A World of Ash: The Territory 3 (11 page)

“You’re coming with us?” Lynn asked.

“Of course,” Knox said. “If I am to lead the Free then I must be involved.”

“But …” Lynn began.

“I’m old?”

Lynn shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“I am old, Lynnette,” Knox said, “but I am not an invalid. I, like anyone who has lived, have my share of regrets, but I do not intend to be on the wrong side of this piece of history. If I am going to die it will not be in bed as an old man, it will be doing this.”

“And him?” Lynn said, flicking her head dismissively in the direction of the Administrator.

“He is an important symbol,” Knox said. “His presence will help us gain the trust of those in the slums and help convince Mr. Barton that we are serious, and that we have the power to do this.”

“You know they hate him?” Lynn said to Knox, but ensured that she made eye contact with the Administrator. She watched the small, barely hidden hurt reveal itself on his face. Lynn almost felt sorry for him. He really did think everything he did was for the good of the people of the Territory. She tried to crush the feeling of pity she suddenly felt, angry even at the suggestion that she might feel anything but scorn for the man. He had been the Administrator for fifty years. He’d had a long time to do something about the conditions out there. Instead, he had chosen to let part of his precious Territory rot and decay.

“We have eight soldiers with us, Lynnette,” Knox said. “That should provide adequate protection for myself, yourself, and the Administrator.”

Lynn knew that as much as she didn’t like the Administrator being involved there was nothing she could do. She wasn’t in charge here. In fact, she didn’t even know what her role was.

“You look as though you’d like to ask something more, Lynnette,” Knox Soilwork said. “Go ahead. I know you’re new to this.”

Lynn ignored what she suspected was an intentionally barbed comment. “What am I doing here?”

“You’ve been out in the slums already,” Knox said. “We’re aware of the encounter you had with a crowd of slum-dwellers when you first left Alice. Hank Barton was one of those. We’re hoping he remembers you.”

“How do you know about that?” Lynn asked, heat rising up her neck and into her cheeks as she remembered flipping out and drawing her sword on Hank, the old man she had suspected, stupidly, of knowing something about her father’s death.

“Stix and Stownes,” the tall man said. “Apparently you made quite a scene.”

Lynn shrugged. “It wasn’t intentional.”

“No,” Knox said. “I suspect not.” He turned his attention back to the larger group. “Now, for those of you who haven’t met her, this is Lawra.” The young woman who had entered the warehouse with Ms Apple meekly raised her hand. “Lawra is responsible for the replica uniforms we’ve been using to impersonate the Holy Order. She’s sewn us some black fatigues to help us blend into the dark and move through the streets as inconspicuously as possible. She’ll sort you out for sizes first and then we’ll move out.”

The eleven people who would be sneaking out into the slums – Lynn, Knox, the Administrator, Cod, Kook, and the other ex-Diggers – all took turns to be attended to by Lawra, returning dressed in utilitarian black uniforms. Each wore identical shirts and pants with more pockets than Lynn knew what to do with. Once they were ready, they collected water, a small amount of dried fruit and food supplies, a shortsword each and a mechanical rifle to sling over their shoulder. Fading into the shadows of the warehouse and loaded with their weapons they looked like a squad of elite soldiers, Lynn thought – that was, if you overlooked the fact that the squad comprised a young girl, an eighty-year-old man, a beaten and toppled political leader, and eight soldiers who’d been on holiday when their entire army was destroyed. Still, they were the only hope for those in the slums. Somehow they would need to figure out how to get the Outsiders inside, and the first step was finding their leader.

Once they were on the streets of the Gap the ex-Diggers led the way, slipping from dark corner to shadowy alley with precise movements honed by years in the army. Lynn could see her father and brother reflected in those movements. The usual stiffness of their military posture in direct contrast to the smooth and practiced way they shifted stances, always conscious of their feet, their arms, their weapons.

Lynn knew the way the Diggers trained to move through ghoul-infested towns, criss-crossing paths, clearing streets and buildings as they went, ensuring they spotted any ghouls long before the creatures sensed the moisture in their bodies, or at least early enough to prepare for their stuttering advance. It was Kook and Cod who took the lead, obviously the most senior of the men, and they used this same method to navigate the city streets unseen. One would lean around the corner of a building or alleyway with their mechanical rifle raised, watching for a moment, waiting as early morning workers or street vendors passed by. When the street was clear the other would move directly across to the next hiding spot, checking ahead before waving the others across to join him. They moved in complete silence from corner to corner and from empty alley to parked bio-truck. Lynn could feel her heart beating powerfully in her chest. Every time they stopped she expected someone to spot them, for a clergyman to yell out and maybe even recognize her as a fugitive of the Church. It was difficult to resist the urge to run straight for the Wall, covering the distance as quickly as possible and finishing this nerve-wracking journey, but she had to trust Kook, Cod, and the rest of the Diggers as they guided them.

In this way they zigzagged through the streets of the Gap until, to Lynn’s great relief, they neared the looming dark of the Wall. Clergy-General Provost had clearly played his part in the plan, as only once did they need to pause, some of their group on one side of the street and some on the other, as a pair of Holy Order clergymen on patrol passed them, arguing with each other about how much money one owed the other from a game of cards the night before.

Lynn’s heart was still pounding when they finally reached the Wall, but she no longer knew whether it was from fear or excitement. Creeping unseen through the streets of Alice had been exhilarating. It reminded her of the times she had snuck into the kitchen of her father’s house to steal midnight snacks, though the consequences for discovery could hardly have been more different. It was only as they’d reached the Wall that she realized three of her group were probably the most wanted people in Alice. Not to mention that the Administrator was among the most recognizable people in the Territory. What they had just done was, quite literally, death-defying.

In the area around the Great Gate, which was always considered the front of the city, the buildings were separated from the Wall by a wide street, as if to give them a dignified amount of breathing room. But here in the Gap, where there had never been anything resembling town planning, rows of houses, workshops, and storerooms had been built right up against the Wall as if they were taking shelter against the dangers outside, or just happy not to be in the slums.

Referring to hand-drawn directions Lynn knew had been pieced together from original plans of the Wall and the few maps of the city that were almost accurate in this area, Knox Soilwork guided them down a laneway barely wide enough to allow them to walk single file. As they reached the Wall they turned sharply to the left down an equally tight gap between the back of some houses and the Wall. Their legs dragged through knee-high brown grass thriving where it had never been noticed. Lynn ran her hand along the rough surface of the stone beside her. As part of the High Priestess’s preparations, much of the Wall had been rebuilt where the years had seen it dismantled and pilfered, but down here, near the ground, the stone was all part of the original structure. As Lynn’s fingertips felt the bumps and crevices in the coarse surface of the stone she reflected that this wall had been in place since the Reckoning itself, since the first ghouls had begun to terrorize their world. She hoped that maybe soon, her best friend, wherever he was, would find a way to end the ghouls forever, and this wall could be taken down once and for all. Maybe then, when there was no Inside and no Outside, the Territory could begin to mend the real wounds that festered at its heart.

A short distance further on an area had been cleared in the thick grass. Red-brown dirt that had built up over the years had been removed, and there, in the Wall, now fully exposed, was a door.

The surface of the steel door was rusted and pockmarked with the divots of time. The gap between the door and its metal frame had been worked on to clear dirt that must have hardened almost to stone over time. Similarly the two large hinges had been scraped clear of accumulated brown rust and treated with oil to attempt to revive some motion in mechanisms that hadn’t been used in half a century or more.

The lock on the door had been a simple bar driven down through a series of rings that connected alternately to the wall and then the door. Each of the lugs had been filed out and the holes enlarged enough to free the bar. Lynn thought it would have been simpler to cut the rings away from the stone completely, but then she supposed that would have left the door open to breach from the outside. They would have been unable to lock it again before the ghouls arrived.

Knox Soilwork stopped. “The door is immensely thick,” he said in a lowered voice. “It only opens a fraction of the way before it jams. The hinges don’t have the full range of motion anymore. We can only open it far enough to squeeze through one at a time. Kook and Rushall will remain behind to seal the door and reopen it at this time tomorrow.”

Knox looked to Kook, who nodded, confirming the plan. Another of the ex-Diggers, Lynn supposed this must be Rushall, moved to stand with him.

“So,” Lynn said, “why don’t we just throw the door open and let the Outsiders come in?”

Knox turned to Lynn. “You’ve been in the slums, Lynnette. You’ve flown over them in a dirigible. How many people do you think are out there?”

“Thousands,” Lynn said. “Ten thousand. I don’t know.”

“Ten thousand,” Knox said, “and we want to get every last one inside. If we were to open that door and let them in it would be like trying to force an ocean through a pinhole.”

“There’s no such thing as oceans,” Lynn said, unable to resist the opportunity to take a swipe at anything she could. She didn’t know if she believed this or not. Now, more than ever, she was questioning everything she had ever been told about the world.

“Maybe,” Knox said. “Maybe not. But you understand the principle. We attempt to move ten thousand people through a single entrance and it’s going to take an awfully long time. How long do you think it would be before the Holy Order caught on?”

Lynn pulled her lips to the side, creasing her cheek. She could find no comeback this time. He was right.

“Once that happens they will come down on us with all their fury and that will be it. We only have one chance. That is why we must venture out into the slums and negotiate a coordinated attempt.”

“A coordinated attempt to move ten thousand people all at the same time when they are entirely disorganized,” Lynn said.

For what Lynn thought may have been the first time, Knox Soilwork smiled without a layer of imposed scorn. “I never said it was a perfect plan, Lynnette.”

“But it’s all we’ve got,” Lynn said.

“Yes,” interrupted the Administrator, “it’s all we’ve got, so instead of standing around debating the finer points of it we should get out there and do it.”

“While I appreciate your zeal, Administrator,” Knox said, “I hope you temper it once we get outside. You’ve never been outside the Wall before.”

“And you have?” Lynn asked.

Knox smiled again. “You know very little about me, Lynnette, yet you have jumped to an extraordinary number of conclusions in our short time as acquaintances. It seems you, too, could benefit from tempering your haste.”

Lynn said nothing.

“Shall we move then?” the Administrator asked. He seemed excited, nervous. Perhaps after so long running things from inside Alice, removed from the realities of the Territory, he really was keen to get his hands dirty and do some good for the people he claimed to serve.

“Whale, Jackson,” Knox said, “would you do the honors?”

The two largest soldiers moved to the steel door, their heavy boots slipping on the loose soil. When they reached the old, hidden exit through the Wall it took both men to pull the spike-like bar up through the rings, twisting and freeing it as it became stuck along the way. This was a task Lynn was certain would have been easily accomplished by a single person when the Wall was new and this door was used regularly. She wondered who had come and gone through it so many hundreds of years ago.

Whale and Jackson both leaned back as they began to pull at the door. At first their boots simply slid in the dirt until the larger of the two took a foothold against the Wall and the door began to open in small, squealing movements. The two of them got into a rhythm of exerting themselves in a sudden burst where the door would move a small amount before they rested and then pulled again. Inch by inch, perhaps in increments even smaller than that, the door was pulled wide enough to allow a person to squeeze through. By the time that had happened the two ex-Diggers were on the verge of exhausted collapse. Lynn couldn’t blame them – the door proved to be made of thick steel, almost as thick as the Wall, and would have taken effort to open even when it was new. Now it must have been like moving a section of the Wall itself.

“Do you think you can close it on your own?” Knox asked Kook.

“We’ll manage,” Kook said. “It looks like Whale and Jackson have broken the jam on those hinges a bit now. It’ll go.”

Knox nodded. “Good.”

Cod moved down to the door next. He turned sideways and pushed his way through far enough to look outside before pulling himself back in. “It’s clear,” he said, turning back to Knox, Lynn and the Administrator. “You go through first. I’ll follow to cover you and then the others will join us.”

“Go ahead, Knox, Lynnette,” the Administrator said. “I’ll follow after you.”

Knox descended the slope of cleared dirt to the door. Lynn, throwing a quick look at the Administrator, followed. Even now she did not like turning her back on him. It wasn’t as if she thought the Administrator would actually do something when her back was turned, it was just the principle of the thing. After dreaming for so long about getting back to Alice and punishing him, she felt more comfortable keeping the man where she could see him.

Lynn’s feet slipped and slid as she moved down the loose soil. She let gravity carry her the last bit of the way, half on purpose and half by accident, waving her arms to regain her balance before joining Knox at the door.

“After you, then,” she said.

Lynn looked up and saw that the Administrator had begun the descent. In front of her, Knox turned and began pushing himself out the door. Once he had squeezed through Lynn heard his low voice from the other side of the Wall.

“All right,” he said, “come through, Lynnette.”

So, here she was again, passing across a threshold between worlds. She had been from the Inside to the Outside, from the Territory to the badlands, from the badlands to an underground prison, and now she was sneaking through the Wall once again. She turned sideways to squeeze through the doorway. Once she emerged on the other side she saw Knox standing and waiting, watching the darkness of the slums around them. There was no movement. Sounds and smells floated on the air as they always did, but it seemed no one had seen them exit.

Lynn was surprised to feel a sense of relief. It was true that she’d been returned to Alice against her will, and to face a punishment she’d thought would result in her death, but Alice was still her home. She had been warned against the dangers of the world beyond for as long as she could remember, and could not previously have imagined a time when she would feel relieved to be outside the city, relieved to be back in the slums. She even thought she was handling the smell better. It didn’t seem so bad anymore; perhaps she would get used to it after all.

Lynn saw Knox’s face change. At first she thought he was looking at her with a bewildered expression, but then she realized he was looking past her at the door. Lynn sensed the movement behind her even before she heard the squealing of the hinges. She spun. What she saw caused her organs to sink to the depths of her body as if she’d been lifted upward at enormous speed. The door was closing.

“Hey!” Lynn said, throwing herself against the cold steel. “Hey! What are you doing?!” She pushed against the door, trying to hold it in place, trying to push it back, but it was no use. Whoever she was pushing against was too strong. With a final shove from the other side the door slid into place in the wall. Though the sound was almost entirely muffled, Lynn could sense the scrape and reverberation through the metal as the bar was slid into place, locking them out, just her and Knox, completely alone.

“What the hell?!” Lynn said, spinning to the shady old man. “What are you doing?!”

Knox’s narrowed eyes had not left the sealed doorway. “Believe me,” he said, his voice low and slow, “this is not part of
my
plan.”

“It’s the Administrator,” Lynn said. “He’s getting rid of us. He couldn’t get rid of me before so he’s trying again, and you, you’re obviously in the way of whatever he’s got planned.”

“We don’t know that,” Knox said. “We have no idea of the circumstances.”

“You saw how keen he was for us to hurry and get outside. He wanted us to go first. He’s been planning this all along.”

“And the Diggers that were with us?”

“Probably working for him,” Lynn said.

Knox turned his gaze on her for the first time, breaking his tunnelling eye contact with the door. “Well,” he said. “Now we are in a conundrum, aren’t we?”