Zuri struggled under the dead weight of Jenko’s indomitable frame. His powerful hand on the side of her head forced the butt of his pistol into her cheek. Her jaw ached against the concrete. Tears rolled over the bridge of her nose and slipped from her cheek, joined by drops of sweat from the struggling brute on her back. Her eyes, anguished and empty, locked to her rocking mother less than a metre away.

  She might as well have been on the other side of the world. She scratched at the scales in the crease of her arm, searching frantically for the remnants of some decimated vein. Her anger flared up and she bucked an arm free, hammering her elbow back into Jenko’s face. He shrugged it off, his hand pressing harder still on her skull. She thought it might crack and she hoped now that it would; perhaps she could fall unconscious.

  He scrabbled at her leggings with his free hand, and she twisted and writhed and bucked, but the man was too strong and too heavy. It was just a matter of time. A formality.

  “Mumma?” Kady didn’t look. “Mumma…if there’s any part of you left in there…please, Mumma?”

  Kady looked up and her eyes locked to Zuri’s. Her hands shaking, her whole body shaking. Her hand raised up, clasping the syringe, and it slowly shook its way towards the bars. A trickle of blood left her nostril and rolled over her lips. Her fingers opened and the syringe rested there, golden and bronze, like a magnificent weapon from some tale of old.

  “Throw it to me, Mumma, let it go,” Zuri whimpered, her own arm and fingers extended, waiting for the weapon to land in her grasp.

  “No!” Kady snatched her hand shut, turned from her daughter, and vomited in her cage.

  Zuri screamed. Screamed like she'd never screamed in her life, full of furious, cynical frustration. She snapped her elbow and heard a crack, then hammered it back once more, and this time, she felt a wicked stab of pain course through her arm. Jenko yelped and she felt some weight lift. She wriggled and spun and levered herself around. Blood coursing from a split in his head poured over his eyes. His mouth was bleeding and he spat some teeth to the floor, and with a roar, he set upon her. One punch to the jaw, a second to her nose, stars and lights and the ceiling spinning madly. She felt sick. She felt cold on her forehead. As her eyes found focus, she narrowed them on the cold pressure on her head and saw the barrel of a pistol jabbed into her.

  “You’ll keep fucking still or you’ll die!” Jenko hissed, one hand on the gun and the other frantically wiping blood from his eyes.

  “Do it, shithead,” Zuri spat. “I’m already dead.”

  As she spoke, she heard a small, quiet tap. It reminded her of before The Panic. She’d be in class and a pen might roll from a desk somewhere, tap the floor, and break the studious silence. She looked towards the sound. Not a pen. A syringe! Her mother had found the will, the strength – whatever it was, she’d found it!

  Zuri threw out her arm into no man's land between the two cages. Time slowed. Jenko continued to battle the cascading blood running over his eyes, the barrel of his gun still jabbing her head. Stretching, reaching with all she had, her fingertips touched the cold plastic and finally rolled it towards her. She scooped it up and held it tight in her sweaty, bloody fist, and she hammered it into Jenko’s arm. With every ounce of strength in her body, she compressed the plunger. His bloody face contorted and twisted and lunged, but he toppled from her into a heap on the floor, his face the picture of pure ecstasy.

  “Mumma! Mumma, you – you did it…I can’t believe you did it!”

  Kady lay foetal, howling like an injured alley cat. Zuri scooped up the gun and stepped over Jenko, staggering out of her cage.

  A thunderous boom erupted with a vicious blast of wind, and the floor shook while the walls crumbled and groaned. The floor on the far side of the huge level began to crack and collapse. Caravans and trailers and tents slid away from her in clouds of dust, and thunderous clashes and clangs followed as they landed below. Her head rang like a church bell being struck with a mallet. Her legs shook and her stomach lurched. She staggered and slipped, scrambling back to her feet to scan the huge level, but there was only dust and flames and screams from below.

  Two salivating dogs, chewing up ground, bounded towards her out of a cloud of fire and dust, their ferocious teeth bared and angry. The first’s head exploded in red mist as Zuri fired off a round. Her second shot missed as the dog leapt at her and brought her down under its weight, but the third shot rattled through its stomach and out of its back, and it slumped off her and died whining. She spun and set about Jenko’s body searching for keys. She found them clipped to his belt and fumbled them loose. The floor was nearly half collapsed now, cascading down through one gaping corner. Only Arnero’s chambers were intact. The screams from below were wild and the rattling of gunfire constant.

  “What’s happening?” she said aloud.

  “I came for you,” slurred Jude as he staggered towards her, drenched in blood and sweat and dust.

  “Jude!”

  “Hey, Zuri.” He fell and pushed himself up. “I’m so sorry, truly I am. I left you.” Sobbing, he covered the final few steps towards her, and she felt his arms around her shoulders as he fell into her.

  “What’s happening? Did you do this?” she asked.

  “The suicidal rescue attempt was me, yeah. The massive explosion and the gun shots, not so much. We need to go, now, while they're all fighting.”

  “I’m so sorry Jude, for everything. You were right!”

  “No, I’m sorry, you were right. We need to move.”

  “Wait! My mumma.” Zuri grasped at Jude’s shoulder and stopped him in his tracks, pulling him towards the cage. She dropped to her knees and began thumbing keys into the padlock frantically.

  “Your mum?” Jude replied.

  “Yes, she’s alive, my dad…it’s a long story. We have to get her out!”

  “Zuri, she has the black scales. We can't save her!”

  Zuri swung on Jude, her eyes an amber inferno. “You were the one who told me they were saveable…all of them! Now help me get her out,” she ordered as she finally clicked the lock open.

  Jude groaned and rushed to her aid, and together they helped Kady up, dragging her out of the cage.

  “Come, Mumma, help yourself, please. We have to move.”

  Concrete and debris falling from the roof clattered at their heels as they moved away from the cages towards the down ramp. They skidded to a halt as a dark shape appeared through the swirling dust. Zuri raised the pistol.

  “Roger? Don’t shoot, he's with me.”

  Roger ran full pelt towards them, a bundle grasped tightly in his arms. Far too big and heavy for his skeletal frame to carry, he looked as though he could topple at any moment. Without breaking stride, he shouted to Jude, his voice ragged and uneven.

  “Go back, laddie! Back, back, get inside!”

  He burst past them, hurdled the low fence, and booted the front door of Arnero’s chambers open before disappearing inside. His face reappeared in a smashed window as Zuri was dragging her mother towards the house.

  “Arnero…on her way up, just behind me. Men with her…we don’t have long!”

  “Shit!” Zuri pushed through the door, pulling Kady behind her like an overfilled suitcase, and behind them came Jude, squeezing through and slamming the door behind him.

  “What now? We’re trapped.” Zuri backed into the door and slid down to rest at the bottom. She watched the curious little man Jude had called Roger as he cleared a dining table with his forearms, rattling and crashing the glasses and plates and empty moonshine jugs to the ground. He spun and grasped Jude at the shoulder, shoving him with surprising strength over to the window. When he spoke, his voice was gruff and deep and didn’t suit his spindly frame in the slightest.

  “Watch the window, laddie. You, girl, stand up and come here.” He fetched the bundle he had been carrying from the floor and spread it on the dining table. He selected Jude’s bow and quiver and tossed it to him with a nod, then slung an automatic shotgun over his shoulder. He turned to Zuri, looking her up and down as if he was surveying a used car, and then picked up a small pistol from the bundle, which he thrust towards her with an inaudible grunt.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Don’t call me that,” Zuri said.

  “Aye, I’m sorry, lassie. My manners. Let's take a moment to introduce ourselves, eh? Or shall we put the niceties on hold until after death?”

  Zuri peered at the skeletal little man, and her anger ebbed away; she even almost smiled. “Point taken, but still, my name is Zuri. Please use it. I don’t want the last words I hear on this earth to be condescending. I’ll take the machine pistol,” she said, thumping the small pistol back into his hand. “You can keep the pea shooter.”

  “Eh, I like her laddie,” he replied, jabbing the pistol into Jude’s belt.

  Zuri dropped to her haunches in front of her mother, pulling her up and setting her back down in a leather armchair in the small room to the rear of the house. Her face was contorted and devilish, and her arms clutched her stomach with intense force. Zuri pulled a throw from the arm of the chair, dabbed her forehead soaked in sweat, and wiped the bile from her chin.

  “Stay here, Mumma. I’ll be back, I’ll get us out of here.”

  When she returned to the front room, Jude and Roger stood guard over the window, arrow notched and shotgun aimed. They were deep in conversation, and she listened intently as she set to work barricading the front door.

  “Where’s the Grey Man?” asked Jude.

  “Fucked if I know, laddie. Like I told ye, he’s not coming back.”

  “Shit. What about the explosion?”

  “I can take the credit for that one.”

  “Why, I thought this wasn’t your fight?”

  “Aye, so did I. Until Chewie told me Arnero had sent men for me. See, Arnero wouldn’t send men for me this late on Trials night to discuss business. The bitch must have worked out I was rebel, worked out I was supplying the cause with weapons. She was going to hang me. Fucked if I know why, laddie, but her allegiances lie with the City Guard.”

  “You’re a rebel?” exclaimed Jude.

  “Aye, laddie, and it’s time I told ye the truth about yer pals. Trevor was a rebel leader, a general. Lisa killed more guards than any of us. They were going to join back up until…you know.”

  Jude stared, dumbfounded, as Roger continued.

  “You should join us. They’d be proud. And, damn, we could use a shot like you.”

  Zuri wedged a final side table into her crude barricade and slipped back into the main room. Jude looked serious. He’s aged, she thought. The scar through his forehead from the last time she saw him was ragged and threatening, his shaved head sporting spatterings of dried blood and his face grubby with sweat and ash and battle. His deep green eyes were no longer playful and naive, but she couldn’t decide on what the change in them was. Focus, perhaps. No, more than that. Angst, anger.

  “So you decided to help me get out, and by help me get out, I mean you decided to give me a shot at killing her before she kills you?”

  “Aye. Something like that. I was confused about the chaos at first, mind, until I pieced it together.”

  “Pieced what together?” Zuri interjected.

  “Well, princess Zuri,” Roger replied with a large hint of sarcasm, “I was puddled as to why Dawson would be storming Arnero’s Shanty with his full militia on Trials night. But now I know his daughter is the prisoner young laddie here wanted to break free, it all makes sense.”

  He turned to Jude and said, “Yer Grey Man must have made it to Dawson and gave him the info.”

  “No,” said Zuri, “I don’t know who this Grey Man is, but Jenko told my dad I’m here. He was supposed to come, and Arnero was going to hang Mumma in front of him.”

  “Aye, that sounds like Arnero. Such a delight she is.”

  “Speak of the devil,” said Jude through gritted teeth and with narrowed eyes.

  Zuri pushed to the window, and sure enough, there she was, charging through the gunsmoke and flames, flanked by her men, the majority behind her firing rifles down the ramp into the darkness. She reached the cages and stopped next to a bank of smashed concrete and rubble from the collapsed ceiling.

  Her clothes were blood-drenched, though Zuri suspected very little of it was hers. Her mouth and cheeks were awash with claret, and it dripped off of her angular chin into the debris. A small ornate crossbow hung at her waist, and the pistol in her hand was jabbing towards them. Her men took up around her, leaning on rubble and behind damaged cars. Those at the rear crouched at the ramp, rattling off rounds at the pursuers daring to ascend.

  “Champion! I know it’s you in there. Send out the prisoners and the old man. That’s all I ask. You can go free. Call it your prize. You have one minute.”

  “Champion?” asked Zuri, puzzled.

  “Long story,” Jude replied with an impish grin. “We can take them. We’re well-armed. Dawson’s men are pushing up behind them. We just have to hold on until they break through.”

  “Aye. You'd be right, laddie, only it might not be Dawson’s men.”

  Zuri was puzzled again and she looked at Jude, feeling relieved that he, too, didn’t seem to have an inkling as to what was going on.

  “After the explosion, I cut and ran across the street, grabbed our weapons, and rushed back for you. When I got back, it was madness. At first, I thought the explosion had sent everyone stunned and panicked. But when I started pushing through, I realised the Crocheads were rampaging. They were animals, attacking everything in arms reach. Violent bastards. Delirious!”

  “They’re rebelling?” asked Jude.

  “No. I think it’s the new drug, this Nileodil, that caused it,” Roger replied.

  “Shit.”

  “Shit indeed, laddie. We can’t wait for Dawson, it mightn’t be him. We have to fight our way out and back down the shanty through the riots.”

  “Ok. I’ll go for Arnero. There’s always a chance the men will cut and run if she dies. You two keep the soldiers busy.”

  Zuri nodded and took Jude’s hand. She looked him in the eyes and moved her mouth but nothing came out. He nodded back to her and squeezed her hand, then pushed his forehead into hers. Then he leaped into the window with lithe speed, loosing an arrow through the open, and Zuri lurched up in time to see it glance Arnero's cheek. Her face became thunderous, and her teeth bared as she growled and dropped behind the debris.

  Zuri rattled off automatic rounds at the men, her hand vibrating and shaking as she fought to control the weapon. The terrifying zip of bullets whizzing past her head and cannoning around the house fired her adrenaline into overdrive as she ducked and rolled and moved position to avoid her enemies' shots. Jude renotched, raised again, and loosed his arrow with frightening accuracy, punching through the eye of an advancing man. She looked at Roger, who sat with his back to the wall below the window, blood pouring from his chest and both arms, the shotgun idle on the floor. He looked spent. He saw her and called out. Thundering gunfire drowned his words.

  Zuri crawled under the window and popped up in a new position to see a man charging the house with a glass bottle in his hand, a flaming rag jabbing out of the neck and glowing like a beacon through the gun smoke.

  “Jude! He’ll burn us out!”

  Jude spun from his cover and drew an arrow back. A bullet hissed past his face, and he flinched and whipped the arrow down into the man’s thigh. He ducked and scrabbled for another arrow. Jumping up into the window, he notched and drew it, about to finish the man off, when a crossbow bolt thundered into his bicep. With a scream, he dropped to the floor, wide-eyed and clutching his arm.

  Zuri saw the glee on Arnero’s face as she notched another bolt to her crossbow. The man with the Molotov was closing the gap, limping and staggering, holding the flaming bottle aloft. She raised her pistol and pulled the trigger, but it clicked, desperately devoid of bullets, and she dropped to the floor next to Jude as the rattle of gunfire ceased.

  “Last chance. You’re done. Come out now, hands up, and we won’t burn you alive,” sneered Arnero.

  “Your call, Zuri,” Jude said, looking up at her dolefully, tears in his eyes. “I’m ready to die. Beside you, it won’t feel so bad.”

  “It’s death either way. Let's die on our feet, take a few more of them with us on our way out. Jude. You’ve one shot left. Try to make it count.”

  He nodded.

  “What do you say, Roger?”

  “Aye, lassie, that sounds right to me.”

  Jude groaned. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it. His face ashen and his arm drenched in blood, but his eyes bright. Zuri smiled at him and she thought she might cry. She pulled the small pistol from her waist and nodded at Roger, who was thumbing shells into his shotgun. She crooked her neck and looked into the back room where her mumma was watching through tired eyes, and she smiled a faint smile and nodded.

  “Time’s up, you foolish bitch. Now you’ll burn!” screamed Arnero.

  Zuri sprung to her feet, pulling Jude with her, and Roger leapt up behind them, pumping shells out wildly. Jude tore free of her grasp and he ran at the window. She watched in silence, stunned, scared as he leapt through it and came up on the outside in a roll, just like he had that first time she saw him. In one movement, he loosed his arrow and it punched through Arnero’s eye. Her wicked smile became a wicked scream as her weapons fell and her hands clasped at her face. He dropped his bow and dove at the man holding the flaming bottle, leaping feet first and cannoning him to the ground. The bottle smashed and the flames engulfed him as he writhed and contorted in the dust.

  Jude spun and faced Arnero’s militia. Zuri stared silently, ready to see him torn down in a torrent of their flying bullets, but none came. The men had turned to the ramp behind them, where screams and howls and anguished otherworldly roars were echoing in the darkness. Like a tidal wave of violence, swarms of delirious Crocheads poured over them, devouring them in their wake. Tearing the men apart, and tearing each other apart in a mass affray, they hammered towards Jude in the falling debris, closing the open ground towards him where he rested on his knees, awaiting his inevitable death.

  Her eyes were hot. The dust was scratchy and the salt of her tears were stinging. Her vision was blurred; she was glad, she didn’t want to watch him die. She wanted to go to him. If she ran now, he could die in her arms and her in his. She looked towards her mumma one last time and smiled at her, then turned and hurdled towards the window. Her long strides had her at Jude in seconds, and she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his shoulders, kissing his bloody cheek. She looked at the horror storming towards her and then nuzzled her face into his neck, peacefully dark. The smell of him in her nostrils, stronger than the smoke and blood and death.

  “I love you,” she heard him say.

  Then she heard a tinny rattle, quiet in the thundering noise. A metallic clanging, like someone had kicked a can, and it was bobbing along somewhere in front of her. Somewhere between her and the horde. Then the noise stopped and was replaced by a bang, so loud that it rattled her bones.