The Ruin Nation

by Kolin Wood

  Above the constant screaming, John could hear the steady crackle of flames. A deep, pungent smell of burning accompanied the smoke that clogged the thin streets like congested arteries, limiting sight to within a few metres in any direction.

  “This is it,” Charlie said. “End of the road.”

  John felt a hand gently squeeze his arm and turned to look into the face of his mother, who offered him a small, anxious smile.

  “John, I think you should stay here. Charlie and I will go get Tanner.”

  John’s brow furrowed.

  Tanner?

  He felt the veins swell in his temples. They were risking everything for this man.

  Charlie looked at him and then away again, staying out of it and saying nothing.

  “Our room is across the square. There’s a cart with supplies. We’ll move quicker if I know I don’t have to worry about you. Becca will stay, too.”

  Juliana looked over at Becca who regarded her for a moment and then nodded.

  John felt anger boiling up from within him. He’d just killed a man in cold blood, pulled nails from his hands. Who did they think they were to be sheltering him like this? Subconsciously, he clenched his fists, bringing fresh spikes of pain up his arms. “Worry about me? I’ve done just fine up until now on my own without you!”

  The words escaped before his brain had had a chance to filter them. Like well-aimed shots, he saw them strike home and immediately wished he could take them back, but it was too late. Juliana’s face dropped and she turned away from him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Becca looking at him, her eyes scathing. His mind whirred, searching for something to say.

  He was just about to apologise when he saw it.

  The rat sat watching them from the entrance of a boarded up shop on the other side of the street. Its long nose twitched as it raised its head and sniffed the air.

  John pointed just as another one appeared from underneath the board.

  “Oh, shit,” Becca said.

  When Juliana looked up, John could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks.

  Becca pointed and Juliana followed the line of her finger.

  Where there had been two, there were now three of them. Each one looked to be as big as a house cat. They sat staring, devil-red eyes, sizing them up.

  “We need to move, now.”

  Charlie glanced over at the rats and laughed. “What? Not scared of a few rats, are ya?” He bent over, picked up a lump of rubble from the floor, and hurdled it at them. “Go on. Git!”

  The rock hit the floor and then bounced harmlessly against the wall to one side. The rats neither flinched nor moved. Just then, another one pushed itself free from the shop. Then another. As more filed in behind, the front rats were forced from the shop step and began to stalk toward them across the road.

  “What the hell? Brave little bastards!” Charlie shouted, taking a step backward.

  Without warning, something large and moving at speed charged toward them down the street. At first hidden by smoke, it was almost on them by the time they noticed it. As it drew closer, John saw the yellow skin and deep, blood-filled eyes.

  The crazy screamed. The sound that escaped it was shrill and not human. It hammered Charlie in the side at full speed, launching him off of his feet and spinning him into the street beyond the alley.

  Juliana was the first to act. She sprang forward, gun raised. But she didn’t shoot.

  “Charlie! I can’t shoot it!”

  Teeth snapped at his face as Charlie, who’d managed to raise his hands up just in time, rolled first one way and then the other in a desperate bid to shake his attacker from the top of him.

  “John, move!” Becca shouted, as she stepped past him, raised the crossbow and fired.

  The bolt, a blur of silver and yellow, struck the crazy in the side of the head, spearing it right through its ear. The body twitched once and then slumped. Charlie coughed and spluttered as blood began to flow from the wound, running in black tendrils onto his face.

  Juliana glanced back, her expression one of shock and relief as Becca slid another bolt from the sheath at her leg and re-loaded the bow.

  A huge rat with greasy fur scurried ahead of the pack. John watched on helplessly as the rat stopped next to Charlie’s feet, opened its mouth to reveal evil-looking teeth, and hissed.

  Without waiting, Becca loosed free another bolt. The monstrous rat squealed as it was skewered through the soft, pink skin of its belly and pinned against the door behind.

  “Get up!” Juliana screamed as another one scurried towards him. But she was still too close to safely fire the shotgun.

  With her face down-turned in an angry grimace, Juliana stepped forward and swung it like a bat instead. There was a loud snapping sound as the heavy stock broke the rat’s back and sent it flying behind. The rest of the pack set upon it immediately, tearing it to pieces in a frenzy of black fur. But still more advanced. They filed out from the hole in the door and slunk forward, a never-ending stream of them, their bodies shaking and red eyes shining with blood lust, driven on by a primal desire to feed.

  “Charlie!”

  But by now there were too many. The advancing horde forced Juliana back toward the alley, her gun raised up but useless against the advancing threat.

  Charlie, well aware of the danger that he was in, panicked, desperately trying to free himself from the tangle of limbs and the dead weight of the crazy on top of him. He looked back, his face a shiny mask of blood and his eyes wide with shock.

  “Quickly! They’re coming!” The gun shook like a dousing rod in her grasp.

  Charlie scrabbled frantically, managing to shake free of the body just as the first rat reached him. He kicked out with his boot, brutally striking it in the face. The furry body sailed a few feet backward, landing with a squeal on the backs of the others who instantly set about it in a flurry of teeth and claws.

  His elbows scraping against the stone, Charlie could only manage a few jerky movements backwards before another rat launched itself at him, this time landing on his lap.

  Charlie screamed.

  The rat scurried up his torso and lunged for his face. Charlie swung his fist and caught the rat in the head, but the blow only served to infuriate it more. There was a loud hiss as, driven on by the bravery of their comrade, more closed in. Like ants on an insect, they swarmed the felled man, some even leaping from behind in an effort to feed before the rest of the pack. Soon he was lost under a juddering blanket of fur as the rats began their frenzied dismembering of him, razor sharp talons and needle-like teeth shredding through skin and clothing.

  A faint gargled yell, more like a cough, was the last sound Charlie the Wop ever made.

  Tearing her eyes from the savagery, it was Becca who stepped forward and hooked Juliana’s arm with her own.

  “Come, Juliana. We have to move. We need to get up, high enough that they can’t reach us. High up off this street.”

  Juliana turned to her, her face an ashen shade. By now, the writhing mass of bodies was wet and slick from the blood. Soon they would be done with the body and looking for another source of food.

  “Let’s move!” John called out from the mouth of the alleyway.

  Juliana was the first to reach him.

  “This way,” she said, as she scanned the buildings briefly before running over to the one closest. An old flower shop, its door was gone and the front window glass a long time missing. Juliana hesitated for only a few moments and then suddenly disappeared inside. John heard her boots crunch over broken glass.

  Behind them, the rats’ squealing intensified. As John glanced back, he was sure that he saw a hundred pairs of red eyes suddenly look up at him.

  “C’mon John,” Becca said as she took his arm.

  Together they moved over to the shop. Inside, the shadows hid everything but the first metre from view.

  “Quickly; in here.”

  They stepped inside, following the sound of Juliana’s voice. The
air smelled rich and earthy. Broken pottery lay amongst the other debris that littered the floor. Across the room, a small door, covered with a beaded curtain, led to a store room where dozens of large, empty bags lay ripped open.

  “Up here,” Juliana called out from the darkness. “With a bit of luck we should be able to reach the roof.”

  She took off up the stairs, two at a time. Another tug on his arm and John followed behind Becca. The muscles in his thighs burned as he climbed, his painfully throbbing, swollen hands making it impossible for him to use the banister.

  He heard a terrible-sounding scream. The breathy shrillness of it turned his blood to ice. Feet crunched pottery.

  “John!”

  He was nearly at the top.

  Something suddenly clumped down on the staircase behind him. He could feel the vibrations of its feet on the wood and when the scream came again, this time it was so close that he was sure he could smell the rancid odour of its breath.

  “Take it!” Becca turned and reached for his outstretched arm, gripping him firmly around the wrist. She pulled.

  Boom!

  The sound of the blast threatened to burst his upturned eardrum, as a flash of bright light lit up the darkness above. John crashed onto the landing on top of Becca. The agony in his hands consumed him. With his ears ringing, he glanced up to see his mother stood over them, her face a black smudge split by a white grimace of teeth, the smoking gun pulled tight into her shoulder.

  “Move!” she shouted.

  The voice sounded muted, but John listened, scrabbling to his knees as fast as his incapacitated form would allow.

  With Becca still holding him tightly around the wrist, the pair of them thundered down the black corridor. At the end, the hallway turned abruptly left and another, narrower staircase carried on up to the top floor of the townhouse.

  Becca climbed and John followed. Sweat tickled his neck and his hands burned like he was holding hot coals. But they couldn’t stop. At the top, another short corridor gave way to a door with no handle. The small room beyond housed a broken window. Smoke had filled the room and now hung at head height, twisting in the macabre glow of the fires that burned outside.

  “There.”

  Juliana pushed past them and approached the window. With the stock of the gun, she broke out any last remaining shards of glass from the frame and proceeded to climb through.

  John watched, dumbfounded, as she let go of the sill.

  But she didn’t fall. John and Becca ran over to the window.

  Outside, a metal balcony enclosed by railings offered an unhindered view of the square below. Juliana set the gun down and gripped the balcony rail tight with both hands.

  Carefully, John climbed through, assisted by Becca, who followed after him. To one side, a ladder enclosed by loops of metal offered an escape up to the roof of the building. But none of them noticed it. With a feeling of dread in his guts, John moved next to his mother, rested his sodden hands on the rail, and looked down upon the scene of utter devastation below.

  All around the square, buildings burned. The floor, teeming with rats, pulsed and moved. Bodies of the fallen littered the space from one side to the other. The screams continued, unrelenting, until it was impossible to distinguish between the horrific cry of a crazy and that of a person dying.

  Beside him, Juliana hung her head and let out a low moan.

  Chapter 36

  The gun clicked in his hand, the magazine finally spent. He didn’t know how many shells he’d fired into the door but the entire bottom of it had been blown away. Splinters of wood hung like sharp teeth, adorned with clumps of black fur and blood.

  Smoke poured into the room, stinging his eyes closed and forcing him to cough violently. The amount of fumes could only mean one thing: the building was on fire.

  Tanner continued to stare at the gap under the door, fighting tears as the oxygen in the room diminished with every passing second. At any moment, he expected to see another of those twitching black snouts try and chew its way in, but none came.

  The fire must’ve scared them off.

  A shroud of pain covered his entire body, so severe that it made him want to scream. Fever had gripped him tight; hot, stinging tentacles that wrapped him up in their grasp, and for a moment he wondered whether he’d been hallucinating.

  C’mon, Tanner, get up, you son of a bitch. This ain’t no way to go out.

  He tried to yell, but the smoke and the tightness of his throat forbade it. Instead, he coughed again, forcing another wheezy breath that did little to fight the tightness in his oxygen-starved chest.

  GET UP!

  He rolled.

  His body felt heavy, as if somebody had injected lead into his veins, but somehow he managed to fight his way onto his knees. He dropped the gun and gripped onto the cart, only just holding on as his body swayed dangerously.

  That’s it. Now pull, you fairy.

  Saliva bubbled from his mouth as he summoned every ounce of strength left in his body, and pulled on his arm. His bicep and forearm screamed. One leg buckled and threatened to send him sprawling back down to the carpet.

  Hold on!

  Tanner knew that, should he go down again, it would be curtain call. Hot daggers of pain stabbed him in the spine. He counted to three, let go, and stood up straight, chin on his chest, unable to see or breathe in the deadly poisonous cloud that filled the room. But he was on his feet.

  Blindly, he stumbled in the direction of the door, holding what little breath remained in his lungs, eyes open just a stinging fraction. With his forehead resting against the warm paint, his fingers found the handle and he fumbled for the catch, unable to hear it as he twisted and it clicked open.

  Come and get me, fuckers!

  If the rats were still out there waiting for him then so be it. Better to go down fighting. That’s the way he’d been brought up, the way he was programmed. He’d kill as many of the little plague carriers as he could before he gave up. Hell, he’d rip them in half with his teeth if he had too.

  His legs threatened to freeze of their own accord as he pulled and the door swung open, almost taking him with it. Outside in the corridor, it was the same.

  Tanner turned toward the main exit, but found it fully ablaze. Hot flames licked the ceiling and scorched the skin of his face. Thick, black smoke choked him. Desperate and unable to hold his breath any longer, Tanner fell to his knees.

  Down low, the smoke had less of a hold and he managed to force a breath down into his lungs. The sharp taste of ash tainted his mouth and burned his throat. The green, painted floor felt slick to the touch. Looking more closely, Tanner could see chunks of bleeding flesh and clumps of fur, strewn all over. The lower section of the wall behind him was littered with holes and splashed with blood. The scene looked like a massacre. But no living rats remained.

  Took a few of the fuckers with you, Tanner. Good Job!

  But the time for self-congratulation was later.

  Aware that his exit from the building lay blocked, and uncaring of the gruesomeness of the conditions that he found himself in, Tanner began to shuffle away from the fire, two knees and one hand at a time. A thin snake of bloody saliva clung to his bottom lip.

  The progress was laboured, painful, and slow. Amazingly, he soon found himself at the far end of the corridor where the smoke had not penetrated as deep. He looked up. A sign on the door read PUSH BAR TO OPEN.

  Without a care for what lay behind the door, Tanner forced himself up and fell with all of his weight against it. The bar banged and released the catch, sending him tumbling out into the night and free falling into the fresh air.

  His stomach lurched as something hard jarred his elbow. He spun over and over, each strike to his shoulder like a hammer, knocking away the last of his consciousness. He knew that he had made it out of the building. He knew that the rats had been real. And then Tanner knew no more.

  Chapter 37

  The three of them sat huddled together for warm
th on the roof; Juliana on one side, John on the other, and Becca in the middle. The first sign of dawn was greeted with happiness but none of them had the energy to offer more than a half-smile at the sky. After that, it had taken another hour for the screams to die down.

  Becca, wrapped up in Juliana’s thick jacket and with her head on John’s lap, slept fitfully, small jerking movements from her thin arms and legs hinting at the nightmares that plagued her. John sat awake, staring down at her, his bloody and bandaged hands resting down at his sides.

  Juliana leaned her head against the rough, white wall and stared into oblivion. The bite of the morning chill on her bare naked arms sent shivers up her spine, and she took a few deep breaths to control them. Watching her son now, alive and breathing alongside her on the roof, her mind rattled. Guilt and sorrow swam circles around her, like encroaching sharks intermittently taking bites. Even with half of his hair missing and his eyes peering out from sunken caverns of a skull-like face on the edge of starvation, the likeness to his father was unmistakable. She pictured Michael’s face, remembered the smell of him as he’d kissed her tenderly for the last time.

  I love you, Juliana Rose Braydon.

  A single tear rolled down one cheek. But the sorrow that she felt was not for her dead husband. She’d cried those tears of sorrow for years, over and over again. She missed him, but she’d buried him a long time ago.

  Tanner.

  Mick Tanner.

  Michael Tanner.

  The last time she’d looked over the top of the small retaining wall, the front of the building had been completely consumed by fire. Smoke billowed from the windows, almost completely hiding it from view. Their room had been at the front, overlooking the square. Even if Tanner had managed to barricade himself in their room, or make it up to the roof, he would surely have perished in the blaze.

  Sitting there now, smelling the acrid odour of burning and the faint char of cooking flesh, Juliana felt numb.