Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear

by Robertson, Michael

  Artan muttered beneath his breath, “Fuck!”

  Max said, “And all of this because you took us into a fight we didn’t need to have.”

  Hawk shook his head. “You’re right. This is my fault. I’m going to go down and face them.”

  “What?” Artan said.

  “It’ll give you and Max a chance to get away.”

  “No, it won’t.” Artan shook his head. “It will give them a chance to kill you on your own; then they’ll only have to wait for two of us to come down. We’ve got nowhere to run.”

  Hawk’s broad shoulders sagged. “Arthur.”

  Max said it this time. “What?”

  “That’s what he called me. Grandfather Jacks. He named me Arthur. He said I was useless, that I’d amount to nothing.” Tears filled Hawk’s eyes, and his knife shook in his tight grip. “He said I was a liability and that he needed to teach me lessons on how to be better. But I never learned from his teaching, so he taught me again”—his eyes glazed—“and again, and again.” He launched his knife at the soldiers. They moved aside, the ting of the blade hitting the ground. “See! I’m useless. I can’t even throw a knife.”

  “Look.” Max put a hand on Hawk’s back. The hunter jumped at first, but then his gaze settled. “Whatever happens, we’re going to find a way out of this. Whatever happens.”

  Hawk nodded several times and bowed his head.

  Artan peered over Hawk and raised his eyebrows at Max. “So what do we do, then?”

  “You led us here,” Max said.

  “We still need a way out,” Artan said. “Regardless of who’s to blame.”

  The roofs of the buildings were too high to reach, even if they stood on one another’s shoulders like when they got out of the pit in the funnel. The soldiers and the dogs waited, staring up at them, batons raised, jaws hanging open. Max yelled and kicked the welded door again. Another deep thud! “This thing sounds like it’s several feet thick. Maybe we have to fight them.”

  Artan shook his head. “There must be a better option.”

  As one, the dogs’ eyes switched from red to blue. Max said, “Are you seeing that?”

  “Uh-huh,” Artan said.

  All three dogs turned and ran.

  The soldier with the bald head pointed up at Max, Artan, and Hawk. “Know that you got lucky today. And if you have any sense, you’d get the hell out of this city right now.” His jaw clenched and his teeth bared, he said, “If we find you again, that promise of a quick death has expired. We will fuck you up.”

  The tall soldier led his team after the dogs.

  About thirty seconds passed before Hawk said, “Do you really think they’ve gone?”

  “Are you still keen to go down there?” Max said.

  “Max!” Artan tilted his head to one side.

  “What?”

  “We can’t make him go down there on his own.”

  “Not on his own,” Max said. “Just first. We wouldn’t be in this shit if it wasn’t for him. It’s the least he can do.”

  Before Artan replied, Hawk raised a halting hand. “He’s right. It is the least I can do.”

  Much easier going down than it had been going up, Hawk crossed the gap in the stairs from a two-footed standing jump. He landed on the other side with a clang! His fists raised in front of him, he descended the stairs with slow and deliberate steps.

  Clang! Max followed Hawk.

  Clang! Artan took up the rear.

  At the end of the alley, Hawk charged out into the road, picked up his knife, and slashed at the air. He turned one way and then the other, his blade out in front of him. “They’ve gone.”

  “Where?” Artan said.

  “How would I know?” Hawk shrugged. “I’m guessing what happened to the dogs meant something? Maybe it was a call for help. All that matters is they’ve gone. Now let’s get out of here before they come back.”

  Max led Artan from the alleyway. He pointed at the tall steel tower in the distance. “Let’s take this blessing for what it is and get to Gracie’s tower.”

  “You suddenly gone religious?” Artan said. “Praise be to the high father and all that?”

  Thick lines creased Hawk’s brow, and his eyes darkened, his irises turning black.

  “Sorry.” Artan raised his hands in apology. “I didn’t think.”

  “Look, let’s just get out of here,” Hawk said, “before they come back.” He led them in the opposite direction to the one taken by the red army.

  Chapter 23

  William followed the same route as Olga and Matilda. He hung from the first floor of the fire escape and dropped to the ground. He landed beside them, absorbing the shock with bent knees. “That many soldiers in one place has to be a good thing, right?”

  Olga raised an eyebrow. “Unless you run into them.”

  “Well, obviously, but at least we know where a good chunk of them are. And we’re going the other way, aren’t we?”

  “We are.” Olga checked up and down the wide road and led them out of there.

  “How do you know your way already?” William said, following Olga down another tight alley. “Everywhere looks the same.”

  “I don’t trust Gracie, so I paid attention to where she led us. You can never be too careful, can you?”

  “Apparently not.”

  At the end of every alley, Olga had done the same thing, this one no different. She paused, poked her head into the road, looked one way and then the other, and led them out. Although, unlike every other occasion, this time the city opened up, a large mall in front of them. A vast and ugly building. It took up more space than it had any right to. Made predominantly from rusting steel, it had once been painted white, but most of the paint had since peeled off.

  They closed in on the derelict metal monstrosity, crossing the open plain of asphalt that surrounded it on every side. Like every other road in the area, nature had begun its reclamation of the land. Cracks dominated the black surface. Shoots of green packed each one, grassy tendrils of enquiry before they swamped the city for good. What would this place look like in fifty years’ time? How long had it taken to get to this state?

  “Gracie told us a bit more about this place after we’d lost the drone. She called this the car park,” Olga said, all three of them jogging side by side. “Apparently, people drove large metal vehicles, came here on their days off, and spent their time walking around the shops, buying shit they didn’t need. It seems like a waste of a life to me.”

  Matilda shook her head. “I don’t get it either. And this is where you last saw—”

  “Over there,” Olga said. She pointed at a wide sprawl of dead diseased. “Jeez, I didn’t realise there were that many. Hawk and the others went one way, Gracie, Dianna, and myself went the other. They must have drawn them out into the open to make them easier to fight.”

  Many of the corpses had glistening holes, puncture wounds from Hawk’s and Artan’s knives. Many more had smashed-in skulls and distorted faces. They’d been bludgeoned by something hard and angular. “What was Hawk playing at?” William said. “There must be a hundred of them.”

  Olga shrugged. “I’m not sure even Hawk could answer that question. Although, to be fair to him, from where we stood, there was no telling how many there were. Also, by the look of things, it probably won’t help our cause to get him to wind his neck in when we do reunite with them.”

  “What do you mean?” William said.

  “Well, if this is anything to go by, it looks like the three of them got away. Hawk went to war and won. That might make it much harder to convince him his actions were reckless. And I doubt he’s aware of the impact on Max.” Olga looked away from the pile of bodies, her eyes losing focus.

  “Look!” Matilda pointed at the ground. The twisted and savaged corpses lay in a lake of their own blood. Crimson footsteps led away from it, the early morning light revealing a shining trail.

  “Well, at least we know which way they went,” William said.
He rested a hand on Olga’s back. “We can help Max when we find him. Hopefully, we’ll be able to rest up in Gracie’s community. Come on, let’s go.”

  Olga gulped and nodded. She took the lead again. They followed the shining footsteps towards the large mall.

  “Please tell me they didn’t go back in there,” William said.

  The steps had grown fainter the farther away they were from the bloody mess of diseased. “It doesn’t look like they did,” Matilda said. Almost invisible, she pointed at the faintly glistening remnants of their path out of there. It caught the light like a slug trail. “I think they went around.”

  The first building in the next street stood as an enormous cube with a roof. Each side stretched at least one hundred feet long. A functional building, aesthetics be damned. “It reminds me of the barns in Edin,” William said. “A place built for storage. Dad took me—” A lump swelled in his throat, robbing him of his words.

  “It has a fire escape,” Olga said. “We should get on top of it and see if we can see the boys.”

  William coughed to clear the lump in his throat. His eyes itched with the start of tears.

  Matilda said, “Just lead the way and we’ll follow.”

  The wall of the building made from bare red brick, it had small windows in it that looked like they were there for ventilation. When they finally reached a window they could peer into, Olga poked her head inside.

  She snapped back so quickly, William jumped, teetering on the edge of his balance, his heels hanging over the last stair he’d climbed. Olga’s face had turned several shades paler. “What is it?” William said.

  Olga stepped aside so William could look in. He approached on tiptoes and held his breath as he peered into the warehouse. A chill snaked through him. As he pulled away, he mouthed one word at Olga. Fuck!

  Chapter 24

  The inside of the building had been as William had expected. A vast open space without walls. It had been designed for storage. Although, he hadn’t expected to find the entire first floor covered with sleeping bodies. At least, they all appeared to be asleep. Many of them snored and grunted while they dozed, some of them entangled on the floor, lying across one another like post-coital lovers. The place reeked of rot, dirt, and flatulence. The collective funk of a warehouse filled with scavengers.

  Olga hissed, “There must be four hundred of them in there.” She backed away.

  “And that’s on the first floor,” William said.

  Olga pointed down. “You think there’s more below?”

  “Who knows.” William shrugged. “Hopefully not, and hopefully that’s all of them in the city. But what concerns me more is how there’re enough bodies to keep them all fed.”

  “What concerns me more is why we’re still waiting here.” Matilda pointed down the stairs they’d just climbed. “Can we have this conversation somewhere else?” Her eyes widened. “Anywhere else.”

  Olga led them away, their steps far more cautious on the way down than they’d been on the way up. As they got closer to the ground, they quickened their retreat. The scavengers might have lived off scraps in this city, but they preferred their dinner with a pulse.

  Their quickened steps turned into a flat-out sprint when they hit the ground. Olga ran around the back of the warehouse and across a road before she took them down another alley, and deeper into the more built-up part of the city.

  She ran to escape, but William called ahead, “Olga, you need to slow down.”

  “Did you see them back there?”

  “Of course, but I don’t think they saw us. We need to keep our heads and make sure we don’t run into more trouble. Maybe we should assume every building is occupied, and every corner crowded with either Fear’s or Fury’s armies. Gracie said this city was a very different place during the day.”

  Olga scowled at William’s invocation of Gracie, but she dipped her head in a nod of concession. “I’ve no idea where Max and the others might be, but I’d say we need to get on the roofs to stand a better chance of spotting them and any other danger.”

  “Do you think they might have gone to the tower?” Matilda said. “I think we should head back that way now.”

  Olga pointed to her right. “The tower’s over there. If we travel towards it across the roofs, we can do a lot from high up. Two birds and all that.”

  When neither William nor Matilda responded, Olga climbed the closest fire escape. She moved slower and with more deliberate steps than when they’d climbed up the side of the warehouse. At the first window, she peered in. A few seconds of her scanning the darkness, she gave William a thumbs up and moved on. William followed, throwing only a cursory glance into the empty building as he passed the same window.

  Nothing to block the wind on the roof, it rocked William back on his heels, his fatigue robbing him of his stability. Many of the buildings in this part of the city were similar. Small two-storey cubes with flat roofs covered in white pebbles and moss. They were packed so tightly together, to cross from one to the next required only a large step, even for Olga’s small legs. “Gracie was right about this place being built to last.”

  “How long do you think it will be before the buildings start collapsing?” Matilda said.

  Olga rolled her eyes. “While this is all very interesting”—she pointed at Gracie’s tower—“we need to get back. While we run across these roofs, I recommend you and William run down one side while I run down the other. That way we can scan for danger.” She’d chosen the right side, the side that overlooked the road separating them from the scavengers’ warehouse. “Let’s get moving, yeah?”

  Several buildings later, Olga stopped. William grabbed Matilda’s arm, halting her before he pointed at the short girl. “She’s found something.”

  The gravel crunched beneath their steps as they joined Olga on the other side. She led their eyes with her pointing finger.

  Matilda said it first. “Oh, fuck!”

  Max, Hawk, and Artan. They were close to the warehouse.

  Matilda hopped up and down on the spot, waving her arms.

  Olga pulled them down. “Stop!”

  Her hands gripped as tight fists at her side, Matilda stepped closer to Olga. “What did you do that for?”

  “Look!”

  “Oh, shit!” William said. Ten to fifteen blue soldiers had gathered in the road, close to the boys, but they faced the other way. The boys saw them and retreated into the alley running alongside the warehouse.

  “Talk about a rock and a hard place,” William said. “How will we help them get out of this without the scavengers seeing them?”

  “We have to warn them.” Matilda took off without consultation, retracing their path back across the rooftops.

  But before Matilda reached the fire escape they’d climbed, she halted. William caught up to her and followed her guidance when she pointed. More of Fear’s soldiers. There were now about fifty in total. They split up, most of them closing in on the end of the alley the boys had vanished down. About ten others cut through another path to block off their escape at the other end. Four drones remained with the larger army. They were also trained on the alley’s exit.

  “It’s a trap,” Matilda said. “They’re going to send the smaller group around the back to chase them into the larger group. We need to tell them.”

  Olga pulled Matilda from the edge of the roof. “And give ourselves away in the process?” She pointed at her temple. “You need to think, Matilda. We let them know we’re up here and none of us are walking away from this.”

  “Besides,” William said, “we know Hawk and they don’t.”

  “What do you mean?” Olga said.

  “Most people would run away from the smaller army and get funnelled into the larger pack. Their best chance of getting out of this is to charge rather than run.”

  Placing her hands together as if in prayer, Olga said, “For once, Hawk, please try to be a hero.”

  Chapter 25

  Max bit his
tongue and let Hawk speak. He at least needed to hear him out.

  “There was only a handful of them,” Hawk said. “I say we should attack them before they attack us.”

  Max rolled his eyes. At least he’d listened. “When has you charging in helped us so far? When you tried to save Olga on the roof of the tower, you nearly got her and yourself killed. When you charged in to fight the diseased—”

  “We beat them, didn’t we?”

  Max dragged air in through his nose. “Did we?” Mad Max. He shook his head to rid his mind’s eye of Cyrus’ face. “Regardless of who killed what”—his right palm still buzzed with the small cuts from the jagged rock he’d chosen as his weapon—“we didn’t need to fight them, and we got separated from the others. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation had we made a better choice. We’d be with the others in Gracie’s tower. Or maybe even resting up at Gracie’s community.”

  “But we are having the conversation.” Hawk’s upper body tensed. “If we neutralise the threat, we take control. You can see I’ve been trying to help, right, Artan?”

  Artan’s lips tightened. “You might have been trying …”

  “But—”

  “I hate to say this, Hawk”—Max pointed away from them to the other end of the alley—“but I’m going this way. You can come if you like. It’s your call. I won’t risk my life unnecessarily for you again.”

  Hawk’s internal battle played out on his features. It started with a hard scowl, which wavered, his glare softening. “Fine. Whatever. You lead.”

  Max led them down the alley, away from the army they’d avoided. They walked between a large warehouse on their left and a smaller shop on their right. Just getting his body to respond took a great effort. Between Edin, the Asylum, and now this city, he’d fought a lifetime’s worth of battles and more. If only he could find somewhere to rest. At the very least, they needed to avoid any more conflict. Hopefully, when they finally got to Gracie’s tower, Olga and the others would be waiting for them.