City of Dust: Completely gripping YA dystopian fiction packed with edge of your seat suspense. Michelle Kenney

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СКАЧАТЬ dense, untouched foliage made for slow progress, but our hunting machetes sliced where our feet and hands struggled, and we were in good spirits, reaching the fringe of the forest by the end of the day’s hike. We trod cautiously as the trees began to thin, picking our route through a thicket of wild hawthorn with care. And although Friskers had followed us for some time, he’d chosen to retreat while the sun was still high. It seemed even a displaced griffin had better sense than to get within striking distance of the Dead City.

      It was only when we finally glimpsed our first view across the landscape of the monolithic domes that we paused to agree final tactics.

      ‘We try for the city when the sun touches the horizon and regroup here, dawn tomorrow morning. Prolets or no Prolets.’

      Max drew a white cross on a royal poinciana with a piece of natural chalk, his voice brusque.

      I looked from him to my brother. A similar unease was etched into both their faces. No one from Arafel had ever been close to the perimeter of the Dead City ruins, let alone explored them. And yet we’d all heard the stories, and stared at Arafel’s scant pre-war pictures of impossibly tall stone trees that stretched on and up.

      Less well known was the fact that a few of the more agile hunters, including Max and myself, had occasionally glimpsed the City from the highest branches of Grandpa’s Great Oak. The tree’s age meant its thinnest branches extended beyond the rest of the others, and it was from these reedier lengths that you could make out the north-westerly tip of the ruins. But it was only ever a glimpse, and from such a distance there was no sense of the layers of dust and ash – the remnants of the people who’d once lived there.

      The years had done their work, and now the ruins were fighting a different enemy, the forest herself. I recalled the moment I’d stepped out onto Octavia’s balcony, and witnessed the endless broken landscape stretching out before me like a nest of grey vipers. Sleeping and waiting.

      I repressed a shudder. Being fanciful about the Dead City wasn’t going to help at all. Our first aim was to locate the Prolets and bring them back to Arafel. We wouldn’t be popular, but burying our heads in the sand would buy only time, not a reprieve. And Eli didn’t need any further reason to think I was planning on a different course of action – at least not yet.

      ‘I suggest we eat up and rest while we can. Tonight we’re going to need our wit, energy, and all the luck of Arafel,’ Max muttered, turning away to make a small camp.

      ***

      It was the absence of distinct birdsong I noticed at first. Almost as though they too sensed this was a place where life had sung its last song, where anything natural had been obliterated leaving only a hollow echo in its place. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying, making all the tiny hairs on the back of my neck lift in the breeze.

      For a moment we stood there, the three of us, staring out at the distant charred landscape interspersed with the creeping determination of the hardiest plants, fighting to reclaim their birthright. It had taken decades before any life had been spotted from a distance, the effect of cataclysmic biochemical warfare having rendered this part of the landscape scarred beyond recognition. But slowly nature was showing herself to be the victor.

      ‘We stick together, no solo heroics!’ Max spoke softly just behind me.

      He still hadn’t really forgiven me, but there was no misunderstanding him, and I felt the oddest sense of déjà vu. It was exactly what I remembered him saying in Pantheon, just before we faced Octavia’s guards and were separated.

      I nodded at Eli who was slowly surveying the dusky ruins. My brother had never been suited to combat of any kind, and it was a wrench to leave the care of his injured animals to a trusted friend in order to secretly help his sister trawl morbid, ruined cities. I touched his arm.

      ‘You don’t have to come. Max and I can cope. Camp here?’ I signed.

      He frowned, arching his eyebrows. ‘And wait for you two to run headlong into trouble because you’re too busy arguing? I don’t think so!’

      He crouched to release an injured salamander he’d been carrying up his sleeve for most of the journey.

      I glanced up and down the edge of darkening trees, like age-old sentries watching the landscape.

      Light was disappearing quickly now, although it was only around suppertime in Arafel. I pictured Mum sitting by the cooking pot by herself, and hoped Raoul had gone to keep her company as he often did when we were hunting in the outside forest. I’d left Mum a note. She’d never have agreed to the plan, and probably wouldn’t sleep until we got back. If we got back. I pushed the thought firmly from my mind.

      A barn owl hooted twice through the waiting quiet, like a siren. It felt significant in some way. And there was no reason to delay any more.

      We took our places beside each other, and as I narrowed my eyes against the glare of the dying sun, I muttered a silent prayer. There were a good couple of kilometres of lumpy arid dirt separating us from the start of the Dead City sprawl. Three of us to bring sixty souls back.

      It seemed a good return should we make it.

      There were no guarantees, of course; no one knew what the ruined city of Isca Pantheon was really like. But we were better equipped than the last time I left Arafel. Although there were no Diasords between us, we’d brought weapons that we’d grown skilled at using every day of our lives: machetes, daggers, axes, bows and in my particular case, a certain well-used slingshot.

      We started out together, and I noticed the cool dirt crumbling beneath my leather-soled feet straight away. This was a thin, recovering topsoil, seemingly like the one Grandpa and his forebears had to coax back to rich life. It made for quick, stealthy progress, and the three of us broke into an easy hunting sprint across the amber landscape, towards the ruins.

      It was deceiving at first, the way the ground shifted, almost as though it could have been merely the impact of our running feet against the dehydrated earth; earth that hadn’t seen human feet for more than two hundred years. But then a pained cry razed the empty landscape, and the enemy was so close as to be laughable. The ground was moving. The cry belonged to Eli. And when I glanced in his direction, he was no long running.

      I froze instantly, my eyes straining against the fading light until I could make out his crumpled form on the ground. My heart rate doubled instantly. We were tree-runners; we never fell.

      ‘Eli?’

      My whisper died on my lips as Max caught my wrist.

      ‘Look at your feet,’ he forced through gritted teeth.

      And there was something in his voice that froze me to the spot. I levelled my gaze, and fixed on the earth beneath my feet. The earth that moved. And now that we were stationary, I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t felt it before. The earth wasn’t just moving; it was writhing.

      I peered harder. My mouth was as dry as the arid soil beneath my feet, and my blood echoed like a waterfall in my ears, but I was unable to break my gaze. Not until I made out the heaving mass of giant, overlapping pincers, just visible beneath the lumpy dirt; and their segmented tails, poised and ready to paralyse their ignorant prey at any given moment.

      ‘For the love of Arafel, fly!’ Max growled, as we lunged together, grabbing Eli and pulling him to his feet.

      Then, between us, we propelled him over СКАЧАТЬ