Furnace 5 - Execution (36 page)

‘Just lucky, I guess,’ I said.

‘At least your eyes are back to normal,’ said Zee. ‘If you can call silver normal.’

I heard footsteps from the corridor outside, shadows blossoming on the stone walls. Zee and Lucy whirled round just as Sergeant Bates and his partner barged back into the chamber. They stood to attention as a third man followed, dressed in beige combats, silver stars gleaming from his collar. He was much older than the others, his hair a grey fuzz and his face lined with wrinkles. When he saw me his hand strayed to the pistol holstered at his waist, but it only hovered there for a second before he let it fall.

‘Here they are, sir,’ said the wounded soldier, Bates.

I sat up, ready to defend myself. The stranger may have been dead but that wouldn’t stop the army from trying to harness his powers, from cutting me up to learn the secrets of my mutations. The older man raised a hand, his face creasing. It wasn’t quite a smile – he didn’t seem like the kind of man who would know how – but there was kindness in his eyes.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to hurt you. My name is General Hamilton, I want to help.’

I’d heard that before, but this time I could sense it was the truth. The man scanned the room, his eyes falling on the puddle of black blood.

‘Was that Colonel Panettierre?’ he asked. Bates nodded, his face blanching as he studied her remains. Hamilton nodded too, wiping a hand over his mouth. ‘Good riddance,’ he muttered before turning back to me. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but my men here tell me you had something to do with killing off those monsters.’

‘He did,’ blurted out Zee. ‘He was the one—’

‘I don’t need to know now,’ the general interrupted, raising his hand again. ‘Save your strength, kids. Tell me everything when we get back to base.’ He must have seen the panic in our faces as we remembered the hospital, because he clamped his hand against his chest. ‘Listen, I know you had a rough ride with Panettierre, but we’re not all like her. I swear before God and my country that it won’t happen again. You’re safe with me. Can you walk?’

‘I can try,’ I replied.

The general nodded at the two soldiers and they laid down their guns, running over and helping me struggle to my feet. It took a while for me to get vertical – I was still the tallest person in the room by a metre or so – but they stayed by my side, holding me up. I draped my hands over their shoulders, careful not to skewer anyone with my blade. Zee squeezed in between me and the man to my right, his hands around my waist, doing his bit to stop me falling over. Lucy reached up, taking my left hand and holding it gently.

‘We’ve got a chopper outside,’ the general said. ‘It’ll fly us back to HQ. Then, if you don’t mind, I’d really like to ask you a few questions.’

‘Sure thing,’ I said, limping slowly across the chamber. The general walked through the door, leading the way. The rest of us struggled after him, resembling some weird spider as we did our best not to trip each other up. I looked back just once, saw the machine against the far wall, still humming gently, its pulse felt in every stone beneath my feet. I saw the space where Alfred Furnace had been, his body crucified there the same way it had been hundreds of years ago in the orchard.

‘Forget it,’ said Zee, peering up at me. ‘It’s finished.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But what happens now?’

Zee laughed, shifting his arms to better hold me up.

‘All for one,’ he said.

That brought back so many memories, some happy, some sad, a bitter-sweet mixture that made the smile on my face almost painful. I knew that this would be another one, a memory that would accompany me to my dying days. I realised that Zee was waiting for me to finish and I didn’t disappoint him, the words tumbling out through my growing smile:

‘And let’s get the hell out of here.’

We heard the helicopters before we saw them, their thunder audible from the top of the stairs. The inside of the mansion was a mess, the walls blown to pieces, the ceilings drooping, barely able to hold their own weight.
Dead bodies covered the floor, but we steered around them, clambering over the wreckage of the front entrance until we were clear. There were two choppers in the sky, a third on the ground fifty metres or so away. Soldiers clustered around it, and as soon as they saw us they ran over, two of them holding a stretcher. They offered to carry me but I shook my head. The way my body was now they’d probably need the whole army to hold my weight.

The sun hung low on the horizon, blindingly bright. Its fierce light threw everything into relief, revealing each burned corpse, each severed limb, each lifeless face in hideous detail. But only the human dead seemed to have resented their passing. I saw a berserker – recognised it as the only one which had still been fighting – and it wore an expression of calm, as if the end had been a relief. I honestly didn’t know what had happened to it, to its brothers, where they were now. I hoped they had gone somewhere good. And if they hadn’t gone anywhere at all, if they had simply stopped living, I hoped at least that they had
believed
they were going somewhere good. I hoped I had given them that.

‘You ready?’ asked General Hamilton. I nodded, but didn’t move, squinting into the brilliance of the setting sun. There were two figures standing on the cliff edge, nothing but blurred silhouettes yet somehow familiar. I put my hand up to shield the glare, trying to work out who they were. One had a huge arm, a body which seemed to be melted out of shape, and he wore a lopsided
grin. Before my excitement had a chance to rise I recognised the other kid, somebody I knew just as well, and somebody who was just as dead.

Donovan slung his arm around Simon, both of them waving at me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, waving back.

‘For what?’ asked Zee, thinking that I was talking to him.

We started for the chopper again, and I watched the figures fade into the sunlight, nothing more than the heat haze rising from the scorched earth.

‘For everything.’

The general hadn’t been lying. We were safe.

The chopper flew us to a small military base hidden in the mountains halfway across the country, one which hadn’t been hit by the berserkers and the blacksuits. It was pretty much deserted when we landed, a handful of personnel welcoming us from the helipad. This time there was a trolley waiting, one used for carrying heavy equipment, and the soldiers helped me, Lucy and then Zee onto it. We travelled in silence, all of us noticing how peaceful the air was – no explosions, no gunfire, no screams. Even the birds had started singing again, their quiet evening chirps cautious but beautiful.

We were taken into the main building, a squat concrete bunker embedded into the hillside. A bed had been prepared for me, so big it took up almost the entire room. There were doctors here, dressed in the same
white overalls as Panettierre, but they wore smiles instead of gas masks and held stethoscopes instead of needles. They helped me lie down, plumping the pillows beneath my head and pulling a sheet up to my chin.

‘First things first,’ said General Hamilton from the door. ‘They’re going to make sure you’re healthy, that you’re not going to die on us. Okay?’

I nodded, watching him stand to one side as Zee and Lucy walked in.

‘You two can come with me if you like,’ he said to them. ‘Get cleaned up, get some hot food. We might even be able to rustle up a cup of tea.’

‘No thanks,’ said Zee, walking to the far side of the room. There was a sofa there, beneath a wide window, and he collapsed into it, Lucy sliding next to him and resting her head on his shoulder.

‘We stay together,’ she said.

‘I understand,’ said the general. ‘I’ll have somebody bring some grub up to you from the mess.’ He walked to my bedside, smoothing down the sheet. ‘Far as we can tell, every single enemy combatant is down, dead. You think there will be more of them, another attack?’

I shook my head and I could see the relief in the man’s expression.

‘That’s good,’ he went on. ‘Then there’s no hurry. You can talk to us about this just as soon as you’re ready. As soon as you’ve had some rest.’

I tried to think back, tried to remember everything that had happened to me. It seemed as though I had lived a million lives, the days countless, and already I
could feel those memories disappearing like sand sculptures before a rising tide. If I didn’t catch them now then they’d be gone for ever.

‘I’m ready to talk,’ I said. ‘Just give us a few minutes.’

‘No problem,’ said the general. He stood straight, then he saluted me, not waiting for a response before striding out of the room. The doctors left with him, closing the door behind them. The silence that followed was so immense that it didn’t seem real.

Zee’s eyes were already closing and I knew he’d be out cold in a matter of minutes. Lucy sat beside him, her fingers curled around his sleeve. I called to her quietly, beckoning her to the bed. She sat on the edge of the mattress, watching curiously as I lifted my left hand and rested those weird, elongated fingers on the pendant which hung around my neck, the St Christopher.

‘I promised to give this back to you when things were normal,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can keep that promise. I don’t think things will be normal again, not after this.’

‘You kept your promise,’ said Lucy, placing her hand on top of mine, squeezing gently. ‘You did good.’

I reached round the back of my head, trying to find the clasp, but Lucy pulled my arm down.

‘Keep it for another day or two,’ she said. ‘I think you’ve earned it.’

She stood, then leant over and kissed me on the forehead, the heat of her lips remaining there even as she sat back down on the sofa. The movement stirred Zee, his eyes blinking in shock.

‘It’s really over?’ he asked when he remembered where he was, his voice slurred.

‘It’s really over,’ I said.

He was quiet for a full minute. I thought that he’d dozed off again and I realised I was about to do the same, the silence and stillness of the room ushering in a wave of tiredness that almost carried me away. I fought the current, keeping my eyes open.

‘You remember that first day?’ Zee asked, his eyes still closed. ‘The day we arrived in Furnace, in the prison.’

‘Yeah, of course,’ I said, picturing the bus ride, the elevator doors opening onto a nightmare.

‘Feels like a billion years ago.’ He opened one eye in time to see me nodding. ‘I’m glad I was there,’ he said, his words almost unintelligible now.

‘Seriously?’ I asked.

‘I’m glad I was there. With you.’ And then he was gone, snoring gently, his head lolling against Lucy’s.

‘Me too,’ I said. And I knew that if it hadn’t been for Zee then I would be a long time dead. He’d saved my life, but it was more than that, I think. He’d given me something to live for.

I had almost drifted off again when I heard a gentle knock on the door. It opened a crack, the general’s friendly face appearing. He must have seen how exhausted I looked because he started to retreat, but I waved him on with my bladed hand.

‘We have surgeons here who can do something about that,’ he said, gesturing towards my mutated limb. ‘And your other injuries too, we’ll do our best to sort them.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, looking down at my distorted body and wondering whether I’d ever be able to shop for clothes in the high street again.

‘Have faith,’ he said, smiling with his eyes. ‘Anyway, down to business. Sure you’re up for this? It’s got to be a long story.’

It was, but I needed to tell it. I needed to remember everything. I’d been through so much that I barely even knew who I was any more, but telling my story, reliving it all, would heal me. It would let the boy back in, it would let me be Alex Sawyer again. More than that, though, telling my story was the only way of keeping them all alive – Donovan, Simon, and the others too. They may have died, but this way they would live on. The whole world would know who they were, and what they had done.

The general sat down on the edge of my bed, placing a digital recorder between us.

‘Ready when you are, son,’ he said. ‘You know where to begin?’

I thought back to before the island, before the city, before the breakout, before solitary confinement, before the prison, before the night that Toby had been murdered, before I had started breaking into houses. And I saw the instant where everything had changed, where this had all begun – a normal day in a normal school, me stealing twenty quid from a kid called Daniel Richards.