can burn our homes, but you can’t take away what we are. We’re free. We’ll never fight beside you pigs, so get it over with.”
The tall man stepped forward and loosened the balaclava, letting it fall to one side. A few of the kids cried out at the maw revealed in the virgin light. Even Max repressed a grimace. It was hard to believe he was alive; there was so much scar tissue, so much shrunken, retracted flesh, exposed membrane and muscle. Patches of bare skull showed in a few spots around where the cheeks and chin should have been.
“It’s been a long time, Vandeborn,” he said.
“James …” Then Max could only shake his head, speechless for the first time in memory.
The fires of Twingo were dying low, and the last survivors were being thrown down on the grass. The flock of victors—filthy, stick-thin and stinking—gathered around the gutted observatory, surrounding their prey on all sides.
But Max scarcely noticed anyone but the tall man before him. Eventually, he found his voice again. “What happened to you?”
He didn’t answer, just turned and pointed east. The pigeons cooed, cocking their heads, as though following the line of sight drawn out by his arm. Max’s eyes followed it too, and his gaze fell upon the horizon. Glistening in the early morning haze, amidst the sagging ruin of London, was the single lit spire in Canary Wharf.
PART 3 – THE PIGEON KEEPER
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
—Plato
Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.
—Bob Marley
CHAPTER 1
“Geoffrey, get down!” Alexander Cain bellowed.
A hundred other warnings joined his own, but they came too late. The line of dark figures holed up on the mezzanine of the old skyscraper had already snaked their rifle barrels into view. Before the members of the ambassadorial convoy from Bristol could raise their heads, three dozen muzzle flashes winked in the gleaming midday heat.
The first volley killed Geoffrey Oppenheimer’s son and his two nieces, along with three of his other companions. Red mist fizzed into the air as they dropped to the cracked pavement, and the procession of carts, horses, and trailers scattered like insects. Then the air filled with cracks, whines, and screams, and Alexander ducked back under cover.
So close, they were so close to home. Only fifty feet separated them from the safety of the fortified walls of the compound around Canary Wharf Tower. But it was all open ground without a speck of rubble to shield them. The bastards had known right where to spring their trap.
The guards up on the compound’s walls returned fire, still yelling for Oppenheimer’s group to flee, but Alexander doubted they were hitting their marks. The majority of the enemy had likely fled already, ducked back into the endless tracts of chrome and steel that made up the city’s bulk. They would never find them if they searched for a week.
Although he was stranded behind the pillar of the underground parking lot, which exploded and fragmented as rounds ricocheted all around him, he had a sense that there was little of Oppenheimer’s group left to save. It had been the same since the ambassadorial convoys had started arriving from the outer settlements. They had been under siege for days.
Forty years ago, before the Old World had come crashing down, commuters had squeezed along these streets in their millions. The skyscrapers had gleamed then—steel and glass spires that stood testament to man’s dominion over all the world. The concrete, too, had been fresh and smooth, and the air had been alive with radio and microwaves, transmitting billions of messages and voices.
Things had changed since the End. The City of London, the small nexus that lay in the centre of London’s sprawling bulk, was a city no longer. It was a mausoleum. No computer had whirred nor phone trilled for decades. All the electronics had turned to dust that day, at the same time as almost every man, woman, and child had vanished suddenly, leaving empty clothing crumpling to the ground and a cascade of falling jewellery.
Only a few had survived. The Early Years had almost finished them, but humanity had pulled through. Since then, they had all faced countless trials and tribulations, but none as bad as now. A famine had levelled any crop worth harvesting, and a blood feud had erupted across the land. An army was gathering, bearing down on the last remnants of civilisation. All that stood between them and a new Dark Age were a few