Beyond These Walls (Book 6): Three Days

by Robertson, Michael

  “This is a test of faith.”

  “A test of what faith?”

  Peter laughed again and Olga distanced herself from the man, his shrill cackle turning her blood cold. “Don’t tell me you don’t have any faith?”

  “I have faith in strangers.”

  “Nice try.”

  “Then what the hell are you talking about?”

  “So you believe in hell? That’s something, I suppose. Do you follow Grandfather Jacks?”

  “Who?”

  Peter ran along the side of the chute and stopped close to the woman. Close enough to reach down and pull her out. The handle of the knife on his belt poked away from his body when he crouched. Olga’s hands twitched with the need to grab it. “My dear, you have much to learn. I’m going to teach you about faith, and it might just save your life.”

  “Why don’t you just pull me out? That would save my life.”

  “What will that teach you? Now, the person who has faith would let go.”

  Tears shimmered in the woman’s glare. “Why would I do that?”

  “Just help her, Peter,” Matilda said.

  Peter spun around, his soft face hardening. “Do you want to join her?” After a pause, he turned back to the woman, his voice calm again. “Now, where were we? Faith, that’s it. The person with faith would let go now.”

  Olga’s hand twitched again as she watched the wooden knife handle, electric pain streaking away from the cuts on her wrists.

  “But there’s a pit of spikes down there,” the woman said.

  “Or is that all you see? When you need guidance in the darkness, your mind might tell you there are monsters ahead. But if you take the hand of the High Father and believe in what he can do for you, then you’ll be all right.” All trace of the malice he’d flashed at Matilda now gone, a wide smile filled his face, his dark eyes pinching at the sides. “We could all do with a little more faith. Just trust me, sweetheart, you’ll be okay.”

  The woman trembled worse than before and shook her head.

  “It’s the only way to freedom,” Peter said. “Trust me, I know the funnel as well as anyone.”

  The woman frowned and fought to get her words out through stuttering breaths. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. This is just a test, my dear.”

  Olga winced when the woman let go and screamed as she dropped. She fell into the pit, her cry dying in her throat. If someone had asked Olga why she’d stepped forward at that moment, she wouldn’t have been able to answer. For some reason, she needed to see if the woman had made it. But of course she hadn’t. Peter hadn’t come here to save her. Skewered on several spikes, the glistening and bloody tip of one protruded from her open mouth.

  His hands raised in prayer, Peter closed his eyes and faced the sky. “Praise be to Grandfather Jacks. May you help this lost soul on her journey to redemption in the afterlife. May you watch over her until she sees the error of her ways. Hell is a place where the unenlightened dwell. Let us pray she learns never to use that word again.”

  Carl fizzed and hissed, Olga screaming in response to the outburst. But he aimed his rage at Peter. His teeth bared, his eyes wild, he sneered at his partner.

  If Peter knew he’d become the focus of Carl’s rage, he hid it well. If the woman’s death had meant anything to him, it didn’t show. He spoke like a tour guide taking the girls on a little jaunt. “So you’ve now seen what some of the traps are like in the funnel. Some of them are so old they don’t go off, but it’s hard to predict, so assume all of them will work. Just follow my lead and you’ll be fine. Anyone guided by Grandfather Jacks can find their way through here. Anyway, let’s move on, shall we? It won’t be long before we’re off the funnel and that one step closer to the High Father.”

  Olga raised her eyebrows at Matilda. At what point should they fight back? How long before it got too late to act?

  “Grandfather Jacks, my arse,” Carl said. Heavy bags sat beneath his eyes, his ruddy cheeks hanging, a white band underlining each iris. His stare remained glazed and lacked focus. “There’s no salvation with him. If hell exists anywhere, it’s where that man resides.”

  However they did it, Olga and Matilda needed to find a way out of this mess before they were delivered to the High Father.

  They’d walked for several more hours, the day growing long. Peter had pointed out many of the trips and triggers along their way. “And we have another one,” he said a few hours later. “As the prophet sent his men to lead the pure through the treacherous path, they encountered many obstacles. They found the devil’s outstretched hand in various forms. Those who took it were lured into darkness.”

  “What the hell?” Carl spat, twisting as if possessed. His head snapped one way and then the other. He rocked back and forth. “The prophet! Ha! The devil more like. Cleanse them of their sins! As if the prophet doesn’t commit heinous acts. Sins. What does that even mean?” The words fell from his mouth as if he couldn’t contain them, and he banged the palm of his hand against his wide forehead. Just speaking them seemed to cause him physical pain.

  This time, a man had been caught in a trap. A pit similar to the one the woman had fallen into, except there were no spikes. Short and in his mid thirties, the man had a bald spot on the top of his head. He paced back and forth in his prison.

  When Peter crouched down on the edge of the hole, his knife protruded from his belt again. The spears remained in his sheathe on his back. He had no worries, and why should he? The man in the pit couldn’t do anything, Carl seemed like more of a danger to himself, and Matilda and Olga were bound so tight he had total control over them.

  Another twitch snapped through Olga’s right hand, and she gripped the air as she imagined holding the knife’s wooden handle. If she charged him, he might drop the knife. It might give them an opening.

  Matilda shook her head. She’d clearly read Olga’s thoughts.

  “Confess your sins!” Peter said to the man.

  The man scrunched his face, squinting as he looked up into the sun. “What are you talking about?”

  “Confess your sins,” Peter said.

  “What sins?”

  “You tell me. Salvation only comes from the pure of spirit. The free of heart. Let me help you relinquish your sins. I can ease your burden, brother.”

  The man’s face twisted and his eyes glazed. At first he looked like he might tell Peter where to go. But his expression buckled. “I ran away from her. She needed me and I ran. I left her hanging over the pit of spikes when I heard you coming. Is she okay? Did you save her?”

  While hooking a thumb over his shoulder, Peter smiled, his voice so soft the strong wind nearly overpowered him. “She’s back there. She’s saved now.”

  “Thank god.”

  Peter’s features hardened. “What god?”

  “Huh?”

  “What god do you speak of? Who do you thank?”

  “W-w-what does it matter?”

  The crouched Peter formed an imposing silhouette as he hunched on the edge of the pit. “What does it matter? It might not matter to you. If it did, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  A panel to trigger another trap. Similar to the one Olga nearly stood on that led to the spiked pit. It remained slightly depressed. The man must have activated it, but it hadn’t reset. Peter tapped it with his toe. Once. Twice. He grinned and leaned on it. Click!

  The thunderous rumble of an avalanche shook the steel beneath Olga’s feet. Boulders and rocks spilled from a hole high up, a slope leading from them to the pit containing the man. They raced towards him, some of them two to three feet in diameter.

  The man’s scream ended in a crunch! Nailed by the first rock.

  Serenity spread across Peter’s face and he nodded at the girls. “And that’s why you’re better with us. We’re on the winning team. You’d do well to learn that. There is only one god, and you are among the lucky few who will be welcomed into the warm embrace of his love. Isn’t that righ
t, Carl?”

  Carl’s mouth spread wide in a battle cry and he charged at Peter. His feet twisted and turned with the uneven surface, but he moved along the funnel as if it were flat. On the run, he drew one of his spears and threw it.

  “What’s gotten into you, man?” Peter called out as he ducked the projectile.

  Carl flashed past the girls and Olga’s stomach lurched. He’d been inches from knocking her down.

  “Fuck Grandfather Jacks. He’s the devil.” When Carl slammed into Peter, both of them hit the steel hard. The skittering sound of metal against metal, Carl’s knife broke from his hip and spun away from the scuffling pair. The wooden handle dared Olga to grab it.

  “What the fuck do you know about the salvation Grandfather Jacks offers?” Carl grabbed Peter by the lapels, dominating the smaller man as he loomed over him. He headbutted him, hitting his nose with a thunder crack. “You talk about sin like he does. Like you’re an authority when you’re nothing but a hypocrite.”

  As Peter reached up, wrapping a strong grip around Carl’s neck, Olga nudged Matilda and nodded at Carl’s knife. No more than ten feet from where they stood, the blade at least eight inches long. Long enough to take the fight to the men if they could get free of their bonds.

  Matilda raised her eyebrows and pulled her hands away from her back. “How can we do anything?”

  “We could use it to cut ourselves free.”

  Matilda shook her head. “We won’t be able to move quickly enough.”

  The men grunted and yelled as they wrestled one another, oblivious to Olga and Matilda’s conversation.

  “Come on, you’ve had a rest now,” Olga said. “Let’s do this. We wait any longer and we’ll miss our opportunity.”

  Matilda shook her head again.

  “Screw this!” Olga took off in the direction of the knife. By her third step, Matilda chased after her.

  Chapter 8

  The map remained in the plastic sleeve Max had found, William referencing it again before he said, “This wall looks like it stretches as wide as the entire map.” The closer they got to the large black barrier, the taller it seemed to grow. “I’ve never seen so much steel in my life.” The gunmetal grey face of it stood sheer. It might have been covered in scratches and scars, but in comparison to the crumbling world around them, this barrier remained strong and resolute. About one hundred feet tall, it had just one path running through it as a deep crevice.

  Cyrus shivered, the day yet to warm up. “How long do you reckon it’ll take to cross?”

  “God knows,” Artan said. “We don’t know how deep it is. What do you think, Max?”

  Again, the boy had very few words. Artan’s spear raised and ready to use, he simply shrugged.

  His war hammer in a two-handed grip, Artan held it towards Max. “Are you pissed that I won’t give you this?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what is it, then?” William said. “You’ve been miserable for days.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly living an idyllic existence right now.”

  “Sure, but it takes some serious effort to be as moody as you’ve been for as long as you have.”

  His voice warbling with his shivering form, Cyrus said, “It’s about what happened with you and Olga, isn’t it?”

  Of course William knew what had gotten him down, but they needed to get it out in the open. And maybe he should have been more sympathetic, but when Max’s lips tightened and his frown deepened, he said, “What did you expect? You publicly humiliated her.”

  Max turned, his spear raised. “I didn’t expect her to kiss Hawk!”

  While wringing his axe handle, William widened his stance. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Maybe if you’d talked to her beforehand, none of this would have happened.”

  “Maybe if you’d taken us away from Umbriel rather than deciding we’d be okay going on one hunt—”

  Artan dropped his hammer and caught William, dragging him back before he could charge at Max.

  Max remained rooted to the spot. Cold blue eyes, he’d fight William if he wanted it, and he didn’t care if he lost. “Why are you suddenly on Olga’s side anyway?”

  After he’d shaken Artan off, Matilda’s brother remaining between him and Max, William straightened his still-damp clothes. “I’m on the side of reason.”

  “Shame you weren’t on the side of reason last night when you nearly got us all killed.”

  “They can’t kill you.”

  “But unlike you, I care about the group’s safety.”

  As Artan guided William farther away, Cyrus walked over to Max and said, “I think we could all learn to communicate better and think about others more, wouldn’t you say? And I think the point William’s trying to make is that Olga needed to know how you felt. It seems like all the drama between you both could have been avoided had she been able to make an informed choice about your relationship.”

  The boy’s softness might have made him a liability in a fight, but Cyrus’ smooth tone moved through the group like hot steam. The muscles in William’s back relaxed.

  Even Max let go of a lot of the rigidity in his frame. He nodded several times as if psyching himself up to get his words out. “Cyrus is right. I didn’t explain myself very well. I think Olga would have behaved very differently had she known. I fear we won’t find them again and I’ll never get to explain. I wonder where they are now. Do they even know we’re still alive? That we’re trying to get to them?”

  “Until we know otherwise,” Cyrus said, “we have to assume they’re okay. With nothing to cling onto, we might as well reach for hope.”

  His legs aching from all the travelling they’d done and the promise of much more to come, William’s feet slammed down as he fell from one step into another. He let go of a hard sigh. They’d reach the wall in the next ten minutes, and then they’d have to climb it. “So what do you reckon? We go through the path in the wall? I’m guessing it’s the quickest route.”

  “It makes me uneasy that the path has already been chosen for us,” Artan said.

  A gap in the clouds burned William’s eyes as the sun found its way through.

  Max raised a hand to his brow to help see better. “But what other choice do we have? I don’t know about you boys, but I’m not sure I could climb any other part of it.”

  “We could look for another way around?” Cyrus said.

  “William,” Max said, “does the map show the path?”

  William unfolded the map again. Two parallel diagonal lines ran across the wall. They were close together and were in the same spot as the path. “I think so.”

  Cyrus said, “And are there any others?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The map’s been reliable so far,” Max said. “I say we use the path.”

  William nodded. “If the girls have come this way, I reckon they crossed here.”

  “And what we know,” Max added, “is there’s a path in front of us right now. Who knows how long it will take to find another one. If there even is another one.”

  While shaking his head, Cyrus said, “I don’t like it.”

  “I’m not sure any of us do, but let’s take a vote,” Max said. “I’m up for using the path.”

  “I don’t think I am,” Cyrus said. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll take it,” William said.

  “I don’t like it either,” Artan said.

  William leaned closer to Matilda’s brother. “What other—”

  “But,” Artan cut him off, “I don’t think we’ll find any better options than this. I say we cross it.”

  Sweat ran into William’s eyes and he stretched his mouth wide to fill his lungs as he managed the sharp incline. He led the way up the cold steel path. “Imagine if we’d tried to go up any other part of this wall.”

  The others followed him in single file, Artan at the back, helping Cyrus manage the climb.

  They said little until they r
eached the path, William holding a hand down to Artan to help him with the final few steps. The ground uneven like rock, the crevice funnelled the wind, William clamping his jaw against the biting cold.

  Cyrus walked ahead as Artan stood straight, the sunshine glistening off his sweating face. He placed his hands on his hips and said, “Looks like we have a long way to go.”

  Click!

  Cyrus stopped and spun around. His face had fallen slack. He stood on a section of the ground no more than a foot square. It had depressed beneath his weight.

  “What—” The wall on William’s left and Cyrus’ right fell away, cutting William’s words off, the ground tilting towards the hole that had opened.

  All four of them slipped, a sharp nauseating sting crashing through William’s left hip when he hit the side wall on his way down the chute.

  The wide funnel narrowed, dragging in Artan, William, Max behind him, and then Cyrus at the back. The chute spat them into a pit one after the other. Artan fell first, the effect of the twenty-foot drop lessened by his slamming into the opposite wall before he hit the ground. If William could have landed anywhere but on his friend, he would have, holding his battle-axe above his head so he didn’t cleave the boy in two. He then threw it away from him moments before white light punched through his vision when Max landed, kicking him in the side of the face as he added to the crumpled heap. The air left his lungs when Cyrus fell on top of them all.

  The space just wide enough for all four of them, the walls sheer, they all groaned and complained as they stood up. The chute, twenty feet above them, was the closest way out. The top of the pit stood at least ten feet higher. “What the hell is this place?” William said.

  “What’s that?” Cyrus pointed up. A cage sat at the top of the pit. A wire mesh bucket the size of at least three bathtubs, it had been filled with shards of glass. Some of the pieces were large enough to cut someone in two. It sat on the edge of its balance.

  “Is that thing supposed to tip on us?” Max said.

  As if responding to his words, the cage teetered for a second before it fell towards them.