Furnace 5 - Execution (23 page)

Zee followed my directions, speeding up the next slip road, following the signs for the port. We passed through half a dozen more villages, all deserted.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucy. ‘They can’t have killed everyone. How is that possible?’

Nobody answered, even though we all knew. The nectar. It had torn through these communities like the plague. I tried to imagine what it had been like for the people here, seeing the monsters, the berserkers, outside on the street, watching them attack, turning the kids into bloodthirsty, feral beasts. I had seen friends morphed into mindless killers by Furnace’s poison, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be set upon by your own children, the horror of attempting to comfort your kids even as they tried to kill you, and that impossible choice: do you let them devour you, or do you kill them first? It was unthinkable.

The worst thing we saw, by far, was when we drove
past a school. We could see movement through the gates, Zee slowing down for a closer look.

‘There are kids in there,’ he said. ‘See them?’

I saw them. They weren’t kids. They were all wearing uniforms, but their faces were twisted into grimaces, their mouths ringed with blood, their eyes gaping black pits. There were too many to count, all of them throwing themselves at the locked gates, stretching torn fingers out towards our car. A few tried to scrabble up the enormous fences but they just didn’t have the strength, dropping down onto their backs and squirming in the wet earth. They looked weak – ferocious, yes, but half starved. I remembered what Sam had said, that the nectar kept the rats alive for only so long. That was another small mercy, I guess, that those rats, those children, wouldn’t have to suffer their nightmare for much longer.

‘What do we do with them?’ Lucy asked from the passenger seat.

‘What
can
we do?’ Simon replied. ‘Let them out?’

I looked at their faces, saw the children there beneath the masks of nectar. It seemed like that would be the kindest thing to do, the humane thing. At least then they wouldn’t die like animals in a cage. But it would be too dangerous. The moment that chain around the gates was broken they’d be upon us, not caring that we were their liberators. They only wanted to spread the nectar, spread their disease, and they’d overwhelm us in seconds.

‘If we leave them there then
she
will get them,’ spat Lucy. ‘That woman. She’ll put them all under the knife, the poor things.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The sooner we get to Furnace, the sooner we can make the world normal again.’

There was no conviction in my voice, though. It didn’t matter what happened when we got to the island. There would be no saving these kids, or the millions who had already been slaughtered. Things would never be normal again. We drove off, Lucy’s hand pressed against the glass so hard that her knuckles were white, her sobs concealing the dead and the dying behind a veil of condensation.

Three more towns, another fifty-eight miles on the clock, and then the sea pulled itself up over the rooftops. The effect was so dramatic that at first I thought it really was rising, that slate-coloured ocean ready to churn across the land, wipe all this madness from sight. I would have welcomed it, even if it meant being dragged to the depths along with everything else.

Zee followed the main road to the harbour. There were hardly any boats here and I saw that as a good sign – it meant that some people might have escaped. The compass of pain in my head had shifted again, and I told Zee to head down the coast. He did so, all of us gazing at the ocean, all of us thinking the same thing – that we could just go, that we’d be safer on the other side of that horizon. But none of us said it aloud.

Fifteen minutes outside the harbour town the pain detonated, the sensation like a stun grenade going off inside my head. I screwed my eyes shut, seeing the island
emerge out of the infinite brightness of my mind.

‘Stop the car,’ I yelled when I could remember how to speak. I blinked the spot of light from my vision as Zee pulled over to the side of the road. ‘I think this is it.’

‘No kidding,’ Simon replied, peering between the seats. I followed his gaze to see two blacksuits, sitting on a bench by the cliff like a couple of tourists. They stood when they saw us approach, their silver eyes brighter than the shrouded sun. One of them carried something in his right hand.

‘I don’t see any island,’ said Zee.

Through the side window I could make out nothing except water. But there was no denying it, there was no escaping the fact that we had arrived. Because I could hear Furnace’s laughter in my head, louder than the idling engine, louder than the explosion of the waves as they struck the cliff below, louder than the pounding of my heart.

We were here.

By the time Zee had switched off the engine the blacksuits were striding towards us. They were both wearing red armbands, the Furnace logo – three circles joined by a triangle of lines – emblazoned on them like a swastika. Neither of them looked armed.

I opened the door, struggling out and extending myself to my full height. I was so much taller than the suits now. I thought back to the night I’d first met them, inside the house where Toby was shot, how they’d seemed like giants. Funny how your perspective can change.

I let my bladed hand drop to my side, the black obsidian skin seeming to reflect the clouds overhead. Both the blacksuits hesitated when they saw how big I was, their pace slowing.

‘Alex Sawyer,’ said one, and compared to the echo of Furnace’s laughter his voice was little more than a whisper. Unlike the other suits, these two didn’t look at me with scorn and disrespect. If anything, their faces were shaped by awe. ‘It’s good to meet you at last, sir. This is for you.’

He held out the bundle he was carrying, letting it unfurl from his scarred fist. It was a suit, a black one, and it had obviously been made specially for me because it looked like it was big enough for a polar bear.

‘No way,’ I spat as everybody else clambered out of the car behind me. ‘You seriously want me to wear
that
? No way.’

‘You won’t get to see him without it,’ the blacksuit said. ‘You may be his new general, but even you’ve got to follow his rules.’

I thought about arguing some more, then decided it would be pointless. It was just a suit, after all. It didn’t have to mean anything. Besides, it had to be better than what I was already wearing. I didn’t really want to face Furnace in orange leggings and a poncho. I grabbed it, carrying it to the far side of the car, beckoning Simon for help.

‘Again?’ he asked incredulously, but he trotted over. It took us a while, but together we managed to get me dressed. All the while gulls swooped overhead, their cries reminding me of the river back in the city, that tide of corpses.

‘There,’ I said to the blacksuits, feeling their eyes on me, approving. The suit did feel good, despite the fact it was a gift from the man I was about to kill. It was soft against my skin, the material cut to exactly the right size for my new body – although I had no idea how they’d managed to make it. The blade of my right hand jutted out, the same shade of black as the cloth. ‘Happy? Now take me to Furnace.’

‘That’s why we’re here,’ said the other one. ‘You ready?’

No
, I said, but the word didn’t make it out of my head. The blacksuits weren’t waiting for an answer anyway, turning and walking across a small swathe of grass towards the edge of the cliff. There was a railing there, and what looked like a cast-iron staircase leading down.

‘My friends are coming too,’ I said.

The blacksuits shrugged. ‘Their funeral.’

I looked at Zee, then at Simon, and finally at Lucy.

‘You guys don’t have to do this,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s out there, I don’t know what will happen. Once we’re on that island the chances of any of us getting off it again are pretty slim.’

‘Don’t you mean non-existent?’ Simon said.

‘A billion to one,’ added Zee.

‘So, about the same as the odds of us surviving if you leave us on this cliff,’ said Lucy. I nodded, looking around. On the other side of the road was a gift shop and a fish-and-chip restaurant, and further down was a pub. It looked quiet here, but there was no guarantee it would stay that way. It could have been any seaside town across the country, and the thought reminded me of the day at the beach I’d spent with my mum and dad, the one in the photo they’d left for me. I wondered if they were watching me now, wherever they were.

‘Yeah, about the same,’ I said after a moment, turning back to them. The blacksuits were waiting by the stairs, showing no sign that they wanted us to hurry.

‘Besides, you can’t really be expected to take on
Furnace without the big guns,’ said Zee, flexing those stick-like arms of his. I snorted out a laugh, another one. I don’t know why but I must have laughed more in the last twenty-four hours than I had in years. I guess if you lose your sense of humour then you may as well hand yourself over to the grim reaper and be done with it. And the bigger the nightmare, the louder the laughs need to be to keep yourself alive.

‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ said Simon. ‘Group hug?’

I waved the suggestion away with a smile, walking towards the blacksuits. They stood to either side of the narrow staircase, letting me past. As soon as I reached the edge of the cliff the sheer drop beyond made my stomach lurch and my head spin. Although further out the sea looked calm, below me it thrashed and tore against the rock with a ferocity that reminded me of the rats. Each wave detonated with the sound of a bomb going off, a shrapnel of surf reaching twenty metres into the air, beads of saltwater pearling on my new suit.

The staircase cut diagonally down the cliff face, bolted into the rock, looking too much like the staircases back in the prison for my liking. I could see that it led to a small bay. There was a boat there, rocking in the tide. I looked at the blacksuits, thought of the pain they had put me through, the night they had shot Toby, and how they’d treated us back inside Furnace Penitentiary. I didn’t hate them, though. They had been turned, like me. They were victims too. I’d meant what I had said to Zee back at the hospital. I wasn’t on the same side as
Furnace’s soldiers, but we weren’t enemies any more either.

‘One of you saved us,’ I told them as I walked onto the first step, the metal creaking. I held onto the railing with my good hand, the chipped iron cold to the touch. ‘Back at the hospital. His name was Sam. You know him?’

‘If he had a name, then he wasn’t one of us any more,’ replied the suit.

I set off down the steps, taking it slowly, knowing that one slip could send me over the edge. And I wouldn’t be the first, I realised. The areas of beach that the sea hadn’t covered were littered with corpses, people who couldn’t handle the horror, people who had taken the easy way out. They hung over the shingle like seaweed. I tried to ignore them, focusing on my own feet as I descended towards the beach.

‘So where is the island?’ I heard Zee asking behind me, the wind tugging at his words.

‘About five miles out,’ one of the blacksuits replied. ‘It won’t take long.’

I stepped onto the stony beach, walking over to the small motor boat that was bobbing up and down in the surf. A third blacksuit was sitting inside it, and he frowned when he saw us all approach.

‘Gonna be a squeeze,’ he said. I waded into the freezing water, the waves here smaller but no less aggressive, pulling on my ankles, trying to drag me out to sea. It was up to my knees by the time I reached the boat, the blacksuit grabbing my left hand and helping me on
board. It rocked alarmingly and I sat down on the small seat at the bow before I could fall back out.

‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ said the pilot, adjusting his red armband so that it sat proudly on his arm. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t his general, but it didn’t seem worth it. Besides, I couldn’t deny that hearing those words, being called ‘sir’, sparked something in my gut, a rush of excitement. I’d been there before, standing in front of the warden back in the prison, dressed in another brand-new black suit. It had been one of the only times in my life when I’d felt I really belonged, when I’d felt I was part of something. It had been truly wonderful and truly awful at the same time.