by Bobby Adair
Bray put his finger to his lips. “Stay here,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“To see one of the merchants. He should be able to help us.”
“What’s his name?” Ella asked, as if she might remember him.
“Elmore,” Bray said.
She didn’t recognize the name. “He’ll pay us for the scalps?”
“Yes, and he’ll have clothing for you, too.”
Ella paused. “Are you sure we can trust him?”
“No. But I won’t tell him any more than he needs. When I crawl through this hole, follow me, but stay inside the building. When I’m finished, I’ll come get you.” Bray held out his hands for her pack.
“I don’t think so,” Ella said. “The pack stays with me.”
“How will I sell your things?”
“We’ll accompany you.”
“In that condition? Not a good idea.”
Ella looked down at her clothing, still stained in blood. She gave Bray a hard stare. Although she’d trusted him to take them this far, the memory of what he’d done to them in the cave was still fresh. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow him to take her things.
Bray chortled. He gave Ella a long look, then turned his attention back to the hole. “How about this? Give me three bits of silver to get your clothes. When I have them, I’ll come back and get you, and we can return to the merchants together. But you’ll need to wait in the alley.”
Ella reluctantly agreed. She tugged off her pack and removed three bits of silver, handed them to him, and watched him disappear through the hole.
Then she sucked in a breath and followed him through. William stayed close behind.
The building was dark, damp, and unoccupied. What was left of the floor was covered in rubble and weeds. Ivy clung to the walls and ceiling, as if the forest had slowly been working its way inside. She scanned the dark walls and the corners, ensuring no one was lurking within. Then she stared out of the hole in the far wall at the dirt road.
She recognized the area. Although time had made subtle changes, she was able to pick out several landmarks—a short building with a cracked door, a taller one with a misshapen roof. A row of wagons waited outside the latter, probably awaiting vegetables from the harvest.
The road was quiet. There was no one in sight. She’d expected to hear the bustle of the villagers, but the street was oddly empty.
She looked over at Bray, who was standing next to them in the darkened room. In the time she’d been distracted, he’d quietly drawn his sword.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer.
The Warden crept through the building for a better look at the street. Ella felt a sudden sense of foreboding, one that slid through her body and wormed its way through her joints. A minute earlier, her primary concern had been encountering the guard or being apprehended by the Brighton soldiers, but now her thoughts had taken a new direction. Where was everybody?
William grabbed hold of her arm. “Mom? What’s that smell?” he hissed.
“I’m not sure,” she whispered.
She knew what it was. It was the odor of death, and it clung to the air like a cool breeze, wafting over the village.
Bray crept through an opening in the building and onto the street, beckoning for them to follow. With each step, Ella expected to hear the din of voices, the cries of children at play, but there was nothing. The village was silent. It was as if all of the residents had packed their belongings and left.
She held her sword in her hand and kept William close by.
They traveled the narrow road, expecting to be stopped at any moment by the guard, or a merchant, but the only greeting they received was the occasional caw of a bird. The buildings were their only companions, and the moss-covered walls seemed as ancient as they ever had. Ella’s legs felt tingly and numb, as if something had crawled inside her and taken control. She recognized more and more buildings as they walked, but each one only fueled her unease. All of them were empty. All of them were lifeless. They were approaching the center of the village.
They took a turn, entering one of the main roads that led to the square.
Ella immediately covered her mouth, bile threatening to spill from her stomach. The mangled remains of the townsfolk were everywhere. Women, children, and soldiers had all been torn apart with equal abandon, mouths hanging open, limbs mangled. Merchant stands—once filled with fruits and vegetables—were toppled, the hay carts overturned and shattered. The carcasses of pigs were strewn about the street, as if their entrails were the last touch in some perverted parade.
The blood in the road was sticky and wet, and Ella sidestepped to avoid it, as if interacting with it would make the scene real. But it was real, and no amount of avoidance would make it go away.
The entire village had been massacred.
The dirt-covered roads, once filled with life, were now carpeted with the blood and bones of the people who’d once walked them. Ella clutched her son with a shaky hand, as much to hold herself up as him.
“Wh-what happened, Mom?” William whispered.
She shook her head. There were no words for the scene. The carnage on the mountain had been a mere taste of what was to come, a foreshadowing of the violence they saw now. Who could’ve done this? Was it the demons? A rogue band of soldiers? No one else would be able to reap so much suffering. She surveyed the scene for some evidence, but found herself more confused. Some of the villagers had been stabbed, but others appeared to have been torn apart and eaten.
There was no reason to the madness.
She took a step forward, almost tripping over the gutted body of a merchant, his entrails coiled around his neck, his tongue lolling from his mouth. A strangled woman lay next to him, her neck purple and bruised. Each spectacle was worse than that last, and each scene was something out of a nightmare.
They needed to get out of here. They needed to leave.
But she was unable to move. It was as if the spectacle had rooted her in place, preventing her from doing anything but taking it in.
Bray walked several steps ahead of them, swiveling from one building to the next, as if whoever—or whatever—had attacked the village would leap out and grab them. But the village was deathly silent.
There was no evidence of the perpetrators.
She pictured her aunt’s and uncle’s faces, smiling as they played with William, bouncing him on their knee. They were gone. Even without seeing them, she knew. She choked on her tears. She’d check for them, of course, but she knew…
Bray walked back to join them.
“What happened?” she whispered, hoping he’d have an answer.
“I’m not sure,” he said simply.
“Who could’ve done this?”
Her face stung with tears. The Warden didn’t answer. For the first time since she’d met him, she could tell Bray was afraid.
CONTINUED IN “THE LAST ESCAPE” BOOK TWO
The Last Escape
A Dystopian Society in a Post-Apocalyptic World
Book 2 of The Last Survivors Series
Preface
If you’re here, then hopefully you’ve already read through The Last Survivors Book 1, and there’s no need in setting this book up for you. You have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. At least that’s my hope.
However, you might have noticed a recurring theme throughout Book 1—a theme that has not gone unnoticed by our readers—we seem to be pretty cruel to the female characters in general throughout the book. There really is a reason for that.
Rest assured, we’re not closet misogynists. As writers, we are keen observers of the world around us. With that in mind, we used our collective knowledge of current events and the history of mankind
to craft a more engaging story.
We created a world where humanity’s accumulated knowledge has been lost and people have slowly reverted to a far less technologically advanced state. This seemed like a plausible eventuality given the set-up—only fifty-seven uninfected humans survived the apocalypse.
In such a situation, it seemed to us that the survivors would focus on the absolute necessities: defending themselves, feeding themselves, and teaching their children to do the same. We imagined that the math and grammar books would become deprioritized and set aside so frequently that after a few generations, such knowledge would be lost. With that would also go literature and all forms of higher mathematics, leaving humanity in a ubiquitous state of ignorance not seen since the Dark Ages.
It is an unfortunate historical recurrence that uneducated societies tend to devalue women. That was the logical basis from where we started imagining the role of women in our new society. And that is the reason they are treated so poorly in the story.
However, one of the questions we asked ourselves when we started was how can a woman in such a repressive culture rise above the constraints that hold her down? What has to happen? What would that transformation look like? Hopefully we’ll find out.
-Bobby Adair
Chapter 1: Ella
They were dead. All of them.
Ella didn’t need to count the bodies to know that all three hundred residents of Davenport—her home village—had been slaughtered. She reached out for William, but her son had already broken away, and he stepped among the gutted and the strangled, his mouth stuck open in disbelief.
“We need to get out of here,” Bray urged.
But Ella’s feet were frozen in place. She scanned the faces of the dead villagers, thinking she might recognize someone. A few were familiar, but it was impossible to tell for sure—their expressions were twisted in the throes of death, their features marred with blood and gore.
“Ella!” Bray hissed, louder. His sword was out, and he spun in a slow circle, as though the perpetrators might reappear. But nothing moved. The village was empty. The smell of blood was thick and fresh enough that even scavenging birds and rodents hadn’t dared venture out yet.
Ella imagined the cries that had filled the air, the panic that must’ve ensued before the massacre. How could this have happened?
“We can’t leave,” Ella whispered, still in shock.
“But we have to—”
“I need to find my aunt and uncle. I need to find…”
She broke from her trance and darted down the street, collecting William. She leapt over toppled pushcarts and spilled vegetables, holding onto his hand, pushing the images of gore from her mind almost as soon as she saw them. Her feet had taken over for her mind, leading her from one turn to the next, operating on muscle memory and adrenaline. William heaved thick breaths beside her. He didn’t speak, not even to question her.
Anywhere they ran was better than here.
She heard Bray’s footsteps behind them as he chased, but he’d ceased calling for them. The village was silent save the clap of their boots, the world as small as the butchered streets before them.
Ella flew by building after building, barely taking in the sights. Doors hung open with no one behind them. Houses stood vacant. She’d never seen the village this quiet. Except for The Cleansing, of course. Had The Cleansing already happened? It must have. It was an unbreakable tradition.
This must’ve happened after.
But none of that mattered. All that mattered to Ella was following her feet and her memory, making her way to the place she’d once called home. With each street they passed, the carnage thickened. Bodies were sprawled in every direction. Not just the remains of the villagers, but the remains of animals, as well, butchered and half-eaten. They’d have to run through the square to get to her aunt and uncle’s.
Things would get worse before they got better.
Her stomach heaved and churned. But she wouldn’t stop until she’d reached her aunt and uncle’s. In the distance, about a hundred feet away, she saw the steeple of the worship building, the place where she’d spent many days in her childhood. The peak rose a hundred feet in the air, the walls built from the smooth gray material of the Ancients. The structure was as majestic as she remembered it.
Davenport had been built around its remains.
We’re almost there, she thought, as though reaching the village center would somehow erase the chaos. But her body gave away her fear. Her heart slammed against her ribs; heavy gasps burned her throat. She dodged the body of a slain merchant, catching a glimpse of his gouged eyes and the hilt of a knife protruding from his forehead. So it hadn’t been demons. Not all of it.
Men had done this.
She barely had time to register the thought when she’d rounded the next corner. She flew past the worship building, giving way to an open, dirt square about several hundred feet across. Bodies lined the edges, many with spears in their backs. Women and children and the elderly had been killed with equal abandon.
Two heads were in the center on spikes.
The ministers, she thought. As she ran, her mind conjured the images of Father Towson and Father Decker, who’d come to Brighton for visits and guest sermons. She hadn’t particularly liked them, but they didn’t deserve to die. Not like this. None of this made any sense.
Tears spilled down her face.
With William running behind her, she dashed across the square, approaching the slain ministers. The sticks were propped several feet above the ground, displaying the severed, ruined faces for all to see. The alley to her aunt and uncle’s was in view, just past the village center; she’d have to pass the spiked heads to get to it. As she approached, she felt William’s hand go slack in hers, and saw that he was staring at the ministers. Unwittingly, she followed his gaze.
Only the heads didn’t belong to the ministers.
Ella stopped running, an icy numbness working its way through her body. She hadn’t recognized any of the bodies so far. Not through the blood and gore. But she recognized these.
She clasped her hand over her mouth, unable to contain her sickness. Staring at her from the tops of the spikes, their eyes sightless, their faces splashed with blood, were the severed heads of Aunt Jean and Uncle Frederick.
“No!” Ella wailed, collapsing to her knees. She turned her head and heaved into the street. William fell to the ground next to her, grasping her arm. He was crying, too. He would’ve remembered them. They hadn’t visited in five years, but there was no mistaking their relatives.
She closed her eyes and reopened them, hoping to find proof that this was all a dream, but it was real. The death and the destruction of Davenport was total and irrevocable.
Bray drew near, his face sympathetic. His eyes wandered from the spikes and then back to Ella. “Blackthorn,” he said.
“What?” Ella dried her face and looked up at him. She furrowed her brow, as much in disbelief as in mourning.
“Blackthorn did this to get to you. To send a message.”
The words hit her like a punch to the stomach, and the tears were flowing again, and she was powerless to stop them. This was all her fault. She’d avoided The Cleansing; she’d skirted the will of The Word. And now others had paid.
“No,” she managed.
“This wasn’t because of you,” William said next to her. “It was because of me.” He dried his face and got to his feet. She watched him through a veil of tears. His face was contorted in both anguish and anger. How could she comfort him? There was no way to mend what had happened.
To her surprise, he raised his fist in the air and began to shout. “I’ll kill you! Do you hear me?”
“Quiet!” Bray said, grabbing the boy’s arm.
William ignored him. “I’ll kill you, Blackthorn!”
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The boy had lost control, and he writhed in Bray’s arms. Ella leapt to her feet. She grabbed hold of William’s other arm, doing her best to hush him. His face was flush and streaked with tears. After a few seconds they were able to settle him down. She looked across the bloodied square, certain she’d find a band of soldiers, but the square was empty. Even still, they needed to get out of here. But not yet.
“I need to check on something else,” Ella said.
“This isn’t wise. We have to—” Bray began.
“Please.” She gave him an insistent stare and then started for the other side of the plaza. Bray and William followed. She scoured the ground as she ran, tracing the faces of the fallen villagers again. Soon she’d reached the alley past the square. The buildings were small and close together, and her mind jumped to memories of her youth. She’d played chickenball and rattles in the streets, just like William. She’d had friends. She’d had dreams. The scenery was so familiar, and yet so wrong.
She stepped around the bodies of several women lying facedown in the dirt, their dresses hitched above their waists, made to look indecent even in death. She glanced inside several open doorways, hoping she’d see someone inside, a survivor of the massacre, someone who could explain what had happened. She needed hope now more than ever. But the small houses were dark and empty.
Four doorways further was the entrance to her aunt and uncle’s. She recognized the door even before she was upon it, and she picked up her pace until she’d reached it. Stomach hitching, she crossed the threshold.
The house had been ransacked. Her aunt and uncle’s bedrolls were slashed, their storeroom raided. A sack of grain lay empty in the corner, the contents dumped across the room. The floor was wet and it reeked of urine. If there was any resemblance to the place where Ella had grown up, it was lost in the disorder.