“Keep it together,” William said. “They’ve not seen us yet. Just keep your head.”
Hawk shrugged. “They fell in there.”
“How do you work that out?” the ginger kid said.
“Look at the impact wounds to their heads. How else would that happen if they didn’t fall?” Hawk’s stamp sent a ringing across the top of the pit. “This steel’s unforgiving when you take a swan dive onto it from a great height.”
One of the other boys called at those gathered around the hole, “I think we should stay here until morning. We have deer that need skinning and eating, and we don’t have to be at Grandfather Jacks’ community for another two nights. I don’t know about you lot, but I don’t fancy getting there early, and with an hour or two before it’s completely dark, I think we need to pick a spot soon anyway.”
“How much longer is the walk to the community?” the boy who’d urinated into the pit said. The new boy, he probably had many similar questions.
“Half a day from here. I mean, we’ll need to catch some more deer before we turn up, but that still gives us plenty of time. Also, up here, we’re much less likely to run into the diseased.”
The boy who’d pissed pointed down into the pit.
“I said much less likely. Not that we wouldn’t.”
“How many do you think are up there?” Cyrus said.
Although he aimed his reply at the nervous boy, William said it loud enough for Max to hear. “Too many. I want to get to Matilda and Olga more than anything else, but we have no choice but to wait for them to go.”
“Maybe we can wait for them to go to sleep and then move?” Max said.
Cyrus’ voice trembled. “I’d rather wait for them to move on like William said. They’ll be bound to have someone on guard all night.”
William said, “It seems like the only sensible choice, Max.”
“But they’re bedding down for the rest of the day and night,” Max said.
William’s stomach rumbled. Even with the diseased corpses pressing down on him, he’d kill for some deer meat right now. “And it looks like we are too.”
“Artan?” Max said, many of the hunters moving away from the edge of the pit. “What do you say?”
“I agree with William. I hate it as much as you all do, but I don’t see any other option.”
Pins and needles buzzed in William’s right arm. He shifted again to relieve the pressure.
Chapter 15
The only power afforded to her, Olga repeated the same useless action of clenching her jaw and twisting against her restraints. Her trousers clung to her thighs, the cold air adding a chill to the damp fabric. The loud, wall-shaking barp matched the three silhouettes’ next step, all of them coming forward in a wave. The one dragging its foot had support from the person next to them.
Barp!
A small splash of light from the tiny sun on the wall revealed the first of the three people. Dianna! The girl from Umbriel. The two girls behind her were the stocky one Rayne had dragged from the tunnel when she and William had been outside Magma’s fortress, and the other one, the girl from the fire in Magma’s community, the one with mousy-brown hair. Smaller and slighter than the one from the tunnel, the mousy-brown girl dragged her right leg behind her, her foot limp as if her ankle had been shattered. Where the slight girl had previously looked out on the world with fear, she now wore a blank stare. She must have been in agony, but her gaunt face and hollow eyes showed she’d gone to another place. A numb existence beyond pain.
Barp!
Dianna came closer to the girls. An apologetic wince, she untied the strap gagging Olga.
Olga gasped, spreading her mouth wide to inhale the damp and chilly air. She filled her lungs and let it out again.
Matilda’s eyes opened when Dianna released the strap across her mouth.
Barp!
“What the hell is that sound?” Olga said.
Dianna tossed the leather straps to the floor. “You get used to it. Either that or it sends you nuts.”
As if on cue, the mousy-brown girl pressed her hands together in prayer. “Grandfather Jacks provides.”
While working her jaw, Matilda blinked repeatedly. Her voice weak, she said, “And that’s its only purpose? To drive us insane?”
“We are in the asylum,” Dianna said. “The sound calls the diseased to the other side. It means Grandfather Jacks—”
“Praise be to the High Father,” the mousy-brown girl said in a monotone voice.
Dianna rolled her eyes. “It means Grandfather Jacks and anyone working for him can enter the asylum through the tunnel at the back much more easily.”
Barp!
The sound shook Olga to her core as if it had a direct line to her very being. “But how do they make such a loud noise? And where do all the glass suns come from? You had one in Umbriel. What kind of magic is it?”
The girl with the mousy-brown hair stepped closer. She put most of her weight on her broken ankle, her expression unchanged as her foot buckled beneath her. “It all comes from the High Father. He’s pulled them down from heaven and given them to Grandfather Jacks. It’s the glow that lights our path towards salvation.”
Although the stocky girl from the tunnel hadn’t spoken, she wore the same sceptical frown as Dianna.
“It’s electricity,” Dianna said, quietly enough to not distress the brown-haired zealot.
“It’s what?” Olga said.
“Electricity. Power. We can power lights, heat rooms, cook food.” Barp! Dianna sighed. “Make really annoying sounds. Electricity is a wonderful thing. We use something called solar power. They’re large black panels that take the sun’s energy and change it into something we can use.”
Barp!
After a few seconds, Dianna wrung her hands in front of herself. “Um … Did the boys make it?”
“You know what happened to them?” Matilda said.
“They were handed over to Magma, right?”
A surge of energy raced through Olga and she lurched forwards. At least, she attempted to. Her restraints kept her pinned to the wooden stretcher. “If you knew what was going to happen to them, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I only found out when they were bringing me here. By then they’d already separated us.”
“But you knew about this place?”
“Everyone in Umbriel does.”
“And you didn’t think it was worth sharing with us?” Olga spat as she spoke. “A friendly heads-up could have helped us get away before this happened.”
“They said they’d kill us if we told you. And not us, they’d kill everyone we cared about too. They threatened to kill Rita and Mary if I said anything. I lost my family in the wild lands a long time ago …” The glass sun’s weak light caught the spread of tears in Dianna’s eyes. “Those two women have been like mothers to me since they took me in. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t put them in harm’s way.”
“So instead you let the boys die and allowed them to bring us here?” Olga said.
Dianna’s tears broke and ran down her cheeks. She shook her head and bit her quivering lip. “I hope they found a way out of it.”
Olga said, “You think that makes up for it?”
Dianna dropped her attention to the stone floor. The girl might have been strong and carried herself with confidence, but she couldn’t have been any older than fourteen.
“They had Max with them,” Matilda said. “That has to give us some hope.”
Barp! The sound continued, every ten to twenty seconds.
They couldn’t blame Dianna for this. The men had to answer for their actions, not a fourteen-year-old girl. “So,” Olga said, chewing her tongue for several seconds. She took a breath to calm the fire in her gut. “What is this place? What’s going to happen to us?”
After a slight pause, Dianna looked up again. “This is where we get conditioned in preparation for Grandfather Jacks. We’re taught how to become his brides.”
; The girl with the mousy-brown hair said, “And praise be to the High Father for such a generous gift.” She stepped forward another pace, the weak sun revealing the swirling madness in her distant glare. “Grandfather Jacks is the only one among us who hears the message from the High Father. He’s the conduit who delivers enlightenment to our community. And he’s been blessed with the ability to help girls transition into womanhood.”
The leather strap across Olga’s brow prevented her from shaking her head. Dianna stepped closer and began untying her bonds. “What the hell is that lunatic talking about?” Olga said.
“On the full moon,” Dianna said, “he marries us and provides us with our first adult experience.”
“When’s the next full moon?”
“In two nights’ time.”
“Screw that!”
Where the mousy-brown girl had spoken in monotone, her voice now shook and her face reddened. “It’s a blessing. A gift from the High Father. It allows us to be ready for motherhood and families. It’s a great honour.”
“I’ll tear his throat out if he comes anywhere near me.”
The girl shook when she screeched, “It’s his job!” Her teeth clenched; her eyes locked onto Olga with the focus of a predator. “It’s what he has to do for the good of the community.”
“You might think it’s for the good of the community,” Olga said, “but it sure as hell ain’t good for me.” Dianna untied the strap across her upper body. Olga rolled her shoulders, a twinge sending a numb throb down her right arm.
The girl from the tunnel took the one with the broken ankle back into the darkness. Dianna finished untying Olga.
While Dianna worked on Matilda, Olga checked the cell door. A small barred window no more than a foot square in the centre of it. It seemed pointless, but she snapped the handle down and tugged. The door didn’t budge.
Barp!
A woman screamed, the tormented yell quickening Olga’s pulse.
Matilda now free, Dianna said, “There’s no way out of here. We’ve checked.”
Olga joined Dianna and Matilda. The girls Rayne had brought to the asylum were well and truly gone. They were loyal to Grandfather Jacks. Loyal to the point of hostility. But they weren’t the enemy. Although they were hidden by the shadows, Olga nodded in their direction and spoke beneath her breath. “I won’t let that happen to me. I’ll die before I give in to him.”
“You might well have to,” Dianna said.
“No way.” Olga shook her head. “I’m going to show this faux prophet what happens when you push too far. Only one of us is walking away from this, and it won’t be him.”
Chapter 16
The corpse on top of William twitched, and he woke with a start, his first conscious breath of the morning a deep inhalation of the creature’s foetid reek. Another diseased shifted, this time the one covering his legs. Already alert enough to stifle his reaction, William blinked away the fog of sleep, the brightness of a new day stinging his tired eyes.
Another shifting corpse, this one farther away. Its movement rippled through the carpet of cold bodies pressing down on them. William’s sight cleared, the silhouettes at the edge of the pit taking form as they threw more deer bones on top of them, each one sending a shimmer through the densely packed cadavers.
“Shall we kick the fire in?” one of the hunters called.
Hawk—the loudest voice, maybe because William recognised it—said, “No. I tell you what, if someone’s made it this far through the funnel without a map, then they deserve to be heated by a still-burning fire. Good luck to them, I say.”
“What would Grandfather Jacks say?”
“Grandfather Jacks doesn’t need to know, does he? It’s not like he ever leaves his palace.”
An early morning dew coated everything, including the corpses. Their clothes were damp enough to transfer the moisture to William below. The steel like a block of ice against his back, the morning air had a bite to it. He drew shallow breaths to keep the condensation he exhaled to a minimum.
Pins and needles now in his left leg, William gritted his teeth against the highly sensitised buzz throbbing through it. Bad enough before he’d gone to sleep the previous evening, but lying beneath their dead press all night had made the sensation a thousand times worse. He wriggled his toes, which sent a tingle directly into his groin.
Despite the rancid diseased reek of vinegar, rot, and human waste, the aroma of roasting deer still found its way to William. His stomach resumed where it had left off the previous evening, rumbling like a growling beast.
How far away were the girls now? Had the old hunters kept moving with them? If William and the others were only half a day’s walk from Grandfather Jacks’ community, were they already there? But what could they do about it right now other than wait for the hunters to move on? To reveal themselves would be suicide. Better they got to the girls late than never.
The apparently reanimating diseased had demanded all of William’s attention, but now he knew the reason for their twitching, the shivering Cyrus took his focus. Paler than usual, he trembled where he lay. Flat on his back on the grey steel, his eyes glazed.
“He’s been trembling like a shitting dog for hours,” Max said. “None of us can get him to stop. He’ll blow our cover.”
“Come on, Cyrus,” Artan’s soft voice called from the other side of the boy. “They can’t wait up there forever. The second we get our chance, we’ll climb out of this hellhole.”
“Y-y-you promise?”
“Of course. But you need to wait, okay? You need to try to relax.”
“Relax?”
“Shhhh!” Artan said. “Keep your voice down.”
Before William had fallen asleep, they’d plotted their route out of the pit. The walls were nowhere near as sheer as they’d first seemed. Crags and lumps along the surface gave them a trackable path to the top. Now they needed to wait for the hunters to go.
“It won’t be long now,” Artan said.
Max nudged William, several diseased shifting on top of them. The crotch he’d faced the previous evening had gone. The open mouth of an old woman with deep gashes in her sallow cheeks now offered him a silent scream. “He’s been like this all night. I don’t know how you slept through it.”
“I sleep like the dead,” William said.
“I can see that.”
“Sorry.” William rolled his eyes. “Bad metaphor.”
“Some would say appropriate.”
Several more deer bones flew into the pit, one of them giving off a hollow knock as it connected with the back of the woman’s head leaning over William. “That has to be a good thing though, right?” William said.
“As long as we don’t get taken out by one of the bones,” Max said.
“But at least it looks like they’re packing up to move on.”
“Here’s hoping.”
The bodies then shifted to William’s right. Cyrus sat up first, Artan a second later as he grabbed the boy and slammed him back down on his back. “Wait!” Artan hissed, his face red as he leaned just inches from Cyrus. “Not yet.”
“Leave that!”
The words from above snapped William rigid. It sounded like Hawk.
Artan dragged several corpses over him and Cyrus.
A hunter replied, “But there’s a half-eaten deer here.”
“We’ll catch more later.” After a slight pause, the shuffle of feet moved off, many of the hunters walking away from the pit. “We need to arrive at Grandfather Jacks’ with offerings,” Hawk continued. “You think he wants to chow down on our leftovers? Also, who knows how he’ll react if he finds out we ate before arriving. He might decide this was one of his deer and we’ve caused great offence both killing and eating it without his permission. The man thinks everything belongs to him.”
“I feel sorry for those girls in the asylum,” one of the other hunters said.
William’s entire body snapped rigid.
Hawk sighed. “Me too
.”
“Asylum?” Max said.
William shook his head. “I was hoping I’d heard them incorrectly.”
“And what about us?” the hunter talking to Hawk said. He spoke with a nasally whine.
“What about us?”
“We could do with having something to munch on while we hike.”
“You’re not full from last night? Look, we’re only half a day away. You know Grandfather Jacks will treat us like princes when we get to his palace. The last thing we should do is arrive with our bellies full. Stop being a prick and leave the deer where it is.”
“What if someone finds it?”
“Good luck to them,” Hawk said. “Like with the fire, if someone’s made it this far into the funnel from either side, they deserve a little reward. Getting here without knowing where all the traps are is no mean feat.”
The diseased on William’s right moved again. Artan pulled Cyrus down for a second time.
“Artan,” Max hissed, “if you can’t stop him, I will.”
The same mild tone, Artan said, “Hold it together, Cyrus. Not long now, mate. Just give it a few more seconds.”
“Come on,” Hawk called back across the pit. The rest of the hunters had already walked away.
The slap of the last hunter’s feet finally took off after Hawk and the others.
The deceased diseased on William’s right lifted and toppled onto him. Cyrus had gotten to his feet again, and Artan hadn’t stopped him this time.
“Fuck it,” William said. “Let’s go now.” As he stood up, Artan and Max stood up on either side of him. Each of them were covered in the bloody slime excreted by the weeping corpses. A crimson sludge so dark and clotted it looked like blackberry jam.
Cyrus took to the wall first.
William plunged his hand back into the diseased bodies like a morbid lucky dip. He shifted around until he found her wooden handle. Jezebel glistened like the rest of them, but at least he had her. His feet twisting and turning as he walked over the bodies, he slipped the handle down the back of his shirt, the axe’s blade leaning against the back of his head.
Beyond These Walls (Book 6): Three Days Page 9