“I’ll be in the security room,” Lucy said. “I don’t need a weapon.”
“Take one, just in case,” Jamie said.
He picked up a matching short sword and threw it on the floor, smashing its case. He picked it up, mindful of the glass shards, and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” Lucy said.
Her affection for Jamie was not lost on Dr. Beck.
“Donny, come with me,” he said, leading him to a single set of large drawers in the corner.
Opening one, Donny could see this was where they kept the real fireworks. C4, Claymore mines, and enough charges to bring down the Empire State building. Dr. Beck picked up two and handed them to Donny, then took another two for himself.
“You know how to use these?” he said.
“Set the timer and run,” Donny said.
“Concisely put,” Dr. Beck said. “Be careful with them. They can be highly volatile.”
They returned to the others.
“Is everyone clear of the plan?” Dr. Beck said. “If you’re not, speak now.”
Everyone was clear.
“All right then,” Dr. Beck said. “Everyone get into position.”
They exited the room and broke off, heading in their disparate directions.
“Jamie,” Donny said, calling after him.
His brother turned to look at him.
“Good luck,” Donny said.
30.
THE CITY was huge. No other way to describe it. Endless corridors led onto other corridors, that led onto yet more, sprouting outwards like some great tree. It was difficult even if Donny had a map—which he didn’t—and had to rely solely on the signposts helpfully posted at regular intervals.
Why Dr. Beck hadn’t thought to tell them about the vehicles they had stationed here before was beyond him. Donny could have left to visit the commune in no time. And the car itself was evidence of the City’s existence. He imagined the looks on the commune members’ faces. What would they make of it? In fact, what would they make of the City itself?
Things were beginning to look up for their little commune, as well as for those in the area. Donny pictured a sprawling City thriving and bubbling with activity, all survivors. It was about time they had an easier experience.
They would need to create some kind of structure. Leadership. Share their knowledge and skills. To be sure, it was a large vestment of Rages outside the City, but he’d seen—hell, he’d fought—a great many more Rages, all while armed with a great deal fewer weapons than they possessed at the City.
The vehicle service centre was located in the City’s basement. It was where he expected it to be. How else could they expect to get the vehicles outside? He continued to follow the signs. Finally, he came to an archway with the word, VEHICLE SERVICE STATION stencilled above it.
Damn. It required a passcard or code. Of course it did. Everywhere in this place did. He was about to turn back and locate Dr. Beck when the light above the door suddenly blinked green and slid open.
Gotta love electronic doors.
There were so many things you could do with these alone. No need for a man to stand there on duty day and night, no need for anything. . . so long as you didn’t forget your keycard. What a hassle that must have been back in the day.
Donny stepped inside the room. Automatic lights flickered to life and illuminated a large room. Everything in the City was big and oversized. What he saw there took his breath away.
Jackpot.
Motorcycles. So many it could have furnished half a small Reaver clan, though they weren’t the sit-up-and-beg style bikes the Reavers’ preferred. To be sure, there were some of those there too, but the majority were built for speed, with names Donny had never heard before.
Kawasaki.
Honda.
Suzuki.
Very foreign-sounding names to his ears. He wondered which part of the world they had come from. Places he couldn’t even begin to imagine, he thought.
And there were cars. Old cars. Blocky and beautiful. Others, newer and more powerful. Sporty. There were even larger vehicles referred to as buses and minivans. And even larger ones than that with a big hose pipe on the top. Shiny and red like something from another planet.
And then Donny fell in love. Now he understood his father’s passion when talking about these metal marvels of engineering.
He’d found the one that represented him. It drew him like a moth to a flame. The one he would drive out of this place.
A Ford Mustang SVT Cobra R.
He opened the shiny door and got inside. Shut the door behind himself, shutting out the world’s problems. The smell was fantastic. The feel of the wheel in front of him, luxurious. There were various buttons and dials. He ignored them all. To his left, within each reach, was a short stick. It couldn’t be that difficult to drive, surely.
The keys were already in the ignition. He turned them. The engine roared, then rumbled. Donny’s heart raced. He let out a childish chuckle. He couldn’t believe he was about to drive his very first car! And a Mustang no less!
His father had told him multiple stories about “shifting up and opening her up,” and “making the road beg for mercy.” It was accomplished by depressing the gas pedal, he understood. Donny pressed the gas. The engine roared but he didn’t move. He held onto the steering wheel, preparing for the car to bolt forward. Nope. Not an inch.
He tested the pedals. The gas. The brake. The third one didn’t seem to do anything, but it felt like he was pushing against something when he used it.
He summoned every memory he had of his father telling him driving stories and wished just one of them had been about how to drive rather than how it felt to do it.
31.
“WHY IS it always us that have to fight the Rages?” Fatty said. “Now, a ship, that’s the way to fight these things. From the air, out of harm’s way. No way they can harm us from up there. We could wipe them out easily.”
“We don’t have a spaceship,” Jamie said.
“We don’t need to do it from space,” Fatty said, rolling his eyes. “We could use a helicopter. Or an airplane. Something like that.”
He hadn’t stopped bellyaching since they’d left the Weapon Research Division. Jamie knew he was talking rubbish. So did Fatty. But he couldn’t help himself. It was how he dealt with stress. He needed to unload on someone. Jamie was his unwilling accomplice, the victim of his mildly irritating utterances.
“We’re getting close,” Jamie said.
That’ll shut him up.
It worked like he’d muttered the words of a powerful incantation. His friend would be quiet now. If there was one thing that would silence him it was his unrelenting fear of harm coming to his person. In truth, they weren’t close enough for the Rages to overhear Fatty’s protestations but it was always in his nature to err on the side of caution.
They came down most of the floors in an elevator. It was smooth and easy to use. It never ceased feeling strange to Jamie to be in such a small room and for it to slide up and down. But that’s what it did. He could feel it moving, but each time the doors opened, he always expected to see the same floor they’d gotten on in the first place. It always surprised him when it wasn’t.
They took the stairs for the final two floors. The elevator dinged when it came to a stop. Jamie didn’t want to draw the Rage’s attention any more than they already had. They crept sideways down the stairs to the final floor, taking one step at a time.
The Rage could be inside already. It could be anywhere. Who knew how far into the facility it might have wandered.
Jamie held the short sword in both hands, prepared to bring it up and around at head height. He had plenty of experience when it came to fighting these things. He had no idea how to fight aliens but he knew how to kill these blasted things. It was what he had been raised to do.
Jamie stood with his back to the wall. Fatty automatically took position on the opposite end of the step. As Fatty peered behind Ja
mie, Jamie peered behind Fatty. There was nothing there. Only another hallway leading to who knew where.
Fatty shook his head too. Nothing behind Jamie. Jamie didn’t need to see with his own eyes. He trusted Fatty. Jamie took a second, then calmly, quickly, stepped across the corridor to the other side. A pincer attack, coming from both directions, was prone to be more effective than them both coming from the same origin point.
Fatty took up Jamie’s former position. They had their backs to the wall. If something came through the corridor—an undead thing—they would let it pass, before proceeding to hack it to pieces from behind, or the side if it was accompanied by friends.
Jamie strained his senses. Listening, smelling. Sometimes he swore he could taste them. He listened for the rustling of clothing, for the clatter of jaw bones, or the chattering of teeth, or the dragging of a limp leg behind a louder second one. Or the soft spattering of saliva on the floor.
All signals that gave a Rage away. Any of which could save Jamie and Fatty’s life. He listened but heard none of these things. Every few minutes, Jamie checked the odd black box at his waist for messages, followed by a glance at their rear. They didn’t want the creature to fall on them from behind.
Ready and fully prepared, they hoped they would never have to take action.
They waited.
32.
DONNY HAD finally gotten the hang of the gearstick. He had to press the mysterious third pedal before moving it. Otherwise, the stick would not move. The car still shuddered, slowing to a crawl each time he made the transition. He couldn’t go very fast in the Vehicle Service Centre anyway, but he could drive around the other vehicles. There was more than enough space between them.
He needed to get a move on or else he was going to be late. He let out a calming breath and turned the steering wheel, approaching the wide front doors. His legs and arms already ached from clenching his muscles so hard. Driving wasn’t easy. He didn’t understand how this was meant to be fun.
He got to the wide doors and was about to climb out to press a random button somewhere when the light above the door flashed green and began to open.
Really gotta love electric doors.
The doors—thankfully—opened on an adjacent mountainside to those infiltrating via the hole. He should be free and clear. As the doors opened, it was like the curtains opening on a wonderful theatre production, the vista yawning before him. How he’d missed it, being cooped up inside.
The unrelenting glowing ball of molten sun blazed white in the perfect blue azure of the open sky. Too bright. Donny instinctively raised his hand to the shade and pulled it down. Ingenious.
Donny pressed the gas pedal and moved the car forward. Slowly, carefully. Out into the welcoming arms of the desert. No sooner was he outside than the doors began to shut behind him. As they did, a segment of the mountain slid into place to hide it. If Donny had been passing by he would never have known a doorway was there. He depressed the mysterious pedal and moved the stick into second gear.
“Here we go,” Donny said.
He pressed the gas pedal and the car lurched forward, bunny hopping a few yards before increasing speed. As the engine roared, Donny depressed the mysterious pedal and shifted up again. This was fun. He pressed the pedal to the metal. Hey, that was what his father used to say! “Pedal to the metal!” and he let himself feel the rush his father must have experienced all those years ago, before the Fall, before the Rages and Reavers, before the end of the world.
He was free.
33.
DR. BECK panted as he closed the final few yards, exiting the highest mountainside door. The wind was strong up here. Warm, but still nice. He looked out on the greatest view—to him—in the world. The Great Salt Plains and the endless blue sky connected by an indistinct white bar on the horizon.
Sometimes the two halves of something could be indistinguishable, even for those looking for it.
And there, rushing away from the City like a bat out of hell was Donny in. . . The Mustang. Of course. It was his personal favourite too.
Dr. Beck couldn’t help smiling. At least someone was having fun during all this drama. He wished it was him out there now, letting the wind rip through his rapidly thinning hair, the driving seat acting like a time machine, transporting him back to the vibrancy of his youth.
He crept toward the cliff edge and peered over the side. He clenched his eyes shut, the earth spinning beneath him, and moved back. He’d seen the Rages down there, meandering. It was enough to know they were still present down there.
He got into position and placed his own charge in the dirt. Now all he had to do was wait for Donny to lay and set off the first charge. He squinted at the car heading rapidly away from him.
“Don’t forget you’ve got a job to do, friend,” he said out loud.
He waited.
34.
LUCY DIDN’T blink. She didn’t want to miss a thing. She had a much better view of what was happening in the bowels of the City than anyone else. She could see everything from every possible vantage point.
The Rages had drifted closer to the hole in the City’s base that led deeper into the City, but they hadn’t yet begun to travel in that direction with any conviction. Things were, for now, stable.
She waited.
35.
IN HIS mind, Donny knew exactly where he was. He knew exactly where he wanted to place the charges. He’d always had an extremely good sense of direction and never got lost. He glanced in the mirror at the mountain behind him, where he’d come from. Then he checked the dials. He’d figured one was for speed, the other for revs. There was another number too. This one counted how far he’d travelled.
“Oops,” he said, slamming the brakes.
He’d travelled too far. He had no concept of how fast this car could really go. He’d been enjoying himself too much. He’d overshot his target by two miles! He’d covered the distance in almost no time at all!
He turned the wheel and made a U-turn—another of his father’s common story phrases—and headed back in the direction he’d come from. He kept a close eye on the dial recording his distance and stopped when he got to about half a mile out. He hit the brakes, kicking up a cloud of white dust, like a thin wisp of smoke.
He got out and used the most accurate distance measuring instrument he owned. His mind. Yes, he was about half a mile away, he decided.
He took one charge from the passenger seat and set it up on the desert floor. Set the timer for twenty minutes. He paused. With his new mode of transportation, he didn’t need to wait anywhere near that long. He set the timer to five minutes and joyfully hopped back in the car.
He pulled the Mustang to a stop two hundred yards away and climbed out. Picked up the second charge but didn’t assign a timer to it yet. He would wait for the signal from Dr. Beck.
He had a countdown for the first timer running in his mind.
He waited.
36.
A NOISE. Finally. There it was.
Like cloth being torn, slowly, gently, every few seconds.
Jamie didn’t need to look around the corner to know what it was. He didn’t want to inform the Rage of a meal so close by.
Fatty turned to Jamie, eyes wide, questioning. Then he picked up on the sound too. He needed confirmation from Jamie, who nodded back at him. Yes, one of them was coming. Fatty swallowed and tightened his grip on his axe. Licked his lips, still leaving them dry.
Jamie hoped the explosion would come soon. It would be a real problem if they had to engage this Rage. It could screech and scream, garnering the attention of more of the things. Within moments they could very well find themselves overrun.
37.
LUCY LEANED forward, centimetres from the screen. Her hands, sweaty, rubbed together in nervous anticipation. She could tell by both Jamie and Fatty’s stances that they were aware of the creature heading their way. Their weapons were raised and ready.
She could hardly breathe.
38.
JAMIE WAS certain it was only one Rage. He hadn’t heard any telltale traits suggesting there were more.
Sweat rolled down Fatty’s round face.
The creature was getting closer. Jamie’s grip grew tighter around the hilt of his sword.
39.
5. . .
4. . .
3. . .
2. . .
1. . .
Donny covered his ears.
40.
BOOM!
Donny’s first charge exploded. Perfectly viewable from Dr. Beck’s vantage point. A cloud of white dust rose a hundred feet in the air, tiny in comparison to the mountain. The noise echoed, bouncing off the neighbouring cliffs.
Donny was parked a close distance away. A tiny figure with the car at his back. Dr. Beck peered down over the hillside. Had the Rages bought it?
41.
BOOM!
The tail-end of the explosion was muffled from Jamie’s location, what with the collapsed refuse inside the former Weapon Research Division distorting the sound waves. Distant, but still clearly audible.
Jamie found himself wishing the charge had been set up a little closer. The sound would have permeated the City entrance easier.
Silence in the explosion’s remnant wake. The creature had stopped progressing forward. Jamie imagined it standing stock still, head held up high, sniffing, listening for more.
After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set Page 31