Ruin

by Harry Manners

  *

  The sun beat down on the field without mercy as it reached its highest point in the sky. Blinding rays struck Norman’s face as he struggled to focus on the middle distance, his eyes scrunched down to slits.

  The tension was palpable. Gathered atop a slight rise at the periphery of an expansive field, all was still. Not man, woman or horse moved an inch, nor made a sound.

  Norman adjusted his stance, bouncing atop bent knees as he concentrated on his target. A single bead of sweat made a break for his chin, escaping from its kindred upon his half-fried forehead.

  And then, with practiced precision, he swung the club in his hands. “Fore!” he bellowed. His voice was rendered thunderous by the many echoes that returned from the valley floor.

  The white ball soared skywards from the tee at his feet, becoming a mere speck and disappearing into the sun’s glare. After several long seconds there was a distant thud as it struck earth somewhere out of sight.

  “Slouching,” Lucian grunted. “Try straightening your back more.”

  “Remind me why we’re doing this,” Norman said, turning to him and handing over the club.

  “We have to wait. I’m not making a beeline for home if somebody’s watching.”

  “There’s nobody out here.”

  “We don’t know that. Now stop your whining and move. It’s my turn.”

  Norman stepped over towards his mount, from which hung what they’d managed to gather, along with the sack that contained the butchered swine, and felt the knot in his stomach loosen slightly.

  They had risked lingering in the field for enough time to strip it bare. Most of the fruit would need culinary magic to make it edible—let alone palatable—but they had done well, and there was a chance the meat would add enough to the pot for the city folk to enjoy a decent dinner. The stag from the coast had been a prize in itself, but the pig had grown fat enough on the allotments’ fetid slop to at least double their meat stocks.

  At Lucian’s insistence, they had taken a winding route home, and halted several miles from the city. They now stood in a valley that marked the northern edge of their territory, where they had stood watch for over an hour, waiting for any weary refugees who might have followed them.

  Norman wasn’t quite sure of when the golf had begun—only that at some point they had found the rusted club and basket of balls in the high grass, where some poor sod had left them forty years ago as he’d vanished from under his white flat cap—but in the midday heat it didn’t seem to matter. He was glad for the distraction.

  He sat on the grass beside Allison and the two of them watched Lucian take his swing, hunchbacked to the extreme, contrary to his own advice.

  She sniffed. “Did you have to make me come out here all day?”

  Norman looked at her for a second, found that there was nothing to say, and then turned back to Lucian.

  He saw her eye twitch in his peripheral vision. “I don’t believe in keeping things a secret. If people are starving, then everybody deserves to know.”

  “The whole world’s starving.”

  “Not like them! My god, Norman, you can’t be serious. We’re living like spoilt royalty compared to them.”

  “We don’t know anything,” he said patiently. “We haven’t even got reports from the other scavenging parties yet. We should just wait until we have all the facts before we go telling people about our…unfounded conclusions.”

  Allison bristled, but then seemed to restrain herself. “Fine. It’s your decision. I just wish you’d tell us what we’re going to do sooner rather than later.”

  Norman straightened, then looked down at his hands. It was some time before he could bring himself to say, “You shouldn’t look to me for answers, Allie. I’m not a leader.”

  Allison looked taken aback. “But you will be,” she said, frowning, as though stating that the sky was blue.

  “I didn’t ask to be.”

  Lucian cleared his throat and fixed Norman with a pointed stare.

  Norman made to speak, but then registered Allison’s confused expression and closed his mouth. “Don’t listen to me,” he sighed. “I’m just tired.”

  She looked relieved, and sank back. They lapsed into silence for a while and took turns swinging the club, sending ball after ball sailing down into the valley. After half an hour, Allison spoke up once more. “How did it happen?” she said.

  Norman closed his eyes, dreading whatever was coming, lying in the depths of the wild grass. “How did what happen?” he mumbled.

  “We’ve all heard the stories. People talk and whisper about you, but nobody’s ever heard it from the horse’s mouth.” Her eyes scanned him carefully, and Norman began to wonder whether her name being drawn for scavenging duty in Margate had been entirely down to chance after all. “You said you didn’t ask to lead us. So somebody picked you, didn’t they? You were chosen.”

  She was staring at him with rapt fascination, as though she had been granted a private audience with a figure from a fairy tale. “It was Alexander, wasn’t it? He chose you.” She inched closer. “When?”

  For a long time, he didn’t answer, trying to catch Lucian’s gaze. But Lucian kept his back turned to him, visibly rigid, wilfully deaf. Eventually, Norman bowed his head and nodded. “When I was a boy,” he said. “Just after I lost my parents. At least, that’s the first I remember of it.” He picked at a stray blade of grass. “They tell me that my parents put me up for it when I was born, but…the accident that killed them… I got hurt too. I don’t remember anything before it all that well.”

  Allie’s voice was hushed, “What do you remember?”

  He squinted skywards, recalling the flashes that sometimes invaded his dreams. He didn’t mean to say a word—had a mind to tell her to mind her own goddamn business—but then his lips moved of their own accord. “A storm.” His voice had grown cold, distant. Words formed without thought, as though somebody else were speaking through him. “I think it was just after the accident. I’m lying on my back…the rain is cold. My head hurts.” Norman frowned as a twinge of genuine pain flashed just above his right ear—behind the twisted scar that lay just above his hairline—before that strange, detached voice continued, “Alex is standing over me. He’s saying that it’ll be all right, that he’ll take care of me. And then he says something else. He has a secret. He says it’s my destiny…my destiny to save it.”

  Allie’s voice, a mere whisper, “Save what?”

  “The world.”

  A brief silence rang in his ears before she answered.

  “Just like that?” Allie said. “Right there and then?”

  Norman nodded.

  She hesitated before uttering, “Do you think you’ll ever remember…what happened before?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe not. It’s been almost years…” He felt an ugly smile blossom on his lips and glanced up at her. “I’m not holding out for it.”

  Lucian was quiet, readying his latest swing, but Norman knew that he’d followed their every word.

  Allison was still staring. “How do you tell somebody something like that?” she said. “That they’re going to have to take care of everybody?”

  Norman sat up and brushed his hair from his eyes. He looked away, towards a distant rise, where the wind turbines that powered New Canterbury revolved in the listless midday wind. Watching them made the words come easier, but he still spoke haltingly. “That’s not what bothers me. I get that we need somebody to keep carrying the torch. I really do. It’s that he used that word…told me it was my destiny.”

  Allie’s eyes met his. “Why does that bother you?”

  He laughed, but his wan smile slid from his face as he said, “Because there’s no such thing as destiny.”

  VI

   

  Don woke late in the afternoon. He rubbed his cheek, numb from being pressed against the lip of the prow, and groaned as the boat was buffeted by an errant wave, holding still until a spell of nausea
had passed.

  The day had been warm and muggy. Land was by now a long way off. A distant shadow that loomed where water met sky was all that remained of the heath-capped cliffs. He tried to judge how far away it was. It couldn’t have been very far compared to what still lay ahead, but it certainly looked as though they had crossed an impossible distance.

  The old man was snoring under the awning in the stern. With each honking breath he drew, the hull resonated. Only his feet protruded from the awning’s shadow, but by their inclination it was clear that he was flat on his back.

  Don sat up, groggy, and blinked sleep dust from his eyes. His skin felt leathery and his mouth was dry. He took one of their canteens and half-emptied it, but his thirst was unquenched.

  He would need more soon if he was to retain his senses, but for now he returned the canteen to the awning’s shade. Even as he did so, he felt the fresh moisture upon his chapped lips begin to drain away.

  All of their planning, all of the time they had spent preparing for the trip, and they hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the fact that they’d need so much water. They’d used over half of their reserves already.

  He cleared his throat, fighting cottonmouth and year-old hunger, and brought out the grubby folds of their map, which fluttered in the breeze while he checked their course against the old man’s compass.

  A shuffling eventually disturbed him. Billy’s tiny profile had been invisible until she’d lifted her head, crouched beside the awning. Don blinked in shock, seeing her afresh. Her eyes looked enormous amidst her hollowed cheeks. She scarcely resembled the plump, freckle-faced munchkin he’d been raising a year ago.

  His little girl was starving.

  He beckoned her, and she crawled over to sit in his lap. Don continued to check the map with his arms looped over her shoulders. She peered at it for a while, bemused, and then said, “Are we there yet?”

  “Not yet. Soon.”

  “I don’t like the sea anymore. We’ve been away for too long. We should go back.”

  Don put the map down. “We’ve only been gone a few hours.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We’re all hungry.”

  She wrinkled her nose and looked up at him, a coy smile touching her lips. “Where are we going?” she said.

  “Billy…”

  “Pleeaaase.”

  Don grumbled and then retold the story of their journey to the new land, embellishing it as usual with improvised speculative details. Billy listened in a trance and smiled at the fantastical legend of the New Land.

  Afterwards, the two of them sat in silence and listened to the old man sleeping under the awning. They watched the sun begin to dip, rolling to the waves’ rhythm.

  “You were asleep for a long time,” she said.

  “Was I?” Looking at the sun, he made a rough estimation of where it had been before he’d dozed. “It can’t have been that long.”

  “It was forever.”

  He smiled. “No, it wasn’t.”

  “It’s daytime. You always tell me not to sleep in the daytime.”

  “Grandpa and I were busy last night. We didn’t get to sleep. You, on the other hand,” he poked her ribs, drawing a giggle from her lips, “got a comfy twelve hours.”

  Billy’s smile remained, but it soon grew thin. “I did?”

  “Yes.”

  When she spoke again, her tone made him look away from the horizon. “I dreamed.”

  “You did?” Something about her expression made him press, “What about?”

  A brief pause. Then she said, “Ma.”

  Don’s throat clicked as he swallowed. They sat through the silence that followed in the same manner as they had many times before. He knew that he needed to say or do something to break the silence, to bring their thoughts away from Miranda. But nothing came to him. Her absence was still too raw, and the shock of her loss too fresh. He could only hold Billy closer to his side as his own tightened larynx failed him.

  “I dream of her most nights,” Billy said. Her voice had a hollow edge, devoid of engagement.

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “They’re memories, though, from…before. When I wake up I can remember how she smelled. Do you remember how she smelled, Daddy?”

  Don stroked her hair. “She smelled of lemons.”

  Billy frowned. “What’s that?”

  “A fruit. But I haven’t seen any for a long time.”

  “Oh… I don’t know what they smell like. Like Ma, I suppose.”

  “Yes, like Ma.”

  “I dream of her, but she has no face. It’s fuzzy, like a drawing. Will she go away if I forget her face?”

  “No, she’ll never go away.”

  “But how can she be here if she has no face?”

  Don sat back and sighed. “It’s all still there, you’re just not thinking about it right. You’ve got to think about something you did together.” He kissed her forehead. “Try thinking about the Christmas before last,” he whispered. “You remember? How she cooked that enormous turkey, the one that grandpa fed double because it never shut up?”

  She nodded, but was otherwise deathly silent.

  Don’s throat had grown narrow, but he pressed on, “We ate all those gooseberries by the fire. I’ve never been so full in my life…” He held back a laugh. “She taught you that dance… that…”

  “Foxtrot,” Billy muttered.

  “Yeah.” He kissed her scalp once more to hide the tears welling behind his eyes. “And we sang until the sun came up. You remember?” His voice wavered near the end of his sentence, but Billy didn’t seem to notice.

  After a long silence, a smile flickered upon her pale lips. “I see her,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking out towards the reddening horizon. “Me too.”

  Sometime later, the old man snored himself awake in the stern. The awning was subjected to a vicious beating while he fought his way out into the open. There, he crouched, blinking and coughing.

  Don handed over the half-emptied canteen, and the old man swiftly depleted it before he could say a word about rationing it, proceeding to peer in through its upturned neck with a dissatisfied expression.

  Don laid a hand on his shoulder before he could reach for another. “We need to save the rest for later,” he said.

  The old man scowled, cradling his head in his wrinkled palms. “It’s hot. I never thought it’d be hot on the water.”

  “I thought you’d been on the sea before.”

  The old man giggled feebly. “Yes, on a ferry, Donald. A big one. Not a…a…” He gestured to the rowboat around them, not bothering to finish. “I should have thought of water. Stupid.”

  Billy leaned over the side and skimmed the crest of a passing wave into her palms. She held it out to him. “There’s water all around, silly,” she said.

  The old man shook his head, too weary to humour her, and turned away.

  Billy looked to Don, her face blank.

  “Throw it back, Billy.”

  “Why? Grandpa’s thirsty.”

  “You can’t drink seawater.”

  “But I’ve drank it before. It’s not very nice, but it’s still water.”

  “It makes you thirstier, throw it away.”

  She slumped and threw the handful back over the side, then peered into the water. “Where are all the fishes?”

  “I don’t know. Gone.”

  “When will they be back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In New Land?”

  “Maybe. Hopefully.”

  She blinked, staring into the lifeless depths.

  “What time is it?” the old man said, sounding wearier than ever. Don was frightened by how wilted and frail he looked.

  “Half one, maybe two.”

  “We need to get moving if we’re going to get there before we run out of supplies.”

  The two of them, stiff and aching, assumed their positions beside one another and too
k an oar each. They then began rowing once more, straining against the squalls.

  Don fought the urge to cough several times, knowing full well that once he started he would have great difficulty stopping. Yet the urge never faded, plaguing him like an itch never scratched.

  All the while, Billy sat opposite them and watched. The sun had become a fiery half sphere on the world’s edge by the time her eyes started to droop and her chest began to sag. From then on, she swayed with the current until her shoulder made contact with the floor, and then she was still.

  Don watched her sleep and knew that she was dreaming of a better time. He found himself wondering whether there was a person left alive who didn’t do just that, whenever they closed their eyes.

  VII

   

  Row upon row of children moved in unison, their faces scrunched into expressions of intense concentration. Copying Norman’s every move as he executed a series of oriental motions, they twirled and pivoted as one. Not once did their focus falter.

  He watched them from the corner of his eye, forever fascinated by the manner in which their immaturity evaporated once their classes had begun. They moved with him, but at the same time they improvised, correcting his minute mistakes. Compared to them, he was a clumsy buffoon. The progeny of a hardened caste of survivors, their bodies and minds were honed to perfection.

  Their weekly martial arts training was supposed to develop the stealth they’d need once they were old enough to scavenge and hunt. Going unnoticed was now paramount. Over the last year, remaining hidden had defused a great many potential shootouts.

  But the children were already faster, quieter and more agile than any adult, and they all knew it. Having grown up around situations that demanded subtlety, they were each as lithe as birds.

  Nevertheless, they were promptly lined up every week to hone their skills.

  Teaching was something that Norman considered one of the less taxing duties on the rota system; the children were more or less self-sufficient already, and they seemed to like him. He suspected that his lax style appealed to their allergy to hard work.

  And yet, he would still never see eye to eye with them. A distant but ever-present measure of respect nested behind their eyes, forging an impassable chasm between them. They too looked to him with a casual acceptance of his purpose in life. There didn’t seem to be even a glimmer of doubt in their eyes that he would one day be the Big Man, the one in charge.

  After half an hour of yelling, thrusting and twisting, the class was dismissed and the children dispersed. Their carefully crafted stances and disciplined silence fell away in an instant, and they were themselves again. They proceeded to poke, entertain and torture each other as they left the hall.

  Norman was left standing alone in the gymnasium. They wouldn’t be back for an hour, and he had little to do in the meantime. He wandered into the hallway, inspecting art projects tacked to the display boards—some new and some over forty years old; fresh paint right alongside the yellowed scrawls of the Old World’s last students—and eventually found his way to Sarah’s classroom.

  The younger children were few in number, but sang merrily enough to make up for it, in a range of pitches that, together, sounded truly awful:

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round,

  Round and round, round and round.

  The wheels on the bus go round and round,

  All day long.”

  The rhyme—one of the few to have reportedly retained its original rhythm—echoed throughout the dozens of empty classrooms. Norman stopped at the doorway and looked in to see them gathered cross-legged on the floor, swaying from side to side to the din of their off-key wailing.

  Sarah sat before them in a checked summer dress, the headband upon her crown framing her cheeks with curls of fire-red hair. She indicated the lyrics plastered upon her easel with a pointer, but the children scarcely glanced up, instead singing from memory.

  Norman watched them sway, and couldn’t help smiling. Eventually, Sarah looked up from her vigil and noticed his presence. She slid away from the easel. The children didn’t seem to notice, and kept right on singing.

  She tiptoed closer, bouncing on the balls of her feet so as not to disturb them, her face illuminated by an inner light, all gums and brilliant white teeth. She would have been beautiful, were it not for the gawky, disproportioned spectacles balanced on her brow.

  “They’re getting better,” he said.

  She smiled back at them, doe-eyed. “I prefer the sound of cats drowning in custard.”

  “Have you got time for lunch?”

  “I’ll be done soon.” She was peering over her shoulder at the toddlers, transfixed.

  “Come on, they won’t notice if you take a break.” He began to tug her from the room.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t,” she said. “Norman—oh, all right.”

  A minute later they were eating tasteless bread in the hallway, listening to the ear-splitting singing and trying to ignore the grit and sawdust between their teeth.

  After a while he realised that she was smiling at him. “You should come to an English class some time,” she said. “I get all sorts to come along, not just kids. We could use a speaker every now and then—one who’s actually been reading all the books that people have been bringing back from out there, one who isn’t just following Alex’s every word about ‘saving the world and all its wonders’.”

  “Careful. Enough words like that about the Chosen One are bound to get ye strung up by the village.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Her smile was coy, puncturing his attempt at diversion with ease. “You’d be great.”

  Norman muttered under his breath for a while, pulling at his frayed sleeves. “I’m not one for public speaking.”

  She searched him with eyes magnified to insectivorous proportions by her ghastly specs. “I know it’s been rough on you this year,” she said, “all this…everybody turning sheep. But maybe you could try to see the other side of it. You’ve got an opportunity to help them. It’s all hand holding at first, but people are stronger than they look. All they’re looking for is somebody to give them a purpose, a direction—something to live for.

  “People look to you. They trust you.” She hesitated, scanning him. “But you always shrink away. Why?”

  Norman felt the light-heartedness of the conversation drain away. His throat had closed up. After a moment he could no longer match her gaze.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. Despite his reticence, her unassuming gaze had only grown more amused. She smiled, observing him from behind hooded lids, and leaned against the wall. “I’ll get to you eventually.”

  He was quiet for a moment longer. “So, you and Robert,” he said.

  She laughed, and her teeth brightened the hall once more. “Yes,” she said. The comforting glaze had been wiped from her face. A flush touched her cheeks, and her chest rose and fell until she was almost breathless.

  “Nobody saw that one coming.”

  She paused with her last crumb of sawdust-bread held to her lips, frowning. “Why?”

  Norman shrugged. “If I were a betting man I’d have put my money on you having Richard in your sights. He lives for the written word almost as much as you do.”

  She glanced along the hall, brows raised. “Him? He’s always got his head in the clouds.”

  “Funny, I always thought it was two inches up DeGray’s arse.”

  She giggled, and hesitated before answering, “Robert’s different. He’s sweet, and kind,” she breathed, her lids lowered further. “He doesn’t despair about the End, doesn’t fret about what’s to come. He’s a fixer. All he sees is something broken, something that only needs the right mechanic to make it work again.” An inner light seemed to emanate from the rosy tones upon her cheeks and chest. “He’s everything a man should be.” She appeared to come back to herself, and trailed away into an embarrassed silence.

  Norman couldn’t help laughing. “Poetic.”
<
br />   “One tries.” She then glanced back to him, her eyes growing sharp. “You need to change,” she said.

  He sighed. “I know,” he said. “They’re all looking to me now. I feel their eyes on me in the street.” He paused. “I just need time.”

  She was smiling again, and flicked her head towards his midriff. “I meant your clothes.”

  Norman looked down at his martial arts robe. “I like it,” he said after a brief pause. “I’m not sure why people don’t dress like this all the time.”

  “The children seem to think along the same lines.”

  “At least I taught them something.”

  A hulking figure interrupted their joint smirk, blustering past with great bounding strides. The two of them parted to allow the portly man past, offering greetings that were promptly ignored.

  “He’s done it again,” the man roared. “That boy will never learn!”

  If Sarah was the last Librarian, then he was the last Professor. The sworn archenemy of all youth, John DeGray was a blimp of a man, and had taken it as his life’s work to mercilessly educate anybody who strayed too close. Despite knowing more than most had forgotten, he was handicapped by the trifling affliction of hating almost everybody. In truth, were it not for Richard Maxwell, his one permanent student, he would have been at a loss for things to do.

  Yet most thought them both indispensable, for they represented all that remained of the Old World’s scholars. Afforded special status—owing to Alexander’s most famous mantra, ‘Knowledge is power’—and yet unable to contribute anything tangible to the city, they spent the majority of their time in their hovel of a classroom.

  Norman and Sarah exchanged bemused glances and, after a glance in the direction of the warbling young ones, followed him. They remained in pursuit until John disappeared into the second occupied classroom, at which point they were obliged to pause and recoil at the fountain of abuse whistling across the threshold. Approaching on tiptoes, they peered in. John, scintillating with rage, was in the process of verbally castrating a slight young man seated at the only desk.

  Richard stared up at John’s ranting form without the slightest trace of surprise or concern. Tiny in comparison to his mentor, crushed between his desk and a sizeable swathe of books and papers from Sarah’s warehouse, he certainly looked to be little more than a child. Despite his foxlike features and intelligent gaze, he was still young enough to bear a fading smattering of acne. A faded red shirt that was far too big for him hung about him like a cloak. To Norman’s knowledge, it was the only one he owned. Richard had adopted the Old World academics’ hatred of fashion, and insisted on washing the same attire each night so that it could be worn the following day.

  “You apologised to Hubble,” John bellowed. His auburn eyebrows—tangled thickets upon his plum-red face—were pressed so close together that for a moment Norman was reminded of Lucian.

  “I did,” Richard said. He stared down at the chessboard before him, his hand poised above it. His face was a perfect picture of intense concentration.

  “On my behalf?”

  Richard moved an ivory bishop across the board with unflinching confidence, nestling it between a black pawn and rook. He then sat back and smiled, looking very pleased with himself. “Yes,” he said.

  John growled and leaned over the desk. “You had no right to do that.”

  “He’s on catering duty. He was handing me smaller portions just for sitting in here with you all day. I’m not feeling faint all week again because you can’t say sorry.”

  “He doesn’t deserve an apology, he was wrong.”

  “You were both wrong. You got into a fight.”

  “It wasn’t a fight.”

  “You punched him in the face while trying to convince him that violence was wrong.”

  “I was drunk,” John blustered, flapping his hands. He glanced at the door and saw that he was being watched. “Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

  “Afternoon,” Norman and Sarah chorused.

  Richard beckoned for them to enter, his gaze lingering on Sarah for a moment.

  John, in a silent display of superiority, swept his hand across the chessboard and captured Richard’s bishop, replacing it with a knight that had been previously invisible to everybody else.

  “Wait, what?” Richard said, glancing down at the board, his expression one of absolute blankness. He stared from the victorious knight to the bishop clutched in John’s hand, and then cursed.

  John rubbed his chin and began pacing, a snide smile upon his lips.

  Richard fumed, planning his next move. “You went out yesterday,” he said to Norman, leaning forwards.

  “That’s right.”

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  Norman sensed all ears prick up at once.

  He sighed, now aware of how far Allie’s words had spread. He cursed her and prepared himself for a swift bout of damage control. “Nothing. There’s nobody out that way these days,” he said. “The locals moved up the coast after winter set in.”

  “No trouble at all?”

  “No.”

  Nobody said anything, but Norman could almost hear the indignation of their thoughts, almost as clearly as if they’d shouted into his ears. Their eyes told the truth—even Sarah’s. They knew everything.

  Allison Rutherford was clearly a force that needed to be contained at any cost.

  Richard nodded with transparent, mock satisfaction. Norman braced himself. The door to further questions had been opened. “The scavenging details just seem so desperate, after all the effort that’s been put into cultivating our own food supply. And frankly I’m shocked that there’s so little out there. I haven’t heard of a famine striking anywhere before this for… what? Twenty years? And now there’s nothing left at all?” He looked to John for confirmation.

  John grumbled in agreement.

  “It never rains, it pours, I suppose,” Richard finished.

  John grumbled once more. “It could have been a lot worse for us if it had come even a year earlier. I don’t think that our stores could have kept us going this long if it had.”

  Norman shrugged. “The land’s stripped bare. We had to go all the way to the coast just to get a few bags of fruit and venison.”

  The two men frowned and shared a glance. Richard was still planning his next move, but his gaze now wandered the room, distracted.

  “There’s really nothing at all?” John asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Even the sea’s dead. No fish since winter…since Southampton went quiet.”

  He mused and muttered for some moments. “We knew the mass exodus from the south must have been caused by something, but still—everywhere?”

  “I miss Market Day,” Sarah said mournfully. “The bakers from Whitstable—so much better than Hubble’s dusty loaves, theirs were—the millers from Blean, and the Torquay tea-runners. People used to come from all over to see us—see the libraries and the electric lights. Petham, Broadoak, Adisham… They can’t all have gone away.”

  “They’re probably all dead,” John said.

  Sarah looked wounded. “That’s callous.”

  “It’s not callous to state the truth. The trade routes are long gone. Whoever survived winter moved north, or away from the cities. The rest died. It’s that simple.” John shrugged. “And we killed them.”

  All eyes turned to him, stunned.

  Norman felt a lump form in his throat, and found his gaze trained on the floor.

  John’s maroon pug of a face had creased into a thin smile, and he pressed on—though it seemed that he now spoke more to himself than them. “Our best estimates put the population at—what—fifty thousand? That puts about ten thousand over the South, who can only occupy land away from urbanised areas. But even a handful of communities like ours make up at least half of that number, and each one draws its food from the most productive remaining rural areas. When our crops were hit so hard last year, we took what we had to.” John’s b
rows flickered skywards. “Everybody else lost out.”

  There was a long silence.

  “So why not group together, like us?” Richard said. “I can’t get my head around the tribal mentality. There’s safety in numbers: more hands to toil, more bargaining power, supply and demand, trade, mutual support—civilisation!” He frowned. “I just don’t understand it.”

  “Of course you don’t, you’re just a boy,” John mumbled, poised over the chessboard. “That’s why I’m the Master and you’re the Student.”

  “I’m still not happy with the title of ‘Master’,” Richard said with a heavy voice, his nose upturned. He moved a pawn and sat back, his hands behind his head. The smug expression remained upon his features long enough for everybody to have registered it, just in time for it to be swept away by the swift movement of John’s queen.

  “Get used to it,” John said. “Western civilisation trumped the world’s tribes, hands down, but getting it started took millennia. Without places like this, mankind would have already slipped into a new Dark Age.”

  Sarah tittered. “It’s all very well and good coming off high and mighty, but like I said, just last year people would have walked a hundred miles just to look at a light bulb. It was…magic to them. This place was magical.” She paused. “Our way of life hasn’t exactly spread like wildfire, has it?”

  John turned his gaze upon her. “People won’t group together for a lot of reasons. First of all, it’s dangerous: if you get into trouble, you can’t run; you’re a bigger target; and you’re vulnerable to outbreaks of infection. And if that isn’t enough, you’ve got all of the troubles of organising sanitation, security, food and water, a law system, and all the other things we’re halfway through scrambling together.” He spread his hands. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  “Look who’s talking,” said Richard.

  “Careful, boy.”

  Richard shook his head, as though shaking off a fly. “It’s still better than huddling for warmth in some mud hut somewhere.”

  “That’s arguable. All of the problems that we have potentially outweigh the benefits. We just haven’t noticed because we’ve had a run of extremely good luck, until now.”

  “But for nobody but us to even try…”

  John waggled a finger. “Don’t think that people haven’t tried to do what we’re doing before. There’s been a lot of time for that—decades. I haven’t been here as long as some. I’ve seen other places where the lights still burned. And I’ve seen every one of them fall. They’ve all failed, because none of them had what we have here.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We’ve got Alexander.”

  At first, John’s final words sounded strange, almost childish, plainly reverential. And yet, nobody felt the urge to mock them. As fresh silence settled, those words seemed anything but childish. They were what they were: the plain, naked truth.

  “And we’ve got you, Mr Creek,” John finished, gesturing to Norman with the slightest of curtseys.

  Norman had been waiting for it, but warmth spread across his cheeks all the same. He did his best to smile. “Sure,” he said, looking into the eyes of a genius, and seeing nought but another zealot.

  John smiled, and turned to the chessboard. “Checkmate,” he said, lifting Richard’s king to his lips with a flourish.

  Richard grumbled, and began to reset the board with a patience and dexterity that could have only come from a thousand repetitions.