Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (24 page)

In all that time, he’d been too busy keeping watch to take a good look at her—at what was happening to her. Now that they both sat a mere foot apart, slumped and panting, tears welled up in his eyes.

She was filthy. Her eyes were glowing masses of sclera amidst her mud-spattered face, surrounded by a maze of tear tracks that converged at her chin. Her hair reached for the sky in a matted tangle, thatched with dried leaves, and her eyelids drooped almost to a close.

“I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry,” he wheezed, reaching to cup her chin. Then he shook his head and fell back in the grass. “I can’t…”

He wanted to tell her to go on without him, to find food, shelter, people, and to never look back. But before he could say a word, the numbness festering in his limbs rushed along his spine and into his head, consuming all thought. He fell towards thoughtless nothing. Threads of darkness invaded the meadow from his peripheral vision, and the sky receded along a tunnel of blackness.

But then his arm jerked in its socket, tugged by insistent fingers. He opened his eyes and fixated on Billy. Her face was set, her eyes alight with fiery intensity. She was pulling with shocking strength—strength that seemed to defy common sense.

Despite his disbelief, she hauled him from the ground and scrambled into the nook beneath his shoulder, draping his arm over her back. “Come on, Daddy,” she said. “Take a step.”

He complied without thinking, staggering a few feet forward. Their motion was unsteady, and brought tears back to his eyes, but it was a step nonetheless.

Together, they proceeded from the midst of the sapling grove, teetering every step of the way.

Norman grimaced, ankle-deep in putrescent sludge. The remains of corn, beans, potatoes, and entire orchards—the result of over two decades of toil—lay in an unbroken layer across the land, having rotted down to pureed compost. The elements had seen the green-black carpet shrink and contract into a desiccated paste, but beneath the surface laid a preserved soup that exuded noxious fumes.

When the crops had failed the previous year, it had been clear from the outset that it would be a complete loss. The only option had been to save their strength, and try again as early as they dared the next season.

But the countrywide decay hadn’t ended, not even by the time they had come to sow the wheat in early spring. After a lacklustre and last-ditch bout of effort, they had watched the hesitant growths wilt along with the last of their optimism.

They had resorted to scouring the wilds soon after. Now, even the ruins of all of southern England had been exhausted. Things were too desperate not to try turning the fields again.

The odds of raising a crop worth harvesting by summer’s height were slim, but there was a chance of scraping enough to tide them over until the land recovered, so long as they moved fast enough.

In any case, it was a distraction. Not only from hunger—for the End Day feast had been but a thimble in a caloric deficit of tens of thousands—but from the thought of Ray’s murder.

His loss had been made only more noticeable by the bakery’s loaves of late. Somebody else had ground the daily flour in his stead, but the bread was now almost inedible; he had apparently been adding something to temper the taste of sawdust, a secret he’d neglected to share with anyone.

Yet another shred of knowledge lost to the world forever.

Norman stooped and took a handful of sludge into his hands. He cast it into the waiting mouth of the sack that Allison held open for him. She looked as disgusted as he felt.

Close by, Lucian stooped beside John—who, to their surprise, had once again elected to stray from the classroom, though he and Lucian still seemed to share a certain animosity—and farther away loomed Robert’s sloping, muscular shoulders. Barely visible behind him was Sarah, who held the neck of another sack open with an expression all too similar to Allie’s.

Beyond their close-knit group, hundreds of others worked in resigned silence.

To clear the way for the turning of the soil, those on field duty had insisted that all hands were needed. For now, at least, things like Ray’s burial plans would have to wait. Even school had been called off. The children had been mustered into a conveyer belt, one that ran bulging sacks out to the distant tree line, and returned them empty.

As Norman paused to flex, a pigeon landed atop the rusted skeleton of a nearby grain silo and cocked its head to look at him—to look at all of them. When it cooed, another answered from afar. Moments later, a third warbling rained down from atop a listing telephone post, directly overhead.

He turned to set eyes on it and frowned.

“We tried everything,” Robert said, registering his glance. “They just keep coming back.”

“Where did they come from?”

Robert shrugged. “Just appeared out of nowhere.”

Sarah shielded her eyes to stare up at its bobbing profile. “Funny, we’ve never had them before,” she said.

“I think they’re cute,” Allie said. “They make a nice change from the crows.”

John grumbled, mopping his portly brow, leaning on the shovel in his hands. “In fact, it’s just more bad news,” he said. “They must have been forced to migrate. No food for them elsewhere. We had the same problem in the Early Years, when the perishables started rotting. You couldn’t go anywhere near the cities, couldn’t lay eyes on concrete for all the vermin. Right, Lucian? Lucian?”

Lucian didn’t answer. He stood stock-still, gloved hands by his sides, staring over Norman’s shoulder.

“Ooo, shoo!” cried a broken voice behind him.

Norman followed Lucian’s gaze to see Agatha seated in the shade of a tarpaulin awning. A straw hat shielded her ash-white face from the sun as she handed out drinks to passing children from a hamper. She was flapping a hand at one of the pigeons, which had alighted nearby.

She leaned forwards, addressing Lucian, her hands on her knees and her mouth creased into a maternal grin. She spoke to him as though he were no more than a child. “Lucian, be a dear and lock away your brother’s birdies, would you? They’re gettin’ on Auntie Aggie’s nerves again somethin’ fierce.”

Lucian stiffened, and Norman caught a glance being cast in his direction. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I will, Agatha. I promise.”

She scanned the bird mistrustfully a moment longer, then sat back and closed her eyes, pulling the hat’s brim down over her brow. “Thank you, dear,” she sighed. “I think I’ll have a little nap now… Recharge the ol’ batteries.”

A moment later, she was snoring quietly.

Norman glanced from her to Lucian. “What was that?” he said.

Lucian shrugged. “She’s just confused,” he muttered.

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

“She’s getting on, Norm. Forget it.”

They each glanced to him in turn as he stood unmoving. “They’re just birds,” he grumbled, then set back to the sludge with renewed vigour, not looking up.

Norman looked to Robert, who merely shrugged, eyebrows raised. They were on the verge of returning to the sludge when a series of wet, slapping footsteps rushed towards them.

Richard appeared in their midst with a wordless cry, breathless. From even a glance it was clear that he had just sprinted quite some distance. “You’re not going to believe it!” he cried.

They all froze mid-action, wide-eyed.

“What is it?” Lucian said, straightening. “Did something happen?”

“No—I mean, yeah! We just got word from London. They’ve found something.” He splashed through the rotting treacle and gripped John’s shoulder. “They’ve found a radio!”

All activity for some distance in every direction ceased. All eyes had turned to Richard, leaving frozen hands to drip great clods of sludge onto their trousers. A few seconds of distilled silence followed, during which Richard looked to each of them in turn, his face creased into an expression of beaming satisfaction. “It works,” he breathed.

They had all heard of radios, seen their carcasses wherever they went, lying behind every door, infesting entire towns and cities with their useless bulks. Just like the rest of mankind’s machines, none of them had worked for forty years.

Countless people had tried to fix them, one of the first things that had been tried after the End, when people had been scattered across the country, clueless and alone. When they’d still been looking for rescue crews that had never come. When they’d still had hope that all hadn’t been lost.

But a working radio in their world could do only one thing: blare an ear-splitting shriek of static, one that blanketed every frequency. No transmissions, no voices, nothing.

It was just another unanswerable mystery.

Therefore, the first word spoken after Richard’s announcement was not unexpected.

“Bullshit,” said Lucian.

Richard shrugged. “They’re saying it works.” He seemed to scintillate with excitement. “They’re saying they’ve got a signal.”

The silence deepened. Richard was now staring at Norman.

“They want to call the council’s summit early,” he said. “They say two weeks. Runners from the Wharf are waiting for an answer. We need somebody to sign off on it.”

Norman glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see somebody of authority behind him, but there was only more black-green slime. He turned back to Richard. “Me?” he said.

Richard frowned. “Why not you?”

“Where’s Alexander?”

At that, Richard looked slightly uncomfortable. “Nobody’s seen him today. He’s been acting a bit…funny, don’t you think?”

“He’s fine,” Lucian muttered, gesturing to the fields. “Just the stress of this mess.”

“No, he has seemed a little…off,” Sarah said, nodding.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” John blustered. “He’s got us through worse than this.”

Norman was still looking at Richard. “I can’t,” he said. He looked to Lucian for help, but found that he only stared back at him, unmoving.

Since Norman had overruled him with the hunting party, they’d said little to one another. He sensed that Lucian’s protection had come to an end. He was on his own from now on.

But it wasn’t just Lucian. They were all staring at him. He swept a glance around at them, and saw the same expression upon each of their faces: expectant, awaiting his verdict.

He mouthed wordlessly until a sigh escaped his throat, and he shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “Two weeks.”

Before he could look to the others for their agreement, they’d all turned away, accepting his words without comment. They returned to work, leaving him to stand and watch Richard race away to inform the Runners. The others were gabbling about the news, excitement threading their voices, but Norman heard not a word of it.

His head was reeling. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Alexander would abandon him to make decisions in his stead? When he was so sure that he wasn’t ready?

While his thoughts swirled in knots, he couldn’t resist the urge to look up at the pigeon atop the post once more. It was still watching them work, cocking its head. For a moment he thought that, perhaps, it had eyes only for him.

Alexander didn’t appear at all that day. Only once the sun had set and the evening meal on Main Street was afoot did he emerge. But he wasn’t himself, didn’t say a single word to anyone. His head was ducked, and he blanked the welcoming cries of the city folk. He spoke only once, to Norman, in passing. “Keep them in the fields.”

Then he retreated to the rear of the kitchen, beside the inglenook, to eat alone.

The hall was soon buzzing with muttered chatter, and fleeting glances leapt in his direction every other moment. But nobody dared approach him. His eyes were too staring, too empty—elsewhere. His gaze didn’t leave the flames.

For a while, his sullen puss weighed heavily over everyone. But the excitement stirred up by the radio was too great to be tempered. The news had sent the city into a storm of heated discussion and debate. Norman’s decision to convene the council in London was mentioned just as often.

Many already claimed that he’d ordered it himself—had demanded that representatives from settlements across the country be brought together.

At first, Richard tried to correct them. But when those many became most, he surrendered, and even began conjecturing along with them. Within an hour, it was common knowledge that Norman had had a hand in the radio’s discovery, and had ordered the Runners away himself, part of a brilliant plan between him and Alexander.

What was that plan? Everyone was sure they’d be told in time.

Norman was beginning to understand how the elders’ stories had started, and grown into the legends they were today—even the legend of Alexander Cain.

Opinions flew every which way, well into the night. The debates were fierce.

But it was all only so much smoke, obscuring the naked truth that now tortured their empty stomachs: This was the last full dinner they could expect to eat for some time.

They could from now on only afford one meal per day, itself composed of mere meagre rations, leftovers dredged from beneath crates and hauled from the weeds in the wilder parts of the city.