Ruins of a Teenage Underground

Ruins of a Teenage Underground (Chapter 4)

Without thinking, I darted into the street. All I heard before my feet hit the grass of the park on the other side was the squeal of brakes and a loud honk.

"Run." Turner said calmly, grabbing me by the wrist and yanking me towards a large concrete structure a few hundred metres away. As we got closer, I realized where we were heading.

We were taking the London Underground.

"Really? You spent all this time being sneaky, and we're going to take the subway which will no doubt have people on it. Nice."

"We have to be sneaky,what if Cory loses his shit tomorrow and calls the cops? Reports you as a missing person? You're going to be a lot easier to recall seeing when he puts your picture all over the news. Plus, we aren't taking the train. We're taking the tracks."

As if to prove he wasn't kidding, Turner jumped on to the tracks, blatantly ignoring the signs telling him specifically not to do that. Without hesitating, I followed, being careful to stick to the shadows just like Turner was. 

When you have nothing to lose, taking risks is the easiest thing in the world.

"How are you holding up?" he asked after an awkwardly long silence, glancing up at me for the first time since we'd set foot on the tracks.

"Fine."

"Well fine isn't really an emotion, now is it?" he pointed out, raising his eyebrows at me in a way that made me feel like he knew all my secrets.

"I just feel like I don't have a valid enough reason to ditch my life here." I admitted, looking away from him.

"Having no reason to stay is a good reason to go, isn't it?"

I didn't reply.

"Hopefully you aren't claustrophobic. This is where we turn." he said a moment later, stopping in front of a small section of broken bricks in the wall where the station appeared to have been blocked off at the fork in the road many years before.

Kneeling in front of it, I shrugged off my backpack and shoved it through the hole, before laying on my stomach and shimmying my way through. It was a tight squeeze, but what I saw on the other side of the hole amazed me. It was an abandoned station. An entire part of the London Underground, just left to rot.

"What is this place?" I asked as Turner worked his way through the cracked bricks, struggling a lot more than I had.

"This part of the Underground got shut down years ago. Probably before you were born. They just didn't see a use for it anymore, so they bricked over the tracks and left it for the earth to take back. C'mon, it's this way."

"How do you know about this? You aren't even from here."

"Yeah, but Cory is." he said, ducking through some vines. "He took me here last summer."

I stared in fascination as we walked, looking at the tree roots that broke through the concrete, and the ivy that plastered the walls and ceiling. It was so crazy that they could just get rid of something this easily. That one day someone just woke up and decided they wanted to "let the earth take it back".

"Where are we even going?"

"Up these stairs." Turner replied, as if I was actually stupid enough to not realize what we were doing.

"No, I mean the place you're taking me. Like, what's our destination?"

"Ohhh. We're going to the Renegade House. It's a place for runaways, people who just need to leave, or people who have nowhere to go. Apparently it's laid out like a maze, with a mile long hallway, secret passages, dead ends, doors opening to blank walls and staircases leading to the ceiling. At least from what I've heard, which isn't much. So it's probably not true, since I also heard it had an alligator moat. I guess we'll see when we get there, eh?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

As we reached the top of the stairs, Turner grinned. Pushing a tangle of weeds and ivy that had created a canopy over the opening, he stuck his head out and cheered. I followed close behind, and realized what had happened. The top of the stairs were located right the middle of a forest.

And through the trees, there was a mansion. The Renegade House.

"Alright. This is the end of the line for me." Turner told me, ruffling my hair. "It was really good knowing you, Camden."

"You and Cory were the best flatmates I've ever had."

"I know, you got really lucky with us." he smirked, but the smirk quickly faded into sadness.

"Take care of Cory for me."

"I will." Turner said, pulling me in for a hug. His chin rested on top of my head, he was so tall. "Take care of yourself, kiddo. We won't forget you."

"Thank you, for everything."

"I got your back, you already know that. Now go, you have a lot of ass to kick and shit to do." With one last grin, Turner descended the steps back into the tunnel, his footsteps getting fainter as he headed back towards his home, a place I would never go again.

Taking a deep breath, I kicked away the last little bit of normal that was left in my life, and ran towards the house in front of me.