“No!” Helen said. “We’re coming with you.”
A short distance away, Oliver and Agatha were in close conversation with the Creeks, their gesticulations placating. “Just stay here. This is far enough to be safe. You’ll be able to see,” Oliver implored.
“Watch what?” Hector said, his arms tight around Helen, who in turn clutched at Norman as he strained to jump forwards.
“Whether it’s safe, or if…”
Both Creeks snorted in derision.
“If it’s all said and done, and we can sneak down like a pair of sheep, you mean,” Hector said.
“Or watch you die, up here, where it’s safe.”
“We’re coming!” Norman yelled, a little too loud.
Agatha sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Oh, bloody ’ell.”
“Let them come.” Alex bore all their shocked stares with steadfast calm. “There’s no time. If we’re going to take the Moon, we’ll need everybody.”
Oliver and Agatha mouthed wordlessly, looking to James for help.
James hesitated. “Can you do this? If things go wrong, then Norman…”
Hector gripped Norman’s shirt tight, raising his chin skywards. “If you all die, I’ll never forgive myself, and I won’t have my son watch me stand by. If that means we all go together, then so be it.”
“We’re coming!” Norman’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Please.”
James searched them in turn. “Okay.”
Lucian tensed beside him, but James laid a calming hand on his arm. “We all go together,” he said. “Mel, lead on. Let’s end this.”
Mel fled, moving with the nimble skitter of a young deer, bounding over the clover towards the Moon. They followed more laboriously, burdened by ammunition. Soon the town’s lights splashed over their faces, and they got down on their stomachs.
“Just remember one thing,” James whispered to Alex, drawing alongside him. “This isn’t about the Moon. This is about her.”
Alex’s face said everything that needed to be said. In the half-light drifting through windows and under doorways, it sent a shiver up James’s spine.
He still thinks I’m his Chosen One. Even now, he thinks I’ll come back. Without me, he has no mission; and what wouldn’t Alexander Cain do for his mission?
Squashing a tremble of unease, James crept forwards, and they made their way into the town as darkness fell in earnest.
XVIII
Allie dove into an alley barely wide enough for her to squeeze into and yanked the little girl in behind her, gasping for breath. The girl clung to her side in the musty darkness, mute and wide-eyed. She peered out at the street, both ends of which had been blasted to pieces. Allie took a moment to steel herself and stifle the scream of unreasoning panic frothing at the back of her throat and gripped the girl’s shoulder.
“Hey, it’s okay, sweetie. We’re okay. We’re fine.”
She gabbled for a few moments before she managed to stop herself and crouch down. She searched for something to say, anything that might displace the terror between them. “Tell me your name,” she breathed, trying to hold the gaze of those wide, staring eyes, framed by flame-red hair.
“Billy.” She spoke with an unfamiliar lilt—Allie had never heard an accent like that.
She’s from far away. God, what are you doing here, sweetie?
“Billy, I’m Allie. I know this is scary, I know it is. I promise, I’ll get you out and we’ll both be all right.”
Through her own panic, she saw that the girl looked shockingly unafraid. She clung to Allie, but there were no tears in her eyes, nor did she shake as Allie shook.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” Allie said, taking a steadying breath. Somehow the girl gave her strength.
That’s the wrong way around…
Billy said, “Where’s Norm?”
“I don’t know. Are you sure they’re here?”
“They told me to stay in the hills but I…” She seemed to drift off a little, her eyes trailing the bottom of her sockets.
Allie gripped her tight as another explosion rocked the walls, which actually seemed to flex with the sheer force of the blast. Somewhere beyond in the street, grit and pebbles showered brickwork and shattered windows. A wave of heat rushed into the alley, and Allie knew they couldn’t stay. “We have to get out. Get out, get out,” she said, looking both ways along the alley as though hoping to see a glowing exit before her.
She took Billy by the hand again and, keeping low, took her back out into the street. The shelling had lessened, and the chorus of screaming had faded to occasional shrieks. Forty years of accumulated decay and dry wood in the uninhabited parts of the city provided the perfect tinder bed to set the entire skyline ablaze.
Inching towards the end of the street, skirting chunks of blasted cobblestone and pressing her back to garden walls, she peered into the junction. A parted roadblock lay ahead; cars she recognised all too well. High Street. “No,” she grated. She punched the wall, ignoring the pain. “No!”
How could she have got so turned around? She had led them right back to where she had started.
By the roadblock, people moved back and forth, cast into silhouette by the undulating fiery rooftops behind them. A group of hunched figures cowered at their feet. To one side, yet more silhouettes, those of three wooden crosses, twelve feet high and surrounded by hay.
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered.
“What?” Billy said, wriggling by her side.
Allie held her back. “Nothing, honey. Nothing… Come on, we have to go. Let’s get out of here.”
She was on the verge of struggling to her feet and heading back the way they’d come when a single prone figure, not far away, resolved into focus. “Oh…” Her throat closed, and all the fight went out of her legs. Slowly she crumpled to the ground. “Oh…”
Heather lay in a pile on the ground, staring blankly upwards, her clothes blackened by blood.
Allie wept, shuddering all over, unable to break her gaze away from the sight. It wasn’t until Billy gripped her sleeve and tugged that she broke out of it. She was about to push herself away when she was stalled a second time.
Sarah sat among the prisoners, her hands bound behind her back. Her face was set, scoured clean by a smouldering stare that could have etched glass. As Allie watched, Sarah was hauled up by an aquiline, predatory figure and hauled towards the nearest of the crosses.
Allie and Billy were close. Sarah would have to pass them to get to the cross. Allie felt her pulse then, a visceral electric thump in the meat of her chest; not racing, but strong; suddenly she felt all the fear melt away, cast aside and flattened by a rolling swell of rage. “Stay here,” she said and peeled Billy’s hand off her own. Billy said something, but she didn’t hear. She had eyes only for the waddling duo in front of her, silhouettes morphing into struggling flesh and blood.
Sarah’s captor became a man with a peaky, sick face, devoid of colour or trace of humanity. Where his eyes should have been there seemed to be only dark holes in his skull. Upon his cheek hung a bloody bandage that was almost certainly gangrenous.
Suddenly Billy struggled behind her with such force that even Allie’s seething focus carved in two. “It’s him!” Billy hissed. “It’s the monster.”
“Who?”
“The monster.” Billy’s lips pulled back from her teeth. “He took Grandpa away.” A disturbing smile crept onto her face. “I cut him good.”
Allie looked back at the man. The bandage didn’t quite cover the great slash upon his cheek, which had probably sliced right through to the innards of his mouth. “You did that?”
Billy reached into her belt and brought out a small paring knife; small, but wickedly sharp. “Uh huh.”
Allie gripped her hand afresh. “Billy, that’s my friend. I have to get her. If I…” She swallowed heavily. “Run. You keep running until you get out.”
“No!” Billy hissed, gripping her so h
ard that Allie flinched. “No, look.”
They looked back into the depths of the old city. The clouds had vanished behind a veil of black smoke, sending the flaming skyline into brilliant contrast. The flames reached the Stour and arched over the still waters, great licking towers of conflagration leaning out into space, waving fiery digits at the opposite bank. All of Canterbury would be ablaze in a matter of minutes.
They had to get out now, before they were cut off. Already they were surrounded on two sides. Without knowing which streets were occupied by the invaders or had been shelled, their options waned by the moment.
Time to go, Allie. Get the girl out. Find the other kids and get out.
But she didn’t move. Frozen upon the cobbles, something congealed in her gut. The figures ahead were suddenly maddening, inhuman things—the only object that seemed real was Sarah, wriggling against her restraints, a fire burning in her eyes to match that consuming the city.
“Billy, you heard what I said,” Allie muttered. She took the girl’s hand gently from her shoulder and rose onto her haunches. Before Billy could protest, she launched herself forwards, following the garden wall out into plain sight. The others’ milling meant that she went unnoticed in her approach. Sarah saw her long before her captors.
When their eyes met, Sarah’s gaze filled with defeat, as though she had just watched Allie gunned down or stabbed to death alongside Heather. So powerful and unfettered was that expression that Allie almost stopped, and only kept going through sheer momentum. Then she was on her knees and scrabbling at the bindings around Sarah’s wrist, madly pulling at the knots.
“What are you doing here?” Sarah seethed.
“Saving your sorry backside. Keep still.”
“Go. Get out, now.”
The knots were tight, expert. Her ministrations had done nothing but tighten them. Cursing, glancing fretfully at the others’ turned backs, she leaned over for a better look.
Sarah’s air of resigned dignity had shattered, giving way to simmering fear. “Allie, if you don’t go right now, they’ll get you too, and trust me—trust me, you do not want to stick around here.”
Allie kept pulling, cursing. She knew she had already lingered too long. Now every moment she went unnoticed was a gift.
A hoarse whisper in her ear: “Please help me. Help me!” The woman with whom Sarah was tied back to back leaned over, her mouth a smear of mucus and tears.
Allie didn’t reply, working on the bindings. If she could work out the knot, she would free them all. Dad had been a dab hand at knots, always showing her all kinds of hitches and bends at the kitchen table when she had been small. What had they been called? Sheep Bend? Sailor’s hitch? Which was which?
Why didn’t I ever pay attention to anything?
“Please! You have to help us. They’ll kill us all!” the woman squeaked.
“Shut up. They’ll hear you,” Sarah muttered.
“You can’t leave me. Hurry up and get us out of here!”
“I said shut up.”
The woman’s eyes bulged and flicked to the crosses. “I won’t go. They won’t take me. No, no, no!”
Suddenly the woman jerked, pulling her feet towards her and dragging her bottom over the cobbles. The bindings jerked in Allie’s hands and tightened to impenetrable nubs. Sarah jerked backwards with a curse.
Allie looked to the woman with horror as her legs jerked desperately, and the three of them jerked sideways again.
“Stop it! Stop it now or you’ll kill us all,” Sarah hissed.
Allie picked at the knots with her fingernails, but they had become far too small. “Shit!”
“Allie, go,” Sarah said.
“No.”
Another jerk.
“Stop that!”
The woman wept wordlessly and jerked purposefully now, as though heading for the alley. Despite the commotion, they had moved but a spare few inches.
“I can’t…” Horror seeped into Allie’s chest, dripping ice-cold onto her stomach. “I can’t…”
Sarah’s gaze sought hers. “It’s okay. Go.”
“No. I’m staying—”
Allie felt the moment she was spotted as though an arrow had struck her. The pressure of a human gaze pinged in some primitive part of her mind; the very same sense that sings in the dark when one is not alone.
No cries of alarm came, nor the clatter of running footsteps. The main body of attention was still on the straw being piled around the crosses. Yet she had been spotted. There was only one thing for it: she didn’t bother looking away, just kept working. She wouldn’t leave, not now, not if there was the slightest chance. Her fingers found nothing but smooth rope, nor a single break where the twine had folded. Her vision blurring with tears, she devolved into a shuddering wreck. Sarah’s head came down gently and rested on hers, and the both of them waited for whatever might come.
Snick.
Allie almost screamed as a blade shot into sight, expecting it would momentarily be embedded in her face. Then she noticed how short the blade was, though sharp, and the soft chubbiness of the hand gripping the handle. Billy crouched beside her, pushing her way roughly between Sarah and the sobbing woman, and began sawing at the bindings without a word. There was a dull thud, and then the bound women’s arms fell slack, and Billy was yanking at loose twine, casting it aside.
Time snowballed in a heady whirl. They were free! But they had been spotted. Somebody, somewhere, was very close.
“Go, go, go!” Allie yelled, abandoning stealth and heaving at Sarah and the woman with everything her muscles had left. They made it to a half crouch when blinding pain exploded in her stomach, as something very solid sank into her midriff. She had time to glimpse a fist pull away from her body before she hit the ground, and all around her everything was in motion. She crawled into a ball and watched the figures whirling above her.
The man with the sick face cast Sarah’s fellow prisoner and Billy to one side with careless flicks of his fist. He had eyes only for Sarah.
Sarah had adopted a boxer’s stance. She seemed ready to take on an army all on her own, but there was no denying the obvious: though small, the man had at least fifty pounds on her, and he moved with the easy assurance of one who had fought all his life.
Sarah lashed out with a wild fist, and he stepped back so that her fist went whistling by harmlessly. He gripped her free hand, span her around, and licked her neck from shoulder to the bottom of her ear. “Silly girl,” he uttered, a high-pitched sigh, eerily clear despite the commotion, shelling and city-consuming blaze.
Allie found herself standing before she knew what was happening, somehow uncurling her body and diving forwards with a yell born of adrenaline and wild abandon. She hit them off balance, and three of them toppled in a spinning pile of clawing limbs, skittering over the cobbles. As they span and a hand gouged at her cheek, narrowly missing her eye, she caught sight of others, dark shapes running towards them from the crosses.
Allie fought madly, punching, scratching, wheeling her arms every which way in a desperate bid to separate herself. Beside her, Sarah’s own clawed hands worked away at the stinking thing under them.
“Over there!”
“Get ’em!”
The cries reached down into Allie and wrenched at her insides. For a moment it looked as though between them, they might beat the man into submission, pummelling his chest and arms and neck like crazed apes. Then Allie’s head exploded with stars and she toppled sideways, her ear singing and gorge rising in her throat. The world span, and amidst the medley of confusion she picked out fire and slanted running shadows. Then rank breath snorted into her face, and a livid pair of murderous eyes bored into her own. Hands closed around her throat and tightened.
This is it.
Allie realised in a heart-stopping moment that there was no getting away from this. This was no fairy tale. The life was about to be choked from her and nobody was going to come riding in to save her.
The world
seemed a remote and inconsequential place from which she was rapidly receding. Pain throbbing in her cheek dropped away, and she realised she was dying; the very fact that she didn’t mind was the most horrific thing of all, reduced to an academic curiosity. Shadows drew in from all sides—whether by her narrowing tunnel of vision or the approaching figures from the crosses, she couldn’t tell.
This is what it’s like to die, she thought peacefully.
A roar of rage reached her from a great distance, and the pressure around her throat was gone. Allie coughed explosively, surging up as fresh air hit her lungs, and gagged. The darkness flew back as though a curtain had been torn away, and before her the man writhed on the ground. Upon his back, riding him like a horse, was Billy, her flushed rounded face drawn into a terrifyingly adult snarl.
As the man struggled to his feet, waving his hands over his head, Billy stabbed down with her paring knife, jabbing at his fingers, his shoulders, and his scalp.
“You bitch, you bitch, I knew it was you!” he roared, twirling on the spot. His hands flailed until he caught hold of Billy’s heel, and then with a single merciless yank, he ripped her from his back and sent her sailing through the air. She hit the cobbles hard, rolling end over end in a boneless heap, and he was upon her within the moment, eyes bulging.
Allie stumbled, fell, saw yet more stars. The woman to whom Sarah had been tied had run screaming—right into the figures approaching from the crosses. They took her to the ground with a single jab from a rifle butt and kept coming. Any moment now and none of this would matter, for they would be surrounded. She had to get him off Billy and go, just go—somewhere. She got up again, managed a few steps, fell again. She spat vomit onto the cobbles and touched her head. Blood came away with a few strands of hair. The world revolved, a graceful, terrible dance. Allie could only watch as the man beat down with his fists, consuming the tiny girl’s figure with his gritty, bloodied bulk. With unmistakable joy, he pinned Billy down and reached for the curved blade at his belt.
Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Page 23