“What’s your story anyway?” Kirsty asked.
Noah frowned. “My story?”
“Before Iqrah. Before here. What’s the deal with you?”
Noah thought back over the last few years, and truth be told, he didn’t know where to start. Not with his abilities. Not with Iqrah. Not with any of it.
Besides. Iqrah. He didn’t know how much Kirsty even knew about her, either. Was that something that the kid only discovered when she’d been taken? He didn’t want to give that up. Didn’t want to volunteer that kind of information.
Noah sighed. “I guess my journey hasn’t been so different to anyone else who’s made it this far.”
“A lot of loss?”
“You bet.”
She opened her mouth, then. Looked like she was about to say something. Then closed it and stopped.
“Look,” she said. “I want to get to Morecambe as fast as the rest of us. But I don’t like the look of those storm clouds over there.”
Noah squinted into the distance. Saw a few grey clouds overhead. “They’re not storm clouds.”
“Trust her,” Iqrah said. “She’s, like, an oracle when it comes to the weather.”
Kirsty nodded.
“Wow,” Noah said. “Bet you’re a blast at parties.”
Kirsty rolled her eyes. “There’s plenty of buildings along the front here. Plenty of places for us to lay low for the night. I don’t see many infected around these days anyway. And the Society, they don’t seem too keen venturing far into No Man’s Land anymore. So we should be good, right?”
Noah opened his mouth. He wanted to tell Kirsty he was doubtful about the Society not being out here, trying to track him and Iqrah down.
Made him wonder whether he should just tell her the truth after all. ’Cause that might change things. Her being with Noah and Iqrah put her in danger by default. Maybe it’d make her think twice about taking them to the Morecambe community.
And maybe it was the wrong thing for the community too.
Maybe, in a weird way, Noah and Iqrah were better out here, with as few people around them as possible—preferably none—totally alone.
“What do you reckon?” Kirsty asked.
Noah looked ahead. Heart racing. He wanted to tell Kirsty the truth. He wanted to break away from this path they were on. Sweat poured down his face, salty against his lips. The tension of being with another person, trusting another person, especially with Iqrah…
All of it built up inside.
All of it threatened to explode.
“I…” he started.
That’s when he heard them.
Footsteps.
He looked over his shoulder, and right there, on the seafront, his entire world froze.
Black outfits.
Masked faces.
And long shiny rifles in hand.
They stood there and looked down the road at Noah, Iqrah, and Kirsty.
And all Noah could do was stand there, heart racing, and stare back at them.
“Society,” he said.
And then they lifted their rifles and started running towards them.
Chapter Thirteen
Noah saw the Society guards racing towards them, and he knew he had no choice but to run.
“Quick!” he shouted.
He spun around. Raced alongside Kirsty, along the promenade. The sky was growing greyer again, darkness setting in. The wind was picking up, making the waves crash and roar against the shore. Bruno panted as he raced along by Noah’s side. Iqrah clutched to his body, begging him to tell her what was happening, what she couldn’t see.
But Noah knew there was no time to talk.
The Society were here, and they weren’t messing around.
He ran down the cracked, uneven road. Wormed his way between the remains of old cars, totally covered in weeds and foliage now. The buildings weren’t much better, mushrooms, mould, and fungi creeping up the windows. He knew they were going to have to go in one of those buildings now, lay low, take cover. Fuck. They didn’t even have any weapons other than a knife. The rifle he’d taken from the Folkesmithe Labs days ago long ago ran out of ammo.
He looked over his shoulder.
Four of those Society guards. Not far behind. Holding their rifles by their sides, like they really didn’t want to use them.
Noah knew they wouldn’t want to kill him or Iqrah. But there was Kirsty and Bruno, too. They weren’t safe.
And besides. What was a bullet in the leg going to do? They’d be under strict orders not to kill Noah or Iqrah. But debilitating them wasn’t going to be off the table if it made their jobs easier, right?
“In here!” Kirsty shouted.
Noah looked around, almost losing his footing. Saw Kirsty pointing at an old antique shop. The windows were dusty. The door had been smashed long ago. It looked dark in there, foreboding.
He stood at the entrance to this antique shop. Didn’t know whether he wanted to go in there. ’Cause the Society were onto them. If they couldn’t get through here, they would be cornered. Their days would be numbered. They would be fucked.
But then he heard those footsteps getting closer, voices starting to echo through the silence, and he knew he didn’t have a choice.
“Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck it.”
He followed Kirsty inside the old, dark antique shop. Old lamps lay across the floor. Creepy dolls’ heads peered up at him with wide crystal eyes. A smell of damp filled the air as mould crept up the walls.
“There’s flats above these places,” Kirsty said, rushing through the shop, over the fallen debris. “We’ve got to get up there.”
“And then what?”
“Then, I dunno. We hide.”
“Hide? These are Society guards, not fucking game players.”
“Then we jump out of a window or something, I dunno.”
“Sounds like you’ve really thought this through.”
“Look,” Kirsty said. “The Society lot are thugs. You get some power trippers. But they’re usually not total savages. Maybe we can talk our way out of this.”
“You really think that? After they took Iqrah away?”
Kirsty frowned. “What do you know about that? Something you’re not telling me?”
Noah opened his mouth. Then he heard the shouts outside. So close to the shop now. “Now’s not the time. Upstairs. Now. Shit plan or not, it’s the only plan we’ve got.”
He swore he saw a glimmer of suspicion cross
