Arcene: The Island (26 page)

"Okay, now, about this wall. Or I suppose it's a fence. Hmm." Leel stood and stepped off Arcene. After a wipe of her face that did little but spread the slobber more evenly, Arcene got up. They both stared up at the fence.

There had to be a way over it, or through it. Arcene had encountered plenty of obstacles in her life, and the one thing she was certain of was that if there was a barrier then there was a way to get to the other side. It stood to reason. If you built a fence then you had to get through it. There were always people working both sides to construct it, so how did they get back over? Nobody built a prison they couldn't escape from, and this one was no exception. She simply had to find out how to beat it, get her freedom and some room to breathe. To think.

Or did she? Maybe she should just hide? Watch and see what happened, how her Hunters acted. See how experienced they were. What weapons would they have? Guns? If so, then she would need a different strategy than relying on hand-to-hand combat. Bow and arrow? Crossbow? Sling? It could be anything. She needed to know.

It would be no good running down a street with them a good distance behind if that meant getting shot in the back. Somehow, it didn't feel like that was the way Vorce would operate, but then again, he'd decided it would be fun to hunt and kill her and televise it for other people's enjoyment. So she guessed he could stoop as low as it was possible to stoop when he thought such acts of cruelty and barbarism were what people who declared themselves civilized did as punishment for supposed rule breaking you didn't even know was a crime.

Maybe I am greedy? Heck, I am, I know it. But I like food, surely that's not a crime?

Arcene set her shoulders. She'd come to a decision.

"Come on, Leel, we're going to hide. No barking," she added hurriedly, as Leel opened her mouth to agree to the game.

Arcene and Leel turned their backs on the fence and headed to the next street, hoping that Vorce would come straight down the main road thinking she was easy prey for a team of six. They hadn't seen anything yet, and they had definitely underestimated Leel.

They walked, no point running everywhere just for the sake of it. Stealth was the order of the day now, and that meant being careful where they trod. The streets were a mess, and Arcene didn't want to leave a trail, so they moved off the grass and close to the buildings where patches of paving slabs were still evident between the rubble and glass.

It wouldn't be easy to move silently here, too much was on the ground. They would be heard. What to do? Which way to go? The best thing was to get some distance, then watch and wait.

With Leel staying close, Arcene stepped on bare patches wherever possible, and ramped up her hearing until every footfall sounded like a giant stomping down on buildings.

She could hear nothing but their own passage, so guessed they were safe. For now. They were on a side street running at right angles to the main street, the fence a block away. It really was a limited area, and if her pursuers broke up they could cover a lot of ground quickly. But still, there were plenty of places to hide so it wouldn't be easy for them to find her if they hid.

They kept moving, Arcene scanning in all directions, Leel taking the rear so she could follow as close as possible in Arcene's footsteps. Leel was silent, amazingly so, the years of hunting paying off, even though she usually just made a mad dash and relied on speed and bulk rather than cunning and stealth.

They got halfway down the street then took another turn, heading back toward the fence. Arcene believed it best to stay close to it as one way or another they had to get over it. She spotted a likely place to hide and they weaved between hulks of ancient cars and entered through a wooden door, out of place amid the steel and concrete, into a building Arcene knew was once a church. It sat amid once modern architecture, still relatively intact, the brick and wood holding better than the crumbling concrete.

Arcene felt out of place and time as soon as she stepped inside. At the far end was a simple wooden cross high on the wall. Scattered church pews covered the tiled floor, most of them turned over, piles of leaves and litter sweeping over them where the wind had blown them into mounds like the tide coming to wash away the sins of the past.

But this was no longer a place for worship, a lost religion Arcene had heard about many times but never even came close to understanding. When The Lethargy came, some clung to faith stronger than ever, but most lost it, or the values were perverted, becoming something else over the years until what were once rules to live by morphed into something else. Arcene never understood any of it.

The small main room was an off-white, simple and mostly unadorned, but it still held that eerie sense of silence you only found in places of prayer or learning. Churches and libraries, they always made you want to whisper, even though there was nobody to tell you to be quiet.

Arcene, with Leel bumping against her side, moved carefully between the upended benches and avoided stepping on the brittle books scattered everywhere. She may not have the faith those who worshiped here once had, but she wasn't about to insult it by putting a dirty boot on their book of worship. They made it to the far end and stepped up onto a raised platform.

Scrawled across the wall beneath the cross were the words "Why have YOU forsaken US?" in red, and on the floor were the remains of a man, little more than bone and cloth. A book was clutched tight to his chest. It was one of the saddest things she had ever seen.

"Come on, Leel, let's go through to the back, see if we can get higher." Leel sniffed the corpse, then followed Arcene into an anteroom. There was nothing but decay, the place ransacked for anything of use, but Arcene found the stairs that led up. They climbed, the silence closing in as their footsteps dulled on the stone steps that spiraled tightly in a space Leel found it hard to maneuver in, her shoulders brushing the sides as they went higher.

Doubt crept in as they ascended. Was this a bad idea? Was she trapping them? Or was it a safe refuge, the last person to find sanctuary in the church? Best to keep going, try to get an idea of what was happening outside, what her Hunters were doing. Ugh, now she was capitalizing it too, like they deserved such importance!

As they turned, and climbed higher, the light dimmed until it was hard to see, but they made it to the top only to be confronted with a closed door. Arcene tried the handle but it wouldn't budge. She crouched to peer through the keyhole but there was nothing but black. The key must be in it on the other side, and she didn't dare try to break it down for fear of alerting Vorce and his team to their location.

"Sorry, Leel, but we have to go back down. This was a bad idea. We need a bigger building, one with lots of windows I think." Leel moaned, and tried to turn, but the space was too tight. Arcene shifted her position, back up tight against the wall on the small landing, and coaxed Leel forward until she squeezed next to her. Arcene slipped past and down a few steps to give Leel room to maneuver then they both descended.

Back down in the church the strange feeling of there being someone, something, watching her returned. A spiritual residue lingering after all these centuries, as if the prayers and the praise had seeped into the walls and was being released just for her — it was unnerving.

Arcene stared at the message on the wall once more, then spoke to the body beneath it. "Maybe he didn't forsake you. Maybe this was a new start, to make things better, but as usual we messed up, got it wrong again."

They retraced their steps. Arcene peeked out of the door to check it was clear, then picked another building. As they crept through the street as fast as possible, Arcene felt a strange sadness come over her. What had the people felt when everything changed for them so suddenly? Did they think they were being punished, or that they deserved it?

The world had definitely been mad, impossible to understand, but it had its beauty too. But that was then, this was now, and she had her own concerns. No time to shed a tear for what once was. She had responsibilities, and letting her energy deflate, and her spirit darken, was no way to go about surviving. She was Arcene and nobody would take away her happiness, her lust for life and its endless beauty. The miracle of being alive.

"In here, Leel. Come on."

They stepped inside what must have been an old clothes store. Most of the stock was gone, taken long ago, but a few items remained — torn to shreds, rotten, or strangely still intact, bright colors peeking from under the fallen rails and display cases, broken mannequins in unnatural poses, prone on the tiles, blank eyes staring forever at the lack of customers.

What a strange world it was. How wonderful it must have been to walk into a building and have your pick of clothes in any color and style you wanted. Then Arcene remembered that you would have to have a job to afford them, and thought herself lucky that all she had to do was ensure what she'd decided was her look was in plentiful supply back home. A huge collection of clothes saved from the rot and carefully stored. She didn't have to pay and she didn't have to drive a car and queue in traffic and inhale noxious fumes if she wanted a new pair of socks.

They made their way through the store as fast as possible, ignoring the bodies. There were always bodies in stores. The last thing some people had done with their lives was go shopping.

Time for a Plan

Above the store, the two levels had been converted into spacious and luxurious apartments. What was even more surprising was that one remained completely untouched. The top floor was a mess, roof partially fallen where a truss had finally given way to rot, but the second floor was almost immaculate. A rare glimpse into the life of city dwellers when hustle and bustle would have been evident by a quick glimpse out of the intact windows.

The carpet was musty, and moldy in the far corner where rain damage had seeped from above, but apart from that Arcene could easily believe she was coming home from a hard day at work — what kind of job would she have been good at? — and was now relaxing, taking in the view.

It was only spoiled by the fact they were crouched behind a stupid sofa made of chrome and leather about as comfortable to sit on as a stick. A pointy one. That, and the faint smell of death that was probably more her imagination than coming from the pile of bones and cloth sat at a counter in the open plan kitchen and living area. How the body had remained there, slumped over the upper half of the counter, the lower half still sat on the stool, was a miracle. But there the man was. Even his shoes were still on.

Leel kept glancing at the body as if she expected him to get up and offer them a cup of tea or something nice to eat. It was making Arcene nervous, and now she was thinking about tea and sandwiches. "Stop looking at him, Leel, he's been dead ages." Whenever she encountered homes that hadn't been ransacked, or in ruin, it always felt intrusive, as if she had no right to enter a space not gone through by multiple pairs of hands long before she was born. Like she was a thief and would get caught.

Hiding behind a sofa, and peering out the windows at the street below, made her feel even more like an unwanted guest. As though she was disturbing the man's slumber and he'd wake up, ask why she'd rearranged the furniture and had she seen the state of his rug? Didn't she have any manners?

Knowing the wait could be long, Arcene gathered a few blankets from the bedroom and made a little seating area for her and Leel, then had a change of heart and moved the sofa again, allowing her to stay hidden by the window and peek out to watch.

As time passed, and Leel fell asleep at her feet, Arcene looked out at the enclosed part of the city and wondered how best to deal with the situation. It all came down to the fence as far as she could tell. Over meant freedom.

She could run. Keep on running until she got home. Or she could at least have the freedom to pick off her "Hunters" one by one, without risking the others getting her before she had time to make good her escape.

This wasn't how Arcene normally did things. She confronted her fears, her abusers, and always had her revenge. She had to be honest with herself — running away was out of the question. And besides, if she let them live they'd do it to some other poor soul that happened to get lost at sea, finding themselves in the hands of such evil people.

The fence bisected the city and she could see it between the buildings each way she looked. How hard could it be to get over? All she had to do was find a weak spot and that would be it.

Or... Yes, that was it! She knew what she had to do.

"Wakey, wakey, sleepy head. It's time to go. No point just waiting for them to show up. We need to get out of here and we need to deal with them. I have a plan. Leel, wake up!"

Leel opened an eye and looked at Arcene expectantly. "No, no food. We're going."

Woof!

"Yes, all right. But then we have to go." Arcene fished in the backpack, pulled out the meat, and they each chewed a few slices of dried flesh. At least Arcene did, Leel gulped hers then pleaded with infinitely sad eyes. "That's it, we're off." Arcene checked the street below. "Change of plan, come on."

She yanked on Leel's collar and they headed down to street level. An Elder, the one called Boehn, the one she'd confronted with her sword, was moving cautiously down the street, searching for them.

Time to even the odds.
Arcene whispered instructions to Leel before they moved through the store and dashed out into bright sunshine — it was a lovely day. Warm, and the breeze had died down. Time to make it somebody's last ever summer.