The 13th Horseman - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,62

Drake’s back.

“Their life force. Their souls,” War said. “He’s going to eat their souls.”

“Ugh, that’s disgusting,” Famine spat. The others turned to look at him. “What?” he said, returning their glares. “Even I have to draw the line somewhere.”

“Get your backside up there,” War said, oblivious to the balls of light streaking past him with increasing regularity. “You have to take him out before he can power himself back up.”

“What’ll happen if he does?”

War clenched his jaw. “Anything he wants. Stop him, or Armageddon’s happening right here, right now, signs or no bloody signs.”

Drake nodded his understanding. “Right,” he said, looking up. “Um... how do I get up there?”

“You managed the walking-through-walls thing, so you can manage the horse,” War told him. “Whistle. Summon it. Call forth the steed of Death.”

He was right, Drake knew. It was now or never. This was his moment.

Curling his index finger and thumb once again, he placed them just inside his mouth, and he blew.

Pffffffffff.

“Bugger all,” War said, with a not-entirely-surprised sigh.

Drake tried again, but War was quick to stop him. “You’re wasting time, and, frankly, you’re embarrassing yourself,” he told him. “Practise later. Now, get your fingers out of your mouth and start climbing.”

“Climbing?” Drake said, but even as he spoke the word, he realised he had no other choice. Mel was up there, in danger. And then there was the whole end-of-the-world thing too. “I’ll try to find a way to shut off the shield. When I do, take the robot down. Stop it hurting anyone, or worse.”

With the flickering glow of stolen souls dancing eerily around him, Drake raced over to the robot’s foot, found a handhold, and slowly, steadily began to climb.

DRAKE FELT LIKE Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk, only he wasn’t climbing the beanstalk, he was climbing the giant himself.

The metal used in the robot’s construction was smooth, but the surface itself wasn’t. It was crisscrossed with cables and pitted with rivets. The hexagonal heads of bolts stuck out regularly along the machine’s entire length. The effect was like a ladder, reaching all the way up from the ground to the head, far, far above.

He reached for the next handhold, a length of steel cable running almost horizontally across the mechanical thigh. His fingertips found it, brushed against the rough surface, then missed completely as the cable began to move.

No, not the cable, Drake realised. The entire leg.

He felt himself sliding, slipping, swinging left as the leg slowly raised to the right. Frantically, he jammed his foot against a protruding rivet and his knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the bolt he was clinging to.

He craned his neck, and looked down. The other horsemen were retreating, pulling back as the leg Drake was hanging from came stomping down towards them.

“The kids!” Drake shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the creaking of the metal leg. The other schoolchildren and the police were all still flat on the ground. The souls were still streaking from within them before disappearing into the hand just fifteen or twenty metres away from Drake, but the foot was coming down, down, down and there was nothing Drake could do about it.

He closed his eyes and pressed his face in against the metal, unable to watch what was about to happen next. He was supposed to be the personification of death itself, but he could not – would not – watch everyone die.

There was a boom as the foot crunched down on to the ground, and a sudden jolt that almost sent Drake tumbling in the same direction. One of his hands slipped from the bolt and his legs were suddenly kicking against thin air.

Despite all that, he had to look down. He had to know if all those people were dead or—

“Alive,” he said, and the word came out as a breathless laugh. The foot had stepped cleanly over them, crushing the police cars instead. A few more souls were sucked from the sleeping teenagers, and Drake suddenly found himself wondering if he were wrong. If the life force was being torn from within them, then maybe they weren’t still alive after all.

There was another groaning of metal and the other leg began to lift. The robot had started to walk. Drake looked up. The waist was just half a dozen metres away. He had to get past there before the right leg moved again.

Gritting his teeth, Drake reached for the horizontal cable again, wrapped his fingers round it and