City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

man marched towards the back of the convoy, indicating to the other drivers that they had to start reversing and that the route ahead was impassable.

I exchanged a look with Monroe and continued with him by my side. Naturally, we both wanted to see the problem for ourselves.

Smoke was rising from the middle of the road. At first I thought it was a car crash but when I spotted the mangled rotor blade, which had been ripped clean off, I knew I was wrong. This wasn’t a car crash, it was another helicopter crash – and whoever had been piloting this one hadn’t survived.

‘Third one,’ I heard someone mutter. ‘Third fucking one. I told you we should have left yesterday.’

I stalked up to him. ‘What do you mean by third one?’

He glanced at me balefully. He was only in his early thirties but lack of sleep, wrinkled clothes and general worry about whether he’d live to see the next hour made him look much older. ‘Helicopters,’ he said shortly. ‘One crashed near our house before we left. We saw another come down over to the east and now there’s this one. Even the skies are being attacked.’

I stared at the blackened carcass of the helicopter. ‘Lightning?’ I asked softly.

His eyes dropped and he turned away. ‘Yeah. If lightning can be bright blue.’ He checked his watch. ‘We have to get a move on.’

Monroe and I stood silently, as if both us were sending out a quiet prayer for whoever had perished. Finally he sighed. ‘We can assume that there won’t be more air drops coming our way any time soon. It’s as well we sorted out all those supplies and rations when we had the chance.’

I nodded, still feeling a tight knot of anguish for the person who had died in the crash, whoever they were.

‘Well done,’ Monroe added quietly. I glanced at him, confused. He shrugged awkwardly. ‘You did well to organise us like you did. Now at least we don’t have to worry about the immediate future.’ He turned on his heel, strode back to our little van and opened the back doors.

I gaped after him for a moment and then caught up. ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s going to take too long to get everyone to reverse out of here. We’ll be faster walking the last section. How far is it?’

I pursed my lips and considered. ‘Half a mile maybe.’ Not far if you were out for an evening stroll with a little handbag, but a fairly long distance when there were massive tree roots, gaping potholes, snarled-up cars and destroyed helicopters en route. Not to mention the dead weight of an unconscious man to carry.

Monroe’s expression didn’t alter. ‘We don’t have a choice.’

I turned back. The man who’d passed us was still trying to make the people behind us reverse so that the road could be cleared and everyone could find an alternative route, but Monroe was right: that wasn’t going to happen. There were too many of us and there was too little time.

‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘You have to walk it from here! It’s the only way to get out before the city is closed!’

‘I’m not fucking walking,’ a woman shouted back. ‘There’s shit out there that will eat you in a heartbeat. The Army will wait for us. They won’t shut the city down until everyone is out.’

Somehow I doubted that. We’d had more than enough warning to leave. I reckoned that at midnight exactly no one would be permitted to step one foot across whatever border the government had fashioned.

I opened my mouth to argue but Monroe pulled his head out of the van and looked at me. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘They’re not going to listen. I know you want to help them, Charley. Believe me, I know. But yelling at those people will only hold us all up. If you want to save this guy, we set off on foot now. Everyone else will have to make up their own minds.’ His blue eyes met mine. ‘You can’t save everyone,’ he said simply. ‘Sometimes they have to save themselves.’

It felt like my body was being pulled in several different directions at once. On the one hand, Monroe was absolutely right; on the other… I sighed. The pilot moaned softly.

I gave it one last-ditch effort. I had to. ‘The borders will close at midnight!’ I shouted. ‘Anyone not out of the city after that will be unable to leave. If you walk from here, you can make it!’

A few people seemed to heed my words and started to walk quickly past the line of cars towards the city’s edge. Others completely ignored me, still wanting to stay with their cars. There was the crunch of metal on metal as someone reversed into someone else.

I opened my mouth again, but Monroe put his hand on my arm. ‘You’ve done everything you can.’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

I walked over to the van. Monroe sidestepped to allow me access and we carefully lifted the pilot out, me at his feet and Monroe at his head. The werewolf might have had the strength to carry the pilot’s body a small distance on his own, but he’d never manage it all the way. We had to do this together. We exchanged a grim look of mutual agreement and set off at an awkward, albeit steady, jog.

It took longer than I’d anticipated. Getting past the still-burning helicopter was incredibly tricky, given that it spanned the full width of the road. It was only when I managed to conjure up a push of magic to jolt it enough to clear a narrow path that we manoeuvred our way past it. Monroe’s brilliant blue eyes were streaming with smoke-induced tears when we made it.

Beyond that, although the bright lights of the evacuation point were so powerful that they illuminated the road ahead, it was just as hard to keep going. There was more carnage to traverse, with abandoned cars littering