“If we send a message and somebody picks it up, they can send help,” Latif said, his fingers moving with dainty finesse, tuning the dial to the empty frequency. The Blanket fizzled and petered out, replaced by a jumping crackle that was blissful in comparison. Latif smiled, his pale lips stretching. “There. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Marek huffed. “Uh huh. So we send a little message, and a magic army of heroes comes to save us?”
“Somebody might hear it.”
“And? If there was anybody out there strong enough to help us, we’d know about them already.”
Lincoln bristled. “We knew nothing of the Scots before. And the party gone north may yet bring them back. This serves as a redundancy. We can’t afford to delude ourselves one moment longer: if we fight without seeking help, we don’t stand a chance.”
“We can hold them!” Marek said, rounding on him. He blinked and checked himself. “Councillor,” he added.
Lincoln let it pass. “No, we cannot.”
“My men and I have protected this encampment for years. Nobody, not a soul, has ever passed through our gates without my say so. I’m not about to let that change for a bunch of mangy scroungers with sharp sticks.”
“You lost your head, mate?” Latif cried, rolling his eyes. “The siege ended two weeks ago, and you’ve already forgotten how they had us pinned down under their bloody thumb!”
“We held them,” Marek glowered.
“Oh yeah? Were you out there, like me and the old goat were? Did you see just how they moved, how they positioned us just how they wanted us? Hunting us, like their little playthings?” Latif’s brow twitched.
“Nobody is questioning you commitment, Mr Johnson.”
Marek stabbed a finger at Latif’s chest. “So why retreat? I’ll tell you: because they’re cowards with no real strength. They need mind games and tricks to make us cower in here. They’ll never take this place. Our walls can stand against anything.”
Lincoln strode forwards to stare Marek in the eye, their noses but a few inches apart. “Mr Johnson, are you not in charge of our scouting parties?”
The fire in Marek’s gaze fizzled. “I am.”
“Then you know as well as the rest of us what they saw marching towards New Canterbury yesterday. Thousands, you hear? Thousands of people. A force unlike any other, one we stand no hope of repelling alone. We are going to do everything we can to the last moment, to reach whomever may be out there. Even if only to warn them.”
Marek fumed but stepped back. “It’s a waste,” he said. “It’s a damn waste.”
Evelyn seemed torn. She straightened and turned back to the radio. “We must do all we can, while we can. There are too many counting on us to fall victim to pride.”
Marek scowled behind her.
“Mr Johnson, please prepare our defences for incoming hostiles. I expect we shall soon have company.”
Marek remained staring at them all for a moment, a touch of forlorn hesitance about him. Then he bowed. “Yes, ma’am.” He left without another word of retort.
Latif and Lincoln turned to Evelyn, who now stood with her arms wrapped about herself, observing the radio with the same potent glare.
“Why?” she muttered. “Why now?”
Latif’s eyes glimmered, and Lincoln saw in them something that made his heart lurch.
He knows something.
“I don’t know,” Latif said.
Lincoln felt her gaze on him. He cleared his throat. “Just another mystery.”
“To gain something so powerful as radio, just as we face our end.”
“Life’s a bitch,” Latif said.
Evelyn didn’t respond. She seemed consumed by the little box. “That so much could ride on so little.” She swayed on her feet. “What do you think our chances are?”
Lincoln took his hat from his head. “Not good.”
She nodded. “Do what you can, Mr Hadad.”
Latif pulled a plastic, toothy grin. Upon his pale face, it looked grotesque. “Have I ever let you down?”
She didn’t answer, just glanced back at the radio, then turned on her heel and left. Before the door closed, she threw one last comment over her shoulder: “If only it had come sooner.”
Then she was gone. Lincoln wasted no time, striding forwards to take a handful of the boy’s hair in his hand. He pulled hard.
Latif squawked, eyes bulging. “Steady on! What are you playing at?”
Lincoln held up a forefinger to silence him. “You tell me what you know right now. This is no time to play at games and secrets.”
Latif grunted as he yanked harder, yet Lincoln saw what he wanted to see: a glimmer of resistance.
Yes, definitely hiding something.
He yanked still harder, and Latif seethed.
“Let go of me! What are you doing?”
Lincoln kept the pressure, slapping the boy’s ineffectual hands away.
“All right, all right!”
Lincoln let go.
Latif seethed, rubbing his scalp. “Mean old bastard, you are. I was going to tell you.”
“When? Once the gates came crashing down and our throats were cut?”
“No.” Latif blinked. “When I knew for sure.”
“What?”
Latif hesitated.
“Must I scalp you, boy?”
Clearing his throat and addressing the radio, Latif said, “It speaks to me.”
Ringing silence. Marek’s voice audible in the distance, ordering a doubling of the guard on the wall.
Lincoln fought a sinking in his chest. “You haven’t slept. I shouldn’t have left you alone so long.” He made to reach out for Latif’s arm, but the boy withdrew.
“You think I’m crazy.”
Damn right, Lincoln thought, taking fresh note of Latif’s slouched, pale form upon the stool, swaddled in his dirty blanket with those dark bands of exhaustion around his eyes. “No, but we must have you in fighting form.”
Latif held up his hands in protest. “Don’t play dumb, old man. You know there’s more going on here. You heard that music just as clear as I did.”
Lincoln hesitated.
The music. I had been hoping that had just been a dream.
He knew it hadn’t been. His heart wouldn’t be racing like it was if he thought it was so.
Yesterday, they had been scouting the ninth open frequency, but this time it hadn’t been a looping transmission, nor quiet bubbling static, but something he had never expected to hear again in his lifetime: Led Zeppelin.
Latif had frowned at the electric-guitar chords as Jimmy Page worked his magic, and Robert Plant’s voice blasted out the lyrics to “Custard Pie”. The lad had never heard music like that before outside vinyl records, not in a world where only classical instruments remained. They had sat in the dark, staring at one another with mouths ajar as the track had played all the way through, come to its resounding close, and been replaced by static. They had waited for an hour on the same channel, but nothing more had come.
Lincoln thought perhaps, somewhere out there, some insane Old World enthusiast was playing DJ.
Why bother, when next to nobody in the world knew about it—when most of Britain was sliding back to feudal barbarism?
They had been spooked, but let it rest. The world was a strange place, and they understood so little about how the Blanket worked. There was no time to dwell.
Then it had happened again, this time a half-garbled AC/DC single. A little after that, they had come across the tail end of something Lincoln was pretty sure had been Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil”.
It was as though the Old World echoed over the electromagnetic spectrum. Somehow, the Blanket had preserved decades-old broadcasts. Apparently, the universe had a thing for classic rock.
Yes, I heard it. And something strange is going on. But talking about the airwaves themselves speaking to you is going over the edge.
He laid a hand on Latif’s arm. “We have a few hours
, yet. Come, rest.”
Latif slapped him away. “Don’t.” There was nothing facetious or tired about him now, just a simmering stare. “I mean what I said.”
“That the static talks to you?” Lincoln said.
“No, it’s… Something talks to me through it. It started before I found the second frequency. I felt cold inside my arm, like it was coming through the dials into my fingers. I knew something had to be tipping me off about where to find the channels—nobody’s luck is that good—but it was so mental that I couldn’t believe it. I’m not into mystical crap, never was. Numbers, cold numbers, that’s all there is.” He cleared his throat. “But I kept finding them. Over and over, like I knew exactly where they were. That cold was like ice eating my insides, telling me where to go, guiding me.”
Lincoln listened with mounting dismay. The boy had cracked. He should have stayed with him. To put so much pressure on one so young; he should have known better.
Latif seemed to spot something in his gaze and stiffened. “I’m telling you, I’m not crazy. That’s what crazy people always say, but I don’t have time for semantics. I’m just telling you what I know. The Blanket fractured because something broke it.”
Lincoln scrutinised his apprentice with all the rigour he could bring to bear. The boy was jittery, weak and so very tired. But his poise, his speech, his gaze, they were perfectly lucid.
He really believes it.
Chiding himself for entertaining Latif’s ravings, he drew up a stool. “Something?”
“It’s just feelings, but not hunches or tingles; I mean… knowing. Suddenly, absolutely, knowing. Like something reached inside you and injected truth into your head. It sounds stupid, I know. But I can’t say it any other way.” Latif touched the dial. “Something out there is fighting for us. It knew we needed help and bent the rules just this once, to give us a chance.”
The rules? Lincoln thought. Good God, this has turned into Mystic Meg hour.
“Rules about what?”
Latif frowned. “Dunno. I get the feeling it’s something much bigger than us. Some war of the titans that goes back and beyond. Every war’s got rules, I suppose.” A thin smile spread on Latif’s face, as ephemeral as the glint of dark humour in his eyes. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t think anybody’s playing fair.”
Lincoln’s mind turned back to what Evelyn had said just before she left: “Why now?”
Latif paled still further, a chalky whiteness under his copper skin. “I get the feeling that night is coming, worse than that army. It’s what the army’s got with it.”
“How could you know that?”
Latif looked at the radio, and for a moment Lincoln saw him anew: a frightened kid with an entire city’s last hopes resting on his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. Suddenly he was trembling, and tears spread into the hollows of his eyes.
Lincoln reached out to touch him, and Latif jerked.
“What is it, lad?”
Latif swallowed hard. “Earlier today, I found another channel. I didn’t say anything about it.”
“More music?”
“No.”
“What?”
Latif’s haunted face searched the room as his lips twitched. “Screaming. More voices than I could tell apart, so much pain, and they were all… working. Working and screaming. Just for a moment, I felt so cold, like I could never be warm again.”
Lincoln shook his head and sat back. He was too old to start working his fingers into some spooky world of other powers and magic signals.
Stick with what you know, old man. Get out there and do some good. Leave the boy to do his work.
“Latif,” he whispered. “If we send this broadcast, will anybody hear it?”
Latif shrugged. “I don’t know. I got nothing but hope, same as you.”
Lincoln stared at him a long time, then nodded. “Send it. We need every man and woman.”
*
“Accept one thing right now: a lot of people are going to die today.” Marek stood before the ranks gathered before him at the foot of Canary Wharf tower, shouting loud enough for all to hear. “Our last scouting party returned five minutes ago.” He stopped pacing and turned to them. “An army of ten thousand marched into Alliance territory from the North. New Canterbury is gone.”
Muttering rippled through the crowd, not conversation but a unified spat of cursing. A moment later, even deeper silence took hold.
Above, the sky grew dark, the clouds an angry black. The temperature had dropped precipitously in the past half hour, and even sunlight seemed to wilt. It was as though a blanket slowly draped over the land, the vanguard of something malicious amongst the vast twisted mangroves of town houses, skyscrapers, office buildings and tube stations.
Marek continued. “The scouts barely kept their lead. That army is here, in London. They’re circling from the south to cross the Thames, so they’ll bypass every land mine we’ve laid, every outpost, all our outer defences. Last sighting had them heading for Westminster Bridge. They’ll be here before the hour’s out.”
No muttering this time, just a carpet of unbroken silence. The entire camp had frozen mid-action: people cleaning bandages for the wounded, cooks, mechanics, smiths, refugees, guards. He even felt eyes upon him through the tower’s windows. They had waited for so long that fear had grown thin and turned to anger; anger they were ready to use.
Marek saw Evelyn emerge from the tower’s lobby in the corner of his eye but didn’t acknowledge her until she was right in front of him. Her cold stare seemed to focus the light around her into a scalding beam, aimed squarely at his head.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Mounting our defence, m’lady.”
“We have been doing just that for days.” She drew close and lowered her voice. “Everybody is on edge enough without this spectacle.”
Before she could continue he spoke again, loud enough for all to hear. “If I’m going to die, I’m not going to do it cowering in a hole. This place is all I have, and everybody I ever cared about is inside these walls. I’m not letting them get anywhere near this place. I’d never order any of you, but I’m going to meet them head on. Who’s with me?”
In his mind’s eye, he heard crickets, saw a crowd of blank staring faces—himself apart, one solitary shadow wandering into the city.
Evelyn gripped his arm. “Marek, have you lost your mind? We can’t—”
The clatter of soles upon compacted mud interrupted her, five hundred strong. Every able body in the courtyard had stepped forwards.
Marek turned to Evelyn at last. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“You didn’t ask the council’s permission.”
“I’ve served the council for a long time,” Marek said—
They both knew what he meant to say: I have served you for a long time.
—“and that will never change. But this needs doing, and none of you would have signed off on it.”
“Because it’s crazy!”
“That’s why it’ll work. They won’t expect us.”
Evelyn seemed to struggle with articulating her rage, and Marek couldn’t keep himself from smiling.
“You dare laugh at me?” Evelyn glared.
Marek shook his head and laid a hand on her wrist. He wasn’t a man of words. He was a fighter. He would never be able to explain why they had to go, not to her, not if he had a week. But in the decade he had stood by her side, he had never laid a hand on her.
That one touch did what his mind could not. Evelyn’s gaze softened, the inferno diminishing. Then all front vanished, leaving the woman who cared so much who he knew had been just under the surface. “You’ll die, Marek,” she said. “You’ll all die.”
Marek let his touch linger a moment, then drew back. “The whizz kid and the old man have it covered. Somebody will come.”
“If it doesn’t work—”
“It’ll work. Those two are batty as anything, but they know their stuff.”
“If they reach us, you’ll give them their medicine. They’ll never get through these walls. What we need is time, and I’m going to make sure we have it.” He nodded to the five hundred before him.
Evelyn swept around to look at them all. He had never seen her look so agitated, like a lioness losing her cubs. “How can you know it’ll work? Tell me you know, Marek. If I let you go now and nobody hears us, I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t want to die knowing you went out there to be slaughtered for nothing.”
Marek pointed to the gate. The klaxon sounded and the iron gates clunked, lumbering open. The volunteers dispersed to gather their things. Every scrap of weaponry, armour, and ammunition had been distributed days ago. Together, they comprised the most formidable armed force the country had seen in memory. So few, but a deadly few.
In moments they were reforming at the gates. With last looks back at the tower, they filed out through the gate and into the city beyond. Marek and Evelyn watched until most had passed through, then he turned to her anew. Before decorum could stop him, he reached out and touched her wrinkled face. “I’ll tell you how I know it’ll work. Times change, people come and go, but you can never quite kill hope. Not totally. We don’t know anything about this world, not a single bloody thing. But, like my Grandma used to say, where science ends, you fill in the blanks with a bit of faith.” He smiled. “Goodbye, my lady.”
Before she could say a word, he crossed the square and passed through the gates. “Seal this thing tight behind us. Make sure you boys see hell before you let those bastards in here,” he called to the guards on the catwalk.
He stood before the five hundred, and a moment of stillness passed. As one they looked over the wall, at the tower that had been the beacon of the Alliance. Lightning flashed somewhere in the city, and a few moments later thunder rolled between the great skyscrapers of old.
“Nice day for it,” he called. “Let’s go.”
Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Page 28