Ansell’s mouth was dry. He was bone-weary, breathing ragged breaths and squinting tired eyes. The night chilled him to shivers as he ambled towards Arnero’s Shanty. He didn’t know how, but the boy had managed to blow it. Plumes of black billowed towards the moon. Hot red fires burst through gaping holes in the structure, antagonised by falling rubble. Low creeks and long groans sounded as cars slipped and fell into the fires. The screams of violence bounced about the street maniacally. He smiled. He knew he was right about Jude. The boy had something special. He had mettle.

  A delirious girl burst from a gloomy side street, and snarling and spitting, she charged him. He swatted her lazily with his hatchet and staggered on. Crowds of screaming people poured out of the falling shanty pursued by the hordes of delirious Crocheads. A gaunt man draped in shadow ran towards the madness, clutching a long bundle of blankets far too big for his skeletal frame. Fool, thought Ansell as he spat blood to the ground. Then he laughed flippantly as he realised he was doing the very same thing.

  He could turn back, he could slip away in the madness. Go home and deal with Brunner when the dust had settled. But he knew he couldn’t. The damned boy had a spell over him. He’s not your son. Your son is dead.

  His wife’s voice. The boy is your light. He could be your salvation.

  He felt a surge of something. Emotion, perhaps. Was it worry? No, it was stronger than that. Fear. Yes, it was fear – parental fear, that special kind of fear only a father understood. The fear he had felt every single day of the pregnancy. The fear that had become real and swallowed him, destroyed him, and spat him back out. He couldn’t lose another; it wouldn’t be fair.

  A surge of energy erupted through him. His eyes narrowed on a gaping hole in the shanty wall. He dropped his hood, tossed his cap, and threw the blanket from his shoulders. Hatchet in one hand, stake in the other, he tore towards Arnero’s with frightening speed.

  He leapt through the flames and landed in the dust of the Trials arena, only to be engulfed by screams and gunshots and violence. A man leapt at him, clawing and grabbing, until he slotted a stake through his mouth and punched out the back of his throat. A woman barged past him pursued by three delirious Crocheads. He ripped his shotgun from his leg and blasted the two front runners to the ground in flurries of red mist. The third launched him from his feet, and he rolled under the shell of a car and came up on the other side. He looked over the car, but the man was on top of the woman now, teeth snapping at her neck. He moved to help, but saw her scales and left her to her fate.

  He hacked his way through the riot and limped up the ramp to the next floor. Quieter here. Pockets of violence sprawling across the floor were a contrast to the bustling riots below. The whole shanty on one side was sinking in on itself, cascading rubble and falling fire raining down. He glanced at the ramp up. A bottleneck of delirious Crocheads forcing their way up were held back with volleys of machine gunfire. There was no way up for him.

  He burst towards the collapsing corner, spinning away from the hungry arms of the Crocheads, chopping those down who blocked his path. He dove towards the collapse, dodging a falling caravan, which flattened the horde in his wake. He pulled himself up. Swirling dust and flames licked at him from above. Hands grabbed at him from below as he scrabbled up the moving scree. Concrete thumped down around him.

  Up through the rubble and debris and fire he climbed, coughing and spitting dust. His fingers were bleeding. He looked down at the gaping hole, and through the smoke, he caught a glimpse of the ground floor, and his stomach turned at the drop. The blood made it hard to keep hold of the loose concrete. Each handhold he found blissful as he rested the searing muscles in his back and the dull ache in his arm. He climbed on through the smoke and he thought he could see a lip, the handhold he needed to pull himself up and over to the floor above. He clutched it, and it groaned and detached, plummeting past him. He fell back and skidded in the rubble, but his feet found firm ground, and he reset and pushed on. Finally, his wet fingers clasped the lip, and his waning strength was enough to pull him up.

  Jude. There, on his knees, and a girl draped across him, a horde bearing down on them, pouring out of the dank of the down ramp. Far too many to handle. He’d faced enough of them now to know his limits. His stomach lurched as his fear clasped him again, the boy's death inevitably hurtling towards him.

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  Ansell moved to run, to throw himself in his path and gift him a few more seconds of life. Thrusting his hand into his pocket in search of shells, his fingers felt the cold bumpy metal of a grenade. It was a risk. The blast might kill the boy. He’s dead anyway. He ripped the pin and tossed the grenade into open ground between the violent stampede and this boy who meant nothing, and somehow everything, to him. It bobbled and rolled and came to a stop, and for a moment, it rested quietly until a bone-shaking blast carved a chasm in the floor. The horde charged into it. As they rained down into the fires below, their shrieks and snarls were silenced by flame.

  Ansell staggered through the black smoke. His ears ringing, eyes blurry, dripping in sweat, blood, fear.

  “Jude!” He fell to his knees and crawled on, choking on smoke. “Fuck! Jude?”

  “Here…Ansell…here.”

  He followed the voice, and as the smoke cleared, he found Jude resting there, cradling the girl in his arms. She was limp and blood-tracked from her ear and down her neck. Her face was black with soot and sticky with mottles of blood. Jude’s face was ashen and battle-scarred. Tear tracks carved through the grime, and his bright eyes were bloodshot and weary. Ansell crawled towards him, but the gaping hole in the floor kept them apart.

  “Is she dead?”

  Jude looked down at the girl and up at Ansell. He nodded as his tears rolled and rolled. They were those tears that fell free, left the eyes sore and the head ringing, and his mouth yawed with silent agonal sobs.

  Ansell dropped his chin to his chest. He shook his head. He couldn’t think. Damn ears were ringing. He felt tears in his eyes, and as he looked up to console the boy, he saw the girl’s hand climbing towards Jude’s face. It wiped away a tear, and he laughed and cried some more.

  “Zuri! You’re alive! Shit, she’s alive, Ansell.”

  “You have to get her out. Now! Down the ramp, get away from here.”

  Jude was smiling now. “Jump the gap, Ansell. Come on, let’s go, we can make it.”

  He couldn’t. The gap was too much, and he knew it. “It’s over for me, kid. It’s too far. Don’t argue, there’s no time.”

  “No!”

  “I’ll try and go back the way I came,” he said weakly, glancing at the flaming sinkhole in the corner.

  “I won’t leave you!” shouted Jude.

  “You have to or she’ll die. Go to the rebels. Find Mighty Mick, tell him about Brunner. Tell him he’s behind Croc, that it’s all about control and pacifying the people. That information is the key. It’ll spark the rebellion, thousands will rise up. War. The tide will turn. That’s how to get to Brunner.”

  “I will. I swear. I’ll get to him – for you! Ansell…I just need to say…”

  “Enough, boy! Go. Now!”

  “You would have made a fine father.”

  A huge slab of concrete plummeted from the ceiling, followed by a long dull creek. An ominous warning that it was to come crashing down imminently.

  “My mumma,” the girl groaned, pointing her finger past Ansell’s shoulder. He turned and saw a ghoul of a woman stumbling through the smoke, gaunt and thin, her naked body covered in black scales. “Please. Jude. Save my mumma,” Zuri pleaded.

  “It’s too late for her, Zuri. She’s plagued with the black scales!”

  “You…said…you wanted to save them, so save my mumma, Jude.”

  “I can’t. We have to go now. I’m not risking you for her. She’s weak, like my father…she chose Croc over you!”

  He pulled her to her feet and hefted her over his shoulders, unperturbed by her weak fists thumping his back. He staggered on towards the down ramp, stumbling through the smoke and debris. He turned to Ansell.

  “Put her out of her misery. Save her.” Jude nodded with a defiant glint, and Ansell shivered at the change in the boy. He felt a stab of guilt in his gut.

  Ansell stared at him with tears in his eyes, his teeth grinding. He spat, then coughed, choked, and shook his head. He climbed to his weary legs and turned, strode through the falling rubble, and snatched the woman. One last time, he glanced back at Jude, then bundled the woman away into the black smoke, followed by the haunting screams of her daughter.