“Not quite,” she grunted, and promptly swung her fist directly into Ashia’s face, catching her unawares. The woman crumpled, staggering backwards, hands to her nose, blood streaming between her fingers. “Go!” Hawkins urged, pushing Misha towards the door.
“No!” Arnold roared, seizing hold of Hawkins’ shoulder, but the Judge ducked under his reach, spun round to face him, grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, then planted a solid headbutt on him, which dropped him like a stone.
Hawkins turned to see Ashia look up from her cupped, crimson-streaked hands, eyes narrowed, and went to shoulder-barge the woman out of the way, but the cultist stepped back, smoothly drawing a knife. She slashed out and Hawkins was unable to avoid the blade’s arc, the wicked edge slicing her bicep. The Judge hissed in pain, stumbling into the shelving and knocking piles of documents onto the floor. She put a hand to the wound, feeling the hot pulse of blood trickling down her arm.
She watched Misha tear open the door just as one of the knuckleheads outside made to reach for her, and the girl nimbly dropped to a crouch and shot out her right foot, which contacted savagely with the man’s ankle. He yelped and keeled over, his leg taken out from under him, and she followed up with a heel strike to his temple that bounced his head off the floor as she leapt towards the exit.
The Judge turned back to face Ashia just as she stepped forward and thrust the blade towards the older woman’s chest. Hawkins scrabbled behind her for a boxfile and brought it round as a shield, the tip of the knife wedging in the cardboard lid. Ashia angrily attempted to wrest it free while Hawkins’ icily numb left arm reached up and secured another box from the shelf, swinging it as hard as she could into the side of the cultist’s skull. The file exploded, sheaves of paper fountaining out, as Ashia dropped to her knees, a dark red bead running down from her hairline. She looked momentarily stunned. Hawkins didn’t hesitate: she gripped the knife handle, yanked it out, then drove it deep into the other woman’s throat. Ashia coughed up bloody sputum, her eyes rolled in their sockets and she fell sideways to the carpet.
Hawkins slid the blade from Ashia’s neck and glanced up in time to see the second thug hoist Misha up against the corridor wall, meaty hands around her windpipe. She stumbled forward, feet slipping on the paper covering the floor, left arm slick with blood and throbbing intensely. She’d need to bind it before she passed out. The guard that the girl had hobbled was groaning and attempting to rise, so as she passed him, she aimed a swift kick to the jaw that silenced him permanently.
Misha’s eyes locked on Hawkins’ as the Judge stepped up behind the goon, unaware of her presence, and she cut the guy’s trachea with ruthless efficiency. Blood spray caught the teenager in the face before the thug’s hands went slack and dropped her, and it continued to spritz in a wide semi-circle as he staggered for a few seconds, the walls and ceiling painted crimson as if from a high-pressure hose. Then he hit the deck and was still.
“Jesus,” Misha spluttered, running a hand over her eyes and mouth, blood caked in her hair. “Oh, Christ.”
“We need to go,” Hawkins said, offering the girl a hand to help her stand. “Right now.”
“No shit.” Misha pulled herself up with the Judge’s support, coughing and rubbing her bruised neck. She looked round at the carnage. “What the fuck, Hawkins?”
“No choice. Them or us, you know that.”
“What about the old man? Is he dead too?”
“Just out for the count, I think. Now, c’mon, let’s go.”
“Wait… your arm.”
The older woman looked down at the blood-sodden sleeve and nodded reluctantly. “Get me something to wrap around this.” The girl did as she was asked and divested one of the cultists of their shirts, ripping it in half to use it as bandage. When she pulled it tight around Hawkins’ bicep, the Judge snarled in pain; one of the few times that the teenager had heard her vocalise discomfort. Nevertheless, she inspected it and nodded her thanks.
The Judge pushed Misha down the corridor back towards the entrance, the girl looking back to the older woman in concern. They returned to the deserted lobby; Misha glanced to one side at the tall, heavy doors they’d seen on the way in, and held up a hand to Hawkins. She jogged over, grasped a heavy handle and eased it open a crack, poking her head around the frame. Inside were row upon row of pews, stretching into the distance for a good fifty feet or so, but there was no icons, no paintings to accompany them—indeed, the room’s original furniture (she made out a lot of maps and workstations) was still in the room, albeit shoved to one side. They were making their own church, she supposed. Then she saw at the front of the pews, where the altar would be, what looked like a pair of home-made wooden crosses with straps attached, at wrist and ankle height. They looked like something that had been dragged out of an S&M dungeon. She quickly retreated and pulled the door shut again.
“What’s up?” Hawkins asked, reading her expression as the girl joined her once more. “What’s in there?”
“Better you don’t know,” she replied, wondering how that mad old bastard Arnold had planned to execute them in front of his gathered followers. What had he said he wanted to do—put his people’s minds at rest? Show them that the Great Journey was nothing to be fearful of? Funny how these death cults were a little less keen on dying themselves than they were about encouraging others to do so. “You were right about the kink, Hawkins.”
The Judge grunted.
“Or they’re polishing their boots, waiting to be called in to witness it.”
Hawkins slipped out and descended the stone steps a touch clumsily, legs evidently weak, and the teen followed her onto the street. The Judge pointed eastwards, which was the nearest direction to a perimeter wall, and her companion silently nodded, before the two of them set off as fast as they could, half crouched as if expecting discovery at any moment, and looking furtively to either side with every step. They were soon within a hundred yards of the corrugated metal barrier that marked the town’s boundary, and it looked intimidatingly impenetrable up close, rising up before them like a towering wave.
“How are we going to get past that?” Misha whispered.
“Ways and means, gotta be,” Hawkins muttered. Then she pointed: “There.”
The girl followed her gaze and saw that the Judge was indicating a tall, narrow iron ladder bolted to the wall that scaled its full height. “Aw, man.”
“You got a problem with heights?”
“I got a problem with falling to my death. That thing does not look safe.”
“Are you in any fit state to be climbing ladders? You could barely handle stairs a minute ago. You’re still recovering—”
She stumble-ran, head down, for the foot of the ladder, staying within the shadow of the wall as soon as she was close enough. Once there, she cast a glance up, established there were no guards in view, and started to ascend. Watching, Misha winced as Hawkins’ limbs failed her, feet slipping, fingers failing to find purchase when she lost her balance and she had to hug herself to the risers. The Judge would pause for a second to catch her breath before continuing, slower every time. Words of encouragement were on the tip of Misha’s tongue, but she decided it’d be foolish to say anything aloud.
The older woma
n was over halfway when the girl heard the sound of angry consternation heading in their direction. Misha retreated into foliage and cast an eye back towards from where they’d come—Arnold, sporting a golf-ball-sized lump on his forehead, and a five-strong lynch mob were storming towards their position. She returned without further ado to the ladder and quickly began to follow the Judge up.
“What are you doing?” the Judge hissed when she saw Misha catching up with her, the rungs trembling both with the added weight and the girl’s urgency. Rusty bolts screwed into the metal squealed under the strain. “This can’t take the both of us—”
The teenager jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Trouble coming.”
Hawkins looked past her and saw the group getting nearer. “Oh, shit,” she murmured and scrambled towards the top, feet clumsily missing rungs and making the ladder sway alarmingly. There were some shouts from below, and suddenly searchlights stationed along the wall were cranked on, dazzling beams sweeping the pair’s position.
A shot rang out, ricocheting off a nearby stanchion. Misha yelped, saw Arnold raising the revolver again as he stood at the foot of the ladder, and she practically flung herself upwards. “Keep your head down!” she shouted to the Judge, fixing her sights on the brow of the wall. “He’s—”
But the rest of the sentence was drowned out by the gun’s second report and her own scream as she saw blood spray across the corrugated metal where the slug had torn through Hawkins’ midriff. The older woman lost her grip and tumbled down several feet, only to get her leg wrapped around the rungs, and she dangled momentarily, just above Misha. Their gazes locked for a second, and the girl thought she saw a small smile grace the Judge’s heavily scarred features; then she fell again, plummeting past her to hit the ground with a dull thud, just a few yards from where Arnold stood. Misha stared down in shock as she saw Hawkins’ left leg tremble and flex slightly, realising that she was still alive. The small crowd that had come after them gathered round her twitching form.
Meanwhile, a searchlight beam caught the girl in its glare and she froze, transfixed in the light. She heard words being bellowed at her from above, and followed the sound in a daze, peering up at a couple of silhouettes leaning over the parapet. They waved at her to continue ascending, and after once more glancing down at the body of her friend she complied, dumbly putting one foot above the other until she was within the figures’ reach. She was roughly hauled over the side onto the top of the perimeter wall, where she lay, catching her breath.
End of the road.
SHOCK MADE TIME elastic, then. Misha abandoned any resistance. She remembered being pulled to her feet and marched along the wall, but couldn’t piece together how long she’d been walking, or when she’d stopped, to be left standing on the lip of a platform jutting out over the blasted landscape beyond the compound. The wind blew past her, bringing with it the smell of corruption. In the distance she saw fires burning. She felt she’d been made to stand here for hours, though it surely could only have been minutes—either way, the strength was ebbing from her legs, and her head felt full of cotton wool.
“Kneel,” a voice behind her said, and she dropped to the ground with some degree of relief. She hadn’t been allowed to look around, or speak, so the first time she was aware of others being up there with her was when a couple of cultists entered her field of vision, holding Hawkins between them. The Judge was in a pitiful state—face bruised extensively, one hand bent like a claw as if her wrist was broken, uniform ripped and bloody—and she offered nothing but a low groan as if she wasn’t entirely there either.
“So we commit another living soul to the earth.” It could only be Arnold, somewhere to her right, out of sight. “As the spirit passes, it joins the multitude, moving to a better plane of existence. Listen: they’re all around us, thronging to watch the world’s demise. To those dead, we offer our respect and fealty. You are the exalted ones. You have achieved a pureness of being that we can only envy. One day we will all be with you, when the planet has breathed its last. But until that moment, accept our offering—to show that we too will ascend from this crude matter, for that is our purpose and destiny. In the name of the spirit.”
“In the name of the spirit,” echoed multiple voices, some of them as if from a distance. The congregation must be watching this from the ground, gathered at the foot of the wall.
Arnold walked into view—now wearing a blood-red full-length ceremonial robe—indicated that the two holding Hawkins should release her, then reached up and gently planted a kiss on the woman’s forehead. She stood there, shaking slightly, meeting his gaze before he shoved her sharply backwards off the platform.
“No!” Misha screamed and scrambled forward on instinct, only to feel hands roughly grasp her shoulders and keep her in place. Arnold looked around at the interjection, catching her eye for a second, then beckoned with his finger. The teen was hoisted up and frogmarched to the spot where the Judge had stood mere moments before. Tears streaming down her cheeks, an uncontrollable trembling taking over her body, she peered over the lip of the parapet and saw below Hawkins’ broken form, impaled on crude metal spikes that had been positioned along the perimeter. Judging by the skeletal remains scattered nearby, the Judge hadn’t been the first to be thrown to her death.
“Hush, child,” Arnold whispered in her ear, bending close. “It’ll be over soon. A moment of trauma and then the greatest of transformations.”
“Fuck you, maniac,” she spat back between chattering teeth.
He smiled and straightened. “So we commit another living soul to the earth—” he started, voice raised, then faltered. He cocked his head to one side. The whine of engines could be heard in the distance, growing louder by the second. “What is that?” he muttered.
“All Father, look!” One of the cultists holding Misha’s arm let go and pointed in the direction of the horizon. She followed his gaze and saw what he was indicating—half a dozen Justice Department H-Wagons were approaching the compound, coming in low and fast.
She closed her eyes in quiet despair. The forces of De’Ath had found them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE FIRST GUY that got taken out decided he’d exit as a martyr. It was one of the numbskulls that had been holding her down, Misha realised; as soon as he saw the H-wagons approaching, he scrambled to the lip of the platform edge and flung his arms wide open as if to embrace the rush of the divine. A laser bolt from the lead ship blew him apart like a puff of wind through a dandelion clock.
Fuck that, the girl thought, shielding her head from the waft of atomised cultist. She got to her feet and ran around the edge of the town wall, looking for a way back to ground level and eventually finding a rickety set of wooden steps, which many others were scrambling down. Arnold was nowhere to be seen. No one attempted to stop her—or, indeed, seemed to notice she was there. They had more pressing concerns now. The craft roared overhead and everyone in her vicinity ducked instinctively, their faces etched with confusion and fear.
Wasn’t this what they wanted, she wondered. Hadn’t they resigned themselves to their own personal apocalypse? It seemed that despite worshipping—indeed, welcoming—the end of the world, to be actually confronted with oblivion was a whole other matter. Suddenly, shit had, as it were, got real, and they were as frightened as anyone else. Their secluded little fortress of Libitina, or whatever stupid name they’d given themselves, had been far from the epicentre of De’Ath’s purges, had escaped the organised slaughter up—until now. For Arnold and his deluded followers, extinction became a romantic ideal; a rapturous end-of-days event in which their spirits transported to paradise. Now, though, cold hard reality had come crashing into their idyll, and it wasn’t at all as swoonsome as they’d been led to believe.
The craft banked for a second pass and they let loose more laser fire, blowing apart several houses in thunderous explosions of brickwork and plaster fragments, before slowing to come in to hover. Clearing space to land, Misha realised.
Three of them descended like this, while the fourth circled the compound repeatedly, tracing the outline of the perimeter wall. Suddenly that barrier around the town didn’t seem so smart: rather than affording protection, it was hemming the people in like sheep in a pen.
Seemingly having nowhere to run to didn’t stop the cultists scattering in panic. Some made for shelter in the buildings still standing, while others fled towards the main gate. She heard them shouting about getting it unlocked and using the compound’s vehicles. Misha followed that group, remembering that she and Hawkins had been brought here by a pair of buggies—if she could steal a ride on one of those, she’d be free and clear in no time.
As she ran with a surging crowd, she flashbacked to the night of the Fall and realised she was doing much the same thing as that night, all these months later: fleeing De’Ath’s footsoldiers amongst a terrified throng, people stumbling and tripping in their haste to escape. Then, it’d been on the choked streets of the capital, citizens screaming as confusion reigned as to what was going on—the Judges, indiscriminately firing upon anyone in their path, had initially been a mystery. She’d lost her boyfriend Joel that night; a snap of gunfire and he’d tumbled to the tarmac beside her, blood leaking from his head wound. It was only luck and the kindness of strangers that meant she hadn’t met a similar fate. Now, on either side of her, townsfolk staggered and fell, but momentum carried her forward, not allowing her to stop even if she was so inclined. These people meant nothing to her. For all she knew, they would’ve happily watched Arnold sacrifice both her and Hawkins; she wasn’t going to start feeling any sympathy for these end-of-the-world-loving bozos now they were getting a taste of their own medicine.
She looked back and saw the three H-wagons had touched down and were lowering their landing ramps, disgorging armed greys. They came out shooting, targeting without hesitation the scared masses running for their lives. The air was filled with the crackle of gunfire and the thump of carcasses hitting the ground.
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