Endworlds - Nicholas Read [28]
By that time Lion and his Longcoats had disappeared into the tunnel.
Once they had walked far enough to lose the tunnel’s own illumination, lights flared from collars to illuminate their path. Dating back to Victorian times, this portion of the old line featured maintenance conduits and side corridors that sometimes didn’t see a visitor for a year or more. To his surprise Eastwood found that he could follow the intricate twists and turns taken by his new friends with comparative ease. Whoever he was, he plainly possessed an able memory, short-term at least.
They had walked two miles underground from Waterloo to Lambeth when one of the party produced a plastic card and waved it over a brick that was slightly paler in hue that those that surrounded it. Something buzzed softly, there was a click, a door opened, and lights came on beyond.
Preceded by Castle, Eastwood walked through a pale blue beam that beeped once in acknowledgement of his passage. Behind him, Vector leaned over to murmur at Lion.
“Well, at least we know he ain’t no bloody Grem.”
Looking back, the newcomer frowned. “What’s a Grem?”
Vector snorted. “You ‘ang with us long enough and you might find out. If you’re lucky, mate, you won’t. Grems are nasty green little blighters, not much bigger than your foot, which makes it tough for ‘em to move in our world without standing out. So they got their own way of blending in.”
Going deeper into the complex, Eastwood observed the grunge of sooty brick was giving way to scrubbed stone and reflective surfaces. A smell of lemon mixed with plastic was palpable as the tunnel widened ahead.
“So how do they blend in?” he asked in mild curiosity.
“They wear your skin.”
It was the matter-of-fact way Vector said it combined with the image his words generated that stopped Eastwood in his tracks.
Hummer put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and pressed him onwards, explaining: “Sharp teeth with venom. They bite in soft place like stomach, groin or butt, then burrow inside and eat out a hollow place to hide. On ends of fingers and legs they have filaments that wind into nervous system. They don’t keep body alive, but until it stiffens they use it. Like bus.”
They were passing lockers and open storerooms now, walking through a succession of vaulted brick chambers that were easily more than a hundred years old.
Eastwood’s mind was spinning. “So one of these Grems takes over a person?”
“Not exactly,” said Vector, keying buttons on another door. “It takes five of ‘em. A hove. One each for legs and arms, and another to control the head. A hove blends into the body and into each other, becoming a single synaptic entity, perfectly coordinated as they work the body. But as the body breaks down, the speech starts to slur, the movements get jerkier. Only then can you really spot a skinsuit. One thing I’ll say for ‘em, they’re not like other random creatures. Sometimes I swear . . .” He trailed off.
“Swear what?”
Vector gave Eastwood an uncertain look, as though he wanted to share something not common knowledge. Then as Lion and the others caught up, his eyes shifted, full of cockiness again. “I swear,” he grinned, “that after tonight I will sleep for a week.”
He pulled a latch, and with a squealing hiss the heavy metal door slid sideways into a recess in the stone.
Moving deeper into what he heard them call ‘The Chimney’, a wide-eyed Eastwood was astonished to find himself walking onto a platform made of thick steel mesh that wound in a descending spiral around a central cavity that extended down numerous levels. Branching outwards in half-storey intervals away from the open void were brightly lit hemispherical