The Sacrifice (7 page)

The sickos finally heard them coming. Or
more likely smelt them. They turned. Started to come down the steps from the porch.

Ed felt a cold fist close round his
heart.

‘Do it quickly,’ he said.

Kyle raised his battleaxe and swung it,
taking the lead sicko’s head clean off his shoulders. At the same time Ed plunged
his sword into the second sicko’s guts. A third sicko went for Adele. One side of
his face had been caved in, giving him a lopsided, cross-eyed look. Adele swung her club
and caved the other side of his face in.

‘Stay in the road,’ Ed
commanded. ‘There’s no room to fight in the doorway. Let them come to
us.’

And the stupid bastards did. As usual, their
hunger and insane drive for food forced them to attack even when they were outgunned.
None of them were armed, relying instead on strength in numbers, hands, teeth and
fingernails. They’d been whittled down enough for Ed to feel confident, though.
Only four were left standing and one of them was already wounded. He had cut his wrist
on something and his left hand was hanging half off, squirting blood down his
trousers.

Ed, Kyle and Adele stood their ground,
placing themselves well apart so that there was no risk of them striking each other with
their weapons. Ed had found a Cromwellian military sword in the White Tower, nicknamed a
mortuary sword. It was heavy and straight and brutal, not a fencing sword, not something
to show off elegant swordplay with. It was designed to shatter and break bones.

And break bones he did, hacking at two more
sickos as they came down the steps. Kyle and Adele easily dealt with the last couple and
in less than a minute all the sickos were dead or dying. Macca and Will trotted over to
join them and retrieve their precious crossbow bolts.

‘Keep watch out here,’ Ed told
them. ‘And keep vocal. We don’t want to get trapped in there like the girl.
Any sign of danger, you let us know.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Macca.
‘We’ll be here.’

Ed called up to the girl, who was leaning
out of the window.

‘Stay there!’ he shouted.
‘We’re coming up.’

Ed bounded up the steps and soon discovered
how the father had cut his hand. The glass in the doors was broken in several places and
one jagged piece was painted with blood. Ed used his sword hilt to knock it out and then
reached his hand in through the gap to open the door. Inside there was an entrance hall
with a noticeboard on one side listing all the businesses that had once been based
there. There was a small reception desk at the back with a blank TV above it, and behind
it the lifts and a stairway.

So far there were no signs of life.

‘Are you thinking what I’m
thinking?’ Kyle asked.

‘Depends what you’re
thinking,’ Ed replied. ‘If you’re thinking of tits, like you usually
do, then no.’

‘I’m thinking there might be
more of them in here. Otherwise why didn’t the girl try to get out another
way?’

‘Nothing’s ever simple, is
it?’

‘Nope.’

Ed sighed. It had been easy outside.
They’d been able to clearly see the threat and prepare for it. In here it would be
a different matter. It was dark and cramped and unknown. He put his finger to his lips
and they listened.

All quiet.

Ed went over to the stairs and looked
up.

‘Nothing. Stay close, yeah? We’ll
go slow and steady. Who’s got a torch?’

Blank faces from the other two.

Ed grunted with dismay. ‘I should have
brought one, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Left in too much of a hurry. Don’t
you have one, Kyle? I thought you were on early watch.’

‘Flat batteries, mate. We need to find
some more of them wind-up beauties. You know Jordan don’t like us to use up
batteries.’

‘We’ll bring it up in the next
war council,’ said Ed. ‘Make it a priority to find batteries and more
friction torches.’

‘It shouldn’t be too
dark,’ said Adele. ‘There’s lots of windows.’

‘Yeah, but be careful.’

‘Will you get off telling us to be
careful?’ said Kyle. ‘It’s not like we don’t know.’

‘Are you ever careful,
Kyle?’

Kyle grinned his big idiot’s grin.

‘Course not,’ he said.
‘Now let’s go. Brain-biter is hungry.’

‘Brain-biter?’ Ed tutted.
‘Don’t tell me. You’ve given your axe a name, haven’t
you?’

‘Yeah. I got it from a book.
Ain’t your sword got a name?’

‘It’s called Terry.’ Ed
laughed and started up the stairs, he and Kyle side by side, Adele watching their backs.
There was very little light in the stairwell, which wound up around the lift shaft in
the centre of the building. They had to feel their way, creeping slowly from step to
step.

‘So did you give a name to that
executioner’s axe you were so keen to use the other day?’ Ed asked Kyle
quietly.

‘Nah. It was just a replica.
Don’t even know if it would of worked.’

‘You were still going to use it,
though.’

‘Dunno. Jordan told me what to do
before the trial. I think he knew that killing Brendan was a no-no.’

‘So why go through with it?’

‘Jordan wanted to look harder than
hard. He was hoping all along that someone would come up with another plan. Talk him out
of it. All he ever wanted was to kick Brendan out. Send him into exile.’

‘So why didn’t he just say that
in the first place and save us all that bloody drama?’

‘I reckon cos he thought exile was
pretty harsh, thought everyone might complain. This way it looks like he did Bren a
favour, not crapping on him from too great a height. Makes Jordan look hard but
fair.’

‘And what if I hadn’t said
anything?’ Ed asked. ‘Would you have gone through with it and cut his head
off?’

‘Shhh … ’

They had reached the first floor where a
corridor with offices off to either side ran from the front of the building to the back.
It was full of dark moving shapes.

Hard to tell in the low light levels, but
there were maybe as many as ten sickos here. Ed had a strong urge to turn tail. Was it
worth risking any of their lives for this unknown girl?

They backed down the stairs and round a
corner.

‘Are you up for this?’ he
whispered.

‘We’ve come this far,’
said Kyle.

‘We could come back for
her.’

‘Are you ducking out, Captain?
Didn’t you say she was one of us?’

‘I don’t want to force you two
to do anything you don’t want.’

‘We’d follow you into the mouth of
hell, Skipper.’ Kyle put on a bad American accent.

‘Shut up, Kyle. I’m
serious.’

‘I told you, Brain-biter is hungry.
Lead on.’

‘Let’s do it,’ said Adele.
‘I can’t go back to the Tower knowing I’d left that girl here. She
must be terrified.’

‘All right. Let’s do it
then.’ Ed led them back up to the top of the stairs and out into the corridor.

‘Which door are you behind?’ he
shouted. There was no answer.

‘She can’t hear you,’ said
Kyle. ‘How could she?’

‘Must be one of the offices at the
front,’ said Adele.

‘But which side?’ said Kyle.
‘Left or right?’

For an answer the girl threw herself at the
glass door to an office with the words M
C
K
AY
C
ONSULTANCY
on it. She banged it with her fists, her mouth open in a
silent scream.

‘Go for it,’ Ed shouted. The
sickos were aware of their presence now. They advanced from both directions.
‘Barge through them!’

As Ed started to run, someone made a grab
for his legs. Someone lying in the darkness of a doorway. Ed got a glimpse of long
tangled hair. A hand took hold of the loose material of his trousers and he
instinctively swiped down, cutting it off. Another slash and the body fell still.

Then a mother got hold of him from behind.
He whirled round and stabbed her with the point of his sword.

‘Get off me!’

‘Come on, Ed!’ Kyle and Adele
had got ahead of him and were by the office door already. Ed put his head down and
powered down the corridor, knocking two more sickos aside. He jumped over a third
who’d been cut down by Kyle and then he was at the door. The girl was still on the
other side, pressed up against the glass. She looked about fourteen
and was dressed all in green.

Kyle held off the sickos, using the shaft of
his axe as a bludgeon in these cramped conditions.

‘Open the door,’ Ed yelled at
the girl and she did as she was told. The three of them piled in, almost falling over
each other, and Ed pushed the door shut and bolted it at the top just as a knot of
sickos caught up. Now it was their turn to squash against the glass. This lot were
mostly young, a couple of them not much older than Ed and Kyle.

‘Ugly douche bags,’ said Kyle
and he spat at them, leaving a greasy gob to slide down the glass.

‘That’s disgusting,’ said
Adele.

‘Oh, right, and that lot
aren’t?’

‘I didn’t say that. It’s
bad enough having to put up with them slobbering all over everything without you adding
to it.’

‘I’m so sorry, mother.’
Laughing, Kyle wiped the gob off with his sleeve to a horrified ‘eurgh’ from
Adele. He then waved his damp sleeve in her face and she backed away, swearing at
him.

In their relief at getting safely in off the
corridor they’d all but forgotten about the girl they’d come to rescue. Ed
tore his eyes away from the angry sickos at the door and turned to her.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.
‘Is it just you?’

The girl was frozen, her lips pressed
tightly together, too scared to speak by the look of it. Ed knew she wasn’t dumb –
they’d all heard her shouting before.

‘Are there any others?’

The girl burst into tears and Ed put an arm
round her. She instantly stiffened, shrinking from his touch, and he
let her go. She had short dark hair cut in an untidy bob. She was wearing jeans and a
sweatshirt, both dark green, like she’d dyed them herself, and not too dirty, so
she hadn’t been sleeping rough. There was a wound on her forehead. It looked like
it might be an old one, though. It was scabby and slightly infected.

Ed ignored the girl for a moment to take in
their surroundings. They were in another reception area, filled with dusty office
equipment.

‘All right,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk now; we’re going to get you back to the Tower, OK? But
you’ve got to do exactly as we tell you. Can you do that?’

The girl nodded. She had a round face and
slightly too many teeth for her mouth. She picked something up.

‘That all you got?’

Again she nodded.

‘You’re not going to do much
damage with that. What is it? A walking stick?’

Another nod.

‘All right. Listen. We stick close
together till we’re out of the building, then we run. You can run, yeah? Good. We
should be fine. Kyle, check outside.’

Kyle went into the office that overlooked
the street and leant out of the open window. They could hear him calling down to Macca
and Will outside. He waited a moment, listening, and then returned to the reception
area.

‘All quiet outside. It’s just
this lot we have to worry about. Once we get past these goons we should be fine. How
many d’you reckon, Adele?’

Adele had been watching the door through all
this. The sickos were still crowding round it, licking the glass, pressing their pimply,
broken faces against it.

‘I’ve counted nine,’ she
said. ‘There could be more.’

Ed took hold of the green girl’s arms
to get her attention.

‘Is there definitely no other way out
of the office than through this door?’

This time the girl shook her head.

Ed swore under his breath. This girl was
making a lot of trouble for them. He hoped she was worth it.

‘We can’t pull the decoy trick
again,’ he said, letting her go. ‘Not in here. Won’t work. Not enough
of us. Too dangerous. Which means we’ve just got to fight our way out. I’ll
go first … ’

‘Wait,’ said the girl, finally
finding her voice. She put up her hand then ran off.

‘She’s forgotten her
handbag,’ said Kyle. ‘Typical girl.’

Adele shoved him and Kyle laughed.

The girl returned with a backpack. She
dropped it to the floor and opened the top. Started scrabbling around inside it for
something.

‘Can’t find her purse,’
said Kyle and Adele elbowed him in the ribs.

It wasn’t a purse she pulled out,
however; it was a pistol of some sort, with a wide, stubby barrel. Then she brought out
a box. Ed read the label. They were flares. She cracked the gun and slotted a flare into
it.

Ed smiled his approval. The girl put away
the rest of the flares, stuffed her stick into the bag, then fastened it and
straightened up, the gun heavy in her trembling hand.

‘You ready then?’ Ed asked,
helping the girl on with her pack. She spoke again, her voice hoarse from shouting.

‘I’m ready.’

‘I’ll pop the door, you let
them have it. When I say, we break out of here.’

Ed and Kyle went to the glass and jeered at
the sickos, riling them, winding them up. They jittered and shook and clawed at the door
in a frenzy. Once Ed was sure he had them all hooked he took hold of the handle.

‘Stand back … ’

He wrenched the door open, two sickos spilt
in and Kyle and Adele laid into them. Meanwhile, the green girl steadied her arm and
fired the flare gun into the open doorway.

There was a bang and the next sicko in line
fell back, a bright red ball of fire fizzing and hissing in the middle of his chest. His
shirt caught fire and in a moment the corridor was full of sparks and yellow smoke. The
other sickos backed off in confusion, coughing and choking.

‘Follow me,’ Ed yelled and he
was first out of the door, chopping to left and right with his sword. It was hard to see
anything and he tripped on a fallen body. Luckily he kept his balance and managed to cut
through the sickos and get to the stairway. He was about to head down when Adele called
out.