were ripped from cold, bloody hands. The Old World’s ruins littered the Earth, but it and all its civility was only a distant memory. For some, it had only ever been a dream.
Max eyed his rifle, lying a few feet away, and tensed his legs, ready to dive. “I hope you brought plenty of rounds,” he said, and then he lunged, and the air was alive with gunfire.
*
When it was over, Max was blinded by his own blood. A gash on his forehead was trickling a steady stream into his eyes, and with his arms tied fast behind his back, it dribbled without check over the contours of his face. Strong arms shoved and corralled him forward, kicking him when he fell, cursing him when he stumbled too fast. He’d taken a ball to the thigh, but it had only skimmed off a chunk of muscle close to the surface, missing the femoral artery.
Waves of heat buffeted his skin and something crackled and popped nearby. They had started setting fires. Gunfire crackled and the occasional scream still rang out, but the battle was almost done. He tried to judge how long they had lasted. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, which seemed impossible. The raiders had been so fast, so silky smooth in every movement, so accurate with every shot. It was eerie.
They had looked like barbarians perched like crows on the hilltop, but they were nothing of the sort. He had taken down maybe a dozen, and they had all been farmer types, emaciated and ropey from the famine, but they had each gone down snarling, often picking off another Twingite before they bled out. Something had turned them all into trained killers.
They were heading uphill. He could hear others’ ragged breathing around him and tried to get their attention, but every time he called out, somebody pressed a thumb into his leg wound, and he ended up biting clean through his lip trying to hold in the screams.
Why were they keeping any of them alive? To barter or torture, maybe for slave labour? He promised to kill the others before himself. No Twingite would be a slave, nor suffer a lingering death.
Someone kicked the back of his knees and he fell forward with a grunt, white-hot agony flashing in his pelvis and up his spine as his full weight landed on the shredded meat of his leg. Others landed in the grass on either side of him and then his hands were free. He wiped the blood from his eyes.
They were sacking the observatory nearby, hauling out the last of those barricaded inside like hounds rooting foxes from a run. Those who blabbered and begged were shot or hacked to the ground. Those who fought back were knocked out cold and thrown on the grass beside Max and the other captives.
Charlie stood over them, unscathed. He and the wolfish man had vanished before he had ever reached his gun, even with his limp. “You people and your pride,” he said and spat at Max’s feet.
“Just finish it,” Max growled.
“Finish?” Charlie grinned, and Max saw a shadow of the wolfish man’s leer buried somewhere behind it, an infectious inner madness that seemed to radiate from every one of these creatures. “Nah. You people have a reputation for being real tough bastards, and you put up a hell of a fight. You’ve got the spark He wants. You’re all with us now.”
Max looked at the others beside him in the grass. He expected them to be veterans, nail-hard folk from before the End. But instead, most of them were young, some only kids. Among them he spotted Radley Tibble, snot nosed and whimpering in the grass, clutching a ragged strip of his mother’s dress, one end charred, the other dripping red.
They didn’t deserve this. He knew what it was like to lose everyone you loved in the blink of an eye. Better if they had all died down there with their families. His mental switch flickered on and off, and a wrenching twist was working into his guts. “Who’s He?” he said.
Charlie stepped aside, and another figure took his position—a tall man with a balaclava tied around his face. A pair of wood pigeons bobbed on one shoulder, cooing and cocking their heads to watch the smouldering wreckage below. The man’s striking green eyes lanced into him. He felt like a pincushion, speared by that gaze.
I know those eyes, Max thought. But no, it can’t be. “You