Chapter Twelve
They didn't let Grey train with us any more after that. Laurie told me he had be sent out into SubWar early. She said that the door to his cell had been found open and none of the Wardens seemed to know how it had happened.
Laurie wouldn't say it, but I could tell that she suspected he'd been let out. She confided in me that a few Wardens enjoyed the violence that their job exposed them to.
Our training progressed well, though I had to work around the various injuries I'd received during my fight with Grey. I was able to throw my opponents on the mat more and more often but I still couldn't land a hit on Laurie. My best attribute by far was my aim. By the end of training, Laurie said I could throw a knife and aim a gun as well as a Warden.
At the end of our final day of training, Laurie gave us a few tips on surviving in SubWar.
"I'm hoping of course that you won't need any of this training, but I'm happy with the progress you all made nonetheless. Your role as a messenger is fairly easy in theory. Just don't take stupid risks. Your only job is to run back and forth between units of your side's fighters. Realistically, they should be using walkie-talkies but they do it this way so they have a low level punishment to hand out to people like you." She smiled like that was a good thing.
"How will people know not to shoot at us?" I asked.
"You will have two red stripes running around the front and back of your jackets which mark you as messengers. If someone purposefully attacks a messenger the punishment is fighting their next battle unarmed on the front line so it doesn't happen often. You'll have weapons, don't be afraid to defend yourselves if you have to."
"Not often isn't the same as never," Taylor pointed out.
"No, but it is really rare. I've never seen it happen," she said, flicking her braid back over her shoulder a little too casually.
"Are we supposed to split up or can we move around together?" I asked.
"Technically you should split up," she said lowering her voice. "But don't bother. You'll be safer together and I don't want you getting hurt." Hook-nose was walking past us as she spoke. He stopped to look at us with a frown on his face.
"Thank you Laurie," I said, taking her hand. "I know you had to oversee our training but you didn't have to take such an interest in making sure we were good. And you didn't have to be my friend either."
"That's okay. Just please try not to get yourselves killed." She squeezed my hand then left so that we could have one last night's sleep before our first day in SubWar.
As she moved away, Hook-nose narrowed his eyes at her and turned to join a group of Wardens who started talking in hushed tones.
I woke with a feeling of dread in my stomach. As Laurie had told us, our jackets now had two bold, horizontal red stripes that ran around our torsos marking us out as messengers. There were also holsters and belts for the weapons we would receive later.
We dressed and headed down to the practice room.
The huge chamber had been cleared overnight. All of the training equipment was pushed against the walls and the convicts were assembled in a group in the centre.
We were the last to arrive and we moved quietly to join the back of the crowd.
"You'll be joining with units that already know what to do, just take your lead from them. You'll see Wardens surrounding the area but you are not to address us or try to engage us in combat. If you attempt it, you will be shot down, as will anyone standing near to you," Uni-brow addressed the group from the front of the room. He turned and opened a large, shuttered door that had been concealed behind the gun rack at the far end of the practice room. We spilled out into the bright sunlight.
Outside, there was a line of convicts who had completed their sentences waiting to come back in. They looked dishevelled and some were sporting various injuries but they all shared a look of relief clearly written over their faces. I hoped I'd be in their position in a few months.
Laurie moved up the line until she was next to me. She gave me a reassuring smile and I tried to return it.
We marched in a fairly well organised unit for about three miles. The immediate area was primarily brown dust and mud, just like the land outside the city, but we were surrounded at a distance on all sides by a huge, all consuming barrier of green. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was hard to make out any details but my heart pounded with a mixture of fear and longing.
"Is that the contaminated area?" I asked Laurie.
"Yes." She glanced at the green wall. "It gives me the creeps, but we do the contamination checks constantly and this cleared area is fine."
It looked beautiful to me, like the way the world should be.
It was soon apparent that the battlefield wasn't just some flat, open area. As we drew closer I realised it was filled with trenches, tunnels, hideaways and general lumps and bumps in the terrain.
All sorts of things from big sheets of metal to brick walls were strewn about, creating pathways that crisscrossed the combat zone.
Ahead of us the other units in our team were ready for the battle, already lined up and waiting to go. In the distance, far across the battlefield I could just make out the opposing units lining up too.
"I'm patrolling the east side." Laurie pointed over to our left. "If you can try to stay over there I can try and keep an eye on you," she whispered.
"Thanks," I whispered as she took off, swinging a rifle over her shoulder. Her hip holsters now held two pistols and the taser was gone. All of the Wardens looked more intimidating than usual.
The people in front of us were moving forwards and being armed with knives and guns which they slid into their belts and holsters.
I picked my weapons with care, fixing four throwing knifes along my belt, a pistol in a holster on my left hip and a pump action shotgun which I slung over my back. I topped it off with as many replacement bullets as I could fit into my pockets and moved aside.
I spied Grey lined up in the ranks in front of us and ducked my head. My injuries were mainly healed though my head still felt bruised and tender. I was lucky he hadn't shattered my cheek bone and I had no inclination to repeat the incident. Taylor and Evan followed me through the crowd to the ranks on the lefthand side of the unit.
We waited while the last convicts were armed and took their positions within the ranks. I could feel my pulse quickening and my palms growing slick. My mouth felt dry and I licked my lips, trying to regain some moisture.
Taylor placed his hand lightly on my back and I smiled up at him, he was trembling nearly as much as me. It was quiet. The air was alive with tension and the seconds dragged by endlessly as we waited for the command to begin.
I tried to slow my breathing but my pulse was thrumming uncontrollably. I didn't want to think about what might happen when we entered those trenches. I wanted to run, to get away from SubWar, the city and everyone in it.
I glanced at the forest again wondering why no one ever took the chance. An image of the contaminated humans entered my thoughts. Overlong arms and mutated claws that could rip a person apart in a moment. Hungry eyes that had haunted my dreams as a child. The staring, gaunt expression of a monster that was all too human. And even if there weren't any left out there, it was what I would become if I was exposed. Death would be better than that.
"Forward!" a cry went up and the crowd around us roared as it surged towards the battlefield.
I blinked away my overactive imagination as Taylor pulled me along with him, his fingers digging into my arm as he fought not to lose me in the crowd. The crush of bodies was claustrophobic, made worse by how short I was. People shoved and jostled as they made their way onto the battlefield and I had no choice but to go with them.
Taylor tugged me aside as we let the rest take the lead. I jumped down into a trench, quickly followed by Taylor and Evan. Everyone was disappearing into the labyrinth ahead of us.
"Maybe it won't be so hard to survive this after all." I smiled at the two of them as we tucked ourselves into
a crevice to let the fighters surge on by.
Once the last of them passed, we followed.
The walls of the trench got higher and higher as we moved along which made it gloomy. We were effectively herded onwards behind the rest as the winding path continued.
It was eerily quiet as we slowly made our way further in. I was so focused on the path ahead that I jumped at the sound of my own footsteps as the ground gave way to a huge puddle and I splashed into it. The rest of the soldiers had disappeared while we were hidden and I started to doubt whether it had been a good idea to get left behind.
The trenches were wet, cold and dim. The lack of sound was the opposite of reassuring. I wanted to believe that we were alone but my skin prickled as if eyes were following my every move.
It didn't take long for us to hear the gun shots start up ahead. I peered around a corner to see several of our fighters, dressed in our black camouflage outfits. They were pinned down behind a brick wall by about twenty opposition who were wearing dark green camouflage.
"Send for back-up!" one of our guys shouted as he saw me lurking by the trench entrance.
We turned back the way we had come, looking for anyone else from our unit. We took a left at a fork in the trench and found six of our guys readying themselves to move forward.
"Back down the trench. Our men pinned down by a brick wall. Around twenty opposition," Taylor said as they spotted us.
They nodded their assent, turned our way and surged in the direction I pointed.
We took the first left and found ourselves at the entrance to a huge tunnel made of corrugated metal. It opened up before us and revealed a damp passageway that turned left again sharply, cutting off the view of what lay ahead.
I glanced at the other two before heading on down. Taylor caught my arm and stepped ahead of me. I frowned at him but let him take the lead.
Once we turned the corner it was pitch black inside. Every move we made echoed around us, making me shy to the side and hug the metal wall. A few shadowy shapes were just visible around us but I couldn't make out anything properly.
A loud splash made me yell out and jump backwards into the tunnel wall which echoed dully with a metallic thunk. I scrambled to grab my pistol from its holster.
"Sorry! It was me. There's water here, I didn't see it." Taylor's voice came through the darkness.
"How much water?" I hissed, straining my eyes to try and see anything in the blackness.
"Hang on," Evan said and a moment later a light flickered on. He held a small torch out in front of him. Taylor was illuminated in the dim tunnel, his boots submerged in a pool of water which stretched on ahead of him.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"They said I could have one in place of a knife," he replied as if that was an obvious trade to make. I'd rather a knife any day but I was glad he'd taken the torch.
Taylor took a step and another. The water lapped higher up over his ankles.
"The floor slopes away, I don't know how deep it will get," he said. I glanced back the way we had come. I didn't really fancy getting soaked.
"Maybe we should just go back," Evan began but stopped as we heard screaming coming from the tunnel entrance behind us.
"Go," I said decisively, running forwards into the water. I didn't want anything to do with what was happening out there.
The floor dropped away quickly and the water was up to my waist within moments. I shivered as it leached the warmth from my skin. We held our guns above our heads to keep them dry and Evan pointed the torch ahead to lead the way.
The tunnel turned to the right and kept dropping away. I regretted never having learnt to swim but it wasn't exactly an option in the city unless you lived a lot higher than I did.
It was freezing, my teeth were chattering and I couldn't feel my feet.
The screaming behind us stopped abruptly but that didn't fill me with much confidence as we pushed on.
The tunnel finally started to rise. We tried to get a balance between moving fast enough to put distance between ourselves and any pursuers, and slowly enough not to make too much noise.
Finally we stepped out of the water, dripping wet and freezing cold but the tunnel exit loomed bright ahead, making my eyes sting as we approached it. Evan clicked off his torch and we holstered our guns.
"Well, this is fun," I grumbled, trying to stop the shivering.
Taylor emerged from the tunnel first and started down the next trench. He'd barely gone a couple of steps when an opposition fighter jumped over a low wall to his right, a gun levelled at his head.
"We're messengers!" I shouted to her but she just scowled and turned the safety catch off. Before I could react, a knife flew past me and embedded itself in her chest.
"Evan?" I spun round to look at him.
I couldn't quite believe what had happened. The gun fell from the woman's hand as blood started to flow down her chest. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
"She was going to shoot him," Evan shrugged. He looked away from the woman as the blood started to drip to the dirt beneath her feet. She stumbled to her knees.
"You saved my life man. That's both of us now," Taylor said, looking stunned.
Evan shrugged again and moved on down the path. I holstered my pistol, which had made it into my hand somehow, and reached out to grasp Taylor's hand. I tried not to look at the woman as she collapsed to the ground and stared glassily at the sky.
A rational voice in my head was telling me that it was either her or Taylor but a slightly louder voice was screaming at me that I had just witnessed someone dying. Dying! She was dead.
Taylor pulled his hand from mine. My nails had dug red, moon-shaped marks into his skin, a few of which were starting to bleed. I opened my mouth to say sorry but Taylor held my gaze and I knew that he understood. He always understood.
I clenched my jaw and pushed the vision of the soldier out of my head. She would have killed him and I wouldn't waste any tears on her.
The trenches started to twist and turn, disorientating us.
"I'm not even sure which way is east anymore," I moaned after a good half an hour of aimless wandering.
A guy dressed in the colours of the opposition came tearing down a narrow gap between a wall and a huge lump of twisted metal towards us. He glanced in our direction, realised we were only messengers, and kept running. A few moments later he was followed by three of our unit who didn't pause but just ran by whooping and laughing. They were actually enjoying themselves.
One of them bumped into Evan as they passed and there was a tearing sound as his sleeve caught on the guy's knife.
"Sorry man!" the guy yelled over his shoulder as he chased his friends out of sight. Evan glanced at his tattered jacket and used his own knife to cut away the torn material. As he did I noticed a tattoo, a rose tangled in thorns, that spiralled around his wrist.
"What's your deal?" I asked him suspiciously. "That's a Dweller tattoo."
Evan gave me a look that said he didn't appreciate being called a Dweller.
"How come you're here?" I pushed on. "What did you do?"
He regarded me for a moment before replying. "I killed a man," he said simply.
I took a step back and bumped against Taylor.
"What?" I gasped.
"I'm not like Grey. I didn't enjoy it." He looked at his boots and took a breath. "I found him attacking my neighbour. There was blood everywhere, she was screaming and I just snapped. Picked up a knife and here I am.
The Guardians felt that justice had been served but they wanted to send out a message against vigilantism so I got four months as a messenger."
"That's horrible," I said finally.
"It's fine." He looked away from me. "Are we gunna stand around here all day?"
"No. Let's go," Taylor said and we continued down through the gap.
The sounds of shots being fired were getting louder. We crouched by a wall and Taylor tried to pull me bac
k. I shoved him off with a frown and peered around the corner.
The brickwork next to my face suddenly exploded in a puff of grit and debris as a bullet hit. I snatched my head back out of view, before my attacker could take another shot.
"You okay?" Taylor asked anxiously, pulling me around to face him.
"Yeah," I replied, though my heart was beating so fast I thought it might be trying to break free of my chest. He kept hold of me until I shoved him off again. "Quit babying me."
A scream burst through the air but was quickly cut short.
"Move up!" the order was given and we heard the sound of quick, pounding feet moving away from us.
I peeked around the corner again. A body was lying still on the ground but, other than that, there was no one.
"It's clear," I told the others.
I ran across the gap, staying close to the ground, to gain cover by a big sheet of metal. I checked it was clear again and signalled Taylor and Evan to follow me. Up ahead we could hear shouting. We paused to listen.
"Which way did they go?" asked a rasping female voice.
"Left I think. Did you see the look on his face when I got his little mate?" I recognised that growl; Grey.
"He cried like a baby. Thought their little red stripes would stop us." The woman laughed.
"Idiots. It just makes them easy targets." Grey again.
"He didn't even raise his gun. C'mon we can catch the other two." I peeked around the corner to see Dolly, with her half head of vivid red hair turn and follow Grey down a narrow passageway. A messenger in green was lying dead on the ground. I suppressed a shiver.
"He's with Dolly," I whispered to the others.
"I heard she burnt her husband alive in their bed," Evan whispered back.
"Why?" I asked, horrified.
"Apparently he gave her a funny look." He shrugged at me. "Don't ask me to fathom the mind of a psychopathic murderer."
"Well they turned left, I vote for right," I said.
"Agreed," said Taylor.
Evan nodded.
We moved down the righthand path which started to widen slowly as we went. After about two hundred feet, the walls had moved so far apart that it couldn't be counted as a trench anymore and we were able to walk next to each other. I felt exposed without the walls closing in on us.
A shadow moved ahead and we shrank back to hug the wall on the righthand side of the clearing.
For a moment nothing happened and Taylor started to move forward again. I caught hold of his arm and pointed at the ridge on the other side of the opening. A dark shape was outlined against the bright sky. Squinting, I managed to pick out several other shapes.
"Ambush," I mouthed to the others.
Taylor pointed to his red stripes and shrugged but I wasn't convinced. I looked at Evan who shook his head and pointed back the way we had come. I nodded in agreement and tugged Taylor's sleeve to make sure that he followed as we snuck back along the path to the crossroads.
"Shall we just keep heading back?" Evan asked, obviously not keen on the idea of following Grey. "I don't think running into him would make for a happy reunion."
I started to agree with him when we heard gunshots coming from the direction we were about to take.
"Ambush, Grey or gun fight?" I asked pointing in the different directions as I named the dangers down each of them. We all looked towards the sound of the gun fight just as a merciless screaming joined the sound of shots.
"Grey is probably long gone by now," Taylor pointed out.
I pushed away a shudder as we headed in the direction my attacker had taken.
The sounds of shooting were moving closer and we broke into a run, taking several turns to get away. We pulled up short inside a dug out alcove and tried to catch our breath.
It seemed like we had finally managed to put some distance between ourselves and the shooters.
"Has anyone noticed that we haven't exactly been doing much message carrying?" Evan asked.
"I get the feeling it's just an excuse. We're really here to be scared straight," I replied.
"If I tell them it's worked already do you think we can go home now?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"Give it a try when we get back tonight," Evan said and we all laughed.
"Now where?" I asked, peeping around the corner.
There was a thudding of feet approaching and we shrank back into our hidden crevice. I pulled out my pistol and took the safety off. Taylor did the same.
The pounding got louder and we saw three members of our unit swing into view being closely pursued by seven of the opposing army. They sped past our hiding spot and into the wide, open area outside it.
I knew we weren't supposed to intervene but, before I could stop myself, I had taken a step forward and levelled my gun at the lead pursuer, my finger on the trigger. A hand clasped around my elbow, fingers digging into the tender skin.
"Do you want to get us all killed?" Evan hissed.
His eyes burned into mine as I glared at him. The moment had passed and the pursuers fell on our men with knives drawn. It was over before I could look away. Evan yanked me back into our hiding place.
"I could have helped them." I frowned at him.
"No. You could have killed one man, then there would still be six of them. Three would have turned our way and opened fire and we have no cover here beyond these shadows. The other three still would have killed those men," Evan snapped.
"You can't know that," I spat at him. My hands trembled as I flicked the safety back into place and holstered my pistol.
"It wasn't worth the risk. If those men were here to fight then their crimes meant they deserved that punishment. Ours did not."
"So we should just let them die? Even if we could have helped?"
"Who are you to say the other men deserve death more? Just because they aren't on our side?"
I could hear the truth in his words, but it still felt wrong to let people die in front of me when I could have done something to stop it.
"Let's just keep moving," Taylor said finally.