Alex Scarrow - The Eternal War

McManus issued orders to the junior officers and NCOs before joining Liam and Bob. ‘They should locate the eugenics soon enough. Did you see how quickly they set off? I believe they already have the scent.’

Liam nodded. ‘Are you sure, Captain, they won’t descend into some sort of, well … some sort of bloodlust when they find them?’

He shook his head. ‘They may be eugenics, but they are also members of the British army. They’ll behave.’ He pulled down the brass mouthpiece from the earpad at the side of his helmet.

‘Captain McManus here … we’ve just sent the hounds in. And we’re now moving out towards the city.’ He gave a crisp nod at the response over the earphone. ‘Yes, sir.’

Up above them, Liam could see the carrier slowly circling high, catching the first dawn rays along its shimmering copper hull. It was seeing the sun a good hour before they were going to feel the warmth of it on their own faces.

‘Right, then,’ said McManus. ‘We’ll get our lads moving in so we’ve less ground to cover once they’ve pinpointed a location.’ He smiled. ‘We’ll find them this morning, don’t you two worry.’

Liam nodded. Given how quickly those baboon-dogs had crossed the hard-scrabble field, he actually felt quite confident they were going to find them. It was whether they were going to find them in one piece that was worrying him.

The walrus-moustached sergeant bellowed for the troops to move out, and section by section they peeled out of their rows to join the back of the lengthening column moving down the broken tarmac of what was once the main road leading into the city.

‘You chaps want to walk or ride?’

‘We’ll walk,’ said Liam.

‘Jolly good,’ he said, tightening the strap of his helmet. ‘Well, no point hanging about, then. It’s only beggars and desk clerks you’ll find at the rear of a ruddy column!’

2001, Dead City

Sal felt a hand on her shoulder, tugging her insistently. ‘Wake! Now!’ She looked up to see one of Samuel’s pack, one of the ‘apes’. She recognized it as the one that had carried her here the night before last.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘ Them … come!’

Sal sat up on her bed, a loosely gathered pile of grubby coal sacks, to see the entire pack awake and hastily scrambling to gather their few possessions. She saw Lincoln sitting up beside her, just as confused and muddled from being so rudely awoken.

‘What the devil’s happening now ?’ he growled.

Samuel padded over. ‘They’re here already! Sholdiersh! They coming! We musht leave!’ He reached down for Sal’s hand.

‘Please!’ She refused to get up. ‘Why don’t you just run! Me and Abraham will go to the soldiers … we’ll tell them we’re OK!’

Samuel looked for the briefest moment like he was considering that suggestion. But then he reached for her hand again. ‘No … you come with me!’

She snatched her hand back. ‘No!’

The eugenic muttered a curse under his breath. He turned to the ape standing beside him. ‘Get them up!’ He turned to address the others. ‘Let’sh go!’

Samuel led the way out of the coal cellar. The ape yanked Sal and Lincoln to their feet. ‘You come!’ he rumbled, pushing them both in front of him.

They climbed a flight of stone steps out of the cellar and crossed the creaking wooden floor of what was once a lounge. From the meagre daylight seeping in through shuttered windows, Sal saw old tall-backed armchairs draped with dust covers, a wall lined with books quietly mouldering away.

They were in a hallway, morning light streaming in through an open front door. Then they were stumbling down porch steps, through an overgrown front yard and past a rusting gate on to a wide weed-choked avenue flanked on either side by tall three-storey town houses, with proud verandas and entrance porticoes.

She caught a glimpse of wooden boards nailed over windows and front doors, the faded red-paint lettering of plague and infections warnings hurriedly scrawled decades ago.

Ahead of them she could see Samuel scooting along the avenue — a curious shambling gait — hunched over like a primate, his disproportionately short legs working so very hard to keep him ahead of his pack of ‘apes’, slender ‘salamanders’ and several other eugenic types.

She noticed several miniature ones, no more than a foot and a half tall, with slender bodies like meerkats, but bald and pale like all the others, and with similarly loaf-shaped skulls. They were all wearing the same miniature striped overalls and she suspected they must have been some sort of work team. She wondered what sort of mundane job they’d been designed for. Every now and then, to keep up, they used their arms, running like macaque monkeys. She heard their frightened gabbling, their twittering voices using pidgin English words.

Behind them, coming from some way down the end of the avenue and round a corner, Sal heard the echoing rattle of gunshots and the high-pitched death rattle of something brought down. A eugenic from one of the other packs, she guessed.

They’re close!

They scrambled together along the avenue until they came to an intersection. In front of them Sal saw a grand old redbrick building with marble columns supporting a large entrance portico. A clock tower stretched proudly from its roof. She guessed it might once have been a courthouse, or a library, or some building with a public purpose. Before it, decorative gardens had gone truly wild and native … gardens fronted by a low stone wall that still boasted patches of blistering and peeling white paint. On it she saw a faded street sign on a rusted plaque:

ROBERT E. LEE UNIVERSITY

Samuel was frantically waving his spindly arms to the left. ‘Thish way!’ he screamed. ‘Thish way! Hurry!’

From side streets and spilling out of the open doorways of abandoned homes other packs emerged to join them.

They were on a much wider avenue now, but it was cluttered with abandoned carts and old automobiles. Panic had swept through this city long ago, streets and avenues congested with civilians desperate to leave. Carts laden with suitcases, valuable heirlooms and gilt-framed family portraits had been left to rot, weather and fade out in the open.

NORTH CHARLES STREET. Now a graveyard of vehicles, and, yes … here and there she could see bleached bones, the dark leather of desiccated skin and tufts of hair in among the iron spokes of cartwheels and rusting chassis.

They’d just begun to pick their way through the jam of long-dead vehicles, when they heard the rattle of gunfire again. It sounded closer than last time. Sal wrenched her hand free of the ape that had been clasping it.

‘NO!’ she shouted. ‘Please! Just let us go!’

The ape grappled with her, hoisted her up and held her under one arm.

Samuel led the way through the barricade of vehicles and finally stopped. The clutter was slowing them down too much. He took a turning off the broad avenue into a smaller alleyway. The others followed him. He stopped and slumped against a brick wall, gasping and wheezing, exhausted from the last few minutes of running. Such a small body, with lungs and a heart not designed for this kind of exertion. The other eugenics crowded round his panting form, waiting for him to recover, waiting for further instructions.

‘GO!’ he gasped. ‘GO! There’sh no time to wait for me. Go! GO!’

‘But which way, Sam?’ asked one of them.

‘Go north!’

‘Which way izzat north ?’ asked one of the salamanders.

‘North!’ He pointed up at the strip of sky above the alleyway. ‘Keep the shun, the shun up there! In the shky … keep it on your right !’ he said, slapping his right shoulder for those in his group that didn’t know their lefts from their rights. ‘Keep the shun … on that shide of you!’ he gasped. ‘Now GO!’