Chapter Six
Freedom can only be gained if we take it. By force.
-A Traitor
What is the best way to break out of a highly defended building? Straight ahead, guns blazing, take no prisoners? Flank the sides, looking for the quickest escape, trying to minimise your time inside a hostile territory, outmanned and outgunned? Perhaps you take the sneaky route, slowly killing and upgrading as you go along?
Joshua considered all these questions as he and Jericho and Matt poked their head out of the door of their cramped cell, leaving Ethel behind them. Jericho then took a step out of the room into the corridor, and quickly scanned about.
"I can't see anyone. I can't see anything, in fact. It's just a white corridor. There's an exit down at the bottom of it though, a couple hundred feet away. If we move quick, we'll make it without anyone seeing us." Jericho whispered in a hushed tone.
This was exactly what they needed, thought Josh. An easy escape. They can't fend off the guards around here for too long anyway. Defeating all these dogmen in their own home territory, with nothing but a rusty .22 and the clothes on their back, is a tall order for the most trained soldiers. Yet how would two kids do it? No, this was the best chance they would get, so they took it.
Josh and Jer both started running down the corridor, with Matt following close behind. It was eerie how there was nothing here at all: just the bare peeling white walls surrounding them, the low wall above them, and their bare feet slapping the cold floor tiles beneath them. Josh's mind kept wandering back to thinking about what this building must have been pre-War.
The trio reached the great door to exit the building, and Josh went straight through, full of the desire to gain freedom from the terrible place behind him. He heard Jericho shout behind him as he pushed down on the metal bar of the door and flung it wide open, seeing in front of him a grass field, a vivid green that is very rare in London. The lush grass harped back to the time before the complete abandoning of meaning to the world, and looked thoroughly out of place compared to the grand monolithic buildings surrounding the grass, and the pot hole ridden roads leading away from the strange place.
As Josh took a step into this urban wilderness, he noticed too late what was at his side.
Josh saw the skull-headed man first. But it isn't until he sees the man in white that he is alerted to the danger.
It was the Dog Man! The man who took him in the first place here. The realisation caught up with him, ripping through his soul. It slammed the breath from him. For a second Josh was rooted to the spot. He then caught himself shouting Run! and his feet pounded the cement tiles beneath him and onto the green pitch in front of him. Josh is running, but it was not like at the Wharf. Hard as he pushes himself, desperately as he sprints to cross the grass and escape these madmen, something has gone since he has been captured – his self-belief, his conviction that he can win, the confidence that he had before that they were going to be OK, despite the odds, despite the danger. Everything they put into making a life at the Wharf, everything that they did to protect themselves and escape danger, and yet none of it made any difference when the helicopters flew in, and guns were being fired against their knives and lead piping.
Somehow we've got to lose them.
But losing the Heralds is easier said than done. He could see the end of the grass was coming up ahead, but Skullhead and Dogface are closing in. Two more Heralds appear out in front of him. There's no way out now.
"Left! Left!" Josh hears a woman's voice shout at him. Jericho! He notices a small building to his side, and makes a beeline for it. He hurdles a crumbling brick wall and cuts down the alley, his pursuers in hot chase. The sunlight disappears above him, coming through only in irregular patches to light the way through the otherwise dark slalom of the backalleys and avenues of inner industrial London. Josh's territory.
He weaves in and out through the passageways until he finds himself in open ground, facing three monstrous grey towers on all three sides of him trapping him in, while the Heralds are closing in from behind. It's known as the Picadilly Avenue, or Picket among the street rats. Once you're in, they say, you're not going to leave in a hurry.
Sensing the Heralds behind him, Josh glances about to try and find where Jericho has gone. He urgently flings his head from side to side, looking around. He notices a house with a woman closing the curtains. An Englishman defending her castle. He sees to the side the heaped masonry and brickwork to the side of the building. There was probably some old refurbishment being done by local government to fix up and improve the city before the bombs flew. The refurbishment around the area half finished, there is just enough to climb up and get over the wall between two of the buildings and into another unknown, preferably one without the Heralds right behind him. He is sure you can get over there. He saw a leg fly over it so Jericho must have jumped over it. She must have jumped over it. She must have.
Josh keeps thinking if there is anywhere else she could have gone, but he notices shadows in the turning behind him grow larger and larger, the shouting of Heralds getting louder and louder. No time to think. Only time to act.
Sprinting across the waste ground, Josh is spurred on by the two dogs behind him. For some old men in huge white armoured suits, they seem to be able to move at astonishing speeds. Josh runs and runs, without looking behind to stop, Josh climbs up a sack of old cementing mixture in a single leap, getting up in height two maybe three feet. He jumped again, this time onto the orange cementing mixer getting another three or four feet up, an incredible jump made possible by the sheer will to live. Josh looked ahead at his target, the cold, unforgiving wall in front of him. He bent his knees. Jumped.
That moment, even though it barely lasted a second, seemed to go on and on. He first felt the cementing mixture begin to shake and wobble as he put his weight onto it. As his bare foot landed awkwardly on the surface, it curled into a fist, trying to grab something, anything for grip on his only way to safety. But at the end of the day it was only a foot. He couldn't get any grip from the surface underneath him, and it began to slowly topple. The cement mixer wobbled even more the more his weight fell onto it, but Josh was already completely invested in this leap. It wobbled more and more and he bent his leg to try in vain to keep the mixer upright. But it fell.
Josh however refused to give up. He made a half-jump, barely able to push himself into the air as the cement mixer fell, but he went for the wall in front of him anyway, almost a foot over him, towering in front of him. The brick wall, the colour of rusting iron, the shade of grey which held the line between his freedom and his capture, was the only obstacle left he had to surmount. He flailed madly at the wall, putting his all into getting an arm, a hand, a finger over the damned thing. He heard the Heralds behind him shout, what they shouted he couldn't understand, his concentration so entirely on getting over the wall.
The wall though was completely smooth. There was no ground to get footing on it. Josh managed to just get a finger over the thing, but it wasn't at all enough to be able to pull himself up and save his life. He kicked maniacally at the wall again and again in the space of no more than a second with the futile hope of gaining the footing he needed, but it was no use. He felt his finger come down from the top brick on the wall, then it come over the corner, then slide down its face.
Josh fell.