Danko led them through another alley. Farther away from Fear’s army and Fury’s massacre. With the three tall towers at their back, they were also going farther away from home.

  Reuben remained at the rear, and just before he reached their next alley, a toot of a loud horn snapped his attention to his left. A soldier in a blue uniform. “Fuck it!” The alley amplified Reuben’s call. “They’re onto us, Danko.”

  Danko jumped at the metal fire escape on his left and climbed. No time to argue. The team followed, Reuben still at the back and the last one to the roof.

  The gaps between each building were small enough to clear with their large steps. All the roofs were flat. Fear responded to the horn, their numbers swelling in the street down to their left. The metal top of another fire escape was three buildings away on their right.

  Groves and Reuben overtook Hernandez. Danko had already started his descent. Groves followed him, and Reuben paused. The blood from Hernandez’s wound mixed with her sweat, covering her face with a mask of pink.

  Hernandez clawed at her eyes. “I can’t see!”

  Although he had one foot on the fire escape, Reuben returned to the roof’s white gravel. But a tug from behind stopped him going any farther. Groves pulled him back. Her eyes wide, she pointed at the drone rising on the opposite side of the building. The top half of the machine visible, the high-pitched whine of its screaming guns overrode its humming propellors.

  The second it lifted above the roof, the ends of its guns turned into orange circles of heat.

  “No!” Reuben’s stomach lurched as Hernandez shook and twisted.

  He pulled against Groves, who held on with both hands and tugged him back. “You can’t help her,” she said. “You can only save yourself now.”

  Reuben twisted again, this time breaking free.

  Hernandez dropped to her knees. She fell forward into the gravel.

  The air left Reuben’s lungs. His stomach sank. His body slumped. His eyes glazed. His throat burned. “Hernandez.” The woman who’d looked out for him from day one. If she’d been able to see, she’d have made it. If he’d noticed sooner, he’d have been able to help. If—

  Groves had climbed onto the roof with Reuben. She yanked him back towards the fire escape.

  The drone turned their way. Its guns whirred.

  This time, Reuben followed, ducking in time to avoid the white-hot streaks of bullets flying over the top of his head.

  Chapter 28

  Sheer will carried Reuben down the fire escape’s flight of metal stairs, the railing at the bottom preventing his fall. He should have noticed Hernandez had been blinded. He should have done more.

  “Come on, Reuben!” Groves waited at the bottom of the next flight. “You need to keep moving.”

  By the time Reuben had stumbled down the stairs to the next level, Groves and Danko had already vaulted over the side. A ten-foot drop to the road below. His vision blurred and his tight throat forced his breaths out in wheezing gasps. He grabbed the metal railing and threw himself over. The shock of his clumsy landing sent a twinge up his back, his legs failed him, and he slammed down onto his knees.

  Danko grabbed Reuben beneath his armpits and pulled him to his feet. He glanced at the building they’d just run across as if he could see through it to the army on the other side. He said, “We need to get back to Fury as soon as possible.” His large bald head shone with sweat, and his words dripped with uncertainty. Lost without Hicks telling him what to do. But he had to decide. His focus returned, and he snapped a sharp nod. “You need to follow me. Okay?”

  The collective hum of drones travelled across the top of the building. The roar of Fear’s army shot down the several alleys they’d entered to get to them. Danko led them away.

  A metal ramp about one hundred feet from them, Danko reached it first. It ran a snaking path to an elevated walkway crossing an old train line. Covered in wire mesh, the bridge led to a train yard. Several rusting metal carcasses were all that remained of a long-abandoned industry. A vast ugly building loomed on their left. It had been built across the train track.

  The drones were already gaining on them, and most of the soldiers had made it through the alleys. Instead of following the ramp, Danko took the most direct route. He vaulted several handrails in his path, each one higher than the one preceding it. Groves followed him. Reuben took up the rear, slipping on the first railing, slamming his shin against the metal barrier, and falling flat on his back onto the walkway. But he stumbled to his feet again, got up, and pushed on.

  The whir of Gatling guns. That all too familiar sound. The ting of bullets hitting the metal on the bridge all around them. It wound his torso tight, and he flinched as he ran, expecting the searing assault to chew into his back.

  Danko and Groves waited in the tunnel for Reuben. His shins on fire, his back aching, his throat still taut with grief. He fell forward as the ting of more bullets lit up the walkway.

  “They’ll get us if we come out on the other side,” Danko said. He turned left down a path leading them into the ugly building.

  The drones rose. Eight to ten of them, they moved as a swarm. A flood of blue uniforms filled the road, and the front runners had already reached the ramps.

  Still at the back, Reuben followed the others into the ugly building’s stairwell. A faded number six on the wall beside them. Danko had already gone from sight, Groves running halfway down the first flight of stairs before leaping the rest of the way, landing with a crack, turning one hundred and eighty degrees, and running to the next level below.

  Following Groves, every landing slammed through Reuben’s exhausted and throbbing body.

  On the third floor, Danko waited for them to catch up before he kicked a door wide and plunged into a long corridor that ran from one side of the building to the other. Their destination, a door similar to the one they’d just burst through at the other end. Rooms sat on either side of the long symmetrical hallway. The white tiles on the floor had cracked and turned grey with age.

  The rooms on either side looked like classrooms. Desks scattered throughout, each space had a focal point at the front. A spot for the teacher.

  Danko pulled the door open at the other end and nipped through. Another stairwell. A carbon copy of the last. They climbed again, Danko’s voice echoing in the cavernous space, “Going to ground is too predictable. I hope you have some more stairs in you?”

  Reuben didn’t have much of anything left, so what did it matter which way they went? He’d find what he needed when he needed it. Groves, as always, moved as if she flew, chewing up the stairs ahead of her in pursuit of Danko.

  There were more stairs past the sixth floor. The seventh didn’t have a number like the others. It led to a dead end, their climb culminating in a glassless window overlooking the city. Danko waited for Reuben to catch up, standing in the full force of the wind. “You both ready for this?”

  Groves nodded. Reuben gulped back the thick saliva in his dry throat and copied her.

  Danko climbed out of the window, reached up, and vanished from sight.

  A flick of her head, Groves encouraged Reuben to go next.

  The wind stung Reuben’s already sore eyes and jabbed needles into his ears. He’d poked his head out between a crisscross of rusty metal bars that clung to the side of the building in the shape of a spider’s web. Each bar an inch thick, Danko had shown they’d support his weight.

  Reuben grabbed a bar and shook it to be sure. He watched where he put his feet, his head spinning because of how high they were. He stepped out of the window. The webbing held. He climbed after Danko, his stomach turning over on itself, the strength draining from his legs.

  “We’ve seen this building plenty of times, but have never been in it before,” Danko said, calling down to Reuben. “Dad told me it used to be a school. When they were building it, they ran a competition for the students to help with the design. The spiderweb won. And thank the heavens it did.”

  “Good for us at least,” Reuben shouted back. He paused in his climb. Groves hadn’t left the building yet. “Groves?”

  She poked her head out.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her face pale, her eyes wide and bloodshot, she fought for breath. “I didn’t know we’d have to climb.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You need to leave me.”

  Reuben’s grip weakened, and his stomach flipped. He hooked his arm through the bars to hold him in place. “What? No way!”

  “I’ve been shot, Reuben.” She pulled her head back into the building for several seconds. When she appeared again, tears filled her eyes and her mouth bent out of shape. “And Fear’s soldiers are coming. The only way out of this is to climb.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me you’d been shot? We could have gone another way.”

  “I didn’t realise we’d have to climb.”

  “But …” Reuben shook his head. “No! You can do it. You have to at least try.”

  “I won’t make it.”

  “But—”

  Groves climbed from the building. She held on with her left hand and winced while she removed her top with her unresponsive right. There were two deep crimson holes in her arm. One in her bicep and one next to her wrist. They both belched thick blood. Her arm hung limp. “I won’t make it. I can’t climb like this. And you can’t carry me.”

  “I can.”

  Groves smiled through her tears. “At least my dad will get his payout now. And he won’t have to send his last daughter outside the city.”

  “No.” Reuben shook his head. His throat burned. “No.”

  “It’s Lisa, by the way.”

  “Lisa.” He climbed down as he repeated her name back to her. But she let go. A sixty-foot drop to the ground. She fell backwards, turning over as she tumbled away from the building. She hit the concrete below with a thud! The impact ran through Reuben. His arm slipped from the rusting metal bar.

  Danko reached down and caught Reuben’s shoulder. He trembled with the effort and spoke through clenched teeth. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  If Reuben fell now, Danko would have a better chance. But he clung on again. A deep need to survive despite everything. He resumed his climb. The bars rough with rust. He pulled himself up, yelling with the effort of every action.

  Danko pulled him the rest of the way. He dragged him onto the roof.

  Lying on his front, shaking with his sobs, Reuben fell limp. How the hell could he carry on now?

  Chapter 29

  Reuben lay on his front, his body bouncing with his heavy sobs. Danko’s steps tore away from him across the ridge of the steel roof. He halted after several feet. The man’s form blurred through his tears, but Reuben made out his silhouette waving him on. “We’ve built up a lead. We need to make the most of it. Come on.”

  Every second on the roof gave the drones a better chance of finding them. Reuben shook with the effort of standing up. Stars swam in his vision, and he fell from one step into the next in pursuit of his leader.

  Danko waited for Reuben at the other end. They overlooked the walkway with the wire mesh cover, about ten feet below them and six feet away from the edge of the building. His hands on his hips, his mouth stretched wide to help him breathe, Reuben said, “How the hell do we get down there?”

  “We jump,” Danko said. “Unless you have a better plan?”

  The wind rocked Reuben where he stood. He should let it carry him off now.

  The train station down to their left. Fear’s soldiers must have all been inside the building. They’d be on the roof soon enough.

  “We jump now, or we lose our advantage,” Danko said. “If we can get to that train station, we can get into the underground. I can get us back to Fury from there, and I’m confident we can lose them. You ready?”

  “Do we have any other choice?” Reuben dragged in a damp sniff and wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve.

  “If we do, I don’t know what it is.” Danko took both of Reuben’s hands and stooped to force eye contact. “I know what Groves meant to you.” The crazy had left him. A humanity sat in his compassionate gaze that Reuben wouldn’t have believed existed until that moment. “And you need to let out your feelings, but not now.” He shook his head. “Not here. Live first and then feel every ounce of this agony when it’s safe.”

  The world blurred again, and Reuben’s face buckled.

  “You need to do this for her. It’s what she would have wanted.”

  Reuben nodded. He needed to do it for her.

  Chapter 30

  Crash! Danko landed flatfooted on the wire mesh with his hands away from his sides for stability. The entire bridge shook from his landing and he swayed. The back of Reuben’s knees weakened as he waited for his leader to fall. But he turned to Reuben and beckoned him down.

  The longer he thought about it, the less likely he’d be to follow. He had to do this for Groves. And if he died trying, then so what? For Groves! The strength left his shaking legs, but Reuben jumped after him, yelling with the effort of boosting himself away from the roof. His stomach leaped into his throat as he fell. Rigid when he landed, the shock snapped through him. But he remained standing.

  Danko gripped him by the top of his arms. A firm hold. He had him. He’d made it. “You good?”

  The tracks fifty feet below were one of the few things in this city still in working order. They showed little sign of corrosion. They drew a dead straight line beneath the walkway and ran away from them in both directions. Reuben’s world spun to look down for too long. He returned his attention to Danko. Should he fall now? End the pain? He gulped. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  The wire mesh of the tunnel’s roof let out a rattling whoosh! Danko led the way along it at a sprint.

  Reuben followed. If he looked down, especially at this pace, he’d fall.

  They got to within ten feet of the end of the tunnel when the all too familiar hum of the drones’ propellors joined them. The sound buzzed around them, thickening the air. It drilled into Reuben’s skull. Get caught in the open and they had no defence. They’d get torn to shreds in seconds.

  “Fuck!” Danko shouted while peering over his shoulder. He quickened his pace, jumped from the roof of the tunnel, cleared the first half of the snaking ramp leading to the ground, and landed on the second half with the same two-footed slam of moments before. The man hit the earth like a superhero.

  Reuben followed. His legs gave out when he landed, and he fell forward, slamming his head against a steel handrail. Something rang like a bell. Either the railings or his brain. Hard to tell, and what did it matter anyway? He lost his breath when Danko reached over and grabbed the back of his collar, choking him as he pulled him to his feet. He dragged him away down the ramp.

  A stuttered burst of firing bullets lit up their surroundings with a series of tings! They hit the old trains in the yard, steel containers, railings, and fences. But the drones were too far away, their shots woefully inaccurate.

  Danko disappeared first, Reuben following him into the underground train station seconds later.

  The space opened up into a subterranean amphitheatre. Metal stairs similar to the ones in the shopping mall led them lower. Cracked, off-white tiles covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. Danko crossed them, disturbing clouds of dust as he ran toward another set of old escalators that descended into a dark abyss.

  Danko paused at the top and reached inside a panel on his left. Lights came on a few seconds later. He shrugged. “It’ll give Fear’s army something to follow, but we need it to guide us out of here.”

  Reuben fell into the same stride as his leader, their steps slamming down in stereo until they reached the bottom of the stairs, turned right through an archway, and burst onto an old platform. They halted instantly.

  A pack of wild dogs gathered before them. A ragtag coalition of ten to fifteen mutts, they varied in size and shape, but every one of them welcomed the fight. Ten to fifteen pairs of receded lips. Ten to fifteen sets of sharp teeth, saliva dripping from some in long gooey strings. Several of them added to the collective low rumbling growl.

  Danko dashed his baton against the ground. It landed on the concrete platform with a loud crash and skittered towards the creatures.

  The dogs bolted.

  “Thank fuck for—”

  The stampede hitting the metal stairs of the escalators halted Reuben’s relief.

  Danko jumped from the platform to the tracks, landing on the large stones with a crunch! Two metal tracks, as true as the ones beneath the walkway, ran straight and parallel along their path. Concrete sleepers every few feet provided a level base for the rails, and stepping stones for Reuben and Danko. Had Danko not flicked on the lights, one of them would have broken an ankle within the first few minutes.

  The acoustics of the underground station amplified and distorted Fear’s pursuit. Hard to tell how close they were. It took for the first crunches of stones to pinpoint their location.

  Reuben’s already stinging eyes burned. He refused to blink, watching every step. Fear’s army at their back, would they find the diseased ahead? What would they do if they ran in to a horde down here?

  It took them about three minutes at the most to reach the next station. Danko vaulted up onto the platform, and Reuben followed. They darted through another archway, heading for another abandoned escalator.

  One flight of metal stairs led them out of there. The one that ran parallel to it had been destroyed beyond use.

 

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