Shadow Walker

Approach

They left the alleyway, sporting Montague and Lazar's high vis vests, and began threading their way along the streets towards the post office, attempting to take the most inconspicuous roads with the least chance of encountering more trouble. Dec was in too much pain to notice much more than the passing of brick beneath his feet, and when he tried to concentrate on the street signs, his mind kept travelling back to the alley and snagging on Mark's dead body. He turned to Teegan, seeking comfort. But Teegan refused to meet his gaze and her silence made their footsteps echo unbearably loud.

The streets changed in the space of a block. One minute everything was in its place – the palm pod repair shop to their left, the infamous SolStore light shop down Pickards Lane to his right where it had always been since Dec could remember. Next minute, complete and utter disarray so that he could hardly recognise the old town at all, let alone keep track of where they were going. Street signs lay in post mortem flatness, their names pointing skyward like white flags in surrender. Shop windows had been smashed to smithereens so that not one store name had managed to keep a coherent order of lettering. Tar graffiti tags covered the walls and paths. Parked cars, bins, stobey poles, bus stop benches, anything that could be upturned had been thrown onto its back. The city looked as though an earthquake had chewed a path through the streets at the same time a tornado had regurgitated the earthquake's leftovers.

Emptiness gave way to the presence of stern men in high vis vests, stationed on every street corner, the grim expression on their faces betraying unforgiving orders. Eerie industrial silence was broken by the sound of steel wrecking balls meeting the brick and sandstone bones of the buildings. And somewhere up ahead, screams – soft at first so that Dec thought he must've imagined them, then growing louder with the undeniable pitch of real human terror. The screams made him think of his sister and the panic in her voice as she'd begged the police officer to find him should their mum not survive the night. He thought of Adele's terror the last time he'd seen her under the bridge – the redness of her eyes and the distance in her gaze as she fell behind another desert-induced stupor.

He looked at the sky, which was still pitch, minus the mist-covered glow of the moon. A sardonic smile made a flat line of his lips, curling them under with the knowledge that his plight to save his people and make it back to his mum before sunrise was practically impossible. Even if he succeeded in destroying the packages, there was no saying Adele would survive until morning. The clock of fate was counting down the hours she had left.

At least it had stopped raining.

With his good arm, he swiped an oily clump of hair off his forehead. The wrecking balls, the crush of buildings, the screams were getting louder. When a particularly loud crash sounded, followed by a scream that ripped a gash through the slow-building noise, Dec stumbled to a halt and sensed Teegan do the same next to him. They didn't need to speak to know they were both thinking the same thing. The demolition mission was working its way outwards from the nucleus of the city. Soon, it would reach the post office. And if it reached the post office before they had a chance to get inside and destroy the desert dust, there would be only one place for the delicately packaged boxes of deadly spores to go should they be torn open and released into the atmosphere. And who knew what effect such a concentrated, unmonitored release of spores could have on the people if it took only a light peppering of the dust to raise welts on Rain's skin?

He forced himself to keep walking, even when the movement drew the attention of a uniformed rebel at the end of the street. He lowered his gaze, aware of their state of dishevelment – him with his makeshift sling and Teegan with the remnants of Mark's blood down her arms.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

The man's footsteps made there way down the street towards them. Dec forced himself to keep a constant pace so as not to appear like the guilty fugitive he was. Teegan shifted her duffel bag to her left shoulder, closest to the sandstone wall of the old town hall. But it did little to hide it from view. Should they be stopped and searched, well, it didn't take a genius to figure out the consequences.