Furnace 5 - Execution (22 page)

The rest of us looked back, peering through the ragged gaps in the truck to see a tank pushing its way through the remains of the shop. But it was too slow, holding back the rest of Panettierre’s fleet, letting us bounce up a grassy verge onto a road. Zee took the first turn he came to, then the next, and the next, and by the time we were skidding around the fourth corner, all of us sick to our stomachs, the rumble of the army was out of earshot.

I reached past Zee, opening the driver’s door.

‘Sorry, Sam,’ I said, pushing him out. It didn’t feel right, leaving him like this. But what else was I supposed to do? Find a nice spot and bury him? He hit the road with a thump, quickly rolling out of sight. The truck felt a lot emptier without him, and for a minute or so we were all quiet.

‘The motorway, right?’ said Zee as we passed a sign. He swung onto a roundabout – the same one we’d taken yesterday – and a few seconds later we were speeding
down the hard shoulder again, the pain back in the middle of my forehead.

‘We lose them?’ he said. I looked out of the window, the road behind us clear. But I could see black specks against the overcast sky, the helicopters, probably tracking us.

‘She’s never going to let us go,’ said Simon, obviously noticing the same thing.

‘Good,’ I said, sitting back in my seat, the cool wind on my face doing little to calm the fire in my blood.

‘Good?’ Simon asked. ‘How is it good? She’ll follow us to the ends of the earth if she has to.’

‘She doesn’t have to follow us to the ends of the earth,’ I said. ‘She only needs to follow us to the island.’

I thought of it, of the creatures I’d seen on it, the berserkers that patrolled the cliffs. And I thought of Furnace, waiting there for me. He wouldn’t let Panettierre harm us. He’d unleash his forces, turning her soldiers to meat, pounding their bones into the dirt. Let her come after us. This time she would receive no mercy.

‘And what happens when we get to the island?’ Lucy asked.

I smiled, so hard that my cheeks hurt.

‘That’s where
my
army is.’

The motorway seemed to go on for ever, an endless scar that stretched from the city out across the land beyond. After ten minutes the office blocks began to grow smaller, from thirty storeys to twenty, to ten, until the buildings we passed were barely taller than houses. We drove through the southern boroughs without seeing a single sign of life, as if something had reached down and scooped up every man, woman and child in the entire area. We didn’t see many corpses either, although we could smell them, the air heavy with the stench of the dead.

The truck reeked too, the inside slick with nectar, and after twenty minutes Zee pulled us off the motorway into a service station.

‘Can’t take this any more,’ he said, gagging. ‘I think I’m sitting on that blacksuit’s brains.’

He popped open the door, stepping out and taking a deep, shuddering breath.

‘Hold up,’ I called after him. ‘We don’t know it’s safe.’

I clambered out of the truck, scanning the
neighbourhood for rats. There were hundreds of blood-coloured footprints across the forecourt, like some kind of morbid dance step routine, tattered scraps of clothing seeming to waltz this way and that, pulled by the playful breeze. It gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t see any sign of danger.

‘Just be quick, okay?’

Zee waved my comment away, running towards a small group of cars parked next to the shop. I saw him peering inside each one, looking for keys.

‘I’m going to see if they’ve got clothes in there,’ Lucy said as she hopped down from the back seat, running in the same direction as Zee. Simon stepped out after her, stretching his legs and his back and looking up into the sky.

‘They’re still following us, you know,’ he said, his silver eyes squinting. ‘I can hear them.’

I could too, that same endless pulse of the helicopters. I lifted my left arm, trying to extend my new middle finger, but the stubby digit didn’t seem to want to rise. Simon saw what I was trying to do, lifting both middle fingers to the heavens and waving them up and down. I wondered if the chopper pilots were observing us, if they could see us from so far away. I saw the look of delight on Simon’s face as he did a little dance, his fingers held high, and I hoped Panettierre was watching.

‘How far behind do you think they are?’ I asked when he had calmed down.

‘Not far,’ he said. ‘I reckon they could easily have caught up with us by now, helicopters aren’t exactly
slow. I think they might be holding back, seeing where we’re going. They could pick Zee up any time, but I guess they’re hoping you’ll lead them to Furnace.’

I was thinking the same thing. In fact, I was counting on it.

‘You want food or anything?’ I asked him. ‘Because now’s your chance.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, saluting, and then he was legging it towards the shop.

I walked over to Zee. He had managed to prise open the door of a friendly-looking people carrier and was fiddling with some wires he’d pulled out of the steering column.

‘How long?’ I asked. He grunted.

‘Five minutes, max,’ he said. ‘Then another couple to nab some fuel.’

I nodded, leaving him to it and walking into the shop. The door was open, but the place was deserted. It was much bigger than it looked from the outside. Simon was filling a carrier bag with sweets and bottles of Coke, and I could see Lucy further in, browsing the small clothing section. I joined her, wondering if they’d have anything that was anywhere near big enough for me. I was still wearing the surgical gown from the hospital and it was drenched in blood, nectar and sweat.

‘This might fit,’ she said, reading my mind and holding up a green rain poncho. I took it from her. It wasn’t exactly the height of fashion, but it had to be better than what I had on now. She squatted down, rummaging in a pile of colourful trousers, eventually pulling out a pair
that looked as if they would be tight on an elephant. ‘Thank god for the obesity epidemic,’ she went on, grinning. ‘These should do you just fine.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m about to go and face the leader of an army of monsters that has torn the country, maybe the world, apart, and you want me to wear bright orange leggings and a lime green poncho?’

Lucy shrugged, grabbing her own clothes and heading towards the toilets.

‘It could be worse; you might have had to face him wearing a dress.’

Her laughter echoed after her, contagious, and I was chuckling as I carried my own bundle back towards Simon. He was stuffing his face full of jelly babies, watching Zee through the window. I didn’t really want to ask him for help, but what choice did I have? My new hands just weren’t designed for putting on clothes. I threw the pile onto a shelf by my side, then used the blade of my arm to slice open my gown, shaking the pieces to the floor and coughing gently.

‘Um …’ Simon said through a mouthful of sugar when he saw me standing there. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

The words brought back another memory – me and Donovan standing in the chipping room back in Furnace Penitentiary, dressed only in our pants, using our overalls to smuggle the gas-filled gloves across the cave. The thought made me smile, which was probably the wrong thing to do as my expression seemed to make Simon even more nervous.

‘Quick,’ I said, glancing back towards the toilets. ‘I don’t want Lucy to come back out and see me butt naked.’

‘Yeah,’ said Simon, putting his bag of sweets to one side. ‘I didn’t really want to see you butt naked either.’

He helped me put on the leggings first, trying not to look at the scars and wounds that criss-crossed my body like patchwork. I didn’t want to see them either, but it was impossible to turn away. In places, especially my stomach and chest where I’d received the worst injuries, my skin had hardened like Kevlar. In others, black veins pulsed visibly as the nectar pumped through them, the stretched flesh so taut that it looked as though it might split at any moment, spilling my innards out onto the shop floor. My limbs, too, were unrecognisable, my legs like tree trunks. But I was relieved to see that everything else downstairs remained just the way it should be. Simon was obviously noticing the same thing, commenting on it as he pulled the leggings up over my waist.

‘You’d think the nectar would have given you a bigger—’ was as far as he got before the toilet door opened and Lucy stepped out. She was wearing a black tracksuit and brand-new trainers, and when she saw us standing there she covered her eyes.

‘A little warning would have been nice,’ she said, quick-stepping across the shop and out the door. We laughed, Simon pulling the poncho out of the bag and getting me to bend down as he slotted it over my head. He had to make a couple of holes in the fabric so I could put my arms through, but other than that it fitted perfectly.

‘How do I look?’ I asked, wiggling my toes and wishing I could find some shoes as well. But at least I was in fresh clothes that didn’t reek of other people’s blood. Be thankful for small mercies, as my gran had always said.

‘You look like a carrot that’s having a bad hair day,’ Simon commented.

‘Thanks,’ I replied, leading the way back out of the shop.

‘Or a leprechaun on growth hormones.’

‘Okay, I get it, enough.’

‘Whose clothes were designed by a Muppet and sewn together by a blind Mexican monkey.’

I shot him a look and he lifted his arms in surrender, grinning like a lunatic. Outside, Zee had managed to get the car started and was siphoning fuel from the van parked next to it. Lucy was sitting in the passenger seat playing with the radio. They both smirked when they saw my new outfit, but neither of them said anything. I climbed into the back, trying to get my arm inside without killing anybody. Eventually I had to lay it across my lap, the blade taking up the entire seat. Luckily there was another row behind me, and Simon eased himself into it. Static filled the car.

‘There’s nothing on the radio,’ said Lucy. ‘Not even an emergency broadcast or anything. Just dead air, everywhere.’

We sat there and listened, the white noise like the whisper of a million dead. Every now and then I thought I made out a word in the relentless hiss, but it was always swallowed up before it could make any sense. It seemed
to be growing louder, though, as if the dead knew we were listening, like they wanted to shiver through our radio back into the real world. I was glad when Lucy finally switched it off. There was a series of clanks from outside as Zee poured the stolen fuel into the car, then he was in the driver’s seat telling us all to buckle up.

‘Stay on the motorway?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, stay on the motorway,’ I replied. But it wouldn’t be for much longer. I could feel that hook inside the flesh of my thoughts, the pain more intense now, and I knew it was because we were closer. Another hour, maybe two or three, and we’d be there.

We drove in silence for a while. The landscape outside the car seemed to demand it.

I thought once we were out of the city the smoke would begin to clear, but it hung like a filthy blanket over the whole world. There weren’t many towns and villages along the way but even so there were countless reminders of the apocalypse. Literally thousands of cars lay abandoned on the tarmac, some smoking, others with luggage and bodies spilling out of them. A few had messages painted on the windscreens or roofs, all saying roughly the same thing:

Still alive. Help us.

But although we slowed down every time we saw one, those messages all turned out to be wrong. There was nobody left breathing.

At one point we passed a sign for the War Museum,
another place I remembered loving when I was a kid. I remembered the tanks and the planes, the weapon displays inside, the guns and bazookas and grenades. We all looked at each other, thinking the same thing but knowing the same truth: weapons, no matter how many we had and how big they were, wouldn’t help us. Not where we were going.

About half an hour later I felt the needles in my brain move, the headache sliding from the front of my skull to the left-hand side.

‘Time to get off the motorway,’ I said. ‘Take the next junction, we’re getting closer.’