Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

you can. You must. Now get the hell out of here, John. And don't worry. I can look after myself, remember?"
    She smiled once, then the mob came surging forward. She met them with both barrels and a handful of shrapnel grenades. I carried on down the steps into the Underground. She'd been right before, as usual. There hadn't been time for a proper good-bye.

    Down in the tube station, it felt a lot later than three o'clock in the morning. The place stank of blood and sweat and desperation and far too many people. They sat huddled on the steps in filthy blood-stained clothes, rocking back and forth and hugging themselves tightly, as though that was the only thing holding them together. They didn't look at me as I squeezed my way past. Down in the tunnels they were packed even more tightly, refugees from the War above. The floors were filthy, wet and slick with every kind of waste. A recent attempt at graffiti on a tiled wall said The End Is but it finished abruptly in a splash of dried blood.
    I forced my way through the increasingly packed tunnels and down the escalators, none of which were working. Half the lights were out, too, and the air was hot and close and clammy. People were shoulder to shoulder down on the platform, and I had to force my way through. No-one had enough strength left to object. The destination board on the wall opposite said street of the gods,
    HACELDAMA, CARCOSA, SHADOWS FALL. I looked Up and down the platform, hoping to spot someplace I could sit down and get my breath back, but there was nowhere. Only people, packed a lot closer than people can usually stand, their faces empty, their eyes dead. There was no energy left in them, no hope. They'd found a place to hide from the War, and the horror they sensed coming, and that was enough. Natives and tourists sat huddled together, equally traumatised, equally lost, giving each other what comfort they could. Every now and again, some especially loud roar or explosion would reverberate down through the tunnels from the street above, and everyone would flinch or shudder, and huddle just a little closer together.
    There was a lot of dust in the air, and the taste of smoke, and I would have killed for a cool drink. All the food and drink machines had been smashed open and emptied, though I doubt their contents went far, among so many. A woman was talking tearfully on a courtesy phone, even though it was obvious there was no-one on the other end of the line. There were no quarrels or shoving matches anywhere, or even any raised voices. The people were all too tired or hurt or beaten down to cause any trouble. One area at the end of the platform had been set aside for the wounded and the dying, and a handful of assorted nurses and doctors did what they could, though they had damn all to work with. Blood and offal and other, worse things pooled on the floor, and the smell drifting down the platform was the stench of despair.
    I asked people around me when the next train was due in. Most didn't answer. Some were so far gone they didn't even seem to understand the question. Finally, a man in a torn and scorched business suit, still clinging protectively to his briefcase, informed me that no-one had seen a train in ages. The general feeling was that all the trains had stopped running the moment the War began. I could understand that. The trains were frightened. (They might have started out as purely mechanical creations, but they'd evolved down the years, and now they were all quite definitely alive and sentient, in their own way.) They were probably hiding somewhere outside the Nightside, afraid to enter.
    I powered up my gift, found the nearest train, and called it to me. I didn't have to worry about Lilith's finding me through my gift any more. By the time she got here, I planned to be long gone. Using my gift felt easier than ever before. Now that I knew the truth about it. As though… it had stopped fighting me. I called, and the train came, protesting loudly all the way. I shut down my gift, silencing the train's querulous mental voice.
    It finally roared into the station, shaking the whole platform with its arrival, a long, shining, silver bullet, cold and featureless. The long steel carriages had no windows, and only the heavily reinforced doors stood out against the gleaming metal. But still there were scuffs and scrapes down the long, steel sides, and even a few deep gouge marks. People stirred and murmured, astonished. The trains were supposed