Furnace 4 - Fugitives (8 page)

Feeding

We sat at the foot of the stairs long after the slap of the berserker’s footsteps had faded, long after we heard the last echo of its sinister toddler’s giggle ebb from the passageways above us. We sat there in silence, trying to make sense of what we’d seen, trying to get our heads round this bizarre new twist.

The platform was deathly silent, no sign of life from the two other inmates who’d been knocked onto the tracks. Zee had been lucky, and I offered a silent prayer. It was about time we’d had a little luck. The angry girl was peeking out from the doorway of the coffee shop, but there was no sign of the other civilians.

‘We should probably go,’ Zee said. He was sitting on the bottom step rubbing his right leg. His new jeans had been torn open but I couldn’t see any blood there, just a bruise that was blossoming on his calf.

‘Go where?’ I asked, struggling to find the strength to move my mouth. My neck was stinging furiously where I had been bitten, as if I’d been rolling in nettles. The
sensation was migrating down my right arm, the skin there tender to the touch.

Nobody answered. What could they say? I mean, if Furnace had sent in his berserkers, freaks like the one that had just been down here, then we wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Hell, nobody would be safe with those things running amok. I thought about my vision, the image of the city in flames, tried to work out what Furnace had been talking about. What had he said?

‘The war begins this morning,’ Simon whispered, as if reading my mind. I looked at him and he glanced back at me almost shamefully.

‘You saw it too?’ I asked.

‘Saw what?’ Zee said as Simon nodded. ‘What did I miss?’

‘Trust me,’ said Simon. ‘You don’t wanna be part of this club.’ He looked up the stairs, then at me. ‘You think what he said was true? About the city, about the war?’

‘Guys!’ Zee snapped.

‘We had a vision,’ I explained. ‘It was Alfred Furnace, talking to us, I don’t know how, exactly.’

‘The nectar,’ Simon interrupted. ‘He talks to us through the nectar, I guess.’

‘It’s like he’s right there, inside my head,’ I said. ‘Like he’s in there screaming. It’s not possible, but that’s what it’s like. It feels like he could just dig his fingers into my brain and make me do anything he wanted.’

‘Only he can’t do that, right?’ Zee said. ‘Otherwise he’d have just killed you. Made you commit suicide or something. He may be talking to you, but he can’t control you.’

‘Right,’ I muttered back, unconvinced.

‘Anyway, what did you see?’ Zee asked.

‘The city in flames,’ Simon said. ‘Full of monsters. Did you see that freak on the tower, right at the end?’

‘Yeah,’ I replied, picturing the beast as it howled at the streets below, looking like it was ready to tear the world apart brick by brick, bone by bone. ‘Furnace, right? That was one evil-looking hombre.’

‘You’re not wrong there,’ Simon went on. ‘If I never have to come face to face with him in the flesh then it will be too soon.’ He turned back to Zee. ‘He said it was our fault that his creatures were loose, our fault that he had to start his war today.’

‘War?’ Zee said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Unless he’s declaring war on us, on the prisoners.’

I tried to think back over my hallucination but it was fragmenting like a dream, erased by consciousness. Maybe Zee was right, maybe that was all he meant – a war against the kids who had escaped from his institution. That had to be it, didn’t it? My head was still reeling and I felt my body give in to gravity, lying back against the stairs. I tried to sit up straight but I just didn’t have the strength. It felt like all my bones had been stolen.

‘He was giving us the same old crap,’ I went on, struggling to find the energy to breathe in. ‘Telling us he’d forgive us if we just gave ourselves in, that we could help him fight, that we could be his new right-hand men, blah blah blah. At least he was slagging off the warden, it was worth it just to hear that. I think that bastard Cross might have had his day.’

I looked at Simon and realised he’d lost even more colour. He flicked me a glance, too quick for me to make out the look in his eyes.

‘He didn’t—’ he began, then stopped and turned away, staring at the wall. I ignored him, feeling my neck turn to jelly, my head dropping against the chipped tiles of the steps. If I could just rest here for a bit then maybe I’d be okay. Or maybe this was it, maybe my body had finally run out of fuel. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if it all ended here, I thought. At least it was quiet, at least I was with friends. I closed my eyes.

‘Did Furnace say anything else?’ asked Zee, making me jump.

‘I don’t think so,’ I slurred, too tired to remember.

‘The tower,’ Simon said. ‘The tower the beast was standing on.’

‘What sort of tower?’ Zee said.

I heard Simon shrug before he said: ‘An office block, in the city. I think it must be his. All kinds of sick stuff going on inside.’

There was more, but I zoned out, my thoughts covered by a pleasant blanket of darkness and quiet. The stinging in my neck and my arm had settled into a deep buzzing pulse which beat in time with my heart. I don’t know how much later it was that I felt hands on me, shaking me hard. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t, the sudden terror of paralysis turning my blood to ice water. I struggled against the grip of sleep, eventually managing to peel my eyelids open. But that was pretty much all I was capable of.

‘You look like crap,’ Zee said.

‘It’s the nectar,’ Simon replied. ‘It’s running out.’

‘What happens if it does?’

‘Bad things,’ Simon said. ‘Seen it happen to the rats, back down in Furnace. If the nectar dries up then all the crap that’s happened, all the wounds and broken bones, fast catches up with you. And Alex here, he’s been beaten to death and back I don’t know how many times. He runs out of nectar, he runs out of time.’

I tried to comment but my words were still locked tight by tiredness. Somewhere in the conversation my eyes had closed again and I hadn’t even noticed. This time the darkness was far from comforting. It felt a bit like I was being buried alive.

‘So what do we do?’ asked Zee, his voice laced with desperation. I realised he had his hand on my head and the touch felt good. ‘I’m pretty sure Mickey-D’s haven’t started offering nectar shakes yet. What do we do?’

‘Something gross,’ Simon said. I heard the scuff of feet as he left the steps, followed shortly by a sound that could have been a lobster claw being pulled from the socket – a disgusting symphony of cracks and slurps and grunts.

‘No way,’ said Zee. ‘That’s just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.’

‘Yeah, but we don’t have a choice,’ Simon said. I heard him swallow something, then gag, then swallow again. ‘If he doesn’t get some more nectar into his system then he’s going to die, if not now then pretty soon. I mean, look at him.’

I sensed Simon standing before me and I felt something drip onto my neck, tickling my skin as it ran beneath my hoodie.

‘Open wide,’ said Simon. I did as I was told, feeling another drip on my chin as he held something over my head. The next drop of liquid struck my tongue, bringing with it the foulest taste I’d ever experienced – as if all the food in a fridge had been left for years until it was covered in mould and putrefied to a mush; a liquefied mess of sour, lumpy milk and maggot-infested beef. I felt my throat close up, my stomach heaving, but Simon held my mouth open with one hand and kept pouring in whatever it was he had in the other.

I swallowed, only to stop myself from choking. The instant I did the disgusting taste was forgotten as my brain recognised what the substance was. My pulse shifted up a gear, hammering in my ears. Even though my eyes were still closed my vision went blacker, tiny pinpoints of golden light sparking like exploding stars against the night.

It was nectar. Somehow, Simon was feeding me nectar.

It hit my stomach like a living thing, like it had a mind of its own and knew exactly where to go. It felt like it channelled itself instantly through my gut and into my arteries, lining them with lightning and bringing my exhausted muscles back to life. The wound in my neck was on fire, although burning with power, not pain. The sensation seemed to spread down my right arm, all the way to my fingers, as if the veins there had been stretched and widened to hold as much of the poison as possible.

I gulped harder, craving the liquid that filled my mouth, like this was my first glass of water after a month in the desert. I didn’t care about the taste, I just wanted more of it – it filled me up like fuel, my body an engine suddenly gunning and ready to go.

I sat upright with a choked growl, opening my eyes and looking through the pulsing black veins of my retinas to see a severed limb over my head. I recognised the boy who held it, but all memories were obliterated by the need for nectar. I lashed out at him, grabbing the arm and pressing my face to the leaking veins, sucking the nectar out with relish. In seconds it was dry, and with another guttural roar I leapt to my feet, pouncing on the corpse of the beetle-black berserker and tearing into its cold carapace.

Somewhere in the frenzy I heard a voice telling me to slow down, telling me not to drink too much. I didn’t know if it was somebody else or if it was me, that same internal thought that had kept me sane back in the prison. I ignored it, sucking poison from the torn cavity of the creature beneath me, filling my belly with nectar. That infuriating hunger that I’d felt for what seemed like forever was gradually being sated, every cell of my being turning from a dry, useless husk into a swollen vessel of power.

I raised my head from the corpse and let my dripping mouth hang open. A noise escaped me, a roar that came of its own accord. I lifted the dead berserker, now as light as cotton wool, using both hands to tear the cadaver in two. I threw the bloody pieces away, turning to the
platform to find something else to test my strength on, something else to destroy. The nectar was screaming at me, sluicing through my brain and shrieking a single word with each pulse –
kill
,
kill
,
kill
– and on top of that the sound of laughter resonating in my head, a low, deep cackle that I knew belonged to Alfred Furnace.

You have made your choice
, he said, the nectar carrying his voice into the deepest reaches of my soul, the words borne on another wave of mirth. They seemed to sprout into visions, images that blossomed into full bloom – me at the head of an army, raining hell down onto the world, me locked in combat with somebody who looked like the warden but who couldn’t be.
Whatever
you do from this moment on, whatever path you decide to take,
you have made your choice
.

I clamped my hands to my ears but it did no good. Furnace was howling as though he had torn open my skull and stepped inside. The nectar carried on flowing, healing my wounds, turning my muscles to rock, smashing my thoughts like china plates. I searched the pieces, trying to keep my mind, but all I could hear was that endless laughter, like thunder, and that same relentless order telling me to kill.

If I obeyed, maybe it would make the madness stop.

I scoured the platform, saw two faces I knew but at the same time didn’t. They weren’t worth my time. Turning, I saw the girl, watching from the doorway.

She’d do.

I no longer knew what I was doing, crossing the platform in three giant strides until the pathetic creature
was beneath me. She heard me coming, scrambling to her feet and holding her hands up to protect her face. Her eyes glared at me, still full of fight, never wavering.

You wanted to help her, remember? You wanted to save her
.

More voices in my head, all fighting each other, contradicting each other. And the only way to banish them was to make that choice, to take a life. I raised my hands, ready to twist her neck like a chicken’s, to end it once and for all. But still she fought me with that gaze, two piercing points of white light that held me back as firmly as a hand on my chest.

She’s looking at you like you’re one of them, but you’re not
one of them, Alex, you’re not one of them, you’re not—

I threw my head into my hands, the voices jumbling together into an insane chorus. I screamed against my palms, only half noticing that there were words in there.

‘Who am I? Who am I?
Who am I?
’

I lifted my fist again, knowing that all it would take was one simple movement and the girl would be dead. Then Furnace would be right, my choice would have been made. I wouldn’t have to fight any more. To my side came the sound of an explosion as a train flew from the tunnel, the deafening noise the final straw. I moved fast, faster than I’d ever moved, turning, screaming as my fist descended like a guillotine blade, driven earthwards by the nectar, by its nightmare desire to destroy.

The train was almost gone but I caught the end of it, my fist punching through the glass of the last window in the last carriage, the force of the blow so great that it reduced the plastic to splinters, tearing a chunk from the
metal frame. The impact felt as though it had ripped my arm right out of its socket, dragging me along the platform on my heels. But it was the train that lurched, the carriages rocking against one another almost hard enough to pull it from the tracks.