But when she reached the top of the first escape, she waited.
“What is it?” William said.
She cupped her ear. “Hear that?”
Distant, yet distinct. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. “The dogs?”
Matilda nodded.
“Fury are coming to check out the explosion?”
She nodded again.
William smiled. “This might be our ticket out of here.”
Chapter 21
The dogs’ clacking steps in the lead, Fury’s soldiers behind them. It sounded like there were far more of them than had been sent to investigate from Fear’s side. A road and a row of buildings between them, William could only track them by sound. They arrived at the explosion site in stages, several groups converging on that one point. “How many do you think there are?”
Matilda shook her head. “Hard to say. But if they run into Fear’s army, I’m guessing they’ll be outnumbered.” She dropped to her front and crawled to the other side of the roof, peering down on where the blue-uniformed soldiers waited.
When she returned, William said, “They’re still not moving?”
Matilda shook her head. “How can they not know they’re there? Surely they’ve heard them?”
“And what if Fury’s army also decides there’s nothing to investigate and goes back the other way?”
Matilda said, “We have to do something.”
The building they were currently on had a lip similar to the one they’d lain behind when they’d hidden from Fury’s soldiers. A foot tall and thick, it ran around the building’s perimeter. Topped with concrete slabs, many of which were cracked, dividing them into smaller chunks. William pulled the corner of one free. The heavy lump about the size of his palm. A road and a row of buildings separated them from Fury’s army. Fear were on the road behind them. The two warring cities separated by one empty street. Gracie pulled on his arm.
“It’s okay,” William said. “I’ve got this.” He launched the chunk of concrete at the row of buildings opposite. He hit a pipe similar to the one they’d climbed down when they had no fire escape. And he hit it true. The contact struck it like a bell.
Matilda leaped from their current building to the next, taking them closer to the one with the donut on the roof. William followed, and they both dropped to their fronts two buildings away. They lay in the shadow of the smiling face.
“Do you think it wor—”
Clack-clack. Clack-clack.
The first of the dogs appeared in the central road, Fury’s army on their tail.
“You were right,” William said. “They’re well outnumbered.”
“Speaking of which.” Matilda pointed down the road to their right. A solitary soldier dressed in blue. From the roar in the street below, Fury’s army saw him too. They charged, Fear’s soldier running back to regroup with his comrades.
“I feel sorry for them,” William said. “They’ve no idea what we’ve led them into.”
“You can feel sorry for them when we’re out of here. Gracie said how these two cities are constantly at war. Them coming together is inevitable, whether we had a hand in it or not.”
The blue soldier vanished, and the red army followed him, the dogs leading the charge.
A deafening roar a few seconds later.
“Looks like they’ve found each other. Come on.” Matilda jumped to her feet again and led him across the roofs.
Past the giant chicken and the large M, William and Matilda reached the donut again. The whoosh of flames met the stuttered bursts of bullet fire. They crawled to the edge of the roof. Most of Fury’s army had already retreated. A line of lunatics stood as their last defence.
The lunatics fell with twitches and convulsions, the drones’ bullets mowing them down, opening the way for Fear’s army to give chase.
William pointed across the road at Gracie’s metal tower. “I think this is our moment.”
“You want me to go first?”
He shook his head. “Let me.”
The neighbouring building had a fire escape that led to the alley between the two shops. William hopped across the gap and took it. Screams, bullet fire, and the roar of flames drowned out his and Matilda’s metallic steps.
At the end of the alley, Matilda behind him, he peered out to the left. The soldiers had gone for now. They wouldn’t get a better chance than this. He sprinted across the road towards the metal tower and yanked the creaking steel door wide.
A blinking Olga stared up at him. A confused frown and bloodshot eyes. Breathless, William said, “We need to go now.”
“Wha—”
“Now, Olga!”
A flash of fire ignited in her ochre glare, but she shelved her rage. She stood up on shaking legs and stumbled out into the bright glow of a new day.
Matilda led the way back across the road, back down the alley they’d emerged from, and back to the fire escape to the roof with the donut.
Still half asleep and her hair dishevelled, Olga had creases on her cheeks from where she must have lain on the hard floor. Viewing the world through a tight squint, she shrugged and scratched her head. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“There’s a war being fought down there,” William said.
“I can hear that.”
“We started it.”
“Huh?”
“The blue army,” Matilda said. “Fear’s army. They were gathered outside the tower.”
Olga’s already pale face lost even more colour.
“We had to lure them away to get to you,” William said. “That’s why we had to get out of there urgently. They might come back. Where are the others?”
Olga sneered. “Gracie left.”
“What?” William said.
“She went to her community and took Dianna with her.”
“And Artan?” Matilda said.
“Max, Artan, and Hawk got separated from us. Hawk was being a hero again, trying to fight the diseased when he should have run.”
William shook his head. “What a moron.”
“Exactly.”
Screams rang through the city. The burst of gunfire, the whoosh of flames, the cries of people dying.
“So Gracie just left?” Matilda said. “She left when my brother needed her?”
“She said she couldn’t wait any longer, and the fact that you and William, and then Hawk and
