Above His Station by Darren Craske Read Free Book Online Page A

sweet-talk a fucking bird, don’t you think it’s worth a shot?’
    I declined to agree. I’d seen what a man looks like when he’s been electrocuted, and it’s not a pretty sight. A commuter was on route to Waterloo this one time and he accidently dropped his mobile telephone onto the tracks. I was in my ticket office at the time with a big queue of people, so I didn’t see the fool climbing down to retrieve it. One of the passengers alerted me. She’d said that people on both platforms had been yelling at him to get off the tracks, but he made some crack about not being able to see any trains coming. He’d forgotten about the live rail and by the time I’d got to him, all that was left was a smoking lump of charred flesh. Ironically, the phone that he had paid his life to collect was undamaged. So, with that image playing in my head, wandering about in the dark with a live rail inches from my feet wasn’t exactly an enticing prospect. But then I slapped my forehead and exclaimed:
    ‘I’m an idiot!’
    To which the rat said, ‘Well, I wasn’t going to mention it.’
    ‘No, I meant I’m an idiot for not thinking of it sooner!’ I said, turning away from the glass partition and rushing back down the stairs as quickly as my bones would carry me, filling the rat in on my brilliant idea as we went. ‘We’ve been going about this the wrong way. We need to get out of this station, so why on earth did we pick the route that was always going to be the hardest? We don’t want to chance walking down the tunnels because of the live tracks, but we don’t have to walk at all.’
    ‘We don’t?’ asked the rat.
    ‘Of course we don’t!’ I said, winningly. I’d unlocked the iron-barred gate and we were through it and back out onto the platform before I explained. ‘We’ll use that!’
    The rat followed the direction of my finger. ‘The train?’
    ‘No, the bloody mess of a tiger. Of course the bloody train!’
    ‘You know how to drive it?’ asked the rat, which was a pertinent question.
    ‘In theory,’ I replied, modestly. ‘As long as there’s a live current of electricity – and I’m inclined to think there is, seeing as the train slammed back into the station only a few minutes ago - then I think we’ve got a good chance of making it to the nearest station!’
    ‘I thought you said this place wasn’t connected to the Underground?’
    ‘It’s connected to it, just not accessible from it,’ I said, confident about a subject that I had only briefly skimmed in my mammoth Welcome Pack. ‘This train had to have come from somewhere, which means that with any luck we can get there too. All right, it might not be a major station, but at least we’ll be able to get up to ground level.’
    ‘Sounds like a plan, Gramps,’ said the rat, giving me a thumbs-up.
    I couldn’t have been more excited as I boarded the passenger car of the train once more, making my way forwards to the driver’s car. Once inside, my ratty companion hopped up onto the control desk alongside me.
    ‘Okay,’ it said, grinning from ear to ear, ‘let’s see what this bucket of bolts can do.’
    ‘All in good time,’ I said, thumbing my lips, consulting memories that I had no intention of ever revisiting again. If I’d known that I might be relying on them to save my life one day, I might have paid more attention. I glanced around the control board in front of me. There were plenty of dials and gauges and things, as well as two handles – one black and one red. I presumed that one was to start the electric current to get the train going and the other was obviously the brake. It didn’t look all that hard to fathom. The only question was whether HQ had cut off the electricity supply to the rails. I closed my eyes and pulled the black handle. The train lurched forwards at a jolt and I quickly let it go. The train stopped instantly.
    ‘It’s a ‘ dead man’s switch ’,’ I said to the rat, as it all came back to me.