Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (7 page)

Norman was gripped by the same paralysis, and for a moment he thought they would both remain that way; but then a bright flash winked to life in the abyss behind his eyes, and he leaned toward her, taking her hand in his. “Back home, do you go to school?” he said.

She nodded, sunken eyes glazed.

“Do they tell the story of the End?” He waited, but she had grown still. He smiled. “I bet they do. They’ve been telling it all over since I was a boy. Before the End, the great cities were full of people, millions, and all the old machines rang and trilled and flashed around them, doing their bidding and talking to other people and other machines across the sea. Because, of course, there were many places across the sea, and each one was home to millions more people. We were wise, and we had power. The world had big problems, terrible problems, but we strived to put them right just as we do today—and that’s what’s important: we’re no different today than our ancestors before us. They might have lived in tall buildings and talked to others on the other side of the world just like I talk to you now, but they were just people, no different from us.” He paused, and squeezed her hand. “Why do we tell that story?”

“Because they’re all gone,” the girl whispered.

“Yes, they are. They left us behind to carry on, and though we don’t know why they left, we have to do our best to carry on their way of life. One day we’ll be ready for that power again. If places like this and people like us fail, everything they worked for will vanish just like them. And we can’t let that happen, because that’s how we keep them alive.” He placed both their hands over her chest. “So long as we carry all they knew, felt, and dreamed, they’re still here with us.”

The little girl looked down at her own chest. She said nothing, but her lip quivered. She wasn’t young enough for fairy tales, but a child’s imagination was the most powerful thing Norman knew of; it made them tougher than diamond. He could almost see the cogs turning inside her head. After a long time, she looked back up at them and gave the smallest of nods.

He gave her his best smile, despite the swell of embarrassment swelling in his throat, and stood on shaking legs, suppressing a grunt as his ribs cried out.

“I’ll be right back,” Allie said, caressing the girl’s cheek. “I’m going to make sure he’s alright. He’s special, you know.”

“I know,” the girl answered. She looked at Norman. “He’s the Chosen One from the stories.”

Norman blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Daddy and the others always talk about you. Everyone does.” She fingered her bloodied dress. “You’re going to bring us all together someday, that’s what they say.” She glanced to the wall and the looming city beyond. “Are you going to save us from the monsters, Mr Creek?”

Norman felt his lips part, but his mind had gone blank. He stood lamely before her for some moments while she stared out through the lobby windows, and then he turned on his heel and hurried away. His cane clacked upon the granite floor, his throbbing ribs begged him to stop, and he sensed myriad eyes moving over him from all around, but he refused to let up, his eyes fixed on the staircase. Suddenly his attention was on escape, and nothing else.

“Norman, wait!” Allie called. He tried to ignore her, but she caught up in a few strides and caught his elbow.

He wheeled around, fury surging forth as though a cork had been yanked. “
What?
” he hissed. “
What do you want from me?
” He had managed to keep himself from yelling, but only just. His voice had emerged as a sibilant whisper, all the more scathing for its bottled intensity.

She recoiled, her face falling. Others nearby fell quiet, averting their eyes and busying themselves with the remaining wounded. “I just wanted to say thank you.” She seemed unable to meet his eye. “You handled her really well. Almost like—” She hesitated and bit her lip, but then with an almost audible
clunk
her eyes rolled to stare right at him. “Almost like Alexander.”

He swallowed convulsively. The others were peeking at him once more. He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “That was one of his old speeches, verbatim. He used to say the same thing to me every night when I was a kid, word for word.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s the pain.” He scowled. “This radio message they received better be worth it. Bringing us all together like this, it could have ended us.”

Her eyebrows twitched, and she touched his arm. “I know. It’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not. I can’t take it out on you. You were doing a hell of a job with her.”

She shrugged. “What was I going to do? She just lost her mother.”

“Not everyone would have. It’s ugly, but it’s the truth.” They started for the stairs, slowly this time.

“Well, I don’t know how much good I did. It was nothing on your performance.”

“Like I said, it was Alexander’s story.”

He felt her eyes stabbing at him again, drowning out the others’. “That may be so, but there’s a reason people look to you.”

“They look to me because they’ve been told to. They’ve had fairy tales of some great prodigal son shoved down their throats since before most of them could walk, and the rest are too old to remember anything different. It’s all fluff, something they can lose themselves in, something to believe that keeps them going.” He suppressed a scowl. “Nobody ever really expects me to lead.”

“That’s not true. Maybe it was once, but not now. You’ve changed. There’s something of him in you, in the way you move, talk—the way you are.”

“I’m nothing like him.”

“Norman, your destiny—”

He grunted, cutting her off. “There’s no such thing as destiny,” he said slowly, enunciating every syllable. “They’re just stories.”

They walked in silence until they neared the stairs, leaving the body of refugees behind, and could talk freely again. “Stories can come true, you know,” she said.

He shook his head. She was supposed to be the one he could rely on to be on his side, yet even she seemed be slipping under the legend’s spell. He couldn’t blame her, surrounded by blood and severed families. But she had been a lifeline he had been relying on. He had few allies left. With Robert back in New Canterbury, and Lucian missing …

He stopped mid-stride and gripped her sleeve, gentle instead of hard.

Clutching
, he thought.
I’m clutching at her
.
How desperate is that?

“Please, don’t turn into one of them,” he said. His voice was almost cracking. “I need you to see me, not the Chosen One. I need you on my side.”

She looked taken aback, and glanced toward the others back in the lobby. Norman knew they were all watching, and knew that they must be making something of a spectacle. The grand marble staircase wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. But he refused to look away from Allie and waited until she had turned back to him. “Allie, are you with me?”

She was chewing her lip again, but her gaze was resolute. “What are friends for?” she said.

Feeling more than a little embarrassed, he realised she wasn’t moving with him anymore, but hovering. She was waiting to go back to Oppenheimer’s daughter. Despite all the staring and his own little drama, she hadn’t forgotten. In fact, she looked more determined than ever.

What a little time can do to a person
, he thought.
She was just a kid not long ago. A damn annoying one. And now … what would I do without her?

“Will you be alright with her?” he said.

“I have to be.” No fear, no uncertainty, where only minutes before there had been. Had his story had something to do with that?

Maybe she’s right. Maybe’s something of Alexander rubbed off on me, after all
.

Left with that uncomfortable thought, Norman made to ascend the staircase to find the council chambers. His focus was so distant that, at first, he didn’t notice the white figures moving past him at all. It wasn’t until the third of them had brushed past him—almost seeming to pass
through
him—that he froze in place.

Half a dozen pale shapes were moving on ahead of him, ascending the stairs. Three were gesticulating in conversation with one another, two were running with armfuls of folders and sheaves of paper, and the last was ambling at a leisurely pace with something held to his ear that sent the air wheezing out of Norman’s lungs: a smartphone. All of them were dressed in the kind of formal office attire that had littered the cities in the Early Years, before they were picked clean by traders. Yet they were all white, like figures from a children’s picture book that hadn’t been filled in. As they passed through the sunbeams thrusting in through the lobby windows, each one seemed to shimmer. He heard them, too, but their speech was warbling and muffled, as though he had water in his ears.

It all lasted only a moment, but it was most definitely there, right in front of him. He could have reached out and touched any one of them. His eyelids flickered, and they were gone. No shimmer, no noise, nothing. Gone.

“Norman?” Allie sounded a thousand miles away. “What’s wrong? Do you need a hand?”

“Did you see that?” he cried, whirling to face her.

“See what?”

“Walking there, people. People in suits, right there on the stairs!” He reached over and gripped her shoulder. “You didn’t see that?”

Her lips had parted, and her eyes were wide, afraid. “Norman, are you alright?”

There was no lie in her eyes; she hadn’t seen anything.

“I’m fine,” he breathed. “I’m fine, I just … I need a rest.”

“Good idea. Just make sure you show for the summit. One hour.”

“An hour.” He nodded. He tried to give her an encouraging smile, but his cheeks had turned to cement. The pain in his chest pulsed, sending blinding flashes up his spine to the base of his skull. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. He turned back to the stairs and hurried away from her—her and everyone else.

It wasn’t real. It was the pain. It was making him seeing things.

They were people from before the End.
The voice whispering those words was familiar, but not his own. He had heard it once before, though, perhaps in a half-forgotten dream.

Echoes. That’s what they’re called. Echoes.

No, it was just a hallucination. Pain did funny things, played tricks on you. The people who had once lived and worked here were long gone.

That same familiar voice spoke once more, setting free a torrent of liquid fear into his bowels:
That’s right: they’re all dead and gone. Aren’t they?

Billy Peyton was dying. Tree-studded darkness lay all around her, and no matter which way she turned, the forest always looked the same. The great maze had swallowed her up, and she had been stupid enough to wander right into it. How long had she been in here?

There was no way of telling. Only thin slivers of light made it down through the dense canopy, and she was lucky if she could tell whether it was night or day. All she had to go on was her thirst, which by now had become a smouldering fire in her belly, slowly creeping out towards her arms and legs. She had tried to eat some dried berries a while ago, but they had caught in her throat and she had choked, as though her mouth were full of sand.

It was fetid and still amidst the forest’s vastness, the air close and old, so humid that moisture seemed ready to bleed onto every surface. She had been licking leaves for a while now, but the scant drops were nothing compared to the torrential slicks of sweat pouring from her skin every minute. Her head was buzzing and an odd ringing had taken hold in her ears, while her muscles ached and her feet grew clumsy.

She was afraid, but what scared her more than her weakness was the fact that she wasn’t as afraid as she should have been. Some part of her was already beyond the point of computing the severity of her situation.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!
she thought.
Daddy always told me New Land was dangerous. I should have stayed with him. He needs me.

She had left Daddy all alone back in the cabin where they had been hiding the last few weeks. He had been sick since they had left home and come across the ocean to New Land, but now he was stuck in bed all day. Most of the time he slept, and it was all she could do to get him to wake him long enough to get some food and water into him. They had been hiding from the monsters who had attacked them and taken Grandpa.

Billy had thought they had gotten away, too. The old cabin they had found was perched on a cliff by the sea, and she hadn’t seen a single sign of another person in all the miles she had covered searching for scraps of food. But then she had come across an encampment of travellers, and found a secret copse to watch them as the days dripped by, and Daddy grew weaker. Though Daddy had warned her to stay close to the cabin, and to run if she saw anyone, she had been drawn to them. They hadn’t seemed so bad, and they had had food, lots of it.

She had been on the verge of walking into their camp the morning she had come to her copse, and saw the place had been burned to the ground. The travellers had disappeared, along with all their food. Her last chance had vanished along with them.