Chapter 36: Death is Not the End

Of course it would be him.

“Get it over with,” Lily said.

63 choked out a hoarse laugh and stood, wearing the same horrible, mad grin she remembered from Laketown. All teeth and blood.

“I’m not going to kill you, I’m your honor guard. Your escort.” He made an abbreviated movement that could’ve been the start of a bow, then laughed again. “Are you ready?”

Michael gripped Lily’s good arm.

“What are you talking about,” she sighed.

“Justice! I did the impossible. I brought 74 back here, but no one cared. Maybe they’ll care when I let him out. Perhaps they’ll have time before they asphyxiate.”

Lily watched him gather magazines, moving in stiff jerks. He was pale and unsteady, his black coat shiny and wet.

He reloaded his rifle, then frowned at them. “Well? Are you coming? I already cleared the way.”

Skeptical, Lily tried her pistol’s weight in her off hand. Her aim would be good enough at such close range if he tried double-crossing them. Triple-crossing? She felt dizzy.

“Kill him,” Michael breathed. He moved as if to take the pistol and do it himself, but Lily shook her head and pointed to the meandering line of dark blood following him. 63 was already dead.

Lily eyed the corridor ahead. “Where are we going?”

“The atrium. Out.” He coughed. “What are you going to do with him?”

This was so wildly bizarre that she wasn’t sure how to combat it. “None of your business, I think.”

He laughed like she’d told a prizewinner and staggered on.

Daylight gleamed ahead of them, starkly different from the bright white industrial glare. The hallway sloped down and widened and opened like a mouth into a whitewashed masterpiece of a room, twin to the entry hall in Sierra Base but magnified by ten.

The ceiling soared and arced, all points converging above a round steel vault door dozens of feet high. A testament to the power of the Coalition. All before it like fallen leaves lay a full regiment of Regulars. Maybe more.

They lay draped over sandbagged barricades, many of them shot in the back. 63 had never done all this by himself; there were even two black-clad bodies among the rest, crumpled and silent.

He saw her looking and grinned, panting like a dog. “I’m the best. They’ll see that now, they’ll beg forgiveness.”

“Who?” She couldn’t help it. Horror had loosened her tongue.

“Them.” 63 pointed up at nothing. Or perhaps at the flags, hanging in regimental rows from the ceiling. “It.”

He spat blood on the white stone floor and smiled even wider.

The great vault door stood ajar. A foot and a half of watery grey sunlight spilled across the debris-strewn atrium, catching on curls of smoke. Outside the crackle of gunfire disturbed the silence of early evening.

And from behind them, up the corridor and back, came shouting. The whoop of another alarm.

Michael stood frozen, staring after the sound. Lily let go of his hand.

“Go, I’m right behind you.” When he hesitated, she added, “I need you to recon. Ok?”

This got through to him. He drew his weapon and slipped out the door, a spot of black against the whitened steel. Once he was gone Lily let out a long breath. One more loose end to tie up.

63 was hauling corpses off one of the barricades, but he turned at the sound of the blade whispering out of its sheath.

“Go ahead,” he said pleasantly, opening his arms. “You promised.”

Lily extended the knife hilt first.

He squinted to read the number etched into the blade. Then he accepted it, smiling even wider. “I should’ve shot you when I had the chance.”

“Same here.”

He laughed as he propped his rifle on the barricade, sighting back the way they’d come. Blood dripped steadily. “Go away. I have more killing to do.”

Satisfied, she slid out into the wide plaza without a backwards glance.

Visibility was poor and growing poorer. A haze obscured the buckled concrete, the bodies and the blood. An armored vehicle had crashed through the wall of a warehouse across the plaza, and thick black smoke boiled from its shattered windows.

Michael had ducked behind a sandbagged firing position, below a mounted rifle hanging slack in its harness. He dragged her down as a bullet whined and ricocheted off the vault door.

He pointed at the glint of watery sunlight off a sniper’s lens in a broken window away northeast of them. Sun in his eyes, Lily thought. And smoke. Still, he could get lucky.

Gunfire erupted behind them too — one rifle, then many.

Michael nodded at the smoking warehouse. “We can make it.”

Lily didn’t blame him for forgetting. She didn’t need to gauge the distance to know she’d never get there even with two good legs. She was starting to feel lightheaded.

Inside the base the firing stopped. Ragged shapes moved though the haze. Converging. They couldn’t stay, they couldn’t go.

An engine growled. Gunfire erupted; close, but not immediate. Not at them. A series of small explosions, maybe grenades, caused the shapes in the smoke to fall back.

Lily clamped her hand down harder. “Promise me something.”

Michael started to protest, but Lily shook her head and grabbed his arm.

“Swear to me you’ll keep running and you won’t look back. I’ll be right behind you. Say it.”

But that wasn’t what he said.

Lily could only look at him. Her hand was going numb. The inferno in her heart consumed her.

The first Regular emerged from Alpha Base, gun first. Michael shot him dead. It happened so fast it seemed like he’d fired before the man’s head even emerged.

Lily rested her own head on his back. After the caravan, partway into the second or third day of riding, she’d fallen asleep like this. At the time he’d seemed mildly embarassed on her behalf. But he wouldn’t remember that. She’d never get to tell him.

She should’ve said it back. Her mouth moved without sound. The hand that did not hold the gun was warm.

Movement. Contact right. She wanted to tell them we’re with you, let us help you, but who would believe her dressed like this?

Michael killed that man, and the next one. Or Operative 74 did. He had blurred, become intangible. Leaning against the sandbags — how had she gotten down there? — Lily watched him work, holding her pistol in numb fingers.

Out of the smoke a man rushed up behind him, another partisan, knife raised. Her finger tightened on the trigger and then the face of that boy in the locker room was superimposed over the attacker’s and she forgot how to fire.

Michael didn’t seem to feel the knife. His own blade opened the man’s throat.

They came in earnest now. He killed with pistol and knife and then just with his knife until they were all dead and he was helping her up, red-handed. Looking her over for injuries but missing the one that mattered.

Lily tasted dust. Someone would need to see to his shoulder, bandage the stab wound. She wasn’t sure she’d have time.

No one else came out. Nothing moved at all. His arm around her back kept her up as they got ready to move.

An engine. A shout.

Orange flame underlit the smoke. A flaming troop carrier tore into the plaza, tires squealing, open doors flapping like limbs. Immediately it came under fire from the partisans and in the chaos Michael pulled them back down, covering her head.

Lily couldn’t feel her legs. She focused every last particle of will into her hand.

Shrapnel rained like falling stars as the vehicle smashed into the side of the dome and exploded. She felt the heat. At least they’d die under the sky and die together.

Shouting. Panic. The partisans scattered, spraying bullets wildly as they fled.

In the carrier’s wake marched an Operative.

She strode out of the smoke, wisps of it trailing from her shoulders as she engaged them, all of them.

Michael moved with abrupt violence. Lily grabbed him. “No! She’s with us!”

A man died on Anya’s knife. Another, panicking, shot her twice in the abdomen before she put the blade through his eye, pulling him around in front of her to absorb a volley of gunfire, still advancing, firing beneath his arm—

The pistol tumbled from Lily’s nerveless fingers. She exhaled sharply as red spread across grey, leaking through her fingers; Michael noticed finally and slapped his hand over hers in a panic, but she shook her head.

Anya finished clearing the square. Neat, efficient, pure economy of motion. Open her up and there would be gears inside, pulleys, blinking lights like the guts of that computer machine. She was awful. She was fantastic.

The transport’s back end sagged with a bang. Then, all quiet.

Anya jogged over. She wasn’t even out of breath. Ash striped her sweating face and her hair had come loose from its braids. Her sleek black body armor was cratered.

She signed something, then jerked her head and pointed around the corner. She wouldn’t look at Michael and moved as if to prevent him from seeing her, even in profile.

“Who are you,” he demanded, trying to grab her arm. “What is your designation.”

“23,” Lily said. “You know her. Knew her. Anya, do we…can you find another of those?”

Anya looked back at the burning vehicle. Then she shrugged, and motioned for them to follow her.

They went around the side of the dome. Anya took point. Michael stared at the back of her head with such intensity that he stumbled and Lily had to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.

A darkness yawned in the shell of rust-stained concrete. Yellow markings on the ground proceeding inward; signs Lily didn’t bother guessing at. Two bodies lay like broken dolls at the base of a ramp, blood pooling beneath them. Tire tracks. Lines of vehicles marching off into the dark behind them.

Banks of fluorescent lights blinked on above them as Anya grabbed keys from a board on the wall. Covering her eyes, she paced down the line shooting out tires. Suspensions groaned as transport after transport sagged, sparks flying.

Michael watched, frowning.

“You do know her,” Lily said quietly. “You grew up together, you just don’t remember.”

He frowned deeper.

“She’ll tell you all about it.” Blood ran through her fingers, landing softly on the floor. Like rain.

Lily collapsed gratefully as an engine coughed, then snarled to life. Michael shouted something — he never raised his voice — and picked her up.

It smelled chemical inside the transport. The bench seat was hard molded plastic. Michael was demanding a medkit and demanding that Anya answer him.

They kicked forward, up the ramp and out into the grey daylight, careening around a corner and bumping over rubble. There was the vault door. Burning metal framework. Bodies. Muzzle flashes. Regulars spilling out. Partisans spilling in.

Then Alpha Base was gone. They rocketed through a maze of streets. Vague forms, human-shaped, lunged at them out of the smoke and disappeared in a cloud of exhaust. Bullets rattled off the windshield and chassis like hail on a tin roof.

This was enough, wasn’t it? She’d done enough? Lily’s grasping fingers left trails of red across Michael’s forearm. Things were getting slippery.

She should’ve said it back.

Impossibly they picked up speed, ploughing through barricades, roadblocks, the corpses of lesser vehicles. The wall dominated the horizon.

The gate. The gate was closed.

Whiteness chewed at the corners of Lily’s vision. They hauled hard right, speeding along the curve of the wall, and she glimpsed a blackened hole gaping in the bone-white expanse ahead. People spilled through it. Running, falling.

Michael braced his feet against the partition in front of them, curling his body around hers, cupping the back of her head as they rocketed straight for the opening, which was not big enough.

The engine snarled, metal squealed against metal, tires churned rubble. They reversed, barrelled forward again. Stuck fast. It hardly mattered; she’d beaten them, she’d won.

Afterimages burned on the backs of her eyelids like branching lightning: red warnings blinking on the control panel. Anya’s pale face set in a determined scowl as she reversed yet again. They ran something over.

A rifle barked and was answered tenfold. Michael covered her. Motion. Violence.

And they were flying.

The book in her lap was open to a two-page spread, a photo of sunlight falling in bars through the canopies of huge trees. Her small finger smudged the glossy page as her mother tied yarn around the ends of her plaits.

She stood over a body in a ditch. She watched grass grow across the Wasteland like a carpet unrolling. The city gates opened and she smelled the grey sea.

Lighter than air.

“Lily, look at me. Lily?”

He must’ve said her name a thousand times, and she must’ve been dead, because when she focused on him he slumped over and hid his face in the crook of his arm. The medkit lay empty on the floor, and a thin rubber tube connected his other arm to hers.

She drew in a deep breath and tried to say it, but couldn’t quite form the words.

“It’s ok,” he told her, as he took her hand. “I know.”