It’s been several hours. There have been Haters moving in and around the building above them, Matt’s sure of it, but he thinks they’ve come and gone. He says nothing to the others, because to do so would mean he’d have to deal with even more unnecessary panic and noise, and right now that’s something he could well do without. As it is he’s already wondering what hope there is for these people. The whispered conversations he’s been a party to have been pitiful. “If we’re underground, what about sanitation?” His answer to that: You get used to the smell of shit. “How long will we be down here? When will I get to see the sun again?” His response: Think yourself lucky that there’s still a chance you might actually see the sun again, no matter how long you have to wait. There’s plenty of people who’d give anything to trade places.
But for now the people down below are playing ball and are deathly silent because someone—something—is turfing through the offices at the other end of the staircase they descended to get down here. One careless noise and all their planning and effort will have been for nothing. And if things go wrong at this stage, he knows Jen’s already slim chances of getting out of the city will be slashed to zero.
The noise upstairs is increasing. Christ, it sounds like a frigging stampede, like there’s a whole pack of Haters riding roughshod over what’s left of the printing house. What if they take the truck? Matt thinks. What if they slash its tires or cut the brakes? Absolutely everything feels like it’s balanced on the most precarious of knife-edges.
It’s getting louder. Thumping footsteps everywhere. Muffled cries and shouted orders. Distant rumblings. Gunshots and detonations. The occasional belly-shaking roar of helicopters and jets racing away from the airport.
“You still got that pistol?” Matt whispers to Darren.
“Yep.”
“Many bullets?”
“Not as many as I need. It’s academic, anyway. I’d never have enough.”
There’s another crash from the shop floor above which silences him. He pulls the rest of the group closer. “If they get down here, just attack. Kick, punch, scratch, bite … whatever you need to do. Darren, only use the gun if you don’t have any other choice.”
More movement. Top of the steps. In the offices now.
“Are we going to make it?” Darren asks. Matt refuses to answer because he thinks if he doesn’t admit that they’re fucked, maybe there’s the slightest chance they’ll survive.
They’re on the other side of the door, about to break through. Matt braces himself. Until now he’s stayed alive by distancing himself from trouble and letting someone else take the heat, but how can he run when they’re at a dead end with nowhere left to go?
“Ready?” he says to Darren, but before Darren can answer the door at the top of the steps flies open.
“Don’t attack!”
Matt falls back against the wall with relief. It’s Jayce. “Thank Christ,” he says as she feels her way down. “Thought you were never coming back.”
Jayce gestures for Matt shut the door behind her. Once they’re sealed in, she produces a flashlight from inside her jacket and switches it on, filling the small space with light and taking the faintest edge off the refugees’ collective fear. She fishes in her pockets for a set of keys and, with a little effort, manages to open the padlocks which are keeping the second door secured. She throws it open, and a blast of stale air hits the gathered Unchanged like the seal has been broken on some long-forgotten tomb.
All nerves and complaints are immediately silenced when the new arrivals finally get inside their bunker. Jayce issues a couple of them with lamps. Matt goes to follow but she stops him, putting an arm across his chest. “Not you, sunshine. We’ve still got work to do.”
Jayce removes the clamps and gets behind the wheel of the truck. It’s pitch black outside now but the dark is a help, not a hindrance. Jayce flashes a light in the window: Matt’s signal to move. He gets up from where he’s been crouching behind a spool of paper the height of a car, then races across to the loading bay door which he opens with a manual hoist, Jayce having already prepped it.
Jayce starts the engine as soon as Matt’s on board and revs it hard. He gets down into the front passenger seat footwell and covers himself with a long coat, safe from prying Hater eyes. He wedges himself into position with his head against the door as the truck swerves out of the printing house and onto the road. He folds back a corner of the coat and watches Jayce. Her eyes are fixed dead ahead. She seems preoccupied. Distant. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Shut up and let me concentrate.”
There are flashes of light which illuminate her face for split seconds at a time. Matt knows that trying to plow through the chaos of this industrial estate and the battle-scarred world beyond in an unfamiliar vehicle of this size is harder than it looks. They’re unmarked and unknown: a target for everyone and no one.
Jayce grips the wheel tight. A jet takes off from the airport then races across the sky, directly crossing her line of vision. Matt can’t see it, but there’s no mistaking the noise. For a few seconds the deafening din consumes everything. When it’s faded away sufficiently, Jayce speaks. “There’s something you need to know.”
Matt feels his gut constricting with nerves. “What?”
“Things are bad. Far worse than they were.”
“But we’ve only been out here a few hours.”
“It’s a domino effect. Everything’s falling apart. I think whatever that cell we saw earlier were being primed to do, chances are they’re going to be executing their orders now if they haven’t already. We’ll be okay getting back into the city, I think, but getting out again is going to be a nightmare.”
“It always was. We knew this was going to happen.”
“Yes, but the plan was always to get in and out before the camp completely collapsed.”
Another whoosh of noise seems to take Jayce’s breath away. It sounds impossibly close. She follows the arc of a missile, then turns away at the moment of detonation. “There are thousands of fighters surrounding the city now and more keep coming. They’re more coordinated than we thought. They’ve got a chokehold on all the main approaches and they’re tightening their grip. I knew there was some level of organization, but nothing on this scale.”
“In and out. We can do this, Jayce.”