Furnace 4 - Fugitives (19 page)

We were halfway to the entrance ramp when the stairwell door opened again. This time it was a blacksuit who stumbled out of it, his clothes charred and ripped, the red armband crumpled around his elbow. He was coughing into his sleeve as he made his way towards the light, so fiercely that he didn’t notice us.

‘Yeah, we’ll get out of here,’ I said, lifting my arm off of Simon, glaring at the suit as he struggled up the ramp. ‘But there’s someone I want to have a word with first.’

Information

Ten minutes later I was sitting inside a small burger joint three streets away, peering through the grease-smeared windows as yet another convoy of trucks rattled past. That had been the second one we’d seen since leaving the car park. They were all heading into town, more and more meat for the berserkers and the rats to feast on.

Zee was busy barricading the back door, where we’d broken in, and Lucy was fiddling with her mobile phone, repeatedly slamming it against the counter in frustration. Simon was crouched on the floor over the blacksuit, who was still out cold. We’d tied him up with electrical cords cut from the kitchen appliances.

Getting out of the car park hadn’t thrown up any difficulties. The blacksuit hadn’t even heard me coming, which was no surprise given the number of burns that coated his bare scalp like old jam. A single blow with my new arm had done the trick, then I’d thrown him over my shoulder and followed Zee as he led the way out onto the street.

The helicopters – three of them – had been busy
bombarding the upper levels of the car park with more incendiaries, the smoke too thick for them to notice us. There had been troops on the ground, too, a long line of trucks, tanks and infantry approaching from the west. We’d gone the other way, unseen amongst the wreckage of the city, eventually stopping here when the weight of the blacksuit became too much.

‘Well, it won’t keep out anything that really wants to get in,’ came Zee’s voice. ‘But I doubt anyone will notice that we broke the lock. He awake yet?’ I turned away from the window to see Zee walk past one of the half-dozen tables that occupied the living room-sized space, looking down at the blacksuit who was snoring gently. ‘Guess not. You must have hit him pretty hard.’

‘Dammit!’ shouted Lucy, throwing the phone against the wall. ‘It’s just
bleep, bleep, bleep
every number I try.’

She reached into the neck of her T-shirt, pulling free the small silver medallion she wore. It flashed between her fingers, the brightest thing in the room.

‘Where the hell do we go from here?’ she went on, no anger in her voice now, just exhaustion and despair. She rested her elbows on the counter, dropping her head into her arms. ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to be here any more. I can’t even call my mum to let her know I’m okay.’ She sobbed into her hands, never letting go of the necklace.

‘Did she give you that?’ I asked. She glanced at the necklace for a second as if she’d never seen it before, then stared back at me.

‘What do you care?’ she snapped.

‘Sorry,’ I said, holding up my hands. ‘Just showing an interest.’

‘Well, don’t,’ she said, tucking the medallion away, slumping against the counter again.

Zee put an arm around her shoulder. ‘It will be okay, Lucy,’ he said. ‘I know it will. Things may look bad, but …’

He seemed to run out of things to say.

‘Wow, thanks for the pep talk, Zee,’ said Simon. ‘I feel so much better now.’

I laughed, and it felt good. Even Lucy cracked a smile. But Zee was right; things could have been worse. I’d suffered a few burns running through the fire, but other than that my body seemed to have healed itself completely. The haze of the nectar had cleared in the time it had taken us to walk here, leaving me with only the unpleasant buzz of a headache.

Zee picked up a salt shaker, studying it as if it might give some clue to getting out of the city.

‘So where
do
we go from here?’ he said, prodding the blacksuit with his foot. He’d pulled off the armband to get a better look at it, the unmistakable logo mounted on red looking more like a Swastika than ever. ‘And why did we lug this numbnuts along with us?’

‘For information,’ I answered.

‘You think he knows a safe route out of town?’ Lucy asked. I shook my head. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Zee replaced the salt shaker, nodding at my arm.

‘Does it hurt?’ he asked. I lifted my hand, the fingers still fused by nectar, fashioned into a lethal point that
looked as sharp and as hard as chipped flint. My hand seemed too far away, the arm now half as long again as it had been, knotted and scarred like old wood. I shook my head. It didn’t hurt, not physically, anyway.

There was a grunt from the floor, the blacksuit’s snores becoming a moan.

‘Here he comes,’ Simon said, moving onto his knees ready to hold the guard down if he needed to. The suit’s eyes fluttered open, and in the gloom of the shop they didn’t look silver at all, they looked pale blue, the eyes of a child. Then I saw the memories flood back into the blacksuit’s face and all of a sudden his gaze grew fierce, the cold fire returning to his pupils. He struggled to get up but only succeeded in kicking a table across the room, his bonds holding as he flapped on the floor like a fish out of water. Simon pushed two hands down on the blacksuit’s chest until the man stopped wriggling.

‘You’re gonna pay for this,’ the suit growled, staring at us all in turn. ‘You’ll pay in pain when they find me.’

‘They won’t find you,’ I replied. ‘Not in one piece, anyway.’

I lifted my arm, flashing the blade of my hand, and his face seemed to melt into itself.

‘You know what’s happening to me,’ I said, a statement not a question. He glanced at my arm and nodded. His hair had been burned off, the blackened remains like a skullcap bobbing up and down with his head. ‘What comes next?’

‘Oh you’ll find out soon enough,’ the blacksuit grinned. ‘When you’re tearing apart your little friends here.’

Simon lashed out, slapping the blacksuit across his face. The guard spat out a mouthful of blood before turning back to me.

‘You can’t run from it,’ he said. ‘You can’t hide. You’ve got berserker blood in you, it’s swimming in those traitorous veins of yours. You can’t even kill yourself, not any more.’ He laughed, the sound filling the small space. ‘Because it’ll bring you back, the nectar. It won’t ever let you go.’

He broke into a coughing fit, black-flecked spittle spraying upwards.

‘How is it doing this?’ I asked, the anger building, fuelled by my fear and confusion. ‘How can I be turning into one of them? It doesn’t make any sense. The warden never said anything about this.’

‘The warden?’ the blacksuit spat, his voice a wheezed laugh. ‘No, that old waste of space doesn’t know the half of it. Cross might think he’s in control, but we answer to one man only, and it isn’t him. What you’re seeing now is something new, something that Furnace has been saving. You notice the difference? This nectar pumps red. It’s a hundred times more powerful than the piss he lets Warden Cross play with. This nectar was designed with much more in mind than changing a bunch of pathetic cons into prison guards.’

‘We know. It’s spreading a plague,’ said Zee.

The blacksuit looked up at him. ‘Oh, it’s worse than that,’ he said. ‘It’s so much worse than that.’ He turned his soulless smile to me. ‘Especially for you, Sawyer.’

‘What’s so special about me?’ I asked. ‘Why does
Furnace want me to stay alive? Why haven’t his berserkers tried to kill me?’

The blacksuit shrugged. ‘The only one who can tell you that is Furnace,’ he said. ‘He wants you for something, and trust me, it won’t be something you’ll like. If you ask me it’s because you got the better of Cross, and nobody’s been able to do that before. You’ve made some powerful enemies.’ He coughed blood down the front of his suit. ‘For all I know, Furnace is keeping you just so he can slaughter you personally in his own sweet time.’

I sat back, slamming the wall in frustration. If anything, the blacksuit’s answers had made me even more confused.

Zee tried another tack. ‘It’s not too late,’ he said to the blacksuit. ‘You can still be who you were, do something to end this. I know that inside you’re just a kid, like us. I know what the warden did to you down in Furnace. Help us get out of here and we’ll vouch for you. They’ll grant you immunity. They might even reward you. You can get your old life back.’

The blacksuit’s eyes widened and he started laughing again, the chuckles descending into hacking coughs.

‘You think I come from the prison?’ he asked when he had recovered his breath. ‘
That
hole?’

I looked at Zee, then at Simon, both of them equally lost. The blacksuit saw our expressions and spat out another laugh.

‘You really have no idea, do you? You’re in so deep and you don’t have a clue. The prison, that was only part of it. A side venture, something to keep Cross busy, to
keep his meddling hands out of the way. Only scum come from there, the inferior specimens,’ he spat this last comment at me. ‘Us, we’re purebloods, raised by Furnace himself. Only we are fit to wear the badge.’ His hand rose almost automatically to his arm, to the place where the band had been.

I sat there, my mouth hanging open, unable to believe what I was hearing. All this time I’d thought that the prison, Furnace Penitentiary, had been at the heart of Furnace’s plans, and all this time it had been nothing more than a distraction.

‘So where are you from?’ I asked. ‘What were you?’

‘What I was, was nothing,’ the blacksuit said. ‘What I
am
is a soldier of the new world. We will burn this country into ashes, and our fire will spread. When we are finished there will be no more weakness in the world, only strength, only power.’

The speech was one I’d heard before, from the warden back in the prison and from Furnace himself, hammered into my skull through the nectar in my veins.

‘But where were you made?’ I asked, stepping forward and angling my mutant hand towards his throat. ‘Where did they turn you?’

‘The tower.’ The answer came from Simon rather than the guard. ‘In the tower. Remember the vision? I’ll bet you anything that’s where this slimy creep was butchered.’

‘And that’s where Furnace is,’ I added. ‘Right?’

The blacksuit merely smirked. It was all the confirmation I needed. I pictured the skyscraper I’d seen in my
vision, the horrors I had watched through the windows, the way it had sat there in the middle of the burning city like a throne in the centre of hell, and the beast that howled from the spire as it watched its new kingdom being born.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ the suit said. ‘You can’t stop him, not now. Nothing can stop him.’

‘In that case, maybe you won’t mind telling me something,’ I said.

I leant in towards the blacksuit, pressed my razor fingers against his windpipe as I hissed:

‘How do we get inside?’

Burgers

‘If you go to the tower then you’re dead,’ Zee said, long after the echo of my words had faded.

‘I’m already dead,’ I replied, shaking my deformed arm at him. The virus inside me, if that’s what it was, was spreading. I could feel it in my neck, the tendons expanding, something growing beneath the skin like a tumour, making it hard for me to turn my head to the right. ‘Look at me, Zee,
I’m already dead
. What else can I do?’

‘Come with us,’ he replied. ‘Get out of the city, find the command centre that Atilio was talking about. She said there were brains there, scientists. They’ll be able to help you.’

At this the blacksuit broke into another round of wheezed chuckles. I did my best to ignore him.

‘And what if they can’t?’ I asked. And I didn’t add,
or
what if they decide they want to cut me up, dissect me bit by
bit to find out why I’m changing, to get their hands on the
nectar?

Zee shrugged. ‘It’s better than giving yourself up to
him
. He can get inside your head from halfway across
the city; what’s he gonna do when you’re right there next to him? How do you know you won’t get to the tower and find yourself under his control?’

‘Because I’m stronger than that,’ I replied, but I couldn’t look him in the eye while I said it. That’s what worried me more than anything. That I’d get to the tower and fall under Furnace’s spell, that the gut-twisting sense of excitement I felt when I heard his voice – something that surely had to be due to the nectar, not me – would become too powerful. I shook my head to get rid of my fears. ‘It just won’t happen. I’m going to find Furnace and kill him.’

‘Better men than you have tried,’ the blacksuit said. ‘You won’t get anywhere near him.’

‘Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that,’ I spat back, suddenly feeling more like a kid than ever. ‘Now tell us what we need to know. How do we get into the tower?’

‘We?’ mouthed Zee, looking at Simon. But I paid him no attention, focusing on the dull murmur of the blacksuit’s laughter.

‘You don’t need anything from me,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re one of us, you can come and go as you please. That tower is your home, now; one of them, anyway. You want to know how to get in? Just walk through the front doors.’

And maybe that was the real reason for what I almost did next. Not that we wanted information, not that we thought he was holding anything back, but because he spoke those last words with relish, that smug smile never leaving his lips, and I hated him for it.

I got as far as lighting up the grill and hauling the blacksuit into the tiny kitchen. And I almost did it, I came so close. It wasn’t even the nectar this time, although it thrashed and surged at the thought of what was to come. No, every person on this planet has darkness inside them, buried so deep that you only know it’s there when your world is coming to an end. Oh, but it’s there. It’s always there.

I didn’t do it, though. I couldn’t. If I had, if I’d pressed that suit’s face against the sizzling metal, then it would have been over. I’d never have found my way back.

And in the end I didn’t need to. He must have sensed the rage boiling in my system because he told us everything we needed to know.

Afterwards he lay beside the smoking grill, slumped on the floor, no more smirks and no more laughter. The four of us sat on the chairs on the other side of the counter, listening to the sound of gunfire and chopper blades from across town.

‘You think he’s telling the truth?’ Simon asked.

I nodded, recalling the way the blacksuit had screamed the words at us when we’d held him over the grill, the heat rising against the burns he’d received in the car park. According to him there were tunnels beneath the tower, designed for carrying equipment and specimens in and out without being seen. None of the tunnels went far – none went to the prison either, which was a relief – and most were linked to shops on nearby streets. He gave us the location of a direct link to the tower basements, a funeral parlour about a mile to the east.

Chances are he was right. I probably would have been able to walk right in through the front doors of that tower. Furnace had invited me, after all. He was expecting me. But that was the problem. If we stood any chance of winning this battle then we had to surprise him. We had to get into the tower and bring it down before he even knew we were there.

‘We have to try, anyway,’ I said. ‘We don’t have a choice.’

‘We do have a choice,’ Lucy said, lifting her head from Zee’s shoulder and glaring at me with those fierce eyes of hers. ‘We have a million choices.’

I returned her gaze, but mine was full of sadness.

‘Yeah,’ I whispered. ‘
You
have a choice. You and Zee. You’re both normal, you can go back to your lives.’ I looked at Simon, his one arm still bulging but nowhere near as badly as mine. He could blame it on a freak accident, a childhood disease, and maybe one day he’d even come to believe it himself, if he was ever lucky enough to forget the truth. ‘You too,’ I went on. ‘You can get out of the city, get out of the country, and you’ll be free. You’ve got all the choices in the world.’

‘If there’s any world left,’ said Zee, wiping his eyes before meeting mine.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘This isn’t some terrorist attack. This isn’t a day’s worth of chaos, a month of mourning then back to normal. This is an invasion. It’s war. It’s happening, right now, out there on those streets. And it isn’t going to end today. It might not end ever.’

They all looked at me and I could just about read their minds:
But it’s not our fight, let the army handle it,
there’s nothing we can do
. Nobody spoke the words aloud, though. They didn’t honestly believe them.

‘And we’ve all seen what’s happening,’ I said. ‘In the cathedral. You saw how quickly those people went from regular folk to stark raving out of their bloody minds. That sort of thing is going to happen everywhere. This city, this whole damn planet, is going to tear itself apart before
he
even gets a chance to.’

I fumbled over my words, my speech running dry before it could really get started. More than ever I wished Donovan was here. He’d have been able to rally everybody with a couple of jokes and that smile of his. He’d have the whole city charging after him into the tower, flaming torches at the ready. But Donovan was dead.

‘So what?’ Simon asked. ‘You’re going to march in there and just ask Furnace to come quietly?’

I stood up, running my good hand over my head. When I pulled it away I noticed clumps of hair trapped between my fingers, coming out as easily as dead grass. Thinking about Donovan had brought back bittersweet memories and I remembered that I’d left the grill on, the small café now as hot as a sauna. I knew that only ten minutes ago I’d planned to use it for torture, but right now I had a better idea.

‘Alex?’ Simon shouted as I walked round the counter and into the kitchen. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Just keeping a promise to a friend,’ I said.

The burgers were in the fridge, wrapped in greaseproof paper. I peeled off five, stepping over the blacksuit and slapping them down on the grill.

‘You want one?’ I asked him, but he didn’t even look up. Not that he would have been able to eat solids. He was like me, full of nectar. Real food would only make him chunder. Immediately the smell of cooking meat sizzled through the air, and it must have hooked the others because after a couple of seconds they appeared in the kitchen door.

‘You’re
cooking
?’ asked Zee. ‘How can you even be hungry?’

But he was licking his lips as he spoke, his words wet with saliva. I dug a spatula out of an empty mayonnaise jar beside the cooker and flipped each burger over, breathing in that smell like oxygen.

‘Can I take your orders?’ I asked, flashing them a smile. ‘It might be our last supper.’

‘Why, because you’re going to give us food poisoning?’ asked Lucy, looking at my blood-encrusted right hand. I pulled a face at her.

‘Anybody see any buns?’ I asked, flipping the burgers again, the grill making short work of them. Zee stepped over with a bag of sesame-seed rolls, tearing it open and placing four on the counter. I nodded at him until he realised what I was getting at, taking out a fifth. ‘There’s cheese, too, I said. In the fridge, if anyone wants it.’

They did, and I carefully laid cheese slices over the blackening burgers, waiting for them to start to melt
before lifting them one by one from the metal and sliding them onto the buns.

‘
Voilà!
’ I said, and even if I had been able to eat I doubted I could have forced any food past the lump in my throat. I looked at the ceiling, but past it, up to where I hoped my old cellmate was, basking in sunlight. ‘These are for you, D. Man, I wish you were here to share them with us.’

Zee and Simon both fell silent, their eyes glassy as I passed them the burgers. I offered one to Lucy and at first she shook her head.

‘I’m vegetarian,’ she started. Then she grabbed it. ‘Oh, the hell with it, I’m starving. Who’s D?’

‘D was Donovan,’ I said. ‘
Is
Donovan, even though he isn’t with us any more. He’s the reason we’re out here, in one way or another. He’s what kept us going.’ I lifted the fifth burger to the ceiling in a toast. There was no relish, no onions either, but I think he’d have liked it. ‘Yeah, this is for you.’ Then I placed it carefully on the counter. I wasn’t really sure what else to do with it. I’d seen my dad toast dead friends by pouring whisky on the garden, but it seemed a little silly dropping a burger on the floor.

Zee, Simon and Lucy repeated my toast, then we all tucked in. I can’t tell you how good that burger tasted, and even though I promised myself I wouldn’t swallow any of it I just couldn’t help myself. I managed to get down three massive mouthfuls before my body reacted as I’d known it would and I ran to the sink, spewing up my guts.

‘That’s gross!’ Lucy shouted. ‘What did you put in these burgers?’

Then we were laughing, so hard that I had to grip the edge of the sink to stop from sliding to the floor. That’s kind of what I meant, though, when I said that Donovan was the reason we were out here. Just the thought of him kept me grinning.

‘You guys are insane,’ Lucy said, and when I looked up I saw that she was smiling, more with her eyes than with her mouth but smiling all the same. Zee was giggling and eating at the same time, doing his best not to choke. He stuffed the last fragment of burger into his mouth then nodded at the one on the counter.

‘You think Donovan would mind?’ he asked hopefully. I nodded.

‘I reckon he’d kick your ass,’ I said. ‘But after that he’d probably let you have it.’

Zee whooped and snatched up the cheeseburger, taking just about the biggest bite I’d ever seen. I wrung out the last few drops of laughter and wiped my mouth.

‘You know, if Donovan was here he’d know what to do,’ I said. ‘He’d take us right into that tower and kill Furnace single-handedly.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Zee said through a mouthful of mush. ‘Donovan? He’d be out of the city in a flash leaving everyone else to mop up the mess.’

‘Yeah, okay, he probably would,’ I conceded, and we were all laughing again, even Lucy. ‘But seriously, I think he’d know what to do. I think he’d do the right thing.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Simon, watching enviously as Zee took another bite. ‘Congratulations, you’ve guilt-tripped us into listening to you.’ He looked back at me, suddenly serious. ‘So tell us, what’s the plan?’