Beyond These Walls | Book 8 | Between Fury & Fear

by Robertson, Michael

  A soldier shoved Max, and he stumbled forwards another step. He stood in between Hawk and Artan. The three of them lined up facing the soldiers on the other side of the arena.

  “So,” the woman said, pointing at her three new prisoners with the tip of her sword, “which one do we save?” Max first, she levelled her blade on him. “This one?” A small section of the crowd cheered.

  When the woman highlighted the scowling Hawk, the soldiers fell silent. If Hawk cared, he hid it well. He’d fight every one of them given half a chance, and he had no problem showing it.

  And finally, Artan. His boyish good looks and tanned skin sent the crowd wild. Strong featured, brooding, and physically fit. Many of them slammed their open palms against the clear wall surrounding the rink. It shook and rattled. Many more stamped their feet. Whistles ran so shrill they forced Max’s shoulders into his neck.

  The woman with the sword grinned. She cut the air with her blade again. “Well, it looks like we have a clear favourite, then.” Somewhere between a smile and a sneer lifted one side of her mouth when she looked Artan up and down. “It’s just a shame we have to let him go. I could do with a new pet.”

  All the soldiers had entered the arena. And still no sign of Olga. Max needed to stall for time. Give her as long as he could. What other choice did they have? He opened his mouth, but someone cut him short.

  “Val!” The call echoed in the tight corridor leading from the foyer to the arena.

  The woman with the sword paused, and the crowd quietened.

  Several soldiers entered. A scuffle amongst them. At first it looked like the blue army were fighting one another until a flash of red revealed the twisting and writhing form in their midst. Smaller than her captors, she continued to twist and turn as if it she could affect her current situation.

  “Well, well.” The woman with the knife smiled, stepping aside to avoid the flurry of activity being dragged up to the platform.

  The soldiers with Max, Artan, and Hawk also moved aside. Blood ran from the red soldier’s nose. It coated the lower half of her face as a mask of blood. Swelling closed her right eye, and the other one remained open with just a squint.

  The woman with the sword showed where she wanted Fury’s soldier: in front of Max and his friends. A finer prize than the three boys. It bought Olga more time.

  The soldiers’ boos and jeers damn near shook the building’s foundations.

  This time, the woman with the knife basked in the chaos. She smiled and spread her arms wide. She then gestured at the two soldiers on the platform with her.

  The back of Max’s knees weakened when they kicked Fury’s soldier at the same time. Her arms and legs flailed as if she could somehow find purchase in the air. A desperate and instinctive attempt to save a life already lost.

  The diseased caught the red soldier’s stage dive and dragged her under, burying her beneath a writhing and ravenous carpet.

  The enclosed space amplified the soldiers’ cheers, and Max’s ears rang from their response. If he didn’t take his moment now, he might not get another chance. He leaned close to his friends. “We might still get out of this.”

  “How do you work that out?” Hawk said.

  The soldiers on the platform were occupied with their enemy’s demise. “I saw Olga on the roof of a building. She watched us get caught. Hopefully, she’ll work out a way to get us out of here.”

  “If she does,” Artan said, “she’d best hurry the fuck up.”

  Max nodded, and his frame sagged. “Yeah.” Who was he kidding? Olga and the others had no chance of saving them.

  Chapter 28

  William still hadn’t explained his plan.

  “William, what the hell are we doing back here?” Olga said.

  As they approached the large building they’d seen the scavengers sleeping in earlier, William said, “There’s, what, four hundred of them in there?”

  The short girl shrugged. “’Bout that.”

  “And how many of Fear’s soldiers did we see?”

  “Eighty at the most.”

  “We saw what they did to that soldier who was strung up. So all we need to do—”

  Olga finished the sentence for him. “Is bring them together.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m worried,” Matilda said.

  “Me too.” William raised his index finger on his right hand. “But one thing I know for sure is we don’t have the luxury of time. Who knows what they have planned for the others. They might already be doing whatever it is. So we need to make a decision. Are you both with me?”

  Matilda nodded first before Olga shrugged. “Fine, let’s do this. How are we going to get them to chase us?”

  “We need to bait them.”

  “How?”

  “Just be ready to run, okay?”

  “Oh.” Olga shook her head. “I don’t like this one bit.”

  A pair of double doors dominated the front of the warehouse. They hung slightly ajar. When they’d peered in last, they’d only seen the first floor. Who knew how many more were hidden from sight on the level below. No matter how William tried to control his breathing as he closed in on the building, his heart still beat like it would burst, and his lungs were tight. Hopefully not so tight that he couldn’t outrun the lot of them. He bit down on his bottom lip and pulled the left of the two doors wide. Just wide enough to allow him to slip into the large space.

  Windows along two of the four walls let in enough light to show him no one slept on the ground floor. While they were large enough to show him the way, they were too small to encourage a breeze through the place. The reek of dirt, the result of so many unwashed bodies in an enclosed space, caught in the back of his throat. Dirt mixed with the funk of sweat from where the day heated up and slowly stewed the rancid scavengers.

  The stairs leading to the first floor reminded William of every fire escape he’d climbed in this city. If it ain’t broke … Metal, they led a zigzag from the ground, bending twice as they worked their way up the back wall.

  As a kid, William and Matilda used to play a game called What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? A simple premise, one kid would be the wolf and stand with their back to the rest. They’d try to get the other kids to come as close to them as possible before they decided it was dinner time, turned around, and chased them. The kids would run off screaming, doing their best to avoid capture. At what point would the scavengers call dinner time?

  William’s legs shook when he reached the bottom of the stairs. A tight grip on the handrail, he took slow and deliberate steps to the first floor.

  What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?

  He threw a glance back at the double doors, plotting his exit. Matilda directly behind him, Olga behind her. They both nodded. They were ready. Time to commit to the plan.

  Heavy stamps up the final few stairs, William poked his head up into the first floor and clapped his hand to his mouth. “Oh, shit!” Half of the room were already awake. He said it loud enough to make sure he roused the other half. “Uh … I—”

  Olga and Matilda ran.

  A flash of white light crashed into William’s vision, and fire ran through his sinuses. A scavenger had blindsided him and kicked him in the face. His sight blurred, he rolled back on his heels, grabbed for the railing at his side, and missed. The back of his head struck a lower step, the entire staircase ringing like a misshapen bell. His skull held the note as he came to a halt at the bottom.

  He lay on his back on the concrete, his head throbbing, his sinuses stinging. A stream of scavengers descended the stairs, their footsteps playing a thunderous roar.

  Back on his feet, his legs wobbly, his nose clogged with blood, William ran. More light flooded into the place when Olga kicked the door wide, Matilda following her out.

  But the light vanished when the doors slammed shut. The closing lock rang through the room with a definitive clunk!

  “What the …?” Alone in the warehouse, the scavengers charging down the metal st
airs. William ground to a halt in front of the closed doors and turned to face the descending wave of fury. “Shit!”

  Chapter 29

  A complex pulley system ran along the ceiling from the bottom of the stairs to the double doors. It gave the scavengers total control over who entered and who left.

  William ran for the wall on his right. The windows were only four feet wide by two feet deep. They were at least six feet from the ground. He dived as if about to enter water, his hands stretched out in front of him. But he hadn’t jumped high enough. He landed on his stomach across the wall. He kicked his legs, catching a scavenger with the backswing of his right boot as he wriggled through. He landed headfirst in the alley to another flash of white light.

  “What happened?” Matilda said the second William charged out into the main road.

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Just run!”

  Overtaking both Olga and Matilda, the two girls paused for the briefest of moments until the crash of the warehouse’s front doors swung open. The scavengers spilled from the large building like a plague. Their thunderous, collective roar damn near shook the ground. They were the most lucid and focused horde they’d encountered. No chance of avoiding this lot by climbing on a roof and hiding from sight.

  The kick to the face and fall down the stairs had left William’s nose clogged with blood. He breathed through his mouth. They only had to get to the arena. They could do this.

  The front of the arena was wide open. It showed William the smaller corridor inside, the mass of blue soldiers beyond that. Get the scavengers and Fear’s army together, and surely they’d do the rest.

  The scavengers had closed the gap, some front-runners eating away at the distance between them, but they weren’t close enough. Olga on one side, Matilda on the other, William ran into the arena’s foyer and threw his arms wide. “Come on, then, you fucks!”

  The blue soldiers turned as one. Frowns of confusion morphed into scowling rage. But none of them charged.

  “What are they waiting for?” Matilda said.

  A woman appeared in the corridor. She had greasy brown hair, and her two front teeth were missing. She carried a long curved sword. Many of the soldiers behind her held batons.

  The scavengers had halted outside the arena. The group at least three to four hundred strong, they stood waiting, many of them panting from the run.

  “Well, well,” the woman said, her words wet with a lisp from her lack of front teeth. “This is a pleasant surprise. You went to the effort of delivering yourselves to us.” The woman waved at the pack of scavengers and said, “Thank you.”

  One of the group stepped forward and nodded. “You’ll leave us something?”

  The blue soldiers had followed their leader into the foyer. They surrounded William, Olga, and Matilda, patting them down for weapons.

  The soldier frisking Matilda took it too far, and William lurched in his direction. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Another flash of white light, the soldier punched him square on the nose. William dropped to his knees and held his face in his hands.

  A female soldier, about five feet tall, kicked William in the stomach and spat on him. “Now get up, you pathetic fuck.”

  Before anyone else could weigh in, William stumbled to his feet, his stomach tied in a knot of nausea. He shook, and blood rained down the back of his throat.

  “What?” the woman with the knife said. “You thought you could turn the scavengers against us? They’re the only people we allow to live in our city. They clean up our mess. We have a symbiotic relationship with them. And we know to stay the fuck away from one another.” The pack of scavengers were already rounding the corner back towards their warehouse, but the lead woman spoke in a mock whisper anyway. “They don’t know this yet, but when we get control back of this city, we will drive them away from here like rats from a burning ship. But until then, we’re—” she paused, tapping her chin as if it helped her think “—associates.” Her laugh bubbled from deep within her throat and she shook her head. “I can’t believe you wanted to use them against us. O’well, I suppose we should give you what you wanted, eh? I mean, this was about reuniting you with your friends, right?”

  As they led the three of them away, William dropped his attention to the dirty and broken tiles at his feet. What an idiot. It had seemed like a good plan.

  Chapter 30

  Mad Max.

  Max shook his head, the diseased’s call like a mosquito buzzing inside his skull.

  There had been five soldiers on the platform with them before, but now, as Val brought William, Olga, and Matilda up to join them, she also brought seven more of her blue-uniformed friends. Max and Olga stared at one another. How the fuck had they both ended up here?

  As she’d done before, Val cut the air with her sword, extinguishing the crowd’s excitement. The diseased groaned and yelled in defiance of Fear’s psychotic leader.

  Mad Max.

  Cyrus stared up from the crowd. His mum and dad. His brothers. William … he did a double take. Not William. William stood behind him, close to Matilda and Artan.

  “So,” Val said, “it would seem our prisoners have some friends.” She laughed. “Friends that were stupid enough to think they could use the scavengers as a weapon against us.”

  Mad Max.

  The plank led away from the platform out over the diseased. A sea of twitching fury. They had but one purpose: to drive this vile plague into clean blood. The dense press of the crowd would make it damn near almost impossible to move when they ended up down there. How on earth would Max protect his friends?

  Fury’s soldier had now become part of the collective mess. She stared up through eyes that matched her uniform. Her arms were pinned to her sides from the tight press of bodies. Deprived of reaching towards the platform, she bit at the air like a dog bothered by a fly. Her head snapped one way and then the other.

  “Of course,” Val said, “we’re going to leave one of them as a symbol of friendship for the scavengers. A live meal, we might even leave them unharmed.” She tapped her chin, her fingernails broken and dirty. “But which one?”

  Many of the crowd shouted. Among the general noise, Max heard, “The short one.” His stomach clamped.

  Mad Max.

  Until now, Max hadn’t noticed the large pole on one corner of the platform. Too much else to focus on. It had looked like a part of the structure. But it offered nothing to the integrity of their improvised stage, and it had ropes tied around it. What did they use it for?

  Milking the crowd, Val used her sword to point to William first. “This one?”

  The crowd made some noise, but they’d proved they could do better when they’d cheered for Artan.

  Then onto Matilda. “This one?”

  Val had heard the calls for the small one. How could she not? Did that reflect the nature of their relationship with the scavengers? They’d leave them someone to feed on, but it would be the slimmest pickings of the lot. After all, they were a pack of cannibals. And why would Fear pass up the chance to give them a reminder of their role in their relationship? They’d take what they were given and be grateful.

  Val pointed the tip of her sword at Olga. The crowd noise trebled, the closed roof amplifying their joy. It made Max’s ears ring and buried Val’s words. Not that it mattered what she said. They’d chosen Olga.

  Val nodded at two soldiers on the platform with her. The hairs on the back of Max’s arms rose as if the air held a charge. They didn’t know Olga like he did.

  The first one grabbed Olga’s right arm while the second tried to grab her left. But Olga moved fast, catching the second one with a wild hook that sent him stumbling backwards.

  Were it not for Val catching the soldier by his lapels, he would have fallen into the pit. The near miss silenced the raucous crowd and invigorated the creatures below.

  Val turned the soldier around so he faced the crowd on the other side. “This, ladies and gentle
men, is an example of what not to do. Lower your guard in this city and you’re screwed. She can’t be any taller than five feet—”

  “Five feet two!” Olga said through clenched teeth, the first soldier still clinging onto her.

  “Well, there we have it.” Val winked at Olga. “I do apologise, sweetheart. Five feet two.” She spun the soldier around, her tone deepening. Her words damn near crackled. “You let a girl of no more than five feet get the better of you.” She shoved the soldier backwards from the platform. He screamed as he went down. He fixed on Val while the diseased caught him and dragged him under.

  Mad Max.

  Her face puce, Val’s sword shook as an extension of her arm when she pointed down at the spot where the soldier had been. “I will not stand for that level of incompetence.” She spun around, her blade making a whoosh as it cut through the air. “You!”

  A woman in blue pointed at herself as if she really didn’t want it to be her.

  “Tie her up,” Val said.

  Olga’s left hand still free, the woman led with a punch, catching Olga hard enough to stun her. She then grabbed Olga’s left arm before helping the other guard tie her to the pole. They’d leave her there for now. Their offering to the scavengers.

  “Now—”

  In one move, Max snatched the sword from Val’s hand, ran the length of the plank, and jumped into the diseased crowd.

  Chapter 31

  While everyone watched Max, William clenched his jaw and kicked Val in the back. Her feet lifted clean off the platform, and she swan-dived into the diseased. One creature drew blood from her shoulder before she vanished from sight. Her scream died as she drowned beneath the writhing fury.

  Matilda shoved one soldier and then another from the platform and untied Olga while Hawk took the fight to three more.