Mr Finn stood, waiting for them to leave.
Both of them were only too happy to get out.
It took Megan all day to convince Cam that
following the map into the old air raid shelter behind the supermarket was a
good idea. Probably because it wasn't a good idea. It was a terrible idea. A
terrible idea with a very good chance of rats.
'Hah! You aren't scared of rats are you
Cam?' she'd said, not even fooling herself.
'No. I'm scared of black death and lymes
disease.'
Megan had to google that.
It was pretty scary. So many scabs.
Eventually she gave up trying to convince
him and announced she was going alone. That's when he agreed to come. Megan
made a mental note to remember that for next time.
The old air raid shelter was a series of
interconnected tunnels hollowed out under a cliff. Cam said it ran down
underground for miles. It had been built especially for the workers of a nearby
munitions factory which had just been turned into very posh flats.
Officially of course, it was now a hazard
to health and safety, all blocked off and locked up. Unoffically, you could
squeeze in behind the dodgy garages.
Cam was tucking his waterproof trousers
into his welly boots for the third time.
'Cam honestly, you're fine.'
'What about leeches?'
'I don't think you get leeches here. Or
pirhana.'
'You might. No one's been down here for
years. It's an undisturbed ecosystem. Anything could be living there.'
'Velociraptors under Port Glasgow?'
'No. But there's that Big Cat people are
always seeing on the hills behind the town.'
'And with miles of moorland to run across,
it lives behind a supermarket? An urban puma.'
'Puma, velociraptor, pirhana...if I get
eaten, you'll have my mum to deal with.'
Megan was actually a bit scared of Cam's
mum - she was a nurse and not really one for nonsense. One time she found out
he'd been trading all the fruit in his packed lunch for sherbet and wham bars
and he was only allowed to eat raw vegetables and porridge for the rest of the
month. That had been a really tough month for everyone.
'Okay? Ready to go?'
Cam nodded glumly.
The two splashed into the darkness. The
water was deeper than Megan had thought it would be, and she was starting to
wish they hadn't bought their torches in the pound shop.
‘My gran wrote a story about a place like
this…maybe the old railway tunnels that people hid in during air raids?’
‘Was it a funny story with a happy ending?’
‘Not really. The end of the tunnel had
collapsed as people were running in to shelter, and for years after there were
always these wee sad grey figures who would try and get kids to come down and
play on the tracks with them. Every so often, someone would go down to play,
and they would be found later, people just thought they had been hit by trains
or electrocuted on the tracks, but
actually it was because the blitz children had dragged them off into the
tunnels with their wee cold hands.’
The dark seemed briefly darker, and colder
too.
‘Great story Meg. Thanks for sharing. She
was always a right laugh your Gran.’
‘I know a few more…’
‘Do they have clowns in them? Or rats?
Because those stories can wait.’
Megan stopped suddenly and gestured for Cam
to stop too.
‘Shh. What’s that?’
There was a distant splash which echoes
through the empty dark. Then another. And another. The unmistakeable splish
splash of something else, walking through the tunnels towards them.
Cam looked around, trying to get his
bearings, ‘Which way is that coming from?’ Megan shushed him again.
More splashing, faster now, and nearer.
Cam reached for Megan, taking her hand to
run back the way they had come.
‘No it’s coming from that way. Go this
way!’
Cam turned his torch towards the nearest
junction in the tunnels, two eye beamed eerily back at them, reflecting the
faded torchlight. They both screamed as the creature splashed quickly towards
them, its startled eyes dancing ever closer through the black. In a moment, the
terrified deer had run past them both and back out into the streets above.
Cam was still screaming long after it had
gone.
‘Cam? Cam it’s away now. It was just a
deer.’
‘Did you see those eyes? It looked evil.’
Cam fumbled through his pockets, finally
producing a packet of chewing gum.
‘Evil.’
The two friends stood in silence for a
moment.
‘See,’ said Cam, ‘there could be a puma
down here.’
‘Maybe that’s why the deer was running,’ said
Meg, it was supposed to be a joke, but it was too soon.
‘Can we go yet?’ Cam scowled.
‘Just five more minutes. My gran wanted me
to come down here, I’d really like to know why.’
Steadying one another as they went, they
wandered through what felt like miles of tunnels, past the rotted bench and bed
frames where families must have huddled together as the bombs fell, past the
tiny cubicles people used as toilets and down towards the huge machines which
stood at the tunnels end.
‘What are these?’
‘Maybe for air conditioning. Or water
pumps?’
The torchlight illuminated a face amongst
the rust, startled, Megan stumbled back into Cam.
‘Look at this!’
It was a figure, a person, sculpted and
built from metal. The head was a near perfect sphere, studded with rivets. Two
eyes, large hexagonal bolts, stared vacantly into the shelter and a wide
rectangular gap, like a broken letterbox, was the figures mouth. It hung open
as if in surprise, or perhaps, silently screaming.
‘Cam, it’s…it looks like a robot.’
In the low light of their pound shop
torches, steel still gleamed through all the grease and dirt.
'It looks a bit like one of those new Waterworx
statues.' said Cam 'What do you think its doing down here?'
'I've no idea. Looks like it's been here a
long time though. This must be what Gran wanted me to find.'
'But how did she know it was here? Did she
build it do you think?'
'Doubt it. She couldn't even do lego.'
Cam tapped it gently. At
once, the robots eyes flared an angry orange and it grabbed Cam's arm.
'Unnnnnderaaaaaattack. Ehhhhhnnnehmeee.'
'Run!' shouted Cam.
