A long, straight, and tight tunnel. The glow of moonlight about two hundred feet away showed them their destination. A thick pipe up to their right ran the entire length. It dominated the space, forcing Olga to walk with her head cocked to the left.
Their tired steps scraped the concrete floor. They all gasped for breath. Gracie spoke in between lungfuls. “When we get to the end of this tunnel, we should have bought ourselves some time. Even the drone will struggle to find us.”
Olga had caught her breath by the time she got close to the end of the tunnel. Max walked directly behind her. She turned to him. “What an evening, eh?”
Max cleared his throat.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
“Thank you, Olga, but I’m not asking you to help me. Let’s chat later when we don’t have to be quiet, yeah?”
The moonlight stung Olga’s eyes when she stepped from the dark tunnel. The pipe they’d travelled with took a nosedive through the ground. “What did they use that pipe for?”
“Sewage,” Gracie said.
“What now?”
“Waste. Human waste.”
“Ew. They had that much of it?”
“Look at this place, Olga. In its day, it pulled in thousands of people a week.”
“That’s a lot of shit,” Hawk said.
Gracie laughed. “It’s a lot of buckets to carry if you don’t think of smarter ways to dispose of it. Not all the old ways were illogical. Some of them we’ve—”
The low growl of a nearby diseased halted Gracie. They were in a small car park. Surrounded by buildings and alleyways. Surrounded by darkness.
“It’s that way!” Hawk—hunched and ready for war—pointed with the tip of his knife.
“So we run—” Gracie’s sentence got cut short again. She’d been hooking a thumb away from them in the opposite direction to the sound, but Hawk had already charged.
Artan turned to Olga with wide eyes. “What shall I do?” But he didn’t give her time to answer. She might have suggested they leave Hawk if he had. “I have to go after him.”
As Hawk and then Artan vanished into the shadows, the screams of the diseased creature grew louder. Gracie bounced on her toes, her long plait flicking one way and then the other with her sharp head movements. “That noise isn’t good. They’ll bring more diseased to us.”
“You’re not suggesting we run, are you?”
“I’m not suggesting you do anything, Olga. I, however, am going to keep moving. Hawk’s a liability. I refuse to die because of his stupidity.” Gracie pointed at the large metal tower she’d set as their destination, now much closer than when she’d first shown it to them. “They know where to meet us.”
More screams joined the fight.
At first, Gracie moved away from the battle with slow steps. Olga and the others could follow her if they wished.
“What shall we do?” Dianna chewed on her bottom lip, her attention divided between Gracie and where Artan and Hawk had gone.
Olga pointed after Gracie. “I don’t trust her. I feel like I need to keep an eye on her.”
Diseased screams came from another part of their dark surroundings. Dianna said, “Gracie was right. They’re going to bring more of them to us. I worry I’ll be more of a hindrance in a fight against the diseased. I’m not cut out for it.”
“You go after Gracie,” Max said, shoving the girl away from them. And then to Olga, he said, “Artan and Hawk might need my help. We’ll meet you at the tower. Wait for us, okay?”
Before Max ran off, Olga grabbed both of his hands. She pulled him close. Their noses touched, their lips hovering an inch from the kiss she so longed for. “Be careful, okay?”
Max’s tormented glaze cleared. Olga’s entire being buzzed. He hadn’t looked at her in that way in weeks. She kissed his stubbled cheek. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
Max smiled. “You’d best be.”
“Come on.” Dianna tugged on Olga’s arm. More diseased screamed from yet another part of the city. “We need to go now.”
Olga nodded several times as the shadows claimed Max. She would see him again. He’d be fine. He survived, that’s what he did. She ran after Dianna, who chased after Gracie.
Chapter 18
The night sky had turned from black to dark blue with the start of a new day. Damp hung in the air and clung to Olga’s clothes. Hard to tell where her sweat ended and the dew began. Every step clumsy, she fell forwards with her run, Dianna ahead of her, Gracie in the lead.
They passed through the tight alleyways of what Gracie had called the city’s residential district. A residential district minus the residents. They’d left the large tower blocks and stadiums behind. They were now surrounded by houses. Who knew what stared from every paneless window or shadowy doorway? But they could only deal with what stood in their way. They couldn’t go to war with what they couldn’t see.
From a distance, the metal tower stood as a tall skeletal frame. Almost as if it had been abandoned mid-construction. But when Olga broke free from the final alley amongst the dense press of buildings, she finally saw the bottom section of the sixty-foot structure. Four legs spread out wide, one in each corner of its square base. Steel panels between the legs turned the space beneath into a room of sorts. A shelter. A storage area. A prison … She slowed her pace.
The side facing them had a dirty steel door. Like most metal in the city, it wore a rash of orange rust. For all intents and purposes, the tower stood as yet another dead artefact in a city filled with dead artefacts.
Gracie reached the door, checked left and right over each shoulder, and opened it. The hinges offered a cackling protest. She ushered in Dianna and then Olga before entering herself and closing the door, throwing them into complete darkness.
Gracie’s voice echoed, bouncing
