Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (15 page)

But there was something wrong with them. The greenery clinging to their clothes seemed suffused into their skin. It was almost as though they really were made of moss, had grown out of the mud and grime that coated them.

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I have to go.”

“You’re not fit to take another step, sweet pea,” Sammy said.

Billy’s grip on the knife was now so hard her fingers ached.

“You’re not thinking straight,” Jerry said. “Just come on with us and get a bite.”

“No, I—”

“
Don’t be rude, dear!
” Sammy hissed, lurching forward and seizing Billy’s wrist. The motherly note to her expression had vanished. She looked Billy up and down critically. “Come on with us, now. There’s a good girl. We had the good graces you haul you out of the woods. God knows what would have happened to you in there. Now come get some food. You’re going to need your strength.”

Jerry’s face had morphed in much the same way. “And plenty of it.”

“No, I have to go. Daddy needs me!” Billy cried.

Suddenly their faces were dark with shadows that hadn’t been there a moment before. Sammy’s face shot down from above, snaggle-toothed and snarling. “Your daddy isn’t here now, is he? We’re here. And it’s only fair you pay a fair price for the kindness we showed you.”

Jerry snuffled with piggy laughter and lashed out with a plastic-clad foot, kicking Billy sharply across the back of her thighs.

Billy cried out and tried to wrench free, but she was weak. They hauled her into the middle of the room. “Please, just let me go!”

Sammy wasn’t listening. “I’ve been looking forward to this for far too bloody long.” She licked her lips, running her calloused thumb over Billy’s arm. “But looks like it was worth the wait. Oh, she’s
firm
.”

Jerry crooned, stepping around behind Billy, out of sight.

“See, we made quite the killing out of that unfortunate famine,” Sammy jeered. “Quite the killing. Before the End, when I was a nipper, people used to laugh at my line of work. They called me quack, hack, fraud—a witch!” Her face contorted into a snarl. “Usually fancy doctors in the pockets of the big pharmaceutical companies.”

What are they talking about? Why is she holding on so tight?

Her wrist throbbed with fresh bruises. Jerry’s ragged breath closed in behind, only inches away, brushing the nape of her neck. Suddenly she realised that something had gone horribly wrong.

Sammy cackled. “Now, people don’t remember so well how things used to be. And all those fancy doctors and the big labs and pills—all gone.” She made a gesture similar to flicking a fly off her arm. “Now people appreciate the power of
natural
remedies again.”

“And there’s quite a profit in it for those who still remember,” Jerry squeaked.

“
Quite
a profit,” Sammy agreed. “But we’ve run into a little snag. And lucky for us all, little one, there’s something you can do to help us out there.

“See, I got this little blemish here. Take a look, see.” She pulled her coat aside to reveal her left collarbone, upon which lay an angry patch of skin two inches across, vibrant red and capped with a seeping sore that made Billy wince. “We used everything we got on it, and still it won’t clear up.”

“Even dandelion root and burdock broth did nothing!” Jerry said with disgust. “There’s a dark aura over this place. More of those evil things are popping up all over. Jerry found her first yesterday. Something in the air is eating us alive.”

“Even our most powerful remedies are no match for that filth,” Jerry said. “We need something a little stronger.”

“What?” Billy squeaked.

Both the women were looming over her now, and their hot stinking breath washed down over her from front and behind. Sammy’s grip on her was vice-like. Her froggy face creased into a drooling mass of lips, boils and folds of wrinkled skin. “The light inside you is strong.” She frowned. “I never seen anything like it. Glowing. I got a little of the light, myself, and Jerry just a pinch. Both of ours blighted by all this bad mojo.” She looked troubled for a moment, and began speaking with her eyes unfixed, almost to herself. “But we can fix it by borrowing a bit of yours. Only fair, wouldn’t you say, for saving your life?”

Jerry uttered a formless squeak of excitement. “Don’t you worry. You just keep real still.”

Billy struggled and kicked, but they both had hold of her wrists and ankles, and were easing her down towards the ground. She thrashed and cried, but then her voice stopped in her throat as Sammy pressed her hands on her bare belly, and began to slide them down towards her belt. “Shh,” she cooed, pressing her. “It’ll be over soon.”

“You can scream if you like,” Jerry whispered into her ear. Her lips touched Billy’s neck. “Nobody’s gonna hear you.”

Billy would have screamed then, if a single picture hadn’t popped into her head: Daddy, lying back there in the cabin, coughing and hacking his way closer to the ground just like Ma. And then, suddenly, there was strength in her, lancing out from a secret place in her core. For a moment the medicine women froze, as though blinded by something invisible shining out of her. Then her hand slipped free, found her belt, and she took the knife in her hand. She swung it up in a jagged arc, and brought it down with everything she had.

A piercing shriek rang out, and Billy’s other wrist was free. Sammy fell back out of sight, clutching her left eye, blood and a strange clear liquid spurting from between her fingers. “My eye! Arrrgh! I’m blind! Jerry, the bitch blinded me!”

Billy span around on the ground to face Jerry, whose face was frozen in a dumbfounded gape, and slashed across the knuckles of both the hands gripping her ankles. Jerry uttered a shriek of her own, so high-pitched that it set Billy’s ears ringing. Before she knew what she was doing, driven by the strength that now thrummed in her veins, she sank the blade up to the hilt into Jerry’s plastic-clad foot, and tore it out again. The woman uttered a whine not dissimilar to a howling dog, and toppled back out of sight into the dark.

Then Billy was on her feet, dragging her bag up with her and running for the door. She emerged at the threshold and looked out upon a recess in a hillside. Below was the same forest she had been lost in, but she was raised high above the canopy. A trail led away, snaking down the hillside, leading to open fields stretching away to the horizon.

She uttered a startled
urgh
then, as another sensation suddenly filled her: the same itch in her feet that she had followed since leaving Daddy, an irresistible pull that pointed across the fields, into the unknown. She turned back into the darkened room, and gripped the heavy iron door, throwing all her weight against it.

Sammy, clutching her spurting eye, covered in streaks of blood from head to toe, scrabbled towards her, her face infected with hatred. The people before the End had been right: underneath all her remedies and talk of the Light Inside, she was a quack, a hack, and a witch. “
YOU BITCH, YOU BLINDED ME! DON’T YOU DARE CLOSE THAT DOOR, I’LL KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE SLUT! WHORE! YOU CAN’T DO—”

The door slammed shut, and Billy pulled the heavy wooden log that acted as a lock down over it. It fell into place with a satisfying thud, and she stepped away as muffled screeching and pounding rang out from the other side. She turned on her heel, shaking uncontrollably. She stood for a moment longer before she fell to her knees and vomited. She felt dirty. The strange possessing strength drained out of her all at once, and she keeled over onto the ground. For a while, everything was dark.

She came to with a jerk some time later. She had been dreaming, but already it was half forgotten. She had been standing in a street flanked by tall buildings, and the rain had been hammering down on darkened tarmac. She had stood to one side of a huddle of bedraggled people all bent over a twitching young boy. She could almost see his face under an unruly mop of black hair—

But the rest was a blur, fading fast. All that remained was a feeling, one of having touching someone, as if she had reached across a great distance and, somehow, bumped up against somebody.

But who?

When she felt strong enough to move again, she crawled towards the sound of distant trickling and found a stream. She rolled the last few feet down its banks and dipped her head into a blissful pool of water, drinking in great gulps, ignoring the taste of mud. Her stomach clenched into spasms as soon as the water hit, but still she drank and drank until she rolled up away onto the banks again, gasping and belching. She lay there in the cool sun-dappled mud and stared up at the clouds peeking through the oak branches overhead. She could feel the water doing its work inside her, diffusing into her body’s parched tissues, clearing away the gunk that had been clogging her mind.

There was something in the sky, shaped like a bird yet quite unlike any she had ever seen. Its wings weren’t flapping but rather stuck out to the side, and it was too far away—far too high in the sky, above the clouds. It flew a straight path until it passed behind the fronds of an ash tree, but though she waited, it never emerged from the other side.

She frowned, then blinked. Grandpa had talked about flying machines once. Had it really been there, or was she more tired than she thought?

Daddy had started seeing things when he got sick. Maybe she was starting to see things, too.

But no, it had been there. A strange certainty insisted: an Echo from Before.

An Echo.

Eventually she sat up and looked around as she filled her water skin. Everything seemed sharper, clearer. Every moment since she had entered the forest seemed distant and fuzzy, as though it had all been a mere half-forgotten dream. She wondered whether Sammy and Jerry had been as much a dream as Ma and the Panda Man, but then she caught a distant thumping on the wind, and realised they were still up there pounding on the door.

Thoughts now came fast. She formed a plan in the few seconds it took to steel herself to stand. She scrabbled back toward the door, and stood there listening to the pounding.

“
Bitch!
” Sammy cried. “
Let us out!
”

“
Sammy, it won’t stop bleeding … I don’t feel so good.
”

“
Shut up, keep pushing. Girl, you let us out, and we’ll make it worth your while.
”

Billy looked farther up the path and saw a wagon laden with vials and jars, all full of the same herbs and flowers. She approached warily and pulled back the canvas cover, and gasped as she revealed a bounty of dried meats, bags of grain, ripe fruits, a box of biscuits, and a loaf of granite-hard bread. She stuffed the meat and fruit into her bag, and sat in the dirt as she gobbled the biscuits. For a time she was deafened by her own satisfied groans and the racket of her working jaw. After, she tore the stale loaf apart through sheer violence and gnawed away until it was gone.

Already feeling new strength in her, she took in the myriad medicines.

Would any of them help Daddy? She had no way of knowing. The medicine ladies on the other side of the door would never tell her now. And she doubted the medicines would help in any case.

She took a thick blanket for cold nights, a full rusted canteen to supplement her water skin, and a man-sized filthy saucer-like hat to keep off the sun. Feeling far more prepared and bolstered against the elements, she returned to the door.

The pounding had stopped now. Sammy seemed to sense her presence; Billy could certainly sense both women, feel their weakness and their fear, and somehow, she knew both were now slumped on the floor. The sensation related to the itch in her feet spoke from the base of her skull: the women were like her—they knew things and felt things that other people couldn’t—but they were also different, broken, black.

Then she felt something else: an absence. She could only feel Sammy now. Jerry’s black light had winked out. Sammy, ever more afraid, spoke through the door.
“
I have something more valuable than anything you’ll find out there in the world. The biggest secret lies in here. We may pedal bullshit remedies, but make no mistake, I have a piece of the same light inside of you. Nothing like yours, but Jerry and I got a sliver. It shows you things.” A pause. “It showed us the truth … the truth about the End.”

Billy paused, caught mid-stride. Before leaving home, she had never known there had been anything but the way things were. But seeing New Land, and the great ruined cities on the horizon, and the stories Daddy had heard from Grandpa, her eyes had been opened to the terrible truth: something dreadful had happened to the world, which was much, much larger than she had ever imagined. For a moment, she considered turning back.

But then the itch in her feet tugged at her heels, and she remembered the Panda Man’s threat. Daddy’s life depended on her.

She kept walking, heading away down the hill.

“Girl, Jerry’s gone. You can’t leave me alone in here with this … thing. Girl! You let me OUT!”

Much later, she heard a final echoing scream, coupled with a manic cackle, which brought her out in gooseflesh.

“The light won’t protect you forever. One day it won’t need you anymore. In the end, it throws us all into the darkness!”