As their leader, Gracie had the group’s attention. They’d agreed they’d follow her … when she finally decided to move off. She currently wrapped a large slab of the remaining deer meat in an old piece of fabric.
“You expect us to eat that?” Olga pointed at it with her sword.
“I expect nothing of you. You’re your own person. You’ve told me as much more times than I care to remember.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You have opinions, Olga.”
“And I don’t mind sharing them!”
“That’s my point.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Maybe for someone arrogant enough to think their opinions are always correct.”
And who could blame Gracie for getting cross? William’s patience would have run out much sooner. Olga had gone at her for weeks now.
Before Olga replied, Gracie said, “This route isn’t easy, but it’s the best route through the city. Like I said up there”—she pointed back at the first-floor window of the house they’d just left—“I need you all to listen to me and do as I say. If you don’t—” she paused and levelled a stare on Olga “—then that’s your choice. I have my path through here. You either follow me or you don’t. I won’t change what I’m doing if people are too pig-headed to listen.”
Olga rolled her shoulders, pulled them back, and lifted her chest. She jutted her chin in Gracie’s direction, her lips tight as she sniffed.
“We will listen to you,” William said.
Everyone but Olga nodded their agreement.
William scrunched his nose when Gracie used some twine to tie the chunk of meat to her back, the slab of cooked deer the size of a rucksack. Would the others eat it with her? Although, easy to turn his nose up on a full stomach. He’d been hungry before. He might be grateful for it later.
A cracked two-lane road separated them from the rest of the city. Gracie looked one way and then the other as if checking for traffic. Her steps were damn near soundless when she crossed.
The first building they came to had a large hole where the window had once been. At least twenty feet wide and ten feet tall, Gracie led them in, William and the others jumping in after her, their weapons ready should they need them.
What had once been tables and chairs now existed as twisted and rusting frames. The old furniture’s skeletons. Bolted into the concrete floor, they now clung on in defiance of their battle with entropy. The remains of several booths ran along one side of the room. Each one identical, each one containing a large metal box bolted to the wall. William pointed at them. “What are they?”
“This place used to be a café.”
The others leaned around William to better hear Gracie’s whispers. He said, “A what?”
“A place where people came for drinks and food. They were utterly pointless. They served drinks no one needed and food that had little nutritional value, but tasted nice. Apparently”—she pointed at the wall of booths—“you’d go into that pod, and those machines had small screens on them. You’d pick what you wanted from the screens, and the machine would spit it out for you. Hard to imagine now, isn’t it? Before everything went to shit, everyone had so much to eat and drink, they were more worried about how fat people were getting than feeding them.”
Artan turned full circle, his mouth hanging open, his spear at his side. “So people gathered here, like in a meeting hall?”
“Kinda. Although, from what we understand, while many people were in the same place together, they gathered in smaller groups. They were much less communal than we are. Mass gatherings were commonplace and rarely a shared experience.”
“How do you know all this?” Olga said, an accusation more than a question.
Gracie stared down at Olga’s slightly raised sword. “We learn about this city’s history as part of our education.”
“And you know it’s true?”
“As much as I can say anything I’ve been taught is true. There are very few facts that haven’t been tainted by bias.” Gracie snapped her hands out to either side and pressed down on the air, forcing everyone to halt.
“Wha—”
“Shh!” Gracie cut Olga off.
His friends as confused as him, it took William a few seconds before he heard it. Maybe Gracie’s time in the city had sharpened her senses.
The uneven beat of footsteps. The slathering grunt of phlegm-clogged lungs. A diseased lolloped past the café, and Hawk bristled, but Gracie shoved him back. The moon highlighted the creature’s twisted and galloping form. On the edge of its balance, it fell from one step into the next and stared straight ahead as if it had somewhere to be, streaking across the front of the café before vanishing from sight.
William’s tight grip sweated on Jezebel’s handle.
“How did—”
A raised finger halted Max mid-sentence. After another ten seconds, Gracie finally broke the silence. “That’s one of the many reasons we pass through this place at night. The shadows are our friend. If the diseased don’t see or hear us, then we don’t have to fight them.”
“Duh!” Olga said.
“You didn’t hear it coming,” William said.
Olga scowled at him.
Matilda spoke in a whisper. “Are there many diseased in the city?”
A shake of her head, Gracie then hooked a thumb to show them their intended destination through the other side of the café. “You rarely get swarms of them. Fear and Fury do a good job of thinning their numbers. Now let’s move.”
Two metal frames were all that remained of the café’s front doors. They followed Gracie’s path through them, small pieces of glass popping beneath their steps.
Gracie’s long ginger plait flicked one way and then the other when she looked up and down the next road.
William shivered and hugged himself for warmth. The street had a bank of buildings on either side that funnelled the wind, condensing its blast.
“On my count, I need you to follow me,” Gracie said. “One … two … three …”
Gracie took off, running with a slight stoop across the road, Artan behind her, followed by Dianna, Matilda, Olga, Max, and finally William.
From the other side of the road, their destination had looked like a dark pit, but now they were closer, William saw the steep steps leading down into a tunnel.
“Fuck no!” Olga said. And who could blame her? She halted and shook her head. “No way am I going down there. No fucking way.”
Gracie shrugged and descended into the darkness. The others followed her.
When William placed a hand on Olga’s back, she snapped taut, and her grip on her sword tightened. “What else do you propose we do?” he said.
“I don’t care, but I’m not going down there.”
“So you’re going to stay up here and wait for another diseased to find you?”
“I’m not going down there. I don’t trust her.”
“Or you’re scared?”
An ugly twist to her face, Olga said, “Of course I’m fucking scared. Look at where we’re going.”
“So, what? We leave you?”
“Do what you want. I’m not going down there.”
“You need to let this whole Gracie thing go. Other than her and Max being friends, you have no reason to hate her.”
“I don’t trust her.” A sharp shake of her head, Olga said. “Besides, it’s nothing to do with her and Max.”
“Right.”
“I’ll say it again … look at where she wants us to go.”
But if William stared into the darkness for too long, he wouldn’t go down there either. From where he stood, the moonlight revealed only a small part of the tunnel. How many steps would it be before they were utterly blind? How deep did they have to go? “But you don’t like her.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything. It impairs your judgement.”
“One of us has to question her motives les
t she lead us all to our deaths. You need me to keep the Gracie fan club grounded.”
Maybe she had a point. Another biting gust of wind cut into William. “I’m sorry, Olga, but I won’t let your jealousy put me in danger.”
“Fuck you, William.”
William took the steps two at a time. Made from the grey stone Gracie had called concrete, the edges of the stairs were wrapped with metal as if to protect against corrosion. So far, it had worked.
The darkness of the tunnel stretched away from them like one of the asylum’s unlit corridors. Max paced in small circles, spinning his war hammer in a two-handed grip. It took for him to make three to four laps before he halted and looked William up and down. “Where’s Olga?”
William held up both of his hands, his fingers splayed. He counted down from ten, starting with the little finger on his right hand.
With three fingers remaining, the tap of Olga’s footsteps called down to them, marking her descent. Her scowl might have been aimed at Gracie, but if she saw it, she did a good job pretending she hadn’t. Gracie set off at a jog into the darkness.
The moonlight shone down the stairs behind them. Not as dark as it had looked from the street. They ran past small booths on either side of the tunnel. Each one had a metal shutter pulled down in front of it. Each one bolted into the ground. Although, every one of them had been mangled from where they’d been prized away to create openings large enough for someone to climb through. The small shops had been looted a long time ago.
William ran at the back, Olga and Max ahead of him. For the acid in her words when she spoke to Gracie, a different Olga spurred Max on with kind encouragement.
Gracie halted when they reached the end of the line of shops. The group fell in behind her.
“I let her go,” Max said.
The group turned his way, all of them taking this chance to catch their breath.
“Monica,” he said. “I let Monica go.”
“You what?” Gracie shook her head. “You saw what she did to everyone, right?”
Olga stepped towards the girl leading them. “He was on the receiving end of some of it. And you did fuck all about it.”
“That’s not fair, Olga.” Max shook his head. “There was nothing Gracie could have done. She helped me when she could. I nearly got her killed.” After a moment’s silence, he said, “I felt sorry for Monica. She was so broken. She’d spent years in that dark and horrible place. She never knew when she’d get her next meal. If she’d get her next meal. She’d completely lost track of time. She’s lived with that for longer than I’ve been alive. Imagine that.”
Gooseflesh pinched the back of William’s neck. The tunnels they were in were too similar to those in the asylum. Imagine twenty years in a place like this. Locked up. Abused …
Gracie’s tone softened. “But what if she goes back to the asylum or the palace?”
Max had stepped back a pace, deeper into the shadows. He shook his head. “I watched her die,” he finally said. “She said she’d rather have a minute of freedom. She knew she had no place in the new community, so she ran. She ran across the meadow and got taken down by diseased. I felt like she deserved that choice.”
Max flinched when William reached out and touched him. “This isn’t the asylum, Max. We’re safe here. We don’t have to listen to people’s suffering.” The shake running through Max’s frame to William’s grip suggested he nodded.
A dull light came on, temporarily blinding William.
Gracie stood up from the switch.
Max quickly wiped his eyes, but the glistening tracks remained on his cheeks. Other than William, no one else seemed to have noticed. Instead, they stared at what lay ahead.
“What the …?” Matilda said.
Chunky metal stairs stretched away from them down into another tunnel.
“We’re going deeper?” Olga said.
Matilda pointed down the stairs. “At least we can see where we’re going.”
The large stairs had sharp, right-angled edges lined with small spikes. They looked like cogs in a giant machine.
“What the hell is this place?” Artan said.
“The armies that fight one another in the city,” Gracie said, “rarely come down here, especially at night.” She pointed down the stairs.
William and the others stepped closer to see the pile of bodies at the bottom.
“And very few of the diseased have the coordination to deal with these stairs without falling and killing themselves.”
“I can see why,” Olga said.
“This is the safest way through the city. At least for part of the journey. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take us to our destination.”
Gracie stepped down, the tock of her first step striking the top stair like a hammer blow.
Where the others froze, William shoved his way through and went next. Handrails on either side, they were rough with perished rubber. He used them to stabilise himself.
The tock of the others’ footsteps, William focused on his path rather than behind. Hopefully, all of them were following him.
Close to the bottom, the sour reek of dead diseased curdled the air. The entire group were quietened by their concentration.
Olga finally said, “If this is the safest and least used route, why are there lights down here?”
“We don’t know who originally fitted them,” Gracie said. “Or who else knows about them. But we’ve used them for years and have never had a problem.”
Olga might have had more questions, but Gracie had already set off again, jumping the diseased corpses and ducking into a tunnel on her right.
“This is a platform for a train station,” Gracie said when the others joined her. “This is one mode of transport they used to get around.” The large cylindrical vehicle in front of them had smashed windows. Small amounts of foam clung to some old seats inside, but they were mostly benches of bare metal. “The people of the city used to come all the way down here, queue on this platform, and then let this thing shuttle them to where they wanted to go.”
Dianna’s voice echoed when she leaned into the train. “Not one for the claustrophobic.”
“Quite,” Gracie said and stepped into the abandoned vehicle when Dianna pulled back out again.
William once again led the others, Matilda reaching ahead to thread her fingers through his. The string of lights continued into the train, giving them a path to follow. It shone on the brown stains of old blood on the floor. The deeper they ventured, the more stains they passed over.
“I thought you said it was safe down here?” Olga said.
“Safer,” Gracie called back. “Nowhere’s safe in this city. I thought I made that clear?”
“Great! So we’re going to get slaughtered in a tunnel?”
“Not if you listen to me and follow my instructions.”
The string of lights led them out of the train. The end of the massive cylindrical vehicle hung open, the metal peeled back like the shutters on the booths upstairs. About three feet to the ground, Gracie jumped down and landed with a crunch. William landed on the stones next. The train sat on two parallel tracks that ran away from them. Thick concrete sleepers every few feet kept the tracks level. Large grey stones filled the spaces in between.
“And no one comes down here?” William said.
“No.” Gracie shook her head and leaned past him to watch Olga jump from the train last. She set off again. “It’s too unpredictable. Especially at nighttime.”
Their path laid out for them, William turned to look at the others, each of them frowning back at him. “But when the lights are on, surely it’s fair game for anyone down here?”
Gracie dropped into a hunch, pulled several stones away, and killed the lights, throwing them into complete darkness.
Max whimpered.
The lights came back on and Gracie stood up. “We can turn them on and off as we please. The fact they’ve remained for as long as they have shows very few people have an inte
rest in coming down here. But if we need to turn them off, we can. Now come on.”
Max stood rigid. The wet tracks still shone on his cheeks.
William stepped towards him, but halted at the sound of footsteps. They called to them from down the tunnel. They moved fast. Faster than any of them could run. He readied Jezebel.
“Kill the lights, Gracie,” Olga said, her hissed words laced with panic, her sword raised. “Turn the fucking lights off now!”
But Gracie ignored her.
“I told you we shouldn’t trust her.” Olga’s voice grew louder. “She’s a snake. She’s set us up. I knew it!”
Gracie continued to ignore the fiery girl.
William stumbled when Olga shoved him in the back. “This is on you. You said we could trust her. Look where that’s gotten us now. Why did we let you make the choices for us? We’re going to fucking die down here because of her.”
A relaxed frame, Gracie took slow steps towards the sound. The steps of someone meeting an old friend. The steps of someone in control. While the rest of them stood ready for war, she held her spear at her side. Had she sold them out? How could William have been such a terrible judge of character? After all they’d been through, had he just sentenced him and his friends to death? The word sat in his mouth like a spitball. But sorry wouldn’t get them out of there. No matter how well he delivered his apology, it would mean absolutely nothing to dead ears.
Chapter 5
Olga clenched her teeth and growled, “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her.”
The words turned through William, lifting his shoulders into his neck. He shouldn’t have trusted her. He should have listened to Olga. But what could he say now? “Just shut up for a minute, yeah?”
“I will not be silenced, William. I will not take a slow and censored walk to my death because you can’t see Gracie’s an arsehole. If I have to make my own decisions to save my own life, then I will. But I like you and would prefer it if you came out of this alive too.”
Gracie continued to walk away from them along the tunnel. A hand on the base of his back made William jump. Matilda stood behind him, her face pale in the weak light.
Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear Page 3
