Matilda beamed and threw her arms around him. “Well done.” She kissed the side of his face five or six times before she let go. “Now let’s get moving.”
The stairs inside the building were made from concrete. Once downstairs, Matilda led them to the road. The same road they’d avoided crossing because of the mines. The layer of asphalt on this section remained mostly intact, the cracks too small to have mines in them. “Do we trust it?” she said.
William shrugged.
“I can’t make this decision on my own.”
“Sorry, you’re right.” William led the charge, sprinting across the road, checking left and right as he ran. He charged down another alley and halted at the end, another wide street separating them and a row of shops.
“They’ve got fire escapes on them,” Matilda said.
“You think we should go on the roofs again?”
“It gives us a better vantage point and takes us closer to what looks like the final row of shops before we get to Gracie’s tower. You want me to lead?”
“Sure.”
Matilda crossed the road and climbed. William followed. The metal stairs shook with their ascent.
Several of the buildings they crossed had statues on their roofs. From a large faded M to a chicken, to a donut with teeth marks along one side. They reached the building with the donut. They were as close to the tower as they could be without going back to ground.
Matilda walked to the edge of the roof and stepped back before William reached her.
“What is it?”
Her face pale, Matilda pointed down to their left. An army gathered in the street below. This time they wore blue. About one hundred of them, they had drones hovering nearby.
“Why have they chosen to have their meeting there?” William said.
“I’m not sure that’s the question we need to be asking.”
“How do we get them to go away?”
Matilda nodded. “How indeed?”
Chapter 20
William pulled Matilda back from the edge of the roof and guided her so they both crouched behind the huge sun-bleached donut. A line of flat roofs broken by narrow alleys stretched away from them in both directions. It gave them options. He tugged on Matilda’s arm and said, “Follow me.”
William crossed from one roof to the next, passing the garish statues raised in honour of each shop’s wares. They passed a large M, a fifteen-foot-tall chicken, a floating smile. Although there seemed very little to grin about in this savage city.
Every step took them farther away from Gracie’s tower and deeper into the ruins they so desperately wanted behind them. But they had no chance against the army below and had to do something. William led them back to the fire escape they’d used to get to the roofs. He led them back across the roads and towards the mines buried amongst the churned asphalt.
“Why are we back here?” Matilda said.
William lifted a chunk of the broken road and tucked it beneath his arm. Still several feet from the exposed mine, yet he watched it without blinking as if the inanimate object might give him feedback other than its binary existence of dormant or explode. “I have a plan.” He climbed the same fire escape they’d used to avoid the mines the first time they were here. The one the red soldiers had followed them up. He stood aside to let Matilda pass.
“What—”
William threw the chunk of asphalt into the centre of the road.
Matilda had already taken off by the time it triggered the mine. A whomp of ignition followed by an atmosphere-rending crack from the explosion. It shook the ground, but the buildings stood strong.
The charge of the blue army descended on the explosion site, their footsteps closing in.
Matilda slowed to let William run at her side. Her face red, she turned her palms to the sky. “Where are we going?”
“Back to where we were.”
They reached the roof they’d climbed from previously. Matilda pointed at the edge. “You want to slide down that pipe again?”
“Yeah, and back to the roof with the donut. Hopefully, this’ll move Fear’s army and give us our chance to cross.” The first of Fear’s soldiers emerged. “Get down!” He pulled on her shoulder, and they both dropped to their fronts.
Fifteen to twenty soldiers appeared. Matilda said, “Is that it?”
William said, “I kinda hoped they’d all come.”
The soldiers peered one way and then the other. They spoke amongst themselves, but they were too far away for William to hear their words. They shrugged and shook their heads. They left.
“What the …?” William said. “So much for that plan. What are we going to do now?”
Matilda stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the donut. We still need to get to Gracie’s tower, and that’s a better place to wait than here. Surely we’ll get a chance to cross at some point.” She kneeled down and turned her back to the road. She lay on her front and dropped her legs over the edge of the roof. The pipe rang from where she struck it with her foot. She lowered herself, more graceful this time for having already done it once before.
William did his best to hide his trembling form. After all, he had planned this route. His knuckles ached as much this time as they had previously. But he’d done it once before, he could do it again. A few feet down the pipe, he stretched his leg for the window, hooked his right foot around the edge, and grabbed on with his right hand. For the second time, he swung away from the building and pulled himself inside in one fluid movement.
They wasted no time, running to the ground floor again, crossing the road again, and ducking into the alley they’d used the last time they ran through here again. This time, Matilda led them the entire way, across the
