A Catalogue of Catastrophe by Jodi Taylor

Author:Jodi Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2022-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

The tower walls were thick, muffling the sounds of the bells, the fighting, everything. All I could hear were my own footsteps. One-one. Two-two. There was dust and grit on the stairs and every now and then my foot would slip forwards, making my heart leap with fear. One broken ankle and we’d be in dead trouble. And I had work on Monday.

The walls were becoming lighter. I could see the outlines of the individual stairs. And my own feet. I was nearly there. I couldn’t wait to be off this bloody staircase no matter what awaited me out there. I rounded the last turn. There was the open door with bright sunshine beyond. I’d made it.

No, I hadn’t. Two men appeared in the doorway and there was something about them . . .

If they’d fallen back and made way for me – as they should have done given my age and status – then I probably wouldn’t have looked at them twice, but they didn’t so I did.

And then I looked at them a third time.

Their backs were to the daylight but I knew these men. I’d seen them before and very recently, too. They were Snipers Three and Four from Runnymede. They were even wearing exactly the same clothes. Greyish-brown camo-style top and trousers tucked into boots. I knew them immediately.

I didn’t even have time to wonder how they could possibly have got away from Pennyroyal. He was like the waiting room to hell. No escape, no returning to the real world, the only way forward was to an unavoidable and unpleasant future.

I had no place to hide. The sunlight streamed through the doorway, hitting me full in the face. They couldn’t miss me. I didn’t dare move. Not even to tap my ear. I waited for the shot that would end my life.

Seconds ticked by as we all stared at each other while my heart rate and breathing accelerated a thousandfold. I had vague thoughts of fishing up my sleeve for my stun gun but by the time I dragged it out they could have shot me thirty times over so I didn’t bother.

Think, Maxwell. Think, think, think.

No useful course of action occurred to me. There must have been chaos, confusion and a hell of a racket going on outside but I wasn’t aware of any of it. The world had narrowed to just me and two men and a patch of bright sunshine on a stone floor.

This was an extraordinarily long silence. They were holding guns. Discreetly and at their sides, but guns nevertheless. Why hadn’t they shot me? Why wasn’t I bleeding all over the flagstones? Surely they knew who I was. There was something wrong here.

Stop.

Think.

I knew them but they didn’t appear to know me. They couldn’t have or I’d be dead by now. Why didn’t they know me? They should do. I’d met them at Runnymede. Markham and I had dragged them back to Home Farm. They’d seen our faces. We hadn’t tried to hide them.

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