15.4

King Solomon and Davey were dozing quietly in their cell when Squeaky came in.

‘Well, King Solomon, it’s time. Mayor Craven is ready for you.’

Davey stiffened.

‘It’s ok,’ King Solomon said.

Armed cullsmen escorted them to the car.

‘Just a short ride, gents,’ Squeaky grinned. ‘Then that’ll be it.’

They got in the car. Squeaky drove. A single cullsmen accompanied them.

As they drove, Solomon got Squeaky talking.

While Squeaky was deep in conversation, Davey saw the King pulling something vaguely familiar out from under his clothes.

With a bemused grin he realised it was Papa Grim’s cutthroat razor.

Solomon quickly put a finger to his lips. Then leant forward and slit the throat of the cullsman accompanying Squeaky.

Blood sprayed everywhere.

Squeaky was so caught off guard he crashed the car into one of the concrete barriers along the side of the road.

‘Goddamnit I just had a shower,’ he hissed.

Solomon went for his throat with the razor but Squeaky ducked back.

Davey managed to grab the dying cullsman’s gun and aimed it in Squeaky’s face.

‘Outta the fucking car,’ Solomon bellowed. ‘Unlock the doors.’

‘Oh you’ll suffer for this, believe you me,’ Squeaky scowled.

‘Open the fucking doors. Now!’ Solomon barked.

Squeaky did as instructed. Davey kept the gun on him the whole time.

He opened the door to Solomon’s side.

Solomon decked him with a wild left hook and dived into the driver’s seat.

He started the car and tore away.

*

With a huge grin Solomon pulled the car up outside the derelict building that housed the entrance to the City of Dogs. As Solomon had planned, Monique was there, as was Josie.

There were some Grims from the Freelands here too.

And it seemed word had got round.

A grizzled Grim that Davey didn’t recognise bearhugged King Solomon hard enough to make him splutter a little.

‘Told yer word would get round, Solomon lad,’ the Grim that Solomon introduced as Rick beamed. ‘We’ve set up camp in District 7. Some of the other lads from the Freelands are over that a-way too.’

‘Thanks, Rick lad,’ Solomon grinned, hugging the man hard enough to make his breathing stall for a few seconds.

‘No bother, Solomon lad, you did a lot for me in those early days.’

Solomon nodded. ‘Happy days to ya.’

‘And to you.’ Rick turned to Davey. ‘And to you too, lad. Right let’s get the fuck outta here before they realise what’s happened.’

Rick beckoned everybody forwards and they made their way through the shadows towards District 7.

*

Torch beams and red laser sights carved through the darkness around them.

‘Stay together,’ Rick said. ‘It’s not far. Once we get into the alleys we can lose them.’

Davey nodded, eyes wide.

He’d never felt such terror in all of his life, and that was saying something.

But the king made him feel safe. They’d been through so much together. The group of Grims with them seemed to be good scrappers. And obviously Monique was a force to be reckoned with.

An explosion illuminated the gloom on the other side of the razor wire fences to their right.

The Cull crews gathered there went off towards that side, seeking a new threat.

Just as another explosion went off on the other side.

‘I’ve had some of the lads create a few distractions,’ Rick said with a knowing grin, pointing to the rough location of the second explosion. ‘Just follow me. I’ll keep yas right, lads.’

They didn’t ask questions, just ran for it.

More explosions went off, disorienting everyone.

Bullets flew all around them, chipping the brickwork.

Most of them missed, but inevitably, someone was hit.

‘Shit,’ Solomon said as Dale, one of the Grims from the Freelands, took a bullet between the shoulder blades.

He fell, gurgling blood, the light already leaving his eyes.

In spite of the chaos surrounding them, Rick seemed to know where he was going.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

They reached the relative sanctuary of the alleyways, outrunning the cullsmen who were laden with body armour and cumbersome weaponry.

*

‘Well you know how to make an entrance, dontcha?’ Monique grinned at King Solomon as they finally came to a stop, huddled up in an alleyway while Rick acted as lookout.

‘As do you, my dear,’ Solomon laughed, throwing his arms around her in a bearhug. ‘From killer to saviour just like that, eh?’

‘Something like that,’ she grinned.

A dirt- and blood-smeared younger version of Monique peered out from behind a mound of burst bin bags a few feet behind her.

‘Josie chose to come home after all,’ she smiled.

‘I’m chuffed to bits for you. How was the City of Dogs?’ Solomon said.

‘Eerie as hell, just loads of bodies,’ Monique said. ‘Creeped the shit outta us.’

They crept through the alley, talking quietly, trying to catch up on what had happened.

As they neared the end of the alleyway, Rick furiously began to hush them.

His dirty finger pointed across the intersection to the next alleyway.

‘That’s the quickest route home by far,’ he said. ‘But we got ourselves a smidge of a problem.’

Solomon peeked round the corner and saw a barricade smack-bang in the middle of the road they needed to cross; ‘Fuck’s sake.’

*

The neon lights of the road block tore through their retinas, making venturing further seem an extremely foolhardy venture.

There were a dozen cullsmen in their standard garb, strategically placed around the roadblock.

‘Outta the alleyway, we got you surrounded,’ one of them bellowed through a loudhailer.

They looked behind them and saw half a dozen cullsmen had managed to catch up to them.

‘Wait for the explosion, then leg it to that fence over there,’ Rick said, aiming a grimy finger into the darkness on the other side of the intersection.

A small explosion went off in the direction that Rick had said that they needed to head.

The cullsmen’s helmeted heads turned to investigate. The movements were eerily synchronised, as though they were telepathically linked.

‘Now,’ Rick bellowed, just as the alleyway behind them began to erupt in a tornado of bullets and muzzle flashes.

Monique opened fire on the roadblock first. The Grims lucky enough to have guns followed, setting off a Mexican wave of bullets.

As the Cull crews on the roadblock began to return fire, another, bigger, explosion hit, scattering the assembled cullsmen like body-armoured bowling pins.

The Grims hurdled their bodies and continued their charge towards the hole that the explosion had made in the fence.

*

Solomon hurled Davey through the fence first, just as bullets sent hails of brick shards and dust falling upon them. Davey’s face was scored in half a dozen places by flying chunks of masonry. Solomon charged through after him.

Davey would have laughed were the situation not so serious. The big man flew through the hole in the fence with his head down like a charging rhino. He skidded to the right as his feet hit the garbage-strewn alleyway. He corrected his course as best he could, but he still flattened a pile of bin bags and nearly wiped out a couple of Grims warming their hands by a small fire.

‘Sorry, lads,’ Solomon spluttered. He turned to look at Rick. ‘Good shout this, Rick lad. These alleys are like a maze.’

Their aching limbs carried them into the alleys.

As the cullsmen began to enter the alleyway through the hole in the fence, half a dozen Grims up on the balconies overlooking the alley began to hurl what looked like water balloons down onto them.

‘What good are fucking water balloons?’ Solomon laughed, until he began to cough once more.

Davey eyed him warily. The cough seemed to be getting more severe as the days passed.

Solomon waved away his concerns.

‘You’ll like this one, Solomon lad,’ Rick grinned.

The cullsmen ran towards the fire that Solomon had almost fallen into. As they neared their clothes erupted in flames. They fell, screaming, and began rolling round in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames.

‘Petrol in them,’ Rick grinned. ‘My idea that one.’

Solomon smiled a little but his coughing had robbed him of his mirth.

‘Jeez, you ok?’ Rick said.

Again Solomon waved away the concerns. But he was unable to run now.

It terrified Davey how easily the king became tired now.

Davey went to help Solomon up, but the big man was too heavy for him.

Three of the bigger Grims took his weight on their shoulders and began to help him move along.

The cullsmen were distracted by the flames, so they had time to get into the alleys properly, even with Solomon’s slowed pace.

They took a path so convoluted that even Solomon, King of the Freelands and its central wooden maze, had no idea where they had gone.

The cullsmen had very little chance of following them, since they had no idea where they were going themselves.

*

After what felt like an eternity, they found themselves in an alleyway lit by the flickering flames of a dozen oil drum fires.

Grims were warming their dirty hands around the flaming metal cylinders.

A few bin bags full of what looked like stolen supplies from the rations centre lay empty at their feet.

Some of the Grims were licking their fingers, like they’d just finished a particularly tasty meal.

They looked up when they saw Davey and his entourage.

Their hands darted for their concealed weapons. Most of them had knives, but some even had guns.

‘Don’t move a muscle,’ the Grim who seemed to have eaten the lion’s share of the food shouted. ‘We gotcha surrounded.’

*

More dirty-faced Grims appeared from all around them.

‘It’s just us, lads,’ Rick shouted.

After a tense few seconds, they lowered their weapons.

‘Holy shit! Is that King Solomon I see?’ one of them shouted.

The lead man was chubby-faced, and wore dirty black fingerless gloves. He smiled a gap-toothed grin and threw his arms around Solomon.

‘I never thought I’d see the day you left the Freelands,’ he said.

‘Me neither, Tommy lad. But I thank the Gods we managed to hold onto it for so long.’

‘Tis a shame,’ Tommy said, bowing his head. ‘I loved the place. Just couldn’t get my head round the food arrangement.’

Solomon nodded sadly. ‘Something I have come to regret.’

‘What brings you here?’

‘Papa Grim brought us to Craven. We managed to get away of course, but while we’re here we may as well finish the fat man for good.’

Tommy’s eyes went wide.

‘Some balls on you, Solomon lad,’ he said, admiration writ large on his face. His dirty hands clapped a few times, the sound echoing ominously round the alleyway.

‘More front than Craven’s fucking tower,’ Rick beamed.

‘Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need. The cull crews don’t tend to bother us. You’re kinda in the asshole of the city here,’ Tommy said, laughing. After a few seconds the laugh turned into a nasty, hacking cough.

‘You ok?’ Solomon said, noting the flecks of blood that had appeared on Tommy’s lips.

He sniffed, shook his head. ‘Fuck no, lad. Spent too long in the Bleak. I got Grimrot in my lungs. You know what they say… when you see blood appear the Reaper’ll soon be here.’

Solomon nodded sadly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, brother.’

‘Me too. But whatcher gonna do? Life sucks.’

‘And then you die,’ the assembled Grims chorused as one. Only Monique and Josie didn’t react. ‘So suck some steam in by the fire.’

They roared laughter and a round of back-slapping ensued.

‘Whaddaya say, Solomon lad?’ Tommy said. ‘Shall we do this again, for old time’s sake?’

‘Aye, lad. Happy days to that.’

Some of Solomon’s friends from when he was first a Grim were here, still alive on the streets, in spite of the odds. They shared a drink and a story beneath the dirty grey sky.