A World of Ash: The Territory 3 (19 page)

Hank looked at Lynn, his hand still nursing his obviously stinging cheek, but at least he was listening now. “You want to dismantle every building in the slums?”

“Yes,” Lynn said. “We’ve still got a couple of days until the horde arrives. That’s not much time, but maybe it’s enough to mount something of a defense. We tear down every building we can and we use the materials to build a wall, our own wall of wood and iron. A wall made out of the slums. It won’t hold the ghouls forever, but perhaps it will buy us some time. Some time to fight back, and some time, I hope, for my friend to show up and save us all.”

Squid stood on the bowsprit of the stolen Holy Order dirigible, the single beam that extended precariously from the front of the hull. He leaned forward into two of the coarse ropes that ran up to tether the hull to the balloon, letting the ropes support his weight at each shoulder. The warm wind, pushed more strongly into his face with the movement of the airship, caused his thick black hair to flutter gently and tickle his forehead. It was longer than it had ever been. His aunt would have cut it back with a pair of kitchen scissors as she had whenever she thought he’d started to look like what she called a “delinquent from the big towns.”

Standing here with the wind in his hair and only a single wooden beam beneath his feet, Squid felt like he could have been flying alone in the sky. That would have been nice. In the confines of the dirigible, where privacy was difficult to come by, he often felt like wandering off alone with his own thoughts.

“Squid.”

He turned, rolling his weight over on one of the ropes to look behind him. The change in angle caused the wind to whip his long hair to the side. Nim was approaching. The Nomad boy stood further back on the bow of the airship.

“What are you doing out there?” Nim asked.

“I can see the horde,” Squid answered. He’d caught sight of the rising desert dust an hour or so earlier and had moved to this position to stand watch. He had wanted to see how much larger the horde had grown, but mostly he was desperate to know whether they would arrive at Alice in time. He had been keeping his eyes fixed forward, waiting to see the Wall and whether or not the horde had yet engulfed the slums. “Come on.” He waved Nim toward him.

“You think that can take the weight of both of us?”

Squid nodded. “Absolutely. It has to carry the pulling force of the balloon, and us standing on it will bend it back the other way. We’re actually doing it a favor.”

Nim didn’t move. Squid knew he didn’t like flying. It was funny really, because he’d been happy to climb along the roof of a moving bio-truck, happy to rush in to rescue Lynn, and he’d been happy to fight ghouls. Well, if not exactly happy, he’d still been willing to do all those things. But flying in a dirigible was something he wasn’t keen on. He said that birds were supposed to fly, not people. He and Lynn were the same in this respect. She didn’t like flying either.

“Come on,” Squid repeated. “You’ll be fine, just hold on to the ropes.”

Nim took a deep breath and moved forward, climbing out onto the bowsprit and holding the ropes until he’d shuffled along to stand near Squid.

“There,” Squid said, pointing to the fine red dust rising ahead of them. “You see them? That’s the horde.”

“That’s … wow,” Nim said, his voice catching and stopping in his throat.

Squid twisted to look at his friend. Nim was staring ahead at the mass of movement. From this distance it wasn’t possible to pick out individual ghouls in the horde – it was just a roiling blight on the horizon – but it was enough to get an idea of its scale. Squid remembered then that his friend had never seen the horde, not like he had.

“What are those dark spots in the air?” Nim asked. “Dirigibles?”

Squid nodded. “Boundary rider dirigibles, I think. Following the horde.”

Nim looked at him. “When we first met,” he said, “I thought there was nothing special about you. I thought you were a weird, weak little Dweller who was scared of everything and not tough enough for this world. I never thought I’d see you hanging off a dirigible like this, staring ahead at thousands of ghouls, and facing it all much more bravely than me.”

Squid opened his mouth to reply but he didn’t know what to say. The truth was that he
had
been afraid. When he’d first met Nim he’d still been afraid of almost everything. He wasn’t afraid now, though, and that was what gave him pause. He knew that once the thought of sailing through the air in a dirigible, leaning out over the front supported by nothing but the taut ropes, would have terrified him. He had spent the entirety of the battle of Dust terrified. But now, as he approached that same enemy again, his mind contained only thoughts of what they needed to do, the mission that lay ahead of them. He tried to think back to when that had changed, when he’d stopped finding everything in the world terrifying, but there was no single point he could put his finger on.

Squid looked from his friend back to the dust cloud. “I’m just scared of other things now. I’m terrified we’re not going to make it to the city before the ghouls do. I’m scared that Lynn is already dead and we’re too late to save her. I’m scared that the High Priestess will win and that Ernest is right and he should have just let the Central Territory destroy itself.”

“I’m scared of all that too,” Nim said, “but my grandfather once told me that being brave has nothing to do with not being afraid and everything to do with how you handle it.”

Squid lowered himself until he sat on the bowsprit, his legs dangling into the open air. He kept his eyes trained ahead, watching the horizon where the dust rose from the feet of those shambling monsters. Nim did the same.

“You think she’s gonna be all right?” Nim said after a long silence.

“I don’t know,” Squid said, not taking his eyes from the horizon, where he hoped they would soon see the city of Alice.

“What does your gut tell you?”

Squid glanced at his friend. Normally he would have said that he liked information. He liked to make decisions based on facts and patterns and things he could understand. That was why he found it hard to make decisions about charging into the unknown. He wanted to understand everything first. But he was starting to realize that the real world usually didn’t give you that choice. So, instead, he just told the truth.

“She’s alive,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Nim nodded. He didn’t smile. He just kept nodding and said, “Me too.”

After an hour, maybe two, a hazy shape began to crystallize in the far distance. Most of the Central Territory was flat, with little more than rolling undulations of earth, but there was still only so far a human eye could see. Now, though, the shape of man-made walls rising up from the red land became clear. They had come within view of Alice. It was all but colorless, the distance and the cloud of dust obscuring the city and robbing it of any detail.

“Are they there yet?” Nim asked. “Are we gonna be too late?”

“I don’t know,” Squid said. “It’s too far. I can’t see.”

“Here you are, lad. These’ll help.”

Squid turned to see Ernest standing at the bow of the dirigible. He held a pair of binoculars in one hand. Leaning out, he passed them to Nim who in turn passed them to Squid.

“Thanks, Ernest,” Squid said.

“Aye,” Ernest said. “You’re welcome. Now, take a look, will you. I’m hoping we didn’t fly all this way for nothing.”

Squid turned back and looked through the binoculars. His view of the distant horizon was magnified. They were still too far away to see what was happening outside the city but he could see the movement of the horde, and he could make a rough estimate of where that movement ended. From here it looked like there was some open space between the front of the rising dust cloud and the spreading black shape that must have been the buildings of the slums, all blending into one from this far away. But what open space he saw between the horde and the slums was a lot less than the distance their dirigible had left to cover.

He dropped the binoculars and turned back. Nim and Ernest weren’t the only ones waiting to hear what he had seen. Much of the crew, mostly men dressed in the white uniforms of the Reach Border Patrol and a scattered few in the blue of prisoners who had volunteered to fly inward with them, plus Sister Constance, had left what they were doing to listen in on the news. Had they flown here for nothing? Were they too late to save all those people the Church of Glorious God the Redeemer had left to die?

“It’s hard to see,” Squid said. “We’re still a little far away, but it doesn’t look like the horde has reached the city yet.”

There were a few cheers, relieved sighs, and slapped hands from the crew, especially from those in blue who had family in the slums. Squid, however, was more reserved. He wasn’t encouraged by what he’d seen. The horde may not have reached the city but they weren’t far from it.

Ernest must have noticed Squid’s reservation. “What is it?”

“Well,” Squid said. “I don’t think the horde is at the city yet but,” he paused, “can this thing go any faster?”

It had taken her some time, but eventually Lynn had brought Hank around to the idea of dismantling the buildings of the slums and using the wood and metal to construct their own wall. It wouldn’t be much, she admitted, but it might buy them some time – more if the Holy Order decided to come out and actually help fight back the tide of ghouls. She didn’t think that was likely, though. It would be better if they used the material they’d gain from the slums to put up a temporary barrier across the hole in the Wall of Alice, but there was too much risk the Holy Order would just fry anybody who approached with their bio-truck flame-throwers. They were all on the leash of the High Priestess’s craziness and Lynn was certain those would be her orders.

She wondered what was happening inside the city. How much panic was there in the streets? The High Priestess might be insane but there were still plenty of innocent people inside that city, people who didn’t deserve to be caught up in her delusions or Hank Barton’s revenge. Lynn was sure the High Priestess would be tearing the gray hair from her scalp, her face red with anger as she dramatically ordered her red-cloaks to do something. Lynn had never seen the High Priestess lose complete control, but she imagined that if anything was going to set her off, it would be this. The thought of the High Priestess lying on her back kicking her legs like a two-year-old as her plans crumbled around her would ordinarily have given Lynn a reason to smile, but unfortunately they were all in this mess together. It didn’t matter which side of the fight you were on anymore, everyone would be facing the same enemy soon enough. The red dirt rising from the feet of the horde was testament to that. It hung heavy in the distance. The ghouls were two days away at best.

Hank had sent word out, letting it spread again through the complex web of communication that seemed to exist below the surface of the slums. In less than an hour a group had gathered in front of Hank’s house. Men and women who must have acted in some way like Hank’s lieutenants waited for him to address them. Lynn had already figured that Hank’s age was part of the reason he had the power and authority he did. She thought that perhaps age was a prerequisite for power here, but then in the gathering group there seemed to be men and women of all ages. Many were injured, their clothes stained red-brown with blood, either their own or somebody else’s. Their faces were dusty and tired and sad. They had lost much in their failed attempt to take the city; friends, family, and maybe, most dangerously, they had lost hope. Lynn just prayed that after what Hank had already put them through he could somehow convince them to band together once again, to pull down their homes and businesses and put together one last stand against their real enemy.

The door to Hank’s house opened. A murmur rose through the crowd, and it was not necessarily one of excitement. There was much resentment in the air. Hank had promised them freedom from danger, a place of safety within the Wall, and what he had given them was pain and death and failure. Hank had retreated to his house soon after agreeing to Lynn’s plan, locking himself inside with several of his most loyal followers standing outside to keep back anyone who might decide to make their disappointment clear. Nobody had done anything so drastic as to attack Hank’s house, but it was clear they were unhappy with how things had gone.

Hank emerged looking worn and ragged. He might not have fought on the front line of that battle but it had clearly taken its toll. He looked as though the fight had happened inside him rather than in front of him.

“My friends,” he said. “Today has been a day I wish we could forget. Today has been a day I wish we …” He stopped, rubbing his hand over his face and pausing with his thumb and forefinger pressed into his eye sockets for a long, long moment. When he pulled his hand away his elderly eyes were red and glazed wet with tears. “Today has been a day I wish I could do over. I was blinded by my desire to get us inside that blasted city. I should have guessed the red-cloaks would do anything to stop us. But I never thought they would go so far as to burn us like damn ghouls.”

His words hung in the air as Hank gathered his resolve.

“I’m not here to ask for your forgiveness because I would not give it to me either. I’m here now to ask that we come together one last time to mount a defence.”

“Why?” a voice called from among the gathered. “You said we couldn’t fight them. That’s why we attacked the city in the first place.”

“Because we can’t give up now,” Hank said. “If we dismantle our houses we can use the materials to build a wall.”

Lynn watched as faces across the crowd furrowed in confusion, skepticism, even anger.

“You want us to demolish our homes?”

“How long until the ghouls get here? Two days? Three? You think we can build a wall before then?”

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Hank pleaded, but Lynn could see his attempt to convince them wasn’t working. Some had already begun to turn and walk away.

“I’m going to be with my family,” she heard one say. She certainly couldn’t blame anyone who wanted to do that now. By all accounts it looked like their world was ending. Why shouldn’t people spend what could be their last days with their families? But Lynn knew those she considered her family, Squid and Nim, were out there somewhere, and they were coming. She knew it. They would be coming with the weapon that would save them. She just needed to persuade the slum-dwellers to hold on long enough.

“Stop!” Lynn began moving forward, pushing her way past those members of the crowd who had started to walk away. “Listen.”

When Lynn reached the front she saw the dejected look on Hank’s face. He knew that he had lost the faith the people of the slums had put in him. He had rolled the dice and lost. She watched as Hank closed his eyes, lowered his head, and gave up. What he had done in attacking the city was wrong, a monumental mistake, but she couldn’t let him give up.

“Listen,” Lynn repeated.

They didn’t. Those in the crowd who weren’t already leaving spoke among themselves, pointedly ignoring Lynn. When she reached Hank she turned, standing in front of him and facing the crowd. “I said listen!” she shouted, surprising even herself with the volume and aggression in her voice. The muttering died down. Those who were walking away turned back.

“Listen.” She spoke more quietly this time. “Don’t leave. I don’t agree with what Hank did – blowing that Wall to two hells was a goddamn stupid idea – but you followed him.” Lynn pointed at the crowd. “You followed him willingly and now you’re going to turn your backs on him. You’re going to give up before the real battle even starts. All he’s asking you to do now is pull together for the last chance any of us have.”

Nobody in the crowd moved or spoke but Lynn could feel a sense of guilt radiating off them. She herself felt a little guilty at reprimanding them in the way she was, as if she were Ms Apple and they her old class, though perhaps Ms Apple might have been a little more diplomatic about it. But if yelling at them was what it took to get this wall built, then yell at them she would.

“What’s the point?” someone called back after a time. “We can’t hold them off forever.”

“We won’t need to,” Lynn said. “Help is coming. A weapon that will destroy the ghouls is on its way.” She hoped that was true, and that her words were not just a blatant lie. There was murmuring in the crowd again, but this time it was higher pitched, more excited, less hateful.

“How long?” The voice came from one of the eldest of the crowd. Lynn recognized her as the woman who had pulled a knife on her during the first encounter she’d had with Hank. One side of the woman’s hair was plastered flat to her skull with a paste of blood and dust. “How long do we have to hold out for this weapon?”

Lynn paused. She knew it was a pause long enough to give the crowd a fair idea of the answer. “I don’t know.”

The murmuring rose again, this time with overtones of concern. Could she really convince them to do this? Looking out across the faces of the crowd she saw Knox Soilwork. The tall man looked back at her and nodded, encouraging her to continue.

“Just today you fought for the hope that you could get inside those walls.” Lynn pointed behind her to the torn-open city of Alice. “And I know that what happened out there was a crushing blow, but I’m asking you to find whatever energy you have left and fight for the last bit of hope we have.”

Faces looked at each other, considering but by no means convinced.

“It isn’t just for yourselves that you fight. With the Wall around Alice gone, the barrier we build here and our efforts in holding back the horde could save everyone. Those people in the city of Alice, those Insiders, they left you here to die. They used weapons meant for the ghouls against you just so they didn’t have to share their Wall. Even when their Wall was blown open they still fought you off. They are selfish and cruel. Yet there are people in that city who are innocent of those crimes. People whose only crime was to be born on the Inside, just as you were born Outside. You have the opportunity now to save them. You have the opportunity to prove you are different from the Church and the Holy Order by saving those you believe to be your enemy.”

Lynn saw some nodding heads, some unsure looks. She knew that now was the time to push for a commitment. Lynn could remember when her father had been made Military Advisor to the government. He had left the fighting arm of the Diggers to join the Administrator in sitting behind a desk. She had been upset with her father, had told him that she didn’t like how he wasn’t going to help people anymore. Her father had sat her down and told her that when people used them correctly, words had even more power than swords. As she stood before these people, she finally understood what he meant.

“The horde will be here in two days,” Lynn said. “That gives us two days to ready whatever defence we can. So, will you convince your people to join this last stand? Will you follow Hank one last time?”

“No.”

Lynn turned at the sound of Hank’s voice behind her and her heart plummeted. He had agreed to this plan, as wildly hopeless as it seemed; was he changing his mind now?

“They will not follow me,” Hank continued, “but we will follow you.”