Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

On the other side of the room, in the far corner, was a whitewashed wall with photos of the missing women in two rows. Four on the top. Five, including Jill, on the bottom. Each of the women had dotted lines marked on their faces. Surgical marks. Around the pictures was a network of other documents: newspaper cuttings, anatomical drawings, cross-sections of faces, blueprints of buildings. Other photographs. Markham. Frank White. Jamie Hart. Charlie Bryant. My house. My kitchen. My living room. Liz and me standing on the front porch of her house.

Then the lights went out again.

Complete darkness.

Megan moved in even closer to me, her face pressed against my chest, her eyes still closed. I could feel her crying, the movement of her jaw, the soft sound as she tried to dampen the noise. I pressed a hand flat to her head and kept her close, then started inching forward.

Six feet ahead, there was a dull orange glow on the floor.

Healy's phone .

On the very edge of the light, I could see a hand, the gun about a foot from it. As we took another step forward, Healy emerged, lying face down, trails of blood running from his head. Next to him, its muzzle at his chest, was the dog. The patch of skin on its face looked infected. It darted a look at us, eyes turning to pinpricks of light, and then turned and headed off in the other direction.

If the dog is inside here, the exit must be too .

I squeezed Megan to let her know we were going to move again, and then edged forward. When I got to Healy, he was making quiet noises, like air escaping from a balloon. He was still alive — but only just. His blood was smeared across the floor and over the coffin next to him.

The sixth one.

Leanne.

She was looking up through the lid with wide eyes, her skin the colour of snow. In that moment, it was like every ounce of Healy's vengeance had transferred to me. I felt his pain. His burning rage. His need to hit out.

' Uhhhhhhh …'

As Healy groaned, the generator clunked and purple light erupted right above us again. In my peripheral vision, something moved. A blur, darting right to left. Feet slapping against the floor. He's trying to confuse me . I squeezed Megan tighter, looking down at her.

And that was when I saw my hands.

They were fluorescent orange, my fingers, my palms, my wrists, glowing. It was all over the sleeve of my jacket as well. I checked my body and there were marks on my trousers and shoes. Megan's shoulders and her vest were glowing too, where I'd had my arms around her.

I glanced at Healy.

Exactly the same: hands, arms, legs, clothes, shoes, everything illuminated. And suddenly I realized — too late - what was happening. The residue I'd felt on the way down the ladder wasn't dew or oil. The bulbs above me were ultraviolet black light. Virtually no light and no visible effect — until they reacted with fluorescent paint.

And I was covered in it.

'Hello, David.'

I turned. He was standing behind me, all in black, glass shard on a chain at his throat, surgical mask over his mouth and nose. His eyes flared, widening as if trying to draw me in.

'You're easier to see when you're lit up like a Christmas tree.'

And then he stabbed me with a surgeon's knife.

Chapter Sixty-eight

In a split second I pushed Megan to the side and brought my arm up. The knife went into the flesh just above my elbow. The blade wasn't more than two inches, but I felt the pain instantly. It shot up my arm and exploded out across my chest.

I heard footsteps as Megan ran off into the darkness, and I felt a second of relief that she'd got herself away. Glass followed the noise too. By the time he'd realized his mistake, I was on him: one punch to the face; one to the side of the head; one to the chest, next to the heart. We crashed to the floor. The knife pinged off the ground and spun away. He was dazed, but still fighting: hands came up to my throat, surgical gloves clawed at my face, fingers grabbed at my nose and eyes.

I pushed him away and hit him again. All my anger and revulsion channelled into the punch. Something cracked. In the darkness, both of us semi-lit by Healy's phone, his eyes rolled up into his head and I realized I'd broken his nose. Blood slowly soaked through from the inside of the mask.

He lay still. Eyes closed.

Getting up, I searched for Megan in the dull glow of the black lights. 'Megan?' Silence. I moved towards the shadows at the back of the room, feeling the breeze. 'Megan? It's okay, honey. Everything's okay. I just need to know you're safe.'

Suddenly, everything descended into darkness again and I heard footsteps. I spun on my heel, preparing for Glass's approach - but it didn't arrive. Instead the footsteps circled me. I heard crates tumble and something fall to the floor with a clang. And then a rectangle of creamy light burst open in the space beyond the coffins.

A door.

Glass looked back at me — and then disappeared inside.

I sprinted after him. The corridor looked like it had been some kind of service tunnel. The walls were crumbling, the cement turning to dust. At the end was a stairwell, zigzagging upwards and out of sight. Glass glanced back again from the steps, then started moving up to the surface.

The stairs rose for about thirty feet. At the top, a door had been sealed with a welding torch and a series of boards. To one side, there was daylight coming through a disused air vent. Glass dived inside the vent, clattering against the metal. As I got to the landing area, I headed after him. The vent opened up in a straight line for about forty feet, before angling upwards. When Glass reached the end, he hauled himself up. Feet dangling. Then he was gone. I slowed down five feet from the end and looked up.

Above me, the same LED light alarm system was in place. The covering for the vent - sitting half over the hole - was a piece of wire mesh. I could see a thick canopy of trees and snatches of blue sky. He wasn't at the lip of the hole. But it didn't mean he wasn't close. If he'd picked up Healy's gun, he would have fired it already. But he might have had another knife — and I wasn't about to fight him from below.

Slowly, quietly, I manoeuvred into position.

Then I gripped the edges at the top of the hole and pulled myself up. The air vent opened into a small brick building with a concrete floor. No roof; trees overhead.

Behind me, stacked against one of the remaining walls were a series of railway sleepers, cobwebs clinging to them. The railway line that had never been laid.

The Dead Tracks.

I searched for a weapon and found a rusting shovel propped against the sleepers, then quickly circled the building. To my left there was a vague path through long grass; to my right, a path that continued for sixty feet before hitting impenetrable woodland.

I headed left.

The canopy was thick and the path quickly became mud and stones. Further along was a length of railway track, cutting across the trail, from one side to the other. I carried on, looking over my shoulder the whole time, the shovel up and primed. Moments later, a wind passed through the woods, the leaves in the trees whispering. A few seconds later it came again, and this time it clearly sounded like a voice. Or maybe I was spooked. I wasn't sure now. I looked around, feeling like someone was watching me.

On my right, I noticed the grass had stopped growing. It had been flattened, ripped away in places. And in the spaces that remained were a series of white posts, spaced equally apart, each one numbered.

An odd sensation shivered through me.

And then I realized why: he's behind you.

I turned. His eyes widened above the bloodied mask as he raised the knife at his side. I ducked away from him - but too late. The blade came fast and pierced the skin at the top of my shoulder. I sucked in the pain and rolled away, keeping my grip tight on the shovel.