“Sure.”
Matilda crossed the road and climbed. William followed. The metal stairs shook with their ascent.
Several of the buildings they crossed had statues on their roofs. From a large faded M to a chicken, to a donut with teeth marks along one side. They reached the building with the donut. They were as close to the tower as they could be without going back to ground.
Matilda walked to the edge of the roof and stepped back before William reached her.
“What is it?”
Her face pale, Matilda pointed down to their left. An army gathered in the street below. This time they wore blue. About one hundred of them, they had drones hovering nearby.
“Why have they chosen to have their meeting there?” William said.
“I’m not sure that’s the question we need to be asking.”
“How do we get them to go away?”
Matilda nodded. “How indeed?”
Chapter 20
William pulled Matilda back from the edge of the roof and guided her so they both crouched behind the huge sun-bleached donut. A line of flat roofs broken by narrow alleys stretched away from them in both directions. It gave them options. He tugged on Matilda’s arm and said, “Follow me.”
William crossed from one roof to the next, passing the garish statues raised in honour of each shop’s wares. They passed a large M, a fifteen-foot-tall chicken, a floating smile. Although there seemed very little to grin about in this savage city.
Every step took them farther away from Gracie’s tower and deeper into the ruins they so desperately wanted behind them. But they had no chance against the army below and had to do something. William led them back to the fire escape they’d used to get to the roofs. He led them back across the roads and towards the mines buried amongst the churned asphalt.
“Why are we back here?” Matilda said.
William lifted a chunk of the broken road and tucked it beneath his arm. Still several feet from the exposed mine, yet he watched it without blinking as if the inanimate object might give him feedback other than its binary existence of dormant or explode. “I have a plan.” He climbed the same fire escape they’d used to avoid the mines the first time they were here. The one the red soldiers had followed them up. He stood aside to let Matilda pass.
“What—”
William threw the chunk of asphalt into the centre of the road.
Matilda had already taken off by the time it triggered the mine. A whomp of ignition followed by an atmosphere-rending crack from the explosion. It shook the ground, but the buildings stood strong.
The charge of the blue army descended on the explosion site, their footsteps closing in.
Matilda slowed to let William run at her side. Her face red, she turned her palms to the sky. “Where are we going?”
“Back to where we were.”
They reached the roof they’d climbed from previously. Matilda pointed at the edge. “You want to slide down that pipe again?”
“Yeah, and back to the roof with the donut. Hopefully, this’ll move Fear’s army and give us our chance to cross.” The first of Fear’s soldiers emerged. “Get down!” He pulled on her shoulder, and they both dropped to their fronts.
Fifteen to twenty soldiers appeared. Matilda said, “Is that it?”
William said, “I kinda hoped they’d all come.”
The soldiers peered one way and then the other. They spoke amongst themselves, but they were too far away for William to hear their words. They shrugged and shook their heads. They left.
“What the …?” William said. “So much for that plan. What are we going to do now?”
Matilda stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the donut. We still need to get to Gracie’s tower, and that’s a better place to wait than here. Surely we’ll get a chance to cross at some point.” She kneeled down and turned her back to the road. She lay on her front and dropped her legs over the edge of the roof. The pipe rang from where she struck it with her foot. She lowered herself, more graceful this time for having already done it once before.
William did his best to hide his trembling form. After all, he had planned this route. His knuckles ached as much this time as they had previously. But he’d done it once before, he could do it again. A few feet down the pipe, he stretched his leg for the window, hooked his right foot around the edge, and grabbed on with his right hand. For the second time, he swung away from the building and pulled himself inside in one fluid movement.
They wasted no time, running to the ground floor again, crossing the road again, and ducking into the alley they’d used the last time they ran through here again. This time, Matilda led them the entire way, across the next road and up the fire escape, back to the row of buildings with statues on the roofs.
But when she reached the top of the first escape, she waited.
“What is it?” William said.
She cupped her ear. “Hear that?”
Distant, yet distinct. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. “The dogs?”
Matilda nodded.
“Fury are coming to check out the explosion?”
She nodded again.
William smiled. “This might be our ticket out of here.”
Chapter 21
The dogs’ clacking steps in the lead, Fury’s soldiers behind them. It sounded like there were far more of them than had been sent to investigate from Fear’s side. A road and a row of buildings between them, William could only track them by sound. They arrived at the explosion site in stages, several groups converging on that one point. “How many do you think there are?”
Matilda shook her head. “Hard to say. But if they run into Fear’s army, I’m guessing they’ll be outnumbered.” She dropped to her front and crawled to the other side of the roof, peering down on where the blue-uniformed soldiers waited.
When she returned, William said, “They’re still not moving?”
Matilda shook her head. “How can they not know they’re there? Surely they’ve heard them?”
“And what if Fury’s army also decides there’s nothing to investigate and goes back the other way?”
Matilda said, “We have to do something.”
The building they were currently on had a lip similar to the one they’d lain behind when they’d hidden from Fury’s soldiers. A foot tall and thick, it ran around the building’s perimeter. Topped with concrete slabs, many of which were cracked, dividing them into smaller chunks. William pulled the corner of one free. The heavy lump about the size of his palm. A road and a row of buildings separated them from Fury’s army. Fear were on the road behind them. The two warring cities separated by one empty street. Gracie pulled on his arm.
“It’s okay,” William said. “I’ve got this.” He launched the chunk of concrete at the row of buildings opposite. He hit a pipe similar to the one they’d climbed down when they had no fire escape. And he hit it true. The contact struck it like a bell.
Matilda leaped from their current building to the next, taking them closer to the one with the donut on the roof. William followed, and they both dropped to their fronts two buildings away. They lay in the shadow of the smiling face.
“Do you think it wor—”
Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
The first of the dogs appeared in the central road, Fury’s army on their tail.
“You were right,” William said. “They’re well outnumbered.”
“Speaking of which.” Matilda pointed down the road to their right. A solitary soldier dressed in blue. From the roar in the street below, Fury’s army saw him too. They charged, Fear’s soldier running back to regroup with his comrades.
“I feel sorry for them,” William said. “They’ve no idea what we’ve led them into.”
“You can feel sorry for them when we’re out of here. Gracie said how these two cities are constantly at war. Them coming together is inevitable, whether we had a hand in it or not.”
The blue soldie
r vanished, and the red army followed him, the dogs leading the charge.
A deafening roar a few seconds later.
“Looks like they’ve found each other. Come on.” Matilda jumped to her feet again and led him across the roofs.
Past the giant chicken and the large M, William and Matilda reached the donut again. The whoosh of flames met the stuttered bursts of bullet fire. They crawled to the edge of the roof. Most of Fury’s army had already retreated. A line of lunatics stood as their last defence.
The lunatics fell with twitches and convulsions, the drones’ bullets mowing them down, opening the way for Fear’s army to give chase.
William pointed across the road at Gracie’s metal tower. “I think this is our moment.”
“You want me to go first?”
He shook his head. “Let me.”
The neighbouring building had a fire escape that led to the alley between the two shops. William hopped across the gap and took it. Screams, bullet fire, and the roar of flames drowned out his and Matilda’s metallic steps.
At the end of the alley, Matilda behind him, he peered out to the left. The soldiers had gone for now. They wouldn’t get a better chance than this. He sprinted across the road towards the metal tower and yanked the creaking steel door wide.
A blinking Olga stared up at him. A confused frown and bloodshot eyes. Breathless, William said, “We need to go now.”
“Wha—”
“Now, Olga!”
A flash of fire ignited in her ochre glare, but she shelved her rage. She stood up on shaking legs and stumbled out into the bright glow of a new day.
Matilda led the way back across the road, back down the alley they’d emerged from, and back to the fire escape to the roof with the donut.
Still half asleep and her hair dishevelled, Olga had creases on her cheeks from where she must have lain on the hard floor. Viewing the world through a tight squint, she shrugged and scratched her head. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“There’s a war being fought down there,” William said.
“I can hear that.”
“We started it.”
“Huh?”
“The blue army,” Matilda said. “Fear’s army. They were gathered outside the tower.”
Olga’s already pale face lost even more colour.
“We had to lure them away to get to you,” William said. “That’s why we had to get out of there urgently. They might come back. Where are the others?”
Olga sneered. “Gracie left.”
“What?” William said.
“She went to her community and took Dianna with her.”
“And Artan?” Matilda said.
“Max, Artan, and Hawk got separated from us. Hawk was being a hero again, trying to fight the diseased when he should have run.”
William shook his head. “What a moron.”
“Exactly.”
Screams rang through the city. The burst of gunfire, the whoosh of flames, the cries of people dying.
“So Gracie just left?” Matilda said. “She left when my brother needed her?”
“She said she couldn’t wait any longer, and the fact that you and William, and then Hawk and the others, didn’t follow her lead wasn’t a reason for her to risk her life by waiting around. You know how I feel about the woman, but I can’t blame her.” Olga pointed at the tower. “There’s a camera in that tower.”
“A what?” William said.
“It’s a device that allows them to see into the tower from their community.”
“What the …?”
Olga shrugged. “I know. Anyway, she said she watches it, and when we’re all waiting, she’ll come and get us.”
“And if we don’t all make it out?” William said. Even suggesting it elicited a hard glare from Matilda.
“She said we should hold up four fingers on our right hand. That’ll tell her we’re ready to get out of here.”
“So what do we do?” Matilda said.
“What else can we do?” Olga said.
“We should find the others. They might need our help.”
“And if we don’t find them?” Olga said.
“We come back here. They know where they need to get to. At least looking for them will give us something to do.”
Olga pointed up the street. “Going to war with those armies will give us something to do; that doesn’t mean we should do it.”
“You’d rather sit around here waiting for them to turn up? The way I see it,” Matilda said, “very little’s changed with our plan. We need to get to that tower as a group and then head to Gracie’s community. We only do something different if we have good reason. So we’re agreed? We find the others?”
William shrugged. “Yeah.”
Olga looked from William to Matilda. “I suppose it’s better than doing nothing. But I think we should stay close to the tower so we don’t miss them. They might find their way here without our help.”
Chapter 22
Max panted as he ran. A new day had begun, and none of them had rested. And now this. Three dogs and five soldiers on their tail. The dogs drove them on with their searing heat. If they got any closer, they’d fuse his shirt to his back. The diseased he could deal with, even if Hawk had been an idiot charging into a fight with them, but he didn’t have an immunity to fire. Or to being battered with a metal club by Fury’s army.
His hands were slick with diseased blood, his right palm stinging with cuts from the rock he’d used to bludgeon them. They’d charged only a handful of the creatures, but as soon as they’d engaged them in battle, more arrived. By the time they’d finished, over one hundred rancid bodies lay scattered on the ground, their vinegar tang palpable in the air. Every creature Max took down stared at him through familiar eyes and hissed his name. Mad Max. He saw Cyrus too many times to count.
And then the dogs and soldiers arrived. Not as fast as Artan, Max ran with Hawk beside him while Matilda’s brother led their retreat.
Like when they’d followed Gracie, Artan ducked into buildings, jumped walls, and dived through old windows. Shattered glass, debris, and dust kicked up at their feet. From one building to the next, they weaved through a life long forgotten.
Many of the larger window frames had low walls. It made the boys’ path easy, for now. For both them and the five soldiers with their dogs.
Max yelled, “We need a better solution than this, Artan.”
“What do you think I’m looking for?” Artan turned right when he jumped out of the next shop.
The army and dogs had only been on their tail for a few minutes. The next few minutes mattered even more. They passed another fire escape on their right. “What are you waiting for?” Max said.
“A space we can defend.”
Another whomp of igniting flames. Max ruffled his nose at the acrid reek of his own singed hair. Their lead had halved from thirty to fifteen feet. If Artan didn’t decide where to go soon, then he would.
After a quick double take, Artan turned left into an alley. Max and Hawk followed.
A flight of stairs in front of them. But unlike the fire escapes, this flight led in one straight line to a steel door on the first floor of a building. Otherwise it would have been a dead end. Artan leaped mid-climb and landed two-footed on the other side of the missing stairs.
At least the day had broken. They would have had no chance in the dark. Max leaped across the six-foot gap next. He landed on the other side, his right foot buckling beneath him. His leg folded, he slammed down on his knee, and he fell forward.
Hawk directly behind him, the hunter leaped, tripped, and belly-flopped on Max’s back. The weight of his stocky frame forced Max into the stairs and drove the wind from him. Hawk climbed over him as the clack-clack of the first dog began its ascent.
While Hawk scrambled clear, the dog leaped. Max pulled his legs away from the edge. Just a few feet between him and the dog’s glowing red eyes. It snapped its jaw with a crack! A token effort, t
he metallic beast twisted in mid-air as it plummeted to the ground with a clang!
The other two dogs learned fast. They waited at the bottom of the stairs.
Stumbling after his friends, Max met them at the steel door. The door without a handle.
Hawk kicked it. The force of his attack, combined with the door’s refusal to budge, sent him stumbling back. He threw his arms up. “It’s been welded shut.”
“How—” Max caught his breath “—are we supposed to get through?”
Until that moment, Artan had been the one with all the ideas. He shrugged.
“What the fuck, Hawk?” Max said.
“What? I didn’t lead us here.”
“Why did you charge those diseased? Why be a hero?”
“I was trying to help.”
“By doing what? What did you achieve? You think you can kill every diseased on the planet?”
“There were only a few of them. I thought I’d get to them before they got to us.”
“We could have gone the other way. We didn’t have to fight them. Had you not been driven by your ego and pride, we would all be in that tower right now, waiting for William and Matilda to catch up with us. As it is, we’re going to die in this shitty alley. And for what?”
The fire left Hawk’s eyes and he lowered his gaze.
Fury’s soldiers, five of them dressed in red, waited at the end of the alley. The three metal dogs paced. A tall man with a shaved head, the leader of the group, stepped forward. “We won’t follow you up there. We’re not stupid.”
“What will you do, then?” Artan said.
“Wait. We’ll wait.”
Hawk brandished his knife, the blade covered in diseased blood. “You’ll be waiting a long time.”
“We have an army behind us. If we have to do this in shifts, then so be it.” A wicked smile split the man’s angular face. “We can wait forever. What will you do when you get hungry? Or we could just come back with spears. Rocks. Throwing knives.”
Max’s stomach sank.
“So you might as well come down now. If you do, we’ll go easy on you. We’ll just cut your throats and leave you for the scavengers. I mean, we might string up your corpses as a reminder to anyone that this is our city, but you’ll be dead, so what does it matter, right?”
Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear Page 11