have killed him ten times over already. Why hadn’t they?
He decided it didn’t matter. He just kept running.
*
Max felt his guts twist, pulled from sleep by distant screams. He took a moment to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, then sat up and sighed. He wasn’t surprised, nor did he hurry. He’d been waiting for this.
Twingo had seen better days. There had been a time when dozens from all the settlements in the southern counties passed along their single thoroughfare daily to trade and share news. Nestled on the edge of the City of London, beside what had once been the green expanse of Greenwich Park, they were second only to Canary Wharf itself, the hub of commerce for all of England. But here, things had been a little looser, the rules laxer, and the trade more risky. Men of ambition and vision had traded here, where the meddling influence of the southern cities was largely absent. They had enjoyed a healthy, symbiotic relationship with the powerhouse across the way.
But then they had gone and started trouble. It was all that fool’s fault. That Alexander Cain and his flock. They hadn’t been able to let the Old World go. They had gone into people’s lives and disrupted any peace they might have found with how things were. And now it was coming back to bite them, and everyone else who had dealings with them.
As he swung his legs out of bed and pulled on his clothes with unhurried, steady hands, the knot in Max’s gut faded, turning off the fear, something he’d learned to do long ago. Once dressed, he took up his rifle from beside the bed, checked the load and safety, and pulled open the door. Across the hall, Bill emerged from his own room a moment later, his eyes set and face grim.
“Do you think it’s them?” he said.
Max nodded and headed for the balcony. The Royal Observatory, empty save for the heavy barricades upon all the doors, groaned and echoed around their heads, the vast stores stacked up in each room, and the few senior Twingites who bedded here. Atop the hill of Greenwich Park, they could see all of Twingo and the surrounding landscape from here, and in the distance, London’s ruined, cragged skyline. They both stepped under the murky sky, struggling toward dawn, and looked out over all they’d built.
“Today,” Bill said. “I can feel it.”
“Today,” Max said.
Below, lights popped on. The screaming came from the trees, a single source moving straight for them. He recognised Radley Tibble’s voice even from this distance, though he couldn’t yet hear what he was saying. Not that it mattered. Everyone knew what it meant. Their time was up.
Smoke had been appearing on the horizon for weeks now. News had reached them of burning, raping, and pillaging. And not just here, but everywhere, all over the country. A scourge swept over the land: a new army bent on enslavement and destruction, driven by the smouldering hatred stoked by Cain and his lot during the famine. They had lost contact with the last of their neighbours three days ago.
“Looks like they saved us for last.”
Max looked past the trees, across the swollen banks of the Thames, toward the single twinkling spire in Canary Wharf. “Not quite last,” he said.
The others slowly joined them on the balcony, rubbing their eyes. Some uttered forlorn cries, a few scowled, while others only stared. But there was no panic. Twingites were made of stronger stuff. They had all known this was coming. Other places might have seen disorientation and fear take over, but there had never been room for that here. Instead, the elderly founders of the rickety trading post turned on their heels and disappeared back inside, some to strengthen the barricades, others to sound the alarm. Only Max and Bill remained, still scanning the land below.
“I don’t see them,” said Max.
“They’re using the tree cover. They’ll come from the west.”
At that, they too headed back inside and sealed the balcony behind them. Bill turned over his rifle to young mop-haired Jordan, their best sniper, and bade him head up to the service hatch at the top of the observatory, and cover them. “I was never any good with a gun, anyway,” he said, flashing his long programmer’s hands, still delicate and free of callouses after these long years of strife. Some things never changed.
“Pieter,” Max called. One floor above them, a hunch-backed scarecrow stooped over the railing, eyebrows raised. “We’ll be needing