The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5)

by Michelle Muckley

  “I wondered if you were thinking about the Adoration of Life Ceremony. It was quite something, wasn’t it?” She briefly closed her eyes to picture the memory of what they had just witnessed. The sounds of excitement were still rife in the corridors outside. He imagined there would be many other couples lying in bed just like they were, hoping to fall pregnant. “Just do as I tell you to and you will be fine,” she said, brushing her fingers through his hair. He had to admit, it felt so good to have her running her hands over him like that. “Anyway, you will have the rest of the team there with you. I’m sure they’ll do whatever necessary to keep you safe.”

  And that was the problem. It wasn’t the road leading up to the tower that troubled Zack. And even though Gamma Tower had gone rogue, it wasn’t even the chaos inside it which made him anxious. After all, he had survived ten years in Delta Tower. It was the fact that Omega hadn’t decided to send in the Salvation Army, or a team of do-gooders to help bring the residents back into the fold. They were sending a team of murderers who had no problem killing the Drifters. The very same Drifters who had infiltrated Gamma Tower.

  The Drifters were not the enemy. They were looking for freedom, for a way out, probably from the same conditions that Zack himself had suffered and endured in Delta. These people were the same as he was in many ways. But they weren't exactly the same. Zack had lived blindly for ten years. He hadn't questioned his existence or what he saw before him. He had lived like a man who took for granted that what he saw before him was the truth. But the people in Gamma Tower weren't doing this. They are a feisty little bunch, that's what Simon had said. They wanted more. They wanted something better and they were prepared to fight for it. Tomorrow was no rescue mission. He was under no illusions about that. It was going to be a bloodbath.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  After less than twenty minutes the van pulled over to the side of a nearly-ruined road. They drew to a halt at an angle, the left side wheels dropping into a fault in the surface. The Sun was yet to rise in the sky, and inside the van was so dark Zack could barely see in front of him. The only source of light was the small shoulder lamp that Nielsen had switched on.

  Zack tried to focus on the task that lay ahead, but the events which followed the Adoration of Life Ceremony yesterday played on his mind. He had fallen asleep in Sarah’s bed, waking up in the early hours of today. He had forgotten to meet Serena the night before, and that meant that he had missed the chance to get a message to Leonard. Plus, he hadn’t completed his Renunciation Pledge. The only positive was that he assumed many people would have forgotten amid the excitement, so perhaps the authorities would be more lenient. Even Sarah had forgotten, unless she slipped out in the time when he was asleep.

  With the aid of Nielsen’s lamp, he and Lund had been playing cards. They covered their knees with a jacket to create a functional table top. On two separate occasions the excitement of whatever game it was they were playing had spilled over and the cards had toppled to the floor. Zack couldn’t see Duke, but he could hear him breathing somewhere in the far corner. He sounded irritated, like a caged bull waiting to fight.

  The rumble of the tyres resonated into the van as it grated over the loose surface, levelling off as the driver turned the van out of the hole in the road. They completed what Zack assumed to be a one hundred and eighty degree turn, taking the road inch by agonising inch. Duke was the first one to his feet. As Nielsen heard him stand he tossed the jacket and the cards to the floor. The light from his shoulder lamp shone on Duke’s orange suit so that Zack could appreciate his overbearing size. He was both tall and broad, shaped like a crucifix. He angled his head left and right peering out from a small slatted window on the side of the van. After what looked like a thorough assessment, he turned to the rest of the passengers.

  “Right, Fuckers. Get your shit together.” It was a warm morning, even at this early hour, and Zack could feel the sweat trickling down his back already. He looked around, wondering what shit it was exactly that he was supposed to organise. “Not you, Delta. It looks to me like there's a roadblock up ahead. Those fuckers have done a good job of trying to cut us off. Don't need you stepping out of the van and getting your arse killed. You're supposed to be the brains of this operation, remember?”

  Duke punched in a series of numbers on the keypad and the doors opened, letting in the first chinks of weak morning light. The relieving breeze which followed was cool, and Zack pulled at the edge of his neckline to let some of the air trickle inside his suit. The rest of the men, some of which were really only boys, were all standing up. As each one of them jumped out the vehicle bounced on its suspension. Duke was the last one. Just before he stepped out he took a glance in Zack's direction. There was perhaps never a time in the past when Zack had felt more out of place and simultaneously more useless than in this moment. He couldn't shake the feeling of sympathy for the people in Gamma Tower, who as far as Zack could see were just trying to free themselves from whatever chains it was that Omega had bound them in. There was part of him that felt proud of them, an acknowledgement of their ability to do something nobody in Delta had achieved. Not for the first time since they had set off, he wondered what it was they were doing here, and if there was any way he could convince himself that he was doing the right thing.

  Duke jumped from the van, and it bounced up as if it had been freed from a slingshot. Within seconds Duke slammed the outer doors shut, and Zack was back in the heat and the dark. The only sound that he could hear was the feet of the men as they negotiated the rough ground outside. Zack stood up and moved towards the side panel and tried to glance out of the narrow window. He realised the paint was flaky, and so he rubbed at it with more force, using the edge of the strap that held the sleeve tightly to the glove of his suit. After a while he managed to clear a small space, enough to peek through. The longer he stared the more his vision became accustomed to the low level of light. After a few seconds he began to visualise what lay beyond his confines.

  He could see the orange boiler suits moving further and further away from him. They formed an imperfect line, snaking across the tracks on the ground that had been created by the turn of the van. The air was dust filled, like a sandstorm in a desert. Every now and then a breeze would clear the air so that Zack could see further ahead. But then the dust would retaliate, swamping everything back into a cloud.

  After seeing Gamma for the first time he thought that it looked less of a tower and more like a lump. It appeared like a factory might have once looked, or a warehouse. Most of the walls that he could see during the intermittent flashes through the dust were made from corrugated metal which reminded him of NAVIMEG, and therefore Emily. That brought him some comfort. There were a few windows on the structure, but they all appeared to be broken, the glass either being shattered or damaged in some way. He couldn’t quite discern what it was. Between the place where he stood and the building that was Gamma Tower there were huge piles of debris. Behind each there was a man wearing an orange boiler suit. Each of his team, as Simon had put it, had positioned themselves behind some sort of cover. From the way each of them was lying down, Zack was sure that they were holding guns in their hands.

  At that moment from somewhere in his left field of vision he saw an orange boiler suit running towards the back of the van. Instinctively, without any explanation as to why, Zack backed away from the window and sat back down in his seat. One of the doors flew open.

  “Put your goggles on and hurry the fuck up.” The words were muffled, stuck in the fabric scarf covering the man's face. He slapped the floor of the van sending shivers of dust into the air. The dull thud shuddered across the floor. “Come on, Delta, let's go.” It didn’t look or sound like Duke. This man was too wiry.

  Zack pushed away the seatbelt that his arm had got tangled up in. He dropped his feet out onto the ground and the other member of the team slammed the door shut. Zack reached down to his waistband and with dust particles settling onto his eyelashes like frost on t
he face of a mountaineer, he fumbled his goggles from a clip on his belt. Just before he put them in place he dusted his eyes, the particles that had settled on his lashes disappearing into the atmosphere, re-consumed by a greater force.

  Whoever it was that came to collect him was now running away from the van, and Zack slotted in behind him feeling like a spare part. He cowered as he ran like a war correspondent stuck on the front line. The man up ahead pointed at a space on the floor. Without hesitation Zack slid into that space, all the while his heart pounding as the dust settled in his throat. It was making him cough. He crouched onto all fours, one fist against his mouth hacking it up. Once he felt better he spread himself out on the floor alongside a body that was so large it could have only been Duke. Zack glanced up ahead and saw nothing coming from Gamma Tower. It was cast under a spell of silence.

  “There is a pocket of them over there,” said Duke, his finger signalling beyond the largest pile of debris.

  “I don’t see anything,” whispered Zack as he choked on the dust. Duke reached over and fiddled a scarf-like cloth out from the front of Zack’s boiler suit, pulling it up over his mouth. Zack took over, fashioning it over his face, tucking the edges under his goggles so that it stayed in place.

  “Irrespective of what you see, Delta, there are probably twenty or thirty of them. Hiding because they have seen the van, no doubt about that. But they're not armed, so it shouldn't take too long. Nielsen is first up. I want you thinking about this junk.” Duke motioned his head towards the debris. “If what we are crouching behind is holding up that thing,” he said, pointing up to a building that looked like it was hanging on by a thread, “you might have a job on your hands more complicated than ours.”

  Zack nodded, his instructions understood. His attention was caught by movement on his right hand side. One of the team members, Nielsen most likely, was up on his feet, his movements slow and cautious. He was carrying some sort of light machine gun with a bipod hanging from it, a weapon capable of heavy volume continuous fire. It was angled dead ahead, the butt of it locked into his shoulder. The man turned back to Duke and made several hand signals. Duke nodded, and sent the hand signals along the line before turning back to Zack. He sat up a little, exposing his version of the same weapon balancing on the bipod. He held it tight like a baby.

  “Whatever you do, do not come out from behind here. Got it?” Zack agreed, hoping he was keeping his anxiety well hidden. He doubted it. “I know you’re wearing orange and we should see you in time, but believe me, it's easy to get trigger-happy when there are Drifters running around looking to get themselves killed.” Duke reached down to his leg and Zack watched him pull a handgun from a holster strapped to his thigh. Duke balanced on his elbows as he angled the handgun in a way that made Zack understand that he should be paying attention. “On, and off,” Duke said as he flicked the safety catch back and forth to demonstrate the principle of a live and a dead gun. “Kill, or be killed,” he repeated as he flicked the switch again. “Don't you pussy out on me, Delta. If one of them comes at you, you use this thing. It isn’t hard. You point it at them and you pull the trigger. Remember the eleventh creed. If you....”

  “I know the eleventh creed, Duke.” Zack didn’t want to hear it.

  “What is it, Delta? Repeat it to me,” Duke barked.

  “If you're not one of us, you're already dead,” Zack uttered, his eyes downcast, trying not to look at the handgun.

  “That’s right, Delta. If you're not one of us, you're already dead. That means you’re one of us, and that means that they hate you,” Duke said, pointing to somewhere unidentifiable in the distance. He pushed the gun into Zack’s chest and raised his own much larger weapon, making a few final checks. A fine layer of dust had settled upon Zack’s goggles. He set the gun on the ground in front of him and swiped a hand across the lens to clear it. Duke snatched up the gun, thrusting it back toward Zack. “You never leave it unattended, Delta. If this gets in their hands it would be a disaster. On your belt, in your hand, or against their skull. Got it?”

  Zack nodded to show that he understood and made a show of gripping the gun tightly. With that Duke pushed himself from the floor, moving so smoothly that it was as if he hadn't displaced a single shingle in the gravel underneath him. For somebody of such size, it was an impressive feat to move with such invisibility. Zack saw that each of the team with whom he had arrived was standing to their feet. He angled his head around the corner of the makeshift shelter and saw that the man he had assumed was Nielsen, the man on point, was nearing the building. He was positioned against an old door frame of a derelict building, the door still hanging on for dear life. As if it still had a purpose. About his feet there were fragments of broken brick and glass, but the way Nielsen moved was slick as oil, sliding over the surface of the land in an almost inhuman way.

  Curiosity had got the better of Zack and in one of the quiet moments he had asked Duke to tell him what one of them had done. Duke was in good spirits because of the progress of the wall, and so had relented, and told Zack Nielsen's story. It transpired that he had killed six people. The first was his sister, a pretty blonde girl who wore thick dark rimmed glasses and who had wanted to be an architect. She was fifteen when she died. They had been watching a movie together. He went to the kitchen to bring them something else to drink, but instead returned with a kitchen knife which he sank into her chest. The way Duke told the story had been blunt and to the point, as if explaining maths where there was only one correct answer. Nielsen had left his fingerprints all over the weapon, which he left sticking out of his sister’s back before he fled. She had been stabbed eleven times. By the time they found him he had killed five more girls, ranging in age between twelve and eighteen.

  Afterwards Duke had asked Zack if he wanted to hear the rest of their stories. Zack had simply shaken his head. He could imagine those stories, all versions of the same history. Maybe some of them worse. Before the war he would have enjoyed hearing such a tale, but only because he would never have met the perpetrator in real life. Back then it would have been just a story, an idea. Not reality.

  As Nielsen crept around the side of the loose hanging door he fired off two bullets. The rest of the orange suits filtered through, one by one. The last person out was Duke, and just before he rounded the corner of the door, he pushed his hand through the air in Zack's direction. Zack understood it to mean stay back.

  Ever since the first outing when they had killed the girl underneath the bridge, Duke seemed to go easier on him. Zack often caught him staring as he oversaw the building of the wall. Zack wondered if Duke saw the wall as a potential escape from his daily existence. Perhaps once the wall was in place there would be no need for him to roam the streets with a team of criminals looking for innocents to kill. Perhaps Zack was his only source of hope.

  Zack pushed his body back against the broken pile of debris. He held the gun against his chest. Inside his gloves his knuckles were as white as bone. At first the gunfire behind him was loud, interrupted by occasional shouting or screaming. The words were muffled and confusing, some not even English. But the sounds coming from Duke and his team were organised, voices in control of a situation.

  The noises coming from the Gamma residents were frantic. There was terror in their shouting. It was the same as the noise of protest a Delta resident would make, right before a Guardian struck them with an Assistor. It was a plea for mercy from their brutality. The sounds of gunfire moved further away and the sharp screams dwindled to nothing more than distant cries, unrecognisable as human. What had the Gamma residents done to deserve this? Was it really the residents’ actions which were the threat to freedom? Or was it what Omega was doing, by keeping them subdued and in chains? Wasn’t that the real threat to the future?

  Zack closed his eyes and imagined for a moment that he was in his bed in his old apartment in Chelsea. Somewhere by his feet there was a tabby cat sleeping, irritated by the movement as Zack fidgeted. Samantha was sleeping a
t his side, strands of blonde hair draped across her eyes, flickering as she breathed in and out. He was getting up, moving towards the kitchen, grinding fresh coffee, putting bread in the toaster. Samantha was behind him. She was wearing his shirt, telling him that she loved him.

  “I'm with you,” Zack whispered to himself.

  “What did you say?” Zack looked up to see Duke standing above him, blocking the Sun so that he appeared in silhouette. Zack pulled at the goggles as he sat in the shade of the crumbling wall, resting them on his forehead. He brought his hand up to shade his eyes. “Talking to yourself is one of the first signs of madness, Delta. You can cut that shit out, I’m telling you.” Duke was chuckling to himself as Zack pushed himself up onto his knees, and then to his feet. Duke grabbed him by the arm and pulled him upright. His grip was like a vice.

  “Is it over?” Zack asked.

  “For now. I give it another few weeks until we are back here, though.” Zack looked down at the gun, still clutched to his chest like the baby he had never had. Zack could hear the odd call of one of his team, but otherwise there was mostly silence. Duke reached down to his leg and detached the empty holster from his thigh. He crouched down onto one knee as if he was about to propose, strapping it to Zack’s leg. He took the gun from Zack’s hand and slipped it into the holster. “Best just keep that in here for now.” Duke flicked a small strap off and on a few times to demonstrate to Zack how the gun was secured and removed. Kill, or be killed, Zack thought to himself. “It's simple, see?” Zack nodded. “Now, what about this wall?”

  Knowing that he hadn't really made any sort of assessment regarding the integrity of the wall, Zack stood back and scratched his head.

  “Well, I guess it is going to need a cautious effort to try to clear the base of it so we can get a look at the foundations.” Duke clapped his hands together and some of the team who had regrouped close by started to move the bricks and shards of wood from the extremities of the pile.