The Road to Ruin: A post-apocalyptic survival series (A World Torn Down Book 1)

by Rebecca Fernfield

  The woman tips her head back wildly as he steps up into the room and laughs. Rick looks on as the drunk woman’s chair tips back almost too far before she lurches forward, wine glass in hand, and lands on all four legs with a clat, the wine spilling out of the glass onto the floor.

  “You’re drunk!”

  “And you … Darling … are … ugly,” she replies with a cackle.

  “Do you need help, Sir,” he asks turning to the dour man beside her.

  He slowly lifts his grizzled head up to look in Rick’s direction, his bleared eyes unfocused, his brow a frown.

  “Eh?”

  “Do you want help, Sir?” Rick repeats as the woman slurps again from her glass.

  “I’m drunk!” the woman shouts and cackles again.

  “Yeah. I gathered that,” Rick says looking around at the empty and smashed bottles littering the floor.

  “Do you want me to help you get home?”

  “Nah. Live here now,” she slurs. “Just drink, drink, drink,” she finishes and slides down in her chair, her eyes closing. “Dead. Until we’re dead,” she mutters as she slides to the floor. “All dead.” Her head hits the scuffed wooden boards as she slips off the chair and sprawls across the floor. Rick steps towards her, his heavy boot knocking against a red wine bottle, sending it skittling across the floor where it clinks up against the glass shards of a once large bottle of gin. A low snore gurgles at the back of her throat as the man groans and lolls in his chair. Stupid drunks! How was he supposed to help them when they were intent on obliterating themselves? He takes a final look at the comatose pair and turns. He can’t help them. They’ll just have to get out of the city on their own. His stomach clenches with the sickness of hunger. Got to find some food.

  Further along the road, he finds what he needs and peers in through the broken window of a small grocery store. Stark, strip-lighting still illuminates the aisles, but it shines on sparsely stacked shelves. He looks back out to the street one more time then steps into the muggy warmth of the store. The lights may be on, but whatever system they use to cool this place down isn’t working. His stomach growls. There must be something left in here. He holds the rifle higher and checks down the bright aisles for any sign of movement. Nothing. He relaxes a little and heads for the chiller. Bottles of diet soda line one shelf and bottles of water line another. At the bottom sit a few boxed cartons of children’s squash. He pulls off the khaki rucksack slung across his shoulder and takes the water and the ‘juice from concentrate’. They can keep the soda, he needs good refreshment, not that poisonous stuff. The ache in his belly deepens and he continues down the aisle, checking up and down the shelves for any food the looters have left behind. At the end of the scratched metal shelf are a few cans. He picks up the first one: meatballs in tomato sauce. Good and it’s got a ring-pull. In the other two cans are plum tomatoes and green beans in salted water. He hesitates for a second then relents and drops them into his rucksack. Rounding the aisle there are more cans that the looters have missed.

  “Yeah! They would leave these.”

  On two shelves sit a column of stacked tins. He sighs. They’re wrapped with images of bounding puppies and close-up shots of gravy-covered chunks. He can almost smell the rank stench of the meat inside. Crouching, he stares at the glossy fur and deep brown eyes of the pups, sighs, groans, then loads as many as he can into his bag and hopes that the farm is well-stocked. Having to eat dog food, well, he’d have to if he was desperate but … Jeez, he really hoped Becca and Justin had gone all out to do the prepper, off-grid lifestyle thing they’d talked about. He’d ribbed Justin when he’d gone on about ‘shit hitting the fan’, and ‘the end of the world as we know it’, but, hell, he’d been right!

  Walking across to the bakery section of the store, the shelves are empty and he doubts the ovens at the back have been fired up since the outbreak. This area of the city had stayed clean the longest, but even then, it had only been a matter of weeks before the end. He reaches over the freezer. At least the electricity is still running—for now. He’s thought it over, and the electricity won’t stay running for long. Everyone’s either dead or dying and those who don’t seem effected are running for the hills. Who’s in charge of the power plants? If this shop is anything to go by, then no one. The city is pretty much deserted. People fleeing ground zero thinking they can escape whatever the hell bug is killing everyone. He reaches into the freezer and pulls out the last packet of part-baked bread rolls and picks up the squashed ice lolly that lays forlorn at its base. It’s sticky. He drops it back. That’s it? That’s the only food left in here? He’d have to find another store in a different part of the city before he made his way out to the country. Perhaps the one on West Street wouldn’t be so badly picked over. Whatever, he had to get out of here—the stench of death was unbearable.

  He turns to walk out of the shop and stumbles, lurches forward, but rights himself quickly as he looks down. A leg protrudes across the floor, camouflaged in its white trouser against the off-white of the floor tiles. His stomach grinds. He doesn’t want to look down, but he should check to see if it’s still alive. That’s the right thing to do. Pulling his neckerchief up around his nose, he steps over the leg and scans the body up to the chest. The woman is lying on her front. He watches for the exhale, inhale. She’s got the stiffness they all have; like they’ve become rigid as they died then just toppled over like statues. The breath doesn’t come. He screws his eyes against the horror he knows he’ll see as he looks at her head. Her skin has taken on a green hue and her face is horribly contorted, eyes bulging, caked brown with dried blood, nose and mouth black with gangrene, and a grotesque necklace of bulbous purple growths rings her neck. A fly buzzes past his ear and swoops down, landing on the woman’s chin. He watches horrified as it rubs its legs together then stoops to vomit on her over-plump, blackened lips. He clutches harder at the gun, holds the kerchief tight to his nose, steps away from the body and the feeding fly, and walks out into the hot sun of the summer day. In the past week, he’s seen the grotesque death of the deadly virus more than a thousand times but it still shocks him, and now the bodies are just lying around rotting in the heat. He has to get far, far away from this festering city—today. Whatever killed them may not have got him, but the disease spread by thousands of rotting corpses might do.

  “Dan!” Cassie calls from the air-conditioned kitchen, the black of the granite island sparkling as the sun fills the room and shines through the apartment. She stares into the white of the empty fridge, the plastic walls shining back dumbly at her, then bends down to open the freezer compartment below. A solitary packet of frozen lobster tails with a hollandaise sauce sits neatly at the back of the last drawer she pulls out. “We’re out of food. You’ll have to go down to the shop.”

  “What?” Dan calls back, remote in hand, flicking through the channels. “I can’t find a single channel that’s working,” he shouts from the living room.

  “Not one?”

  “Not one.”

  “We’re out of wine and juice too. Dan. Are you listening?”

  “Cassie. Didn’t you hear me? I can’t find a single TV station working.”

  “Perhaps the signal needs tuning.”

  “I’ve done that.”

  “Are you going down to the shops?” she asks walking through to the living room, the skyline huge and elegant through the enormous plate glass windows. He looks back at her, a frown on his face, the remote gripped firmly in his hand, pointing at the large screen on the wall then he walks over to the window and peers through the glass.

  “It’s dead down there,” he says looking down to the still street. “What if they’re all dead now, Cas?” he says with a tremble in his voice.

  Her heart hurts for him. The past weeks have been rough.

  “It wasn’t your fault, babe,” she soothes walking over to him, stroking his arm, feeling the tension in his muscle beneath the soft cotton of his shirt. He flinches. “It wasn’t. You weren�
�t the one who let the virus ou-”

  “No, but it was my company that brought it back to life, Cassie and one of my researchers who stole it and set it free and now it’s already killed millions—in weeks—millions in just a few weeks!”

  She can’t bear the look of pain on his face, but she has nothing to give that can comfort him. “Well, at least they’ve gone now.”

  “Who?”

  “The reporters. I thought they’d break the door down yesterday, but today they’ve gone. I checked the security camera—thank God it’s still working—and they’ve gone. Can’t see anything down there anymore. We need food though,” she continues deflecting his self-pity. “And there must be other people alive. I mean, it hasn’t killed us so there must be others.”

  He sighs and seems to relax a little then nods and turns again to the blank screen. “I’ll go down to the shops then,” she says walking away from him and down to the hallway. “Do you want some croissants? Bella always gets them from the patisserie down the street. I can go get some for you? What about some fresh coffee? Don’t you worry, babe,” she says calling along the corridor as she reaches for her bag and grabs for the keys on the marble-topped hall table. “I’ll get us some breakfast.” She turns to the ornately carved and gilded mirror flicking at her blonde curls, and smiles at the memory that it brings—the day at the auction when she’d got one over on Kayla Van der Mer. Stuck up baggage thought she’d have the mirror for sure, but she hadn’t reckoned on Cassie that day. She knew she’d paid over the odds, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let Catty Kayla have it, not after she’d caught her with her hand on Dan’s arse at Melissa’s 30th. Hah! It was worth the extra thousands to see the look on her face when she admitted defeat. She stops for a moment and wonders if it caught Kayla—the bug, plague or whatever it was called, then flips the blonde curls of her long hair and smiles at her reflection in the mirror. Yes, the last couple of weeks have been trying, but she still looks fresh. She opens the door and steps out into the grand hallway as the lights flicker.

  The private lift is ready and waiting for her as she pushes the button to take her to the ground floor. The lights flicker again. Should she take the stairs? In an emergency, she should take the stairs. The doors of the lift open and she steps inside and presses the button again to close the doors. If it flickers again she’ll stop it and get out and take the stairs. Such a long way down though. As the lift lowers, she checks her reflection again in the mirror. She looks a little peaky in this light. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out her lipstick and smears pale pink across her full lips and smiles. The baby pink looks good against the colour of this tan. She must remember to tell Eve to use this colour next time. The ground floor reached, the doors open to the apartment’s private entrance. The lights are flickering here too. With a quick step, she walks to the door and pushes. It hardly budges.

  “It’s not locked!” she says aloud and pushes the handle down again forcing the door forward. It moves a little more and the first waft of stench, a putrid rotting stench, reaches her nostrils, a sourness at the back of her nose. She pushes again, enough this time to let her see through the gap into the foyer of the apartment building. Glossy tiles shine in the summer morning sun. She tries again. The stench is stronger. What’s stopping it opening? She looks down through the gap. Someone is sitting on the floor. A tramp fallen asleep by the look of the shabby jacket he’s wearing. “Excuse me!” she asks politely. “Could you move please? I need to open the door.” The man, she can tell it’s a man from the broadness of his shoulder and the roughness of his jacket, doesn’t move. “Hey!” she calls, the manners of her yester-self scratching their way to the surface of her perfectly groomed, married to a billionaire, persona. His head lolls as she pushes and her heart thuds as realisation dawns. The stench is death. She’s seen the footage of the sick and dying crowding the hospitals, the reports of cars crashing and the huge traffic jams as drivers died at the wheel, saw how everything just came to a grinding halt, but that was all from the comfort of the penthouse. Now, here, right in front of her, is a body. Now, with the body at her feet it’s real. She thought it would bother her more than it does.

  “Ugh!” she exclaims and looks about the hallway for anything to help leverage the door, push him away. The short corridor is empty apart from a small radiator along one wall, a framed print of the apartment building and a small fire extinguisher hanging next to the door. Just push it hard, Cassie. She grabs hold of the handle and pulls it down, leans back and pushes, shoulder first. It opens a little further, shoving the body to the side. It’s enough. Slipping through the gap, she grimaces as the man’s greasy brown hair brushes against the tan of her bare legs. The door closes with a thud and the corpse, prop gone, falls back, its head hitting the solid wood of the fire door before it crashes sideways and cracks hard against the tiled floor. The blackened tips of his fingers stretch out beyond the cuffs of his jacket.

  Cassie gags as the reek of his body rises stronger and covers her mouth and nose with the soft fabric of her finely knitted cardigan. The lights of the foyer shine bright as they always do and the sun streams into the large cool space. Nothing seems out of place. It’s just a whole lot quieter than usual. The heels of her shoes tack, tack across the polished surface of the tiles as she walks to the plate glass doors of the apartment block’s entrance. The warmth of the summer sun warms her cheeks and she inhales deeply through her nose to rid it of the stench of the man’s decay. The air doesn’t smell clean and fresh. The stench is out here too, just not as strong. Cassie gags and covers her mouth and nose again. She walks to the edge of the silent path and her hand trembles as she looks down the length of the street, first left, then right. The towering brick and glass buildings sit huge, their silence foreboding even in the glowing sun of the summer morning. Nothing moves. Not one man or woman walks the paths of this usually busy part of the city. Cassie’s hairs prickle on the back of her neck as she scans the street for signs of life. Ten feet to her left, a plastic bag flitters, whipped by the soft wind that eddies, then blows across her legs.

  The street seems to have stopped mid-action as if it were in a film on pause. Cars, buses and delivery lorries all sit at a standstill, parked neatly in rows, unmoving even as the traffic lights change. She watches as the signal moves from red to green. She wants to shout—to tell them they can go, move forward. Stepping off the path, she moves closer to the cars parked in front of her building and walks up to a dark blue people carrier, metallic paintwork glittering in the sun. It’s empty. She pulls at the door. It’s locked. They must have walked. Ahead, she can see where the cars aren’t so neatly parked and a truck lies on its side, its head disappears into the black mouth at the base of the one of the office blocks further along the road, trailer angled across the road, blocking the cars. Her belly growls again and she moves back onto the pavement and turns to walk the few blocks to the pretty little patisserie where she knows Bella always bought their morning bread and croissants. Perhaps a pain-au-chocolate would cheer Dan up this morning. She pulls her cardigan closer, wrapping the fronts over one another and shivers despite the warmth of the morning, her steps a little quicker.

  Cassie’s reflection is the only movement on the street as she steps along the pavement, arms crossed, blonde hair bobbing in its high, perfectly styled, curling pony-tail, the tack, tack of her strappy sandals seem to ricochet off the concrete slabs. She wishes they’d be quiet. The glossy black paintwork of the patisserie is just ahead and the tables are set out at the front with their happy yellow and white umbrellas ready to shade their patrons from the sun. Hope rises and a smile lifts at the corners of her mouth. Somewhere above, a dog howls, the noise piercing the quiet of the day. It must have come from one of the apartments. She looks up to the windows lining the street, searching for movement. It howls again and pity wafts over her at the maudlin wail. Her stomach growls and she hurries to the door of the patisserie peering through the glass of its door as she grabs hold of the old-f
ashioned brass thumb latch. In the second that she takes hold of the handle, the dark of the interior makes her doubt it will open, but regardless, her thumb pushes down and the heavy door swings open with ease. The delicious and distinctive scent of French pastries and bread filters into her nose, displacing the stench of death that had filled the street. She quickly shuts the door behind her and stands in the cool shade of the small room. To her right are small round tables with their pretty, vintage chairs. So chic! To the left and in front of her are antique pine shelves and a wooden counter, painted black to match the exterior. She scans the shelves, searching out the delicious breads and pastries her nose tells her are here. She frowns as she searches the glass covered shelves at the counter too. Empty! Not one bread roll or croissant remains.

  “Hello!” she calls.

  Silence.

  She waits a few seconds then calls. Again, silence.

  “There must be food here somewhere. There must be,” she says aloud, her voice low, insistent.

  Walking to the end of the counter, she checks along the shelves beneath: few skewed stacks of paper bags, a neatly folded, black canvas apron, and some flat-pack boxes sit there. No food. The shelves behind are empty too. Her brow creases with her frown and she fills her lungs with a deep breath, pushing at the increasing unease settling over her. She has to eat. There must be food somewhere! Moving to the back of the shop, she pushes open the door that leads to the toilets, and, she presumes, the kitchen.

  “Hello!” she calls as she walks past the doors painted with ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘Ladies’ in swirling blue lettering to the door at the end with ‘PRIVATE’ writ large in red. Palm flat against the brass plate, she pushes the door wide. It opens into a small, commercial kitchen, a complete contrast to the old-world charm of the patisserie. Here every surface is shining aluminium. A huge slab of marble still covered in flour, a wooden rolling pin at its side sits uncleaned. An old memory of reading with her mother, nestled on her lap losing herself in the painted pictures as her mother wove the magic of its story: a medieval castle, a fat cook, hands floured, rolling pin raised, held for a hundred years over the cowering figure of a kitchen boy. She wonders for a second if she’ll find a sleeping beauty lying upstairs and shudders. Going up isn’t an option. If there is a body there! The face of the body from the foyer shifts across her memory and she cringes at the shadows in the kitchen. Next to the floured marble slab an aluminium tray holds a neat row of pale yellow and speckled lumps. She clacks across the tiled floor and peers down at them. Mould has spread its red and black polka-dots crazily across the moist pastry. Pulling back, she covers her nose and looks around the room. Huge bags of flour sit stacked neatly against a wall. A large fridge, stands against the far wall and inside she find a catering size tub of margarine and several blocks of unopened butter. She leaves the patisserie with four of the foil wrapped blocks and steps back out into the warm sunshine and the dense reek that sits greasy on her skin. As soon as she gets back to the apartment she’ll shower and rinse away the filth.