Brink

Chapter 8: Forced Decisions

Chapter 8

Nick

14-12-2019

10 minutes after Chapter 5

Nick wiped a tear from his eye with his hand. The salty liquid was slowly absorbed into the leather of his glove. He sat against the double doors of the train, as it went through the tunnels of the London underground. He suffered a wave of nostalgia; a reminder of the better times. The trains packed with hundreds of people, each of them with their own purpose in life, until that horrible day came.

'Nick? Mate, you there?' sounded Rory's voice under a few static cracks.

Nick grabbed his radio. 'Yeah, I'm here, what's up?'

'You're about to arrive at Baker Street. Get out of the train there and head to Queen Mary's Gardens.'

Nick sighed. 'Alright, Rory, thanks again.' He switched off his radio.

Nick calmly reloaded his crossbow as the train rolled into Baker Street station. It stopped, and the doors slid open. Nick stood up and stepped from the train onto the platform. The lights of the train dimly lit the platform; enough for Nick to see. He walked towards the stairs. The lights of the train then switched off as Rory disconnected power, and Nick was back into the thick engulfing darkness. He clicked on his torch. The beam of light drove the darkness away, and allowed Nick to slowly navigate over the platform.

The air was surprisingly fresh. No smell of death or decay, just clean air. Nick found the stairs up to the station itself. As he ascended them step by step, the air became fouler. It had just been the air feeding through the tunnels. In the main building, the dead had probably been piled up.

Nick reached the top of the stairs. He quickly scanned the chamber. It was hallway, he concluded from what he could see. He walked forwards. The air became fouler and fouler. Nick was not comfortable with this. It had almost passed the point which he still recognized as the smell of burnt bodies, and was reaching the point where he had to move fast or risk infection. As he walked further along the hall, the stench became fouler. Not good. Nick pulled up the make-do mask he had, which was nothing more than cloth. He pulled it over his nose and mouth.

He ran slowly, careful not to slip on the wet tiled floor. It was freezing cold down here, probably even more than outside. The old advertisement posters went by him. He held his crossbow cautiously, and aimed the torch at the floor three metres away from his step, to make sure there was nothing to trip over. He turned around the corner, to another flight of stairs, and scaled those with great speed as well.

He had reached the top level. The big building of Baker Street Station. A source of sunlight at the far end of the hall marked where Nick had to go. The black silhouettes of decaying bodies shaded across the floor in the dim light of the outside. Nick only looked down a few times, and not when his torch lit up one of the bodies. He did not need to see them. The men and women, collapsing on the sidewalk and the street, their bodies picked up and scattered in here, as if this building was a mass grave. The children, boys and girls ranging from all ages, each of them coughing up blood, and then choking on their own innards. The ugly details which the media decided to leave out, and with good reason.

Nick sprinted towards the exit, after having hopped over a gate. The floor, smeared with dark blood and dotted with bodies, became icier as the exit came closer. The doors of the building had remained open, letting in rainwater and the cold. Nick did not think about it though, he had to get out of the infected air as soon as possible. When he started to slip on the icy floor, he slowed down, but still jogged. The exit was only 20 metres away. He reached the opened glass doors and stepped onto the sidewalk. He exhaled as much air as possible, emptying his lungs entirely, and then inhaled the fresh and uninfected air deeply. Now it was just a matter of fate. If he was still alive in a few days, he had not been infected. The bleep of radio sounded. Nick flicked the switch, turning the device on.