“You were saying?” Olga said. She kept a hold of Max.
Lowering her voice to a whisper, Gracie hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”
They broke into a jog again, their steps louder with their haste.
Maybe William imagined it, but every time they passed a new floor, he glanced in and glimpsed someone there. A silhouette or two in the shadows. But on every second check, they’d gone. Tricks of the light? Ghosts? Scavengers?
Floor twenty-eight.
Floor twenty-nine.
They were just a few floors from the top. They followed Gracie past the large number thirty and up the next flight of stairs leading to a metal door. The old hinges groaned as she forced it wide.
William froze again, the others slamming into him. Had he just seen that? Several floors below, the dirty face of a scavenger peering up at them.
“Come on!” Matilda shoved William.
He must have imagined it. They were looking to him for guidance. The last thing he should do was panic about invisible enemies. He could tell them about it when they were well away from here.
The second William stepped out onto the roof, the wind shoved him back a pace. It burned his eyes and stung his skin. He dipped his head into the strong gales and moved aside to let the others through, each of them leaning forwards into the force of nature. All of them walked on weary legs. All of them save Gracie and Dianna.
“Wow,” William said. “I know I said it earlier, but I’ve never been this high up.” The trio of towers had been built close to one another. The drop to the ground made William’s head spin. He stepped back, his heart in his throat.
Gracie placed a hand on the back of William’s arm. “Give it a moment. You’ll get used to it.”
Several rounds of deep breaths, William returned to the edge. Still woozy, but his dizziness had left him. The city stretched away from them in every direction. The tops of the buildings were lit by the moon. There were older structures with spires that pointed at the sky. A vast metal arena, a webbing of rusting steel over its open roof. Seats surrounded a rectangular patch of mud. What had it once been? Did they use it for trials like with the national service area?
Ascetically ruined, but structurally sound, the buildings might have looked a mess, but they were unlike anything William had seen before. It was like witnessing the future. A post-future. What if they rediscovered the secrets that had died with this society? What could they do with them now? The dark night prevented him from seeing to the edge of the city, let alone beyond it. How close were they to the wall? Did they have communities on either side of them like Gracie had said? If only he could come back here during the day.
“Now, while I think this is a wonderful trick,” Olga said, stepping back from the building’s edge, “has it really been necessary for us to come up this high?”
“Like when we went through the tunnel,” Gracie said, “the less time we spend on the city’s streets, the better.” She pointed at a pile of thick hollow poles. They were made from brushed steel. Unlike the rest of the metal William had seen in this place, these were rust-free. They’d seen a lot of use. Several slipped and clanged when Gracie pulled one from the stack. A small lip about a foot tall ran around the edge of the roof. It had grooves cut into it every few feet. Gracie laid one of the poles in one of the grooves and leaned it across the gap between the two buildings.
William’s stomach flipped with how close she stood to the edge. One powerful gust could end her. Especially with the weight of the pole tipping her balance.
“No way.” Artan this time. He shook his head and repeated, “No way am I climbing across that gap. No.”
“Come on, Gracie.” The aggression had left Olga’s voice. “Surely there’s no need for this?”
But Gracie went back for the next pole. Before she lifted it, the metal door leading from the stairs flung wide with a crack!
A short woman with wild and greasy black hair. The face that had stared up at William. She charged at them. Her toothless mouth stretched wide in a scream. She wielded a metal bar and ran straight at Olga.
Hawk released a yell to rival the woman’s. His spear in one hand, his knife raised, he charged at her. But he tripped, fell hard, landed on his shoulder, and cleared Olga’s legs from beneath her.
Gracie intercepted the scavenger before she reached the fallen pair. She grabbed her ragged shirt and turned away from her, using the woman’s momentum to launch her over her shoulder. The woman’s scream changed in pitch as she flew in an arc over the side of the building.
William led the charge to the edge, the others joining him. He dropped to his knees and held onto the building’s raised brickwork lip. It stopped his head spinning. The scavenger’s arms and legs flailed as she fell.
She hit the ground with a loud kaboom! The explosion shook the building, and a ball of fire engulfed the dead woman. It swirled on the ground and turned into a sphere of acrid smoke that rose and slammed into William’s face.
“Those,” Gracie said, “are landmines. They are lots of them in this part of the city. You can see many of them from where the road’s been torn to shreds.”
A jagged line ran through the churned road between the two towers like an angry scar.
“But some of them are hidden. We don’t know how the mines got there, but the more time you spend on the ground, the more likely you are to step on one. Especially in the dark. Maybe we’re being overcautious using the roofs of these buildings, but it’s the safest
