Ruins

by Dan Wells

  Someone was coming up behind her, and Heron put a hand on her sidearm, ready to pull if it turned out to be an enemy.

  “I want to apologize,” said Kira.

  Heron slowly lowered her hand and turned to glance at the girl keeping pace with her. “Apologize?”

  “I was rude to you,” she said. “You came all this way, and risked your life to help me, and I treated you like . . . well, I’m sorry. You helped me, and I’m grateful.”

  “I didn’t risk my life for you,” said Heron, looking forward again as they walked.

  “For Samm, then,” said Kira. “The point is—”

  “The point is that I didn’t risk my life,” said Heron. “I was always in control, and if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “Why can’t you just accept the apology?” said Kira, and Heron could hear the tension in her voice.

  “When have I ever made anything easy for you?” asked Heron.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I told you to pay better attention—”

  “You want to kidnap a human,” said Kira. Heron didn’t respond, and Kira didn’t falter a step. “You came back for the cure, and now that you’re sure it’s in humans, you want to take one and save yourself. I have been paying attention, better than you think, and that’s the only thing that makes sense. All you’ve ever cared about is your own survival—you were helping Morgan because you thought she could save you, and then you helped me for a while because you thought I could. When I failed, you went straight back to Morgan, and now that she’s failed you were completely out of options—until I confirmed the cure.”

  “I don’t think you understand me half as well as you think you do,” said Heron. She paused. “But a little better than I’d like you to, at least in this case.”

  “Then you know—”

  “Did you ever stop to consider,” said Heron, cutting her off, “that getting in my way is a bad idea?”

  “I’m trying to save us all,” said Kira. “You know that. Even you, if you’ll let me, but I can’t let you hurt anyone else.”

  “In the absolutely best-case scenario,” said Heron, “I kill you, grab one of these humans, and no one ever sees me again. That’s how things will play out if you keep trying to question me. Take it further—put up a fight, try to stop me, call for help—and I’ll end up causing a lot more death and destruction before I, yes, still get away. It’s not worth it. Go to Breezy Point, get on your little boat, and count the minutes until that army finally catches up and kills every last one of you. I will be safe, and whoever goes with me. It’s not worth it to try to stop me.”

  Kira put a hand on Heron’s arm; Heron stiffened but didn’t pull away. Kira’s voice was softer than she expected. “Survival is important,” said Kira, “but not if you lose yourself in the process. Surviving just to survive is . . . empty. That’s not a life, it’s a feedback loop.”

  Heron expected her to say more, to go on and on, moralizing in classic Kira style, but she let go of Heron’s arm and stepped back into the night, returning to Samm and Marcus and the others. Heron stopped, watching the line of refugees march past her in the snow, and then she turned and walked away into the city.

  The buildings were dreamlike in the darkness—dull, black shapes, their outlines softened by snow and dim moonlight. Heron moved through them silently, haunting the world like a living ghost. Her stealth training was so ingrained, her skills so perfectly honed, that she left no footprints as she walked, no signs, no traces whatsoever of her passing.

  If she didn’t choose to leave a mark, no one would ever be able to tell that she’d been there at all.

  Another shape appeared in the falling snow, low and lean. A wolf or a wild dog, sniffing hungrily through the dim gray void in a desperate search for sustenance. Heron raised her rifle silently, ready to kill it on instinct as a potential threat. Her finger hovered over the trigger. She watched the wolf stop, tense as a spring, and then burst into motion, racing through the street after a tiny white target—a cat or a rabbit, both hunter and hunted kicking up a frenzied spray of snow in their wake. The wolf pounced, shook its head three times, and the rabbit was dead in its jaws. Dark blood dripped down to the snow.

  This is life, thought Heron. Not a peace treaty, not an idealistic dream, but a grim dance of death and survival. The strong live on while the weak—the ones too small or too foolish to fight back—die in agony and blood. Kira wants a world of rabbits, safe in their warren, happy and communal and oblivious to reality, but the real world is out here. A hunter in the snow. Life is a lone wolf, scratching out a living with teeth and claws and a heart of stone. The wolf shook its prey again, ensuring the kill, but didn’t stop to feast right there in the street. It looked up, still oblivious to Heron’s ghostly presence, and padded off between the drooping houses and the snow-covered boulders of old, sagging cars. Heron followed it, curious to see where the wolf deemed it safe enough to pause and eat its kill. It slipped through holes in fences, jumped over fallen trees and power lines, and all the while she followed it, watching, waiting. At last it came to its den, a crawl space below a dilapidated house, and crawled through the narrow tunnel it had dug through the snow. Heron crept up behind it, peering in softly.

  The wolf laid the rabbit on the floor and watched in maternal silence as four small cubs yipped and snapped at it, eager for a meal. The mother turned toward the entrance, looking straight at Heron, and her dark eyes gleamed green in the dim, reflected light.

  Heron watched the children eat, and she cried.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Kira struggled through the snow, clinging to the stretcher they’d rigged to help carry Green. The Partial army was too close, and the night too cold; if they stopped they’d be cut down, or freeze to death, and so they kept walking, step after step, inch after inch, while their feet bled in their shoes and their hands froze in their gloves and the relentless storm howled around them. One mile. Two miles. Five miles. Soon almost everyone was pulling a stretcher, each one cobbled together from whatever they could find in the frozen houses on the side of the road: brooms and mops and shirts and dresses. They draped the stretchers with blankets, trying to keep the injured from freezing, and relied on their own exertion to save themselves.

  On the sixth mile after the last blown bridge they were hailed by the first line of defense along the Rockaway peninsula. The land here was barely a thousand feet across from ocean to bay, and the tattered remnants of the Defense Grid were dug into homes and makeshift bunkers, headquartered in an old public school. They brought the refugees there and lit fires to warm them, pulling out all their stock of food and water. Another thirty people had died of hypothermia, and one man’s feet were blackened and dead from frostbite. Kira let the soldiers help and crawled into a corner under a dry blanket to collapse into sleep.

  When she woke the next day she was shocked to still be alive.

  Despite the early morning light indicating the new day, her exhausted body told her she’d only been asleep a few hours. Kira forced herself up and over to the meager fire, where she held her freezing hands up to the scant heat, wondering if she would ever feel truly warm again, then sought out the leader of the outpost. He was an older man, grizzled and weary, who introduced himself as David.

  “Kira Walker,” said Kira, shaking his hand. She saw the shadow of recognition in his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, that one. Has the Partial army caught up to us?”

  David shook his head. “We’ve been watching all night for them, and we have snipers and IEDs—improvised explosive devices—along the peninsula, but there’s no sign.”

  “They’re probably massing for a major assault,” said Kira.

  “Or defending their rear flank,” said David. “Tovar and Mkele are still out there, with whatever’s left of the resistance, and they might still be buying us the time to escape.”

  “Tovar’s dead,” said Kira. “I don’t know about Mkele.” She rubbed her eyes, feeling no more reste
d than when she’d fallen asleep. “Tovar was killed by a man named . . . well, they call him the Blood Man.” She felt a sudden, irrational need to hide his identity, even though nobody knew who he was or that he had any connection to her. “He has a rotor and leads a group of genetically modified Partials, killing people to steal their DNA. You haven’t heard of him?”

  “Nothing like that,” said David, shaking his head. “Some of the refugees have talked about a rotor out over Long Beach and Brosewere Bay, but none of the messengers from Breezy Point have said anything. If he’s out there, he’s still east of us.”

  “And picking off loners so they can’t spread the tale,” said Kira. “Keep an eye on the skies; if he does decide to come here, it’s going to be trouble.” She rubbed her temples, leaning wearily against a wall for support. “How about the rest of the humans? Do you know how the evacuation’s going?”

  “Slow but steady. Another week at least before everyone’s across. This outpost was scheduled to fall back today, but I don’t know if your group can make the journey.”

  “You have more outposts like this?”

  David nodded. “Two more choke points along the peninsula, one at each bridge into Brooklyn. We’ve kept the bridges open in case more refugees make it across. Our plan for today was to arm our traps, rig our explosives, and fall back seven miles to the Marine Parkway—let the Cross Bay Bridge folks be the front line for a while.”

  “Do it,” said Kira, and put up her hands to stop his protest. “We’re pretty beat up, but we can make it at least as far as the next outpost. If we stop moving, we’re as good as dead.”

  “Then we’d better get going while there’s still some daylight left,” said David. “Gather your people; I’ll send word to mine. We can be ready in two hours, but you’re welcome to get a head start.”

  Kira walked back to the gym full of refugees, wincing with each step. That doesn’t bode well for the day. She picked up a bottle of water to bring to Green, but saw that someone was already talking to him.

  It was Heron.

  “You’re still here,” said Kira, unscrewing the bottle to take a swig herself.

  Heron nodded. “So are you,” she said, “though I suppose that’s not as surprising.”

  “I think she was talking about me,” wheezed Green, his voice almost too weak to hear. “She thinks I’m going to die.”

  Kira grabbed his hand but didn’t correct him, looking at Heron with tired eyes. “He’s too stubborn to die.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Heron.

  Kira nodded. “We’re moving out again. They have another outpost, sounds like it’s about three miles away. With a break in the snow and some daylight to walk in, we should be able to make it in just a few hours.”

  “Two more frostbite cases this morning,” said Heron, and pointed to Green, “including him. It’s the people on stretchers; we have to make them walk and keep their circulation high, or they’re going to lose more limbs.”

  “Think you can convince them?” asked Kira.

  Heron smiled wickedly, walked to the nearest stretcher, and overturned it with a grunt, spilling the sleeping occupant out on the floor. He woke up spluttering, still trying to figure out where he was, when Heron tossed his stretcher onto the nearest fire.

  “What are you doing?” he cried.

  “She’s saving your extremities,” said Kira. “Find something to eat. We’re leaving in an hour.” The man worked his jaw wordlessly, too exhausted to argue, then walked unsteadily to the dwindling pile of emergency rations, rubbing his legs as he went. Kira nodded to Heron, who nodded back before assaulting another stretcher. Kira looked back at Green. “She’s direct.”

  “And smoking hot,” wheezed Green. “She attached?”

  “You’ve already fought your way through Candlewood and the winter from hell and a nuclear explosion and your own body trying to kill you,” said Kira. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

  She patted him on the leg and walked away to spread the word to the rest of the group. Marcus was on one side of the room, discussing something with a refugee, and Samm was on the other talking to his group from the Preserve. Kira stood in the middle of the floor, not knowing who to talk to first, or what she would say, or . . . anything. She took a step toward Marcus, stopped herself, and walked straight instead, rousing the people in a line down the center of the room. She would worry about Samm and Marcus when she wasn’t running for her life.

  She snorted and shook her head. If that ever happens.

  She had only spoken to a few more people when Samm walked up behind her. She had learned how to use the link through him, and she felt him coming now, his data as familiar to her as his face, and just as comforting. She closed her eyes, savoring it like an old, familiar smell, then wiped the emotion from her face and turned toward him. “Samm.”

  “Kira.” He stood silent, not embarrassed or awkward but simply . . . uncertain. She loved these little flashes of vulnerability from him, like cracks in his armor of supreme, quiet confidence. Knowing that he’d led a team from the Preserve and conquered the wasteland and defeated an army to be here, only to see him hesitate, unsure what to say to her, made her heart flutter in her chest.

  “I heard you say we’re moving out,” said Samm.

  “Yes, I was just coming to tell you.”

  “Kira, when you left—”

  “I know,” said Kira. “I know . . . and I don’t know.”

  “This isn’t what I—” He stopped himself. “This isn’t how I intended to do this. I had months to plan what I would say when I saw you again, but when I found you I wasn’t ready.”

  “You made a plan and saved my life before I even knew what was happening,” said Kira. “If that’s not ‘ready,’ I don’t know what is.”

  “That kind of thing is easy for me,” said Samm. “This . . .” He paused, straightened his shoulders, and tried to start again, but she stopped him.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said, “for hours and days and forever, but we can’t right now. Not here, and not while we’re still in danger.”

  “You’re right,” he said, and she felt frustration and relief mingling on the link. “What can I do to help?”

  Kira glanced around the room, wondering what to tell him; she saw the refugees trying to dry their clothes by the fire and came to a decision. “Take whoever you can and go to the nearest block of houses. We need all the dry clothes you can find—jackets or coats are ideal, but any shirt or pair of pants will help. We can’t let them go outside all wet like this.”

  “Most of them need new shoes as well,” said Samm. “We’ll bring what we can.” He hesitated again, as if unsure whether to salute her or embrace her, then turned and called to his group; they followed him out, even Calix and Phan, and they recruited a few of the sturdier-looking refugees before they left. Kira watched them go, wondering if she’d said the right thing—if not taking him back on the spot meant she’d lost him forever, or if she even wanted him back at all.

  Marcus, for his part, was already organizing the refugees into groups, taking stock of who had been lost and who was still there, and what resources they could muster for the next leg of the journey. She walked toward him, trying to think of what to say; now that she’d talked to Samm, she couldn’t leave him out. As she walked she saw Heron, still dumping out stretchers and yelling at everyone to get up, to walk on their own, to get their blood flowing. Kira still didn’t know why the girl had stayed, or if she was still planning to leave or betray them or what. Great, she thought. One more thing to worry about.

  Marcus looked up as Kira approached, though he didn’t smile. He nodded toward the door Samm had left through. “They scouting ahead?”

  “Getting dry clothes,” said Kira. “How’s our food supply?”

  “Grim,” said Marcus, “edging toward ‘disastrous,’ but probably still shy of ‘wanton cannibalism.’ This outpost was on the last of their rations before three hundred refugees showed up; a
pparently they’re scheduled to evacuate today.”

  “They are,” said Kira. “The next outpost will probably be just as strapped when we get there.”

  “We can try to scavenge the area around it,” said Marcus, “but you’ve got to remember that every human on the island has passed through here in the last month. Even scavenging, there’s not going to be enough food for everyone.”

  Talking to Marcus is so much easier than talking to Samm, thought Kira. Or maybe it only feels easy because we’re talking about easy things. Weights and measures and nuts and bolts. Why can I talk about saving the world, but not about myself?

  Screw this, she thought. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it at all. She looked Marcus straight in the eyes. “Marcus, you know I’m in love with you, right?”

  His mouth hung open a second, and then he smiled. “I didn’t know if I’d ever hear you say it again.”

  “And you also know I’m in love with Samm?”

  His mouth hung open a moment longer this time, his eyes clouded. “That’s not what I wanted to hear next, but still . . . thanks, I suppose. Better to hear it straight out.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

  “So that’s why you kissed me?”

  “That’s not why I wanted to kiss you, that’s just why I allowed myself to kiss you.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not sure that makes me feel better.”

  “I made a choice because I thought it was the only one I had,” said Kira. “I know that’s horrible, but there it is. When I kissed him, it was for the same reason—I thought I was going to die, and I kissed him, and I told him I loved him. It’s like . . . I can throw away my whole life trying to help somebody else, but I can only do something for me if I know it doesn’t matter.”