“Hold your horses, mate.” Jim forced Tully to sit back down. “Your old man’s not going anywhere for the moment. If we want to get out of this place—all of us—we have to wait until Ace’s attention is tied up with saving his skin. Whatever else is lurking outside, he’s scared shitless by the Gouge tribe. Big Bob, their leader, is twenty-five stone of pathological killer, and he can’t wait to get his mitts around Ace’s throat.”
Tully clenched his fists and was about to shout something about where Ace could stuff his plan of campaign, but Carla grabbed his arm.
“Jim’s right,” she said. Her face was white, and she had to grit her teeth to get the unpleasant truth out. “This is our best chance, Tully. We can’t afford to mess up. If this Big Bob attacks—”
“When, you mean,” Jim interrupted.
“That will be our perfect cover for getting out of here, like we said.”
“And just leave Dad—”
“He’s safe where he is,” Jim said. “We should stick to the plan. Just a couple more days and we’ll get him out.”
“That’ll give us time to get properly prepared, get this place all stirred up.” Matt grinned. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”
“If we have Ace and his band of apes charging about looking for his lost prisoner,” Jim said, “it could seriously screw things up for us.”
“Okay,” Tully sighed. “But tomorrow I want everybody at it, all day. I’m not having Flo commandeering all the women for some stupid job outside, and I don’t want to see any joints going around either. You lot need all the brain cells you’ve got left.”
“Tully,” Carla put a hand on his arm, looking from Jim to Matt, “there’s something else you can do. You can stop your warrior friends asking for Zo and Dee.”
Tully followed Carla’s gaze and saw the furtive glances exchanged by Jim and Matt, the way they hung their heads and refused to look at him, and he understood.
“Zo and Dee are out of bounds. I’ll see to it.”
Carla smiled.
Matt finally raised his head. “Thanks,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next couple of days were spent ransacking the mall for material for Tully’s plan. The women were pleased to be involved in anything that got them out of the usual routine, and they went through the reserves looking for the articles on Tully’s list like kids at a birthday party. Flo, in a silent fury, crashed about with a face like thunder. The lion tamer’s whip never seemed to leave her hand. It flicked and stung for the flimsiest of reasons. The first night Tully asked for Kat and Carla, she’d hardly closed her eyes, convinced that they were plotting something. But the night passed as peacefully as it ever did, and though she peered carefully at the two girls when the guards escorted them back the next morning, there was nothing in their hangdog behavior to suggest they had had anything but a horrible time.
* * * *
It was Kat who had pointed out that they ought to look as though they’d been messed about with.
“You mean…?” Tully looked horrified at the idea.
“Just slapped about a bit.” Matt backed her up. “The girls always get roughed up. It’ll look suspicious otherwise.”
“If you think I’m slapping anybody except Ace or Joe, you can forget it,” Tully blustered. Jim opened and closed his fist. “And I don’t want any of you slapping them either!”
Jim nodded at the spirit stove. “A hot pan will do it. It’ll hurt more than a slap, but it’ll stay red and angry enough to convince Flo.”
“Jim’s right,” Carla said. “Just hurry up and get it over with.”
* * * *
The guards pushed Kat and Carla back under the blind. Flo called them over. Though they had tried to hide their shame behind a veil of untidy hair, Flo could see that their cheeks were red and swollen, and streaked with what she took to be tears. She sniggered to herself. They’d both gotten what was coming to them, pair of snotty bitches.
Not that Flo let down her guard. She still disliked and distrusted Tully, and continued to believe that he was not the big-mouthed buffoon he seemed. After all, if she had been as popular as Tully, she would certainly have been plotting a coup d’état by now. As far as Flo was concerned, Tully was a snake in the grass, and she did her best to sabotage the plan by refusing to hand over her reserve of kitchen knives and scissors until Matt and a few of the boys called around to put her straight.
Despite Flo’s interference, most of the Flay tribe put their backs into the preparations, and by the end of the second day, most of them knew their parts. Carla and Kat had difficulty not bubbling over with excitement, but since they were supposed to be living in dread of being summoned to the Warlord’s chambers again, they had to keep the expression on their faces as cowed and fearful as possible.
The girls had pushed half a dozen tables together and were working in a friendly silence, turning an assortment of knives, drill bits, beaten-flat tin cans, garden canes, and bits of string into lethal weapons. Their voices broke the silence occasionally, like the fluttering of wings, to ask for the glue or more string.
Heavy footsteps came from the walkway and work stopped briefly as Matt, an assault rifle balanced casually on his shoulder, appeared in the doorway. He sauntered past the group of girls tearing cotton sheets up into squares, or hefting metal cutters to make jagged blades, riffled his hand along the broom handles standing to attention against the wall and inspected the tin-can blades that turned them into evil-looking spears. He bent to finger the rag squares and caught Carla’s eye.
She looked at Kat, and the pair of them piled up the cloth squares and carried them over to the far side of the room to the table where the jars of paint stood, where none of the other girls were working. Where no one would hear. Not daring to look at one another, scarcely daring to breath, Kat and Carla spread out the squares and began painting tribal symbols on them.
Matt carried on his inspection, looking over shoulders, running his thumb along the edge of the homemade blades. For a second time, he headed over to the broom handle collection against the far wall. As he passed the painting table, he whispered, “Tonight.”
He tested the balance of a broom handle spear. “Nice work,” he said and gave the girls a look of approval. In the doorway he turned and saluted Flo before closing the door behind him.
* * * *
“Girls,” the guard barked.
The women stopped shaking out their quilts and blankets and tried to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. Carla and Kat were no exception, turning their backs on Flo, their eyes fixed on the floor.
“Four or five will do.”
Carla forced herself to keep calm. This wasn’t in the plan!
“Any preference?” Flo asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the two girls.
“Blondes. With big tits. The boys aren’t that fussy.”
Flo pointed at the most likely candidates and the girls followed the guard in silence down the corridor. Carla looked at Kat in a pantomime of relief, though her heart was pounding.
What the hell is Tully playing at?
More footsteps rang out and the women looked anxiously at the door.
“Warlord Thor wants his women!”
Matt stood in the doorway, feet apart, rocking slightly in his thick army boots and looking like a thug with his shaved head crisscrossed with little scars. Kat cringed and Carla gave a little whimper. Flo gave them both a calculating look that was a mixture of suspicion and evil pleasure.
“Kat and Carla, now!
They hung their heads and trooped reluctantly after Matt, who turned and grabbed Carla by the shoulder, as she appeared to hang back in the doorway.
“Move it,” he snapped.
Flo watched them go. She couldn’t be certain if she was right, but she smelled a rat. “Get those beds made up, pronto,” she snarled at the women clutching their unsavory blankets. “Power’s off in five minutes.” With a warning glare that defied them to misbehave, she w
ent out onto the deserted walkway.
A couple of minutes later, the darkness that enveloped the whole of level one was broken as a beam of light escaped through the opened, then quickly closed, door of Ace’s headquarters.
* * * *
They huddled together nervously in the Lady Day Boutique, listening to the noises that filled the night. Wind whistled under doors that hung half off their hinges, and rattled loosened sheets of roofing. There was a constant scratching and squealing as rats and other creatures scrabbled about among the debris. From the wasteland outside, a desolate howling poured through all the holes in walls and roofs and smashed-in entrances, a howling that could have been drax, but could have been other things too—things that hunted by night, things nobody had ever seen.
“So they’re definitely moving in?” Tully turned to Matt.
He nodded. “From the boundary with Kusha, but none of them came in too close. You know what they’re like, friggin’ cowards. Won’t take any chances. They’ll have been waiting for nightfall, and if they haven’t attacked yet, it’s because they’re waiting for something else.”
“Could be they’re waiting for their friends. The Bulgarians get on okay with the Kusha.” Jim frowned as another thought struck him. “Could also be because they’ve got wind of somebody else muscling in.”
“Looks like this might be our last chance to make sure we all know what to do when the shit hits the fan,” Tully said.
“When I take your dad his breakfast, I won’t lock the door,” Carla said.
“I took the liberty of relieving Flo of this,” Kat held up a small key. “Just in case the spiteful old battleaxe decides the prisoner doesn’t need breakfast.”
“Me and Matt will keep an eye on Flo to make sure she doesn’t sabotage everything,” Jim added.
“And Jeff will help me keep Ace occupied.” Tully grinned at Jeff. “And as soon as the fighting gets heated and Ace starts pissing himself with excitement, we’ll just slip away, via the bank.”
Carla frowned slightly. “You’re certain your plan will work?”
“Dead certain. Can’t fail.”
She didn’t look convinced. “What about you, Jim?”
“Could work. Thing is, all we’ve ever done before has been like kids belting one another with bricks and stuff. None of them will be expecting anything like Tully’s plan.”
“Yeah, the difference between the Battle of Agincourt and Star Wars,” Matt added.
“I still can’t help feeling bad, though.”
Tully stared at Carla, but in the darkness all he could make out were the two pools of light that were her eyes and the look of distress in them. “About what?”
“Running out on everybody. Doesn’t it make you feel like a rat?”
There was an awkward silence.
Carla sighed. “There are some of the girls I’d like to bring with us. We can trust them. I hate the idea of leaving them behind with Ace.”
Matt looked at Jim. “Me too.”
“We might not have to,” Kat said. “We haven’t talked yet about where we’re going to head for. I’ve had an idea. It’s risky, and if anyone has anything better to propose—”
If they did, it was drowned out by the howling.
Matt sent the flashlight beam darting along the corridor out onto the walkway. The sound of long curved nails skittering across the fake marble flooring grew more distinct, though the howling continued to roll in from beyond the east side entrance. Drax! An instant later the alarm went off, a sinister wailing that sent echoes bouncing around the empty galleries.
“Shite,” Tully cursed. “It’s started.”
Carla moved closer and put her arms around him, pressing herself against him to take the imprint of his body with her when they parted. “Your plan will work, won’t it?”
Her eyes were wide and she searched Tully’s face intently, looking to find the truth in his expression. It was only the old Tully she saw. The swaggering, self-opinionated joker had gone, melted in the warmth and tenderness she saw in his eyes. He didn’t need to speak the answer. She could read it in his face. He smiled at her and she fell into the blue depths of his eyes. His plan would work because he would make it work. For her. For them.
* * * *
The biting cold made their eyes water as they huddled in the main entrance, peering through the wreckage of wire trolleys into the darkness. The tribesmen had followed the drill more or less correctly, and the scouts had darted off to their posts. After the first punch of fear, the adrenalin started to fizz through Tully’s system. His energy was infectious and spread to the others. Only Carla seemed reluctant for the action to start.
Though there were no cell phones that still functioned, the scouts had walkie-talkies. None of them had called in. Tully was getting impatient.
“Jeff, run over to Matt and tell him to get the women organized. And to keep a sharp eye on Flo. I don’t trust the cow not to switch camps just to spite me.”
“Hold on!” The walkie-talkie was sending out a faint signal. Jim stuck his ear to it. Reception was feeble, more crackle than voice, but he got the message. “Ben’s found them. It’s east side. Can’t hear everything he’s saying, but it’s over there, all right.”
“Call the others. If they’ve got us encircled, we’re in trouble. Go on Jeff, run! I want those girls in their teams ready to move.”
Carla gave him a strange look. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Ah, please, knock it off, will you?” Tully pleaded.
Carla laughed and shook her head. “It’s not a criticism. It suits you. How about if I start calling you Napoleon? Just in private, of course.”
Tully spluttered, but was secretly relieved that Carla could joke about it. Jim finished calling the scouts.
“The others have nothing particular to report, except that there seems to be a sort of flanking movement making its way over here from the east side.”
Tully grabbed the rucksack lying at his feet and a broom handle with a deadly-looking butcher’s knife strapped to the end. “Come on then, mate! Roll on, death, and let’s have a go at the angels, as my dad would say. At least, if I can’t get him out, the other lot can’t either.” He pondered this last fact. “Probably just as well. He’d only get in the way. It’s not that he can’t fight. He just doesn’t like doing it. I remember once when—”
“For Christ’s sake, Tully, get a move on,” Jim yelled. “The family reminiscences can wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The smell of fear filled the dark room where the women waited, but also an exhilaration that had long been absent from their lives. For once they were to be trusted with action, participation alongside the men. Flo watched the growing enthusiasm of her charges with a scowl, watched as they were snatched out of her control by the little general’s toy soldiers. This had not been her idea. In fact, she had been totally opposed, and Ace had backed her up. But the shiny new warlord had had his way, and a flock of chickens was going to be driven out to fend off a horde of drax and savage tribesmen.
Flo ground her teeth in fury. It wasn’t right! If they were to admit that women could fight like men, where did that leave the men? What was left in this crippled world but strength and destruction? It had always been the men who had been entrusted with that side of things. Now, at the end of days, some jumped up little shit from a wormhole was going to take their final glory away from them.
Flo could tell that Ace had agreed entirely with her, when she told him what she suspected, but he was torn—torn between his fear of Tully usurping his place, and the blind terror of what was on its way. Ace hated Tully, but he saw him as the only possible bulwark against the Burnt Man. Flo knew Ace’s weakness, his fear of the supernatural. He was a slave to the predictions of the half-wit he called a Holy Man, and Flo despised him for it. She had no belief in predictions. She believed only in what she could see and hold in her fist. Ace was losing his grip. Flo had seen it in the depths
of his eyes the previous evening.
* * * *
A few hours earlier
As soon as the two little slags with their escort were out of sight, Flo slipped into Ace’s headquarters, ill at ease, as she always was when she had to stand up to the men, knowing there was nobody who would defend her if things turned nasty. Ace narrowed his eyes as she closed the door behind her, looked at her with a disgust he barely bothered to hide.
“Well, what gossip has the Witch of Belsen brought us this evening?”
Flo held his cold gaze but her mouth was dry. “Those little bitches Kat and Carla have gone sneaking off to your precious warlord. They’re plotting something. I thought you ought to know.”
“I know what I’d be plotting with that new chick. Whatsername, Clara?” Max made an obscene gesture to his twin. Seb gurgled like a drain.
Flo cast her eyes about the room, at the red faces of Ace’s brutish comrades, and saw only hilarity and stupidity. “You should have someone keep an eye on him all the time. You can’t trust him, Ace.”
“What makes you think I trust that little arsehole? You think I’m a complete moron or what?” Ace’s voice had a dangerous edge to it now.
Flo hugged her arms across her chest, suddenly very cold.
Joe glared at her with his bulging, dull eyes. “Who d’you think you are, calling Ace a moron? You ugly old cow!”
Flo drew herself upright, her eyes glittering at the sting of the insult fixed on Ace, ignoring Joe. She licked her lips and decided to risk another humiliation. “He’s turning the men against you, and his little whores are talking to the other girls. Whispering. I hear them sometimes. Just remember, if he leads the men into a fight with the other tribes and he wins, there’ll be no holding him back. He’ll have your hide, Ace.”
Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1) Page 17
