Ruin

by Harry Manners

  *

  They found Paul’s body three days later, not far from the house, propped against the trunk of an old oak. His unseeing, dead eyes still bore traces of sadness. His body was slumped, an empty bottle of bourbon held in a claw-like grip. His legs, stuck out in front of him, were clad in only a thin pair of trousers.

  He had been banished without a coat, undergarments, or socks, and died of exposure. James couldn’t help imagining him looking over at the house, the drink dulling the cold, as he had slipped away.

  Alex didn’t speak for two weeks after his funeral.

  For the first time in his life, James found himself doubting not only his destiny, but that of all things.

  XXV

   

  “I’m not going,” Robert said. He’d just spent the last hour bringing Alexander and Lucian up to speed on what had happened in the forest. Now he’d retreated to his front doorstep and squeezed into the threshold so that he filled the entire doorway, determined not to give anybody so much as a hint of an invitation to follow.

  “We need you,” Lucian said.

  Robert merely shook his head and repeated, “I’m not going. I’m staying right here.” He paused, listening to the minute noises emanating from the living room. “We both are.”

  Twenty men on horseback had gathered in the street just beyond his garden gate. All of them now wore frowns of acute disquiet. Lucian and Alex stood only a few steps from his door, neither of them bothering to conceal their crestfallen expressions. They didn’t argue or protest, but still they stared, planted to the spot.

  “We don’t know where to go,” Lucian said.

  “We’ve stationed everyone we could get up there.” Robert looked over his shoulder at the ancient windup clock upon the wall. “The next changeover is at thirteen-hundred. I suggest you get up there and wait for them to break cover.”

  He leaned past the threshold so that the house no longer obstructed his line of sight, and pointed towards the hilltop. “Up there,” he said.

  Alex turned away without a further moment’s pause. Lucian’s brow flickered, and for a moment he looked close to saying something. Then he followed suit, shaking his head. They retreated to their mounts, their faces stolid, and wheeled to face along the street without a word of protest. Yet Robert sensed anger in the vehemence of their nods of salutation.

  Lucian led the group away without looking back. The rumble of hooves upon muddied tarmac filled Main Street, heading for the city’s edge.

  Alex, meanwhile, lingered beside the garden gate. “Lucian and I will be heading back to London before dusk. I’m leaving everyone under your command.” His eyes were hard as diamonds, devoid of any trace of charm. Here was the real Alexander, without his mask, the man behind the messiah. Robert knew that he was one of the few people who would ever see it. His voice was cold and harried. “Things in London aren’t good. We might not be able to get back. I need you to hold the fort.”

  Robert bit back a hasty retort. There were people counting on him. “I’ll do my part.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to the job?”

  “Is there anybody else?”

  Alex’s gaze flickered. His mask had already returned, his voice wrangled back to an even keel. He cleared his throat. “Good luck.”

  With that, he kicked at his mount’s sides and raced after the others.

  Robert retreated inside once he was out of sight and hurried back to the living room. Every candle in the house had been lit and flung into myriad corners. The sheer number made the room seem ablaze, lining its periphery, balanced upon books and teetering on the mantelpiece.

  Sarah’s voice sounded from the room’s depths, hollow and toneless. “Are they gone?”

  He caught sight of her figure amidst the sofa’s shadows, her knees drawn up to her chin, rocking back and forth. Her eyes were fixed on the fire in the grate, wide and unblinking. She had barely spoken since he’d dragged her from the forest; hadn’t eaten, nor slept, despite Heather’s insistence that she rest.

  “Yes.” He manoeuvred around candle-laden trestles and discarded comforters, trying to reach her. The stifling heat rose up in waves, bringing a film of perspiration out on his skin before he could take even a few steps.

  Heather sat with her arm draped over Sarah’s shoulder. He couldn’t be sure, but he suspected that she’d been awake since the day before. From what he’d seen of the traffic flowing back and forth between Main Street and the clinic, she’d been dealing with clamouring patients without pause.

  After the attack on the wind farm, people’s curious range of ailments had increased tenfold. Most were headaches and muscle pains, while some complained of difficulty breathing. But nobody could fool even themselves. It was a thinly veiled exercise in seeking comfort in any way they could. Affecting a dicky hip was a small sin if it meant half an hour of attention and a sit-down with somebody who cared.

  It was harmless, but still Robert admired her for holding out so long. Now she looked utterly defeated, her hair wispy and lank, her white coat splattered with sputum and other body fluids.

  Robert came to a standstill beside them and gritted his teeth against the tense silence that followed. There was nothing to be done. They couldn’t leave the house, not now, not even for some air. Everyone had been ordered to stay inside, like rats holed up in the floorboards beneath a tabby’s basket. Yet he couldn’t let them stagnate. They needed to keep moving, to maintain an even state of mind. “We should open the curtains,” he said. “We’re safe here.”

  Heather looked up at him, baggy-eyed and ashen-faced. “Not from what you’ve told us,” she muttered.

  Robert took a step closer to her, moving as delicately as his lumbering body would allow. “We’re safe,” he repeated. Despite being in awe of her steadfast work at the clinic, he was almost snarling through bared teeth. “I’ve got half the city on watch. Nobody’s getting through.”

  He ambled over to where Sarah sat and crouched before her, taking her hands. Her deathly white palms were dwarfed by his, yet still he gasped at how cold they were—like slabs of ice. “Are you alright?” he said.

  Sarah looked at him as though from very far away, as though she couldn’t quite see him at all. She nodded, and attempted a smile, but her lips wobbled and tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. After a moment she fell forwards and threw her arms over him. She began to shake as soon as her head came to rest on his shoulder, muffling fresh sobs against his shirt.

  He brushed her hair and hushed her as the fire crackled and the candles danced. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered. As he spoke, though he would never show it, his own conviction withered. The wolves were circling closer, and now there was blood on the air.

  XXVI

   

  The thumping of twenty steeds’ hooves upon hard soil, combined with as many war cries from the men astride them, echoed within the confines of the valley, amplified to a thunderous rumble. To anybody in the surrounding area, the party would have sounded ten times as large.

  Alexander led the charge over the crest of the hill, rifle balanced atop his saddle. Six riders banked away to either side, while the rest stayed their course, following him into a headlong descent. The group enveloped the office complex, each rider poised to open fire at a moment’s notice, orbiting the chain-link fence.

  Yet, as they reached the valley floor and the horses’ hooves ceased to resonate, the resultant silence was deafening. Not a thing stirred amongst the tower block’s remains. The entire valley was still and quiet, dead as the darkest Old World wreckage.

  Alexander blinked, casting wild glances around at the surrounding hilltops, half expecting to see their enemy lining the tree line, ready to strike. For a moment he cursed himself, convinced that he’d led them into a trap—onto low ground, where they could be picked off without trouble.

  But there was nobody there.

  The others’ war cries trailed off without dignity. They slowed to a canter, then a trot. T
hen each rider stopped dead and exchanged disconcerted glances with their neighbour.

  Alex had been sure that they would be met by an immediate volley of defensive gunfire. But after a further minute of half-hearted circling, nothing had stirred. The building sat derelict, nestled amongst overgrown layers of nettles and ferns.

  Quiet as a tomb.

  Alexander called a halt, and any residual movement died away. As one, they stared at the main entrance, which had been riddled with ragged bullet holes. A small, crimson lump lay nestled in the grass before the doors, unmoving. Beside it was the unmistakable profile of a stunted pistol.

  “What do you think?” Lucian said, close behind Alexander’s shoulder.

  “They’re gone.” Alexander urged his mount forwards with a kick of his spurs.

  The other men followed suit cautiously. From every direction, they drew closer to the concrete walls. Alexander listened all the while with one ear cocked, and still heard nothing from within the building except for the monotonous whistle of a stray breeze.

  But the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end all the same.

  He and Lucian were the first to dismount. They alighted on tiptoes and flattened themselves against the edge of the building, beckoning for the others to follow. The ragged hole left in the tower block’s side by its fallen wall was only feet away—a gaping, unstable maw that looked ready to collapse at any moment.

  Alex approached it nonetheless. Taking a deep breath, he leapt up onto a slab of fallen concrete. His feet met the surface with an unexpected lack of traction, and he wobbled momentarily before pitching himself towards whatever lay beyond.

  He landed with a hollow clatter, squinting amidst inky blackness, and managed to pick out the edges of what looked to be a stairwell. It was cool and damp. A pervading odour rose up in waves, musky but sweet, catching at the back of his throat.

  Lucian had leapt in behind him by the time his eyes had begun to adjust, and he could see well enough to tell that they stood upon a narrow landing. One flight of stairs down was a rusted ‘G’, which he guessed indicated the ground floor. The flight above them, however, led to nowhere; the upper landing had fallen away along with the outer wall.

  Down was the only way.

  With a clatter, three more men joined them upon the crumbling platform. Elsewhere in the building they could hear similar clatters as the others invaded through alternate entrances. They descended towards the rusted ‘G’ and passed through the doorway beneath it. Beyond, the darkness seemed to grow only thicker.

  Alex remained upon the threshold for some time, uncertain. Craning his neck, desperate to catch even the smallest detail, he placed his hand on the wall nearest to him for support, and cried out: it was slicked with something akin to treacle.

  He drew his hand away, but it was too dark to see even his own palm. Cursing, he stepped through the doorway, nearly yelling in fright when his foot hooked on something lying across the threshold. Freezing in place, he stroked the trigger of his rifle while his eyes roamed the blackness, fumbling with a small torch attached to his belt.

  “Think that’s a good idea?” Lucian uttered. “If we’re not alone, we’ll be made.”

  Alex held the torch aloft. “There’s nobody here,” he said, and thumbed the switch. A beam of light burst from its tip and pooled against the wall ahead, revealing what lay before them.

  Revealing horror incarnate.

  “Jesus,” Lucian whispered.

  Every wall was dripping with streaks of blood, every surface, every pane of glass and rotten furnishing, contrasting to such an extreme with the grey walls and drab plywood that it seemed to scream out at them. Alex dipped the beam as fast as he could, but still the others’ rush of gasps and bouts of disgusted gagging deafened him.

  Turning the torch beam upon the floor, he saw that his foot was wedged beneath the torso of a young woman. Half her face was calm and untroubled, as though she merely slept. The other half had been cleaved away, right down to the naked skull.

  A curious mixture of fury and paralysing shock came over him. He turned around as his stomach churned. As though from afar he heard the others retching and reeling away from the carpet of bodies that lay in every direction.

  Other shafts of light were spearing into the darkness elsewhere on the ground floor as the other teams reached the lobby. Each revealed only more bodies, carved up and motionless on the ground.

  From somewhere across the lobby, Lucian’s voice rang out, “Anybody find any survivors?”

  A few nauseated grunts issued from each corner. All reported in the negative. A series of booming footsteps heralded Lucian’s approach. A moment later he was once again at Alexander’s side. “Robert said they tried to fight back,” he said, and shook his head. “Look at these people. They’re wives. Kids. Old folks. They didn’t stand a chance.” He shone his own light on the girl at Alex’s feet, and closed his eyes against the sight of her face. “These people were executed. None of them were armed.”

  He fumed. “They were kept here for”—he paused—“what, insurance?”

  “That’s what Charlie said.”

  “If they went through the trouble of enslaving all these families, how could they afford to kill them?”

  “Maybe they were too much trouble. Either that, or it’s an example.”

  “To whom?”

  “To us.”

  Alex left the room without another word, and set about searching the nearby offices, holding a hand to his churning gut. The corridors were empty, dank and rotten. Shining his light on the floor, he saw the remains of a great many pitiful meals, little more than bowls of gruel.

  The last room along the corridor was the smallest, and had been swept and neatened. It contained only a desk, upon which lay something he recognised from profile only: a single silver-grey feather. Beneath it was a brown envelope.

  A shiver coursed along his spine. He looked over his shoulder and saw that he was alone. Pushing the rickety remnant of the door ajar and stepping inside, he took the rifle from around his neck and leaned it against the wall.

  He sat on the chair, cradled his head in his hands, and remained there in silence for a long time. Only when his hands had ceased to shake did he train the torch beam upon the envelope and reached out towards it.

  XXVII

   

  Billy was crouched amidst leaf litter. The branches of trees that had survived the year’s strife danced overhead, having recently taken on a new lease of life. The grass underfoot was shedding the last of its desiccated, straw-like texture, and once again reached for the sky. Green shoots budded amidst the morning dew.

  Life was returning to a world that had come so close to cataclysm for the second time in living memory. Birds once again twittered in the trees, and deer once again frolicked beneath the canopies of the land’s youthful forests—forests still growing up around the remains of villages, towns and cities. Even a few hardy flowers had dared to rear their beauteous heads.

  Billy had been sitting beneath the sun-dappled fronds of the sheltered copse for over an hour. It offered her all the cover she needed to remain hidden from any onlooker. A tawny owl had remained close by for some time, hooting somewhere out of sight, rustling buckled undergrowth.

  Below her, perched upon a rocky incline that led down to a dense scatter of lean-to shacks, were the carcasses of ancient mobile caravans. Around them was what had been a halo of camping tents. The tracks that the newcomers had made in the earth as they’d arrived were still fresh.

  She had found the settlement after the last of the food stores in the cabin had run dry. Daddy no longer noticed when she strayed from his beside unless he was sitting up for their daily meal—which now only lasted a mere handful of minutes, due to the pitiful size of their rations. The rest of the time he lay in a daze, slowly fading, growing further from her and the world with each passing day.

  Sometimes he spoke nonsense, mumbled about a tower, a city, and a Dark Man. At
first it had only scared her, and she had thought it meant Daddy was going to die soon. But then she had started having dreams too. Most of the things she saw were confused, just blurs, but through it all she could make out three men. One was blonde and old, another brown-haired and young. Her waking thoughts were of these strangers. She could have sworn she knew them, but had never laid eyes on either.

  Then there was the third: the Dark Man. She didn’t want to believe it was the same man Daddy saw, but when Daddy woke and talked about his nightmares, she knew it was. It was all the same, every detail. The pale young face, the dark cloak, and the strange marks over his cheekbones…

  But there hadn’t been time to dwell. They needed food.

  Her first foray outside had been fraught with false starts and frightened tears, but after an hour she’d managed to brave the small distance to the cliff side. There, she had discovered that the cliffs formed a ridge, several hundred feet above the inland basin, leading down towards a vast expanse of fields and scrubland, all wild and unpopulated.

  She had expected, and secretly hoped, that Daddy would wake and scold her for daring to wander away without his knowledge. But he had still been dazed and only semiconscious when she had returned.

  She’d endured a night’s hunger and growing thirst before daring to go out once again, straying into the nearby forest from whence they had come. That time she’d brought back stream water and berries. The water had unsettled her stomach, and Daddy had been furious when she had tried to feed him the berries—for, unbeknownst to her, they had been of a bad kind—and admitted what she’d done. But, despite his anger, he had taken her into his arms and thanked her.

  That night he had laboriously sketched and described the safest and most likely things to eat that could be found in the forest, and sent her back the following day, with strict orders to stay close.

  And stay close she had, that day. She’d brought back a few handfuls of blackberries and a canteen of water, which she had then boiled under his instruction. They had eaten together after nightfall, and Billy had felt stronger —not only in body, but in mind. She had done something herself. She had taken care of them.

  She had, for the first time, taken the edge off the fear boiling away in her gut.

  But her newfound strength had been cut down by the fact that, despite her efforts, Daddy had weakened only further by morning.

  From then on she had strayed farther and farther into the woods, gathering the items that Daddy had described. Unfortunately, the woodland was too young for very much of anything to have grown to maturity. She was soon forced to stray even farther, far enough to have stumbled across the travellers’ settlement.

  From her vantage point in the copse she had watched them a little more each day.

  At first, she would never have considered approaching them. Although Daddy now spoke almost constantly of leaving him alone—of leaving him in the cabin and finding people elsewhere—she refused to entertain the idea.

  She didn’t mention her discovery. Daddy would only want to investigate himself, something she was sure was now beyond him. Instead, she had merely watched, and waited, as a sense of the ragtag microcommunity had formed in her mind.

  They, too, were new to the basin. That much had been immediately obvious. Still very much embroiled in the tasks of tying guy ropes, unpacking their belongings and felling nearby underbrush, their malnourished bodies and travel-weary faces had betrayed their true identities: nomads, forced away from their homeland—just like her, and Daddy…and Grandpa.

  They, however, had clearly developed a few skills along the road, and had had more success at gathering than she. Each day they managed to acquire a mouthwatering array of fruits, root vegetables, berries, nuts, fish and smoked meats. As though only to taunt Billy further, they piled their spoils in the centre of their circle of makeshift homes.

  While Billy had visited more often each day, and the sparse offerings of the forest had thinned to the point of mere morsels, she had watched them with a sense of overwhelming desperation growing inside her.

  This morning, she had awoken with no pretence about the purpose of her visit to the copse: she would have to steal. She would take only enough to see her and Daddy through the next few days, and then she’d be strong enough to brave the scrubland farther afield. But today, there was no choice.

  What she had seen once she’d arrived, however, had driven all thought of food from her mind. She’d fallen upon her haunches amidst the ferns, unable to move, staring down at where the settlement had been, until the wind had kicked up nearby leaves and twigs into the deep pile now nestled against her thighs.

  It had clearly burned some time during the night. All that remained of the tents were their blackened profiles against the ground, and a few skeletal support wires. The caravans had been rendered buckled shadows of their former selves, their walls blistered open, having spilled their contents onto the ground outside. Everywhere, myriad personal effects lay charred and unrecognisable beneath a thick layer of grey-white ash. The food was gone.

  No effort had been made to put out the blaze. Nothing had been dragged clear of the flames. Not a single body littered the ruins. The campsite merely lay smouldering in the midst of the sapling forest, as though man had never passed this way. No cries of sorrow sounded from beneath the trees, and no trail of survivors graced the undergrowth.

  They were just gone.

  “Enjoying the view?”

  The voice, low and smooth, trickled over her shoulder and into her ear, seeming almost to creep up on her from behind. Her heart skipped a beat as she whirled in the grass, ready to run or scream. But she was stilled by the sight of the figure standing over her. She knew his face. “You,” she whispered.

  “Me,” he said.

  “You…you’re not here. You’re the nightmare man. You’re not real. You’re a dream!”

  A smile grew on the man’s beautiful face, right below a pair of eyes surrounded by dark streaks. If those eyes hadn’t been so razor sharp, he would have looked funny, like the Pandas that Ma had used to show her in picture books. But this man was anything but funny. “Do I look like a dream to you?” he said.

  She flicked her head down to look at his long black overcoat, and his feet planted in the grass, which parted around his ankles. His overcoat fluttered in the wind. He was real, alright. She couldn’t have spoken if she had tried, so hard had her jaw clamped shut, and so she shook her head.

  He crouched down beside her and gestured to the conflagration. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said.

  “Did you do it?”

  His eyes widened. “Me? No.” Absurdly, he smiled with genuine good humour. “No, this isn’t my style.”

  Despite the mirth in his eyes, Billy’s guts quivered, and she cowered in the grass. “Who are you?” she said.

  He shook his head, suddenly impatient. Urgency filled his gaze. “There’ll be time for that later. I need you to listen close.” He swept an arm at the camp. “You see this? It’s just the start. If you don’t do exactly as I say, there won’t be a soul under these stars who can escape what’s coming.”

  Tears were splashing from her cheeks without check. Though he spoke softly, he frightened her more than even the devil who had taken Grandpa. The air around him seemed alive. “Please go away!”

  “Billy.”

  “I want my Daddy!”

  His gaze bore down on her with such intensity that she froze in the grass. “Listen, child! Listen well. Or else your Daddy will be but one of countless to perish in fire. You’re special, Billy. You can make all the difference.”

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  “You.”

  Despite herself and all her writhing guts, she asked, “How?”

  The Panda Man spoke fast, his voice having fallen to a whisper. “Something is brewing on the horizon, something you’re a part of, something that will decide the fate of not only this world, but many. Maybe all.”

  She blinked. “I
don’t understand…”

  He shook his head, ever more impatient. “There will be time for answers later. Right now I need you to find some people.”

  “Who?”

  “I think you know.”

  For a moment Billy could only frown up at him. Then the faces from her dreams danced in front of her eyes; the two men who seemed to hover over her bed each morning.

  The Panda Man nodded with a knowing glint to his smirk. “That’s right. I need you to find them before it’s too late to change what He’s done.”

  “What who’s done?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her, glancing away at the horizon. “He’s upset the balance.” A scowl brewed on his alabaster face. “So much depends on the here and now, yet all these silly men ever do is think of themselves. It needs to be put right. We have little time.”

  Billy hesitated. “I can’t leave Daddy. He’s sick. Please, just go away and leave us alone!”

  “Your father will be fine, for a while. Right now, I need you to get up out of the dirt. There’s work that needs doing.” He straightened, his long coat billowing around him, and offered a hand.

  Billy’s breath shuddered in her throat. “No,” she cried. “Leave me alone.”

  “If you don’t, your father will die. I guarantee it.”

  Billy sobbed, but offered her hand. It was seized by a grip of immense strength, and the Panda Man’s eyes glittered. “Good,” he muttered. Then he hauled her up in a hail of browning leaves and set her on her feet.

  Billy brushed herself down, dazed, and took a breath to steady herself. “Where do I go?” she said, straightening up to meet his gaze. But he was gone. All that remained of him was a fading rustle in the grass, a groan in the bark of the copse’s trees, and a single departing whisper on the wind. “It’ll come to you. Find them, Billy. Find them.”

  XXIX

   

  Norman shuffled without pause, passing each guard yet again as he circled the catwalk, orbiting the tower. They paid him no notice, their eyes trained beyond the wall, but he was glad for their presence nonetheless.

  The city’s shadows seemed alive today, boiling away where the sun’s glare couldn’t reach, as though plotting, murmuring.

  He kept his gaze fixed a few feet ahead of him. It was easier to keep walking that way—in a trance where time was unhinged, one which kept his thoughts and chest pain at bay.

  By the time he came to a standstill, the sun had fallen low in the sky, and his ribs were throbbing, coupled with an icy pinch in his chest that had taken seat not long after Alexander had departed. The heat of the day was ebbing, but it was still far too warm to explain the chill that now seemed to surround his heart, a raw, gnawing cold.

  He’d passed out by the stables after Allie and Richard had left him. It couldn’t have been for very long, as he had still been alone when he’d come to, but it had been long enough to bring him back to his senses. By the time they’d returned, regret and deep shame had set his cheeks burning and his stomach tied in knots.

  He’d said things he didn’t mean, done things he shouldn’t have in front of people who were relying on him. He’d made a fool of himself. And there was no way to take any of it back.

  A few hours of rest—with Allie watching over him—had been enough to cement an even state of mind. But still the pain had persisted enough to drive him back outside—to pacing the catwalk—in search of distraction.

  He wondered just how long it would take the pain to fade. He now suspected that it was down to more than just the broken ribs. Something told him that, somehow, it was connected to the nightmares, and the scar upon the side of his head.

  But right now the pain seemed distant. His mind had turned elsewhere.

  When he’d been resting, he had endured a bout of restless twitching, and dreamed a dream all too familiar: the city, the storm, the yelling young faces, and the leering figure.

  Looking out at London’s skyline now, there was no doubt in his mind that it was the very same as that city’s. This time there had been nothing vague about the dream; every detail had been rendered in sharp relief. He had not only tasted the stagnant mud, but felt the grit between his teeth, felt not only the icy rain upon his skin but also the weight of his sodden clothes. The bolt of pain above his right ear had this time seemed closer to a white-hot steak knife embedded in his skull. The voices of those standing above him had reached his ears—still distorted and meaningless, but audible.

  It had all been more substantial. More real.

  But most noticeable of all had been His return: that strange, leering figure. The first time Norman had had the dream, he’d been standing off to one side, watching. This time, however, he’d been standing directly behind Alexander and Lucian, the dark marks beneath his eyes casting his face in shadow. He had leaned between the bellowing figures, smiling, and repeated the words that now haunted Norman’s every waking thought: “Remember, Norman. Remember. You were all there.”

  Norman shuddered. There would be no more sleep for him today.

  A noise finally drew him back to the catwalk: scuffling footsteps, approaching from the tower. At first he suspected it was one of the guards changing shift, but the silhouette passing over the catwalk was slighter, more feminine.

  Allison materialised from the tower’s shadow, approaching with unmistakable purpose.

  He tried to smile, but faltered, the shame of his earlier outburst arresting his lips. Instead he turned away and waited, leaning against the catwalk. From here he was looking out across the Thames, which cast a silver-blue glare across the city, one that enamelled the crumbling shells of glass and steel behemoths. The monuments of long-dead men momentarily struck him dumb—as the Old World’s remains had done countless times before, and would never cease to do—as Allison continued to grow closer, until her face was mere inches from his.

  “Can’t sleep?” she whispered.

  Norman drew a great sigh. “It feels like the whole world is holding its breath,” he said, “just waiting for something to happen.”

  She nodded. “I’ve never liked it here,” she said. “It’s too quiet.”

  “It’s always quiet.”

  “Yes, but here it’s different. Not just silence but…an absence. Like there’s something missing that isn’t quite gone…just a ghost of something greater.”

  “I suppose all that’s left are ghosts of greater things.”

  She shrugged. Moments later, she sidled an inch closer. “Do you ever wonder where they all went?”

  Her words died on the wind, and Norman couldn’t help swallowing audibly. “Sometimes,” he said.

  She shook her head, her eyes glassy. “It’s hard to think of so many people. And they all just… I can never begin to imagine what it was like for the elders, what it was like to watch it all go, and know that they had to carry on.”

  “Alex always said it happened fast,” Norman said. He snapped his fingers—though they both knew the snap was coming, it made them jump—“Just like that.”

  She shook her head once more. “Why?” She paused. “Why them? Why then, and only then?” She shivered. “Why are we still here?”

  Norman felt his mind grapple with the questions, but only momentarily. It was all too big, especially now. After a brief silence he said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Best just to do what you can with what you have.”

  She was motionless for a long time, her gaze locked on the long-dead city, but when she turned back to him she had regained a trace of vim. “We’re trapped here, aren’t we?”

  He nodded.

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s any doubting why we got through London untouched. They have us all together now, in one place.”

  He heard her throat crack. “Things are better, now. Not everyone is starving. Maybe…maybe it’ll all just blow over.”

  He smiled despite himself and gave her arm a squeeze. “Sorry, Allie, but I
don’t think so. This was never about hunger. There’s something they’re not telling us. I’m going to find out what it is, but I don’t know if I can do anything to put it right.” He paused, thinking of Alexander. “Our past isn’t all roses.”

  “There’s the radio message, too. Maybe there’s someone out there who can help us.”

  “Maybe.”

  Allie sighed. “At least we have you,” she said. “You and Alex.”

  Norman tried to keep an even expression, but couldn’t stop his shoulders slumping. “Allie…” He looked into her eyes, and felt the weight of two cities press upon his shoulders. “I’m not the man you’re looking for. I don’t think I ever was. I’m just…” His scar throbbed, but he pressed on, “I’m nobody.” He looked out across the river once more to hide his burgeoning grimace. “I can’t save you.”

  They lapsed into a silence long enough for the city’s skyline to become emblazoned on his retinas. A dark presence seemed to be exuding from its murky depths, one he felt all too often now. He saw it peering around every corner, felt it pressing in from all sides.

  And he suspected that Allie felt it too. They all did.

  Her delicate fingers twisted into his, and her voice washed over him from lips that had grown close to his shoulder. “You are that man. I know you are.” She pressed her lips against his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “You might not believe it, but I do.”

   

  That same eternal truth still rang out at him: I’m not Alex. But now, cutting over it, the disembodied voice of that nameless stranger spoke even louder: Tsk, tsk, Norman. Storm’s on its way, and you need to be ready.

  He sighed. “Maybe I can change,” he said. “Maybe I don’t even have a choice.” He closed his hand over hers, looking out over the ruins of the Old World metropolis. Despite the warmth of her skin, a splinter in his thoughts kept him frowning. They had reached a turning point, and there was no going back. Their lives hinged on the council convening. Though it was only hours away, it might be too late. Amidst the city’s streets he sensed malevolence, and a great many eyes moving over his skin. “They’re out there, waiting. I can feel them,” he said. “Whatever happens, it’ll happen fast. We’re not out of the woods, yet. Not by a long shot.”

  XXVIII

   

  Alexander waited until the others had taken in the horrors under the tower block’s roof, and could bear no more. While he sat motionless in the gloom, he heard them traipse outside to gag and vomit, one by one. The sound of scuffling also reached his ears. A few must have fainted, and were being carried outside. Only a handful remained inside, who he glimpsed passing by at the end of the corridor, searching for survivors with rags held to their mouths.

  They found no one.

  Eventually, they too filed outside, cursing under their breath. So shocked did they seem that all pretence of keeping watch had been abandoned. Through the nearly opaque office window he could see them gathered on the outskirts of the rubble field, sitting atop boulders with their heads bowed, broken.

  Alexander waited until all had grown utterly still and silent. Even then, it took him some time to muster the will to move. His knees felt heavier than blocks of lead, while his hands, moulded around the envelope, seemed stuck fast to its wrinkled surface.

  It would have been so easy to stay like that indefinitely, devoid of thought or worry. The world seemed distant; the massacre outside could have been a mere figment of his imagination. He might not have been so very guilty—so very responsible for every single part of it.

  He was finally on the verge of moving when Lucian appeared in the doorway. His cheeks were pale, and his fists bunched. Alexander’s heart sank at the sight of his distant gaze.

  “Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing. They cleaned the place out.” He glanced at the bloodied walls. “Cleaned it out, killed every last one of them, and left. And we’ve got nothing. We’re still on square one. I…” He threw his bunched fists to his temples and grunted. “I don’t know if we can ever come back from this, Alex. I don’t see an end to it.” His arms fell to his sides, and his jaw grew slack. For the briefest of moments, Alexander saw the eight-year-old boy he’d once met in a roadside warehouse. “What have we done?” he muttered.

  Alexander swallowed, felt a lump of self-loathing pass along his gullet, and shook his head. “We survived, Lucian,” he said. “All we’ve ever done is survived.”

  Lucian’s shoulders slumped. He lingered for a moment longer, and the light in his eye—the one that Alexander and so many others had relied on for countless years—died, perhaps for the last time. He nodded, slid from the doorway, and disappeared from sight.

  Alex was left alone once more. It was only after Lucian’s footsteps had well and truly faded, and the office building was filled with the tell-tale whistle of total silence, that he brought the envelope from his lap and tore it open.