from afar.
For a minute, he leaned against the frame and massaged his aching head, looking through slitted eyes at the silhouettes still patrolling the nearby rooftops. It seemed the vigil had been kept at least this long. Perhaps the blind groping panic had passed. He glanced back at the bed, wanting nothing more than to climb in and pull the covers over his aching head.
Then something clicked in the back of his mind, and he bolted upright, sending his head crashing into the window box ceiling.
He knew that sound. The popping and cracking came in bursts, followed by the ring of stark silence in repeating intervals. And on the brink of audibility, preceding each bout of rattling, there was shouting.
Gunfire.
He ran for the stairs. The rickety old house rumbled and creaked on its foundations to the beat of his thundering steps.
*
He hauled on his boots and duster, and was pounding the streets before he had time to lose his balance. Once he was hurtling along the cobbles, however, he wobbled a moment, caught off guard by how weak his body had become.
I’m getting lazy. It’s this place. Food off the stove, running water, electricity. A sham of Old World suburbia. It’s been enough to fool us into thinking we don’t need to be ready. The body is just a machine, and badly kept machines run down.
He grabbed a lamp post and regained his balance, then wobbled off once again, heading for the nearest sentry outpost.
Goddamn cobbles are going to break my ankle. All this used to be so easy. Christ, I’m old.
The three-storey Victorian red brick apartment block appeared up ahead. He burst in through the doorless entryway and took the stairs to the roof four at a time.
Gunshots still buzzed afar, the whip crack of small-arms fire, probably pistols and .32 rifles. It was coming in volleys, each preceded by that same barking voice. He could now tell it was far away, beyond the borders of the city in the fields, but that did nothing to quell his hammering heart.
He reached the rooftop and stopped just before the doorway. “Passage,” he called breathlessly.
A voice came from just beyond the threshold. “Password?”
Robert felt a moment’s relief at how calm the voice was. Maybe they weren’t as defenceless as he’d thought. “Creek.”
“Alright.” The sharp click of a firearm hammer being lowered.
He stepped out onto the roof and nodded to the trio perched close to the ledge on their haunches.
His relief evaporated almost immediately.
They each flicked clumsy salutes, holding onto their weapons with grim determination. Weapons too big and heavy for muscles used to suburban chores. Weapons they hadn’t known how to fire only hours ago, let alone hit anything.
Robert had tried to assign at least one veteran guard to each team, but there had been too many volunteers and little more than two dozen guards. And if he had made the teams larger, they would lose any semblance of stealth. He had been forced to put guns in untrained hands and leave them to make do.
It hadn’t seemed so very foolish at the time. How tired he must have been to become that deluded. He couldn’t afford to let himself get in that state again.
Mr Higgins was by far the oldest of the three, a grizzled stick insect of a man with a clump of frizzy white wool for hair. “Mr Strong, sir, you’re awake,” he bleated.
“I am.”
“Maybe I could suggest you go back to bed a while longer. You were in quite the delirium when you left us.”
“And you don’t look so great now,” one of his young companions said. Robert thought his name was Mark Pegg, but it could have been Danny Succo. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen, and he cringed when Robert turned his gaze on him.
The other young man, himself twenty at most, was pale, his eyes fixed on the street.
“I’m fine,” Robert said.
They all fidgeted at the bass of his reverberating impatient tone.
Two boys and an old man, sweaty-faced and shy because they’re afraid of … What, being reprimanded? Or are they afraid of not being up to scratch?
The fact that they worry means they’re not up to scratch. I need soldiers, not farmers and children.
But that was all New Canterbury had to offer. Ironic: the city was arguably home to the most powerful man in the known world, was the crown jewel of their order; yet, of all the alliance strongholds, it was also the most defenceless.
He looked at their holds on the