“How?”

  “If the gangs see it, they’ll think twice about following us. Now take that lab coat off.”

  Hugh did as he said and tossed the coat into the alley.

  Of the bodies around them, William found one of a similar build to Hugh. The boy lay on his front with his rear end in the air. It took all he had not to look at where Hugh had shoved the machete. He rolled the boy over and removed his top. He couldn’t look at Hugh as he handed him the garment. How long would it be before the devil returned? And when it did, would it turn on them?

  After about ten minutes, they’d cleared the bodies from the roof. The rain had done a good job at washing most of the blood away. William rubbed his hands on his trousers as if wiping them would somehow remove the experience from his psyche. A machete in his hand, he showed it to Hugh. “At least Olga has a better weapon now.” They just needed to make sure she didn’t know where it had been. “Are you ready to go back to the girls?”

  Hugh frowned, his eyes red from crying. He then nodded.

  “Right, we’ll tell them you saved us, because you did. You killed several people, and now we need to move on.”

  When Hugh didn’t reply, William said, “Right?”

  Hugh nodded. “Right.”

  William went first, kneeling down on the roof and sliding off it backwards, letting his legs hang down until his feet found the floor of the loft below. Hopefully, Hugh wouldn’t feel the need to talk about his guilt surrounding Max and the labs. On top of everything else, that was the last thing they needed.

  Chapter 41

  The rain had stopped, the sun breaking through the dense grey clouds. Not quite a jog, but they’d been on the move for about twenty minutes, their pace quick enough for William to be sweating beneath his clothes. They spoke little, all of them on high alert for the gangs from woodwork. As of yet, none had shown themselves. They’d known about Goliath, so hopefully they’d used that same ability to spy on them to witness what Hugh had done. If that didn’t keep them away, nothing would.

  Hugh set the pace, jumping alleyways as he moved from roof to roof. Although William, Olga, and Matilda followed, they were at least thirty feet behind. Far enough back for Olga to speak freely. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Huh?” Had Hugh told her about Max? William looked at Matilda. “Uh … what do you mean?”

  “Come on, we can see Hugh’s lost the plot again. What did he do to those kids from the gangs?”

  Even as the memory of the massacre flashed through his mind, William relaxed. A grizzly thought, but better than admitting the truth about Max. It didn’t matter how often he told himself the lie, the chances were Max was still locked in a cell in the labs. Were he back there now, he’d do more to free him, but they were too far away to do anything to help.

  “Well?” Olga said. “What did he do?”

  “Whatever it was, you think they didn’t deserve it?”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure they deserved it. My concern isn’t for them. It’s obvious that Hugh’s losing the plot. Who knows what he’ll do in his current frame of mind. What if he turns on us?”

  “He won’t.”

  “You know that?”

  “I promise you he won’t.”

  “How can you make that promise?”

  “I trust him.”

  “That’s not a reason for us to trust him.”

  “Us?”

  “Matilda agrees with me.”

  An apologetic wince, Matilda lifted her shoulders with a slight shrug. “At what point does he become too much of a liability?”

  “Shit,” William said and halted. He then drew his sword. “We should have been paying more attention.”

  At least fifteen boys and girls from woodwork blocked Hugh’s way. William jogged to catch up with him. One of the boys stepped forward. A tall lad with a shaved head, the sun bounced off his pale scalp. His blue eyes glared almost as bright. “We saw what you did to the others.”

  “They shouldn’t have followed us,” Hugh said, the slow ring of steel as he drew his sword.

  Olga and Matilda caught up, Matilda with her sword drawn and Olga gripping her machete.

  The tall and bald boy held Hugh’s glare, his tone flat. “Well, we’ve followed you.”

  “I thought the threat was implicit in my response,” Hugh said.

  A vacant wash travelled across the boy’s face before Hugh sighed. “You’ve enunciated the point I was making. It seems like I need to be more direct with you. Spell it out and maybe speak using words with fewer syllables. You shouldn’t have followed us because you saw what happened to those who did. Do you understand now?”

  The bald boy’s face twisted and he charged, the gang rushing forward with him. Before William or the girls reacted, Hugh ran to meet his attackers. Fast and with deadly accuracy, he slashed his sword across the throat of their leader, dragging a line of blood away from the bald kid’s neck.

  As the boy fell, rolling over when his momentum continued to carry him forwards, Hugh took two more down, predicting their moves like they were as easy to read as the diseased. The gangs had been bullies for their entire lives. They didn’t understand combat, and it showed.

  By the time William, Matilda, and Olga had moved forward to join the fight, Hugh had taken down nearly half the gang, and the others had backed off. And why wouldn’t they? Especially when Hugh had ignored the very real threat of those still standing and went to work on those he’d already dropped. He hacked and slashed, removing hands, feet, and heads, even from the ones who’d clearly passed. While he did it, he shouted, “This is for you, Elizabeth. These gangs won’t be able to harm anyone else.”

  Nine members of the gang left, by the time he’d finished mutilating the fallen, Hugh backed them towards the edge of a roof at laundry’s perimeter. A drop of several feet to the ground below, William heard the diseased waiting for something to feast on.

  “Please,” one of the nine said. “We’ll go. Just let us go.”

  The drop from the roof landed in the square, the only thing between them and the political district. It took for them to get this close for William to see the wooden wall where there hadn’t been one before the city fell.

  His sword pointed at the kids from the gang, Hugh stepped towards them. He shook when he shouted, the diseased below falling momentarily silent at the loud outburst. “On your knees and drop your weapons.”

  Whatever had happened to him when Elizabeth died, it gave him a drive unlike anything William had seen. It had turned him almost superhuman. The gang fell to their knees.

  “Now drop your weapons.”

  The clang of several machetes and knives hit the tiles.

  “Over the side, you morons.”

  All nine of them—the once brave thugs of the gang—were reduced to subservient pets in the face of Hugh’s rage. They all threw their weapons over the side.

  “Now hands behind your heads.”

  One of the gang members Hugh had already dropped lay nearby. Still just about alive, she groaned as she tried to stand up on her one remaining leg. Olga hacked a deep cut into her neck.

  Closer to Hugh, William again took in the square stretching out in front of them. The cage in the centre of it, rotting heads of the diseased on the spikes in the middle. The benches the lovers sat on. A lump lifted in his throat. Mr. P didn’t deserve that treatment. If he ever saw Robert Mack again …

  “How are we going to get across?” Matilda said.

  There were as many diseased in the large square as anywhere else. Too many. As William traced the route from one side of the square to the other, he sighed. “There’s nowhere to hide from them, and what’s that wooden wall about?”

  Olga pointed across the main road at the structure in the distance. “What about the arena?”

  “What about it?” William said.

  “It might be a better route to the political district.”

  “How?” Matilda said.

  “We might be able to use it to get over the wall. It’s right next to it.”

  Matilda shook her head. “But how will we get there?”

  “Hugh?” Olga said.

  The same glaze William had seen too many times fixed on Olga. A distance in his dark eyes. The devil had returned.

  “Can you get these clowns over to the main road?”

  “They’ll do whatever I need them to.”

  “Okay,” Olga said, “I have a plan.”

  “You heard her,” Hugh said to the gang, directing where they should go with a flick of his sword.

  The gang stood up and walked off in single file. William spoke to Olga from the side of his mouth. “Good job we had Hugh to help us then, eh?”

  Chapter 42

  About ten feet from the edge of the roof, William stood with Olga and Matilda while Hugh moved closer to the street and lined up the woodwork gang. He made them kneel and face the main road as if they were about to be executed. The diseased grew louder at the sight of them.

  “Please,” one of them said, a short girl with blonde hair, “I have a baby brother who needs me. His name’s James.”

  William’s heart sank and he turned away as Hugh kicked her in the back. The excited diseased below smothered and then silenced her screams.

  The girl now one of them, the diseased quieted while Matilda muttered, “If she’d have said any other name …”

  Hard to tell from where he stood, but William expected to see the dark glaze in Hugh’s eyes. They might have been a gang, and they might have done horrible things, but they were still people. The Hugh he’d met in the dining hall would have made that distinction.

  The eight remaining captives knelt with their heads bowed, and many of their shoulders bobbed with their tears.

  “Okay,” Hugh said. When he turned to Olga, his eyes were so dark, William stepped back a pace. “What now?”

  Her hand raised to implore patience from the short and stocky boy, Olga said, “Not yet, but in a minute we’re going to throw them off.”

  The girl’s scream still echoing through his mind, William said, “What?”

  “You think they deserve better? They’re bullies and rapists. I’m not one for capital punishment, but they came with the intention of killing us. They killed Goliath.”

  “So we play God and kill them?”

  “Look around, William. You think God lives in this place? If she does, she’d best show up soon. Until then, I think we need to make the decisions. We can’t leave them alive because they’ll come after us again, so we might as well use their deaths to serve a purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “You haven’t worked it out yet?”

  Matilda cut through their conversation and pointed at the arena on the other side of the road. “While the diseased are focused on them, we can make a break for it.”

  “You agree with her?”

  “I think it’s the best plan we have.”

  One eye on his prisoners, Hugh stepped closer to William and the others. His face blank, his eyes dark, he spoke in monotone. “I’ll do it.”

  Although he didn’t look directly at her, William couldn’t avoid the smugness emanating from Olga. “We’re fighting for our lives and you’re happy about scoring points?”

  “I just think it’s the best plan. I’m happy the majority agrees.”

  The fire died in William. He could hardly claim democracy only when it suited him. “Fine, but there’s no way Hugh’s doing all the dirty work. Not again.” The mess on the roof above the loft flashed through his mind. “We’ll all do it.”

  Throwing the girl over the side had left them with two prisoners each. William stood on the far left between two, Matilda next to him, Hugh farther along, and then Olga on the other end. The girl who claimed to have a brother now bled from her eyes. She’d become just another rancid freak in the crowd.

  “Now, this can play out two ways,” Olga said. “You either jump down of your own free will and try to outrun the diseased, or we shove you down. Whatever happens, you’re all going over the edge so we can get to the arena. Wha—”

  Before Olga finished, one of the kids from the gang jumped from the roof. Landing in the mosh pit of snarling diseased, he threw punches and shoved several creatures as he bolted in the direction of the arena, dragging the ravenous and uncoordinated crowd with him. Although quick, the diseased were quicker. He lasted just three paces before he vanished beneath a scrum of writhing bodies.

  “Well,” Olga said, “I think your friend there just showed us you can’t be trusted—”

  “We can.” The girl in front of Olga looked up, her nose running, her eyes puffy. She had dirty brown hair and acne. “Just give us a—”

  The girl screamed as she fell, driven from the edge of the roof by Olga’s hard kick. The diseased jumped on her when she hit the ground.

  Matilda cried as she kicked her two off, William and Hugh following suit.

  “Remember,” Olga shouted while sprinting off across the roof, “they came to us with the intention of doing much worse. Think of the suffering those gangs have caused. They wanted to hurt us.”

  Olga led them away from the carnage below. She maintained her pace, the first of them to jump down to the cobblestone street. Hugh, Matilda, and then William followed her over.

  The gang had bought them seconds, no more. The instant Olga hit the ground, the creatures around them yelled. The kids from woodwork already dealt with, the mob now turned their focus on William and his friends. As much as they’d worked together to get to this point, they were now on their own until they reached the arena.

  Olga in the lead, her machete proved more useful than a sword when on the run. She dealt with several diseased without missing a beat.

  One of the vile creatures charged William from the left. He avoided its snapping jaws, shoving it in the chest. The impact drove a foul stench from the beast’s lungs, but sent it stumbling backwards.

  Half a mind on Matilda, William fought to keep his attention ahead. The road no wider than forty feet, it felt like they had miles to cross.

  Because they had to dodge and weave on their way to the other side, the pack they’d whipped into a feeding frenzy closed the distance on them.

  Still ten feet or so from the arena, William saw the doors and fought to get his words out. “It’s locked!”

  Olga, as the leader, altered their course slightly. They’d have to head to agriculture instead. If they got on the roofs, they could reassess.

  “Wait!” Hugh pointed at the arena.

  Although the main gates were closed, a gap had been smashed through the top of them. Large enough for them to fit and at least ten feet from the ground, so the diseased couldn’t follow.

  Olga reached the doors first, kicking off the wooden barrier before diving through the hole. Who knew what waited on the other side, but with the creatures behind them, they had to take their chances.

  Hugh reached it next, but he turned, yelled, and dropped three diseased in quick succession as Matilda followed Olga into the arena.

  Were Hugh not smiling, William would have waited, but he knew he’d meet resistance from his friend if he tried to help. The gate boomed as he kicked off it, and he too pulled up and then dived through the gap.

  Where William expected the landing to drive the wind from his lungs, he fell on something soft, several strange faces looking down on him before a large man dragged him out of the way. Hugh landed where he’d been only seconds before.

  The man who’d dragged William clear had long curly black hair, bulging arms, and a grin filled with stark white teeth. They were all the whiter in contrast to his deep brown skin. Yet, despite his sunny demeanour, it stood in stark contrast to the sword he’d levelled at William’s face.

  Chapter 43

  “Stay there, boy.” If anything, the large man’s winning smile broadened. The tip of his sword hovered just an inch from William’s nose. “Now, while you’re lying there, I’d like to welcome you to one of the last diseased-free spots in Edin. As long as you don’t turn, we can offer you sanctuary.”

  “T-turn?” William said. Matilda, Hugh, and Olga were also held at sword point, Hugh still on the mattress, the others dragged free like William had been. The shiny tip so close to Matilda’s face quickened his pulse, driving his response. “What the hell are you talking about, and what do you want with us?”

  But the grinning man didn’t answer. A more level head in that moment than William’s, they both needed him to settle the situation.

  About five minutes passed before a bell rang and the grinning man pulled his sword away. He offered William his hand.

  The ease with which the man brought him upright tamed what remained of William’s fury. Not only did the brute have a sword, but he had the kind of strength that would break William’s neck should he have the inclination. William walked over to Matilda. “Are you okay?”

  The woman who’d held a sword to Matilda’s face backed off several steps, and before anyone else spoke, the smiling man clapped his hands once. “Right, now we can get off on a better footing. My name’s Samson. I’d like to welcome you to the arena. Like I said earlier, this is one of the last places in Edin that isn’t infected with the disease.”

  Samson walked towards the ring, and they followed, William and Matilda holding hands.

  Upon entering the circular fighting area, William’s mouth fell open and he spun on the spot. The stone seating stretched up and away from them in all directions. The amount of times he’d imagined himself here …

  Matilda’s grip tightened, pulling William back into the moment. He found Samson still grinning at him and said, “I never thought I’d get to be in this spot. I mean, as a kid, I dreamed about it every night, but with everything that’s happened …” The words caught in his throat and his eyes burned with his tears. After rubbing them, he let go of a hard sigh. “This certainly wasn’t how I expected it to play out.”

 

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