by Cavan Scott
I realised I was beaming.
“That’s it,” I called to the front of the group, the two guards leading the way. “Around the corner. The stairs are on the right.”
Wright raised a hand, telling us to stop. The kids obeyed immediately, shrinking closer together, as the sound of running feet filled the corridor. Wright ushered us towards the wall as he and David raised their guns, waiting.
Surely the raiders hadn’t reached this far already? I felt Olive tugging at my sleeve, trying to get me to run the other way. Leave the kids. Forget them. You know what you must do; who you must find.
But the figure that came sprinting around the corner had no weapons. She skidded to a halt, raising her arms in surrender as she saw the guns pointing at her.
“Don’t shoot. It’s me.”
“Bets?” Allison broke from Dawn’s embrace and ran to her girlfriend. “What’s wrong?”
Betty grabbed Allison’s hands, kneading them beneath her fingers. “They’re downstairs. In the ward. I thought they were going to kill me.”
There was no need to ask who she was talking about. “How many?” Wright asked, his voice professionally calm.
“Three, but one of them was shot, I think.”
A fist gripped my heart. “Which one?”
Betty looked confused at my question. “What do you mean?”
“Which one was shot? I saw them on the monitors, two men and a woman—”
“You never said!” Allison turned to me.
“She was trying not to worry you!” Olive protested, aggrieved.
None of that mattered.
“Which of them was shot?” I repeated, more forcibly.
“One of the men,” Bets replied, looking unsure. “The skinny one. I got out as soon as I could.”
The pressure on my chest released. The skinny one. Thank God.
“And our men?” David was asking.
Betty shook her head. “There were two of them. I couldn’t tell who, with all the visors and everything, but...”
She didn’t have to say anymore.
“We’re going to the bunker,” I told Bets, urging everyone on.
“What about the patients in the ward?”
“We can’t help them now.”
Dawn looked up at me, her mouth open. “We’re leaving them behind?”
“We’ll come back for them later,” I lied. “But only after you’re all safe.”
“No! You can’t!”
It was Ruth. I’d never even heard her raise her voice before. She broke from the group, trying to run around the corner. “We’ve got to get them.”
Wright reached out, grabbing the girl. She screamed, fighting against the guard as he pulled her close into him, more gently than I would have thought possible. She shrieked, arms flailing as he held her close.
“No, no,” he said, firm and sympathetic at the same time. “That’s enough of that. Calm down, eh? Calm down.”
The other children drew back, unnerved by Ruth’s outburst. We moved to them—Allison, Betty and me—throwing our arms around them like hens around their chicks.
Ruth stopped thrashing, hugging Wright close, sobs wracking her thin body. “That’s it,” he cooed. “That’s it. We won’t let anything happen to you, okay? We’ll look after you.”
Ruth nodded, sniffed and stepped out of Wright’s arms, raising her arm and shooting the guard point-blank in the face.
Brain-matter splattered over the wall as his body fell back. Ruth turned, Wright’s blood across her face and chest, and pointed the handgun she had taken from his belt straight at Stones, who was staring in disbelief down his own sights.
“Drop the gun,” he said, a little shakily. “Drop. The. Gun.”
I gaped at Ruth. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t.
“Ruth,” I said, raising my free hand. “Do what he says. Put the gun down and you won’t be hurt. You’re scared, we’re all scared, but this isn’t helping.”
Ruth didn’t take her eyes off Stones. She didn’t look at me or say a word. Instead, she did something I had never seen before.
She smiled.
Without warning, the children surged at us, crying out as one. Taken by surprise, we staggered back, Allison stumbling against the wall and cracking her head.
Stones turned, just for a moment, distracted by the sudden confusion, but it was enough. Ruth fired, the bullet tore through the guard’s exposed neck. He went down, his rifle skittering along the floor, where it was retrieved, coolly and precisely, by Dawn.
Ruth turned her gun on me.
“Show us the cameras.”
“What?” I couldn’t make sense of any of this. What were they doing?
“In the lab. I need to know how you access the cameras.”
When I didn’t respond, Ruth calmly turned the gun and shot Betty in the chest.
Allison screamed as Betty crumpled against the wall and slid to the floor, leaving a smear of blood in her wake.
“Show me the cameras,” Ruth repeated.
The children were all looking at me, but not for help. They were waiting for me to obey Ruth’s command, their eyes cold, Dawn standing behind them, her rifle trained on Allison.
Perhaps I did dream, after all. That had to be it. This was just a dream, and I would wake up any minute for another day of routine tests. There wouldn’t be killers surging through my base, sirens blaring and Allison crying, trying to hopelessly revive the woman she loved.
There wouldn’t be him.
“Jasmine,” Olive said in my ear. “You need to do what she says.”
I nodded, clutching the handle of the case tighter than ever.
“Allison,” I croaked, my throat dry. “Allison, we need to go.”
“No,” she whimpered. “I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her.”
Never taking my eyes off Ruth, I edged closer to Allison, leaning down and taking hold of her arm with my free hand.
She wailed, trying to shake me off, but my grip stayed sure. If she didn’t move, they would kill her; that much was clear.
Michele and Adam had recovered Stones’ other weapons now. We were outnumbered.
Allison finally let me pull her away, nearly doubling over in grief. “That’s it,” I encouraged her. “We’ll come back for Bets later. When this is all over.”
“The cameras, Dr Tomas,” Ruth reminded me.
“Yes,” I said. “This way.”
I turned, half expecting a bullet between my shoulder blades, and, wrapping my arm around Allison’s waist, walked back towards the lab. Olive said nothing. She had her arms raised in surrender, but I could see that she was thinking, the ultimate control-freak coming up with a plan.
It had better be good.
“AT LEAST THAT’S shut her up,” Olive sneered as we entered the small control room.
Allison had sobbed all the way to the lab, trying and failing to pull herself together. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, seeing the love of her life gunned down in front of her.
What sickened me was the voice I heard in my ear, telling me to shut her up, irritated by her heartbreak and grief.
Now Allison was standing open-mouthed, staring at Eckstein, lying in the sticky contents of his own head.
She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. She stepped away from me, the disgust on her face more damning than any rebuke.
Olive immediately jumped to my defence. “It wasn’t her fault. You don’t know what he wanted to do.”
I should have shut her up, but didn’t have the energy anymore. I just looked away, seeing Eckstein’s gun where I had dropped it, the drying flesh clinging to its handle. Why hadn’t I taken it with me? I could have had it in my hand now.
But what good would it have done?
Ruth marched through the crowd of children, serene and confident, gun in hand. She had no need to threaten us now, not with her army behind us.
An army. Is that really what I had bred?
I stepped up beside her, wondering if I could take her out before her cohorts fired. I had the briefcase. Slam it across her face, knock her to the side. She was only a child after all, no matter how special her physiology. Once she’s floundering, grab Eckstein’s gun. The children were bright, but they’d never fired weapons before today. They would hesitate, maybe even miss, the recoil shocking them. Sadly, I had plenty of experience. I could give the distraction Allison and Olive needed.
“Dr Tomas?”
Ruth was looking up at me, expectant.
“Yes, sorry. It’s simple enough.” I leant down to the control box, clicking through the feeds. “Use this unit. The cameras are on a cycle.”
She all but slapped my hand out of the way, taking over, scrolling through the feeds. The other Neighbourhoods, the medical staff being rounded up, a few missing faces in the crowd. Then we were back in this building: the ward, with the guards sprawled on the floor; a corridor, the woman I’d seen creeping around the corner—and then him! I fought the urge to smile. It was real. He was here, crouching down in a corridor, his back to the camera—before Ruth moved on, flicking through the channels. It was all I could do not to wrestle the controls back from her to see him again.
I had to keep my cool, to remain calm. I could almost hear Olive’s advice. Just go with it, give them what they want and then we can leave them all to rot. We can find him.
She was right. She was always right, although I’d never let her hear me admit such a thing. She was insufferable enough as it was.
“Thank you,” said Ruth, the gratitude as false as any emotion she’d ever portrayed. “Matthew and Adam will take you and Dr Harwood down to the bunker.”
“What about you?”
Ruth looked at me as if I was an imbecile.
“We must defend our home.”
Our home, like it belonged to them.
Things started clicking into place.
“Samuel,” I said simply.
Ruth didn’t respond.
“You know what happened to him, don’t you? You know he died.”
“You tried to keep it from us.”
“I was trying to protect you. But there was no need, was there? No one crept into his room. No one slipped poison into his food.”
“He did it himself,” Ruth replied, blandly.
“But why?” Allison asked. Ruth didn’t answer. Why waste the energy? We’d raised them to be pragmatists. But I wanted to hear it. I wanted a reason to abandon them.
“He sacrificed himself,” I offered. “To spread confusion amongst us. Mistrust.”
Ruth watched me.
“Creating a crisis that would end with us letting you out of your rooms, moving you to a safe location, so you could strike.”
“But how could they plan it?” Allison asked. “We were always with them; every time they were together, we were there.”
And then I remembered Ruth sitting, engrossed in her computer game, controller in hand, headset clamped over her ears.
“Not all the time. We gave them a network to talk to each other, to interact. To plot against us.” I snorted in derision. We had thought we were being kind.
Why hadn’t we seen it coming? We monitored all of the chat over the network, there were recordings...
On the computer system.
“Lam,” Olive said. “He has a console in the hub. He was playing with them. He was in on it.”
“His pass is like mine. It can get him everywhere. Opening any door.”
“Who?” Allison again, asking stupid questions. I couldn’t blame her, I guess. She was in shock.
“Lam,” Ruth replied, obligingly. “He wasn’t comfortable with what we were doing. I persuaded him to let me out one night, when he was on duty. I told him that I wanted to see where he worked. He would wipe the record of it, no-one would know. He was cross when I ran away.”
“To N-4, to the stores. You took the poison, slipping it to Samuel during Dr Heslin’s PE session.”
Ruth nodded. “Please don’t be too harsh on Lam. He didn’t know what we were planning. Although he panicked when Samuel died. He was going to tell you everything, until I pointed out that we could pin Samuel’s murder on him. All those times he wiped the records. My secret visit. It wouldn’t look good.”
“You blackmailed him!”
“I assured his silence.”
All that stuff about freaks. Had it been a bluff, Lam trying to distance himself from the plot?
“It didn’t matter in the end,” Ruth continued. “The raids were unexpected. Events have escalated.” Her gun was raised again, pointing at me. “Please, make your way to Bunker Three.”
“To keep us safe?”
“We have much to thank you for. You have made us pure in body—”
“If not in mind.”
“And yet there is much we need to understand if we are to build upon your work. You will assist us.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We will find someone who can.”
“If you survive any of this, you little bitch,” Olive added, as gunfire echoed through the corridors outside.
Ruth turned to the monitor and flicked through the channels. “The raiders are in the building. We will all go to the bunker.”
The children ushered us back through the lab and I turned to see Ruth retrieve Eckstein’s gun, not even flinching as her small fingers closed around the gore-encrusted grip.
Waste not, want not.
She followed us out, just as three raiders chased us around the corner, two men and the tallest woman I’d ever seen, with a buzz cut and plaster strapped her nose. They raised their guns, warning us to stop. The children stood firm, caught in the one of the most bizarre standoffs in history. A hand brushed against my back, Olive drawing my attention to the swing doors behind us.
There was no way we could reach them.
“Drop the weapons!” the woman shouted, her rifle never wavering, although the men behind her weren’t looking too sure. I could imagine what was going through their heads. Armed guards was one thing; but children, even with machine guns?
The woman took a tentative step forward and Dawn fired. The sound was deafening. The woman cried out, squeezing her trigger in reflex. There was a scream, not a child’s voice, a woman’s; maybe Olive, maybe Allison. I didn’t know. I was running, head down, towards the doors. I flung myself to the floor, a bullet slamming into the door next to me, but I carried on, crawling on my hands and knees with the case in my hands. Struggling to get the door open, I squeezed through the gap. The door slammed shut, but I was up and running. I hugged the case to me, expecting to feel the impact of a bullet in my back at any minute.
There were stairs ahead. I had the vague sense of someone following me, shouting my name, but I didn’t stop.
I wouldn’t stop until I found him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KILL
THE REST OF Brennan’s gang were in now. I could hear them, muffled shouts somewhere nearby, the percussive rattle of gunfire.
She might already be dead. Wouldn’t that be the final joke? All this way, after all this time and I find her bleeding out in the corridor?
I couldn’t think like that.
I pounded the corridor, snatching another remote grenade from my chest strap. More gunshots, up above, on the third floor. The grenade was cool in my hand. I stopped, stooping to fix it to the metal pipes, the magnets doing their work. A flick of the switch as it was primed, another link in the chain, waiting for the signal.
I stood up to find someone standing in front of me. My gun was in my hand in a heartbeat, even before I realised I was staring at Brennan down the sights.
Her Glock stared back.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I didn’t answer, already planning my next move. She was standing beside a stairwell, but had little cover. I had even less. If either of us fired, this close to each other, i
t would all be over.
I tried to reason with her.
Yeah, like that ever works, soldier.
“This place is wrong, Brennan. You know that.”
“What?”
“You saw what they were doing to those kids. What else are we going to find?”
“So you want to blow it up?”
“It’ll send a message. To whoever’s behind all this.”
She took a step closer. Dangerous. “We’ve already sent a message. We’ve taken the base.”
I snorted in derision. “And you think that’ll be the end of it? Where did all that medical equipment come from, Brennan? The guns, the body armour? None of that was here before the Cull. It’s been brought in from outside. Settle here and you’ll find yourself under siege when the real owners turn up.”
“Where’s the trigger?” She hadn’t heard a word I was saying.
“We could still get out of this alive.”
“‘We’? Are you sure about that? Downstairs it was them. ‘You might as well tell them.’ Now I’m supposed to believe we’re in this together?”
“I never said I wanted to stay here. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Neither were your grenades. Drop the gun.”
“Brennan, listen—”
“Drop it.”
It was no good. I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be the quicker shot, not anymore.
“Okay, I’m putting it down.”
Slowly, purposely, I lowered my gun to the floor and slid it over to her. She stopped it with her foot as I straightened, hands in the air.
She stalked towards me. “It’s a shame. I liked you. Thought you might fit in.”
“Like Fenton fitted in? How did that end up?”
“Come on, you met him.”
I gave her my best lop-sided grin—the full Han Solo. “Sure, and I wanted to put a bullet in his head from the first moment, too.”
She was in front of me now, the Glock inches away from me. She wasn’t buying my charm offensive. Couldn’t blame her.
“The trigger.”
“In my jacket.”