Mr Wolf and the White Princess

Chapter Fourteen

Nine stations to go.

The wolf keeps on pressing forwards, he gets to the end of the carriage, yanks open the connecting door and feels the blast of fresh air on his face. He breathes deeply glad to get away from the press of bodies for a moment, before he pulls open the next door and plunges in again.

St James’s Park station zooms into view and the noise of the train thunders off its low ceiling.

Eight stations to go.

He starts panicking, speeding up and shoving angrily at people, jumping up over their feet and knocking them aside. They do not resist. He gets through another carriage faster that way and bursts through the connecting door not stopping to breathe this time.

Victoria station shoots past.

Seven stations to go.

He begins to lose track of time and the stations. The sweat is pouring off him as he jumps and shoves his way forwards. He is getting through the carriages faster now. At the door to the next one he pauses and thinks, ‘How many have I got to go?’ He cannot tell where he is in the train and he has lost count of the platforms. He suddenly remembers the other train loaded up with blanks full of liquid ugliness on automatic hurtling round the Circle Line from the other direction towards him, to hit him.

Notting Hill Gate station.

He glances at the tube line map by his head.

Shit! Two stations to go.

He blunders to the end of the carriage, scrambles through into the next one and stands on tiptoe to look down it. He can see the top of the door to the driver’s cabin.

‘Come on, you can do this, get to the cabin and divert the train.’

He makes a frantic final effort to push through the crowd. He gets past the halfway doors and then they shoot through Bayswater station.

One station to go.

He scrambles to the door of the driver’s cabin and yanks it open.

He looks at the controls and tries to think which ones to pull or push.

They burst out into the daylight of the wide-open mainline rail yard at Paddington. He looks up through the front window of the train and sees the tube platform streaming by on his left hand side past the open door of the driver’s cabin; the dark circle of the tunnel to Edgware Road is rushing towards him.

He has no time left and steps over to the open door feeling the rush of cool air across his face. He throws himself out and tumbles head over heels along the deserted platform as the train plunges back into the tunnel and on to its destruction at Edgware Road.

Project Darkness has succeeded, the blackhole of despair will begin.