Furnace 5 - Execution (12 page)

The suit crouched to a halt beside a door. It was half open, and through the gap it looked as if the whole world was on fire. I reached out my good hand, stopped him before he could take off again.

‘Tell me what’s going on,’ I said, narrowing my eyes at him, glaring, until he broke contact and looked away.

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure,’ he said. ‘All I know is that I was a prisoner here, like you. Furnace must have sent reinforcements because all this kicked off, and the next thing I know there were two berserkers pulling me out of my cell. Furnace has ordered me to watch over you. You’re his new right-hand man.’ There was no mistaking the bitterness there, the hatred that boiled just beneath the surface. The blacksuit looked up at me, spitting out the words like he had a mouthful of acid. ‘I’m surprised he’s not told you anything, seeing how you’re his general now.’

‘I’m not his general,’ I hissed, clutching the blacksuit’s gown with my truncated left hand, my right poised by my side, ready to skewer him. ‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but I’m not on his side, I’m not on
your
side. You got that?’

There was a growl in stereo behind me, the two berserkers crowding in on us. I thought they were coming after me, but the nervous way the blacksuit looked at them made it clear who they’d protect if it came to a fight.

‘Whatever you say, Sawyer,’ he replied, shrugging my hand away and focusing his attention on the door. I swallowed my anger, the sensation like gulping down a spiked ball. I could worry about what was going on later. Right now the important thing was to find Zee and Simon and Lucy and get the hell away from this madhouse.

‘They’re being kept in cells somewhere,’ I said, remembering what Zee had told me.

‘I know,’ the blacksuit said. ‘The main hospital building is through this door. It’s swarming, our guys and theirs. At least it was when I passed through here a few minutes ago. If we’re lucky there will be enough of a distraction to get us across the courtyard to the atrium and the psych ward. That’s where they’re being held, your friends – if they’re still alive.’ He reached out, peeled open the door a fraction more to reveal an entrance hall. There was an inferno raging out there, but it seemed to be concentrated on the walls to the left, firelight merging with the red glow of the setting sun. ‘If I were you I’d send out one of the berserkers first, make sure the coast is clear.’

I looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and he stared back impatiently.

‘I can’t—’ was as far as I got before he interrupted. Not the blacksuit, but the voice in my head.

You can
.

The berserkers were behind me, shoulder to shoulder, practically taking up the whole of the stairwell. They looked like twins, some horrific parody of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Just the sight of them made my stomach churn, my heart pound, every instinct in my body telling me to run, to get away from them before they turned on me. But they were just standing there, like soldiers, waiting for a command.

‘Okay,’ I said to them, pretty sure nothing would hap-pen. ‘Off you go.’

They didn’t move, frozen like golems carved from pink clay. I tried again with the same result.

Don’t just say it
, said Furnace, his whisper louder than the flames, louder than the gunfire.
Believe it
.

‘Better hurry,’ said the blacksuit. ‘Something’s coming.’

He was right. There were footsteps, lots of them, getting closer. I looked back at the berserkers, but this time I didn’t speak. I cleared my head, pictured the door, the room on the other side. I imagined one of the berserkers charging into the flames, finding us a safe passage through.

It was on the move so quickly I almost didn’t manage to get out of its way, the beast barging through the door hard enough to rip it from its hinges. It arched its back and howled, a war cry if ever I’d heard one. There was the crack of a rifle, a fleshy thud as the bullet struck the creature in its leg. Then it charged, vanishing so fast that it caused tornadoes of smoke to spiral outside the door.

‘Nice,’ purred the suit, that leering grin back on his face. ‘Maybe you weren’t such a bad call after all.’

Another crack rose above the flames, not a gun but something else – wood snapping, maybe, or a bone breaking. Something flew past the door, a bundle of wet rags that was engulfed by the fire before I could identify it. Had I really given that berserker an order? It didn’t seem possible, and yet there was so much that was impossible but somehow real. The rules that had once governed the universe simply didn’t seem to exist any more.

‘Come on,’ said the blacksuit, propelling himself through the door. I followed, a fist of heat striking me from the raging fires to my left. The room was bigger than I’d thought, a massive hall that stretched a good fifty metres from end to end. The berserker had already reached the right-hand side where a dozen uniformed soldiers were doing their best to scramble out of its way. It had one head locked in its obese arm. There was a sickening crunch before it discarded the lifeless body, moving on to the next.

I had a flashback to my last day inside the prison, the day we escaped, when Furnace had unleashed his berserkers – the way they had bounded from inmate to inmate, rending flesh and spilling blood. Back then I’d risked everything, my life and my sanity, to kill the freaks. And now I was the one who had unleashed hell, who had set the nightmares loose.

But I was doing it to escape. I had to get out of here so I could find Furnace, so I could kill him. That made it all right. Didn’t it?

One of the soldiers glanced across the room, doing a double take when he saw us. He swung his machine gun round and pulled the trigger, the air suddenly alive with the sound of angry hornets. I ducked, but the berserker was quicker. It pounced on the soldier, tearing the gun away from him as we started running again.

‘This way,’ yelled the blacksuit, vaulting a reception desk and sending a computer monitor crashing to the floor. He sprinted to the left, towards what looked like a solid sheet of fire. Covering his face with his hands, he threw himself into the blaze, vanishing with a crash of broken glass. Someone else was taking pot shots at us, and without looking to see who I leapt at the burning wall.

I was out the other side before the fire even noticed I was there, hitting the ground and rolling once before finding my feet. There was a grunt as the remaining berserker followed, patting at its skin with one giant fist in order to put out the flames that had taken hold.

We were outside, the setting sun dazzling. I squinted, seeing a courtyard the size of a five-a-side pitch. Two burned shells that had once been trucks occupied the square, and blackened shapes littered the floor between them like spilled dominoes, still smouldering. Overhead, some distance away, two choppers waltzed together, but other than that there was no sign of life.

The blacksuit was on the move again, just a smudge against the yard. There was a two-storey brick building dead ahead, every single window blown out, and without pausing to look inside he bounded into the dark
interior. I was halfway after him when I heard the roar of an engine, a Humvee skidding around the side of the building. It hit the remains of one of the trucks, sending burned metal clattering over the courtyard, then accelerated towards us.

I pictured the berserker running at it, willing it to happen, and sure enough a pink shape blasted past me, heading right for the Hummer. I don’t know how fast they were both going by the time they reached each other – a combined speed of fifty, sixty miles an hour – but the sound of the collision made my ears ring. The berserker held its ground, its fleshy folds rippling so hard I thought they were going to slough right off. It twisted its body, its huge arms wrapped round the bonnet, and with a howl of effort it launched the vehicle into the air.

Three tonnes of metal spun my way, the faces inside frozen in shock. It hit the ground right in front of me, momentum causing it to bounce, whistling over my head close enough to touch before cart wheeling into the burning building behind. A ball of heat and noise struck my back as the ruptured fuel tank exploded, pushing me onwards. I shot a look at the berserker as I passed it and the expression it wore seemed to be almost apologetic.

Then we were through the window, swamped in the cool darkness of the atrium. The room we were in was small, classroom sized, and there was no sign of the suit until he pushed his head through the door in front of us.

‘Come on, there’s no time,’ he hissed. I caught up, chasing him down another corridor and through a
double door, the berserker close behind. There was still no sign of its brother, the one which had been fighting the soldiers. We must have been in some kind of secure ward, as the rooms here had barred doors like back in the prison, each cell equipped with a bed and a toilet. It was almost like being back at home. One of the cage doors had been ripped clean away, lying on the floor like a metal skeleton.

‘This where Zee is?’ I asked. The blacksuit was moving between the cells, peering through the bars, talking as he walked.

‘I don’t know. Probably. This is where they were keeping me.’

He stopped outside a cell, his fists wrapped around the bars. I hurried over, expecting – praying – to see a familiar face inside. But there was just another blacksuit there, stripped to his underwear, slumped on a bench. He was covered in fresh wounds, his skin a patchwork of scars and dried nectar. And he was dead.

‘Bastards,’ said the blacksuit by my side, and I think there was genuine emotion there. He blinked his silver eyes, mouthing something that I couldn’t quite hear, then he set off again.

‘Zee?’ I shouted as I followed. ‘Simon, you here?’

More cells, most empty, some not. Rats thrashed and howled at us from behind a couple, the sound of their teeth crunching against the bars making my stomach churn. We had rounded two corners, and were on the verge of giving up, when somebody responded to my calls, a voice so faint it almost went unheard.

‘Zee?’ I yelled, running in the direction of the sound. ‘That you?’

He called again, and by the time the echoes had faded I was looking in through the bars of a cell. There was a boy there, but he wasn’t Zee, and the surge of relief I felt was bitter-sweet.

‘Simon,’ I said, gripping the bars with my good hand. His smile lasted for the second or two until the blacksuit appeared by my side, the berserker taking position behind us, then he was pushing himself back against the far wall of his cell.

‘Alex?’ he said, eyeing us nervously. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’ll take too long to explain,’ I replied, tugging at the cell door with my left hand. ‘And I’m not even sure I know. Let’s just get out of here, we can talk about it then.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with those two,’ he said, raising his own mutated arm in defence. It had once looked so monstrous, that limb, but compared to mine it was utterly human. I looked at it, jealous, trying not to see the scalpel-sharp blade of my right hand by my side.

‘You’ve got a choice,’ I said, echoing the words he had once said to me. ‘I don’t know how, or why, but for now these two are on our side. They’ll keep us safe.’ Simon spat out a reply but I didn’t let him finish. ‘You either come with us, or we leave you here so they can cut you open, study your insides. Your choice, make it now.’

He was silent, and I swore I could see the cogs working behind those silver eyes of his. Then he nodded,
straightening up. Once again I cleared my head, saw the berserker ripping the bars away. Sure enough the creature strode forward, grabbing the door and pulling it from the wall in a maelstrom of dust and shrapnel. It cast it to one side, the clang of metal loud enough to wake the dead. Simon scurried from the cell, keeping as far from the berserker as possible, taking shelter beside me.

‘That thing better not come any closer,’ he said, peeking out past my elbow. He seemed to have shrunk since the last time I’d seen him, back in Furnace’s tower. He looked thin, too, his emaciated body making his swollen arm seem bigger than ever. He must have been thinking something similar because he glanced up at me, frowning. ‘They been feeding you Ready Brek?’

‘Something like that,’ I said, feeling a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. It seemed to relax him. He stepped away, straightening the front of his black hoodie – the same one he’d got back in the mall, a million years ago.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ he asked. ‘You guys know a way out?’

‘He does,’ I replied, nodding at the blacksuit. ‘But first things first, we get Zee. He’s here too, somewhere. I’m not leaving him.’

Simon’s face fell.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘Have you seen him?’

He looked at me, then at the blacksuit, then finally over his shoulder at a cell across the hall. It was deserted, the door open.

‘He was right there,’ Simon said. ‘He’s been there since we got here.’

‘So where is he now?’ I asked, tempted to pick the boy up and shake the answers out of him. I managed to bite my tongue, hold my temper.

‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘They came about twenty minutes ago, just as all the fighting started. Soldiers, and that woman, Panettierre.’ He shrugged, studying his feet as though Zee’s location was printed there. ‘They came and they took him. He’s gone.’