The bell tinkled again. The sound came from a cage in the distance. “Is that—?”
“Max, Matilda, and Artan,” Olga said.
Their three friends were tied to a pole in the middle of the cage. They were bound standing up. Every time one of them shuffled, a bell on the front rang, calling to the diseased surrounding them.
William chewed on his bottom lip. “It makes sense why Max hasn’t had a chance to use his invulnerability yet.”
“Well, we don’t have to go through the tunnel,” Olga said, “but how the hell do we get through that lot?”
As much as William wanted to offer a different suggestion, he sighed and said, “We have to go through the tunnel.”
“What?”
“Look behind them. It’s a hole. It has to be linked.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to go through it?”
“You think how I feel about it matters?”
Olga shook her head. “No. I don’t suppose it does.”
Chapter 15
Several feet into the tunnel and William’s chest had already wound as tight as a drum. The enclosed space threw his quickened breaths back at him with a mocking echo.
“You okay?”
How could Olga be so calm as she strolled through the darkness? The air thick with damp, William nodded. “D-d-do you think these tunnels might collapse?”
“What can we do about it if they do?”
A scuttling up ahead, William’s gasp chased after it. “What’s that?”
“A rat. Or a mouse. Either one is much better than a diseased.”
The ceiling a few feet above was made from the same grey rock as the floor but with far fewer cracks—at least, the ceiling close to the entrance had fewer cracks; hard to tell now with so little light. “Imagine what it must have done to that girl having to wait down here. How long do you think they held her for?”
“And where have they taken them now?” Olga said.
Still out of breath, the memories of his run through the tunnels with Max lurked at the periphery of William’s mind, ready to close in and smother him. A chill ran through him as an involuntary spasm, and his skin crawled.
“If they kept the girl down here,” Olga said, “it has to be free of diseased.”
Dizzy with his lack of oxygen, the dams in William’s mind broke, his memories flooding in. The shrieks of diseased. The thunder of their steps. The cloying reek of smoke in the woodwork district. The girl crying as she burned, her small face blistering before she disappeared behind a wall of bright orange flames.
Metal screeched over rock and William halted. What little breath he had left him. The light behind them vanished, cut off from where the steel sheet got dragged back across it. “Shit!”
“Shh,” Olga said. “Maybe they don’t know we’re down here.”
“Of course they know we’re down here.”
“That’s your panic talking. Surely they would have followed us? They might have thought Rayne left it open.”
“Or they might have simply decided to trap us like they did the girl from earlier?”
“So what do we do?” Olga said.
“What else can we do? What we know for sure is that there’s someone back that way. Whether they’ve seen us or not, they’re there. The only thing we can do is get to the others and hope we find a way out of this.”
They quickened their pace, William’s feet tilting and rolling with the cracks in the ground. “At least we’ll hear them if they follow u—” He bit back his yell as he stubbed his toe and stumbled forward, his knees slamming down against the hard ground.
“You okay?” Olga said.
For a few seconds, William breathed through his nose, nodding in the darkness. His scream successfully stifled, he finally said, “Yeah.” He pushed off from the ground and stood up again. “Be careful of the hill.”
“At least we know where we are. We must be past halfway now.”
Thankfully the slope didn’t have the gradient of the hill above. William’s eyes stung from where he strained to see in the dark.
The screech of a diseased bounced off the walls of the tunnel. William stopped dead. Something touched his shoulder. He spun to face it.
“It’s me,” Olga said. “We’re getting close. That was the sound of the diseased outside the cage. There’s nothing in here.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“If there were any down here, they would have come closer by now.”
The ground levelled out. Light up ahead. “You’re right! That must be the hole in the cage’s floor.”
“Wait!”
William jumped, turning to Olga. The daylight ahead helped, but it still took him a few seconds, blinking against his burning eyes to make out where she pointed. “It’s another tunnel.”
“It means we don’t have to go back the way we came,” Olga said. “If there is someone waiting for us, we can avoid them.”
“But where does it lead?”
“Who knows?” Olga set off again towards the light and their friends.
The path grew lighter the closer they got to the hole. They ended up below and behind Matilda, Max, and Artan. William said, “Hey, don’t look down.”
Of course, all three of them turned and looked down. The bell tinkled louder than before, the diseased screaming in response.
“I said don’t look down. We’ve come to bust you out, but we need to be sly about this. Who knows if we’re being watched. Can you see anyone looking on?”
The bell tinkled again as all three of them looked around.
Matilda shook her head. “It seems clear.”
“Okay.” Olga this time. “We need to be quick. We’re going to come up and untie you. Then we need to get the hell out of here. You ready?”
Max nodded.
While holding up her right hand close to William’s face, Olga mouthed her fingers’ actions. Three, two, one.
On one, Olga climbed up first and William followed. Their friends were tied to a thick tree trunk. Vines had been plaited to make ropes. They were tied so tightly all three of their hands had turned purple.
The vines then fell loose. Olga stepped away while sheathing her sword. She jumped back down into the tunnel.
The diseased whipped into a frenzy, Max followed Olga, Artan next, and then Matilda. The dark mouth of the tunnel taunted William and he hesitated.
When William landed in the tunnel, he hugged Matilda. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
They parted, William hugging Max next. When he held on to Artan, the boy stiffened.
“We’ve got to move fast,” Max said. “They might not have been watching us, but they could have been listening and the bell has now stopped.”
Olga led the way, jogging until it became too dark again. She slowed to a walk, her steps heavy. She must have done it to make her easier to follow. She took the new tunnel back.
Matilda walked beside William and after a minute or two said, “How are you? Where have you been?”
“We’ve been looking for you. We went into Magma’s community.”
“What was it like?”
“Horrible,” Olga said. “Although, it helped me understand why Ranger’s such a dick. With an old man like that, he has no hope.”
William added, “We saw them behead two boys and take two girls away. We feared the worst for you.”
“Thank you for saving us,” Max said.
“You’d have—” Before Olga finished, she slammed into a wall with an “oomph”.
William reached up. Cold steel above him. Rough with rust, he lifted the sheet and walked his fingers along to the edge before hooking them over and sliding it free. The light dazzled him, but his breaths came more easily with the fresh air. They’d found a way out. Thank God.
Olga pointed up. “Give me a boost. I’ll see what’s going on.”
William joined his hands by linking his fingers, leaning down so she could step up. The grit on the soles of Olga’s boo
t stung his palms.
After just a second, Olga pulled back down, her skin pale. “We’re in Magma’s community.”
“Shit.”
“What do you want to do?”
William shook his head. “We can’t go back in there again.”
“So what, then?” Max said.
“I think we take our chances back the way we came in,” Olga said.
The thought of it clamped William’s chest tight. “Back through the tunnels?”
“That’s what I reckon. But I’ll do whatever you think’s best. You decide.”
The others stared at William. Matilda, Max, and Artan weren’t in a position to help him choose. And Olga had left it open. She would follow him through Magma’s community if that was what he needed. But it would be more about his needs than the group’s.
“What we know is there’s tens of people up there,” William said. “If we go back the way we came and there is anyone waiting for us”—he pointed up—“I don’t imagine there will be as many people as there are up there.” It took him a second to find the words. He reached up and slid the steel sheet into place. “Let’s go back.”
Chapter 16
William’s toe dropped into a crack in the ground, sending him stumbling forwards several steps. Again. The heavy stamp of his feet called up the tunnel, rats running away from the noise.
He flinched when someone touched his back. Matilda said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just a jagged bit of floor.”
A few feet later the dull glow of daylight on their right marked the cage their friends had been held in. He led them left, deeper into the gloom and back the way he and Olga had come from.
The darkness closed in around them again as they descended the hill. William jumped for a second time in as many minutes when something touched him. When Matilda found his hand, he squeezed back. “I’m so pleased you’re okay,” he said. “And … uh, nothing else happened to you, did it?”
“Other than being bound and tied to a pole?”
“Yeah.”
“No, that’s all.”
“Good. And, Artan, you’re okay?”
A grunt, nothing more. “Humph.”
“Max?”
When Max didn’t reply, Olga tried. “Max, honey?”
“Huh?” Max said.
Olga said, “Are you okay?”
“Oh … uh … yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
William again. “You’ve been through a lot in the past few days.”
After letting go of a hard sigh, Max said, “We all have.”
William shrugged. “Doesn’t make it any less real.”
“Fair enough. I was just thinking about Drake.”
“Your brother?” Olga said.
Max sighed again. “Yeah. I was wondering what happened to the others. What happened to my parents. You know, did it happen quickly? Which one went last and had to see it all unfold?”
“You did, Max.”
Olga’s words cut through the group, the near silence punctuated by Max’s stuttered breaths, his voice cracking when he said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Matilda said. “You need to let it out.”
Despite all of them stumbling once or twice, they reached the end of the tunnel without incident. William patted the rough stone wall, cold to touch. He found the ladder rungs by whacking the back of his left hand against one. “Shit.”
“You okay?” Olga said.
“Yeah.” He rubbed it quickly to ease the sting. “I’ve found the ladder.”
Olga again. “Let me go up first.”
“No, we’re here because I said we should come back, so I should go up and face whatever’s there.”
A wet sniff from where he clearly still struggled to control himself, Max said, “I should go up there.”
“I don’t think it’s the diseased we need to worry about, mate. My hope is, the people who closed this back over assumed Rayne left it that way, and they were tidying up after him. Hopefully, they’re long gone.”
Rough and uneven with rust, the ladder rungs were colder than the wall. William grabbed one in front of him with his left hand and one higher up with his right. He missed when he tried to find a rung with his foot. He caught it on his second attempt.
When William reached up and felt the underside of the metal sheet, he pushed, grunting from the effort. “It won’t budge.”
“Try again,” Matilda said.
The sheet held fast. “Still not budging.” William climbed higher, dipped his head, and pressed the back of his shoulders to the metal sheet. He held onto the ladder rung with both hands and used the strength in his legs to push, lifting the sheet with his back, dizzy with both the angle and the effort. Daylight flooded in, his eyes stinging from the sudden adjustment. “Got it!”
Olga said, “We can see that.”
The sheet shot away, and William gripped the ladder rung so it didn’t take him with it. The tip of a sword appeared just inches from his face. His entire body sagged. “Shit!”
Chapter 17
“Climb out of there slowly.” The woman stood with the sun at her back, its glare dazzling. She raised her voice at William’s friends. “All of you need to come out slowly or I’ll cut his eyes out before he has a chance to even consider running.”
When none of them replied, the woman yelled, “You hear me?” As she forced her words out, she jolted forward and nicked William’s cheek with the tip of her sword. It left a buzzing sting followed by the warm trickle of blood.
A chorus of dull voices, all but Artan replied, “Yes.”
“And I know there’s four more of you down there, so don’t try to mug me off.”
Directed by the woman’s weapon, William climbed from the hole and stood to attention. The sun no longer in his eyes, he now recognised the short woman from inside the fortress. The angry horn blower with the two tattoos around her neck, her thick monobrow still fixed in a hard scowl. The spiteful little thing emanated malice.
The woman’s long hair then shot to the side with a blow against the back of her head. A thick bar of wood. Tonk! Her eyes rolled and her legs buckled. Clang! Her sword hit the ground before falling into the hole William had just climbed from.
Olga shouted, “Steady on. We’re coming up.”
“Am I glad to see you,” William said to a smiling Samson. And then he called into the hole, “It’s okay, Olga. Samson just knocked her out and she dropped her sword. Someone can keep that as a weapon. Come up slowly; we’re safe.”
Samson clamped a hug around William that squeezed the air from his lungs and cracked his back. The large man kissed the top of his head before stepping away, a wide beaming grin dominating his face. “Am I glad to see you’re okay.”
Olga was the next one out of the hole, Max close behind, before William said, “How did you know we’d be here?”
“We saw you go in, and I convinced Missy to wait for you to come back out again. That way I knew it wouldn’t get back to the community and I could help you.”
Her hands on her hips, Olga stepped close to Samson and looked him up and down. “Why do you keep on helping us?”
“You’ve seen what they do in there.”
Max looked at the wooden fence close by while Artan crawled from the hole with Missy’s sword in his grip. Olga and William remained fixed on Samson.
“I can’t do much when the whole community are against me, but when I’m out here, it’s different. Besides, I don’t want to stay here. Where are you going?”
Matilda emerged as the last of them while William pulled the scrunched-up map from his back pocket. He unfolded it to reveal their intended destination: the small community outside the ruins. He gave his friends a moment to object. “We’re going here.”
“What’s there?”
“We think another community. We can’t stay out in the wild forever. And anywhere’s got to be better than Edin, right?”
Samson raised his eyebrows.
“Okay, maybe there are worse places, but chances are we can find somewhere better.”
“And you think this is the place?”
“We hope it is,” Olga said.
A usually confident man, Samson’s shoulders hunched and he dropped his attention to his feet. “Do you have room in your party for one more?”
“I get the impression very few people are loyal to Magma and want to be in that place?” William said.
Samson paused and turned his head to one side. “There’s a handful of fanatics, but not many.”
“Do you know Trent?”
“Yeah. I’d count him in the few.”
“He has a friend. A short black kid who was sent out hunting earlier today.”
“Cyrus.”
“If you say so.”
“Yeah, it’s Cyrus.”
“We owe him. He let us through in the national service area when Edin fell, and I promised I’d be back for him.”
“So you want me to bring him with me?”
“Can you?” William said. Then he checked the others. “Unless anyone objects?”
Of all of them, Artan’s face twisted. But the glaze remained in the boy’s eyes. He could have been thinking about something entirely different.
“I can get him out of the community. I’ll take him hunting with me and we won’t come back. Where shall we meet you and when?”
A large and twisted metal structure sat just over a hill in the direction of the new community. A skeleton of steel, the top ten feet or so visible, it was much more hidden behind the brow. The top had corroded with time. From the width of what remained, it had once been at least three times its current height. “That tower?” William said. “How about we meet you there in the morning?” The air had a slight bite to it from where the afternoon had grown long. “We all need a rest before we move on. We’ll find somewhere to sleep and meet you there at first light. Sound good?”
Samson’s familiar beaming smile returned and he clamped another tight hug on William before working through the others. When he got to Artan, the boy snarled, his fists balled, his shoulders pulled back.
“Thanks again,” Samson said, eyeing Artan as he stepped away from him. “Can one of you hit me?”
Beyond These Walls (Book 5): After Edin Page 8