A World of Ash: The Territory 3

Salvation is a world away.

Trapped in a city no one knows exists, Squid lies dying as Nim fights for their lives. With every minute, their hope of getting the vaccine back to civilization is fading. From the brink of death and the edge of the world, Squid must once again conquer dangers even more sinister than the undead – the future of humankind depends on it.

But Squid’s efforts will be wasted if Lynn cannot keep the people of Alice safe until he returns, and Lynn is now a hostage of the Holy Order. Forced to face punishment at the hands of the High Priestess, Lynn is at the mercy of the mad cult, as beyond the wall the undead horde continues its relentless approach.

Caught between madness and mindlessness, the odds are stacked against Squid and Lynn. Will they triumph or do they already walk in a world of ash?

The thrilling conclusion to this zombie apocalypse series is perfect for fans of James Dashner’s Maze Runner series and Michael Grant’s Gone series.

For Mum and Dad.

Even the wind was hot. Not just warm as it often was but genuinely hot, as if the entire world stood in front of an open oven door. They weren’t flying all that high but usually any altitude allowed a cool breeze to blow through the open cabin of the dirigible, providing some relief. Not so today. It was winter – at least what passed for winter in the Central Territory – but the usual promise of a break in the searing heat had never come. Instead, as the shuffling horde of ghouls crossed the red waste toward the walled city of Alice, the world around them seemed to grow hotter, perfect conditions to compel the stop-start husks into an even stronger desire to drink. It seemed to Brick that nature was siding with the ghouls. This didn’t seem fair. They didn’t need any help.

Burley West sat in the pilot’s seat of the dirigible working the controls. Brick, resting with his arms dangling over the side like puppet strings, stared out at the red desert, watching the heat haze shimmer over the ground. It played tricks on his eyes, making the distant landscape seem like a silvered mirror or an inviting lake. He could see why there were stories of boundary riders running out of water and flying for miles off-course following the promise of fresh water. But of course they never reached it. There were no lakes that large in the world, nowhere with that much water in one place, except maybe the ocean, if that was even real.

“Do you see anything?” Old Mr. West asked as he maneuvered the small airship around for another circuit. “Any movement?”

Brick pulled his attention back to the task at hand and shook his head. “No,” he said, looking down again. “There’s nothing.”

Below them, strewn across the sand, lay the remains of a crashed dirigible. Mr. West said it looked like a large transport, one of the ones that carried goods back and forth between Alice and the mines or out to the distant farming towns. It didn’t seem to have been there long as it hadn’t yet been swallowed up by the constantly shifting desert sands. It was strange to find a fresh wreck like this, word had passed between boundary riders that all air and ground traffic to and from Alice had completely stopped now. There was no reason for a transport dirigible to be out here. The High Priestess had ordered the city locked down in preparation for the attack from the horde. Rumours had accompanied the news too, the most disturbing of which was the whispered suggestion that all those who had fled to Alice seeking refuge were going to be left outside to die. This was something else that didn’t seem fair. Why would anyone do that? Brick had never been to Alice but he’d heard it was the biggest place in the world. Surely there was enough room to let everyone inside.

Fragments of wood and steel were scattered around the crash site where the hull of the dirigible had struck the ground and carved a craterous scar in the soft red dirt. The propellers, still connected to their geared driveshafts, had been torn away from the back of the vessel and were now no better than twisted scrap. The enormous fabric balloon that had once held the airship aloft in arrogant defiance of gravity now lay in deflated folds among the remnants of the wooden frame that had once held it in place.

Seeing the shattered wreck of the dirigible made Brick think of his father and the way he must have felt as his dirigible had fallen from the sky, crushing the ghoul-proof fence beneath him. His throat tightened and tears made his eyes glassy and blurred. He wondered whether his father had been scared. He must have been – anyone on board a crashing dirigible would be scared – but he preferred to imagine his father bravely flying until the last moment, trying to save himself and the ghoul-proof fence. Brick wanted his father back. He wanted him back more than anything.

Brick wiped aggressively at his eyes, trying to clear away the thoughts that drove him to cry again and again. He concentrated on the ground below them, hoping Mr. West hadn’t seen the emotions ravage his face. As they circled around a third time Brick made out bodies among the twisted metal and shattered wood. Some had jumped or been thrown quite a way from the site of the impact. Others were still tangled among the wreckage. None of them seemed to be alive.

“Still nothing, lad?” Mr. West said.

Brick shook his head.

“All right then, I’m going to bring us in to land. We’ll check for survivors and find out which ship this is so we can pass word to the city. If nothing else there might be something of value we can salvage, save it from pirates and nomads or whatnot.”

Burley West continued to circle the crash site as he inflated the dirigible’s air bladders and controlled the much smaller airship in its descent. With a subtle jolt and a slight forward slide the boundary rider dirigible came to rest near the rear of the wreck. It was a flawless landing. Brick had to admit, even though Mr. West didn’t take care of his airship the way Brick’s father had, he was an exceptionally good pilot.

“Can you see the name?” Mr. West said.

Brick looked to the stern of the transport ship. The dirigible seemed to have landed on its side when it crashed and part of the stern had come free, torn apart as the propellers dug into the sand. He shook his head.

“Well, we’d best go have a look.”

Brick climbed over the side of the dirigible and dropped to the ground, his feet landing in the loose topsoil. Despite initially resisting his mother’s wishes that he fly with old Mr. West, Brick realized he had now begun to feel that sense of awe and exhilaration that came with the sensation of flight. He didn’t know whether to feel guilty and try to suppress the feeling or whether he should just let himself enjoy it the way his father had always said he would.

Despite not having seen any sign of movement among the wreckage Brick still moved cautiously toward the crash site. Once Mr. West had secured the dirigible and anchored it into the sand he climbed out and followed Brick. They’d been searching through the broken wood for a few minutes when Brick stopped. He’d stepped on something half-covered by a plank of wood and buried under a light layer of red sand. He stepped back and pulled at it. It was fabric, and slipped out easily from beneath the thick wooden beam. It was a flag. He flapped it to shake away most of the dust and held it up. It rippled gently in the hot wind, and Brick saw a red skull in the center set against a black background.

As Brick was examining the flag he heard Mr. West call out to him. “
Blessed Mary
.”

“Huh?” Brick didn’t understand. Maybe Mr. West was swearing again. He did that. All the boundary riders seemed to swear a lot.

“The ship,” Mr. West said. “It was called the
Blessed Mary.
”

“Oh.”

“What’s that you’ve got there, lad?” Mr. West said, his eyes on the flag hanging from Brick’s hands.

Brick held the black flag aloft and saw Mr. West’s face harden.

“What is it?” Brick said, hoping he hadn’t done something wrong.

“Pirates.”

“Pirates?” Brick repeated. He’d heard of pirates, of course, but hadn’t thought there were any left. The Diggers had protected the Territory from pirates just as they’d protected the Territory from ghouls, but then, the Diggers were gone now.

Mr. West began walking back toward his small dirigible. “Aye, lad,” he said. “Come now, we’d best just leave this here, I think.”

“You don’t want to see if there’s anything to salvage?” Brick didn’t want to say it but he was mostly thinking of treasure. He didn’t know if it was true or not but he’d heard that pirates sometimes had treasure on their ships. Although when he thought about it, he wasn’t sure whether there was any treasure at all in the Central Territory. It didn’t seem like the kind of place that would have treasure.

Mr. West shook his head. “I don’t think so, lad. It doesn’t look like there were any survivors but I wouldn’t want to chance a run-in with any of their sort. I’ve seen pirates at work before and they ain’t much like the stories you hear. More likely to cut you into pieces with a blunt knife than sing songs about life in the air.”

As they climbed back into their much smaller vessel Brick looked over his shoulder at the bulk of the crashed dirigible. He imagined the epic battle that must have occurred to take the airship down. Two hulking dirigibles firing at each other like in old stories; the good guys bravely fighting off the pirates, bursting their balloon and sending them slamming into the red earth below.

Old Mr. West lifted the anchor from the sand, pumped out and closed the air bladders, and released extra gas into the balloon. With the slight sound of creaking wood the balloon strained against its wooden frame and the dirigible lifted off the ground. Brick watched as Mr. West worked the controls for the rudder and elevator and adjusted the gas to guide the dirigible smoothly and levelly into the air, turning the propellers to move forward. Mr. West wouldn’t let Brick fly the dirigible but he’d watched intently every time they’d taken off and landed and he was sure he could do it. Besides, like his father had always said, flying was in his blood.

“All right, lad,” Mr. West said as he settled the dirigible into straight and level flight, “we’ll continue inward and rendezvous with Stormey Costa this afternoon. We’ve got to relieve her in tracking the horde. She can pass word on about what we found here.”

Brick heard a sharp click behind his seat. He felt something cold and hard pressing into the side of his head, right into the temple.

“Do anything stupid and the kid dies.”

“What?” Old Mr. West said, spinning around and almost falling from his seat with shock. “Who in the two hells are you?”

The man who had appeared behind them squeezed his way between the front seats. The fabric tarpaulin used to cover supplies stored in the rear of the dirigible was folded back. He must have climbed aboard as Brick and Mr. West were searching the wreckage. The intruder moved tentatively, wincing and grunting, but he kept his mechanical hand gun trained on Brick’s head. He was a tall man dressed in a dirty red coat torn down one side and wearing a black hat with the brim curled up at the front. His red hair was coming free in wild tatters from where it had been styled into two long braids either side of his face. He dropped into one of the chairs opposite Brick and Mr. West, the four chairs of this dirigible being arranged as two opposite pairs with the glass viewing floor between them. The man held a cane in his free hand and used that forearm to support the aim of his hand gun. He stared at Mr. West and Brick with sunken eyes. His face was cut and bruised, swollen, but also gaunt in places. Brick immediately guessed he was a pirate. He must have been in the crash of the
Blessed Mary
. He looked like the kind of man who wouldn’t hesitate to cut them up with a blunt knife just like Mr. West had said. He looked like the kind of man who had nothing left to lose.

“My name is Captain Pratt,” the pirate said. “That was my old hag crashed into the sand back there. It was kind of you to stop and pick me up. I was starting to run low on water.”

“Not your ship,” Mr. West said. “I know how you pirates work. No doubt you stole it.”

Captain Pratt smiled, and Brick noticed that one of his front teeth had been broken, chipped away in the crash, or maybe before. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Isn’t that what they say?”

“I don’t think that applies to theft.” Mr. West kept his hands tightly on the dirigible’s controls. “You’re certainly not taking this one. We’re boundary riders. We’ve got important work.”

“I’m afraid I
am
going to have to requisition this little airbag,” the pirate said. “See, in the crash I lost everything, everything I’ve worked for years to achieve. My ship. My crew. My chance at finally taking what riches this Territory can cough up. I had plans to go beyond the fence. All that is gone. Now, I intend to find the girl whose fault that is and have my revenge.”

Burley West’s face was stern. “Sad story,” he said. “But you’re not using us to do it.”

“Can he fly this dirigible?” Captain Pratt said, indicating Brick.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Mr. West said. “He’s never flown it. He’s ten years old.”

Captain Pratt shuffled forward from his seat and pressed the barrel of his gun hard into Burley West’s forehead. He turned to look at Brick, cocking the hammer back on the gun as he did so.

“Can you fly this thing?” he asked.

Brick didn’t answer, too afraid to speak.

“Can you?” the pirate roared. “The truth or I kill him right now.”

“Yes,” Brick said hurriedly. “Yes, I think so. I mean, I’ve never actually flown it before but I think I could.”

“Good.” Captain Pratt smiled. “Honesty, you see. I like honesty.”

And he pulled the trigger.