“Just worry about you. It’s every man and woman for themselves until we get to the tower.”
The space at the bottom of the stairs cleared. “On my count,” William said.
“Three …”
“Two …”
“One.”
The five of them moved in single file, Hawk in the lead. He descended the stairs two at a time and broke away at the bottom.
They should have planned it better.
Olga and Hawk joined the blue army’s mass exodus to their right.
Matilda and Artan went straight ahead, climbing the spectators’ seating.
William went left.
Too late now. They each had to take their own path. Hopefully, they’d all find their way to the tower.
Chapter 32
Nothing William could do about it now. They’d agreed they’d find their separate ways out of there, and he needed to stick to that. Many of the soldiers ran for the exit, but the narrow tunnel created an impossible bottleneck, and the diseased had already caught up to the mass exodus. They chewed into the congestion with snarling ferocity. He headed for the opposite end of the arena.
The spectators’ area on this side was a mirror image of the one Fear’s soldiers gathered on to watch them walk the plank. Rows of seats, they lifted in steps, growing progressively higher the farther they were from the ring. They ran all the way to the wall. While avoiding Fear’s soldiers, William climbed.
Sweat itched William’s collar, his brow damp by the time he reached the top row of seats and closed in on the arena’s far wall.
Screams and shouts filled the air as Fear’s army fell to the diseased attack. Those soldiers at the front had tried to flee while those at the back waded in to help their brethren. They were all failing.
A wide rectangular window only two feet tall ran the width of the arena’s back wall. As absent of glass as almost every other window in this city, the breeze cooled William’s sweating skin. The frenzied crowd by the narrow corridor turned gradually more chaotic, the diseased tearing through them, overpowering them. Their cries for help morphed into wails of insanity. Maybe, in the heat of battle, each soldier thought they had a chance. Would they still think that if they were watching it all unfold from his vantage point?
William’s stomach lurched when he poked his head outside. The wind cooled his sweating face. A series of metal cables ran from the side of the building to the ground like guy ropes. Several of them started just below the window ledge. A way down, but if he screwed this up, he had a thirty-foot fall onto concrete. The snarls and shrill screams behind him turned up a notch. Risking the fall had to be better than any other option.
The yell of a soldier nearby. William pulled back inside and spun around. The man brandished a baton, his teeth clenched as he bore down on him.
Weaponless, William raised his fists.
The soldier stepped over the seats with long strides.
William widened his stance.
The soldier yelled as he jumped the last seat in his path, caught both feet on the bleached plastic, and fell. His head crashed into the wall with a tonk. His eyes rolled back. His body fell limp.
The soldier lay unconscious, his face pressed against the concrete step. William pried his baton from his tight grip and slid it down the back of his trousers so his belt held it in place. The arena, a writhing hive of chaos, his friends still nowhere to be seen. He climbed out of the window and hung from the ledge with both hands.
William’s clothes flapped in the wind, and his grip ached. The shrill cries were muted now he’d climbed outside. Rust coated the metal cables, but they remained taut as if they played a part in keeping the arena standing. Freckled with corrosion, the rough rust cut into William’s hands when he reached down. “This is going to hurt.”
William let go of the window ledge and caught the cable with his other hand. He clung on, his body falling into a pendulous swing.
Hand over hand, William made his way down the cable’s forty-five-degree angle. Thankfully, he had enough purchase to avoid sliding. The rough steel would have sheared his palms off. His knuckles aching, he progressed by a foot at a time on his slow descent towards the ground.
With the drop reduced to about six feet, William let go, the shock of landing snapping through him. One last check for Matilda and the others. He shook his head and took off into the city, the arena at his back. He’d get away from this place first, and then he’d find his way to Gracie’s tower. Hopefully the others would do the same.
Chapter 33
William had gone the long way around to avoid the chaos spilling from the arena. It had taken him a few hours, any trace of dawn burned away by the bright sun. Leaning against the large discoloured donut, he squinted and shielded his eyes to give him a better view of the tower below.
As good a place to rest as any, he’d watched the door in the tower’s base for the past fifteen minutes. No one had gone in or out. Were his friends already inside?
On the ground, a main road separated William from the tower. Still no soldiers, red or blue. And, more importantly, no dogs or drones.
While gripping onto the baton he’d taken from Fear’s soldier, William burst from cover and sprinted across the road. Exposed in broad daylight, he ran with his back hunched like being a few inches lower would make a difference.
The door’s hinges creaked when William opened it. The faces of his friends squinted against the glare. Hawk held a baton in preparation for a fight.
William slipped in and closed the door behind him, throwing the place back into darkness. Max, Olga, and Hawk were in the tower. Max’s face was covered
