“Of course,” Matilda said.
Before either of them could ask Hugh, the short and squat boy said, “I’m with you both, wherever that leads us. We’re in this together, right? But if we’re going in, I also need to go through tailoring.”
Hopefully Hugh hadn’t noticed Matilda’s reaction. Although her features fell at the prospect of him joining them, she righted them a second later.
William spoke before she could. “We’ll find James, just like we’ll find my mum and dad and Artan.” And it would do them good to have Hugh with them. The boy could take on armies of diseased by himself.
Hard not to focus on the creatures tearing through it, William followed the line of the main street all the way to the back wall. On foggy days, the city stretched so far into the distance he couldn’t always see the other side. The clear morning gave him a view straight to the wooden scaffolding. “We need to plan to go out the back.”
“Through the eviction gate?” Matilda said.
“Yeah. There seems little point in travelling all the way through the city to then turn around and do it again on the way back. Besides, the eviction gate died with Edin’s collapse. It’s just a gate now.”
A wet sniff, Hugh turned to them again. “There’s just two more things we need to think about before we go.”
Both William and Matilda waited.
“First”—Hugh pointed at Trent’s crew on the roof of the dorm—“what do we do about them?”
Although Matilda turned around, William didn’t.
“If we go through the eviction gate,” Hugh said, “how will we help them?”
Matilda said, “We have our own path to tread. I hate to say this, but getting to our loved ones has to be our priority. It’s certainly mine.”
The kid in Trent’s crew had saved their lives no more than ten minutes earlier. They owed him, but what else could they do? William finally looked their way and then out into the wasteland and ruined city beyond. “And even if we do get them off the roof, where will we take them? Everywhere’s a mess.”
“Okay.” Hugh nodded.
“And the second point?” Matilda said.
Hugh peered over the edge of the gym, the mob below screeching at the sight of the boy. They were surrounded on all sides, the ladder their only possible escape. “How do we get down?”
Chapter 18
Two hours earlier
The guards had focused on Olga and what she’d done to one of their own, but now, as she tore back through them, several of them still biting down on their whistles, they had much greater things to worry about than her. More diseased on her tail than she’d ever seen in her life, she tore through the uniformed enforcers and Edin’s citizens alike, running with everything she had.
The charging creatures at her back released a call that sounded like hell had been torn open. But it was the very human cries and screams of Edin’s citizens falling to the swarm that took almost all the strength from her legs. As much as Olga hated many things about the city she’d grown up in, she didn’t want to see it collapse. Not like this. So many innocent lives wiped out because … because of what? How did they get in?
Even with her broken arm, Olga had maintained her training. The second she could, she’d started running again, and a good job too; many of Edin’s citizens would fall because they weren’t fit enough. Although she’d left her mum and dad behind when she’d gone to find Max, she had to get back to them now and make sure they were okay. The route to laundry clear of diseased, if she kept this pace, she’d reach them ahead of the creatures.
A small lead on the swarm, Olga looked back. The diseased filled the street, the mob so dense they could block somewhere twice the width. Shoulder to shoulder, they flooded forwards. While some of the front-running diseased disappeared into ceramics on one side of the road, others ran into woodwork. Hopefully the gang she’d encountered would get hit first. But even with the numbers vanishing to each side, the pack didn’t thin.
As Olga turned back around, a guard slammed into her, his shoulder sinking into her stomach and driving the air from her lungs. She landed on her back, the guard on top of her.
It was the guard whose foot she’d stamped on. Olga shoved him, but he wouldn’t budge. “What are you doing?”
“If I’m going down, so are you.” The guard sprayed spittle in her face. “You’ve broken my foot, you spiteful bitch!”
He was easily three times heavier than her; Olga wriggled and squirmed, but she couldn’t get free.
The guard leaned so close, the whites of his eyes dazzled Olga. “And to think I saved you from woodwork.”
“Saved me? You wanted to arrest me.”
The guard raised a balled fist, and from the tight clench of his jaw, he clearly intended to punch her unconscious. But when he moved to ready his blow, he shifted his weight, giving her the chance to bring her knee up between his legs.
Olga’s kneecap sank into his crotch, driving the guard’s mouth wide in a gasp. As he leaned to the side, she used his momentum to throw him off, jump to her feet, and crack him across the face with his own baton. He moved as if to get up, so she cracked him again, knocking him out with the second blow and sending a spray of blood from his mouth.
The diseased no more than twenty feet away, Olga turned to run but stopped instantly. Ahead of her, a swarm of the creatures flooded from tailoring. As the neighbour of woodwork, they must have moved through the gaps in the walls. They’d cut off her route to laundry. “Shit!”
Chapter 19
The kids on the roof of Phoenix’s old dorm had clearly seen William and the others, all eight of them facing their way. The lanky figure of Trent stood at least a foot taller than those around him. Obviously still pissed from when William sucker-punched him, he watched them with a hard scowl crushing his features. The kid who’d let them through without raising an alarm fixed William with a silent plea, a reminder of what he’d done for them.
But it would be hard enough going forwards without returning to save a group of rookies. They needed to find their own way. Every person for themselves. And when it came to a straight choice, it might have been harsh, but loved ones were more important than strangers.
Olga and Hugh peered over the side of the gym at the diseased. Maybe they didn’t feel the guilt, or maybe they simply chose not to engage with it. William joined them. “There must be one hundred of them down there.”
“At least,” Matilda said.
Hugh shook his head. “Too many to fight.” He sounded disappointed.
Most of the diseased looked up and worked their jaws, showing their bloodstained teeth in their dark mouths.
William shuddered to be on the receiving end of such an intensified hatred, so he broke eye contact with the creatures and looked out over the fallen city. Their experience on national service had nothing on the chaos now running through the streets of their former home.
The squeak of cartwheels and clop of hooves below, a large piebald horse walked around the corner of the gym, dragging a carriage behind it. It moved at a slow pace, cutting a path through the diseased. Despite their close proximity to one another, the diseased and the horse existed as strangers. The diseased focused on anything human; the horse wandered aimlessly, suddenly deprived of the job it had done for years. Another one of Edin’s displaced residents.
William pointed down at the creature. “Surely that’s our way out of here.”
“It looks like it’ll pass through the diseased without any problems,” Hugh said.
Matilda nodded. “And the carriage’s roof will keep us high enough from the ground.”
“But how do we get to it?” Hugh said.
With the horse and carriage a good eight feet from the gym’s walls, he had a point. They were too high up to jump from the roof, and it hadn’t yet walked close enough to the ladder. Yet. “I think it’ll come closer,” William said.
“Through that lot?” Matilda pointed down. The closer the diseased were to the gy
m, the denser the crowd.
There seemed little point in discussing what could and couldn’t happen until they tried something. William moved across to the ladder and climbed down it backwards.
About two feet from the reach of the tallest diseased, the heady and palpable reek of rot in the air, William held onto a rung with one hand and reached towards the horse with the other. While clicking his fingers, he made a kissing sound through his teeth.
The horse had one brown and one white ear. They swished in response to the sound.
William tried again, and the deep brown eyes of the languid creature turned his way. So intent on alerting the horse, he didn’t care about the reaching arms from the sea of creatures below. He shut out their cries and shouts, kissing through his teeth again.
“That’s it,” William said when the horse took steps towards him. Despite the press of bodies, the creatures yielded to the horse’s unstoppable progress.
While still clicking his fingers, he continued to kiss through his teeth. “Come on, boy.”
“How do you know it’s a boy?” Matilda said.
Although he remained fixed on the horse, William shouted up, “Do you really need to ask me that?”
Where there had been a gap of ten feet or more between William and the horse, his efforts coaxed the creature closer. Eight feet. Six feet. But then it stopped. Were it any nearer, he’d be able to step onto the roof of the carriage.
“Come on, boy. Here, here, come to William. Come on.”
But the density of the crowd prevented it getting closer.
Matilda showed how well she knew William when she called down, “The gap’s too far to jump. Don’t even think about it.”
When he didn’t respond, she added, “Remember the time when you tried to jump from a wall onto the roof of the factory in textiles?”
“That was once. In all the times we climbed up there, I missed once.”
“You think you have a second chance if you screw up this jump?”
As William climbed a few rungs higher, his attention on his friends above, Matilda let it go. She meant well; he understood that. But the amount of times she’d reminded him of his fall when he’d tried to get on the roof of the factory in textiles … Once! He’d only failed the jump once, yet she brought it up again and again as if it got funnier in the retelling.
Still several feet from the gym’s roof, William turned back to the horse. It had watched him climb, remaining about six feet from the building.
“William! Don’t!”
William jumped, kicking away from the wall to propel himself through the air towards the carriage. He flew over the heads of the diseased. Wide red eyes watched him, and he nearly watched them back, but he remained fixed on his intended target.
Falling slightly short, William hooked his hands over the far side of the carriage, his knees cracking against the near side. The sharp sting sent a hot wave of nausea through him. Despite his now sweating palms, he held on. A hard enough task on its own, the hands of several diseased then grabbed onto his hanging feet.
William kicked his legs, but the landing had robbed him of his strength to pull himself up onto the roof.
The wooden cart shook and wobbled as more diseased crashed against it in their desperation to get to him. The horse whinnied, the carriage moving back and forth with its steps.
His grip still sure, his arms still too weak to pull him up, William held on as the creature bolted, tearing off across the national service area, dragging him away from the diseased.
Dragging him away from Hugh and Matilda.
Chapter 20
Two hours earlier
The residential part of agriculture butted up against the main street. The fields stretched out to Edin’s external wall. With one side of the city falling quicker than the other because of the gaps between woodwork and its neighbouring districts, Olga had no choice but to dart right.
The diseased spilling from tailoring into the main street, Olga moved at a flat-out sprint when she jumped and kicked off the back wall of one of the many one-storey houses, catching the roof and pulling herself up as several crazed creatures slammed into the building a second too late.
Looking at the uneven spread of roofs stretching out ahead of her, she pressed her ribs. Tender from her collision with the guard, but probably not broken. The diseased hadn’t yet entered agriculture. Maybe she could give the people a heads-up on her way to laundry. No more than a few feet ahead of the creatures, she stuffed the guard’s baton into her belt and took off, her feet twisting and turning with the roofs’ angles.
Olga jumped from house to house, clearing several narrow alleys as she aimed for agriculture’s main street. Filled with people who appeared to be going to work, but many of them had stopped and looked at the sky as if it had answers as to why they heard so many diseased. “Get inside your houses now. Edin’s fallen; the streets belong to the diseased!”
Maybe they didn’t hear what she said, because despite her warnings, the citizens stared at her like she’d lost her mind. Not a single one of them moved.
“Go now, you fools. Hide before it’s too—”
The shriek of the diseased cut her off. They’d entered the district. The ones at the front took down citizens in their path, but it didn’t slow their forward momentum, those behind driving the pack on at the same frantic pace.
Still ahead of the beasts, Olga shouted with everything she had. “Edin’s fallen. Get to safety before it’s too late.”
The same blank looks regarded her, now dividing their time between the crazy girl on the roofs and the chaos charging through the streets towards them. Yet the stupid bastards still did nothing. Olga said it more to herself than agriculture’s fallen residents. Too late for them now. “What the hell do you hope to achieve staying down there?”
That part of agriculture now lost, Olga shook her head and continued towards laundry.
When she reached a busy but narrower street, a guard pointed up at her and blew her whistle. “You, girl, get down from there.”
“Edin’s fallen. Save yourself before it’s too late.”
If only the guard had drawn the baton to fight the diseased rather than as a threat to her.
Olga could do nothing more than watch as her angry glare fell slack when she turned to face the onrushing madness. Seconds mattered, but none of them got it. Like the other people she’d tried to warn, she watched the disease roll right over the guard.
No way could she beat the diseased to laundry or help the people of agriculture. Why waste the energy? Soon she’d be a minority in the city, if not already. She needed to save her strength. Olga made her way back across the rooftops to the soundtrack of screams and cries that were now Edin’s requiem. She jumped several small alleyways—all of them jam-packed with insanity—until she reached the city’s main road. As packed with diseased as the rest of the place, she stared over the heads of the beasts in the direction of the laundry district. Her mum and dad had probably already fallen, but she had to check. Although, with at least twenty feet of road packed with the foul creatures, checking might not be so easy.
Chapter 21
So focused on holding on, it took William a few seconds to stop kicking his legs, the diseased now far behind him as the horse continued to gallop away from the hut.
The beat of the horse’s hooves and the shaking of the rickety carriage sent William’s body into a pendulous swing. It seemed as if every bump in the ground shot through the wooden vehicle, stinging his hands and challenging his grip. But at least they’d broken away from the diseased.
The gap between William and the diseased had opened wide enough for him to let go. He could get on the roof of a nearby dorm. But what good would that do? That would only leave him in the same shitty situation as Trent and his friends. And what if he fell when he landed? The rumble of the carriage’s large wooden wheels spoke volumes for what they’d do to his brittle body.
The window frame in the carriage’s d
oor protruded by about an inch. The tendons in his fingers ready to snap, William clamped his teeth, grunted, and lifted his right foot onto the ledge.
One foot in place, he braced his swinging body, halting it enough to get the second foot on the small lip. His fingers were still about to fail him, but it bought him a few more seconds.
The horse appeared to be running without direction, clearly spooked by the riled diseased. But they were now far enough away for the large stallion to slow to a canter.
William boosted off the window ledge and scrambled onto the roof, falling onto his back while opening and closing his hands. As his pain subsided, so did the ferocious cries of the charging diseased. From where he lay, he couldn’t see them, so they obviously couldn’t see him. They might have still been following, much like when they’d remained outside the dorm, but like outside the dorm, they sounded like they’d forgotten their reason for being there.
A moment to catch his breath, William massaged his knuckles. By the time the mob caught up to the now stationary horse and carriage, he’d relieved the fiery pain. From the shrieks and tormented cries, the diseased were clearly as disturbed as ever, but their calls lacked the focus of the hunt. All the while he’d assumed they were blind; how could they see through bleeding eyes? But there had been times when their behaviour challenged that assumption. Like how could they fix on their prey when they were surrounded by hundreds of baying spectators in the middle of a packed arena? They were probably very far from twenty-twenty, but they clearly saw something.
Collapse: Book four of Beyond These Walls - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Page 8
