“I thought we were going together,” Bray argued.
Kirby dismounted her horse, handing over the reins. “I’m going to sneak down and get a better view. If you hear a loud noise, like thunder, stay put until you see me again.”
Bray looked like he was ready to fight. “So we’re supposed to stay here, like bored stable hands?”
“I know the settlement better than you, and better than those men. I can hide easier on foot.” Kirby gave him a stare that made it clear she wasn’t changing her plan. “Stay here and keep William safe. If you see more men, ride out through the gap in the wall and into the woods. I’ll meet you both at the creek we passed on the way here.”
“Be careful,” William said, concern crossing his face.
“I have Tech Magic, remember?” Kirby smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
William didn’t seem certain, but he obeyed and turned his horse in the other direction. Bray followed grudgingly, taking Kirby’s horse with them.
Kirby waited until they were at the top of the settlement, hiding.
Then she snuck down toward the water.
Chapter 3: Kirby
Kirby crept around the collapsed tower and onto a small, dirt street, stepping around rotten, festering carcasses of mutants and the half-eaten bodies of her people. Brass casings from gunfights were scattered everywhere. Most of their battles blended together in her memory. She’d spent fourteen years fighting mutants in this new land. Toward the end, those battles had become altercations with her own spore-infected people, who had fought to stay inside the settlement, even as their minds deteriorated. A few of the worst ones had started the fires that had ruined the walls, letting in the demons and condemning the rest to death.
Kirby was the only one to survive.
At least, she thought she was.
She hadn’t seen any other survivors since the day most of them burned. Those who weren’t eaten by demons had fled and never come back.
She doubted she’d ever see them again.
She looked around at the small, squat buildings and the towers. They’d named the settlement New Hope. At one time, the makeshift town had been filled with woodworkers, doctors, and metallurgists—people who had planned to use that knowledge to build a new life, until insanity and mutant attacks had crushed their dreams to death.
She recalled that first meal of fresh game they’d had by the ocean after they’d built the stockade, laughing around a big fire. They’d hoped things would get better. But they’d only gotten worse as more mutants attacked. “Home” was a word that had lost meaning to most in her native land, and it had never found its meaning here.
Catching a glimpse of the distant shore between several of the houses, she searched for the men. She’d lost sight of them, but their tracks pointed from the first ship to the second.
She heard no pounding footsteps. No cries of alarm.
They hadn’t seen her, for the moment.
That meant she could sneak up on them.
Kirby looked around, cautiously searching for the strange men, or more like them. She crept behind a tall tower. Looking all the way to the top, she located the observation deck that they’d built to keep watch for danger, which held a mounted turret gun. They’d brought several of those big weapons—along with a slew of smaller ones—from their homeland, putting them on top of as many towers as they could, but most of the turret guns had jammed in the battle with the demons. They’d abandoned some when the fire had consumed most of the structures around them. Even if any of those guns worked, getting to them would be a dangerous pursuit.
The inside of the tower was littered with charred corpses. Kirby hadn’t moved any of the bodies after the attack, except to scavenge the few things she could use. An intruder in the settlement would notice a grave, or a purposefully moved body.
It didn’t matter now.
The intruders were here.
She snuck around the tower and between several small buildings, keeping her gun close. The settlement was even emptier and quieter than when she’d left it, foreboding. The smell of mutants was ripe in the air, but she didn’t see any roaming the streets. Before she’d left the last time, most had been dead. But she could tell more mutants had been here, scavenging through her people’s corpses.
Where were they?
She was creeping closer to the beach when something caught her eye. Through the missing wall of one of the houses, she saw a pile of dead demons stacked on top each other, seemingly fresh and dead for no longer than a day or two. One of them was on its back and upside down, hanging off the pile with its mouth stuck open, the top of its head split almost in half. The fetid stench of skin and guts filled the air.
Kirby held her breath.
Maybe the men had been here longer than she thought.
Chapter 4: Bray
Bray sat on his horse next to William, peering out from behind the tall, intact tower, one of the few buildings in the settlement that hadn’t been destroyed. Behind them was the part of the ruined stockade through which they’d entered. If Bray hadn’t had William to think about, he might’ve ignored Kirby’s advice and followed her.
They’d already lost sight of Kirby.
She’d slipped between several small buildings and entered a small, dirt road of which he had no clear view. The men were gone again, too. They’d disappeared into a gaping hole on the side of the second rusted ship. Bray was waiting for them to come out.
He knew Kirby could easily handle two men, with her Tech Magic. But what if there were more? The prospect filled Bray with an unease that he didn’t want to admit. The settlement was stranger than anything he’d seen in the wild, or in Brighton.
On top of the tower behind which they were hiding was a long, metal device on a parapet with a thin metal tube poking out of the end. He’d never seen anything like it. On the building’s side were several wooden panels with slits that served a purpose at which he could only guess.
Looking around, he saw a slew of buildings and towers that held similar strange devices, and any of those buildings could easily hide men with Tech Magic devices like Kirby’s. He’d be dead before he saw them.
And the demons—they could be hiding anywhere.
Trotting closer to the tower behind which they were hiding, Bray nudged open the door with his sword, unleashing a foul smell. The square room inside was empty, other than a single, mostly-rotted demon corpse. He backed up.
“I keep trying to spot Kirby, but I can’t find her,” William whispered next to him.
“Hopefully that means the men can’t find her, either.”
William nodded nervously. “If we see anyone else, we should ride, just like she said.”
“Keep alert. Watch for more men.”
Bray looked behind him and up the valley, but saw nothing other than corpses through the gap in the wall. It was still hard to believe this settlement existed. Bray had encountered plenty of people who lived away from the prying eyes of others, but most were settlers that had come from the townships, choosing to live in the wild. With a few, he’d grown close enough to share a meal, or to trade. Most were people who preferred solitude to the townships’ rules.
Most groups numbered only a few. He’d never seen a settlement as large as this. And certainly not one that wasn’t connected to Brighton.
The strange men by the water gave him a dark feeling he didn’t like. They made him recall rumors he’d heard since he was a boy.
Ever since childhood, Bray had been told stories of uncouth settlers who had succumbed to the lawlessness of the wild, living like animals, killing mercilessly, sacrificing people to the demons. He’d even heard of settlers wearing pieces of their victims as trophies.
Most of those rumors were unfounded, tales told by Wardens around campfires. But Bray had one memory that still haunted him.
When he was twelve years old—about William’s age—he’d been sitting by his father, Fuller, next to a campfire, listening to him tell stories of bat
tle. They’d been hiking all day, and they’d settled next to a steep, rocky hill where they could disguise their fire. On the other side of them was thick forest. The forest was quiet, but it was getting toward winter, and most of the animals had gone to wherever they hid in those dead, quiet months. Even the demons had decreased their activity. The only noises were from the occasional animal that hadn’t hidden from the cold.
Bray’s father had spoken of an encounter he’d had with a half-dozen demons—a battle Bray had heard about many times—and Bray had been listening intently, when he saw a face peering from the shadows outside the firelight. The person’s face was discolored, with teeth pointed like tiny, crooked knives. If Bray hadn’t seen eyes in the middle of that face, he might not have believed it was human. Bray’s jaw had dropped in horror. Fuller had jumped to his feet, drawing his sword.
“What is it?” Fuller had barked. “A demon?”
“Something else.” Bray had barely managed the words.
Fuller had turned his attention to the trees, prepared to fight, while twelve-year-old Bray had raised a nervous, shaking hand, pointing.
The person—or whatever it was—was gone.
After recovering from his fright, Bray had joined his father, searching the forest with torches for several hours, but they’d found no tracks, no broken branches, no impressions in the ground.
At the time, Fuller had dismissed it as a childhood fear bred from stories. Bray had been so ashamed he’d never mentioned it to Fuller, or to anyone, again. He wanted to be a Warden, not a prissy merchant’s boy, scared of shadows.
Now, having come across Kirby and these men by the water, Bray wondered if what he’d seen that night was real. Who knew what was in the wild?
Maybe he didn’t know as much as he thought.
“What is it?” William asked, noticing Bray’s expression.
“Nothing.” Bray spat on the ground, then returned his attention to the beach, watching the rippling waves and the spot where the men had disappeared.
Chapter 5: Kirby
Kirby hunkered in one of the smaller wooden buildings in the street closest to the water. It was a butcher shop, once owned by a man named Joshua. A small table contained the dried remnants of some old meat and some crusted bloodstains. Several pegs on the wall—usually filled with fresh carcasses— were empty, and the places that once held tools were also vacant. Joshua, along with almost everyone else, had died in the demon raid, his body dragged into the streets and consumed. Kirby no longer knew which pile of bones was his. The thought saddened her. That memory, like the other memories of her people, would bury her if she let it.
She wouldn’t.
Through several missing boards in the back wall of the house, she inspected the length of the beach, the destroyed cabin, and the second ship, where the men had vanished.
Occasionally, she heard a bang as the men stumbled into something in the ship’s dark interior, but she couldn’t hear much else. She imagined them sloshing around the standing water, searching for things to steal.
The overturned ship where she’d hidden the guns was next in line.
She could probably get to the cabin on the beach without being seen, hide there, and surprise them—whether with a grenade or a gunshot, she wasn’t sure. She’d just need to watch for signs that the men were with others: a hand signal, a turned head, a shout.
If she saw any of those signs, she’d leave.
She kept a tight grip on her rifle, watching the gaping entrance of the first ship until the men’s silhouettes appeared from the blackness.
From her new vantage point, she saw bloodstains spackled on their jackets—her people’s jackets. Bastards. The mens’ faces were caked with grime, and the strange, black markings she’d seen from a distance seemed to be part of their skin. The men spoke excitedly, discussing something they’d seen in the ship. Between the slap of the waves and their thick accents, she didn’t understand any of the words. They were carrying the bows they’d gone in with, which she could see now were crudely constructed, less angular than the ones the people she’d encountered from Brighton used.
The men looked up and down the beach, but their gaze didn’t linger.
They pointed at the next ship and started walking toward it.
Kirby stretched her stiff, crouched legs. As soon as the men were far enough in the ship that they wouldn’t see her, she’d sprint to the cabin. Then she’d figure out what to do. The men waded through the water, reaching the overturned boat and walking through a gap where the wooden deck had given way to a hallway. Kirby waited until their voices were faint and she could no longer see them.
Then she crept out of the house and ran toward the beach.
Chapter 6: Kirby
Kirby’s boots pounded the sand. She watched for anyone who might be tracking or stalking her, but the settlement was quiet and deserted. All she heard were the susurrant swells of the ocean and the subtle clink of debris knocking against the ships’ hulls. Bray and William were out of sight, hopefully hiding.
Making it to the collapsed cabin a few hundred feet from the shore, she crouched behind the pile of blackened logs, ignoring the burnt bones that protruded from underneath the building’s collapsed frame.
She leaned around and focused on the ship where the men had disappeared. The men were banging loudly on something inside, presumably trying to get through a rusted door. Kirby looked down at the grenades on her belt. If she threw one on the beach, she might make enough noise to send the men running.
Commotion.
Shouts and bangs spilled from inside the overturned ship. A woman screamed. A woman? Kirby stood, caught between fleeing and staying. Before she could move, a woman she didn’t recognize burst from the gap in the ship’s deck, splashing through the water and running toward the beach. Another woman exited close behind her. The two strange men ran out behind, chasing. Kirby’s pulse thudded as she watched.
One of the women carried a rusted hatchet that she might’ve found inside the ship; she was limping. The other was empty-handed and her face was bleeding. They looked over their shoulders as they splashed through the last of the ankle-deep water and onto the beach, heaving frantic breaths and making new footprints in the sand.
They must’ve been hiding in the ship for a while.
Before Kirby could think to do anything, one of the men nocked an arrow and fired. The arrow flew fast and true, skewering the woman with the hatchet, sending her sprawling face-first onto the sand, dead, an arrow protruding from her skull. The other woman cried out as she watched her friend tumble and go still. She kept running while the shooter nocked a new arrow. The second man chased her with an expression that said he might try to keep her alive, if he could catch her.
Kirby had seen plenty of disputes between people in the forest. Normally, her people avoided contact unless their settlement was in danger.
But something about these men, wearing her people’s coats…
And something about the unarmed woman…
Kirby didn’t realize what she was doing until she was out in the open, racing toward the man nocking the arrow. She aimed her rifle. She screamed to distract the man’s attention.
The man swiveled toward her, momentarily disoriented. When she was close enough that she was confident she wouldn’t miss, she fired her rifle. A bullet hit the man in the torso, and he fell to his knees. She fired again, hitting him in the head, sending him to the sand.
The second man stopped, caught between choices. Before he could refocus his attack on Kirby, she fired at him several times, striking him in the chest and the shoulder. The man pitched forward onto the sand, his bow flying from his grasp. He didn’t move.
The beach fell silent.
Kirby stood on the sand, looking between the men she’d killed and the wounded, unarmed woman, who had stopped running and was staring at Kirby with wide, panicked eyes.
Kirby looked around the perimeter of the settlement, certain that more marked men would
be coming. But all she saw were two people on horses, galloping around the burned houses and onto a dirt road that led most of the way to the water.
Bray and William.
Chapter 7: Bray
“Are you all right?” William asked Kirby, as they joined her.
“I’m fine,” Kirby answered.
“It looks like they got the worst of it,” Bray said, pointing at the men’s dead bodies as he dismounted his horse. He drew his sword and scanned the shore and the ships, performing a similar inspection as Kirby, before turning his attention back to the strange woman who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
“Are there more people inside any of these ships?” Bray asked her.
The woman—girl—appeared to be less than twenty years old. Her shoulders heaved as she watched all of them, looking as if she might panic and run, but she didn’t answer, and she didn’t move. Fresh blood spewed from her nose, running around her lips and dribbling off her chin. It looked like her nose was broken. She wore a shirt and pants that Bray might’ve seen in Brighton, but he didn’t recognize her, and she didn’t look like any settler he’d ever met.
Noticing the hatchet and bows on the ground a little further away, Bray walked over and collected them.
Kirby repeated Bray’s question. “Are there more of you?”
The girl slowly wiped some blood from her nose. The bottoms of her pants were tucked into her boots. Her shirt and jacket were tight against her skin with sweat. Bray didn’t see a place where she could hide anything, but then again, she might have a small, deadly device like Kirby’s.
“Maybe she can’t hear us,” Bray suggested.
“I think she’s having trouble understanding us,” Kirby said, furrowing her brow.
“Why wouldn’t she be able to understand us?” Bray scoffed as he tucked the rusted hatchet in his bag.
The Ruins Box Set Page 3