Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (32 page)

Jessie lowers
the rope at full speed and Trouble lingers to make sure that the
eight infected who’ve turned away don’t suddenly change their
minds.

I race back to
Jessie and grab the rope. She’s put in some little loops to anchor
our hands on and I grip as hard as I can. There’s a tiny double tug
on the rope, which I really hope is Kean, and we turn and pull. The
rope sits over our shoulders and we just run for it, but it’s not
enough to get it started.

“Trouble!” we
both call.

He forgets the
infected and sprints to us, taking the rope. We all pull together,
straining and slipping, but it begins to move. Jessie and I march
forward, ducking under a roller door and heading into a dark shop.
Trouble stays out in the open with his feet wedged up against the
railing, pulling hand over hand.

We must be half
way. I can’t tell. I suddenly stop moving, the weight on the rope
becomes so heavy it forces me to take a step back. I look over my
shoulder and see Trouble’s stopped pulling. He has good reason
though. Two infected jostle him and he fights back, stepping out of
view.

“Oh God,”
Jessie says behind me, as we start slipping back.

Kean yells at
the top of his voice. No words, just sounds. The rope is swinging,
pulling us back in jolts. My hands are sweaty, slipping. My boots
are sliding. My muscles are at full capacity. I have no more
strength to give and nowhere to dig it from.

And then we
stop. Suddenly I’m steaming forward again. Trouble is back on the
rope, absolutely menacing it. Arms pumping like pistons. He repeats
something over and over in Chinese.

The rope goes
slack and I turn to see Trouble pulling Kean over the side. Kean’s
so pale he looks worse than the infected. He slips in blood and
Trouble pulls him upright. It’s gross and beautiful at the same
time.

I drop the rope
and head for the exit, grabbing the back of Kean’s t-shirt and
pushing him through. You’d think I’d have something life affirming
or kick ass to say. All I manage is, “Door.”

Kean goes
through. Me next. Jessie follows and Trouble takes up the rear.

“Go, just keep
going,” I say to Kean. He’s slow. I don’t know if he’s injured or
just shaken, probably a bit of both, but I keep nudging his back as
encouragement. We sprint down the narrow corridor and the infected
barrel after us. The hole in the door will be slowing them down but
that doesn’t mean we can stop. We speed around the corners, out of
breath, eyes searching. I have no idea what’s at the other end of
the corridor or if there’ll even be a way out. It could be another
locked door. It could be a dead end.

We just keep
going, one foot in front of the other, one breath at a time. We hit
a staircase and head down. The walls change from white to bare grey
concrete. When it levels out we can only turn left. It must be some
kind of maintenance corridor running alongside the tracks. The
ceiling is low with brownish pipes running its length.

Haunting moans
chase us. I don’t dare turn around.

The walls turn
white again and we start passing doors. Vague white squares with no
handles. I try a couple as I pass but both are locked. They
probably lead to rooms we don’t want to be in anyway.

Finally we
reach the end of the corridor. I push the door but it’s got one of
those damned code boxes on it. We can’t get through.

“Trouble!” I
yell.

He steps right
in and just goes to town on that door. Man, he has a lot of power.
I step back and turn to the others. Only… it’s just Kean standing
there, looking oddly pale and flushed at the same time.

“Where’s
Jessie?” I say.

Kean glances
behind. “Oh crap.”

“Jessie?” I
call and start running back. Maybe she rolled her ankle or
something. I make it maybe twenty metres before the infected come
into view. They claw their way toward me, stumbling and snarling
over each other.

“Jessie! Can
you hear me?” I start to double back. “I don’t know where she is,
Kean. Did they get her? We would have heard. She would have
screamed. I swear, she was right there.” But I’d been so concerned
with making sure Kean kept up the pace that I don’t remember the
last time I saw her. Back when we first entered the corridor,
maybe. I rack my brain, keeping an eye on the approaching
horde.

I want to help
Trouble in some way but it’s too narrow and I’d just end up with an
axe in my boot. “Oh, Trouble, come on,” I say. “We’re about to be
in a whole lot of trouble.”

Trouble steals
a glance over his shoulder and says what I’m pretty sure is a
Chinese swearword, but he never stops swinging. I place myself
between the infected and our group, since Kean doesn’t even have a
weapon anymore and he doesn’t seem in the fighting spirit. So it’s
up to me. And one baseball bat.

Oh God.

They’re so
close I can see their dirty little fingernails, the plaque on their
teeth.

“Go!” Trouble
exclaims as he pushes Kean through the ragged hole. I sprint and
burst through, looking around to see where we’ve come out. And holy
thunderstorms, if this isn’t the first bit of luck I’ve had all
day. We’re standing right in front of the door that leads onto the
station platform. We’re almost out.

A hand snags on
Trouble’s shirt and he stalls. I bring my bat down on the hand with
so much power it’s almost like brushing off a fly.

As I get
through onto the platform I think of Jessie. There’s nothing I can
do for her now, so I push her to the back of my mind. And Jacob,
for that matter, he’s just down the other end of this corridor. In
a perfect world I could rescue everyone.

Trouble gives
me a questioning look and glances back at the door.

I tighten the
shoulder straps on my backpack and shrug, shaking my head just a
fraction.

At least the
platform is lit. We stand on the white tiles, in muted silence, and
stare reluctantly at the train tunnel.

“The infected
are down here, aren’t they?” Kean says in a thin voice.

I grind my
teeth for a few seconds. “Yep.”

“I don’t have a
weapon.” His voice wavers.

Trouble still
has the axe. I have a metal baseball bat. Apart from a backpack
with boots, I have nothing else to give him.

“Since when
have we not looked out for you, Kean? Just follow.” I take the lead
and drop down onto the tracks. “You don’t have a choice if you want
to see Henry again.”

Trouble helps
Kean down and then produces the small torch I handed to him back in
our quarters. I’d completely forgotten about it. If Trouble hadn’t
kept it, we’d be going blind.

Without another
thought, we plunge into the dark space and just hope like hell
everything’s going to be okay.

“WAIT,” I SAY.
“Did anyone hear that?”

We stop in our
conga line: Trouble up front with the torch, Kean holding the back
of Trouble’s shirt and me holding onto Kean’s.

I try to listen
so that we at least know where they’re coming from and how many
infected we might have to deal with. “Never mind, keep moving.”

“What did you
hear?” Kean says as we start walking.

I stare into
the black hole behind us. I don’t want to freak Kean out. I mean,
he’s had a tough day. Heck, we’ve all had a tough day. Even if we
get through this underground tunnel, we still have to make it to
the vehicle and the last time we were out there we got stuck under
a train for hours. It’s like for every step forward we take, we’re
pushed back ten or twenty.

All I want to
do is go home. I want to know if this stuff in my pocket is going
to bring back my sister. I want to sit in the safety of our home. I
swear if we get back, I’ll never leave again. Not for anything.

I hear another
sound: a hiss. It’s close enough to bring all the hairs on the back
of my neck to attention. Thing is, I can’t tell which direction
it’s coming from. Trouble swings his torch around and lights the
figure. It stands there for this horrifying second, assessing the
scene — except that infected don’t really do that, it’s probably
just waiting for its eyes to adjust.

A groan reaches
us from somewhere deeper in the tunnel.

“Time to run!”
I say.

We all
move.

You always see
people tripping and falling in all those movie chase scenes and you
think… moron, you manage to walk around all day and not stumble
once and then you fall when your life depends on it. Well, momentum
is a funny thing. Once you start, you can’t stop. I can’t see a
damn thing, and it’s like an obstacle course of trip hazards —
train tracks and metal bits and bolts and all kinds of things
sticking out. Infected grab at us from all over the place. I can’t
tell how many there are, but I think the darkness makes it seem
like more. So we’re dodging and ducking and twisting — all while
still steaming ahead. We trip and stumble and call out and swing
our weapons and have to dislodge them from infected heads.

It’s frantic,
relentless.

We go down, we
get up. I catch my toe on something and go flying forward, just
managing to catch myself by doing a little flapping motion with my
arms and a quick step thing with my feet. An infected roars at me.
I swing at the dark and I smack him away to the right. I’m not
going for kills; I’m just trying to knock them down.

I see the grey
light seeping in from the gated exit; the path is clear. Rain
falls, dead straight, and pools in the gap under the bars. Like
that would stop us.

Trouble waits
for us to go first, which is both the kindest and most horrible
thing, because I can’t breathe until he’s through too. It makes me
nervous that he doesn’t put himself first. Ever.

We scramble
under the gate and emerge into pummelling sheets of rain. I can
barely hear anything over the roar.

“Run,” I yell.
“Run and don’t stop.”

That’s my big
plan. That’s all I’ve got left up my sleeve. We’ve already been
running, already been fighting. We’re tired and strung out. I just
want this to be over.

I’m soaked
through in seconds. I gasp for breath and rain streams over my lips
and fills my mouth and then waterfalls out the sides. Drops hit me
in the eyes and I flinch every time. The world is a blur; my heavy
clothes make it feel like I’m running through mud.

We run in a
line. The railway tracks are infected free, and the rain covers our
blundering noises. If there are any out there, we don’t know about
them and they don’t know about us yet. But damn, it’s hard work. I
count my footsteps for motivation. Or maybe a distraction. I guess
if every stride is a metre, I can roughly keep track of our
progress.

We run maybe
three kilometres before stopping. We just stand there, huddled in a
circle, heads down, being pummelled by the rain. I try to catch my
breath but there’s not enough time.

Without a word
we start moving again. It’s like we’ve gone beyond words. We’ve
been stripped back to the bare essentials of communication. A head
turn is a sentence. A glance is as good as saying, “Let’s go.”

The storm is
definitely moving away. Thunder ripples in the distance. Lightening
shatters the horizon behind us every now and then, and we just
forge on.

At last, Toorak
station comes into view, but it’s not the glorious feeling I
thought it would be.

They stand
there waiting, still as ghosts. Silhouettes dotted around the big
silver bodies of the stationary trains. The rain is definitely
confusing the infected. Their heads twist slowly upwards. We slow
to a stop. I can’t hear their moans over the rain, so I assume they
can’t hear us either. I search for a way through.

Kean grabs my
arm. A tortured look twists his face. He knows it. I know it.

It’s like we’ve
gone into over time. We’re hit the final level. I can think of all
kinds of silly ways to say this is our last dance. Including that
one. I like the dance one best. It’s somehow less… horrifying.

Our vehicle
sits on the other side of a minefield.

“We can’t get
through that,” Kean says.

Unfortunately,
since his fall, he’s not like the normal Kean I’d go into battle
with. He’s more afraid than determined. I mean, he’s probably
always afraid, but he never seems to show it. I wonder if he’s
thinking about what will happen to Henry if we all die in the next
few minutes.

“Come on,” I
say. “We’ll be fine.”

He shakes his
head.

Trouble looks
back like he’s telling us to hurry up. And fair enough too.

I hold my
breath for a second then make the decision. It may go against my
gut instinct, but Kean has been there for me when I didn’t even
know I needed someone. So I hand over my weapon.

Kean blinks a
few times at my offering.

I nod. The
moment he touches the metal bar, his whole body changes. He stands
taller, stronger. Kean flexes his fingers and tightens his grip.
It’s amazing what a little bit of control can do.

Me on the other
hand… well, I figure this will be just like playing dodge ball:
version death. Besides, I’ve racked up a fair bit of experience
with gauntlet running since the apocalypse began.

I’d be lying if
I said I wasn’t scared, but I have not gone through all this to be
wiped out on the finish line. I will deliver the modifier to my
sister today.

I signal to
Trouble and we split apart so we won’t draw the infected into one
area. I skirt over the tracks to the left side.

The infected
start to notice us, not exactly seeing us—their sight isn’t any
better than ours—but sensing us somehow.

A thought
flickers in my mind. What if the car’s gone? I stomp it out like a
mini brush fire. No time for that.

We advance at a
jog, saving for the sprint later. As we move, the strangest thing
happens: like the turning of a tap, the rain eases. And maybe
that’s our cue to go for it, because suddenly the infected start
moving. They kind of cross over each other and slow themselves down
as they pick random targets from our trio. I dig out a burst of
speed and try to break ahead of Kean and Trouble so I can scout out
the scene ahead. If I need help I can always drop back behind
them.