Beyond These Walls (Book 5): After Edin

by Robertson, Michael

  At ground level again, the ruins once more proved to be a dizzying maze of dead ends, double backs, and surprises lurking in the shadows. The ground threatened to trip them with every step with the old sheets of metal, rocks, and cracks in the road.

  The shriek of a diseased then called from a dark doorway on their right. It burst out a second later, blocking Artan’s way. A lone aggressor, bloated from what must have been a life of decadence, the once man had bloody streaks down his face, his skin tinged green with rot. His mouth spread wide, revealing a black pit of infection. His arms windmilled as he charged. William drew his sword; the ring of steel echoed from the others following suit. But Artan moved fast. He drove a hacking slice into the side of the creature’s face. The blade cut deep into the beast’s left cheek. Dark blood spilled from the wound as it dragged Artan’s sword to the ground when it fell. Artan pressed the sole of his boot against the side of its face and removed his weapon with a wet squelch. He raised it, ready to go again, the creature’s blood dripping from it like tar.

  Matilda stood at William’s left, panting as if she’d just ended the creature herself. Olga and Max behind, all of them waited. After a few seconds of near silence, William sheathed his sword. “Well done, mate.” He patted Artan’s slim back. “You’ll be back to your old self in no time.”

  “You sound surprised,” Matilda said. She took the lead, stepping onto a large grey rock and jumping a gap of about four feet to the next one along.

  Although they never agreed where their next checkpoint would be, it had been obvious every time. They found the tallest structure in their vicinity well before any of them ran out of breath. Artan caught up to his sister and reclaimed the lead. He guided them to a destination like the others had before him. He ducked into what had once been a tower; like many of the other ruins, it had a rusting steel skeleton surrounded by brickwork. What remained of the floors had been constructed from the same grey rock so abundant in the ruined city.

  The wrecked stairway leading to the first floor had a large gap from where the middle had collapsed. Not impossible by any stretch, but having to clear the four- or five-foot space and land three feet higher up made it trickier. Artan cleared it without breaking stride.

  Matilda leaped across the gap with the same ease as her brother.

  William jumped and just made it, landing on his toes. His heart kicked, but he had enough momentum to continue forwards, his knees slamming against the corner of a higher step. He bit his bottom lip to stifle his scream. He didn’t need to give Matilda any more of a reason to doubt his jumping ability.

  If any of the others struggled, they hid it well. But from the way they all stopped, they were as glad of the rest as him. Olga glistened with sweat, William wiping his own brow as he filled his lungs.

  “I wish I’d saved some of that water now,” Matilda said. From the way she looked at Artan, she clearly aimed it at him, another invitation for him to reply. If he heard her, it didn’t show. Instead, the boy paced what remained of the building’s first floor. At the other end, a set of unbroken stairs ran back down to the ground. A quick exit should they need it. Or an easy access should any diseased see them.

  “How much longer do you think it will be before we’re out of this city?” William said.

  Olga said, “You’re the one with the map.”

  Max cut in. “At a guess, I’d say we’re maybe a third of the way through. I’m not sure the map can help us much. First, it doesn’t have a scale on it, and secondly, it’s not like we’re running in a straight line. It’ll take longer to charge from safe spot to safe spot, but I think it’s the best option we have.”

  “Or a not-so-safe spot,” Matilda said.

  William’s already tight lungs tightened. Curious at first, the mob idled into view at the bottom of the unbroken set of stairs. Canted stances, their clothes torn to shreds and flapping in the breeze. If he never saw a shrivelled diseased penis again … At least ten of them in sight and god knew how many more behind.

  Before anyone spoke, the diseased broke into their hellish chorus. A shrill shriek. A call to their brethren. As the one farthest back, William had to lead their escape.

  The broken stairs they’d just climbed took them out of the building. Another set led up to the next floor. They’d also collapsed in the middle, the gap larger than the one he’d only just cleared.

  “Go up!” Olga said.

  It made sense, and anyone else in their party would have gone that way. But William ran down, back the way they came.

  Olga followed. “What the hell are you doing? You should have gone higher!”

  Too late now, William burst out of the old wreck of a tower and paused for the others to catch up. Artan at the rear, he took the gap in his stride.

  The diseased on their heels, the first one made light work of the gap too. “Shit!” William said. He’d made the wrong choice.

  William led them along what must have once been a main road. Littered with debris from the crumbling environment, he shimmied and darted along his mazy path. Beside him, Max opted to go over several rocks, Matilda and Artan following their immune friend’s path.

  Olga continued to snipe at William. “You made the wrong choice. If this doesn’t kill us, I swear I’m going to kill you myself.”

  Their current path might lead them out of the city, but they had a long way to go. “Why are we running?” William said. The ring of his sword from where he unsheathed it, he spun around and faced the onrushing horde. The others stopped, Max moving to the front. He had to be their first line of defence.

  Max threw his sword in a wide arc, burying it in the skull of the first beast. Crunch! The beast turned limp as it fell. Olga stabbed the next one while Max took down his second. William stepped forward, Artan and Matilda at his side.

  They dealt with the pack, William out of breath when he said, “We should have remained in the building and fought them there.”

  “You should have gone higher,” Olga said. “You picked the worst place to run.”

  As if proving her right, their surroundings came to life. Lethargic at first as if the creatures had been woken from slumber, the scraping of bricks and the snapping, snarling fury of the diseased emerged from the environment.

  “You’ve well and truly screwed us here,” Olga said, turning one way and then the other as if trying to ascertain which creature would be their next attacker.

  If only he’d been brave enough to make the jump to the second floor. “I thought this was the better choice.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Can you two shut up?” Max said. “Arguing won’t get us anywhere.”

  Matilda grabbed Artan’s arm and dragged him away through a gap in the horde. A building as tall as the one they’d just been chased from, its side coated with a blanket of thick and waxy green leaves.

  By the time William caught up, Matilda and Artan had already climbed several feet. He waited for Olga, the diseased on her tail. Many of them tripped, one losing its shirt to a steel rod protruding from a grey rock.

  When Olga reached him, a sneer on her puce face, she shook her head and scrambled up the vines. “You’d do well to worry more about yourself.”

  Max remained on the ground and cut a diseased down as William grabbed a thick vine, found somewhere for his foot, and started his climb.

  William only slowed his ascent after he’d climbed about ten feet. The creatures gathered at the bottom, their zeal quelled by what appeared to be an acceptance of their limitations. But they were ready should someone fall.

  It didn’t matter how many times he’d been the focus of their crimson stares, William trembled, the strength leaving his limbs.

  Matilda and Olga leaned out of the window they’d climbed through, grabbed William under each arm, and pulled him into the ruined building. They were on the second floor of what had once been a tower.

  Olga stood over William with one hand on her hip. “The only way to get here is through the windo
w, probably much like the second floor of the last building we were in. You might want to thank Matilda for getting us out of the tight spot you ran us into. Why didn’t you go higher in the last building? Were it just you and me, I would have left you on your own.”

  Did Matilda know why he hadn’t gone higher, or did he imagine the pity in her dark eyes? And he’d had the gall to worry about Artan leading them through the ruins.

  As the last in through the window, Max remained closest to it. “I think you all might want to look at this.”

  The old window frame thick with vines, they all gathered around it, Olga shoving William aside to be closer to Max. The pair held hands. The air heavy with the rich reek of vegetation, they watched a smaller street than the one they’d been on. Much tighter and packed with debris, it took William a moment before he gasped. A tall and skinny kid. No wonder he’d earned his nickname of beanpole. “Trent?” Several more he didn’t recognise, then a big man with long hair and an award-winning smile. “Samson? We should go to them,” William said. “Maybe they’re the ones who took the supplies from the national service area.”

  As William drew a breath to yell, Matilda’s low growl cut him dead. “Stop!”

  Every one of the gang carried something: wood, rocks, sheets of metal. They moved in small packs. It must have been their way of avoiding detection. The second pack were much less approachable. Led by Magma, among them they had Warrior, Crush, and—

  “Ranger?” William said. “Of all the people to come out of Edin alive …”

  “We should have seen it coming,” Matilda said. “The boy’s a damn cockroach; he can survive anything.”

  Chapter 3

  “Where do you think they’re taking all those supplies?” William said.

  Olga tutted. “They’re obviously building something, dumbass.”

  “Obviously. But what and where? If it’s so obvious, maybe you can share your insights with us so we can make sure we avoid them.”

  Before Olga could counter him, Max said, “I’m guessing they’re building somewhere in this city, which is good for us because as long as we can get out of here, we can leave them behind once and for all.”

  The sight of Ranger had quickened William’s pulse. His stomach clamped tight and his breaths shortened. When they’d been on national service, he’d been dealing with the nasty little antagonist daily. The unrelenting nature of it had somehow made it easier to manage. But seeing the boy’s smug face after some time away brought it all back. He moved closer to Matilda, who tensed at his proximity. Had she felt the same thing, or was she still pissed about him doubting Artan? “Of all the people to survive …” he said.

  Olga shrugged. “I know, right?!”

  “So what do you reckon, Artan? Where shall we go?” If William didn’t know better, he would have assumed the boy had lost his hearing as well as his voice, his sallow eyes devoid of recognition. The kid he knew so well always had a conversation in him. Matilda raised an eyebrow. And why wouldn’t she? Although he wanted Artan to talk as much as any of them, he couldn’t blame her for seeing it as an attempt to get on her good side. “Look,” William said, but before he could add anything else, the shriek of a nearby diseased derailed his attempt at reconciliation.

  “We need to shut that thing up,” William said, the diseased closing in on their position, its crimson glare fixed on them in the window. He stepped away with the rest of his friends. The shadows hid them from view, but the diseased had already seen them. It would take a while to forget.

  Max nodded at the diseased closing in on them. The thing tripped over the landscape, hit the ground hard, but got straight back up again. “If we climb down the vines, Ranger will see us. Especially with that foetid alarm giving us away.”

  From the way Ranger and his crew moved through the city, if they’d heard the diseased, they thought nothing of it. But that could change in an instant. And it only needed one of them to get curious and their cover would be blown.

  Cowardice had already forced William into making a bad decision that had put them all in danger. He wouldn’t let it happen a second time. Fixed on a spot of flat ground about fifteen feet below, he drew his sword and stepped off the ledge to the gasps of his friends. The hard landing snapped through him. He’d pay for that later. His sword drawn, he stepped from the ruins and tapped the steel against a nearby wall, commanding the attention of the diseased.

  The creature charged. It stumbled but remained on its feet. It slashed at the air, its fingers splayed.

  His jaw clenched, William swung for the beast. Slightly too early, the tip of his sword ran through the front of its face, drawing a deep gash and dragging a spray of blood away from it. It did nothing to slow the thing’s momentum.

  With his second attack, William forced the tip of his sword into the beast’s chest. It burst through the creature’s back, ending the vile thing mid-stride while releasing the acrid stench of vinegar and rot. He kept his sword raised, ready for more.

  Olga hung down from the second floor, reducing the drop by five feet before letting go. She landed with grace, glaring at William before moving aside for Max.

  When Artan came down, Matilda still on the second floor, Olga moved closer to William and spoke so only he could hear. “Why did you jump down when Max could have?”

  “Because Max didn’t jump down, and someone needed to make sure that thing didn’t give us away. It’s not my place to tell him what to do.”

  “It probably wouldn’t have given us away anyway,” Olga said. “A diseased’s scream in this city is hardly out of the ordinary.”

  “No, but it could have called more over. Besides, why risk it?”

  William stepped away from the angry girl and nodded up at Matilda. “What’s she doing?”

  Although he aimed it at Artan, keeping his focus on the boy so it didn’t look like an attempt to gain favour with Matilda, Max replied, “She’s going to climb higher when they’re out of sight to see where we should run to next. We have a few hours of daylight left. We need to use that time to get closer to the edge of the city and farther away from Ranger.”

  William waited on the ground floor with the others while Matilda climbed several stories higher and peered out over the city before heading down to join them. Like the rest of them, she hung down and dropped, the dull ache at the base of William’s back a reminder of his own haste in getting to the ground. She pointed in the direction they’d already been traveling before seeing Ranger and the others. “There’s a cluster of taller buildings over that way. I’d say they’re about two hours from here. I reckon we can reach them before nightfall, and from looking at the path Ranger and the others took, it should also move us farther away from them.”

  Artan burst to life, spinning around and throwing three quick attacks at diseased. He cut all of them down before their cries left their throats. The slack jaws of those around him, including Matilda, suggested the others hadn’t seen them either. “My god, Artan,” William said. “The last time I saw someone so adept at taking them down …”

  Matilda grabbed William’s hand and squeezed. He coughed to clear the wet lump in his throat. In his mind’s eye, Hugh stared up at him from the corridor in the labs all over again. A moment of sadness before he got buried beneath the tide of foetid creatures. “Right, I think we should move on. I think Artan should take the lead with Max. Any objections?”

  For once, Olga kept her thoughts to herself.

  Max led them away from the building’s ruins through a half-collapsed doorway. Artan went through next, Olga behind. When William stepped aside to let Matilda out, she snarled at him, “I forgive you for having your doubts about Artan, but don’t ruin it by thinking you need to be chivalrous.”

  Now they had more than just the diseased to avoid, the gang moved with extra caution. From hiding place to hiding place, they took down the creatures that crossed their path in an attempt to keep the noise to a minimum.

  William remained just ahead of Matil
da while Olga took Artan’s place at the front beside Max. “So you had four older brothers?” she said.

  While stepping on a large rock, Max scanned their surroundings before he jumped back down. “Yeah. Drake, Sam, Matthew, and Greg.”

  “And they all survived national service?”

  “Nuts, isn’t it? I suppose our luck had to run out at some point. Although I’m glad to be away from that cell. I didn’t ever think I’d get out of there.”

  William winced when Olga turned to him and said, “You nearly didn’t.”

  Matilda’s judgement had been sound. It took them close to two hours to get to the spot she’d set her sights on, the sun now a deep orange on the horizon. Broken stairs much like the ones they’d been chased from earlier that day, the gap they had to cross was similar. William led the way. He could make the jump; they didn’t need to worry about that.

  As William settled down near Matilda—but not so close he got in the way of her trying to reconnect with Artan—he said, “At least we didn’t see Ranger and the others again. Hopefully we’ve lost them and we can get the hell out of this damn city tomorrow.”

  The second he leaned back against the wall—a cushion of vines coating the rough brickwork—William’s eyes grew heavy. Despite the natural drop in temperature as day transitioned into evening, it promised to be a mild night. He hugged himself and closed his eyes, filling his lungs with a deep breath before letting it and the day’s tension leave his body.

  Chapter 4

  His sleep restless from the cold bite in the air, the discomfort of the stone floor, and his inability to relax in an environment inhabited by the diseased meant it didn’t take much to wake William. The croaky voice forced his eyes wide. The crescent moon shone down on them. No roof on the derelict building, it lit them up like a spotlight. Matilda and Artan were sitting close to one another, leaning in.