Furnace 5 - Execution (15 page)

It was hard to see through the smoke, my eyes watering as soon as I was inside. I could just about make out the blurred outlines of ten, maybe fifteen people clustered at the back, a mixture of medical and military uniforms. I waited for the gunfire to start, my bladed hand up to shield my face, but it didn’t come.

‘Alex?’ somebody said.

‘Wait! Zee!’ came another voice, this one female.

Then a tiny shape in army fatigues was running towards me. Zee’s arms wrapped around my waist, his smile beaming up at me. Another figure stepped out of the group, also wearing camouflage. She took a couple of steps forward, hesitated, then followed Zee. It took me a while to recognise the girl, the same one who had given me the St Christopher medallion. Her eyes widened when she saw how I had changed, what I had become, but she didn’t shy away.

‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘Zee – you both okay?’

Another voice answered for them, Panettierre’s. She stood in the middle of the group, that smile finally wiped from her face.

‘You just don’t give up, do you?’ she spat. There was a clatter from overhead, then a strangled yelp as Simon tumbled into the helicopter. He saw Zee, the pair of them hugging briefly, slapping each other on the back. Panettierre waited for them to finish before continuing. ‘Are you happy now, Alex? Are you happy with the blood of my men and women on your hands, happy to have brought the world to its knees?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet. There’s something else I’ve got to take care of before you’ll see me smiling.’

I lifted my right hand, extending it towards Panettierre. She flinched, but she didn’t move. There wasn’t anywhere for her to go. A flurry of cries and gentle prayers rose up from the people around her, a couple of them collapsing to the floor. But when Panettierre spoke her voice was strong.

‘Then you’d better do it. You’d better kill me. Because I’ll keep coming after you, Alex. We need him. If he’s immune to the nectar then we can find a way to make others immune too. We need him to find a cure.’

‘You need to butcher him, you mean,’ Lucy spat back, jabbing her finger towards the colonel as if she wished her hands too were weapons. ‘You were supposed to be helping us, not killing us.’

‘We went through this,’ Panettierre replied, the edges of her voice fraying. ‘You agreed to it, Zee. You
understood that sometimes sacrifices have to be made, that some people have to die so that others can live.’

I looked at Zee and he shrugged.

‘Pretty hard not to agree to something when there’s a gun pointed at you,’ he said. ‘I’m all for ending the war, for things going back to normal. But, you know, I’d rather find a way of doing it that doesn’t involve me lying in pieces on an operating table.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Simon, waving the smoke from his face. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here while we still can.’

‘Hang on a sec,’ I said, starting forward, holding my arm out like a spear, the point at Panettierre’s throat. One thrust, that’s all it would take. Somebody like Panettierre didn’t deserve to survive this. She was a killer, worse than the rest of them; she was a monster, a Warden Cross in the making. In her head she probably thought she was saving the world, in her heart she wanted power, she wanted the nectar. I’d have bet my right eye that if she was offered the chance to swap places with Alfred Furnace, to be at the head of his army, she’d have accepted without hesitation. She deserved to die.

I felt a hand on my arm.

‘Stop it, Alex, she’s not worth it,’ said Zee. His grip was kitten-weak, and yet it anchored me like steel – as though his fingers were passing right through the twisted flesh of my new body, wrapped around the old me, the
human
me. ‘There’s been enough blood spilled today. Come on, leave them.’

I met Panettierre’s eyes, just pockets of darkness in the unlit interior of the chopper.

‘I meant what I said,’ she hissed. ‘I won’t stop coming after you. You know all about promises, Alex, and that’s mine.
I won’t stop
.’

I glanced at Zee, who was shaking his head. Then I looked at Lucy, and at Simon. They stared back, and I knew what they saw: a monster, bent and twisted almost beyond recognition, drenched in blood. My hand dropped as I pictured myself through their eyes, a freak, a killer. And suddenly I was so full of shame that I couldn’t breathe. It was as if that dam had finally broken, the barrier of nectar crumbling, the emotions sluicing through. I would have cried, I think, if I’d remembered how. Instead I just stood there, feeling hollowed out.

Zee must have sensed it, because his grip on my arm tightened and he pulled me back, pulled me away.

‘Let her come after us,’ he said softly. ‘Worse people than her have tried.’

‘And it’s not worth another death on your conscience,’ added Lucy.

She was right. I felt like one more murder would mean I’d be lost completely, the last, broken pieces of me sinking into the nectar, forever gone.

‘But if she tries to stop us getting out of this hospital then you have my permission to kill her ass good and dead,’ said Simon, looking back at Panettierre. ‘Does that work for you?’

She held her hands out in mock surrender, her smile like a badly painted doll’s. Simon climbed out of the
chopper first, his hand dropping down to help Zee, then Lucy. I paused, staring back at where Panettierre stood. It was insane, wasn’t it? Letting her live? Every instinct was telling me to finish her off, not just as payback for what she’d done but as protection against what she had promised to do.

But I didn’t, even though some part of me knew that decision would come back to haunt me. I left her standing there, draped in shadows, her hatred and her anger an invisible tide which seemed to lower the temperature in the helicopter by a good ten degrees. I launched myself up, grabbing the lip of the door with my good hand, hanging there for a moment.

From the darkness, Panettierre spoke. And I don’t know whether it was coincidence or fate that I’d heard those words before, so long ago in another life, in a stranger’s house after Toby had been shot, as I was being framed for his murder, pushed out onto the streets by the blacksuits. Either way it turned my blood to ice, the chills chasing me along with the echo as I pulled myself back into the sunlight:

‘Good luck, Alex. Run as hard as you can. We’ll see you real soon.’

I clambered out of the chopper thinking we were under attack again. Lucy was screaming, Zee too, and they both looked like they were about to throw themselves back through the hatch.

It took me only a moment to identify the source of their panic – the berserker which was perched on the upended chopper. Its hackles were raised, a loose growl emanating from its throat, although it seemed to be in control of itself. It took a lot longer than a moment – almost a full minute – for me to calm the pair of them down enough to explain what was going on.

‘You’re telling me you can
control
it?’ Zee asked, his face warped by disbelief. I focused, silently ordering the beast to keep its distance, give us space. It did so, hopping back down to the ground and retreating to a flower bed, staring aimlessly at the setting sun. Zee opened his mouth but I knew what he was going to ask.

‘I don’t know how,’ I said. ‘I just can. The berserkers have saved my ass. They saved yours too.’

‘You mean the one on the helicopter?’ Lucy asked. ‘The one that brought us down?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You told it to jump onto a helicopter and it did?’ Zee asked. ‘I didn’t even think they understood English or anything.’

‘They don’t,’ I struggled, unsure how to describe it. ‘It’s like they can listen to my thoughts, like I can send messages to them. Not words, just images, like I can transmit things into their heads.’

‘The same way Furnace can?’ said Zee, the words making my skin crawl.

‘No,’ I stuttered, breaking eye contact, trying not to think about the implications of what Zee was suggesting. ‘It’s not the same. I’m not like him.’

‘So the berserkers are your pets now?’ Lucy asked.

‘There’s a blacksuit with us too,’ I said, trying to ignore the venom in her voice. ‘But go with it, okay. He can help us get out of here.’ I lowered my voice so the suit below wouldn’t hear. ‘He might be able to get us to Alfred Furnace.’

There was movement inside the Chinook, and voices. I jumped to the ground, offering my hands to help Zee and Lucy. They saw my arm, like a sharpened stake pointing at the heavens, and not surprisingly they shook their heads, making their own way down over the wheels. Simon followed them, landing beside me. He looked at Zee, then at Lucy, frowning.

‘How come you guys got cool uniforms?’ he muttered, looking down at his bedraggled clothes. ‘No fair.’

The blacksuit appeared from the other side of the helicopter and for a moment we all stood there awkwardly, nobody quite sure what to say. It was the blacksuit who broke the silence.

‘This is touching,’ he muttered. ‘Friends reunited. Do you want me to find you all a room, or are we okay to go?’

‘I thought you guys weren’t clever enough for sarcasm,’ Zee said, although he was standing behind me, peering at him past the crook of my elbow. The blacksuit sneered, then turned and started jogging away from the burning building. We trod in his shadow, the two berserkers loping along behind.

We crossed the garden and reached a small round-about, a sign telling us that this was the way out. I must have glanced back a hundred times as we went, checking the chopper doors, waiting for Panettierre to appear with a rocket launcher in her hands ready to blow us all to kingdom come. But there was no sign of her, and five minutes later the hospital was out of sight behind a bank of trees.

‘Should have let me kill her,’ I mumbled beneath my breath as I ran to catch up with the others.

We found ourselves on a main road, all four carriageways deserted. The only vehicle in sight was an army truck parked by the hospital gates, and the blacksuit ran over to it, his gown fluttering as he disappeared into the cab.

I looked to my left, to where a vast, black cloud hung over the city, like something from one of those horror
films where weird forces are unleashed from the skies. Except the cloud was nothing more exciting than smoke, so much of it that it looked as if night had fallen over those few square kilometres, putting up walls of darkness and threatening never to let the sun in again. The pain in my head pointed right towards it, no matter which way I turned. It was like there was a leash inside my skull, a wire that wanted to pull me in that direction. I had an idea that a leash is
exactly
what it was.

‘What’s the plan?’ Zee said, his eyes wide as he took in the cancerous horizon.

‘You know what the plan is,’ I replied. ‘It’s the same as it’s always been.’

‘You’re going after him,’ said Lucy, standing on my other side. ‘You’re going after Furnace.’

‘What choice is there?’ I asked. ‘Look at the city, guys. It’s a graveyard. And how far has it spread?’

‘Far,’ said Zee. ‘We saw the news reports while you were zonked, back when the news was still being broadcast. It’s pretty much nationwide now, over the borders too. The whole country has been quarantined.’

‘They say the death toll is in the millions,’ said Lucy, almost choking on her own words. ‘And that’s not including the … the kids that have turned.’

She looked at me and I could see the hate there, gone in less than a second as she got it under control, but still simmering underneath. She let her head drop, swallowing hard, and I got the impression she was biting her tongue. Zee walked to her side, slotted his hand into hers and squeezed. She didn’t let go. Another pang of
jealousy twinged inside my chest and I thought about how different things might have been if Zee had been the one to change and I was still normal. The dream was too painful and I tried to pretend it didn’t exist, turning back towards the city.

‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ I said. ‘Going to the police, to the army, it won’t work. We know that now, they’ll just try and kill us, and for what? To make monsters of their own.’ Nobody argued. How could they? We’d all seen it for ourselves. ‘And we can’t hide. Not for ever. The country’s gone, finished. No matter where we go, we’ll never be safe.’

‘We could find a boat,’ said Lucy. ‘Try to get abroad.’

I realised something was glinting, throwing light against her skin, and I remembered the St Christopher medallion around my neck. I was amazed it was still there after what I’d been through, and I hoped it was a good omen.

‘You made me promise something when you gave me this,’ I said, touching it tenderly with my new fingers. ‘You made me promise that I’d make things normal again. I will, I’ll do that by killing Furnace. I’ve promised it to you, to everyone. I’m not going to give up on that.’

She looked at the medallion, hypnotised by it, then she nodded.

‘But you can go,’ I said. ‘I’d understand.’

Zee, Lucy and Simon exchanged glances, and they must have been reading each other’s minds because they all shook their heads as one.

‘Let you get all the credit?’ said Simon. ‘No way, man. I want my medals too.’