop at my lips as the sound of static rose and fell around me. Deep inside, I knew none of this was right. It was too easy so far. Everything was too easy. But when I looked down at Megan, I let it go, and headed back up the corridor. Past the windows. Through the hatch, to the ladder. Maybe there was an easier way out, maybe there wasn't, but I couldn't afford to take a chance. I had to get her out. I'd have to try and wake her. And then, once she was awake, I had to get her up the ladder to safety.

But the ladder wasn't there.

Looking up, I could see the manhole cover was still open, a circle of blue sky visible, but the ladder had retreated back into the space beneath. It was too far from the floor to reach now. He raised it. He hadn't passed us, so the ladder was either remotely operated or he'd been above ground and pulled it up manually from the lip of the hole — which meant there was another exit. It didn't matter now either way. The only option was to go back through the door with the rivets, a thought that filled me with dread. How the hell am I going to keep her safe when I don't even know what's waiting for me ?

I laid Megan gently down on the floor, pushing her hair away from her face. She felt cool. There was dried blood and snot around her nose, but otherwise she looked okay. A little bigger around the face, but she was carrying most of the baby weight at her front. Looking around, the only light was from the three rooms in the next corridor; everything else was coated in darkness. I needed to wake her before we could find the other exit — because, with her unconscious in my arms, we were both easy targets.

I glanced down at her, trying to figure it out.