Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (38 page)

Marek turned to Evelyn at last. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“You didn’t ask the council’s permission.”

“I’ve served the council for a long time,” Marek said—

They both knew what he meant to say:
I have served
you
for a long time.

—“and that will never change. But this needs doing, and none of you would have signed off on it.”

“Because it’s crazy!”

“That’s why it’ll work. They won’t expect us.”

Evelyn seemed to struggle with articulating her rage, and Marek couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

“You dare laugh at me?” Evelyn glared.

Marek shook his head and laid a hand on her wrist. He wasn’t a man of words. He was a fighter. He would never be able to explain why they had to go, not to her, not if he had a week. But in the decade he had stood by her side, he had never laid a hand on her.

That one touch did what his mind could not. Evelyn’s gaze softened, the inferno diminishing. Then all front vanished, leaving the woman who cared so much who he knew had been just under the surface. “You’ll die, Marek,” she said. “You’ll all die.”

Marek let his touch linger a moment, then drew back. “The whizz kid and the old man have it covered. Somebody will come.”

“If it doesn’t work—”

“It’ll work. Those two are batty as anything, but they know their stuff.”

“We need you here. If they reach us…”

“If they reach us, you’ll give them their medicine. They’ll never get through these walls. What we need is time, and I’m going to make sure we have it.” He nodded to the five hundred before him.

Evelyn swept around to look at them all. He had never seen her look so agitated, like a lioness losing her cubs. “How can you know it’ll work? Tell me you know, Marek. If I let you go now and nobody hears us, I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t want to die knowing you went out there to be slaughtered for nothing.”

Marek pointed to the gate. The klaxon sounded and the iron gates clunked, lumbering open. The volunteers dispersed to gather their things. Every scrap of weaponry, armour, and ammunition had been distributed days ago. Together, they comprised the most formidable armed force the country had seen in memory. So few, but a deadly few.

In moments they were reforming at the gates. With last looks back at the tower, they filed out through the gate and into the city beyond. Marek and Evelyn watched until most had passed through, then he turned to her anew. Before decorum could stop him, he reached out and touched her wrinkled face. “I’ll tell you how I know it’ll work. Times change, people come and go, but you can never quite kill hope. Not totally. We don’t know anything about this world, not a single bloody thing. But, like my Grandma used to say, where science ends, you fill in the blanks with a bit of faith.” He smiled. “Goodbye, my lady.”

Before she could say a word, he crossed the square and passed through the gates. “Seal this thing tight behind us. Make sure you boys see hell before you let those bastards in here,” he called to the guards on the catwalk.

He stood before the five hundred, and a moment of stillness passed. As one they looked over the wall, at the tower that had been the beacon of the Alliance. Lightning flashed somewhere in the city, and a few moments later thunder rolled between the great skyscrapers of old.

“Nice day for it,” he called. “Let’s go.”

The gates of Canary Wharf rumbled shut as Marek held his rifle aloft and headed west. High above, an electric sizzle cut the sky in two, and thunder sounded again, directly overhead this time. Great waterfalls of dust rained down from the rooftops. As they moved out onto a dual carriageway, one cohesive amoeba engulfed by miles of nothing, the first drops of rain darkened the asphalt.

By the time the walls had fallen out of sight, the heavens had opened in earnest, and the rainstorm crashed down over them and the once great city.

Billy shivered, curled into a ball. The canvas sack in which she hid was soaked, jostling violently with the horse’s gait under her. The nausea was intense.

Only the cold eating away inside her kept her from vomiting. Every nerve thrummed, every finger and toe screamed. The Frost was everywhere now, woven into the fibres of her clothes, hanging in every molecule of air. She felt she would drown in the swathe of treacle-thick death left in the Bad Men’s wake.

Holding on meant being strong, like Daddy had told her. She had had to sneak into the sack on the back of Norm’s horse, which hadn’t been easy, especially with so many people looking to him. But she had wriggled, and crawled, and she had made it. Now she wished she hadn’t.

It seemed that the world wouldn’t stop spinning if she lay still for a hundred years. Since leaving the burning city they ridden without stopping, hours of stifling headaches that abated only when she poked her head into fresh air—she had only dared a handful of times, lest they saw her. She knew they couldn’t send her back, but maybe they would leave her.

She wouldn’t be left again. She still had no idea what she was supposed to do, but she knew she had to be there. Even if Norm and his friends won, the Frost would come.

A little while ago they had sped up to a canter, driving the horses through unending meadows. Billy risked a peek through the opening in the sack’s neck and caught sight of dark shapes racing parallel to Norm’s horse. Not far away Allie bounced up and down, her clothes hanging slick and heavy with rain and her hair flagging out behind her. Ahead was Robert, who looked like he would tear the world apart with his stare.

Rain splashed her face, freezing and stinging. The clouds overhead were monstrous, black things hanging low over the plains. Not far away a ghostly outline of great spires filled the horizon, made hazy by the downpour.

Billy gasped at the sheer size of the city—so much larger than those she had seen on her travels in Enger Land. How could men build so much?

Awe gave way to dread as she noted the clouds over the city’s centre, where the buildings thrust up into the storm and out of sight. The clouds there had whipped into a whorling vortex, reaching black tendrils down towards the ground.

It was starting.

Trafalgar Square looked much the same as the rest of London: frozen in time, scattered with red double-decker buses and cars, cleared of the clothes and goods of the Vanished by scavengers long ago. The air still seemed to hold some memory of its bustling history, where flocks of tourists and city workers had passed between the fountains and statues over the centuries.

The bronze lions stood untouched by forty years of solitude, the fountain beds were filled with leaf litter and dust, and the great central column atop which Nelson surveyed the slumbering metropolis.

Marek crouched low in one of the divots lining the square’s eastern edge. They had dug these foxholes years ago, long before the compound walls had gone up, miniature trenches set behind the weathered window frames of chain stores and souvenir shops. Along his flanks, he sensed the others join him in a unified gaze trained upon the storm.

The far side was barely visible through the slashing rain and a heavy mist that had come with the storm. Coupled with the ever-decreasing light, it had cut their visibility down to less than a hundred feet.

He knew they would come through here. He felt it. But they wouldn’t know the army had arrived until they were right on top of them. That gave them the element of surprise, but it also meant they had to be ready. They wouldn’t get another chance.

A patter of feet behind him signalled the return of a scout, a man named Ian with a jittery avian likeness. “Well?”

Ian panted, shaking his head. “Mist is too thick. There’s no way we could have seen our hands in front of our faces out there.”

“The bridge—did they cross the bridge?”

“There’s no way to know. You can’t even see the Thames.”

Marek turned away with a scowl. Why did the weather have to turn now?

Every part of him sang with tension, every sinew screwed tight. He thought of checking on the others, but stopped himself. In the forty minutes they had been holed up here, he had tuned their positioning and attention to the optimal. They were as ready as their motley crew of civilians, mercenary guards, ambassadorial security and traders could be made.

Ian settled down beside him, and the roar of the slashing rain overtook them. Thunder shook the city, and lightning glanced off myriad panes of glass, casting the city aglitter in flashes of twinkling white. Hunkered against the wind, with their breath frosting the air, five hundred heads bobbed just in sight.

“This stinks,” Ian said.

“Quiet.”

Ian grumbled. “I don’t like it. They should be here by now.”

“I said quiet!”

A moment of silence passed, then Ian muttered, “They could have gone right past us and we’d never know. What if they’re at the walls right now?”

Several faces turned towards them, visibly concerned.

Marek couldn’t allow the slightest break in concentration. He rounded on Ian. “Look, I know they’ll come through here. The road behind us leads right to the gate, and they’ll know the gate is the wall’s weakest point.”

“You can’t know that—”

Thunder thrummed the air directly overhead like a titanic gong, accompanied by a flash of lightning that sent everybody flinching. For a horrible instant Marek thought he’d been shot. He reached out to steady Ian’s rifle barrel as it bucked in his hands, and waited for the rumble to dissipate. They looked at one another, and Marek allowed himself a smile.

Ian returned it, laughed unsteadily. “Phew, I thought we were—”

A black figure hurtled into view from above, crunching against the pavement. A tangle of broken limbs were visible for a moment before a rain slicker fluttered down to cover the body: one of their lookouts, his face frozen in open-mouthed surprise, a neat red bullet hole punched through his chest.

“Ready!” Marek roared. He hunkered down behind the door frame of what had once been a Starbucks while his vision narrowed to a funnel, the sounds of the storm grew faint, and his finger hovered over the trigger.

When they appeared, they did so without warning. From the riotous obscurity of the storm, suddenly and totally, they were there: thousands of figures lurched from the mist. Their battle cry reached Marek a moment later, the wild screams of those made feral and mad by hunger, desperation, and hate. With astonishing speed they covered the square, pouring over the statues and fountains and vehicles as though such obstacles were but leaves upon a forest floor.

Marek didn’t have to give the signal. The first wave brought the air alive with cracks and whizzing ricochets, sending half the encroaching front line toppling back. Falling like sacks of wheat, they were trampled by their comrades, who rushed ever onwards, a single subconscious behemoth.

Return fire crashed down from surrounding buildings, and those in the square scrambled back for cover. Marek jumped behind the door frame and yelled, “They’re using their unarmed as fodder, laying down covering fire until the ground troops get close enough to use what they got. Get your bayonet ready, Ian, we—Ian?”

He turned, saw the bloody pulp of flesh that had been Ian, spilled over the counter beside him. Marek leaped out and fired once more, taking out two more before he was forced back.

Too many. Far too many.

He had been hoping they would attack in waves. But that wasn’t the way of this beast. They had sent in everything they had.

We can’t hold ten thousand for long, not if they don’t care how many they lose. How could I not have seen this coming?

Metal sprayed the Starbucks and reduced the panelling to pulp. Marek curled into a ball until there was a let-up, then threw himself out into the street and dived through the adjacent window, skittering into an old souvenir stall. Five wide pairs of eyes stared from sheltered nooks, trapped and shaking.

“Keep fighting,” Marek said. “We have to hold them.”

“We can never stand up to that!”

Marek pulled them out one by one. “We’re going to. We have to.”

They fired, were hit, kept firing. Despite the Alliance’s relentless barrage, thousands of ragged bodies had crossed the square and were upon them. In moments the sky became blotted out by their writhing shadow, and puddles of rainwater ran red with blood.