The Ruins Box Set

by T. W. Piperbrook

  “It is something all The Shadow People fear, of course,” Kirby said. “And it is certainly stopping them from acting.”

  “What if we could eliminate the threat of the demons? Then we would only have to deal with the guards and The Gifted.”

  Kirby laughed softly, but he could tell she was intrigued. “I don’t see how, without slaying them.”

  “The guards have ingrained a routine that might help us,” Bray suggested. “They use their words, and their bells, to herd the demons into the Feeding Pen. What if we could do the same?”

  “I do not understand,” Kirby said.

  “The demons react to the bell, not the people,” Bray guessed. “At least, that is what I think. If we can keep close enough to the same ritual, we might be able to get the twisted men inside the Feeding Pen, away from the commands of The Gifted. We might be able to contain them before they can harm us.”

  “Why would we let them in?” Kirby seemed dubious.

  “Outside the city, the demons are an uncertain threat. The Gifted have control of them. Even if we barricade the front gate, The Gifted will find a way to let them in. Teddy mentioned that some parts of the wall are crumbled. The Gifted might know that, and order them over in the unstable areas, or they might use Tech Magic to break down the walls. We will not know which points to defend, or when. We will have no visibility.” Bray watched her a second, more of his idea solidifying. “If we trap the demons in the Feeding Pen, they will be contained in a much smaller area than outside the walls of a whole city. And they will be away from their owners. We will not have to worry about The Gifted commanding a swarming mob to kill us. Even if the demons get over the wooden Feeding Pen walls, we can station our people by the walls and take them a few at a time. Or we can feed them corn and keep them subdued while we enact the next part of our plan.”

  “Which is?”

  “We storm the building,” Bray said, with a firm nod. “We will have the keys. Hundreds of us slaves can certainly take down ten Gifted. We might suffer some losses, but once we kill them, we will have the power of their Tech Magic to fight the demons. And we can rescue William. The shimmering tower will be ours. We can use it as a base, a place of refuge, or however we see fit.”

  “It is a brave idea, but it is risky,” Kirby said. “And you are forgetting about Rudyard. He helps control the mutants during the feeding. Assuming we kill the guards before the feeding, once we open the gate, he will command the mutants to kill us.”

  “We do this in the morning, before he wakes,” Bray clarified. “Rudyard does not come down to New City until just before the count of the Field Hands. If we do this before daybreak, he will not hear much, from so high up in the tower. At least, that is my hope. We kill the guards in the morning, after first light, as we planned. We take their bells and weapons. And then we head to the main gate, before Rudyard is outside. If we time it right, we lure the demons into the pen before he catches on to what’s happening. By the time he or anyone else in the tower hears the bells, it will be too late. The demons will be confined.”

  “Do you think the mutants will listen to the bells in the morning? That is outside their routine.”

  “No animal I’ve seen in the wild will refuse an easy meal,” Bray said. “They will follow the bells because they mean food. We can feed them in one large shift, herding them all in at once, instead of in two shifts. I was inside the Feeding Pen. It is large enough to hold all of them. I do not think any of them will stop moving, once they see corn on the other side.”

  “You hope,” Kirby reminded him.

  “If something goes wrong, we will have the escape route we talked about,” Bray finished.

  Kirby was silent a moment.

  Finally, she admitted, “It is a bold idea.”

  “It is worth taking to The Shadow People. It is worth waiting on our deaths. What do you think?”

  Kirby looked around the dark house. She didn’t agree. But she didn’t rush past him, either.

  “If we are going to die, let it matter,” Bray said, pushing his words into a final argument. “Let us spend our last moments fighting, instead of facing death at the hands of a few cowardly guards. Let us find that golden palace in the clouds.”

  Kirby sighed again. She said, “I will have Drew set up a meeting, as soon as he is able. It won’t be tonight.”

  “The soonest we can meet, then,” Bray said. Feeling the weight of her anger and pain, he said, “We will get revenge for what they have done, Kirby. I promise you. Just hang in a while longer.”

  Chapter 41: William

  William’s breath heaved as he pressed his ear against the door of his quarters. He’d waited several days before risking another escapade. In that time, Amelia had only come by once or twice, but his cough had scared her away. She didn’t want to risk her own health, or the wellbeing of the others. Instead, she had sent two of the scrawny, stone-faced guards to bring his food and take his empty trays. He already had the ammunition for the old, sentimental gun.

  The next time he saw The Gifted, he hoped to have the Tech Magic gun in his possession.

  Letting that thought drive him, William opened the door to a darkened hallway, peering out onto a stairwell he couldn’t see. He slowly made his way to the landing, clung to the rail, and climbed upward, counting the stairs. He passed the sixteenth floor without incident. Quiet conversation made his heart beat loudly as he passed the seventeenth level, where the guards watched. He imagined they had a dull task, waiting and looking out the windows. Occasionally, he had heard laughter coming from behind that door, when he passed it going to The Library Room, but he seldom saw them.

  Still, at any moment, they might step out and find him.

  He kept going.

  Reaching The Library Room, he picked the lock.

  He left the door open to a crack, just in case he had to depart quickly.

  The odor of succulent meats and vegetables—smells he recognized from his tray earlier, which he’d taken in his room—wafted into his nose. The moon shone enough light to illuminate the outlines of the grand table and chairs. Operating on muscle memory, William skirted around the furniture, past the bookshelves and the looming, metal devices called fans, heading for Amelia’s desk. Looking at the shadowy shelves on the walls filled with books, he recalled the many lessons he’d received.

  If his plan went correctly, he would never have a lesson again.

  Reaching Amelia’s desk, he slid open the drawer and searched for the gun. The panicked thought hit him that Amelia might’ve moved it, but he found it, sitting idly, as if it had been waiting for him. William felt the power of Tech Magic as he picked up the heavy weapon and held it. The long, metal barrel gleamed in the moonlight shining through the windows.

  The gun was freedom and power.

  Tears he hadn’t expected stung William’s eyes as he ran his hands over the gun’s smooth surface, thinking he might have the answer to his predicament. Perhaps he’d even see his friends soon.

  But not if he wasn’t careful.

  Returning the way he came, William cautiously made his way past the furniture. He couldn’t allow his excitement to make room for a mistake. He’d left the caps, balls, and the flask of black powder in his room. He didn’t want the clanking, small pieces of metal making noise and giving him away. Nor was he foolish enough to think he’d have the time to figure out how to load them in the dark Library Room.

  He would do it when he got back.

  With his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he moved at a quicker pace, ready to get back to the relative safety of his room. Reaching the door, he eased it open.

  The light of a lantern splashed on the stairs.

  The person holding it took a step.

  Barron.

  Barron stopped moving as he saw William.

  A moment of uncertainty passed as two people processed an unexpected meeting. William’s mouth opened and closed as he thought of an excuse that would save him. Before William could sp
eak, Barron’s eyes roamed from William’s face to the gun in his hand.

  Barron’s wart-covered lips twisted to anger.

  He lunged up the stairs.

  Barron grabbed for William, but William leapt backward and turned. Barron reached again, catching hold of the back of William’s robe and pulling. William fought for balance, grabbing for the doorway to avoid being tugged back onto the stairwell. He found a handhold, jerking free.

  A pained cry rose from Barron’s direction as he lost his balance, falling.

  Loud thuds reverberated through the building.

  The lantern bounced and shattered.

  A small flame erupted as the oil from the lamp caught fire, creating a glow of light on the stairs.

  A cold panic coursed through William as he saw Barron’s silhouette, lying on the seventeenth-floor landing near the smashed lantern. He wasn’t moving. William glanced frantically behind him into The Library Room, about to flee and find refuge there, but the image of that last, frantic standoff panicked him. He wasn’t ready to die.

  In his terror, all he could think was to get to his room.

  William darted down the stairs, rushing as quickly and quietly as he could. He jumped over the small fire and kept to the wall as he reached the landing, skirting around Barron’s body, certain that his greasy, infected hands would clamp his ankles and trip him. He didn’t. Loud voices emanated from some of the floors above and below. William had just reached his room when doors on the other levels crashed open and shouting filled the stairwell.

  He shut his door and sprang for the bureau.

  The rounds, the rounds!

  He managed to get the supplies and sink to the floor behind the bed as more voices echoed from the stairwell just beyond his room. He fumbled fruitlessly with the gun, the rounds, and the flask.

  Even if he knew how to load the gun, he couldn’t see what he was doing.

  It was over. All of it.

  Once Barron awoke, he would expose what he saw. Or he was dead, and The Gifted would connect it to William.

  “What’s going on?” Tolstoy shouted in the stairwell, to the exclamations of the guards.

  Electric lights winked on, illuminating the crack beneath William’s door. His nervous hands slid over the gun. More voices echoed as more of The Gifted joined Tolstoy. William heard Amelia’s voice, intertwined with the sounds of the guards. Confusion bled through animated voices as people put out the fire and tried to determine what happened. The Gifted and the guards spoke loudly enough that William could hear the words, echoing down the two flights of stairs and to the landing just past his door.

  A pronouncement froze William’s frantic hands.

  “Barron’s dead.”

  William felt a small relief through his icy chills.

  “Dead?” Amelia said from the stairwell, in disbelief.

  “His neck is snapped,” Tolstoy announced, to the grumbles and murmurs of the others. A few of The Gifted talked at once, inspecting the body, or making sense of what must be a gruesome scene.

  Footsteps pounded up and down the stairs as they continued inspecting the stairwell, and William stayed put in his room. People answered over one another, trying to explain, or make sense of what they were seeing. Eventually, one of the voices won out.

  “What happened?” Tolstoy demanded.

  “I’m not sure,” said a nervous guard. “We were at the windows when we heard the noise. It took us a moment to retrieve our weapons and come out. We thought it was The Plagued Ones. When we arrived, we found him like that.”

  “The Library Room door is open,” the first guard said, stating the obvious. “I didn’t see anyone else upstairs.”

  “Check the bottom floor,” Tolstoy ordered another guard.

  Footsteps clapped down the stairs, passing William’s floor, continuing to the building’s bowels. After a few moments, more guards returned. It sounded as if the guards downstairs had joined the others. “We didn’t see anything from the bottom level,” said one of them, presumably stationed below. “The Plagued Ones outside are quiet.”

  “I told Barron to stop going to the Library at night,” Amelia said, with a crack of pain in her voice. “I told him he might get hurt.”

  “It must’ve been an accident,” Leonard proclaimed, repeating her assessment.

  An accident.

  William’s heart hammered in his chest.

  He hoped everyone would believe it.

  Tolstoy cleared his throat, clearly unnerved. “See if you can move him,” he ordered the guards.

  Grunts and grumbles echoed through the stairwell as the guards tried moving Barron. Footsteps beat the stairs as someone came up or down. It was only a matter of moments until someone remembered William and thought to question him, coming to his door. His panic heightened as he looked across the room toward the crack of light, making another realization.

  He’d left his door unlocked.

  In his haste, he’d left a clue that might connect him. Stuffing the gun and the ammunition back in the drawer, William padded across the room, reaching the door handle. He dug for the pin, stuck it in the door, and worked on the lock as The Gifted’s chatter grew louder, and they fought with the body, getting it down what sounded like a flight of stairs.

  “Where are we going?” asked one of them.

  “To Barron’s room,” said Leonard, in a grave tone. “We’ll put him in bed until we can figure out what to do with him.”

  “Be careful,” Tolstoy ordered. “We don’t need someone else falling.”

  Heaves and groans got closer as people carried the body. William knelt on the ground, fiddling with the lock. He had just managed to re-lock it when the people outside reached his landing. Raising a fist, he banged hard on the door. The voices on the other side stopped as they heard a new source of commotion.

  Someone unlocked and opened his door.

  Rubbing fake sleep from his eyes and putting on the most confused face he could muster, William peered out into the hallway and into the staring faces of The Gifted.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Chapter 42: William

  A circle of grave, stony faces stood in a circle around Barron’s bed, staring at the lifeless, prone man. Barron’s eyes were wide. His mouth was gaped open in an expression of pain and surprise. Several of his warts had broken open, leaving bloody, puss-covered holes in their wake.

  Death wasn’t pretty.

  But then, it never was.

  Standing in the far corner of the room, kept away due to his supposed sickness, William watched The Gifted hover around the dead man. They had propped Barron’s head up on his pillow, but even then, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, weighed down by his bulbous head. Despite the size of his skull, he seemed to sink into his robe, as if the gods had already claimed him. Amelia, in particular, stared at the body, as if Barron might sit up and speak, even though he would never talk again. A lump in William’s throat reminded him that he was the last person to see Barron alive.

  William wiped away his fake tears. He was a sickly boy, woken from sleep by a tragedy. Or, that was how he’d played it.

  “Three hundred years of life,” Tolstoy said with reverie, as he shook his head. “Over in an eye’s blink.”

  “It is a reminder of our fragility,” Amelia said in a somber tone.

  The other Gifted folded their arms, staring at the scene, as if they hadn’t yet processed it.

  “We are the most intelligent beings on the planet, but we have our perils.” Herman sighed. “If only our bodies were as strong as our minds.”

  William surveyed Barron’s body on the bed. His victim. Any remorse he might’ve felt was buried by the memory of his friends, rotting away in the city below. Looking around at all the wart-covered figures in the room, he couldn’t help but picture them alongside Barron.

  “Shall we have a service for him?” asked Leonard, cocking his wart-covered head.

  “Perhaps those in the city will
mourn,” Amelia suggested.

  “Mourn?” Tolstoy scoffed, as if he had stepped in a putrid puddle. “They will not mourn. They will blow their pale noses and smear their watery eyes, but they will welcome our end, because they think it means something better. They would rejoice in Barron’s loss.”

  “It is true,” Rudyard said, shaking his head. “They are misinformed. We should not speak of Barron’s death to the humans.”

  “They do not deserve it,” Tolstoy spat emphatically. “We will honor him in a private service.” Turning to the handful of guards hovering by the door, who awaited his orders, he said, “Sneak his body to the Glass Houses and cremate him privately. When you are finished, bring his ashes to me.”

  Chapter 43: Kirby

  Shrill screaming ripped Kirby awake.

  She sat up quickly, looking around her small hovel in the morning light. Blinking through the pain of her swollen eye, she saw several guards in the room, arguing with Esmeralda.

  Fiona screamed from Esmeralda’s arms.

  “Please!” Esmeralda cried, to the uncaring faces of the guards.

  Kirby tossed aside her bedroll. A guard stopped her before she stood.

  “Stay down,” he ordered, standing near her to make sure she complied. “You don’t want to get involved.”

  “Tomorrow, you’ll bring her to Isabella’s,” another guard told Esmeralda. “Those were the orders.”

  “I just need a little more time,” Esmeralda pleaded.

  “If you’re not at the shop for count, you’ll be punished,” the guard threatened. “You know how it goes.”

  Esmeralda pleaded with a few guards, but they barely listened. They waved their hands, as if she were a circling gnat. One or two smiled in a way that showed they were used to the commotion and the tears.

  “Not all of the new mothers want to go back to work,” the guard next to Kirby explained. “Sometimes they need a little coaxing.”

  Kirby watched the guard, keeping expressionless.

  “This time, it is a friendly visit,” the guard said. “Next time…” His warning hung in the air.