Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (52 page)

This morning, she had awoken with no pretence about the purpose of her visit to the copse: she would have to steal. She would take only enough to see her and Daddy through the next few days, and then she’d be strong enough to brave the scrubland farther afield. But today, there was no choice.

What she had seen once she’d arrived, however, had driven all thought of food from her mind. She’d fallen upon her haunches amidst the ferns, unable to move, staring down at where the settlement had been, until the wind had kicked up nearby leaves and twigs into the deep pile now nestled against her thighs.

It had clearly burned some time during the night. All that remained of the tents were their blackened profiles against the ground, and a few skeletal support wires. The caravans had been rendered buckled shadows of their former selves, their walls blistered open, having spilled their contents onto the ground outside. Everywhere, myriad personal effects lay charred and unrecognisable beneath a thick layer of grey-white ash. The food was gone.

No effort had been made to put out the blaze. Nothing had been dragged clear of the flames. Not a single body littered the ruins. The campsite merely lay smouldering in the midst of the sapling forest, as though man had never passed this way. No cries of sorrow sounded from beneath the trees, and no trail of survivors graced the undergrowth.

They were just gone.

“Enjoying the view?”

The voice, low and smooth, trickled over her shoulder and into her ear, seeming almost to creep up on her from behind. Her heart skipped a beat as she whirled in the grass, ready to run or scream. But she was stilled by the sight of the figure standing over her. She knew his face. “You,” she whispered.

“Me,” he said.

“You…you’re not here. You’re the nightmare man. You’re not real. You’re a dream!”

A smile grew on the man’s beautiful face, right below a pair of eyes surrounded by dark streaks. If those eyes hadn’t been so razor sharp, he would have looked funny, like the Pandas that Ma had used to show her in picture books. But this man was anything but funny. “Do I look like a dream to you?” he said.

She flicked her head down to look at his long black overcoat, and his feet planted in the grass, which parted around his ankles. His overcoat fluttered in the wind. He was real, alright. She couldn’t have spoken if she had tried, so hard had her jaw clamped shut, and so she shook her head.

He crouched down beside her and gestured to the conflagration. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said.

“Did you do it?”

His eyes widened. “Me? No.” Absurdly, he smiled with genuine good humour. “No, this isn’t my style.”

Despite the mirth in his eyes, Billy’s guts quivered, and she cowered in the grass. “Who are you?” she said.

He shook his head, suddenly impatient. Urgency filled his gaze. “There’ll be time for that later. I need you to listen close.” He swept an arm at the camp. “You see this? It’s just the start. If you don’t do exactly as I say, there won’t be a soul under these stars who can escape what’s coming.”

Tears were splashing from her cheeks without check. Though he spoke softly, he frightened her more than even the devil who had taken Grandpa. The air around him seemed alive. “Please go away!”

“Billy.”

“I want my Daddy!”

His gaze bore down on her with such intensity that she froze in the grass. “Listen, child! Listen well. Or else your
Daddy
will be but one of countless to perish in fire. You’re special, Billy. You can make all the difference.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“You.”

Despite herself and all her writhing guts, she asked, “How?”

The Panda Man spoke fast, his voice having fallen to a whisper. “Something is brewing on the horizon, something you’re a part of, something that will decide the fate of not only this world, but many. Maybe all.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand…”

He shook his head, ever more impatient. “There
will
be time for answers later. Right now I need you to find some people.”

“Who?”

“I think you know.”

For a moment Billy could only frown up at him. Then the faces from her dreams danced in front of her eyes; the two men who seemed to hover over her bed each morning.

The Panda Man nodded with a knowing glint to his smirk. “That’s right. I need you to find them before it’s too late to change what He’s done.”

“What who’s done?”

He didn’t seem to hear her, glancing away at the horizon. “He’s upset the balance.” A scowl brewed on his alabaster face. “So much depends on the here and now, yet all these silly men ever do is think of themselves. It needs to be put right. We have little time.”

Billy hesitated. “I can’t leave Daddy. He’s sick. Please, just go away and leave us alone!”

“Your father will be fine, for a while. Right now, I need you to get up out of the dirt. There’s work that needs doing.” He straightened, his long coat billowing around him, and offered a hand.

Billy’s breath shuddered in her throat. “No,” she cried. “Leave me alone.”

“If you don’t, your father will die. I guarantee it.”

Billy sobbed, but offered her hand. It was seized by a grip of immense strength, and the Panda Man’s eyes glittered. “Good,” he muttered. Then he hauled her up in a hail of browning leaves and set her on her feet.

Billy brushed herself down, dazed, and took a breath to steady herself. “Where do I go?” she said, straightening up to meet his gaze. But he was gone. All that remained of him was a fading rustle in the grass, a groan in the bark of the copse’s trees, and a single departing whisper on the wind. “It’ll come to you. Find them, Billy. Find them.”

Norman shuffled without pause, passing each guard yet again as he circled the catwalk, orbiting the tower. They paid him no notice, their eyes trained beyond the wall, but he was glad for their presence nonetheless.

The city’s shadows seemed alive today, boiling away where the sun’s glare couldn’t reach, as though plotting, murmuring.

He kept his gaze fixed a few feet ahead of him. It was easier to keep walking that way—in a trance where time was unhinged, one which kept his thoughts and chest pain at bay.

By the time he came to a standstill, the sun had fallen low in the sky, and his ribs were throbbing, coupled with an icy pinch in his chest that had taken seat not long after Alexander had departed. The heat of the day was ebbing, but it was still far too warm to explain the chill that now seemed to surround his heart, a raw, gnawing cold.

He’d passed out by the stables after Allie and Richard had left him. It couldn’t have been for very long, as he had still been alone when he’d come to, but it had been long enough to bring him back to his senses. By the time they’d returned, regret and deep shame had set his cheeks burning and his stomach tied in knots.

He’d said things he didn’t mean, done things he shouldn’t have in front of people who were relying on him. He’d made a fool of himself. And there was no way to take any of it back.

A few hours of rest—with Allie watching over him—had been enough to cement an even state of mind. But still the pain had persisted enough to drive him back outside—to pacing the catwalk—in search of distraction.

He wondered just how long it would take the pain to fade. He now suspected that it was down to more than just the broken ribs. Something told him that, somehow, it was connected to the nightmares, and the scar upon the side of his head.

But right now the pain seemed distant. His mind had turned elsewhere.

When he’d been resting, he had endured a bout of restless twitching, and dreamed a dream all too familiar: the city, the storm, the yelling young faces, and the leering figure.

Looking out at London’s skyline now, there was no doubt in his mind that it was the very same as that city’s. This time there had been nothing vague about the dream; every detail had been rendered in sharp relief. He had not only tasted the stagnant mud, but felt the grit between his teeth, felt not only the icy rain upon his skin but also the weight of his sodden clothes. The bolt of pain above his right ear had this time seemed closer to a white-hot steak knife embedded in his skull. The voices of those standing above him had reached his ears—still distorted and meaningless, but audible.

It had all been more substantial. More real.

But most noticeable of all had been His return: that strange, leering figure. The first time Norman had had the dream, he’d been standing off to one side, watching. This time, however, he’d been standing directly behind Alexander and Lucian, the dark marks beneath his eyes casting his face in shadow. He had leaned between the bellowing figures, smiling, and repeated the words that now haunted Norman’s every waking thought: “Remember, Norman. Remember. You were all there.”

Norman shuddered. There would be no more sleep for him today.

A noise finally drew him back to the catwalk: scuffling footsteps, approaching from the tower. At first he suspected it was one of the guards changing shift, but the silhouette passing over the catwalk was slighter, more feminine.

Allison materialised from the tower’s shadow, approaching with unmistakable purpose.

He tried to smile, but faltered, the shame of his earlier outburst arresting his lips. Instead he turned away and waited, leaning against the catwalk. From here he was looking out across the Thames, which cast a silver-blue glare across the city, one that enamelled the crumbling shells of glass and steel behemoths. The monuments of long-dead men momentarily struck him dumb—as the Old World’s remains had done countless times before, and would never cease to do—as Allison continued to grow closer, until her face was mere inches from his.

“Can’t sleep?” she whispered.

Norman drew a great sigh. “It feels like the whole world is holding its breath,” he said, “just waiting for something to happen.”

She nodded. “I’ve never liked it here,” she said. “It’s too quiet.”

“It’s always quiet.”

“Yes, but here it’s different. Not just silence but…an absence. Like there’s something missing that isn’t quite gone…just a ghost of something greater.”

“I suppose all that’s left are ghosts of greater things.”

She shrugged. Moments later, she sidled an inch closer. “Do you ever wonder where they all went?”

Her words died on the wind, and Norman couldn’t help swallowing audibly. “Sometimes,” he said.

She shook her head, her eyes glassy. “It’s hard to think of so many people. And they all just… I can never begin to imagine what it was like for the elders, what it was like to watch it all go, and know that they had to carry on.”

“Alex always said it happened fast,” Norman said. He snapped his fingers—though they both knew the snap was coming, it made them jump—“Just like that.”

She shook her head once more. “Why?” She paused. “Why them? Why then, and only then?” She shivered. “Why are
we
still here?”

Norman felt his mind grapple with the questions, but only momentarily. It was all too big, especially now. After a brief silence he said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Best just to do what you can with what you have.”

She was motionless for a long time, her gaze locked on the long-dead city, but when she turned back to him she had regained a trace of vim. “We’re trapped here, aren’t we?”

He nodded.

“What do you think will happen?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s any doubting why we got through London untouched. They have us all together now, in one place.”

He heard her throat crack. “Things
are
better, now. Not everyone is starving. Maybe…maybe it’ll all just blow over.”

He smiled despite himself and gave her arm a squeeze. “Sorry, Allie, but I don’t think so. This was never about hunger. There’s something they’re not telling us. I’m going to find out what it is, but I don’t know if I can do anything to put it right.” He paused, thinking of Alexander. “Our past isn’t all roses.”

“There’s the radio message, too. Maybe there’s someone out there who can help us.”

“Maybe.”

Allie sighed. “At least we have you,” she said. “You and Alex.”

Norman tried to keep an even expression, but couldn’t stop his shoulders slumping. “Allie…” He looked into her eyes, and felt the weight of two cities press upon his shoulders. “I’m not the man you’re looking for. I don’t think I ever was. I’m just…” His scar throbbed, but he pressed on, “I’m nobody.” He looked out across the river once more to hide his burgeoning grimace. “I can’t save you.”

They lapsed into a silence long enough for the city’s skyline to become emblazoned on his retinas. A dark presence seemed to be exuding from its murky depths, one he felt all too often now. He saw it peering around every corner, felt it pressing in from all sides.

And he suspected that Allie felt it too. They all did.

Her delicate fingers twisted into his, and her voice washed over him from lips that had grown close to his shoulder. “You
are
that man. I know you are.” She pressed her lips against his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “You might not believe it, but I do.”