As he started catching up with the two he heard Shirley talking:
"[...] If we can get the traincart working in Dalston camp with the parts we might find in Hoxton..."
Working? He'd ever only seen a train cart in motion once when he'd passed by a group of almost twenty people at Maryland and it had been by muscle not machinery. The bare thought of the amount of sound that a moving train cart makes made Jake shudder. It would, and had, attracted every deadly thing within a ten mile radius. There was nothing but a red painted old cart there now.
"I-I mean... We're not gonna make it work, we're just trying to turn it into a... A... Safe bunker, of sorts. Yeah." she added quickly and hurried past the subject.
As Jake caught up with them Shirley turned around and called to him.
"Ey', speechless, don't lag behind. It's dangerous out 'ere, even though we're not far from camp."
As annoying as it was to have it pointed out by this girl who'd probably never set a foot far outside the camp, which showed extensively on the knife dangling in it's holster strapped to her belt. For one it looked barely used and secondly, anyone who had ever encountered one of them knew that sharp weapons did absolutely nothing against these creatures, most of them seemed to outright lack a sense of pain. Your only chance was to disorient them enough to run for your life. But despite all of this; she was right. And from there on Jake kept close to group and his mind clear.
After a few hours they reached Haggerston. The old platforms were still intact but little else remained. The roof had collapsed over the eastern platform and the rubble now mixed with the rusty barrels that seemed to be spread throroughly through the platforms. As Shirley tiredly sat down to rest something else caught Jake's eye. On the opposite platform there was a big piece of what used to be Haggerston's ceiling. It was soaked with blood and deep clawmarks had altered its shape. He nudged Fuaad before he jumped down on the tracks. The sole of his shoess made a clanky sound as it hit the old metal tracks and he froze, listening, as the sound echoed through the tunnel. It was dead silent after the echo faded, Jake could hear his own heart beating, 15... 18... 20 seconds of complete silence before he let out a relieved breath and heaved himself onto the eastern platform. Moss covered almost the entirety of the walls on this side and its dark grey-green color framed the large chunk of rock stained black with blood. He crouched down and slid his palm over the surface. The dark colour of it indicated that it was several years old as did the texture, but the way the stone had soaked it up, was it human?. He ran his fingers through the clawmarks, they were two fingers wide and came in irregular patterns. The lack of residue from the scarred stone indicated that the marks were of similar age as the blood. The clawmarks came in groups of four and five, was it the same beast or had there been different ones? A territorial dispute? Did they even have those? Jake shook his head, what did it matter. Whatever left these marks would've been much larger than anything he'd ever seen before. Claws of this size would slice a man in half.