The ghoul collapsed forward and Squid took a leaping step back. It hit the ground in front of him, its hands snapping and cracking audibly as its fingers closed around Squid’s ankles. Squid drew his shortsword and swung it at the ghoul’s neck. The blade passed right through the desiccated skin and bone and hit the floor with a clank, sending a shock of vibration up Squid’s arm. His aim had been right on the mark and the head parted ways with the body, the grip on his legs instantly loosening. Squid felt an instant of proud surprise. There had been a time when he couldn’t do that, when he couldn’t hit the crack in a log with his uncle’s axe, when he couldn’t hit a ghoul’s neck with his sword. He whispered a quiet thanks to Lynn for helping him master the sword – well, at least for giving him enough confidence to slice the head from a decrepit ghoul.
As he stared down at the head of the ghoul rocking gently on one bony cheek, he heard the calls of more ghouls behind him and the sliding ring as the rest of his group pulled their blades free.
“Light!” Mr. Stix called. “We need light!”
Squid spun and held the lamp toward them. It flickered, the battery running so low that it struggled to generate a constant light. He saw Mr. Stownes cut into a pack of ghouls as more ancient dust-decaying faces emerged from the black. For a moment the light cut out completely. It was only for a few seconds, but the darkness that encroached on them was absolute. For the shortest time Squid believed that perhaps he’d gone blind, because there was nothing but complete black.
When the dull, trembling light returned, Squid saw Mr. Stix swinging wildly at the ghouls, guided by sound alone in the dark. Squid turned to look behind him. He could see no ghouls in that direction, so he dropped his sword, letting it clatter to the ground, and began winding the crank handle on the lamp as fast as he could. Just as the light began to brighten, spreading out from him, Squid heard a ghoulish moan behind him.
“I got it,” Nim said, “just keep that light on.”
Nim rushed past Squid, launching himself at the ghoul as it entered the circle of light, removing its head with a clean blow. Nim had certainly picked up the use of a sword much faster than he had, Squid thought. Another ghoul came from behind the one Nim had decapitated. It was as if they were coalescing out of the dark. How many more were there? Nim swung at this one. His sword entered the creature’s neck but he had struck on an angle and the blade continued down, lodging in the ghoul’s opposite shoulder and not passing cleanly through.
“Bugger it,” Nim said as he struggled to pull his weapon free. While he was doing so, another ghoul pushed its way past, and as the light fell on its face Squid saw that its mouldy eyes were focused on him. He kept winding. He had to make sure they had light. He knew that if they lost the light they were dead. He stepped back from the creature as its head jolted to the side and then back up, the unnerving movement they always made when they were watching you. Squid jumped as he felt his back hit something. He turned to see that it was Mr. Stix. He had gone as far as he could. All four of them were being pushed in together as ghouls came from both directions out of the dark.
Beside him Mr. Stix swapped hands with his shortsword, drew one of his mechanical pistols, lifted it toward the ghoul bearing down on Squid and fired. In the confines of the tunnel the sound was remarkably loud. It reverberated in Squid’s ears, leaving them ringing with a high-pitched wail. As if the sound had annoyed them, the screeching of the ghouls grew louder and more aggressive.
“Bugger it!” Squid heard Nim repeat. He roared as he finally pulled his sword free, but another ghoul had managed to pass the first one and it was going for Nim.
Squid saw his sword on the ground a few steps away. He stopped turning the handle on the lamp. His efforts would give them light for a little longer and it would have to do for now. Nim needed help. He picked up his sword and attacked the ghoul, which had its teeth bared ready to suck the life from Nim. As it reared up to pounce, Squid swung and hit the ghoul square in the side of the neck. The ghoul’s head remained on its shoulders for a split second after Squid’s blade passed through. For a moment Squid thought he had missed completely, that the ghoul was turning to look at him, but then the head slid off the neck and the body collapsed, landing with a crunch and a spray of dust.
“I think that’s all in front of us,” Nim said.
“Go then!” Mr. Stix said. “Make a run for it.”
Nim hesitated until Squid realized he was waiting for him. He didn’t want to run headlong into the dark, and Squid could hardly blame him. Holding the lamp in front of him, Squid ran with him, turning his head to look back at Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes. They were still fighting as the darkness took them. Squid’s heart seized in his chest until he saw them at the edge of the pool of light, running after them.
All around them the light bounced and waved as they ran. Squid did his best to keep the lamp steady but it swung with the cadence of his desperate running. Each side of the tunnel was light then shadow, light then shadow, light then shadow. One moment he could see the gray wall beside him, the next there was just the dark. It wasn’t a surprise then that Squid didn’t see the opening to another branch of the tunnel until the very last moment, and when the light swung back toward him it was accompanied by a lurching ghoul.
Squid’s feet tangled as he tried to dodge to the side, jumping away from the rotten brown-fingernailed hands of the reaching monster. His legs were tired and he struggled to control them. He tried to catch himself against the opposite wall but with the sword in one hand and the lamp in the other he wasn’t able to. With a few faltering steps he collapsed forward, arms outstretched. The lamp hit the ground first and with a sickening smash they were dropped into darkness.
Squid felt someone groping at the back of his shirt, grabbing hold and trying to pull him up. In the pitch black he didn’t know whether it was one of his companions or a ghoul. Nim’s voice reassured him that the ghouls hadn’t got him yet.
“Get up!”
“The light,” Squid said pointlessly, “I dropped it.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Nim said.
“What do you mean?” Squid said, but it was as he was finishing the sentence that he realized he could see Nim’s face. He was looking at him. He couldn’t see him very well – his features were still lost in the blackness – but there was the faintest shape of him, his white tattoos standing out a little in the dark.
“The ghoul,” Squid said, suddenly remembering the creature that had caused him to fall.
“I got it,” Nim said. “There was just one. Come on, look up ahead.”
Squid looked up the tunnel. He couldn’t see much but it was unmistakably lighter than everything they had walked through so far. Somewhere in front of them was a source of light, and it was leaking down into the tunnel as if reaching out for them, trying to guide them in.
Screeching echoed down the tunnel from behind them and though it was distant it was a reminder that they weren’t out of danger yet.
“Keep moving,” Mr. Stix said.
Abandoning both the light and his sword to the darkness, Squid ran after Nim. Their feet slapped against the floor, the blue line beneath them gray in the thin light, but with each footfall, each moment, they drew closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, and the subtlest amount of color returned to the world. The ghouls, still screeching and moaning behind them, were old and dusty, and because they hadn’t fed in so long they were slow. Squid knew he and Nim were pulling away from them, but he didn’t stop running.
As they rounded a final corner Squid saw where the light was coming from. It wasn’t the end of the tunnel but a hole in the roof. The tunnel had collapsed, and rubble from above had fallen in to fill the space. Whether it was luck, or whether someone had long ago cleared a path, the fallen rocks and soil had formed a kind of ramp up out of the tunnels and into the light. Squid, Nim, Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes began to scramble up the rocks, their feet skidding and sliding over the loose rubble.
A loud groaning s
hriek made Squid look up from where he was concentrating on placing his hands and feet to scale the rocky ramp. The light above was bright after so long in the dark, but Squid could make out that the edge of the hole was rimmed with the unmistakable shapes of ghouls reaching down toward them.
“Ancestors’ sin!” Squid yelled. “Can’t they just leave us alone?!” Despite the situation he almost laughed at how much he sounded like Lynn.
The ghouls above began to throw themselves with reckless abandon down into the hole. Many of them fell a significant distance, landing with the crack of bone and hollow thuds on the rocks around them. Ignoring the way their bodies smashed against the ramp and their bones bent in absurd directions, the ghouls continued to reach out for the four of them. Those ghouls that were near the top of the ramp began awkwardly stuttering down toward them, slipping and sliding on the loose stones. Others continued to drop down from above like a hideous rain of dirty, dusty, decomposing bodies. One almost landed right on top of Squid, brushing his shoulder, hissing and desperately clawing at his legs as Squid scrambled aside.
Mr. Stownes climbed past Squid, swinging his blade like a maniac at the ghouls dropping and sliding down the ramp. Mr. Stix was soon beside him. He moved up the ramp, cutting off the heads or hands of ghouls that escaped Mr. Stownes.
“Go,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”
They climbed as quickly as they could, Mr. Stownes clearing the path in front and Nim and Mr. Stix chopping at those that got too close on either side. Squid felt helpless without his sword, unable to do anything but be shepherded upward to what might be safety or might just be more ghouls. Behind them the ramp had become a pile of bodies, over which those ghouls still able to move climbed in their endless, heedless search for the moisture they could sense in the living.
As Squid scrambled up and over the lip of the ramp he found himself in the middle of a street surrounded by a scene unlike any he had ever seen. For a moment he felt nearly paralyzed with awe. Buildings towered above them on either side, so tall that they blocked the sun and overwhelmed his vision. They were old and unmaintained. Whole chunks of some were gone, having collapsed into rubble on the street, and sections of glass were missing like pockmarks on the buildings’ faces. Everything around them was coated with dirt. Green grass and vines grew up through cracks in the road and twisted their way up walls.
But even with these obvious imperfections the place was incredible. It was like standing at the bottom of a ravine made of glass and concrete and metal. Squid knew these were the buildings they had seen from the outpost. This was not at all the same as the small pre-Reckoning knick-knacks that people had kept in the family, nor even like the vehicle that had been kept in Government House in Alice. These were enormous monuments to what the Ancestors had really been capable of. This was Big Smoke.
Squid became aware of Nim and Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes scrambling up beside him. As much as he would have liked to, he knew there was no time to stand and admire their surroundings. Ghouls were emerging from alleyways between buildings and streets all around them. They stumbled, twitching and jerking, out onto the street, screeching and moaning at the sudden appearance of moisture in their empty city. They were all slow, perhaps not as decrepit as those lost in the tunnels below, but still unfed and rigid. But as they collected in the street they soon formed a large mass. It was nothing like the horde Squid had faced outside Dust, but it was the biggest group of ghouls he had seen since then. And given that there were only four of them against the hundreds of ghouls that seemed to be gathering, Squid estimated that the odds were much the same.
“We need to run,” Squid said.
“Yes,” Mr. Stix agreed. “We do.”
As the remnants of those in the tunnels began crawling out behind them, Squid looked around. There was only one direction that seemed clear of ghouls. Directly ahead of them, some distance up the street was an enormous dome, not as high as the buildings around them but certainly massive, and wide enough that they couldn’t see all of it. It was opaque white, lit up to a dull shine in the sun. Where the street ended at the dome’s base there was a door. The building looked complete, secure, and hopefully they could get inside.
“There,” Squid said, pointing to the base of the dome.
Mr. Stix looked at Mr. Stownes and the two men nodded to each other.
“Nim,” Mr. Stix said. The Nomad boy turned to look at him. “You stay with Squid. You get him to that dome. We’ll keep as many ghouls at bay as we can.”
Nim looked from Mr. Stix to Squid and then back again. He nodded, once, a confident response. “You got it.”
“Squid,” Mr. Stix said, “your only role in this is to stay alive. Do you understand?”
“What are you going to do?” Squid asked, though it was a stupid question because he already knew what the answer was.
“Our job.”
Mr. Stownes began walking ahead, his blade held at the ready. Mr. Stix sheathed his shortsword and drew his two mechanical pistols. He began firing at the ghouls that were emerging from the nearest alleys and empty buildings. Crack after crack after crack emanated from Mr. Stix’s hands as he shot. Ghouls’ heads snapped back, knocking them to the ground. Some were struck in the chest or shoulder, slowing them down, but only until they regained their feet and kept coming.
“Come on,” Nim said, pulling at Squid’s arm, snapping him out of the trance he had fallen into watching Mr. Stix shoot. Squid and Nim ran. Ghouls that drew too close would stagger in unison with the sound of Mr. Stix’s firing, though that soon stopped as he ran out of ammunition. Squid looked back over his shoulder. Mr. Stix had drawn his sword again. The vast majority of ghouls were still coming from behind them. Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes were hanging back as they fought them, trying to give Squid and Nim a chance to get to the dome.
Squid couldn’t help but be amazed by the things he saw as they ran. As they passed a street blocked by an overturned vehicle, he noticed that several other vehicles were lined up behind it as if they had been abandoned, unable to pass. Each of them was rusted and smashed, the doors still hanging open, the glass so dirty it was barely transparent. The vehicles were all smaller than bio-trucks; sleeker, too.
Another vehicle ahead of them on the side of the road had a tray on the back like the Prophet Steven’s ute. It made Squid realize that Steven would once have walked these very streets. The stories the Sisters told said he had led the worthy across the desert from Big Smoke to Alice, where he had built the walls and protected them while God enacted his vengeance on the world of man. Had the Prophet Steven really helped people escape whatever had happened here and left some weapon behind knowing that Squid would one day come to collect it? Is a prophecy like that really possible? Squid had thought that reaching Big Smoke would somehow make things clearer, but seeing the city for himself only filled him with more questions. Now, though, as they raced toward what safety might or might not lie under the dome, was not the time for pondering anything except survival.
As they approached the dome Squid saw that he had been right, there was an entrance, a set of double doors that looked to be sealed shut. Above the doors was faded writing peeling away from the glass in some places.
Australian Center for Disease Control
Infection Research Facility
Exclusion Zone – Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point
Little of this meant anything to Squid but it sounded promising, like the type of place where a weapon against the ghouls might be kept. But then he thought, not for the first time, that if there really was a weapon against the ghouls here, then why hadn’t the Ancestors used it?
As they reached the base of the dome, the white shape of it rising before them, Squid stepped toward the door. Nothing happened. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. He reached out and touched it. It felt like glass, warm from the sun. He tried to push or pull it, to slide it open, but it wouldn’t budge in the slightest. Nim joined the effort, trying to slip his fingers
into the join at the center of the door, but that too was impossible. Squid’s eyes fell on a small panel to the right of the door, which comprised a small slot and a green piece of glass. He pressed at it, hoping maybe it would do something, but it didn’t. Hearing the screeching and groaning behind them Squid yelled in frustration, slamming his fist against the door.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Come on!”
Squid turned to look back. The mass of ghouls was a short distance behind them. Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes were walking backward as they hacked and slashed at them, trying to keep the overwhelming numbers at bay, but they couldn’t hold them all forever. There were too many to fight. They needed to run. They needed to retreat in the way the Diggers had never retreated. Squid needed to give them somewhere to retreat to.
He turned and looked again at the dome. They could circle around it, looking for another way in, but somehow Squid didn’t think there would be one. He had to think. He was supposed to be the leader. Lynn always told him he was the smart one, the clever one, so why couldn’t he be smart now? Why couldn’t he figure this out? The sounds of the ghouls drew closer. Looking over his shoulder, Squid saw that they were now only ten or twenty steps away. Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes were moving side to side, trying to keep any ghouls from getting past them, trying to draw the attention of those that would go for Squid and Nim. In less than a minute Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes would have no further to go. The ghouls would crush them against the wall of the dome, trapping them all.
Squid felt panic encroaching, so he reached for the shape of the key beneath his shirt. His hands shook as he gripped it. Think. Think. Think. He looked up at the dome again, staring at the words above the door. Australian Center for Disease Control. ACDC! He almost tore the cord through his neck as he grabbed his key and pulled it off. He looked at the scratched letters on the side. ACDC. The word that didn’t make sense wasn’t a word at all. Squid looked at the slot beside the door. It looked to be the right size. He took his mother’s key and pushed it into the slot.
A City Called Smoke: The Territory 2 Page 24
