Beyond These Walls (Book 5): After Edin
Page 1
After Edin - Book five of Beyond These Walls
A Post-apocalyptic survival thriller
Michael Robertson
Contents
Edited and Cover by …
Reader Group
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
About the Author
Reader Group
Also by Michael Robertson
Email: subscribers@michaelrobertson.co.uk
Edited by:
Terri King - http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
And
Pauline Nolet - http://www.paulinenolet.com
Cover Design by Dusty Crosley
After Edin - Book five of Beyond These Walls
Michael Robertson
© 2019 Michael Robertson
After Edin - Book five of Beyond These Walls is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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Chapter 1
Olga stepped closer to William, her hands on her hips, her chin jutting out. “We’re not going anywhere until he’s back!”
“Huh?” William said. “What are you talking about?”
The fiery girl threw an arm in the direction of the fallen Edin. Her face a deeper shade of crimson, she tutted. “Max! We’re not going anywhere until he’s back.”
“That’s good.”
“What do you mean that’s good?”
“I’m trying to agree with you. We need to wait for Max before we move on. So that’s good, right? We’re all on the same page. Or am I missing something?”
“Well”—her arms fell limp—“just in case you get any ideas to the contrary, we’re—”
“—not going anywhere; I get it.” Before Olga could go at him again, William turned his back on her. They were currently waiting in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. They’d climbed up to the first floor, Max helping them all get into place before he returned to the devastation of what had only recently been their home. Hard to know what the building had once looked like. The grey stone so common in the city made up the first floor, gnarled and twisted fingers of metal hanging from where it had broken off over the years. Small clumps of stone still clung to the bowed rods like dew bending blades of grass. They’d found a shadowy corner to keep them hidden from the diseased.
Another chill snapped through William, his skin tense with the promise of gooseflesh. Despite the bright midday sun, they were still a few months from summer.
Instead of relaxing with them, Matilda had scaled another floor of the ruins. She perched on the top as a lookout.
It had been about two hours since they’d last seen Max. “Are you worried about him?” William said. “Is that what it is?”
“No!” Olga balled her fists. “I’m just making sure you don’t get any ideas about leaving him. Again!”
“I thought we’d worked this out?”
“We worked it out when we were running for our lives, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed at you for leaving him in the labs and lying to me.”
With Artan still mute, Matilda high above him, and Olga clearly wanting a row, William turned to the ruined city and took in what he could see of the place. The sprawling ruins consisted of a wide variety of buildings. In their day, some of them must have been as large as four arenas put together, while others were as small as the pokiest houses in Edin. Broken bridges—collapsed in the middle—the fallen chunks now piles of rubble on what remained of the roads below. Grass pushed up through the cracks in the asphalt as nature slowly took back what had been placed on top of it all those years ago. The clumsy diseased ambled through the mess, their limbs twitching, their heads snapping, their jaws working as if they were desperate to articulate what they’d become: a denizen of hell. The embodiment of evil.
Although he’d rather have her by his side, Matilda keeping watch meant William didn’t have to. With Edin behind them, they wouldn’t be able to lower their guard often, so best to make the most of it now. He leaned against a rough wall and lost focus. Fatigue ran a dull buzzing ache through his muscles. At that moment, Matilda looked down, so he gave her a thumbs up. She nodded.
“There he is!” Olga stepped from the shadows and walked to the edge. Several diseased snarled.
“Get back,” William said.
“You trying to hide from him?”
“How long is this going to go on, Olga? We made a mistake when we left him in the labs.”
“One I won’t let you make again.”
“One we have no intention of making again.”
“Because he’s useful to you now?”
“Because he’s a friend. Just like you’re a friend. Like Artan’s a friend …”
When Olga turned away from him and waved at the approaching Max, William softened his tone. “If you get back into the shadows, it will give Max fewer diseased to deal with. You know he feels a need to fight them all. Allow him a peaceful passage to us, yeah? Let him conserve his energy like we’ve been able to do for the past few hours.”
Olga’s small frame tensed, her lips pursing before she moved back into the shadows. She kept her attention on Max. “Happy?”
The sun glistened off Max’s sweat-soaked skin as he picked a clumsy path through the ruins on what appeared to be leaden legs. His bloody sword in his right hand, a makeshift bag slung over his left shoulder. “Where are the rookies?” William said.
“Maybe he’s got them to safety and left them somewhere to rest. It must be hard to lead so many of them through the city. How many did you say there were?”
“It feels like a lifetime ago now, but I counted eight before we left the national service area.”
“That’s a lot to lead through here in one go.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
The scuffling of shoes against stone above them, Matilda came down from her lookout. She travelled down the wall like a spider, finding foot- and handholds that William wouldn’t have seen in a million years. No matt
er how many times he watched her climb, it still took his breath away. She moved like she had supernatural powers. About six feet above them, she jumped off backwards, her legs bending as she landed soundlessly.
The urge to touch her surged through William, but he fought against it and let her go to Artan. She hugged her brother before pulling back, holding his shoulders, and peering into his eyes. “Are you okay?”
Artan nodded. He might not have spoken since they’d liberated him from his cell, but at least his blank glaze had given way to the warm glow of recognition. A mild day for March, yet the boy shivered as if they were in the middle of winter. Prisoner-of-war thin, he needed time to recover his mind and body.
Wails and roars, the castanet click of teeth. Olga had returned to the edge of the floor and had stepped on the metal bars protruding from it with one foot. She crouched down and stretched a hand out to take the bag from Max. While hugging it close to her, she turned away, shielding it from William. Max would decide what needed to be done with it, not him.
If he’d needed help getting up, William would have given it to him had Olga not blocked his path. But Max made light work of the relatively easy climb. The diseased around him paid him no mind as he dragged himself up onto the stone floor.
Pale and out of breath, Max fought to recover while taking the bag back from Olga. Heavy pants, he wiped his brow. “I’m not trying to kill every diseased now. There are too many of them.” A sheet tied around a bulging sack of goods, he opened it to reveal bread, carrots, apples, and several flasks of water. Enough to fill their stomachs and sate their thirst—for now. Max winced. “I’m afraid it’s all I could find.”
After he’d sipped from the flask Max gave him, the water stale from where it must have been boiled days ago, William took an apple. “What about the kids on Phoenix’s hut?”
Still fighting to regulate his breathing, Max shook his head. “Nothing. Nowhere. I searched the entire national service area.”
Everything Matilda took from Max, she moved on to Artan until she’d been given two flasks, two apples, and now two loaves of bread. “And you didn’t find anyone else?”
“Or any more food?” William added.
Olga pulled her shoulders back and stepped close to William. “Give the guy a break; he did the best he could. He’s contributed more than you have.”
“That wasn’t a criticism.”
“Sounded like one to me.”
“I think you’re just looking for an excuse.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You want to have a row. It’s obvious.”
Although she drew a breath to respond, Max cut her off. “William’s right. The national service area fell fast. There shouldn’t be a shortage of supplies anywhere. Not so soon after the collapse.”
Her mouth slightly open, Olga let her response die while William pulled a tight-lipped smile at her.
“You think someone’s raided the place?” Matilda said.
Max shrugged. “It’s possible. Why would we be the only survivors? Especially if other people took a more sensible route and left the city rather than travel through it.”
Matilda again: “And you think they might have rescued the rookies on Phoenix’s dorm?”
“I’m not ruling anything out,” Max said. “But I think it’s an option we need to consider. Maybe we’ll find some of Edin’s survivors out here somewhere. Although, I’m hoping we don’t. I’m done with Edin after everything that’s happened.”
William sat down on the hard stone floor, the others joining him, forming a circle around their limited supplies.
“While we’re on the subject of how Edin treated us,” Max said, “I wanted to ask you all to keep my invulnerability a secret. It’s handy, and if I absolutely have to use it in front of other people to save our lives, I will, but I need you to trust me to use it when I think it’s appropriate. I’ve had nearly six months of being someone else’s property because of it and want to avoid that happening again. Okay?”
Max looked around the group, waiting for an acknowledgement from each of them in turn. After William and Matilda acquiesced with a dip of their heads, Olga nodded furiously in response to the question. Artan seemed oblivious, the boy attacking his loaf of bread like a wild animal feasting on a kill.
“Artan will keep it to himself,” Matilda said.
William moved the remainder of their supplies to one side and pulled the crumpled map from his back pocket. The wrecked building shielded them from the worst of the wind, but it still lifted the edges of the sheet. Olga pressed her side down to help keep it flat.
A sprawling mess of ruins on the map, William pointed at them. “I think we’re here.” Farther down, on the opposite side of the ruins to Edin, sat what looked like a small community. A blue blob a fraction of the size of the once city they currently occupied. One of many on the map. “Because they haven’t marked Edin on here, it’s hard to get an idea of scale, but my guess is this is a community, and it’s much smaller than Edin was.”
Max raised his eyebrows. “Friendlier?”
“Who knows.” William shrugged. “Hopefully. Unless anyone has any better ideas, I think we need to get to another settlement. We can’t live outside of a society’s protection indefinitely.”
“Unless we build our own society,” Olga said.
“There’s five of us,” William said. “As much as I’d love to spend the rest of my life so close to you, and I’m sure the feeling’s mutual”—Olga pulled a face—“I think we need to aim higher. Edin was run by bad people serving their own needs. I don’t believe everywhere’s like that.”
“And what if you’re wrong?” Matilda said. “What if it’s worse than Edin?”
The map showed tens of blue blobs of varying sizes between the ruined city they were currently in and what looked like a wall much farther south. “One of these places has to be friendly, don’t you think? Did you get any more information from the woman you were locked in the cell with, Max? Anything that might help with our plans?”
Max shook his head. “She told me about a wall, which I’m guessing is this thing here.” He traced the thick black line with the tip of his finger. It ran from one side of the land depicted on the map to the other. Coast to coast.
Matilda leaned over the sheet. “If that’s a wall, it must be miles wide. It’s about ten times the width of this city.”
“At least,” William said.
“She told me about a war,” Max said. “But maybe she was just referring to the diseased; it was hard to work out exactly what she was saying. Other than that, we didn’t really talk.”
“For five months? Then what did you do?” Olga’s cheeks reddened.
Max placed a hand on Olga’s knee. “We ignored each other. She was quite hostile.”
“That’s good.” A deeper flush of crimson, Olga coughed as if it would somehow clear her discomfort. “I mean, that must have been boring.”
William would have let Olga squirm for longer, but Matilda pointed at the communities on the map. “What do these boxes mean?”
Each blue blob had a small box beside it. Some were mostly green with splashes of orange, but as the map went farther south, they turned redder until all the communities close to the wall were marked by an angry scarlet square. “It seems obvious,” Olga said, “the redder the box, the more dangerous the community.”
William said, “That’s quite an assumption to make.”
“Maybe,” Olga replied, “but do you have anything better?”
A shake of his head, William said, “Either way, the community closest to this city has the greenest box. I’m sure we’ll find out what it means soon enough. So we’re agreed? We eat, we give Max some time to rest up, and then we move on, right? It might be a long road, but we need to find a new life out here.”
Matilda and Max nodded. Artan continued to attack his roll, and Olga fixed on William, her lips pressed together while she chewed her apple. William folded the
map, slipped it back into his pocket, and took a large bite from his small loaf of bread. Their lives might have undergone a drastic change, sending them into free fall, but at least they now had a plan.
Chapter 2
No way could William refuse to let Artan lead. Artan needed it, and more importantly, Matilda needed it. They had to do all they could to facilitate his returning to the boy he used to be. But he’d come close to saying something, and from the tightness around Matilda’s eyes, she’d picked up on it. William reached over his shoulder and touched the handle of his sword strapped to his back as he followed the skinny boy through the ruins.
They’d been on the move for the past few hours, running from one elevated point of safety to the next. They caught their breath on the roofs of old churches, and the first, second, and sometimes third floors of fallen tower blocks. They’d even climbed the faded plastic seating of what must have once been a grand sporting arena. Like most of the city’s history, the game played there had been lost to time. They’d had several small encounters with the diseased and come out unscathed.
For the first hour, William had led them, then Matilda. She only led for a short while, her expectation of the climbs the rest of them could make proving wildly unrealistic. Max had been slow and steady; Olga fast and efficient. So, of course, Artan had to take his turn.