Furnace 4 - Fugitives (10 page)

The Streets

It should have been a five-minute walk to the surface, but it took us three times that long.

We went slowly, stopping at every corner to make sure the coast was clear, pausing with our breath held each time we heard the ghost of a noise spirit down the passageways. The last thing we wanted was to walk in on a berserker midway through a meal, or to swing round a bend into a barrage of bullets from an overzealous SWAT team.

At the top of the platform steps we followed a winding trail of black blood all the way down the passage to the escalators. The dark line continued up one of the three moving staircases, a macabre signpost showing us the way out of Twofields station. I stepped onto the other upward escalator, not wanting to go anywhere near the mess even though I knew it was nectar, the same filth that was fuelling my muscles, powering my heart.

‘Anyone know where we’ll come out?’ Simon asked as we travelled slowly towards the level above.

‘Twofields,’ Zee said unhelpfully. He noticed we were
all looking at him and added: ‘Um, it’s in the financial district, I think. By the banks and all that. I’ve never been round here, sorry.’

‘It’s the cathedral, not the bank,’ Lucy said. I hopped off the escalator, scanning the hall ahead to see no sign of life apart from the same bloody trail. Simon followed, then Zee, and Lucy was still talking as she stepped gingerly onto the tiled floor. ‘St Martin’s, you know? Banks are over the river, Morgan Heath and Central. Why, you thinking of robbing one?’

‘I told you—’ Zee started, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

‘I know, I know,’ Lucy said, holding up her hands. ‘You’re all innocents, you’d never dream of robbing a bank.’

‘Well, apart from Simon,’ Zee added, almost apologetically. ‘He used to rob stuff.’

‘Gee, thanks for sharing that,’ Simon muttered as we set off across the hall. It was deserted here too, although there was more evidence of violence – crimson streaks splashed up against a pillar, decorating a map of the underground. As we passed it I couldn’t help but think that it looked like the whole city was drenched in blood. It bled freely onto the floor, dripping like an open wound, which meant it was fresh. I held my finger to my lips to keep everybody quiet as we walked up a small flight of steps onto the main concourse.

‘Jeez Louise,’ Zee said when the station foyer came into view. ‘What the hell happened here?’

Twofields station looked like it had been hit with a
cruise missile. The various pillars scattered between us and the main doors had crumbled into dust, the ceiling drooping like a canvas tent. Every single bench had been overturned, and one was embedded in the glass door of a Marks and Spencer’s. The strip lights in the ceiling had been daubed red, casting the entire scene in a weird, muddy glow that reminded me of the infirmary back in Furnace.

‘Oh God,’ Lucy moaned, wiping her mouth. ‘Oh God, what’s going on? What’s wrong with you people?’

Zee started to defend us again, attempting to rest his hand reassuringly on Lucy’s shoulder only to have it shrugged away. I left them to it, treading carefully across the sticky tiles, through the open ticket gates and round a corner. There was a noise here, the faintest whisper, and flickering too, like somebody was fidgeting manically in the shadows. I raised my hands, praying I wouldn’t come across the berserker that had caused so much destruction.

To my relief, the source of the noise and light was a television. It hung precariously off its wall mounting, a string of something red and wet drooping over the screen and looking like the only thing keeping it from toppling to the floor. The volume was almost muted, but I didn’t need it. The images told their story effortlessly as they flashed on and off behind a pale-faced newsreader.

‘That looks bad,’ said Simon from behind me. ‘Is it real?’

I thought it was a stupid question, but I could see
why Simon had asked it. I’d seen this city attacked a hundred times – blown up in films, invaded in computer games, blazing on the cinema screen – so it was easy to believe what was taking place in front of me was make-believe, nothing but special effects and acting. Except that wasn’t how the news worked.

No, those images were real. They were happening right now, and right outside the doors of this station. The shot of a building on fire – a residential block, by the looks of things, smoke-blackened faces screaming from windows twenty storeys above the ground; the footage of street blockades on every major route out of the city, bridges sealed off with police vans and … had that been a
tank
? Fleeting, blurry video of a huge, muscular creature scaling a wall like King Kong, vanishing through a window with a flash of silver eyes and a lunatic grin; aerial shots of the city that looked too close to my hallucination – pillars of smoke rising from three or four major fires, smudging the blue sky; CCTV feed of gangs of inmates running wild; and the vision I knew would become iconic, the one that we’d be seeing everywhere – a girl, maybe five or six, sobbing into a wide-eyed corpse that had probably been her mother while an inferno raged behind her, camouflage-clad soldiers trying to drag her to safety.

JAILBREAK THREATENS CITY
,
ran the headline beneath the anchorwoman, an understatement if ever I’d seen one. Below that the rolling text bar ran its relentless course, telling people outside the city limits to get the hell away from town, and everybody inside the circular
to lock their doors and start praying.
POLICE WARN OF A  NEW ‘WINTER OF SLAUGHTER
’
. And the thing that was more ominous than anything else, a flashing warning stating
ALL EMERGENCY LINES HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED.  DO NOT CALL 999
.

When the emergency services stop working, you know you’re in serious trouble.

‘No way,’ Lucy sobbed. She had a hand to her mouth, looking both ten years older and ten years younger than when I’d first seen her. She buried her head into Zee’s shoulder and this time she didn’t protest when he rested his arm around her. He had tears in his eyes too. They rolled down his cheeks leaving meandering trails in the layers of dirt that had accumulated there. ‘This can’t be happening,’ Lucy’s muffled protests were the perfect accompaniment to the images on screen, a soundtrack of misery and disbelief that bled into our ears as we watched the reports file in, the body count rising by the second as the unknown threat surged through the city. And then the picture changed.

‘There’s the bastard,’ Simon said, his voice low and menacing. On screen was a motorway, army trucks rumbling down it and flooding into the city. There was a police barricade at the junction and the barrier was open, the trucks passing through it under the scrutiny of several more camouflaged soldiers and …

My heart almost stopped.

It was
him
. The warden.

He stood surrounded by hulking blacksuits, his grey suit as smart as ever, his hair parted neatly. There was no
sign of the injuries that he’d suffered during our escape. He could have been anyone, a middle-aged man who had turned up to watch the show. Only even from here, halfway across the city, even as a tiny figure on a TV screen, it was clear that he radiated power. His posture made the soldiers around him hunch their backs, lower their eyes, and his leathery face – so much like a rotting mask pulled tight over a skull – seemed to dominate the entire picture.

‘Arrest him, you idiots,’ Simon yelled. ‘Go on, you want to know who’s behind this, he’s
right in front of your
stupid eyes!
’

But the police and the soldiers showed no sign of doing so. Instead they were talking to him, and from the looks of it they were hanging on his every word. He waved a long, thin arm and three uniformed men vanished out of the shot, running.

The camera began to zoom in as more vehicles crossed the bridge, this time something that looked like a cross between a truck and a tank, its caterpillar tracks tearing up the tarmac. The warden slid closer to the edge of the screen, looking like he was about to climb right through the glass and into the station. Before I even knew what I was doing I had taken a couple of steps back. We may have beaten him, we may have escaped his prison, but that man still scared the crap out of me.

I braced myself, studying his expression. He looked deadly serious as he addressed the men and women around him; furious, even. But just before he fell out of shot, in the instant before he vanished, he turned his
crooked face to the camera and smiled, a wicked glint that was gone before I could even be positive it had been there. But it
had
been there, it was scored into my retinas, his face like a Punch doll carved in bone, flashing up in negative every time I blinked.

‘Come on,’ I said, desperate to get away. ‘The longer we leave it, the less likely we are to get out alive.’

We all turned our backs on the television and shuffled towards the exit. One last flight of steps took us up to the main doors, thrown into shadow by the smoke that billowed and blustered beyond. It was so dark out there that for one terrifying moment I imagined the entire city had been plunged beneath the ground, a chamber of solid rock growing overhead and sealing us in this tomb forever. I had to close my eyes and literally shake the image from my head, stepping from the door to see slivers of blue sky through the relentless smog.

‘Looks clear,’ said Zee between coughs. I don’t know how he could tell, as visibility was reduced to maybe thirty metres. The street outside was lined with cars which all looked empty. Some still had their doors open and their engines running. The buildings here were all shops and offices, and the fire was coming from one further up the road. It was engulfed, flames licking from the doors and windows as if jeering at the fact that there was nobody there to put them out. Walls exploded, raining lethal shards of glass and masonry down into the street. Several alarms were going off in shops and cars alike, rising like some demented morning chorus.

I pulled my hoodie up over my mouth to keep the
smoke out, but still I felt dirty fingers stretch down into my lungs. It was like being back in the incinerator in Furnace Penitentiary, and I coughed so hard I thought I was going to puke.

‘Which way?’ I wheezed.

‘Away from that,’ Zee replied, pointing at the burning building.

We’d taken three steps from the station doors when a cop sprinted out from behind an abandoned truck. He saw us straight away, raising his pistol and pointing it at us with shaky hands. It was impossible to gauge his reaction because a gas mask covered his face, only a pair of wide eyes visible beneath. I raised my hands above my head instinctively, hoping he wouldn’t notice the writhing muscles and tendons in my right arm. Zee and Simon lifted theirs too, but Lucy started running towards him.

‘Thank God,’ I heard her say as she bounded across the street. The cop saw her coming and angled the weapon towards her.

‘Stop,’ he shouted. Lucy slowed to a walk, holding her hands in front of her.

‘Officer, I’m not one of them, I’m innocent, a civilian; I need help.’

The cop flicked his eyes at us but kept the gun pointing at Lucy. Beside me I could feel Simon tense up, knew that as soon as he saw a chance he’d be across the street, fists at the ready.

‘I said don’t move,’ the policeman barked at Lucy. ‘I’m warning you, take another step and …’

He trailed off. Beneath the mask his eyes were blinking furiously and I thought I recognised the expression. He was in shock.

‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘Back off, he can’t help you.’

Lucy ignored me, taking another couple of steps towards the policeman. I could hear her pleading, asking him to take her with him, to arrest us, just to get her off the streets. But he was paying no attention, looking at us like a rabbit about to get hit by a truck. I could hear muffled sounds and I realised he was talking, a stream of words blurred by his gas mask. From here, it sounded like a prayer.

‘Come on,’ Zee whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

We started to move down the street, keeping our steps small and slow so we wouldn’t alarm the cop. He swung his weapon towards us, his mumbles ending abruptly.

‘I can’t let you go,’ was all he said, his gun shaking.

Lucy was crying now, holding her hands out to him, fingers clasped together. Somewhere nearby a siren welled up, barely audible over the sobs and the constant roar of the fire. And there was something else, too, the patter of feet running this way, getting louder, faster, accompanied by hoarse breathing. I risked a look up the street but I couldn’t see anything past the smoke.

Somebody cried out, a noise that might have been a yelp of pain or a whoop of excitement. The cop turned towards it, his eyes blinking even more furiously behind the sheen of his visor, as if by opening and closing, opening and closing they might erase the madness from
sight. He lifted the gun, pointed it in the direction of the sounds, but there was nothing there but a wall of smoke backlit by shades of orange and red. That call came again, echoed by another, and this time there was no doubting that they were shouts of delight, like monkey screams.