“What’s the matter?” snapped the guy. “You never use one before? Pick it up!”
I slowly bent and wrapped both hands around the shaft of the sledgehammer. It felt good. Right.
“If you insist,” I muttered.
58
Kian
There was a thump.
I rolled off my bunk just in time to see a guy fly through the air and crash to the ground on the other side of the bars. All of us ran over to them, craning our necks to try to see down the hallway.
There were more thumps, coming faster, now, as if someone was finding their rhythm. Another guy flew through the air, hit the floor and slid along the linoleum. I couldn’t see any blood but there was no question he was out for the count. What the hell’s going on? I gripped the bars. Whatever it was, I wanted to be ready to take advantage of it. If there was a chance I could save Emily….
Everything went quiet. What the hell?!
A thunderous crash shook the whole cell, as if a truck had slammed into the wall. We all looked around, trying to figure out where it came from. On the second impact, we saw one of the cinderblocks that made up the wall twitch and loosen.
On the third blow, the cinderblock tore loose from the wall and went flying across the room, to shatter on the far wall. We only just dodged out of the way in time.
Another crash and two more blocks were torn free. We ducked back against the bars. A third impact and there was a hole big enough to climb through. The brick dust slowly cleared and we saw Sean standing there, a sledgehammer in his hands. His muscles were gleaming with a sheen of sweat and there was a gleam in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “Couldn’t find where the cop put the keys,” he said.
We all scrambled through the hole. The floor outside was littered with the unconscious bodies of the men who’d been working construction. Carrick stared at Sean in delight, then pulled him into a hug. Then he went jogging down the hallway, looking for something. Aedan hurried after him.
I was left standing there gawping at Sean. My baby brother. The one who’d just saved all of us.
Emily’s voice in my head: your brothers are on your side. You just have to let them be. It was the only reason I’d let him go with the workers. If I hadn’t….
I pulled Sean into a fierce hug. “Thank you,” I told him with feeling. When we moved back, my hands still on his shoulders, I gave him a nod. An acknowledgement that things had changed.
At that moment, the main door opened and two cops strolled in. They balked when they saw Sean and me standing there. One started forward towards us, drawing his nightstick. He was halfway to us when Aedan stepped into his path from a side-hallway, his face a mask of vengeful fury. The cop ran right into the punch and was knocked back on his ass. The other cop went pale, grabbed his radio and started babbling into it. Aedan started forward but the cop darted out of the main doors before he could reach him.
Carrick came running back to us. He must have raided whatever locker the cops had locked our possessions up in because he was carrying Caorthannach, that crazy antique shotgun of his, and my handgun. He had something else, too: a police-issue pistol. He offered it to Sean.
Sean shook his head and brandished the sledgehammer. “I’m sticking with this.” Something was different about him. For all the ferocious anger in his eyes, he looked at peace with himself.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “They know we’re free.”
“So what do we do?” asked Carrick.
I went to the main door. I could hear police sirens in the distance: every cop in town was heading our way. Great. I looked desperately around, my eyes finally coming to rest on Pryce’s elaborate mansion near the center of town. I could see him standing on the balcony like some old-fashioned lord of the manor watching over the peasants….
Old-fashioned. I frowned. Something Annabelle had said came back to me, about the personality tests being on paper. It’s kind of old-fashioned, really. Like, why aren’t they just using an app, on a tablet?
I’m not as smart as Emily, not as good at figuring things out. But finally, it all came together in my head. “Goddammit!” I said with feeling.
Everyone turned to look at me.
“I know who Pryce was, before all this” I said, my voice shaky with bitter anger. “I know how it all started.” And now my mind was racing. That laptop: never out of Pryce’s sight, even when he was eating breakfast. He must keep everything on there: every one of the Groups, every cult member. “If we can get to him, maybe we can shut them down for good.”
At that moment, the bells in the town’s church began to clang. I guessed it didn’t see any use for services, since Aeternus seemed to be all these people believed in, but the bells must have been an agreed-upon alarm call because suddenly the streets started to fill with people. They spilled out of every store, every home. Some of them had grabbed improvised weapons: baseball bats, shovels, fire axes. And every one of them, young and old, were moving towards us.
My heart sank. We were no more than a few hundred yards from the mansion but it might as well have been miles. No way could we fight our way past all those people, all of them eager to help capture an Outsider.
Then I looked the other way down the street. The police station we were in was almost at the edge of town and there were far fewer people in that direction. If we ran, we might make it.
But then we might never find the girls. By now, the cult must have them and they could have taken them anywhere. And we’d never get Bradan out.
I looked at my brothers. They understood what I was asking because all three of them shook their heads. “Fuck that,” said Carrick.
“Pryce needs to get what’s coming to him,” said Aedan.
“I’m not leaving Louise and Kayley,” said Sean.
I felt my heart swell with pride. “Alright, then,” I said. “Let’s go start some trouble.”
And together, we ran into the street.
We met the cops first: their cars were just screeching to a halt in front of the police station. But they were expecting a siege, with us holed up inside, not for us to come pouring out of the doors at them. Before they knew what was happening, Sean had jumped up on the hood of one squad car and brought his hammer down on the roof, crushing it and forcing the cops inside to duck for cover. Two more blows and the doors were so mangled they wouldn’t open, trapping the men inside.
Two cops ran towards the main doors but met Carrick coming the other way and were quickly clubbed to the ground with Caorthannach. Aedan grabbed hold of another cop and laid him out with one punch. I shoulder-charged the last one as if I was sacking a quarterback.
We moved fast, before they had time to recover. But while we’d been fighting them, the crowds of townsfolk had been sweeping towards us and now they were almost on us. They might only have fists and baseball bats but, as we’d found out when we tried to escape, twenty or thirty of them could easily overwhelm us. This was the whole town. And they were between us and Pryce’s mansion. Shit!
At first, we only met them in ones and twos: the front-runners who’d pulled ahead of the crowd. But ahead, they were shoulder-to-shoulder right across the street, a charging army we stood no chance against.
Up ahead, I saw a dark opening between two buildings. An alley. We had to run straight at the crowd and pray we reached it before they did. “Run!” I yelled.
We ran, feet pounding the sidewalk, lungs burning. When one of us lagged behind, the others would grab his shoulders and haul him forward. The crowd rushed towards us horribly fast and the street seemed to extend, the alley telescoping away from us. Run! I bawled at myself.
If we didn’t make this, I’d never be with Emily again. Not as me.
I forced myself to move faster.
We reached the alley a split second before the crowd did and flung ourselves down it. Then left into a side street. Shit: not as many people as on the main street but still too many. We shoved them aside but that slowed us down and the crowd wh
o’d poured into the alley behind us gained. The alley shook with their collective roar. It was like being trapped in a city at the center of a riot only much, much worse: riots at least are chaos; this was terrifyingly organized, the crowd like a monster with single-minded purpose. I risked a glance over my shoulder and immediately regretted it. All I could see were hate filled eyes and open, yelling mouths.
We forced our way forward, doing our best to use fists, not guns: ever since I’d realized that it had been Bradan we’d beaten nearly to death in the printing works, I’d been seeing the cult members differently. Every one of them was someone’s brother, someone’s son.
But they didn’t have any qualms about attacking us. The word must have gone out that Pryce wanted us alive if possible, because no one was shooting at us. But all of us were soon limping and bruised from being punched, kicked and tussled to the ground. I lost count of the number of times I’d be sent sprawling, only for one of my brothers to pull me up. And every time one of us went down, the stampede behind us got closer.
The constant attacks were taking their toll. Carrick was holding his ribs on one side, Sean had a nasty gash along one cheek and Aedan and I were both staggering from taking so many blows to the head. And the whole alley rung and shook from the thunder of footsteps behind, hundreds of people intent on running us down.
We weren’t going to make it. They were going to catch us before we got anywhere near the mansion.
There was a metal door just ahead, locked with a padlock. The alley ran behind the stores that lined the main street so I was guessing it was a service door for one of them.
Carrick saw me looking at it. “We go in there, we’re trapped,” he said.
I looked around us. The crowd behind us had almost caught up and people were flooding into the alley ahead of us, too. “We stay here, we’re finished,” I told him.
Carrick gave me a grim nod, leveled Caorthannach at the padlock and pulled the trigger. The gun’s roar filled the alley and when the smoke cleared there was a ragged hole where the padlock, handle and some of the wall had been. I pulled the door open and led the way inside.
We were in the town’s small department store. Directly across from us, big plate glass windows looked out onto the main street. While Carrick braced a mop against the service door to stop it opening, the rest of us hurried across the store to the main doors. The street outside was still a sea of people: no way out there. I quickly locked the doors: fortunately, the store seemed to be empty: shoppers and staff had all rushed outside when the bells started ringing.
But looking around, I couldn’t see another way out. Carrick had been right: we’d gained a few seconds of breathing space but now we were trapped. One by one, we slumped down on our asses beside the racks of clothes, utterly exhausted.
Soon, there was a hammering on the metal service door as the townsfolk outside tried to batter it down. I checked over my shoulder. The crowd in the main street had surged forward and were pressed against the doors and the plate glass windows. We were completely surrounded. In another few seconds, they’d find something to throw through the windows to break them and then they’d be all over us.
“If anybody’s got any ideas,” I muttered, “now’d be a really feckin’ good time.”
Everyone was silent. Minutes passed. The store grew dark as bodies pressed up against every square inch of window. They started banging on the glass. Any second, they’d find something to throw through it and then it would all be over.
Carrick slowly got to his feet, one hand clasped to his ribs. He adjusted his leather cut so that it hung straight. “If this is it,” he said, “I’m going down fighting. Better than being turned into one of them.”
I read the look in his eyes. “They’ll try to take us alive.”
His jaw set. “I don’t intend to give ‘em that choice.”
I understood what he was saying: fight so hard they’d have no choice but to kill us. I’d never see Emily again. But maybe that was better than being together as Pryce’s slaves.
Carrick held out his hand to me.
I reached out, took his hand and hauled myself up, wincing from my bruises. Then I held out my hand for Sean. Blood was running down his face from the cut on his cheek and he had to use his hammer to help push himself up off the floor, but he made it. Then he held out his hand for Aedan. Aedan pulled himself to his feet, rocked unsteadily but stayed standing.
I looked at their faces. “I was wrong,” I said.
“‘Course you were,” said Carrick. “But about what?”
I looked down at my gun. Checked the magazine, even though I didn’t need to. “When we were in that cell,” I said, “I was thinking we shouldn’t have put the family back together.” I cocked the gun and finally managed to meet their eyes. “But I was wrong. I’m glad we did.”
Carrick put his hand on my shoulder and it seemed like he was about to say something. Then he thought better of it and just pulled me into a hug. Then Sean and Aedan joined in from the other two sides. No one spoke. We just clung to each other.
There was a heavy thump from the direction of the windows. We turned to see a chair from some cafe bounce off the store’s safety glass. A big, misty white mark was left where it hit. The guy who’d thrown it picked it up to try again.
“Okay, then,” I said. “When the window breaks, we run at them.” We all lined shoulder to shoulder.
The guy hurled the chair again, harder, this time. The glass turned into a white spider web. The next hit would take it out completely. Carrick and I raised our guns. Sean lifted his hammer. Aedan put up his fists. We all leaned forward, ready to rush them in one last, suicidal fuck you.
“I love you all,” I said.
The glass shattered.
And we ran towards the crowd.
59
Annabelle
We crested the final rise and I slowed the Mustang as we got our first look at our destination. What?! I’d been visualizing an armed camp, out in the desert, or some backwoods fortress protected by guard dogs. This was a town out of a tourist brochure.
I pulled over and we all climbed out. “The cult’s headquarters is down there?” asked Louise.
We stared in disbelief. It looked like a place where nothing bad could ever, ever happen. And yet...something was happening. Some sort of riot. The streets at the edge of town were all empty and a massive crowd was converging on a shopping street in the center.
“What the hell is going on?” whispered Sylvie behind me. I understood why she was whispering: the silence was eerie. In my mind, a riot should be noisy: shouting and chanting and breaking things. But the crowd was oddly quiet and ordered: they moved with purpose. The only sound was the town’s church bells, which were ringing non-stop. I scrunched up my forehead. It was like one of those old war movies where a little town rings its bells to warn that the invaders are coming. Or that they’re already here…..
“Oh shit!” I said as I worked it out. “They’re in there!” I pointed to the store where the crowd seemed to be focused. “The guys are trapped in there!”
“What?” asked Sylvie. “Why would the whole town be—”
“Because the whole town is in the cult!”
Louise put her hands over her mouth. Sylvie bit her lip and cursed. Alec’s eyes scanned the crowd. “Jesus, there are hundreds of them….”
Only Bradan didn’t react. He hadn’t said a word the entire journey and I didn’t know if he was really on our side. He just stood there, hands still zip-tied behind his back, gazing towards the center of town: not at the spot where the crowd were massed but at a large mansion down the street. He was utterly still and quiet.
When I looked into his eyes, though, I could see a battle going on, as chaotic and destructive as the crowd beneath us was silent and ordered. He was being torn in two directions...and I had no idea which would win.
I looked at the town again. The crowd was pressing up against the windows of the store, now, desperate to get at
what was inside.
I dived back into the Mustang. The others opened their doors to join me. “No,” I said quickly. “Just me.”
Sylvie balked. “What? You can’t go down there al—”
“There are four of them!” I glanced over my shoulder at the Mustang’s rear seats. “We can’t all go!”
Sylvie hesitated, her hand on the passenger door. I could see she wanted to argue: no way was she going to let me drive into that. But she knew I was right. She finally slammed the door and stepped back. “Be careful,” she said grimly.
I threw the car into gear and stamped on the gas. The big V8 roared and I picked up speed as I descended the hill into town. Every house I passed looked empty. Many stood with their doors wide open: people must have literally run out into the street when they heard the bells ringing. I passed outdoor cafes with plates of food still on the tables, piles of shopping bags on the sidewalk where people had just dropped them. The idea of a whole town where people were so utterly devoted to a single cause, where every one of them obeyed without question, made my skin crawl.
The idea that I was driving right into a crowd of those people made me want to throw up.
At first, they didn’t even notice me. But the Mustang’s engine rattled windows and throbbed through the street: you couldn’t ignore it. As I drew nearer, I saw them begin to turn around and frown. I suddenly wished I was driving a less recognizable car. It didn’t help that I seemed to be the only vehicle moving in the entire town.
And then I swallowed, and my foot slipped off the gas, as I saw it pass like a ripple through the mass of bodies. Another Outsider. The front of the crowd stayed focused on the store but the rearmost ranks started to break off and walk towards me.
And then run towards me. My blood went ice cold. Oh Jesus!
My foot was still off the gas and the Mustang was slowing. A turn was coming up. An empty street. If I hauled on the wheel now, I could be away from the crowd before they reached me.
Brothers Page 27
