Quicker movement up ahead. Something ran towards Gracie. It slathered and panted, but it didn’t run or sound like a diseased. It didn’t have the clumsy and leaden-footed gait of their foetid predator. A diseased would have tripped and fallen on the uneven ground several times already. This thing moved fast and light of foot. William stepped back a pace. Jezebel already raised, he lifted her a little higher, ready to swing. The heavy weapon’s lack of mobility would give him one chance. He’d have to make it count.
“What the …?” Artan said.
Gracie dropped into a hunch and laid her spear and knife on the large grey stones. She slipped the wrapped deer meat from her back and placed it on the ground.
“A dog?” Matilda said when the creature stepped into the light.
“And not just one,” Dianna said.
More dogs followed. Six, eight, eleven of them, maybe more. Some of them were jet black and blended with the shadows.
Spasms fired up and down the length of William’s legs, daring him to run. If these dogs turned, they wouldn’t walk away from this encounter unscathed.
What appeared to be the biggest dog led the pack. Large enough that it could have stood on its hind legs and looked William in the eye. Covered in thick black fur, it had a white patch on its chest. It had a short nose and a square head. If that thing bit down, he’d have to drive a knife into its skull to detach it. Still six feet from Gracie, it dropped lower, its hackles raised in a stripe of fur along its back. It let out a low growl.
“There, there.” Gracie spoke with a soft voice. “We’re not here to fight you.”
“I am!” Olga lunged forwards with her sword, and Hawk stepped forwards with her.
The lead dog skittered back several paces, retreating into the shadows. Its bared teeth shone in the darkness.
Olga spoke as if the creature and its pack understood her. “If any of those things come near me, they’ll lose their heads.”
“You’re making it worse,” Matilda said. “We’re all scared.”
“I’m not scared, I’m mad.”
“It’s the same thing.”
When Olga settled down, Hawk doing the same a few seconds later, the lead dog returned its focus to Gracie. Its growl softened, but it remained hunched, displaying the coiled power in its muscly frame. For at least thirty seconds, the pair stood in a stalemate. A questioning of trust. Should the dog trust Gracie? Should anyone trust Gracie?
Gracie unwrapped the fabric, revealing the meat, before she slowly stood up and backed away. The entire pack of dogs watched her. When she’d retreated far enough, the alpha took a tentative step towards the package. The others waited.
William’s heart pounded, tension turning through him. Even Olga kept her mouth shut. And a good job. Their chance to run had passed.
The lead dog sniffed the meat, tasted it with a lick, and then bit into it, pinning it with one of its enormous paws so it could tear a chunk free. As it backed off, chewing the deer meat, its dark eyes flitted from Gracie to the others while the rest of the pack piled in. A free-for-all, they fought one another for their chance at a meal.
Captivated by the feeding frenzy, the mass of densely packed bodies writhing, twisting, and competing with one another, it took for Gracie to hiss, “Come on,” for William to see she’d retrieved her spear and knife and had moved to the far wall of the tunnel. “Let’s get moving before they run out of food and we become more interesting to them again.”
If any of the group had objections, they kept them to themselves. William led them after Gracie, Matilda directly behind him.
The dirty wall of the dark tunnel on their right, the group made their way past the pack on their left. The stones sloped away from the track. The angle proved difficult to walk along, the ground shifting beneath their steps. One or two of the dogs raised their heads. A small brown and black scruffy mutt watched them the entire way. The least threatening of the lot, yet it had the confidence of a lion.
The dogs snarled and growled with in-fighting as they scrapped to get their chance to eat. One or two of them yipped and pulled back. A snap of jaws. A loud bark. But they soon returned to the feast.
With the dogs behind them, Gracie quickened their pace.
Olga had been waiting for this moment. She said, “What the fuck—”
“Sing a different tune, Olga,” Max said.
“Although,” Matilda said, “she has a point. Gracie?”
The ginger girl turned to the group.
“What the hell was that all about?” Matilda said. “You could have given us a warning.”
“If I gave you a warning for everything we might encounter in this city, we would have needed to stay in the ruined house for another week to cover it all.”
Matilda shrugged. “So what was that about?”
“Dogs,” Gracie said. When none of the group replied, she said, “Wild dogs live in these tunnels. They’re mostly fine.”
“Mostly?” Artan said.
“Look, would you rather take your chances with a pack of dogs who can be tamed, or the diseased?”
“It’s a choice?” Hawk this time.
“It is. We don’t know why, but the diseased don’t like dogs. I mean, there are anomalies, but from what we’ve witnessed, they do what they can to avoid them. The very few that make it down here without killing themselves on the metal stairs try to get back out again the second they realise they have to share this space with dogs.”
Hawk shook his spear. “The enemy of my enemy …”
“Exactly,” Gracie said. “And they’re quite sweet, really. We call the alpha Rocky.”
“You’ve named it?” Olga said.
Gracie sighed. “Him. And what did you expect? That he’d name himself? You don’t know much about dogs, do you, sweetie?”
Olga bit down on her bottom lip and raised her middle finger at Gracie.
Gracie led them around the next bend. “This is a platform,” she said. A walkway similar to the one they’d seen at the other end, but no train this time. She laid her spear on the platform and used both hands to boost herself up. She reached back down and offered William a hand so he could follow. “It’s where the people used to wait for the trains to arrive.”
Between them, William and Gracie gave a hand up to everyone who wanted it. All of them, save Olga, who scrambled up by herself. Any dignity she’d hoped to retain slipped away with her kicking legs, her slithering on her belly, and her grunting as she dragged herself to her feet.
This journey mirrored the one down there. A different station, but they ducked through another archway and came to another flight of metal stairs leading up away from them. Another mound of broken, diseased bodies gathered at the bottom. Their foul reek tainted the air with the same acrid tang. Palpable, it clung to William’s sweating skin and weaved into the fabric of his clothes.
They crossed the decomposing diseased one step at a time, testing their footing before they committed. William’s knuckles ached with how tightly he gripped Jezebel. How did they know all the diseased in this pile were deceased?
The steep climb up the metal stairs pulled on the back of William’s tired legs.
A red-faced and sweating Olga took up the rear. She reached the top of the stairs last. Gracie hovered nearby.
When Olga stepped clear, she said, “You didn’t have to wait for me.”
“I did.” Gracie reached a hand down the side of the stairs, winced as she buried her arm deep into the metal frame, and, after a few seconds of searching around, turned the lights off with a click!
The darkness gave the moon its chance to shine again. A splash of silver light leaked down from the streets above, highlighting the small flight of stairs out of there. Once again, Gracie led the way.
William caught up to Gracie before she left the station and said, “Why did we go through there? Why not just go overground?”
“A pack of dogs isn’t a big risk. Especially when you have cooked deer meat for them. We’re
almost certain to avoid the diseased for that section of our journey if we go the way we did, and there’s a good chance we won’t run into the soldiers either.”
William climbed the stairs at Gracie’s side, but before they stepped clear of the station, she threw her right arm across him and halted him mid-step. She pulled him back down into the shadows.
The others waited behind them in the train station and held their collective breaths. Even Olga had fallen silent. All of them had fixed on the man no more than fifty feet away.
Chapter 6
One man. Although, not really a man. A man like William had been a man when he’d gone on national service. A man in responsibility only. A man when someone needed bodies to perform duties, like build a wall or go into battle. A man to make it sound like he’d made his own choice to fight for the cause, to take part in a war that will never end. He wore blue trousers that looked like they were part of a uniform. A uniform that had been torn from him. He’d been left naked from the waist up. A sharp crease ran down the front of each trouser leg. At least they dressed them nicely before they sent them to be slaughtered. The trousers were dark. They glistened with the man’s blood and probably a lot more besides. William leaned close to Gracie, keeping his voice low. “That’s one of the soldiers?”
She nodded. “Fear wear blue. Fury wear red.”
The boy hung chained between two vertical steel poles about twenty feet apart. The poles stood fifteen feet tall and had large glass spheres on top. How they’d remained intact for so long … In the past, the spheres would have glowed, lighting the city at night. The chains had been tied around the boy’s ankles and wrists, stretching him into a star and suspending him like a fly caught in a web. His head hung limp, his weak, hairless torso rocking with his exhausted breaths.
Matilda spoke in a whisper. “What have they done to him?”
“They’re bleeding him out,” Gracie said.
“You’ve seen this done before?”
Gracie shrugged. “Variations of it, yes. They would have cut deep into the back of both of his thighs before tying him up for everyone to see.”
Hawk appeared behind them and said, “Jeez!” his voice shooting out into the city.
Gracie pressed her finger to her lips. “Shh!”
Although he spoke with the breathy hiss of an attempted whisper, Hawk hadn’t lowered his volume. He pointed at the boy. “He’s still alive. Surely we need to do something?”
“There’s nothing we can do to help him.” Gracie shook her head. “Even if we do free him, he’s already dead.”
“So we just leave him?”
“Hawk, when I said you need to trust me, I didn’t mean some of the time. You need to trust every one of my decisions.”
“What is this, a dictatorship?” Olga said.
“Exactly!” Hawk had grown even louder.
“Will you keep your damn voice down?” Gracie stamped her foot.
Hawk climbed the stairs. He stood just inches from Gracie, who raised her chin in defiance.
William jumped when the hunter burst away from the group, charging towards the street.
With one swing of the blunt end of her spear, Gracie cleaned out Hawks’ feet. His shins bore the brunt of his fall, slamming against the stairs’ metal edges.
Hawk rolled over onto his back. His face twisted as he coiled his right leg, showing Gracie the sole of his boot. But before he could connect with his attack, William kicked his foot away, redirecting his strike into the metal handrail attached to the wall beside them.
Hawk stood up and launched himself at William. He hit him in the chest, shoulder first, driving both of them back into the station.
The fall winded William, and before he could find his bearings, Hawk climbed on top of him and raised his right fist.
Max, Olga, and Matilda jumped in. They each took a limb, leaving William to grab the leg he’d diverted from striking Gracie. They restrained the wild hunter like the boy in the street above.
The others helped, all of them dragging a kicking and twisting Hawk deeper into the train station.
Possessed with a strength that proved a match for them all, Hawk continued to fight and turn. Hissing and spitting, he shook and writhed. He grunted through clenched teeth, his voice echoing in the enclosed space.
“Shut up!” Gracie hissed.
Hawk drew a breath to scream again, but before it left his mouth, Olga let go of his arm and drove a right cross into his chin. The crack of the connection rivalled any noise Hawk could have made, and the hunter fell limp.
Her fist still balled, Olga panted like the rest of them, standing over Hawk as if daring him to come around. She eventually looked at Gracie, her teeth gritted, her nostrils flared. Gracie dipped her a nod she didn’t return.
William and the others went back to the stairs. “What are we waiting for?” he said. “Not that I agree with Hawk’s methods, but surely we have to do something? Let him down at least. The kid needs our help.”
Gracie shook her head. “This isn’t our war.”
“Since when do we turn our back on suffering like that?”
William followed Gracie’s line of sight. At first it looked like shifting shadows. A trick of the light, even. But then the scenery came to life. The hunched and scrawny form of a man stepped into the road. Long hair, a long beard, and so skinny he looked like a skeleton with skin. His clothes hung from him in rags, and the moonlight showed he only had a few teeth remaining in his mouth.
He sniffed the air as if guided towards the restrained soldier by scent.
“It’s always just a matter of time before the scavengers turn up,” Gracie said. “Had Hawk rushed out, they would have seen us. Believe me, you don’t want to be fighting them if you can avoid it.”
“Whose side are they on?” Dianna said.
“No one’s.” Gracie shook her head. “They live in the city. They get by however they can.”
Something in the way she said it turned William’s blood cold. However they can.
His movements erratic like that of a diseased, the scavenger’s arms twitched, spasms snapping through him. He giggled to himself.
More shifting in the shadows, several more scavengers emerged as if birthed from the surrounding buildings. How did they hide themselves so well? Men and women, some of them children as young as nine or ten. At least ten to fifteen of them. They formed a semicircle around the suspended soldier.
As if buoyed by the support of his peers, the scrawny man burst to life. He closed the final few feet between him and the soldier. He turned one way and then the other as if spooked by his surroundings. On his third erratic shift, he fixed on a large lump of rubble, skipped to it, and giggled as he dragged it back to the boy. He stepped up onto the lump of concrete so he stood at the same height as the soldier.
A check over each shoulder again. The scavenger’s crew remained close by. He grabbed the soldier’s hair and lifted his limp head. Eyeball to eyeball with the boy, he leaned so close their noses touched. He giggled the entire time.
Several of the older males in the group clicked their tongues. The sharp cracks whipped through the abandoned streets.
The scavenger on the lump of rubble poked the boy’s face. Was he testing him? Seeing if he’d suddenly burst to life?
This seemed to satisfy the others, who closed in. The children and women replaced the tongue-clicks with a low hum. They continued to hold back, their tone increasing in volume.
“What are they going to do to him?” Artan said.
One of the older males stepped forwards. The one on the rubble jumped clear. The group’s scout, he made sure everything was safe for the elders. The older male carried a blade, the glint of it catching the moonlight. He stepped up onto the rubble and sawed into the soldier’s bicep.
The soldier dragged a breath in through his clenched teeth. His chest swelled and his eyes rolled in a battle for consciousness. He yelled when the elder made a second cut.
But th
e strength left the soldier, blood raining down from his wound as the elder held up a strip of wet flesh. A slug of human anatomy. He held it over his open mouth in a pinch before letting it fall.
Blood ran over the elder’s lips and chin as he turned to face the others while he chewed on the soldier.
All the while, the women and children hummed.
The elder jumped from the rock to make space for the scout. The next one to feed. He now also had a blade in his hand.
As the scout cut into the boy’s stomach, Dianna barked with an effort to suppress a heave and stumbled away down the stairs.
Her steps heavy, she ran into the darkness, retching as she vanished. The splash of vomit hit the tiled floor far enough away to not attract the scavengers’ attention.
Before the scout feasted on his cut of flesh, William and the others followed Dianna back into the station. A thick tang of vomit hung in the air.
It took a few seconds for William’s stomach to settle. “You never told us about them,” he said to Gracie.
“I’ve already told you, there’s a lot to know about this city, and I haven’t had time to explain it all.”
Olga threw her arms wide, the slap of them hitting her sides when they came back down again. “And you didn’t think the scavengers might have been worth mentioning? And if not, what the fuck else are we going to run into that you’ve not told us about?”
“I’m not withholding information,” Gracie said.
“You are.” Matilda this time.
“But I’ve already said, if I held a Q and A about what lies ahead, we would have been on the edge of the city for another week. Look, this is the last time I’ll offer this; if you want to go back, I’ll help you return to the edge of the city.” She pointed towards the scavengers. “When I get to the top of those stairs, I’m not turning around. I can’t promise you what we’ll come across, but I can promise you I’ll do my best to make sure you’re safe. If you listen to me.”
Hawk remained unconscious, lying on his back on the train station’s dirty tiled floor.
Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear Page 4