by Glynn James
I frowned.
"Who are The Ward?"
The woman laughed. It was a warm laughter, though not loud, and it was a sound that I hadn't heard in a while.
"You truly are not from this place are you? Well, whoever you are, wherever you came from and wherever you are going, know that The Ward are the people that rule this place, and they have eyes everywhere. They do not like those that go against their will. People like us, those who hide in exile outside of their barriers, are considered vermin to be removed. People like you? Well, I would imagine that they would be very interested in what you have to say. The means they use are not pleasant."
She pointed up the road.
"You should go."
I nodded, thanked her and then headed back into the ruined building to collect my things. When I emerged a few minutes later the man and woman were gone.
Well, that was brief.
"We should go quickly so that these Ward people don't catch up with us."
"Yes."
For maybe another half an hour we moved quickly through more streets of ruined buildings that seemed to become more and more devastated and run-down the further we travelled away from the barrier. Occasionally in the distance I saw figures in the darkness moving slowly, but these didn't move with the stealth of the exiles that I had met. No, these stumbled along.
Dwellers.
Zombies.
We changed direction a few times, avoiding any paths that would lead us to one of them, whilst still trying to follow the scent. Eventually DogThing led me behind a row of houses and into a large open area surrounded by the backs of a dozen houses. It was a square clearing, with broken pavement slabs encircling it and an overgrown area of weeds and grass in the middle. One very large tree overshadowed what once had been a children's playground. In the middle, amongst the weeds, were the rusty remains of a swing and a broken climbing frame. It had been from places like this that we had salvaged enough to build the playground in Evac city. Even though I had only been given one brief flashback, and it had been one from decades before, that memory was clear now.
Even clearer was the crackling, glowing archway underneath the overhang of one of the houses. The brick-work behind it was already blackening. The bright light shone over the area and sent a chill up my back.
"Another gateway. But to where?"
"There is only one way to find out."
"Yes. But first, did he go through? And did he take Abegail and Chione with him?"
DogThing sniffed at the ground around the portal, which even now was beginning to stutter and fade.
"Yes, they went through."
"Then let's follow."
I stepped forward, moving towards the gateway.
"Stop!" shouted a voice.
I spun around. Twenty feet away, just across the park, were the two men who had spoken to the rat seller. They were holding hand axes and moving towards us through the overgrown weeds and grass. There was a sharp metallic clank, and the nearest man fell forward, calling out in pain. He hadn't seen the climbing frame and had collided with it, but the second man ran forward.
I stepped quickly through the portal, and the darkness of the night in Riverfall vanished.
I found myself standing in yet another street, but this time in the bright sunlight. It took a few moments for my mind to catch up and for my eyes to focus, but the movement around me was all too familiar.
I lifted my gun and fired into the face of the nearest Zombie that was standing close enough to reach out and make a grab for me. Its head exploded in a cloud of blackened spray, and the body fell to the floor.
I spun around as something brushed my shoulder, and fired the gun into the chest of another Zombie. This one fell sideways still holding onto my jacket, almost pulling me to the ground. It flailed its arms at me, grabbing, pulling, but I managed to level my gun at its face and fire.
Growling and gnashing sounds erupted behind me, and I kicked the arm of the expired Zombie and stood up.
We were surrounded. Dozens of Zombies were closing in from all directions. DogThing and GreyFoot were in a frenzy, biting and clawing at the creatures closest to them.
We had walked into a trap. These things were barely a day dead, the stolen exiles, left here to stop us from following.
I looked around, knowing that I only had a few seconds at most to make a decision, and saw it. Ten yards away, with only four Zombies between it and us, was the row of open windows of a nearby house.
I was about to speak when the two men from Riverfall appeared in front of me just a few yards away, and right amongst the mass of Zombies that was lurching its way across the street towards us. They both squinted against the bright sunlight, looking confused.
Confused long enough for the Zombies to set upon them.
Both men went down in a fury of clawing hands, screaming. I think more in shock than pain. Honestly, thinking back to that moment, I suspect that neither of them had enough time to even figure out what was happening to them before it was over. Within seconds most of the Zombies on the street were lumbering over and fighting past each other to get at the two men now being torn apart.
Then more movement as another figure appeared just a few feet away. This one was barely noticed by most of the undead on the street. They were all too busy with their unexpected meal.
It was the alleyway drunk, the spaced-out guy that hadn't seemed to know where he was when we arrived, except this time there was nothing drunken about him. He was just as ragged and scruffy as he had been in the alleyway, but his face was a mask of grim determination as he raised his shotgun.
The blast rang out and several of the hungry creatures lurching towards us, the few that hadn't yet made it to the feast in the middle of the road and had actually noticed him arrive, were scattered to the ground, blood and body parts strewn across the cracked tarmac road. The drunk - I'm pretty sure I'll have to find something else to call him - looked swiftly all around, seemingly taking in the situation with a calmness that was surprising, and then he spotted me across the road and started moving.
I ran towards the house, drawing my blade. There were still a few stragglers amongst the Zombies that weren't being mindlessly drawn to the mess in the middle of the road, and I lashed out at the nearest two with my blade, cutting them down. I'd forgotten just how lethal Nua'lath's blade was against these creatures. They fell to the ground and writhed, but I didn't stop to finish them off.
I ran onwards, my gun held out in front of me and my blade held back ready to strike, and I was half way to the window when the remaining two Zombies that blocked my path closed in on me. The first I shot in the face, a face that vanished into a spray of dark gunk that showered the one behind it. It fell backwards, sprawling onto the road, hitting the ground with a cracking sound. The second Zombie, already missing an arm, stumbled forward and hit the pavement at my feet. I jumped over its outstretched arm and stepped onto its back as I passed, running for the window. Growling and tearing sounds behind me told me that I wasn't going to need to finish off that one either.
Another shotgun blast pounded my ears as I jumped through the open window, landing hard on my knees but still managing to haul myself up, spin around and aim my gun out of the window. The alleyway drunk, who I could now see was a huge bear of a man and certainly hadn't appeared to be when he was huddled in the corner of the alleyway, jumped through the window next to mine, nodded at me once and then aimed his gun outwards. A moment later and furry flashes, one large and one small, jumped through another window nearby.
We started firing at the mass of Zombies lurching towards us across the street, picking them off one by one before they could cross the front garden of the house that was our temporary refuge. The sound of both guns firing filled my ears and drowned out the noise from the street. One by one, the creatures that couldn't get at the remains of the two men peeled off from the brawl and staggered in our direction. This made it almost trivial to kill them. By the time the last few stood
up and began to make their way towards us, there was nothing left in the middle of the road but a jumble of blood covered bones. Our guns sang once more and the last of the Zombies fell.
Then we were both leaning against the wall, breathing heavily and looking at each other. I could tell that he was as suspicious of me as I was of him. Whilst we had been killing the Zombies we'd had a common cause, but now that it was all over neither of us knew if we could trust each other.
I was the first to speak.
"Are we good?"
He peered at me for a moment, not raising his shotgun.
"We are if you are."
"I have no problem with you."
He visibly relaxed.
"Good. I don't either. I didn't come out here to die, just to escape."
"How did you find us?"
His voice was a deep growl, just as it had been before, but this time it was clearer.
"I woke up a few hours after we spoke in the alleyway, I'd had far too much of that shine, and I still remembered everything that I had seen, which wasn't normal. I don't usually remember much. That's the reason for the shine in the first place, you see, when you become too old for your work in Riverfall they let you fall by the wayside." He shook his head. "They don't look after the old. They just let them fend for themselves, and I spent a long time trying to find other work, but in the end I fell to the depression and took up drinking shine to ease things. It's what happens to everyone eventually, or so it seems. They get old, get useless, and then get drunk. Then they drift off out of the places that people frequent, disappearing into the back alleyways or out of the populated areas altogether. I think a lot of the Dwellers that wander outside the protected areas are mostly old folks that were left to fend for themselves, and caught out, alone, somewhere. I was well on my way to that end, but remembering you changed that for me. I came round, and I had a headache, but I remembered it all. I thought it was some nightmare or hallucination, you know, a side effect of the shine, but then I saw all the footprints in the alleyway. Yours, the others, and then I saw paw prints. There aren't any dogs in Riverfall."
I smiled, still trying to catch my breath.
"Why follow us?"
"You were following him, the one that was going to just pass through and leave again, by whatever means they can do that, and as I sat there, still trying to get the headache away from the hangover, I started remembering other things. Before him there were some others, all dressed in dark hoods and, well, I think robes, and well, they came into the alleyway and stood together, and they began to chant, but it was more like a whisper. They did that for a while, and I was watching from my corner in the dark, thinking it was all a dream. That was when he stepped through. It wasn't like some door, not like the one in the park just now. It was just a hole."
Holes. I'd seen plenty of those before.
The alley drunk continued.
"Well, when he stepped through, with his slaves dragging behind him, those ones he has in chains, one of these robed figures speaks quickly and I couldn't remember it until I woke up this morning, but he says 'The next portal awaits you my master.'. Then the tall fellow, he's really damn ugly isn't he? Well he says 'does it go to The Ways?', and they say no, but they say they will be able to open a door to this Ways place in the next world. They say something about a lack of anchors. I didn't get all of it clearly."
The Ways?
What was that place?
I let him carry on.
"Then I realised that it was all real, that you were all real, and you were all just passing through, by whatever damn magical means I don't know, but I did know that it was a door of some kind to somewhere else. It dawned on me that I might be able to escape, and if I did then there wouldn't be any shine to keep me drunk, and I might be able to start again. It meant a way out of this place."
He looked around.
"I mean a way out of Riverfall."
"So you followed me," I said.
"Yes," he said, smiling. "I went back to my place, grabbed my stuff and picked up your trail as quickly as I could. Of course it was easy after a while. I wasn't the only one following you. Those young city rangers are damn good at following trails, but they were young and inexperienced and I used to be one myself when I was younger, and they were stupid enough not to notice me following them at a distance. I've done it many times."
I stood up, and stretched my arms.
"Well now you're out. I'm not sure I've led you to a place that is any better."
"Anywhere is better than Riverfall."
"I would hold off on that before you decide."
I looked directly at him for a moment. He seemed to collapse under the scrutiny and looked away from me, his cheeks red with either embarrassment or, maybe, something else.
"Aint no way back it seems," he said, nodding in the direction of the road and the spot where the portal opened to. He was right. There was no hole, no way back. The door from Riverfall was one way only.
"I'm James. What's your name?" I asked.
"Ellis. Ellis Rendell. Or should I say, Captain Ellis Rendell, but now retired. As I said before, I used to be a ranger in my youth, but I grew old. I've still got some go in these old bones."
I held out my hand and we shook.
That was when three more people appeared in the middle of the road, all armed with loaded crossbows. They stepped quickly forward, spreading out and covering all directions.
Three more followed.
The Ways
Within thirty seconds, and before any of us could decide whether to run or stay, six had turned into ten, and then twenty. They hadn't seen us, but I didn't think it would be long before they did.
"Exiles," said Ellis.
I glanced at him.
"As in the ones that live outside of the barriers?"
He nodded, and stayed crouched below the open window, peering over every few seconds.
"I think I met them already. They let me go. I wasn't expecting them to follow."
"Hmm." Ellis was squinting. "They let you go? That isn't normal. They kill anyone or anything that comes near them. They don't trust anyone. We should leave."
Then something popped into my mind.
"Do you think they let me go for the same reason that you followed? Maybe they wanted me to lead them out?"
He stared at me with a blank expression.
"Did you tell them? About the portal I mean? Did you tell them that you were leaving?"
"No, but I did tell them that I was hunting the man who killed a lot of them."
"Then how would they know?"
Had they lied to me?
I looked over to where DogThing and GreyFoot sat, crouched a few yards away from me. I wondered for a moment if this was a different group of exiles, and almost as though I had predicted it the woman who led the group I'd met the night before stepped through into the road. By now the first group, the ones armed with crossbows, were spreading out, making room for more to follow, and they followed quickly. Women, children, the old and the injured came through until there must have been a hundred people gathered on the road.
"Kill anything that moves," called a voice from amongst the gathering crowd. It was the man's voice again.
I glanced over at the Maw again.
"That's our cue to leave," I said.
I stood up and moved quickly through the run-down living room, heading for the back door. DogThing and GreyFoot followed close behind.
Then I heard Ellis moving behind us.
Ten minutes later and we had left the back of the house and moved through the alleyway at the back. It led along the back of a dozen other houses and out onto street that looked the same as the one we had left. It all looked the same here.
"We're moving away. The scent is weaker here."
I stopped.
"Ellis, we need to double back, or at least find our way around to the other side of those Exiles."
"The trail your...dogs are following goes that way?"
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"Yes."
He nodded, looked around, scoping out the directions of the few roads that joined the one we were on.
"This way," he said, and strode off.
I frowned, but followed.
"How do you know?"
"The buildings around. The larger buildings. They tell you what shape the streets are. Trust me. I'm used to navigating streets. This way should lead us around. You see that tower over there? The one with the broken clock? That was not far from where we came out. If we circle around, keeping the same distance, we should be able to reach the opposite side. If we're quick we will be able to skirt around in maybe an hour and still avoid those back there. We have to avoid them."
I followed him.
"Why are you helping me?"
There was no point in just wondering.
He looked back at me and smiled.
"You found me the way out of that stinking city. The least I can do is get you back on your trail."
As we moved through the streets I began to wonder once more if I would ever see a place that wasn't damaged. If I would ever set foot in a city, somewhere, that hadn't been ravaged by Nua'lath's creatures. Were there even any worlds left that weren't? Yes there was one.
Earth.
Earth was still not destroyed, but my travelling had not led me back there for decades, not since we had pulled parts of London out of existence and into the void under the desert.
We made our way, skirting around the city. Every now and then I would glance up at the clock tower, still roughly a mile away from us. As the minutes ticked by the face of the clock gradually turned away from me, until finally we were looking at the back of the tower.
"The scent is stronger here."
"Can you follow it?"
"Yes."
"Good, then let's go."
I stopped and turned to Ellis.
"We've found the trail again. Thank you."
He seemed to size the three of us up for a moment.
