Days Like This (24 page)

Strangely, there was no sign of Blacktroopers. An eerie stillness hung over the whole place.

‘We should make our move; it’s dangerous hanging around here,’ Kieran said. ‘The troopers can’t be far away.’

Sweat streamed off all of them.

‘Wait,’ Luca grabbed Kieran’s arm. ‘Listen.’ They all heard it – the faint but unmistakeable tramp of Blacktroopers.

‘Get down flat,’ Ingie hissed. ‘And turn the jammer on.’

‘I already have,’ Kieran replied, holding up the screen with it’s glowing numbers.

Lily pressed her body into the dust beneath the bushes. They were sparse, leaving them exposed, but it was too late to retreat back down to the surrounding houses. In their favour, the sun would be shining directly into the eyes of anyone looking outwards towards the perimeter.

A group of Blacktroopers, moving in single file, emerged from behind the smaller building. There were about eight of them, hugging the wall of the facility, marching parallel to where Lily and the others waited. The troopers held their weapons at the ready. It was hard to see from this distance, but the leader also seemed to be scrutinising some kind of hand-held screen.

‘Surveillance patrol,’ Kieran whispered to Lily. ‘We’re not showing up on their system – for now If they don’t double back when they reach the corner of the building, we go. We have a small window while the jammer’s still working. We’ll all head for the loading dock except you, Luca. You know what you have to do, okay?’

Luca nodded.

‘Everyone else, keep together; weapons out!’

They watched as the troopers rounded the corner.

‘One, two, and three …’ Kieran counted softly. The troopers didn’t reappear. Lily estimated they had about a hundred metres to cross before they reached the facility wall, with only the smaller building providing a poor kind of cover halfway there. They would be in full view of anyone looking out of the hangar building as they crossed. She had no idea where the loading dock was.

‘Stay beside me, Lily. Now!’ Kieran said.

He sprang up and set off across the concrete, moving steadily. Luca peeled off, heading along the perimeter bushes, Sal followed. Lily looked after them, confused, but there was no time to ponder what they were doing. Ingie and Greta joined Kieran and Lily and they headed directly for the side wall of the facility. They passed the smaller building without pausing and headed back into the open. Directly to their left was the hangar.

Like the others, Lily held her metal pipe. Her hand was slick with sweat and she wiped it repeatedly on her shorts to try and get a better grip on the pipe.

Finally they reached the side of the main building. Kieran and the others crowded so closely around Lily now that she could barely breathe. The heat bouncing off the tall white wall sucked the breath out of her lungs.

Get it together. Daniel is here and you have to help him
, she told herself.

They turned right and ran along the side of the building, keeping close to the wall. Ahead, Lily saw a ramp. More armoured vehicles were lined up near it, alongside the Wall. There were also a few smaller, less military-looking cars.

‘Side entrance,’ Kieran pointed, ‘and loading dock.’

He was holding the jamming device at waist height as they ran. Lily hoped it lived up to it’s promise to conceal them from security scans. Her heart thumped, not just from the exertion and the fear of detection, but also from the possibility that Daniel would be inside.

Kieran held up a hand and stopped abruptly. They had reached the armoured cars that were parked up against the wall. They crouched down behind the first one. From this vantage point, they had a good view of the stairs that led from the parking area up beside the loading ramp. Lily stared at a small carefully polished brass sign bolted to the wall:
Centre for Scientific Rejuvenation No. 2.

The alarm went off at the same time Lily spotted the tiny closed circuit cameras fixed above the dock and the stairs. Two were already swivelling towards them.

‘Damn.’ Kieran looked at the jammer. The light was red and the screen was fading in and out. A volley of bullets pinged off the car and the stairs.

‘Run,’ Kieran yelled, taking the stairs four at a time and leaping up onto the dock. Lily didn’t have to look around to know that Blacktroopers were sprinting along the facility wall towards them. She had no idea how many. Goosebumps rising on her skin, Lily scrambled after Kieran, Greta and Ingie, who had already disappeared.

Lily reached the top of the stairs and ducked behind the protective front wall. Huge metal doors sealed the loading dock at the top of the ramp so there was no entry there. There was a smaller glass-fronted door beside the dock, but Kieran didn’t stop there. Instead, he sprinted across the ramp and vaulted down the other side. As Lily followed, she heard the thud of boots on the stairs. Holding up the jamming device, Kieran frantically typed numbers into a keypad that was next to a small door underneath the ramp. He yanked on the door. Nothing happened. He hit the device against the palm of his hand, punched in the numbers again and the door swung open. They all slipped through, pulling the door behind them. Ingie shoved her metal bar through the handles.

‘Should hold for a minute or two,’ Ingie gasped. ‘They bring the dead floaters out this way.’

Lily followed the others up a sterile corridor, her heart thumping. She didn’t see how they could escape the Blacktroopers this time. But she had to find Daniel. They burst through automatic sliding doors into the main draining area. A quick glance told her there were no Blacktroopers inside the facility, not yet. She had never seen one during her time here, only carers.

She saw a huge windowless cavern lit by arc lights. She recognised the blaring video screens. The noise of the screens muffled the alarm, but Lily saw the uniformed carers darting anxiously between the people being drained.

The people lay face down, as she had, on trolleys with tubes and draining equipment suspended above them from rectangular metal boxes. Every so often there was an empty station, it’s tubes and wiring coiled.

‘This way.’ Ingie was bent over, using the trolleys as cover. Lily followed, dropping in behind Kieran and Greta.

Lily had no idea what had happened to Luca and Sal; she only hoped that it hadn’t been their capture that had alerted the Blacktroopers. Kieran and Ingie were checking the nametags attached to the trolleys. Kieran grabbed a syringe from a metal tray.

‘Antidote to the stuff they inject to cause paralysis,’ he said.

‘Over there,’ Lily said.

‘What?’ Kieran looked around.

‘He’s there.’ Lily pointed across two rows. The stations around him were empty, their cords and tubes neatly coiled up and the trolleys gleaming silver. Daniel lay alone.

‘How do you know it’s him?’ Ingie asked.

It was a good question. Lily couldn’t say exactly how she knew, she just had a feeling. Keeping low, because Lily was certain the Blacktroopers were in the facility now, hunting them, they dodged between the trolleys.

‘Daniel,’ Lily said, peering down at him.

He was trying to move his head. His eyes were terrified.

‘It’s okay, Dan. It’s me, Lily…’ Kieran pulled the tubes out of Daniel’s body and injected him with antidote that relaxed the muscles and allowed movement. Daniel’s eyes widened in pain and Lily knew how he felt.

‘It’s okay, Dan, we’re taking you out of here,’ she said softly. He locked eyes with her and nodded slightly. Lily could hardly believe she had found her twin, alive. A great rush of love and relief flooded her body.

But what about all these other people hanging here, helpless? They were someone’s brother or sister or child, too. Lily felt cold at the thought of how these people must feel, how she had felt; immobilised, terrified.

‘Can we take at least take a few more?’ she asked Kieran. ‘We can’t leave them here.’

‘No time,’ Ingie said. ‘If we wait any longer, we’ll all be toast. We’ve got to get out of here, fast. Follow me and Greta!’

Lily was about to object when all at once the lights died and the screen noise and footage cut out. The only illumination came from the hundreds of floater stations, each lit by a green globe, transforming the sterile place into an eerie shifting tableau.

Now that the screens were quiet, Lily could hear shouting. Not televised shouting, but real. It ricocheted off the cavernous ceiling and dissipated in the darkness.

‘Move, Lily,’ she heard Kieran say. In the faint glow of the green lights, Lily saw Kieran lift Daniel off the trolley like he was a bag of feathers and throw him over his shoulder, then he took off after Ingie and Greta. Daniel’s gown slipped open and his ribs shone through his pathetic, stretched skin.

‘Please be careful with him,’ Lily pleaded.

With a last remorseful look at the nearby floaters, Lily followed Kieran, trying to call to Daniel and reassure him. His head and body bounced as Kieran ran, bumping between trolleys. Lily thought he would snap like a dry twig. Kieran twisted and turned, negotiating a path between the floater stations.

Lily wondered why the Blacktroopers had switched off the main lighting. Whatever the reason, it meant she and the others no longer had to hunch to use the trolleys as cover. They could run properly now. They were in what seemed to be a central corridor and Kieran picked up his pace. Lily had no trouble keeping up. Now they had Daniel, her fear had gone.

But there was a new danger. The ground was beginning to buck and shudder. Lily was used to earth tremors. They had hit frequently when she had been inside her parents’ house, but these seemed different somehow. Stronger and much more like the precursor to a big earthquake. Lily had experienced two earthquakes and she didn’t like the idea of another one. Kieran ran faster.

They’ll stop soon
, Lily thought.

Far from stopping, the ground trembled more violently. It felt to Lily as if she were running on a trampoline, struggling to keep her balance.

A whooping siren replaced the alarm. ‘Evacuate! Evacuate!’ The broadcast instructions drowned the clamour. The bucking floor was throwing the trolleys sideways. Lily was sickened to see people being flung to the floor, tubes ripped savagely from their limp bodies. Now the green globes were flicking on and off, the metal boxes with their attached tubes swinging wildly. Lily peered down to see what looked to be medical instruments littering the floor, hindering their progress even further. The entire facility was almost in darkness.

Afraid of losing Daniel and Kieran, Lily grabbed hold of her brother with one hand and Kieran with the other and they lurched and staggered on. Lily hoped Kieran could still see Ingie and Greta. People bumped and ricocheted against them. This was definitely a full-on earthquake. The carers also scrambled towards the side walls of the building, desperate to leave this dark, unstable space.

Kieran, with Daniel still over his shoulder, slipped from Lily’s grasp and was pulling away. Lily peered ahead, but could no longer see Ingie or Greta. She hoped they were okay.

‘Kieran!’ Lily called out, but her voice was meagre and lost in the clamour. She could see the side walls now with the silent video screens, which were cracking with the earth’s movement. Lily didn’t think the building could stay upright for much longer. Very soon the whole place was going to collapse and there was nothing anyone would be able to do for the poor people who lay paralysed on their trolleys.

A group of three uniformed carers elbowed past her and she followed them as they ducked down a passageway that looped around before joining another corridor that ran at right angles to it. People jostled behind Lily as she ran towards light, bursting through a swinging door into the glare of outside.

The sun, lower now, shone directly into her eyes. it’s heat was still like a shockwave. She shaded her eyes. Lily was being shoved forward, but she pushed back to try to slow herself. People were sprinting away from the unsound building – carers, Blacktroopers, everyone equal in the face of nature. It was horrible being in such close proximity to those cruel creatures in their visors and helmets, with their weapons swinging from their belts.

Lily looked to her right and was relieved to see Kieran. He was still carrying Daniel and had stopped about fifty metres from the facility. He was looking around frantically.

‘I’m here. Over here,’ Lily said, jumping up and down, waving her arms.

‘Thank God, Lily,’ Kieran called. ‘I don’t know where the others are, but we’ve got to get out… somethings happening. It’s more than just a quake. Whatever it is, it’s not good.’

He took off and again it was difficult keeping up. Great cracks were appearing in the cement, zig-zagging wildly outwards from the building walls.

Kieran craned his head around as he ran. They passed the smaller building and were headed for their entry point in the bushes.

The earth stopped jolting, but now there was a strange, high-pitched humming sound which seemed to come from all around them.

‘The others, what about the others?’ Lily said.

‘Listen, can you hear that? There’s no time. If you want to save your brother, we’ve got to get him back over the Wall,’ Kieran said.

‘But I have to get Alice,’ Lily said desperately.

Luca appeared suddenly, running alongside them. Greta was with him.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Kieran panted.

‘I was hoping you’d know. Good, you’ve got your brother,’ Greta said. The high-pitched hum had become a roar and it was getting louder.

‘Where did you go?’ Lily asked Luca. ‘And where’s Sal?’

‘I was organising transport,’ Luca said. ‘I lost Sal when the earthquake started. Follow me.’ He headed towards the boundary bushes, which snagged and scratched. The ground was starting to lunge and buckle again.

‘It’s the second shockwave,’ Greta said. She was calm.

She’s almost a different person
, Lily thought,
from the nervous girl I first met
.

‘At least we’re away from the building. Where are the others?’ Greta said.

As if on cue, Sal burst through the bushes. She was holding her arm and blood oozed through her fingers. ‘Fell,’ she said.