Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (32 page)

Paul ambled back into the room and settled into his seat, still grumbling minutely. His derisive stare added to the lingering sting of Agatha’s words, amplifying Alex’s sense of isolation. Acknowledging that he’d been defeated, he leaned back. “I have to check on the boys,” he said.

He stood amidst awkward silence and shuffled away towards the corridor, passing beyond the candlelight’s reach. At the mention of children, the conversation had grown embarrassed and diminished, hushed and somehow more sober, more lucid.

Alex walked beyond their line of sight and paused, waiting for them to continue in his absence. Perfectly still, he pricked his ears and held his breath.

“There’s something to that lad, I’ll admit,” Paul said. “But he’s still the devil’s work, I tell you now.”

There was uproar at the remark.

“Can’t be callin’ Vision the devil’s work, you daft ol’ goat!” Agatha said. “That boy’s the one thing keeping us goin’. Without him, there wouldn’t be any hope, and hope is the only thing tha’ makes me get outta bed in the morning. Wha’ else is there?”

“Hope?” Paul blustered. “What place has hope got here? Everybody that we ever loved, gone, and whoever’s left is scrabbling for purchase. All the while, the world takes a nosedive towards fucking Armageddon. And you’re clinging to
hope
?”

“S’all we got left. S’all that matters so close to such a thing.”

“Ah!” Paul grumbled dismissively. “The words of the devil!”

“Paul, we talked ’bout that word,” Agatha said. “Ain’t God’s will, an’ you’d do well not to test him in times like these.”

Paul sighed. “I know, Aggie,” he said. His voice had grown a touch sheepish.

“You'll see it, so you will. One day tha’ boy’s hope will change the world, and there won’t be a word ’bout the devil that’ll change anybody’s mind ’bout it!”

Paul grumbled something incomprehensible. In reply, Agatha gave her final word on the matter, in a voice that pulled at strings within Alex’s gut, “Not everythin’ boils down to the End of Days. There’s more to life than tha’. Folks live on, and they’ll do whatever they got to do to survive. I tells you now: We’re not gonna give up. Wha’ we've been left with ain’t enough, so we’re gonna take back what we had.”

“Unite under the boy’s banner, then?” Paul huffed. “I suppose that makes us his gang, running around and singing Kumbaya? That’s your idea, is it? We’re Alexander’s Pals now? The Kin of Cain?”

A moment of silence. Then, “You’re bloody well righ’ we are.”

Paul grunted. The conversation died at that. Reverting to idle grumblings and comments upon the meal and weather, talk from then on was stinted and overly polite.

Alex, smiling, continued along the corridor until he came to the last bedroom. He knocked and received an invitation to enter. He found James already tucked in, pyjamas and all, propped up against the headboard, waiting.

He seemed somewhat disquieted by the raised voices, but at the same time he smiled and welcomed Alex inside. As soon as the door was closed he bounded up and down beneath the sheets, brimming with glee. “Story!” he cried.

Alex couldn’t help laughing. Already dinner’s troubles seemed far away and inconsequential. He stooped into the child’s stool beside the bed and glanced about the room.

Lucian snored amidst the other bed’s sheets, against the far wall. He had little interest in stories at his age. Over the past year he’d taken to disappearing for hours at a time into the wilds. Nobody knew where he went—except Alexander.

He’d followed him once, through expanding forests, along roadways lined with rusting cars, across fields littered with charred airliners. Eventually they’d come to a bluff amidst dense burdock, one overlooking miles of barren wilderness.

Hidden amidst foliage, Alexander had watched him stretch his arms towards it, embrace it, breathe it in, relish it in a way that he’d never relished any wonder of the Old World.

The others were talking about keeping him home before he got hurt, but Alex knew they couldn’t if their lives depended on it. Lucian needed the wilds; needed to
be
wild.

He loved the boy—even dared to say he loved him more than he’d loved his own family, before the End—but knew that they would never understand one another. They were too different.

Lucian didn’t lament what the world had lost, but accepted it as it was. He slept soundly.

Alex turned from him to assess the rest of the room. He had perhaps become carried away with furnishings. Apart from Lucian’s drab, adolescent décor in the corner, the room was alive with vivid colours, painted patterns, models hanging from strings, and myriad toys of every description. It was filled to the very brim with stuffed animals, picture books, enormous reams of paper, colouring pencils, paints and board games. For each item, there was a replacement underneath, and another beneath that.

“Story,” James repeated, his emerald eyes brimming.

“You’re getting a little bit too old for bedtime stories,” Alex said.

James looked shocked and horrified. “Why?” he said.

“You can read.”

“I like you to read.”

Alex laughed again. “Looks like you’ve got a book right there,” he said. “What is it?”

James turned the leaves of the hardback in his grasp, revealing its title:
Birds of England
.

“Birds again?”

James merely smiled.

Alex sat on his bed and flicked through the pages. “You’ve always liked birds, ever since you were a baby.”

“I was reading about pigeons,” James said. “People used to send them to their friends with letters tied to their legs.” He hesitated, but met Alex’s gaze. “We could do that, one day.”

Alex’s cheeks were already aching from the strain of smiling. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we can.” He closed the book and put it aside. “What story would you like to hear tonight?”

“I don’t know,” James said without embarrassment. “You pick.”

“Most people have favourites,” Alex said, standing and perusing James’s generous collection.

“I like all stories.”

Alex felt a flutter of glee. James had been more like him than the others since he’d been able to walk and talk. Something of Alex’s own reverence of the past seemed to have been infused within the boy’s mind. Now he yearned for knowledge, yarns and discovery.

“All stories?”

“I like to know that there’s more.”

Alex frowned and glanced over his shoulder. “More?”

“More,” James affirmed, then looked ashamed. “I like to know that it isn’t just…this.”

The hairs upon Alex’s arms stood on end. He fumbled with the books upon the shelf, trying to hide a giddy grin.

The boy was the key to starting over. Alex might never live long enough himself to realise his dreams—dreams of bringing it all back from the brink, of saving what was left of the Old World—but James could carry on even after he was gone. James could unite people, bring them from the gutter and claw back some civility in the world. For him, there would be time, time to fix it all.

Alex had had the same thoughts a thousand times, lying in bed at night, but never before had they seemed more obvious. The others could never be counted on to make the first step or carry the torch. If anything—or anyone—was ever going to be saved, it was down to the two of them.

At the realisation, he stood bolt upright and hurried to his own bedroom. He returned a few seconds later, holding a bundle wrapped in old cloth. He met James’s quizzical gaze, settled into the stool, and unravelled the package with nervous, shaking hands, revealing the mottled green cover of his father’s copy of
Alice in Wonderland
.

James fixed his eyes on it. “What is it?” he said.

Alex said nothing, just pressed the book into James’s hands and sat back. He followed James’s gaze as he looked over every inch of it, turning it over in his hands with great care by the candlelight, somehow sensing that the book deserved special attention. He read the cover and looked up at Alex, a frown upon his face. “Alice in Wonderland?”

“It was mine, when I was a boy. Before that, my father’s.”

“It was yours? Before?” James looked at the book with fresh reverence. He glanced up ruefully and held it out for Alex to take back.

Alex shook his head. “It’s yours now.”

“I can’t,” James stuttered. Not a glimmer of childishness remained about him now. His manner of honour, of polite refusal, was crushingly adult.

“Of course you can,” Alex said.

“It’s your book.”

“It’s a gift.” He knelt beside the bed, holding James’s hands, gesturing to the cover. “It’s important,” he said. “You have to promise that you’ll take it.”

In the flickering light, James’s enormous eyes glittered. He nodded slowly, and took the book into a tender embrace. He opened it with great care and looked down at the illustration on the cover’s reverse side: the White Rabbit, dashing through the grass, pocket watch aloft, waistcoat trailing. Not once did he ask to be read to. After a long time, a frown crossed his face and he looked up. “Why is it important?”

Alex leaned forwards, gripping James’s hands, and cleared his throat. “Because I have a very important job for you. One that only a special boy like you can do.”

“Special?”

“That’s right. Other boys aren’t like you, because they see what’s there. Not like you. You see what could be.”

“Are there other special people?”

“Many, once. Now…” He shook his head. “Not anymore. Just you, and me.”

James’s frown had only deepened. He replied as carefully as Alex had spoken himself, “What job?”

Alex swallowed.

Could he really just come out and say it? Surely it would only frighten him—something that big would frighten anyone. But, looking into those piercing eyes, full of life and ambition, he knew that James could handle it. He leaned forward and spoke in a voice so hushed that James was forced to turn his head. “Can I tell you a secret?”

James leaned close, glassy-eyed. His mouth had fallen ajar, and his pupils had dilated.

“One day you’ll save the world,” Alex whispered.

James blinked. Only a moment’s pause stretched out before he said, “The whole world?”

Alex smiled. There was no fear in the boy’s eyes, nor incredulity. “The whole wide world.”

James’s expression didn’t change in the slightest, but behind his eyes Alex saw a million thoughts erupt into existence. “How do we do that?”

Alex sat back. “I don’t know. But I promise you—I
promise
—that we will.”

James didn’t move for a long time. Only his eyes gave away his feverish internal reaction, darting left and right. Eventually, he said, “How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That we can do it. If that’s what we’re…supposed to do.”

Alex smiled and stood, leaning over and placing a kiss on his forehead. “Because some men have a destiny.” He took James into his arms. “And you’ve got that in spades.”

Holding back tears, he looked down into James’s adoring face, and felt his conviction grow tenfold. He placed the candle beside the bed and backed away towards the door, pulling it half-closed behind him before pausing to glance back in. “I love you, brother,” he said.

James smiled, the book tight in his grasp. “I love you, Alex,” he whispered.

Alex closed the door and crept away to his room. He froze at the sight of a figure, stock-still and wreathed in the kitchen’s shadows, staring back at him.

Agatha’s smile was not only friendly, but maternal. It always had been, to all of them. She had taken Alex and James, broken and helpless, kept them alive, and warded away the worst of the pain. Even gruff Paul had found comfort in her embrace when gut-rot had been in short supply.

Right now, her eyes twinkled. She held her diary in her hands, laden with their only records of after the End, the only thing that might remain of them if they didn’t get their house in order. He smiled back at her, and that was enough for them both. They went back to their business without a word to one another.

Alex snapped the door shut behind him and sighed. White walls, bare and lifeless, met his gaze. His uncarpeted, unfurnished, cluttered room sat unsaturated and beige in the candlelight.

He’d never decorated. Never cleared the Old World relics from the cupboards or cabinets. Never changed a thing.

What did he need wallpaper for? When he lay here at night, he didn’t see these walls anyway. His dreams took him far away, dreams of what mankind had once been, and could be again.

He lay on the bed and looked across at the ancient fireplace, which lay dormant, unusable, and littered with mouse droppings. But the mantelpiece remained, and upon it were the purple and orange tattered packages that had been his parents’ last gifts to him. Beside them sat a framed photograph of the dog, long since buried.

She had died saving his life. A dark voice in his head sometimes plagued him with promises that she was the first of many casualties, if he was ever going to save anything.

He stared across at the gifts for a long time, having settled beneath the sheets, listening to the sound of Oliver and Paul singing merrily to an incomprehensible tune. Their argument had apparently become lost to a mellow rhythm and drink-addled giggling. At some point, his eyes ceased to look upon the packages. But still he saw them in his dreams. The faintest of smiles remained upon his lips even when he woke the next morning.