Although Louise looked at her dad, it was through the glassy glare of shock. She’d retreated into a place in her mind he couldn’t reach. The last time he’d seen that look was when he’d killed someone in front of her for the first time. She never understood what the men had intended to do with her. He’d tell her one day.
After another deep sigh, Matt leaned forward and patted her shoulder. “Come on,” he said, and then walked toward the entrance to the warehouse.
“Where are you going?” Louise called after him.
“Inside. There’s something I need to do before we leave.”
It took a few seconds, but by the time Matt had entered the warehouse, he heard Louise’s footsteps as she followed behind.
On the floor, next to one of the shoes, lay the machete; the one used by the woman with the piss blonde hair. When Matt leaned down to pick it up, the strong metallic reek of blood clogged his nostrils.
He stood back up again and held the weapon. The handle had turned tacky with blood. Hers, or someone else’s, he couldn’t tell. Either way, he didn’t care; the weapon would come in handy.
Louise walked into the warehouse at the same moment a gust of wind ran through it. The dampness on Matt’s trousers bit into his lap again. The fire in the corner glowed and lit up the room more than before. It highlighted the old message on the wall in front of Matt. Like the message Fuck Trojan Scum, it had been sprayed in red paint; streaks of it ran down like blood and it read The Gargantuan Will Fall. With the machete in his hand and his daughter by his side, a surge of energy lifted Matt. They would fucking fall. And he’d be there to see it.
After he’d slipped his bag off, Matt slid the machete through the top of it and shouldered it again. A gentle pat on Louise’s back as she continued to look at the aftermath of the slaughter, and he said, “Come on, kid, let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 14
It didn’t matter how much Matt’s eyeballs stung, he continued to search the darkness for signs of movement. A drone could hide much more easily in the shadows at night. He didn’t need a reminder of the consequences of running into one, but on the very infrequent moments where he did blink, the image of two bloody arms suspended from rings in a dirty wall punched through his mind. They would never get the chance to do that to Louise… ever.
When they came to a crossroads, Matt glanced to either side. They could only go straight ahead. The remains of fallen tower blocks shut off the other options. The debris met in the middle of both roads as a high pile of bricks, steel, and broken glass. Even if they had felt inclined to climb over one of the piles, one slip or wrong foot placement, and some glass or jagged metal could tear a hole into them that would no doubt turn septic within hours.
With no drones to be seen, Matt continued straight ahead and Louise followed after him.
A roll of his shoulders did little to relieve the ache that gripped Matt’s back. He dipped his head from side to side as if he meant to touch each ear to its closest shoulder, but it did nothing. His muscles all the way down his spine sat as hot knots that only rest could cure. That or he could dump the bag. Neither would happen any time soon.
They’d walked for so long that Matt’s tired legs ached. His heavy feet scraped the ground every few steps.
One look at his daughter and Matt laughed.
“What?” she said.
He shook his head and laughed again. “All of this walking has made me think of when you were a kid.”
When he looked across, he saw her half smile as she continued to stare at him.
The ruby-tinted retelling of experience gave them some joy when they had none. Each version became a more fictionalised enhancement of the one before; an evolution that—through the foggy lens of hindsight—created the perfect childhood for Louise. “You were no more than a year old when you first started walking. Your mother and I…” Just the mention of Scarlett cut his words short. The perfectly fabricated past had turned Scarlett into an angel; someone that not even the real person could live up to. It deepened Matt’s remorse and gave the memory of his dead wife claws. In some ways, her perfection had turned her into a monster.
A hard swallow dislodged the painful lump in his throat and he continued. “We used to joke that you looked like a little zombie. You’d walk with your arms out in front of you like you were always on the brink of falling face first onto the ground.”
He glanced toward her and he saw he had Louise’s full attention. To look at her now, his little girl all long and skinny, a woman in the making, made his heart ache. “You had a small trampoline that we kept in the house. It had a handle to hold onto. You’d climb up onto it and bounce until you collapsed.” He laughed and added, “You were a lunatic. You’d bounce as if it was your sole purpose in life.”
Sadness sank in his chest and Matt looked down at his feet. Tears blurred his vision. “Then the Trojans were elected for a second term and everything went to shit.” Tension made his jaw tight and formed a rock in his stomach. “We lost our home and all of our luxuries. Instead of worrying about what toys we could buy you for Christmas, we had to think about how to keep you alive and fed. God knows the state didn’t give a shit about people’s kids anymore.”
“What happened during their second term?”
“Like I said earlier—austerity.” A sneer twisted Matt’s face. “More fucking austerity—austerity on top of austerity, with a side helping of austerity. They cut public services, like the National Health Service, to the point where it was inefficient. Waiting times increased and people didn’t get the operations they needed. People died because of it. So when people died, they claimed changes needed to be made. They said it couldn’t carry on as it was.
“They could have spent to rejuvenate it, but instead, they followed their ideology of privatisation. That’s what it was all about. A few dead people simply strengthened their argument for change. It was perfect. They said the NHS needed to be brought into the twenty-first century. The Trojans decided that meant bringing in private contractors to run things. But all the contractors cared about was making a profit, not providing good healthcare to the British citizens.”
To dislodge the bitter taste of acid that had accumulated, Matt cleared his throat and spat. After he’d wiped his mouth with his sleeve, he continued. “They started screwing the middle classes. That was their mistake. The Trojans had bitten off more than they could chew at that point. They’d made human life so fucking cheap that people were prepared to lose it to overthrow them.”
With the road ahead blocked, Matt turned down yet another dark alley and Louise followed him. For a few seconds, he fell silent and listened for the hum of a drone but heard nothing. He tried another roll of his shoulders, but the pain in his back remained. The weight of his pack sent sharp aches across the base of his neck.
When Matt spoke again, his voice echoed in the alley. “We also had a housing crisis, which was worsened by our floppy-haired fool of a mayor and his social cleansing of London. You had to have a lot of money to rent or buy a home anywhere in the country, but the jobs weren’t there for people to earn the money. At first, families lived together as several generations under one roof. Soon, neighbours and friends moved in with one another and shared houses. Eventually, families shared rooms. Some houses had thirty or so people living in them while other houses sat empty as second homes for The Elite. Every time one of the empty ones got broken into, the squatters were unfairly prosecuted to be made an example of.”
When they got to the end of the alley, Matt peered out into the street. The buildings that flanked it had been reduced to no more than about a metre high. They provided no cover. After a quick check for drones, he darted across the road and down an alley opposite them. Louise followed.
Slightly wider than the previous alley, Louise walked by Matt’s side. “So what happened?”
“We revolted. When the middle classes finally realised the Trojans only cared about the super rich, they decided to do something about
it. The devaluation of their lives by the Trojans took them to the point where they were prepared to sacrifice themselves to overthrow the bullshit regime. Although, maybe the Trojans did us a favour; their blatant disregard for anyone but their own forced the issue a lot sooner. The opposition party would have eventually landed us here too.”
Once out of the next alley, Matt and Louise walked up another road. They rounded the bend and stopped. The way had been blocked by a huge pile-up of cars and lorries. Matt wriggled one of his water bottles free, took a sip of the muddy liquid, and passed the bottle to Louise.
After a heavy gulp, she grimaced and handed it back to him.
Unable to take his eyes from the pile-up in front of him, Matt shook his head. “How did so many cars end up here?” When he looked at the top, his breath left him for a moment. “And how the fuck did that train get up there?” Across the top, several carriages long, sat a train, twisted and broken like it had been the plaything of one of the gargantuan. Maybe it had.
A road led away to the right so Matt looked at the dark and ominous pile-up for a few more seconds before he took it.
As they walked, he said, “So you can see why the revolt happened. You can see why we need to get to Enfield to keep it alive. We need to use every last breath we have to stop The Elite. Your mother died for this cause, so we need to make sure her life meant something.”
A frown darkened Louise’s face.
“What’s up?” Matt said.
Louise shook her head and refused to look at him. “I just don’t think we can win, Dad. I think we’ll fight until we’re dead and The Elite will—”
The pair stopped at the same time. On the floor, in several small pieces, lay the remains of a drone. It had clearly been battered by someone. Matt glanced at his daughter and raised an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
Although she opened and closed her mouth, Louise didn’t reply.
“See, we can win. We just need to stay strong in our belief. The Elite can be wounded.”
Louise continued to stare down at the broken drone.
Another search of their dark surroundings, and Matt pointed at the next road, which sat at a right angle from where they were. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
Chapter 15
Like the darkness had hidden the smashed drone until they almost stepped on it, it had also hidden something else. A step or two later, and the form took shape in front of them. Another couple of steps and the hope Matt had tried to instil in both Louise’s and his own mind vanished. Cold dread sank through him as he stared at the old child’s swing set. Rusty and with the feet coated in mud from where it had been ripped from the ground, the large red frame took up most of the road. It sat as out of place as the train of only a few streets ago.
Not that the frame mattered. After a cursory glance of the structure, all of Matt’s attention focused on what hung from the frame. Three people—all of them suspended from the crossbar by their throats. Three faces, bloated from the pressure on their necks, stared at the dark ground as if ashamed of their crime.
Angry open wounds ran across their stomachs and their guts hung from their bodies like sodden ropes… a mixture of brown, purple, and red. Lots of fucking red.
“May… maybe they’re from the revolution? Maybe they’ve been there a while?” Matt said. “Th… th… things turned savage pretty quickly. Maybe these are from a few years ago. Maybe the people who smashed that drone up back there are still alive and well. Maybe they’re in Enfield.” If he couldn’t convince himself, how the fuck did he expect his daughter to believe him?
“Come on, Dad,” Louise said, a strange calm in her voice in the face of such grotesque horror, “if they’d been put there during the riots, they wouldn’t still be bleeding. Their guts are still glistening with bile. Blood’s still dripping from them. This happened recently. This is a warning to anyone else—fuck with The Elite and this is what fucking happens to you!”
The calm assessment took Matt’s attention away from his daughter’s swearing. “What do you know about dead bodies, fresh wounds, and bile?”
“I have lived in this world, you know. I’ve seen the horrors of the new way. I know you want to protect me, Dad, but you can’t wrap me up in cotton. You can’t expect me to walk around with my eyes closed all day every day.”
The graphic images of the past decade sat as a rolodex in Matt’s head that sometimes spun of its own accord. Horrific image after horrific image would flick through his mind. Parliament Square remained the worst and most revisited memory of the lot.
Matt’s shoulders slumped; were it not for Louise, he would have given up at that moment. Matt looked around and then stared straight ahead past the hung corpses. “We need to keep moving. If this is a warning, then I don’t think it’ll be long before a drone comes around the corner looking for us.”
With a stoic nod and her lips pressed tightly together, Louise said, “Okay.”
Matt could almost hear his legs groan when they set off again. The threat of severe cramps balled in his muscles. As they got close to the dead bodies, he put an arm around Louise’s shoulders and screwed his face up against the reek of shit. “Don’t look at them, darling. Just keep focused on what’s going on up ahead.”
Matt glanced at his little girl to see her stare straight at the corpses. Steel sat in her eyes, her face impassive. Matt reached down and held her cold hand. Although she squeezed back, it was clear that she didn’t need his comfort. Instead, she continued to watch the dead. She looked at their twisted and pained expressions. She looked at their intestines. She turned around and looked at the broken drone.
“Why don’t you look away, sweetheart? You don’t need to see this.”
With so little emotion, her words sounded mechanical as she said, “We need to remind ourselves why we run when we hear the drones.”
“And we need to remind ourselves why we keep fighting. Why we need to find the resistance,” Matt said.
Louise let go of his hand.
Chapter 16
Silence hung as thick and as impenetrable as the darkness that surrounded them. With each hour that passed, the girl by Matt’s side turned more and more into a young woman; into a younger version of Scarlett. She’d always had her sass, her eyes, and her spirit; now she’d started to show that she had her wisdom and level head too. No matter what he did, the damp weight of grief occupied Matt’s chest whenever he thought about his dead wife and of how the two greatest people he’d ever known would never properly get to know one another.
After they’d walked for a time, they came across an entrance that Matt somewhat recognised, although not entirely because the signs had been torn down. “I can’t tell you where we are. To be honest, I know we’re heading north, but I’ve lost track of exactly how far we’ve come. But what I can tell you is that we’re looking at one of the many tube stations that used to be active in the city.”
“Tube stations?” Louise asked.
“Underground trains. There’s a huge network of tunnels that trains used to drive down. It was the easiest way to move around London. I’ve tried to avoid them until now, which is why I’ve not mentioned them, but after seeing that mess behind us, I wonder if we should go underground. Maybe it’s free of drones down there…”
As Louise stared at the wide set of stairs that led down into yet more darkness, she chewed the inside of her mouth. For a moment, she said nothing. Then she dipped a sharp nod. “I think you’re right. Anything’s better than staying up here.”
At that comment, both of them checked around. To drop their guard could be to die. It seemed clear and Matt certainly couldn’t hear the buzz of the drone’s engines.
When Matt walked to the edge of the stairs, his daughter by his side, he peered into the darkness and took a deep breath. The tunnel stank of damp like an old basement. Years ago, the underground had seemed like a reasonable way to travel the city. Now it smelled and looked like ancient catacombs—an environment that no longer belo
nged to the people. Hopefully it didn’t belong to the drones and gargantuan either.
After he’d eased his large rucksack to the floor, Matt rolled his shoulders and let out a relieved sigh. He then removed two head torches from his bag. A quick twist of each, and they popped to life. The bulbs shone brightly; the batteries still had plenty of power left in them. Matt slipped the elastic strap over his head and passed the second one to Louise.
As she stared down into the underground, she drew a deep breath, exhaled so her cheeks puffed out, and said, “I’m ready when you are.”
A shake ran through Matt’s legs after he’d pulled his backpack on again. Whether it was exhaustion or fear, both of them seemed like they wanted to paralyse him. He swallowed hard and took his first step into the underground station.
The air temperature dropped with every step down.
Chapter 17
Although the beam on Matt’s head torch cut through the darkness, the inky black that surrounded them only gave up what it had to. The beam seemed to exist only because the all-encompassing dark gave it permission to do so. “Jesus,” Matt said, and his voice echoed in the cavernous space. “We’re only a flight of stairs down. Imagine how dark it’s going to be when we get into the tunnels.”
Such a mature girl most of the time, the meek voice of Louise answered, “I’d rather not, thanks.”
“Sorry, darling.” Matt shook his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Not helpful, eh?”
Wherever Matt looked, his head torch illuminated. Everywhere else remained filled with the creatures of his imagination. If the lights suddenly came on down there, they could be surrounded. Drones, monsters, ghosts—whatever they were—they’d watch as they waited to pounce, and they would most definitely have the upper hand over the pair. Gooseflesh rippled over Matt’s torso and he fought his own reluctance as he continued forward.
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