Her eyes water and she works to suppress a cough, but one comes out.
The cannibals hear it.
They shriek and whistle and I think one of them sees me.
I make several shushing sounds in Naia’s direction, but she’s not listening.
She’s down on her knees, striking the strand of wire against the shank I gave her.
Nothing happens for several seconds and then there’s a little flash of sparks as a coil of smoke rises up.
“Hurry,” I say to her. “They’re coming!”
I ooze my way down through the garbage as she fans a small fire built on the ground a few feet away from the PVC pipe.
There are a few scraps of newspaper and some cardboard that she feeds the fire, the flames blazing up nicely.
“They heard you so we need to hurry.”
“Cool your jets,” she replies even as the screams of the cannibals grow closer.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Trust me,” she says. “I’ve plotted it all out.”
The cannibals are visible now, streaming toward us through the trash.
“Get ready to dive and duck.”
She grabs a piece of newspaper and rolls it up and touches it to the flames before motioning for me to fall back.
I search for and find a natural depression in the garbage and look back to Naia who tosses the now lit newspaper toward the PVC and dives at me as—
WHOOOSHHHHH!
The methane’s ignited by the paper, creating a wall of fire that seems to set the air ablaze.
The cannibals are forced back and then the fire sucks back down into the PVC pipe and—
WHUMP-BOOM!
The pipe explodes and the resulting shockwave tosses me and Naia back, end-over-end, like a pair of quarters in an old-school washing machine.
My ears ring and stars fill my eyes and every inch of my body is covered by garbage.
Sunlight hits me next, huge shafts of it falling through the gaping hole in the far side of the building.
The explosion has rocked the space, gouged the floor and torn off a section of the faraway wall large enough to drive several trucks through.
Through the dust I can see the outer buildings.
I spot Naia, a few feet away from me, and she spits out a mouthful of trash.
Her eyes widen and then she stands and pumps a fist and cheers.
“You see!” she says, “I told you! I told you I’d find a way to save our—”
The words die in her mouth because she’s taken a step and fallen.
Slipped on the trash and before I can move she’s on her back and sliding forward through the trench carved by the explosion in the floor.
The one that slopes directly toward the hole in the far wall.
CHAPTER TEN
Naia’s a goner.
In seconds she’s going to be sucked through the hole in the wall and spat out into dead air so I bound forward, charging down through the trash as Naia fights to stop her forward progress.
The trench is sloped in such a way that her momentum carries her forward at an alarming rate. In seconds she’s traveled nearly twenty feet from me.
I rocket through the smoke from the explosion and negotiate my way up a slope, hands out, trying to maintain my balance.
I pick up speed, taking an angle that allows me to rise up over her and sensing a chance, charge forward and jump.
My hand thrusts out as I sail through the air.
She’s seven feet away from the huge hole in the wall.
Seven feet away from certain death.
Her mouth pulls back.
She scrabbles for purchase, but there’s nothing to hold onto.
And then I land, belly-flopping onto the soggy ground next to her.
My hand somehow finds her wrist.
I dig my boots into the trash and manage to slow her descent just enough so that her feet are dangling out of the open wall, but her upper body remains on solid ground.
She plants her palms and pushes back and I bear-hug her up and away from the hole in the wall. Releasing my grip, she slumps to the ground and catches her breath.
“I – I saved you,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“Are we even now?” I ask.
“Not even close,” she replies, exhaling.
We crawl forward and look outside.
Scraps of paper and bits of trash, remnants of the explosion, flutter through the air. I can see some of the residents from the outer buildings peering through windows at us. We both look out, up and down, and then all around.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask.
“You’re looking at it,” she says, pointing to the hole.
“You blew a hole in the wall, Naia.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That’s the plan?”
“I never said it was a great plan.”
I search the space behind us and spot the bodies of the cannibals who lie br0ken and bent and charred. One of them twitches and moans, but I don’t think he’ll be causing us any problems.
“We’re safe for right now. Maybe we can hold tight here for a while and come up with a new angle, a new way out.”
Sirens suddenly wail overhead followed by footfalls and muted shouts.
“Maybe not,” she replies. “We could fight.”
“We don’t have the numbers or the weapons.”
“So what then? We give up? Surrender?” she asks.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, that’s because you never really say anything. I’m the one that’s always doing the strategizing.”
I turn back to the hole as a draft of wind hits my face. I breathe deeply and the cool air reinvigorates me and the clouds break and the warmth of the sun’s rays splashes my face.
“There’s only one thing to do. We have to go outside,” I mutter.
“Excuse me?”
“We go out and climb down.”
She snorts.
“Are you – we’ve got no equipment.”
“Not true,” I say, wiggling my fingers. “We’ve each got ten of these suckers.”
She holds my look, her face ultra tense.
“You’re crazy.”
I manufacture a huge smile.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
My mouth says these words, but my hands don’t get the message. They’re trembling and so I tuck them in front of me (so Naia can’t see them) as I take another look outside.
The good and the bad of the situation become readily apparent.
On the one hand, we’re only sixteen or seventeen stories up, which means the wind currents won’t be as intense as they might be up near the thirtieth floor.
On the other hand, we’re sixteen or seventeen stories up!
Even a Jumper like me would be hard-pressed to free climb out of a shattered window without any security gear. I mean, not only am I about to go out completely naked, but I’m taking a newbie with me.
Naia looks out and down at the road and her face drains of color.
“That’s a super long way down.”
“It’s all in your mind.”
“I’ll remember that when I hit the pavement at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.”
“We can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. And you know why?”
She shakes her head and I point at the hole in the wall.
“Because I know what that is.”
“It’s a hole, Wyatt.”
I shake my head.
“It’s a chance. And if we’ve got a chance, we can find a way down.”
I reach over and grab her hand and she musters up a smile.
“All in my head, right?”
“Right, except for the actual climbing down part. That’ll be totally physical.”
Her smile wilts.
“I hate you, Wyatt.”
“We’ll go one hand at a ti
me,” I say, ignoring her. “How’s that sound?”
“Peachy.”
A door bursts open somewhere behind us. I can hear men shouting and a gun fires and several people scream. Probably the last of the cannibals just cut down by Odin’s goons.
I grab the metal frame of the shattered window which is thankfully still in one piece. My first training as a Ledge Jumper consisted of tests on a white-board with Shooter and memorizing the exterior of the building. In my mind I can see the curtained walls of glass and steel fastened in diagonal grids that resemble diamond shapes twelve feet deep and six stories high. We’re near one of the diamonds so there will be ledges and frames and little steel buttons hammered into the exteriors that we should be able to “finger” from.
What this means is that we’ll have to slip down five or six feet from our present position to a stone ledge and then slide twenty feet or so over a wall of glass to the lip of the building. Once we reach the lip we can drop onto another ledge and then another until we’re able to either find a way back into the building or we reach the ground. Of course we’ll be without cables or any other kind of safety equipment, but it’s our only chance.
I suck in my abdomen and tense the muscles in my core, repeating this to Naia so that she does the same. Then, when I’m sufficiently coiled, I draw my arms in tight against my sides and feel the pressure in my lats.
Del Frisco always said if you can take that first step you can do anything and so I do like he does. I conjure up some music, classical stuff I imagine being played at some great party in Europe attended by people in horse-drawn carriages with white wigs.
I work against the rhythm of the music, measuring my breaths and then I take that first step and it’s like leaping off the edge of the world.
A frigid downdraft hits me and the wind currents work to suck me back into the nothingness that exists between VC1 and the outer buildings.
I cling to the frame, my eyes peeled on Naia, my boot hunting for a foothold.
A full-on wind gust hits me, the air colder than I expected.
I watch Naia stiffen.
“Don’t look down,” I say.
“That’s what you say.”
“I’m the one talking, so of course it’s what I say.”
My eyes roam down for both of us. I spot the stone ledge under me which means I’ll have to release myself and measure my weight and hope like hell that I’m able to make the plant and then catch Naia as she does the same.
“Naia?”
She nods, unnerved, but doesn’t look back.
“I’m going to jump.”
“You’re –what?!”
“Just four feet, maybe five, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“There’s a ledge. A safe spot. It’s the only way.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll have to do the same.”
“That is exactly the opposite of what I hoped you’d say.”
A scream rips the air and I look up as—
WHUMP!
A man flies out the open window and nearly takes Naia down with him.
He’s a bearded grunt in grubby clothes, eyes as wide as the moon, arms chopping the air. My guess is he’s a guard who was sent down to snuff us out when he slipped on the garbage just like Naia did. Unlike her, however, there’s nobody to stop his fall.
He rockets past us and hits the glass below us, bouncing up and over the edge of the building.
His anguished face freezes for an instant and I remember bits of information from my training days. About how we used to toss Dub bodies out of upper windows to measure speed and study how a body was injured when hitting the pavement. We found, for instance, that a body reaches terminal velocity after a fall of five-hundred feet. At that distance you fragment upon impact, you black out, your inner cavity basically becoming like a scrambled egg. The falling man’s distance to the ground is probably a little less than two-hundred feet which means he’s going to live just long enough to feel the collision.
He disappears from sight and then I whisper:
“I jump first and then you do the same on my call.”
She nods and I glance back and I’m woozy as hell, momentarily disoriented by the play of light off the glass. But fear has a way of clearing the mind and so I close my eyes and focus, laser-like, on the ledge and now I’m falling.
The wind buffets me again, edging my body back closer to the building by a millimeter or two.
I land on my toes and throw my arms out, just like Shooter taught me so long ago.
My bulk shifts forward and I bend and push back and brace myself against the window below which is broken (thanks to the methane blast), but inaccessible due to a series of metal security bars.
I look back up at Naia and gesture to her.
“Hurry,” she says, “I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Count to three.”
“I can’t—”
“Now.”
I count loud and she mutters softly along with me and then she cries out and releases her grip.
She falls in agonizingly slow-motion and I struggle to fight off thoughts about how this could end very badly and—
WHUMP!
She lands near me and I hug her and wrestle her back against near the barred window.
Her chest heaves and I swear the beat of her heart is audible.
“They’re up there,” she says. “I saw them.”
I turn back and assess the nook we’re standing on which is barely big enough for the two of us.
We grab the window bars and pull and even though the brick surrounding the ledge is starting to come loose, none of the bars give.
Dropping to my knees, I look down to the giant sheet of glass under us. It’s at least twenty-feet long and curved at an unusual angle.
Gus said most of the windows in buildings used to be straight up and down years ago. Flat plate-glass I think it was called. But then some fancy architects and engineers decided to prioritize style over substance and everything started having curls and slopes to it.
I silently curse the men who designed the VC1 with all its little kinks and alcoves and glass bowed out like a fat man’s belly.
At the end of the sheet of glass, at the very edge of the building, are two metal ornaments shaped like great birds of prey that partially hold the glass in place. If we can slide down and grip those, we can then lower ourselves down to the next ledge. It’s a long shot, but the only chance we have.
I point to the metal birds.
“We’ve got to slide down and grab those.”
“I’ll take my chances here.”
“The sun’s going down later today.”
“That’s generally what the sun does…”
“Which means we’ll probably freeze to death up here. Either that or Odin’s people will grab us or knock us off when it gets dark.”
Her eyes scan the glass and the metal birds and then she stares at her hands, white and red and skinned from the climb down. She cracks the knuckles in both hands.
“The funny thing is the others I came with didn’t want to visit the city,” she says. “They didn’t want to set foot in this place. I should’ve listened. I should never have come.”
“So why did you?”
“Because I thought people in the city would be different from the country. More civilized. I guess … I wanted to believe there was some place better.”
“Maybe there is.”
“But first we’ve got to get out of here, huh?”
I nod and she sets her jaw.
“Who takes the first step? You or me?”
“I’ll go,” I say.
“If you say the first step is the only hard one I swear I’ll punch you.”
I don’t, laying a hand on her wrist and then I crab slowly back and drop to my rear and elevate my legs like a child on a playground slide and hope like hell Matthais and none of the Prowlers are watching what’s about to happen.
&nbs
p; Dropping down, I zoom over the glass which is spattered with birdshit that slows my forward progress and then I hit some imperceptible divot in the glass, some bend in the plate that was invisible from up on my perch.
I go spinning hard to the left, away from the metal bird.
I can hear Naia gasping, but things happen so quickly, I barely have time to breathe.
The edge of the glass comes up fast and so I bring my boots down and then—
I’m catapulted into the air and throw out my hand and somehow manage to snag one of the birds.
My face presses close to the bird whose detail work is incredible. I’m able to see every pattern and contour in the metal that runs from east to west, every gap in every feather, every pore in the damned thing’s steel beak.
It’s a beautiful little thing, an eagle I think, and I admire it for a few seconds.
And then the bird breaks in half.
And just like that I’m falling.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
No, no, no!
Images flicker before me: my parents and Gus, me plummeting to my death, pinwheeling through the sky until I break apart on the face of the building, my warm insides dashed across the cold blacktop below.
My hand rockets out into the recessed spot left by the hollowed-out, broken bird and whatever shard of metal that’s still there pierces my finger.
Blood flows, but I don’t let go.
I can’t.
I look back and down to see I’m actually about thirteen or fourteen stories off the ground. A few errant Dubs are visible, bumbling around, one or two of them looking in my direction.
My eyes find Naia and she’s as white as a sheet.
Her finger is pointing up and that’s when I spot a pumpkin-toothed man grinning at me from the hole we blew in the wall. Then another man appears and another, all lower-level VC1 guards, none of whom I recognize. They’re only a few feet above Naia, but she’s so quiet and pressed so tightly into the ledge that they don’t hear or see her.
They point and jeer at me, one of them holding up a rifle. They could easily pick me off, but then I see faces pressed against the glass on the outer buildings and I realize Odin’s goons don’t want to make a scene. Everything they do, all the killings of those shunned from the mother building occur in the shadows. They don’t dare operate in broad daylight. They quickly lower their weapons and hurl obscenities at me and then the pumpkintoothed man clutches the edge of the window frame and jumps down.
Vertical City (Book 4) Page 5