Into the Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

protection against looters, though I couldn’t imagine it would be much of a deterrent to those we saw rampaging throughthe City the previous night. We retraced our footsteps, headed up the side alley, found the trashcans and started to pick our way through them.
    Okay, so hunger is the best sauce, but I still gotta say a lot of what we dug out was a helluvan improvement over what we ate on the Island. The only thing was, we’d assumed the place was empty, but while we were busily chomping away, the back door suddenly burst open and this guy came out pointing a fancy-looking hunting rifle at us.
    “What are you doing?” he demanded.
    I put my hands up, more in a gesture of apology than anything. “Sorry. We were really hungry. We got kids with us. We thought . . . you know, it’s just garbage.”
    He stared at us as if we were some kind of new lowlife he hadn’t come across before and didn’t have a name for. Bearing in mind the way we looked, I guess that was understandable.
    “Get the hell out of here,” he said, choosing to level his weapon at me.
    I wasn’t going to argue, especially now there were no satellites up there to stop him. I apologized again and led the others up the alleyway, the guy still squinting down the sight of his rifle, his trigger finger looking like it might twitch at any moment.
    “Friendly,” Delilah commented, once we got back up to the street.
    “Very.”
    We walked on in silence, the full impact of our situation weighing heavier by the moment. What the hell were we going to do? How were we going to survive? This place was worse than the Island—maybe a whole lot worse. And, of course, the irony was, we were partly to blame. It was us who took out the satellites, who started the fires (or some of them) that caused all this smoke.
    “Clancy?” Lena said, interrupting my thoughts. “We gotta find somewhere safe for the night.”
    I grunted my agreement. Without satellites, there was no reason why those looting and burning should confine their activities mostly to the night, but for some reason, you knew they would. That as ifresponding to some primeval call, they’d keep the very worst of their excesses for darkness. The hardcore, those we’d do best to avoid.
    A lot of properties looked beaten up and deserted, but when you got closer, peered in the window or something, there were people inside. Those who’d already been the subject of intruders and were pretty hostile toward any more. We got chased by this armed gang, who might’ve made a real mess of us if they hadn’t been distracted by an intact sports store with a window full of sneakers.
    Night was rapidly starting to fall, pressing down on the smoke, compounding its darkness. In the far distance, deep in a remote fold, you could hear the sound of something starting up you’d rather not know about. None of us had spoken for a while and there was this sense that hope was dying with the remains of the day when Jimmy spotted this ruined church set back from the street.
    All of us stopped and peered through the railings, even Lena, though she was sniffing rather than looking. It didn’t appear that inviting—just a few walls, as crumpled as Christianity, in the middle of an overgrown churchyard; the odd gravestone poking out of the surging undergrowth like debris through floodwater. But at least it had the advantage of being isolated from other buildings, so that there’d be no chance of a fire spreading to it.
    “Stay here,” I said, thinking I’d check it out, but Lena had other ideas.
    “Isn’t it dark?” she asked.
    “Getting there,” I admitted.
    “Then you need me.”
    I thought about refusing, saying I preferred to go alone, but it was obvious how important it was to her. “Yeah. Sure.”
    Slowly we began to pick our way through the tangle and whip of the undergrowth, expecting an angry shout at any moment, ready to turn and run. There was a path worn through there where someone had been in and out