London Under Midnight by Simon Clark

that they had to hang on to the ladder as they roared with hilarity. This gave Ped a chance. He pulled the aerosol from his jacket pocket.
        'Mickey. Watch me. Please, open your eyes. See what I'm doing. I'm putting a circle around the light.' He sprayed a ring of florescent green round the red light. 'See, bro. I've closed it in. I've trapped it. Now it can't hurt you.' He reached up and yanked his brother's ankle. 'Now move!'
        Mickey stared at the red light with the gleaming boundary of green. In his eyes the paint had become the protecting force field. The magic shield that stopped electrons streaming from the lamp to sear his face. Gulping repeatedly, he quickly descended; so fast, in fact, that he stepped on Ped's fingers.
        'That's alright, bro. You can stand on my face if you want to. Just keep moving. That's beautiful. Yeah, beautiful, Mickey. You're doing the business.'
        Seconds later they reached the gravel base of the cutting. Across the rails he could see the gleam of canal water. Nearly there. He glanced up. The skinheads' anger at being thwarted from simply booting Mickey off the ladder had killed their fit of laughter. Now they were hell-bent on catching their victims. The ladder shook as their boots clattered on the rungs. The clatter became a thunder. It was so loud it made the ground tremble. For a moment he believed it was the force of those feet crashing down the ladder. Then a flicker of light raced across the horizon. 'Great,' Ped muttered, 'all this and a thunderstorm, too.'
        He grabbed Mickey by the elbow. After a train had passed, all lights as it clanked forward in the darkness, he urged his brother to move. Mickey's legs froze as he saw the dreaded live power rail in front of him. Running between the two rails that accommodated the wheels of the train, it was a thick continuous band of iron that even for Ped appeared to pulse with ominous energy.
        'For God's sake, step over it when we cross. Don't touch it.'
        But Mickey had clearly decided to go nowhere near it.
        'C'mon, Mickey. We've got to cross over the rails. It's the only way we can escape those guys.'
        Mickey shook his head.
        'Don't worry. I can make it safe.' Ped leant over the track. He'd use the aerosol to spray two parallel lines. Then Mickey could walk through with the protecting lines on either side of him. Okay, its protective power only existed in Mickey's imagination, but it would be enough. He painted the first green line across the live power line. However, as he tried to spray the second, only a hiss of propellant emerged from the atomizer. Not so much as a drop of green. Behind him, the thugs reached the bottom of the ladder.
        One shouted, 'We're going to fry your dick, too!'
        A train roared down the track. Ped saw its lights in the distance. Another twenty seconds and this wouldn't be a healthy place for two very good reasons. The gang, or the train, was going to leave their mark, and Mickey had locked up tight with fear. His eyes bulged as he stared at the electrified metal bar that fed the motors of the approaching train.
        Ped shook the aerosol and tried again. Just that fizzing sound. No paint. No way of creating a magical pathway for his brother.
        'I'm going to have to drag you across.' He seized Mickey, but the kid seemed to have embedded himself in the gravel. No amount of wild horses, nor desperate siblings, were going to haul him across the line of living death. As Ped tried to wrestle the man forward he felt a hard cylinder in his brother's jacket pocket.
        'Why didn't you tell me you had a can!'
        Mickey merely stared at the electrified rail without uttering a word. Ped dragged the can from his pocket.
        As he sprayed the green line across the track, he shouted, 'See what I'm doing? I've sprayed you a magic road. The electricity can't hurt you.' As long as you don't touch the live rail, was