around the entrance.
‘Martha . . . I better . . .’
She nodded, let go of his hand and shoved his shoulder. ‘Go! Go, go, stupid!’
He stepped away from her as torchlight from the boys’ end flickered down the walkway and onto them both. Adam dropped down quickly on to one knee and aimed a shot at the torch. He heard a cry and the torch spun and dropped, lancing light in all directions. There was a clattering sound as the boys ducked backed behind cover.
‘Yeah!’ Martha cheered weakly. ‘Now go, go,’ she said again, shooing him away with a flapping hand.
‘Sir?’ It was Bushey’s voice calling down from the far end. ‘Better move it!’
‘Take good care of her . . . she needs you,’ whispered Martha still smiling. ‘She likes you . . . now go!’
He turned to abandon her, feeling like the lowest form of life for doing so. Then he stopped. ‘Martha, do you want to . . . to leave now? Right now?’
She looked at him. ‘You mean . . . die?’
He looked up at the far end of the walkway. ‘You don’t want those boys to get hold of you alive.’
She gave it only a heartbeat’s thought, then nodded. ‘Oh, yes, please.’
Don’t fuck around, Adam. Make it quick for her.
‘Close your eyes, then,’ he said, reaching for her shoulder and squeezing it affectionately. She did as she was told and then clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘Mum’s coming, Nathan,’ she uttered softly. ‘Just hang on for me, baby.’
Adam shouldered the gun, aimed at her forehead and closed his eyes as he fired.
Then he was running; running with the sound of his boots making the walkway ring and rattle in his ears. Sparks chased him and he felt the air on one side of his hunched-over head and shoulders hum as a solitary shot narrowly missed its mark.
He was out of the other end and lying on his back next to Bushey less than ten seconds later, gasping ragged lungfuls of air and looking up at shifting clouds above haloed by the moon. The silhouette of Bushey’s head leaned over him and he was saying something. Adam felt like he was a thousand miles away, watching the moon above, the skimming silver-haloed clouds, the dark outline of head and shoulders and the muffled bellow of a faraway voice. Watching it on a telly; a storefront telly through the plate glass of a window.
‘Sir!’ Bushey’s voice was getting louder, cutting through, pulling him back, reluctantly, from this odd sensation of calm detachment.
‘Sir! Adam!! You okay? You hit?’
Bushey was shaking his shoulder. Adam took in another breath of cool night air and finally managed to sit up. ‘I’m fine,’ he grunted. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I thought the bastards’d got you.’
He turned over, propped himself up on his elbows to look back down the walkway. There was plenty of movement on the far platform. The boys gathering their numbers again. Probably stacking up bodies on yet another supermarket trolley, getting ready to run the same tactic again.
Bushey leaned closer to him so he wasn’t overhead. ‘We’re fucked now. We’re out of ammo.’
Adam said nothing. If they tried the trolley trick again that was going to be it for them. In fact, even if they just ambled over without any cover at all, that was pretty much it for them. He was down to half a dozen rounds left in his clip.
‘Maxwell will make an example of us,’ said Bushey. ‘I know he will. The bastard’s going to let the boys rip us to pieces.’
‘So let’s make sure we hold back a couple of rounds, all right?’
Bushey pressed out a scaffold-smile. ‘Yuh. Just don’t fuckin’ fire ’em by accident.’
Adam felt an arm on his shoulder. He turned to see Jenny settling to a crouch beside him. ‘I thought we’d lost you,’ she said.
‘I’m all right.’ He mentioned nothing about Martha. If there was time later, if there was a later, he could pass the message on then.
She bit her lip. ‘My lot want to surrender. They’re all talking about surrendering.’
‘And you?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe that Maxwell won’t be quite so bad? Maybe—’
‘He’ll do whatever he needs to do,’ said Adam. ‘That means keeping his boys happy.’
She stared at him. ‘You mean—’
‘Whatever those boys want, they’ll have.’ He gestured at those around them, cowering, crying, waiting for the boys to make their way across. ‘All these women? Do you understand?’
She looked back over her shoulder at them; women