Ruins (42 page)

The officer staggered back, touching his jaw in surprise. Sam winced as his knuckles pounded. He no longer had the element of surprise.

“That’s how it’s going to be, then,” the officer said, advancing again and drawing what looked like a stun gun.

“GET THIS THING OFF ME!” howled the other office, attempting to pry Isabel free. Unable to shake her off, he stumbled down a side corridor, taking her with him. They vanished from sight.

“You have no idea what’s going on out there, young man,” Sam said softly to the policeman who had the stun gun aimed at his chest.

“Don’t make this any worse,” the officer said.

Sam held his hands up.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry.” He made his voice tremble and was surprised at how convincing he sounded. Maybe he was getting better at lying. “Just don’t shoot that thing at me. Got a bad ticker.” He cowered, hoping he wasn’t overplaying it.

The officer sized him up.

“Face against the wall,” he said. “Hands behind your back.”

Sam complied and the officer came up behind him. Before he could lay a finger on him, Sam dropped clumsily to his knees and turned, yanking the gun from the officer’s hands. He aimed and fired.

The officer yelped and collapsed, spasming against the floor as the gun ticked.

Sam threw the weapon down.

“Sorry, chap,” he muttered.

At the end of the corridor, he found Isabel sitting atop the other officer, who was sprawled on his back.

“Fool knocked himself unconscious running at the wall,” she muttered, licking a paw and running it behind her ear. She hopped off and Sam followed her through the station.

A girl stood in the reception. Not just any girl; the one from the tunnels. The one Laurent had brainwashed.

“Rae, I presume,” Sam said. She nodded.

“What happened to
her
?” Isabel asked, noting the unconscious female officer behind the front desk. An angry pink welt was swelling on her jaw.

“She looked tired,” Rae said.

Sam went to the door. He shuddered, seeing the black smoke pouring up into the night sky.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

Isabel told him about the attack at Aileen’s and Sam listened grimly. They were scattered, just as Laurent no doubt wanted.

“We need supplies,” he said and his eyebrows arched in surprise when he spotted Aileen standing by a tree out front, a sword strapped to her back. He pushed the door open and went out, sounds of destruction clamouring in on him.

“Evening, dear,” Aileen said, handing him his satchel.

“Aileen,” he said. He rummaged through the bag, checking his stock. A raven feather, herbs, the deadly little white parcels he’d hoped he would never have to use again. “Thanks.”

“Didn’t have much choice,” Aileen said. “The safehouse is gone.”

“That bad?”

“Harvesters, dear.”

Sam shook his head. “That mine?” he asked, nodding to the rifle in her hands.

“Here,” she said.

He went to take it from her, but Aileen didn’t release it. He found himself alarmingly close to her. Her eyes sparkled at the centre of her doughy face. She smelt like washing powder and apple crumble.

“We’re tough old birds, you and I,” she said. “Not as easy to pluck as one might imagine.”

Bewildered, Sam nodded. Aileen’s free hand was on his arm. It squeezed, gently but firmly.

“Let me...” she began softly. “Let me take care of you.”

It was clear in an instant. The way she fussed around him like a mother hen. Clucking at his every movement. Fluffing pillows, filling kettles, primping and prattling. Sam didn’t know what to think. How to feel. It had been years since anybody had looked at him that way. He was a doddery old man. Nobody looked at him like that anymore.

“Aileen,” he began.

“I’m no spring chicken, I know that,” Aileen said. “But that’s no bad thing. We could be happy here.” Sirens shrilled and Aileen checked herself. “Could be, after all of this.”

With infinite delicacy she added: “It’s been years since Judith, dear.”

Judith
.

He couldn’t. Aileen seemed to notice something in him the instant he thought her name. Had his face changed? Did he look repulsed? Scared? It didn’t matter. Aileen released both his arm and the rifle.

“No,” she murmured as Rae and Isabel approached. “No, of course. Foolish of me. You still...”

“Aileen,” he started.

“We best get going,” she interrupted him, checking the sword at her back. “My, but your face is a picture,” she chuckled, her old self returning in the blink of an eye. “Never seen a woman with a blade before? I doubt that. My granddaughter’s somewhere out there, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything happen to her.”

He knew better than to argue.

“I’d be glad for the company,” he said.

He noticed that Rae looked worse than he felt. The dark bags under her eyes seemed to deepen with every second, as if the weight of everything that had come to pass was slowly squeezing the life out of her.

Shock
, Sam thought.
This is all new to her
. And who wouldn’t be shocked by what was happening in the town?

“Good, you’re armed,” Isabel said.

“You alright?” Sam asked Rae. She nodded.

“We must reunite with the others at the school,” Isabel sniffed.

“You think Laurent will be there?”

“Even if he isn’t, it’s integral to his plan,” Isabel said.

Sam’s instincts told him that whatever was going to happen, it would happen at the Abbey ruins. That’s where the tunnels were, and Laurent had talked about the primal energies pulsing there. But the school was important, too. It had been desecrated. He eyed Rae. They couldn’t take her with them, surely. She was too dangerous. And how could they trust her after she’d allied herself with Laurent?

He felt claws sink into his shoulder and realised Isabel had clambered aboard.

“Go,” she urged. “There isn’t a minute to spare.”

The town was worse than he’d imagined. Black smoke and fire filled the sky. Every building smouldered and the streets were filled with bodies and warring townspeople.

“Here,” Sam said, handing out handkerchiefs and fastening one protectively around his face. Rae and Aileen did the same. They kept close to the buildings as they made their way down the street, attempting to draw as little attention to themselves as possible.

A car careened down the road and ploughed into a block of flats. A landslide of fiery rubble spilled onto the stalled automobile, cocooning it and its driver.

“Hurry,” Sam called, taking up the rear, clasping the rifle tightly. He heard a strange noise and realised Aileen was singing softly.

“London’s burning, London’s burning,” she murmured, as if to comfort herself. Sam appreciated the distraction, even if the location was wrong. “Fire fire, fire fire.”

They made their way through the streets, meeting with destruction at every turn.

“The girl. She’s fading.” Isabel spoke quietly into Sam’s ear. “Another hour and she’ll be useless to us.”

“Have a heart,” Sam whispered back, his voice muffled by the handkerchief. He agreed, though, that things would be a hundred times more difficult if Rae became unstable.

“If the school’s untouched, she stays there,” Isabel said. “It’s the only way. She’s exhausted herself, or that brute has. Whatever she’s been doing, it’s not the way it’s meant to be. She’s abused her power.”

Sam hadn’t thought he could feel any worse about the situation, but Isabel’s words proved him wrong. This wasn’t good.

Royal Birch Primary School was located further out of town and as they cleared Bury’s centre, they found that fewer buildings had fallen to the Tortor. The streets were quieter. They climbed a hill and Sam chanced a look back. His breath caught in his throat.

The town had become an inferno. Every rooftop flickered with hellish fire, belching ash and embers into the heavens. There were no more sirens. No shrieks. No screams. Bury was falling and there was nothing they could do about it.

“We’ll lose them,” Isabel warned. Sam shrank away from the town and saw that Rae and Aileen had gone ahead. He jogged to catch up with them, wiping sweat from his nose. He felt grimy with dust. The handkerchief over his mouth was already filthy so he pulled it free and tossed it to the ground. The others did the same.

At last, they reached the school. It seemed unaware that the world was ending. Somnolent behind a curtain of trees, its windows were peaceful, unperturbed by the mayhem of the town centre. The calm was a momentary tonic to the carnage they had battled through.

There were no people, though. No movement behind the blinds.

Sam eyed the building distrustfully. Was it possible that the sickness spread by the Tortor had yet to reach the school? Or was it being protected? Armies needed a base. Was this somewhere for Laurent to regroup? The quiet was alarming.

They stood staring up at the school. Sam didn’t know what to think.

“Where are the others?” he said at last.

Sentinels had been sent to guard the school days ago, and Liberty should be here somewhere, too.

“We would be foolish to enter,” Isabel said.

Sam knew they had to go in. It was their job. If the school was harbouring something insidious, who else would tackle it?

“Then we’re all fools,” he shrugged, ambling forward. “Stay close.” Rae stepped in line with him, Aileen on his other side.

“I had forgotten how exciting this could be,” the landlady said.

“I had forgotten what an adrenaline junkie you used to be,” Sam commented. He kept his eyes on the school as they approached the entrance. There was no movement. Nothing that made him suspect an imminent attack. He pushed the door open and they all went inside.

The quiet hung like a veil. Something that smothered and obscured.

“I’ve never known a school so quiet,” Aileen said. Despite the emptiness of the reception, her voice didn’t glance off the surfaces. The atmosphere absorbed it hungrily.

“We should leave,” Isabel hissed.

Sam looked at Rae. She swallowed nervously.

“We’re here now,” he reasoned. As he performed the protective ritual with the raven feather, Isabel hopped from his shoulder, padding silently across the polished floor, a four-legged spectre.

When Sam was done, he, Aileen, Isabel and Rae made their way down the main corridor. At the end, Sam eyed the staff room uneasily. It looked the same as it had earlier in the week. There was no sign of the hag who had set the shadow demons on them, though.

“Down here,” he said, drawing everybody away from the staff room.

They went down another corridor. Sam paused, a vile stench assaulting his nostrils. He peered ahead. In the darkness, it was hard to see properly, but his heart thumped faster at what he could make out.

The corridor was painted with blood. It oozed thickly across the shiny floor and was splashed up the walls.

Sam pushed against the voice in his head that urged him to turn around. No matter how long he’d been doing this, that voice was always there, and it only got louder with age. When he was young, he’d found a way to ignore it; he’d imagine the worst thing he could, and that helped to diminish the horror of the things he had to face. All these years later, though, he’d seen enough horrific things to know that nothing good awaited them.

At the end of the corridor, a sign above a pair of double doors read: GYMNASIUM.

They approached slowly. Sam pushed the doors open. He nearly retched at the stench.

Rae and Aileen made disgusted sounds, shoving their hands to their mouths. Sam raised his arm to his nose but the stink of rot pressed in all around them.

“Rae,” Sam grunted. “Stay here.”

Steeling himself, he passed into the gym. The reek was overpowering and Sam blinked rapidly to stop his eyes from watering.

Bodies littered the gymnasium. Lifeless, heaped up against the walls. All dead. Left to rot. The Sentinels who had been sent to guard the school had been killed.

At the centre of the gym, Liberty and Merlyn turned to look at him.

“We just got here,” Liberty said.

“What have they done?” Sam croaked. Fresh terror crashed through him. “We have to get out of here.”

“But you’ve only just arrived.” A silky voice roved into the gym and Sam’s legs threatened to drop him. On the other side of the gymnasium, a shape detached itself from the shadows. Malika’s smile was a wound-like slash of red and her eyes stabbed through the gloom. Sam gripped the shotgun tighter.

“You killed them,” he muttered, not caring that he was stating the obvious. He had to find a way to stop her. What would it take to bring Malika down? Bullets had failed on the bus and she looked even stronger than ever. There wasn’t even any facial scarring from the powder he’d used on her mere days ago.

“They all screamed and begged.” Malika shrugged, rippling slowly through the shadows.