The Ruin Nation

by Kolin Wood

  The Human Zoo 4 – The Ruin Nation

  Kolin Wood

  Copyright 2018 Kolin Wood

  The Human Zoo books are works of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places, or things.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permissions of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews

  WARNING: This book contains scenes of strong horror and violence.

  Cover art by Kristyn at Drop Dead Designs

  Edited by Terri King at Terri King Editing Service

  “I have heard the languages of the apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.”

  Neil Gaiman

  Chapter 1

  The cold, rough edges of concrete cut lines across his back like a griddle pan. Tidus opened his eyes, but the darkness in the room was so complete that it made no difference to his vision. Traces of his dreams flicked and fired in the corners of his eyes.

  Somewhere above, a door slammed loudly, further dragging him from his slumber. He felt weak, as though he had just taken part in some extensive feat of endurance and had yet to recover. The stinging sensation in his stomach emanated outward, radiating tendrils of sharp pain both up and down his body. The cut had been deep and far longer than normal, but the moment had required it.

  For this one had been different.

  The act of killing the man—of exploding his head like a balloon—had made Tidus’ blood bubble up like frothing milk. It had sent tingles of ecstasy racing through his body like intravenous drugs of a type no laboratory could ever possibly hope to replicate. The pain that he had needed to inflict upon himself, therefore, had been specially designed to match. How much further he could take this level of self-harm, and how much more pain he could inflict upon himself without causing life-threatening injury, however, he was not sure.

  Tidus rolled tentatively, first one way and then the other, grimacing at the pull of dried blood on his naked flesh. As he stood up, he relished the popping sensation of his stiff joints. Stooping to pick up the candle and matches from the floor at his feet, the wound tore open. Fresh, warm blood streamed down his thighs.

  The match popped as he struck it against the box, and the small flame penetrated the gloom with a halo of orange light. The grey floor around his feet was black with blood, as was his entire midsection, which looked as though he had prematurely stepped away from a surgical bench.

  But, my god, do I feel alive!

  With slow steps, he trod over to his desk, the only piece of furniture in the room. A pad of gauze and a thick roll of fresh bandages had been set out in preparation for his injuries. Fresh blood soaked through the first few layers of the previously sterile cloth as he proceeded to wrap it around himself, taking care to tie it tight enough that it would hold in place when he walked. He dressed, holding his body as upright as possible to save further damage, then trod across the room and proceeded up the stairs.

  The basement air had been cold and fresh, but the closer to ground level he climbed the warmer it felt until the heat had dried all of the wrinkles from his cold skin. At the top of the stairs, he paused to take a deep breath before turning left and walking through into the huge room beyond.

  As one, two hundred bald heads, housing two hundred sets of eyes, turned to face him. One of them, a short and squat version of the rest, moved immediately forward, head bowed.

  “Did you see?” the clone asked, extending a hand, palm up, in Tidus’ direction.

  Tidus reached out and laid a bony hand on top of the man’s own. He had no idea where it had come from, but since its first use, the gesture had been taken on as the formal greeting of the Church.

  Only once the greeting had taken place did the man dare to look up. His eyes looked like liquid candy, curious and as wide-eyed as a child’s, as they took in the blood-stained skin and bandages surrounding Tidus’ body.

  Tidus smiled. The men sat on cardboard mats before him, and stared on, eager to hear their saviour speak.

  “I have seen!” he said loudly, his voice booming around the rough, stone walls. “I have seen the beginning, just as I saw the end.”

  Immediately, the men became jittery. They raised their hands in his direction and shouted incoherent sounds, much like a pack of excited monkeys might at a zoo.

  It was true that many of them had contracted the madness long before he had welcomed them into the Church. Personal tragedy affected people in different ways, and many of the people who came to see him had given up on life in some way or another. He had simply provided them with a new vision; a new truth. For he had been chosen. He alone could receive the messages, and therefore, he knew that he would be saved along with anybody else who followed him.

  “My brothers, we must be vigilant, for the bible—the book of heretics—told us that Death has been given the authority to kill with sword and with famine, to strike us down with pestilence, and rip us apart by the wild beasts of the earth, and I, for one, believe it!”

  Confused faces looked at him, and as he closed his eyes, he saw his father, standing tall in the pulpit. Long, black robes flowed beneath a stiff, white collar, thin-framed glasses perched on the end of his crooked nose, his authoritarian voice filling the four corners of their parish church.

  “For all the lies and deceit, woven so skilfully into those twisted and hate-filled pages, the tale of the end was a true one!” he boomed as his eyes sprung open. “The sword of Death will fall, just as the beasts of the earth will rise up to reclaim the land!”

  As the men began to sway; their voices fell into rhythm. The content was nonsense, but the tone and type of the sounds that they were making moulded together to form a strange and eerie driving mantra.

  “I saw it!” Tidus continued, feeding off of the growing frenzy. “I saw the pale horse!”

  The groaning and yelling grew louder.

  “And there sat a rider, cloaked in black upon it!” Tidus raised his hands, ignoring the sting of his midriff.

  The man stood before him suddenly threw himself to the floor, and Tidus felt warm hands clasp both of his feet. With his pulse racing and blood streaming from beneath the bandages, Tidus laughed aloud. “And he spoke to me! And he said, ‘Let us feast upon the flesh of the ignorant. Let us dine upon the idolaters, and the rapers of this world, for that is the truest test of our faith!’ FEAST… UPON… THE … FLESH, brothers! So that is what we will do!” As he spoke, the veins sprung taught in his neck and saliva rained from his mouth. “Bring me these heathens; these detested believers, so that I may continue to serve Him. Him, who has taught me to look beyond the gold-plated lies in order that I might guide us through these tempestuous times; these catastrophic End of Days.”

  Tidus opened his arms and tilted his head backward so that his face pointed to the ceiling. He could feel it again, the need to kill. Could taste the fizz and pop of life pulling on him like a needy child. And who was he to fight it?

  The room continued to bob and move, arms like swaying stalks of wheat, clutching for him in the gloom of twilight. With his eyes ablaze and his blood like soda, Tidus kicked the grabbing hands from his feet and strode back toward the door, leaving the rest of his congregation babbling in his wake.

  Chapter 2

  The rat darted along the slim ledge, stopping as it caught sight of him, its nose twitching in the dank air of the
sewer tunnel. Norris Tuttle, the city rat catcher, had already seen the movement in the corner of his well-trained eye, and he stopped walking, holding his leg in mid-step. The large cage pulled down on him heavily as the thin, nylon straps bit deeply into the hardened flesh of his shoulders.

  Think you can sneak up on me, do ya? Come join your brothers and sisters, little one. Come join the piper.

  As if reading his mind, the rat suddenly turned and darted away in the opposite direction. Norris smiled. He knew where that ledge would take it: straight into one of his traps. He knew every inch of this tunnel, every nook, runway, and crevice that the little bastards could hide in. He knew every escape route and had baited them all. This was his world down here. He was the guardian of this underworld—and the shopping centre above, for that matter.

  With the hypnotic movement of his trundling broken, the cage full of rodents on his back—which had been crammed in tight on top of one another—began to stir. Small, protruding limbs twitched and scratched. Norris felt sharp claws and teeth nipping away at his skin as the squeaking grew into an almost unbearable din.

  “Shut up!” Norris shouted, swinging his stick over his head so that it clattered loudly against the top of the grate. “Cut the noise or I’ll drop this cage in the water and drownin’ time’ll come early for yous all!”

  As the noise abated a little, Norris started to walk again, his steps slow and steady on account of the slippery, filth-covered floor beneath the turgid, brown water.

  Of course, he wouldn’t really drown them down there; he couldn’t afford to. Chef would have his guts for garters, and he only got paid for the live ones, after all. Chef said they cooked up better that way, cooked up better when they were boiled alive so that their skins could be peeled off like washing up gloves. Fresh to the point of cooking; a bit like crabs! he frequently said. Norris had always thought, ‘cept crabs turned grey to pink and rats turned pink to grey; the only difference really.

  Up ahead of him, the tunnel branched and Norris kept right. He knew that the route to the left became so narrow that it became unnavigable after only a few hundred feet. He’d left that particular tunnel free of traps on purpose; he didn’t want the little bleeders turning away from him before they’d even got down here. They was clever, see, the rats. They’d followed mankind around successfully for centuries, scavenging and repopulating; their entire habitual blueprint built around their need for close proximity at all times. And when something bad happened… oooooh, that’s when they really liked to come to life. It was the corpses, see. They loved to feed on the corpses most of all. Like a hidden army of water buzzards, they skulked, waiting for a disaster to come and rewrite the specials menu.

  But Norris knew that their love of carrion was also their biggest downfall. When presented with the opportunity to feed on the water-softened meat, any sense of care and preservation fell away, leaving them greedy and predictable. And therein lay the beauty of it all; it was not even as if Norris needed to do anything bad to procure the bait for his traps—the people in the Refuge were dying every single day.

  One more tunnel to check and bait.

  Just one more and then he would head back. Young Artie would be waiting for him at the tunnel entrance to help him remove the cage without toppling over, then strap it to the barrow and help him push it all the way into the city centre. That was when the rats really made a racket. Some of them would get so frustrated that they would try and eat through the bars, and they didn’t stop until their little mouths were shredded and their teeth shattered. Others would simply turn on the rat closest to them and eat them instead. For that was the nature of the rat—brutal, vicious, and self-serving to the bitter end. And Chef would welcome him in, ply him with food and booze, and try to discount the load, as he always did. Sometimes Norris would let him, too tired to haggle, because his supplies were infinite; there was always another day down in the tunnels and there was always more rats.

  Thousands of ‘em.

  A splashing noise some way off told him of another rat ensnared. He snapped too, suddenly alert once again, and increased his stride in the direction of the last trap. As he walked, he tried to make his steps as gentle as possible, careful not to allow the water to lap over the top of his rubber boots.

  Today was turning into a good day.

  Ahead of him—attached by cordage to an eyelet on the crumbling corner of the wall and partly submerged in the water—Norris could see the top of the cage. The rat, crazed and furious on account of being caught, thrashed and twisted inside, sending white foam spraying up in all directions. He focused his torch on it, annoyed by the dim light that it cast and wishing that he had changed the batteries before coming down. As he sloshed through the water, he made a promise to himself to ensure replacing them was the first thing he did once he made it back to the surface—before he hit the bar and before he spent his earnings on drink. He knew that the others were down there, watching him, waiting for their chance to pounce. Should the light fail him, even with his knowledge of the tunnels, he’d never find his way back. He’d be walking rat food; a meal on legs, tenderising with every second, waiting to drop down onto the brown plate.

  He approached, and the rat stopped thrashing. It tried to hide itself by submerging its body in the water. With a well-practiced movement and ignoring the ache in his back, Norris reached down and plunged his hand into the cold water, scooping up the cage by the skinny handle. For a moment, he thought that perhaps he had caught two of the little blighter's at the same time. The trap felt unusually heavy, and pain glowed like hot stones in his arthritic elbow.

  “What the—?”

  The rat looked at him; its evil eyes glinting pink under the shine of the torch. Its body was well over a foot long, and it had a thick, muscular tail that hung part way down to the surface of the water.

  The rat thrashed and bit at the bars, revealing two front teeth the size of small nails. Once satisfied that it would not be able to bite its way through, it curled into the far corner of the trap, opened its mouth, and hissed.

  Norris simply stared at the beast. Never, in all his years catching vermin, had he ever seen one that big. It was a sure fire monster.

  “Where in the devil’s hell did you come from?” he said, turning the torch beam over it, first on one side and then the other.

  The rat continued to hiss, shaking water from its greasy fur.

  As the pain in his back increased, Norris lowered the cage, holding it just above the surface of the water. He shone the torch farther down the passageway, focusing on the ledges and piles of rubbish, but could see nothing moving.

  A rat that big would fetch a mean price with Chef, he thought, unable to take his eyes from the beast.

  He wondered how many more there were, and as the thought struck him, so too did the first pangs of doubt creep in. How many more monsters were watching him right now?

  With one last check into the darkness ahead, Norris turned and began to make his way back toward the hatch. The straps holding the cage cut deep and, as he strode in the direction of home, water sloshed over the tops of his boots, soaking his feet. But, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Norris Tuttle did not care.

  Chapter 3

  “Julie, wake up.”

  A warm hand circled her waist and Juliana felt her heart skip a beat. She blinked her eyes once, twice, squeezing them shut and curling herself into a ball as something banged loudly, nearby. The room was dark and a great noise filled the space, pushing in on her oppressively.

  “Julie!”

  This time the hand at her waist moved up to tug her shoulder, and she forced open her eyes once more, confused by the commotion all around her.

  “It’s me, Tanner.”

  The voice was calm and controlled, familiar. She turned to face him, her eyes sprung wide like an animal in a trap.

  “Tanner?” Her speech was croaky. “What’s… going on?”

  She heard his head thud into the wall, and she
pushed with her arms to straighten herself into a more seated position. Every part of her hurt. The palms of her hands were cut and blistered.

  They had been travelling for weeks, taking it in turns to push the huge barrow which had become lighter at every small town or village that they had felt the inclination to stop in. Tanner, with one arm incapacitated, had offered help where he could, but much of the hardship had fallen upon Juliana and even more so on Doyle, who had not been seen for two days now.

  A click and then the red glowing ember as Tanner lit a smoke. He breathed out heavily.

  “The square,” he said. “Sounds like some sort of celebration. I think we should go take a look.”

  Juliana nodded. She turned over, propping her head on one arm to look at him. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

  Since their entry into the Refuge, the pair had barely left the confines of the small, rented room. The space was little more than a bolt hole but it had cost them little: some assorted heavy clothing from the stock, and a few sticks of Tanner’s tobacco. The weeks of travelling had left them both weary, and the sudden clamour and noise of the dense and raucous population was taking some getting used to. What had become apparent, however, were the differences between the Refuge and its counterpart—The New Capital in the south. For here in the North, they harboured something that she had not felt for a long, long time: a feeling of hope. From what they had been able to make out, there appeared to be no limits on trading; no trade blocks, guards, or levies to be paid. People traded wherever and whenever they wanted to, using existing shop fronts and other buildings. In some areas, string lighting hung above walkways clear of rubbish, and pockets of music could be heard from various windows above. People smiled and milled about, uncaring and confident. But, right now, the pair was having trouble adjusting to the apparent bohemian frivolity of the place. To Juliana, in particular, it felt alien.