Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (22 page)

The thought was fleeting, but enough to make him start.

“Why should we tell you anything?” the younger man jeered, raising his rifle to eye level. “What made you think that you could just follow us and expect to walk away? You people are all the same. You think that you own the country, trespassing on other people’s property, snooping around places you have no business with.”

His hands were shaking with anger. The barrel of the rifle wandered from Norman’s head to his chest. “You’re the reason that nobody’s got anything to eat. You’re the reason that nobody has the balls to go within a hundred miles of London. You’ve stripped the place bare!”

At that, he cocked his weapon and took aim. “I don’t think that we’ll be letting you run back to rustle up a posse.”

“Peter, wait,” the older, emaciated man whispered.

The youngest flinched at the use of his name. “Shut up!” he whispered.

“Just wait. I knew you were up to something, but…not killing people!”

“One more word and I’ll shoot your boy myself when we get back.”

“Just wait. Think about it.”

The man with the neckerchief kept still, his eyes darting back and forth between the other two. He’d lowered his rifle to his side, and showed no sign of interfering. In fact, he took a step back, away from them, towards the shadows.

“You can’t just kill them,” the older man muttered.

“I said SHUT UP!” the young man screamed. He licked his lips and took a step towards Norman. His finger crawled towards his rifle’s trigger, and began to depress it. “I’m gonna enjoy thi—”

Norman closed his eyes as a high whine rang through the air, accompanied by an explosion of splintering wood. For a moment he thought he’d been shot, and waited for the pain to come, but none did. Instead, he felt a gush of air soar over his head, towards the three men.

Movement erupted from the surrounding forest as dark shapes emerged from the gloom, surging into the clearing.

Peter yelled in shock, whirling in circles and spraying bullets into the trees. His companions wasted no time. They threw themselves behind bushes, tall grass, and any other cover they could find.

Another bullet whizzed past Norman’s ear and he flinched instinctively. And yet, he felt stupefied by the silent man’s gaze. The two of them had locked eyes across the clearing, even amidst the storm of gunfire.

Those eyes burned into him, hypnotising him. Everything had slowed to a crawl.

He was glued in place, unable to move. In a moment he’d be shot dead—he had to move!

But those eyes. He recognised them.

A tickling under his skin, behind the scar above his ear
—

A rough fist grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to the ground. Over the gunfire he heard Richard shout something incoherent as he landed on top of him.

Norman drew his face from the dirt just in time to watch Lucian pass the campfire, his body cast in brilliant crimson tones that caught the wild whites of his eyes. In a fraction of a second he had drawn his automatic and fired.

A wet splatter and a scream of pain answered the shot, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Norman turned to see one of the men topple out of sight with a bloody hole in his chest: the emaciated man. The one that had tried to save them. His limp body rolled over the ground, coming to rest upon the gnarled roots of the giant oak.

Six shapes swooped in from the right, sending bullets snapping and bouncing around in the clearing. The tooth-rattling din threatened to burst Norman’s eardrums. He struggled to his feet, slipping in the mud and passing the scattered remains of the fire. He raised his pistol to the man with the neckerchief, now fleeing. “Stop,” he bellowed. His voice was barely audible over the hail of bullets. “I said stop!”

The man paused for only a moment, at the edge of the clearing, and stared back at him.

Norman caught a glimpse of his eyes once more: a rich, shimmering green.

Emerald eyes. Eyes he’d seen before…

Norman jerked as something stirred deep in his mind, something buried in the fog that obscured his youth, something he’d long forgotten.

Then the man turned and melted into the dark.

The night was well past its zenith when Alexander finally forced himself to look at the scrap of paper from the old man’s pocket. As starlight splashed across it, it seemed to exude a malevolence of its own, one that threatened to taint his skin.

He only hesitated once before his patience waned and he unfolded it with a curse.

There was no reason to suspect anything of it, anyway. In all likelihood it was nothing more than a sentimental keepsake that the old man had picked up on his travels, or perhaps a cherished letter from before the End—

But it was neither. Before he had even finished unfolding the sheet, he recognised the handwriting upon the page.

He stared, open-mouthed, while a pigeon hooted outside the open window.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

“Did you find anything?” Richard said as Lucian and three others returned to the clearing.

Lucian kicked a charred log in two. “Nothing,” he panted. “They just disappeared.”

Norman was crouched over the body of the emaciated stranger, patting his pockets. The rank odour of perspiration and urine rose from the body in waves.

“They didn’t leave any tracks?” Norman asked.

Lucian shook his head again. “Nothing from that quiet one,” he said, “he’s just gone.” He gripped Norman’s shoulder. “I couldn’t see from back there. Did you get a good look at him?”

Norman shuddered at the memory of the silent man’s emerald peepers. Unsure of why he was doing it, he shook his head. “What about the other one?” he said.

Lucian cursed. “There’s blood everywhere. He made a right mess when he ran off. I don’t think he’ll last long by himself.”

Norman looked out at the darkness. Then he sat down on a log beside the dead man, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand. “He wasn’t like them,” he said. “He was trying to help us.”

“He hung out with the wrong crowd.” Lucian’s expression flickered. “We can’t save everyone, Norman.”

Richard crouched beside Norman. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know I messed up.” His face had fallen, his expression sorrowful, repentant. “I just got in the way. Maybe if I’d just done what I was told… I just wanted to help.”

Norman heard him as though from far away. But despite his weariness, he forced his hand to Richard’s shoulder. “No,” he said, “you saved my life. Thank you.”

Richard still looked ashamed, but a glimmer of a smile played on his lips. “All the same, maybe I’ll stick to the classroom from now on.”

Norman managed a smile. “Don’t count yourself out just yet.”

“At least we scared them off,” John said, tying a haphazard bandage around the arm of one of the guards. The bullet wound was already bleeding through. He was eyeing Richard carefully, a slight frown upon his brow.

Lucian scowled. “What good is that?” he said. “Two got away, and one of them is perfectly capable of bringing others right to us. They already know they can waltz right onto our streets and slit our throats.”

“But why?” Richard said. “We didn’t get an answer… Why would somebody do this?”

A silence fell over them as they stared about themselves. A concentrated sense of isolation had crystallised from the ether, making the short distance that separated them from home seem far greater. The trees seemed suddenly sinister, as though their darkened bark concealed untold evils.

Norman thought he sensed something change about Lucian—he seemed to stiffen and avert his gaze. But he said nothing. Norman sighed. “That doesn’t matter now.” He stood up. “We need to get back. We’re going to be missed.”

He made the comment in passing, without thinking. He was therefore surprised when everybody, including Lucian, froze mid-action and set about gathering their things, preparing to leave.

He watched them, disbelieving, and felt his gut squirm with distant unease. They were looking to him.

They left the emaciated man’s body in the clearing beside the dying fire. At the tree line, Norman looked back at his sprawled profile, slumped against the oak. The pity he’d felt moments before was now overshadowed by fear of retribution.

The night was a long one. Many people were too frightened to return home in the dark and opted instead to remain in the cathedral. Dozens of guards were posted all over the city until sunrise, which brought with it only a tenuous sense of safety.

When Norman and those following him—following
him
, not Lucian—returned, they learned that the old man had died, having slipped away in his sleep. After talking to Norman, he’d never said another word.

While Norman and the rest of the hunting party made for bed, Lucian refused to check his weapons back into the armoury, and stood on sentry duty until midday. By that time he had sagging bags under his eyes, and his head would droop to his chest without warning.

After several complaints from harried guards, Heather convinced him to take an anxiety pill of her own making, after which he finally slouched into a clinic bed and dropped into a deep sleep.

Once he’d rested, Norman went north-west with him and Robert to look for any sign of the young man from the fireside. Lucian was still convinced that the sneering youth had been too severely wounded, and would not have survived.

They found him as sunset neared, face up in a patch of bluebells.

His mouth and eyes were already crawling with insects, and his skin had drained to a sickly marble pallor. A wound in his abdomen had been bound with makeshift bandages, torn from the hems of his trousers. The blood upon them had long since coagulated, and had spread into sticky pools on the forest floor.

They buried his body without a marker, beneath a pile of stones amidst the bluebells. They spoke sparingly while they worked, and afterwards there was a moment’s silence before they returned to the city.

They continued to search from then on for the man with the neckerchief—but, for reasons Norman couldn’t explain even to himself, he never spoke of those green, hypnotic eyes.

They found nothing. No sign of him, none at all. He had simply vanished.

Morning.

Alex held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s rays and groaned from the depths of his duvet. He rolled over, and for the briefest of times enjoyed the sun’s warmth, along with the sound of dying embers crackling in the grate.

Then there was a thump, and the crying began.

Beside him the dog groaned, rose to her feet and slumped away to the recesses of the cottage once more. He wished he could have gone with her. He stumbled to his feet, taking James in his arms and walking him around the periphery of the room.

The previous night, the two of them had eaten a meal together by the fire. After dusk the rain had continued well into the evening, and its patter upon the roof had been almost peaceful. The abundance of tinned food and a few pieces of unspoiled fruit had allowed them to take their fill, and then some. Alex was sure he’d burnt, maimed and spoiled every last bite, but the two of them had eaten ravenously nonetheless.

However, before and afterwards, all that James had been content to do was cry. He cried when he was talked to, sang to, left alone, held, swayed and rocked, for so long and with such force that Alex was at times entertained by the notion of him wailing himself unconscious.

He had cried overnight too. It had only been in the early hours of the morning, when the storm had lost its voice and the rain had abated, that he had finally succumbed to sleep.

Now, it seemed he had been rejuvenated by his short bout of rest. He ignored Alex’s pleas, wriggling and screaming, his face scrunched into a puckered maze of puppy fat.

After an hour, Alex found that the noise had lost its edge. He abandoned his attempts and sat with James in the armchair, watching the embers fizzle until he felt enough strength to stand.

He then left James to cry on the floor beside the grate’s residual warmth, heading for the shower. There was still some hot water. Apparently the water system had yet to fail, along with the power grid—for now.

Grime sloughed from his skin and tangled hair in great mudslides, basting the bath in a layer of jet-black sludge. The water splashing against his face was blissful, ruined entirely by the fact that he was obliged to keep the door open, lest the child fling himself onto the ash pile in his unattended state.

Afterwards, wrapped in a towel, he brought a bowl of lukewarm water to the fireside. Dipping the struggling child into its depths, he did his best to clean James’s stinking, soiled body. Lathered with soap and sporting tufts of hair that stuck out at wild angles, the boy’s screaming quietened. Once or twice, a gap-toothed smile broke out onto his face—one that seemed to light up the world.

Alex changed into another set of clothes from his bag, along with a waterproof coat, and set about shuttling in the last of the containers he’d put outside to fill in the rain, all of which were by now full to the brim.