Beyond Hope (Tales from the Brink Book 3)

by Martyn J. Pass

  “Is that what you want me to take?” she said, smiling.

  “That's all of it. I hope it's not too much.”

  “It'll be fine,” she replied. “May I ask what's inside?” He shifted around on his feet a little, looking at anything but her and she understood. “It doesn't matter. I'll deliver it for you. Where am I going?”

  He grinned and rummaged in the pockets of his travelling coat for several pieces of battered, stained paper. Mickey shuffled to the other end of the desk whilst he laid out a handmade map with various notes and scribbles here and there. A coffee cup stain seemed to obscure part of it in the top-right corner but it didn't stop him from explaining what it all meant.

  “Someone drew this for me,” he said. “I hope it's clear enough.”

  “Kind of,” she laughed. There were enough details to build on. A small settlement she already knew about, the odd ruin here and there, some of the roads. It would help. “Thanks.”

  “When you get there, ask for John Nibbs, that's my uncle. I think he's pretty well known at Hope so someone should be able to point you in the right direction.”

  “Hope?”

  “That's the name of the settlement, one of the last before the border. It's smaller than Abbingdon but it does pretty well with fishing and such things. I might consider moving there if things don't pan out here.”

  “Okay then,” she said, gathering up the papers. “I'll stay the night and leave in the morning. It shouldn't take me more than a few days to get there and back. Will you still be here?”

  “Oh yes,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Plenty to read here. Plenty.”

  He gave Mickey a knowing wink of the eye before looking past her to the shelves. Sarah picked up the bundle and felt its weight. Whatever it was, it wasn't light.

  “Thanks. I'll see you around,” she said, heading towards the door. She struggled to open it by herself and neither of the other two had enough attention to spare her from their books to help. Instead she wrestled it open and heaved it shut behind her, already regretting the decision to carry the thing all that way to Hope.

  As she walked down the muddy street, she heard a voice behind her and she turned her head. It was Harry and he was jogging a little to catch up with her.

  “Sarah! How nice to see you again,” he cried. “What brings you here and what on earth are you carrying?”

  “I came to fetch this parcel for Michael Nibbs, the new lad. He wants it taking to somewhere called Hope in the northeast. Does the name ring any bells for you?”

  “Nibbs? We must not have crossed paths yet,” he replied. “I heard Hope mentioned once in a letter from that way. Something about a fishing village?”

  “Michael said that too.”

  “It'll do well if that's the case,” he said with a grin. Sarah saw a different man this time than the one weighed down by despair a few weeks earlier and she wondered what had brought on the change.

  “You seem in better spirits?” she asked. His face turned a little more solemn.

  “I know. I've been hoping to bump into you after our last meeting but, well, we heard what happened to you and with all that was going on with the Calderbanks, I guess it just never happened. I'm sorry for dumping all that emotion on you, it wasn't fair of me.”

  “It's fine,” she said and it was. “I understand and I'm glad you're feeling better.”

  “I am,” he beamed. “Things are looking up, I know they are. It's always darkest before the dawn, you know.”

  “So they tell me.”

  He looked around and smiled some more before clapping his hands together, indicating that he had very important things to be getting on with.

  “Anyway, be safe on the road. Anything you need, ask Billy-boy and he'll sort you out. Free of charge.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But there's no need. I can handle it.”

  “Still, this settlement owes you a debt. With the Calderbanks gone we can breathe a little easier from now on. Like I said, Sarah - things are looking up.”

  She watched him carry on, almost running and she wondered if this sudden enthusiasm would be short lived. She remembered what Alan had said, about it getting worse before it got better, and she wondered how true that would turn out to be.

  When she returned to the stables later that evening she felt ready for the early morning start. Well, as ready as she could be. She'd managed to get her hands on a large amount of dried meat and some biscuits that would last her for a few days before turning. Billy-boy had given her some spare skins for water, a packet of homemade matches and a pouch of tinder made from animal fur. He'd dug out a bag of coffee beans too, some dried tea leaves and a small amount of sugar found in bags in a warehouse a while ago. She'd never been so well provisioned before and Billy-boy even had a dozen shells for her rifle. All of it was for free because he'd been told not to take a single piece of metal from her. He did accept a hug though which made him blush and grin like a young boy.

  When she'd packed her saddlebags with the supplies and carefully tied the package in place beside her bedroll and spare blankets, she felt ready to sleep and took a bed in the loft above the stables. After only a few pages of the book she felt her eyes growing heavy and soon she was fast asleep. During the night she dreamt of Alan and Moll again, of finding them on the road and telling him what she'd found out. But it was a silly dream that quickly descended into the ramblings of her tired brain. But throughout it all, Meggy was still there, still watching and waiting for something Sarah would never know or understand.

  In the morning the rain was already falling. It came down as a light drizzle but it was enough to soften the muddy paths out of Abbingdon and back onto the north road. Ziggy kicked up great clumps of dirt as they went, splashing anyone unfortunate enough to get too close to them. With the hood of her poncho pulled down over her face and her leather gloves on, she was at least warm if not a little dispirited by the weather. It came with the depressing grey canopy, taking all the colour and vibrancy off the landscape and replacing it with cold and sadness and grief. It seemed to be sending out a message: that all was not well just yet and that the scarred country was still grieving for its loss and healing from its wounds. It was a message that Alan had echoed and one that Sarah now felt even more keenly as she took the tarmac road away from the settlement towards her destination.

  No one in Abbingdon had been as far as Hope. It was spoken about in the quiet places, the dusky tavern holes, the shadowy places behind the stables and not without suspicion. No one knew why. Some said because it was too good to be true, others said that it was a trap, an El Dorado that no one could find. The explanations didn't tally right with Michael Nibbs confidence that the settlement was everything it claimed to be and that she'd find it just that way when she got there. So why the mystery? In an age where the closet nomads had been set free, why hadn't a single traveller come from there of late?

  She thought this over as the morning passed her by along with the ruins and relics of the old world. The road she was on had once been a four-lane highway, separated by white painted lines and divided from another road on the other side of a metal barrier. Long stretches of this road were littered with the rotting shells of cars, some still containing the skeletons of their drivers, untouched for almost a century. Lamp posts that had once given light were now felled like trees and strewn across the lanes, their insides picked clean by looters. She wondered why some of the cars hadn't been touched and yet these metal poles had been set upon by human vultures. A lot of what she saw didn't make sense. A pram here, a horse's trap there and pieces of a strange craft she suspected of being an airplane. It was like a toy box that had been turned over and left as each piece fell, out of place and out of context.

  Towards the afternoon she found herself crossing over a long, wide bridge suspended on cables over a dry riverbed. Most of the thick metal cords were intact but a few had snapped, snaking across the road like rusty reptiles with their heads cut off. If she looked hard, s
he could just see the structure twisting in the wind, rolling like a rucked up carpet and giving off unnerving groans and moans from the steel framework. She was over halfway across when she noticed all this so there didn't seem much point in heading back. Instead she kicked up Ziggy's speed to a gallop and got off there as quickly as she could.

  On the other side at the bottom of a hill she came across a lone building by the side of the road. There was nothing else nearby, only a large car park half-filled with heaps of scrap in each of the bays, rotting on aluminum rims. The road continued off into the distance and she suspected that this was mostly farmland and that this solitary building had once been a pub of some kind for travellers, one of those 'truck stops' she'd read about in crime novels.

  Curiosity, hunger and her sore ribs conspired to direct Ziggy towards the entrance where an enormous sign made of plastic hung above the double glass doors. The path to it was bordered by wild grass and it seemed the perfect place to let the horse nibble while she went inside.

  She climbed down, wincing again, and looped his reins around a lamp post. The animal went to eating straight away and so she took out her rifle and her lunch and examined the doors. They opened easily, the locks long since having corroded away and the glass that had once filled the four openings had been smashed. Moss and weeds grew between the mechanisms and they proved more resistant than the metal itself as she pushed them open.

  Her father had always told her to avoid exploring the ruins. Other than the risk of disturbing rats and Scavengers, he'd explained how unstable these buildings were now, that they could fall down at any minute even by something as simple as the vibrations of a passing horse. It hadn't quenched her thirst for exploration though and her usual trick had been to kick a few of the supports as if that might dispel all concerns. She did this again, calling out a 'hello' every so often to pre-empt the rats and the Scavs.

  “Nothing,” she said to herself. “It's all mine.”

  There was a kind of welcome desk on the other side of the door and it was stuffed with rows of dry, brittle leaflets. Half of them had faded where a slant of sunlight had crossed over it every day, precisely between a Copper Mine museum and Kart City, slicing the ages with sepia. Behind the desk was a skeletal stool and a cash register, empty, and some shelves, also empty.

  She passed on, entering the dining area where part of the ceiling had caved in leaving a mound of rubble in the middle of one of the aisles that ran between plastic table booths and bolted-down bucket chairs of bright red and orange and yellow. To one side was a long bar, broken up by more cash registers and an enormous long glass display showing pale, whitewashed burgers, sausage sandwiches, bacon rolls and hot coffee that now looked more like warm milk.

  Behind the bar, off into the back of house, were the kitchens and these stainless steel effigies stood timeless, unspoiled and untouched. Swollen plastic tubs that had once contained food were stacked in the corner along with rolls of paper, cartons, plastic cups and all sorts of miscellaneous items that she would have thought easy pickings for looters. In drawers arranged under the fries counter, she found plastic knives and forks in little packets, salt wrappers and even some hygiene wipes. It was a looter's paradise and she wondered how it'd been missed. The obvious items had been taken, cash, cards, that sort of thing, but why not these too?

  She found a small plastic bag at the welcome desk and began filling it with as much as she could, knowing how valuable the items were in the markets back at Pine Lodge. She took two more bags back to Ziggy and stuffed them at the bottom of her saddle bags under her spare clothes to trade later.

  Upstairs there was very little. The doors had been kicked open or smashed apart with some kind of hammer and the looters had really gone to work up there. Machines had been smashed, computers torn open and their yellow, green and red entrails left to hang out onto the floor. Sofas in the canteen had been gutted and all the tables overturned. Sarah wondered if the vandal had been someone who'd once worked there. The damage seemed so personal, so vindictive.

  She examined the lockers in the staff room and found them empty. There'd been magazines on the table but they were nothing but dust and shreds now. A few of the cupboards had broken cups in them but nothing more. The hole in the floor had been made by something heavy falling in through the roof but whatever it had been it was long-gone now. Part of a plane maybe? Looted for its contents?

  When she was satisfied that the place was empty, she returned to the dining area and cleared one of the tables for herself. Taking her lunch she sat down to eat. She tried to imagine what it must have been like. She looked at the booths and put people in them. Families. Couples. Business men. She looked outside and replaced the rusting heaps with brand new motors, fresh off the production line. Behind the bar she put kids in uniforms, taking orders and preparing them, serving out the plastic cutlery and the hygiene wipes with plates of golden fries and juicy burgers loaded with salad, just like the photos showed. She heard the chatter, the noisy clamour of everyday life where food was so cheap, so readily available and life was so uncomplicated.

  As she ate her simple meal, she shook her head and laughed to herself. It was all gone now. So fragile, so easily taken from them, so pointless now that it was laughable. Had they seen it coming, she wondered. Had they known that one day they'd be farming again, trading crap just to survive and always living hand to mouth? From the looks of the place, they hadn't had a clue.

  When she'd finished eating she drank a little of the spirits she'd brought with her along with some coffee and took a deep breath. Then, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve, she got up, winced at the pain, and returned to Ziggy, closing the door behind her.

  She saw no one on the road until later that evening when the rain had eased and she felt that her ribs were telling her it was time for a break. Leading Ziggy off the highway and into the fields, she sheltered under a great oak tree and sat down to finish her cold coffee. As she looked back the way she'd come, she could see something moving along the other side of the road, walking very slowly.

  She took out her monocular and raised it to her eye, scanning left and right. She could make out a man, hunched over and pulling a trolley behind him. It was a red thing like a child's truck and piled inside were all his worldly belongings. There were bottles of water, cans of food and even some books and she considered approaching him and perhaps making a trade. She'd give up some meat for those books and she had a few titles in her head that she knew Mickey was looking for.

  As she thought about this, she suddenly saw something else moving to the left, just inside her peripheral vision and she swung the monocular around to have a look. There were two of them crouching down behind one of the wrecked cars, a blue one with tall sides, and they'd seen the man but he hadn't seen them. It was obvious they were planning to pounce on the poor traveller and Sarah realised that if she hadn't stopped when she did then they'd be ambushing her right now.

  She returned the monocular to its pouch, mounting Ziggy once more and setting off at a brisk pace, back towards the road. From higher up on the back of the horse she had a much better view and as she got closer she could see the man and the woman still hiding, still unaware that she was coming up behind them. As the soft ground gave way to a concrete platform, they spun round; hearing the metal shoes of the horse, but it was too late. She had the rifle leveled at them and ready to fire.

  “Well?” she asked. “Go on.”

  “What are you on about?” asked the man.

  “Looks to me like you had plans to jump that fella there,” she said. “Don't let me stop you.”

  “We were just watching,” said the woman. “We didn't mean anything.”

  “Really? Watching with knives and clubs?”

  “Honest,” she replied. “Please don't shoot we-”

  “Cross the road and keep going,” said Sarah. “Keep going until I can't see you and don't be rushing back. You should be grateful I didn't shoot first but I'm feeling generou
s today.”

  The two stood up and the man, having seen and heard Sarah by now, stopped where he was, staring with his mouth wide open. Walking past him without looking at him, the couple crossed the highway and carried on through the next field. Sarah watched them, still aiming and she saw them pass over the horizon a short while later.

  “They would've got me,” said the man, pulling back his yellow rain hood and revealing a bald pate, scarred by radiation. “Thank you.”

  “I was over there,” she explained. “I'd stopped for a moment when I saw you coming along. Then I saw those two and I thought I'd see them off.”

  “Again, thank you.”

  His voice was hoarse and thick like he'd smoked a lot of tobacco in his life and was just paying for it now. He had a stubbly chin and was some fifty years old. There were red marks up and down his arms and on his neck and it was obvious that he was badly irradiated.

  “You've been exposed,” she said. “How bad?”

  “Bad as bad gets,” he replied, looking down. “I've been trying to find somewhere I can spend my last few days in peace before it gets me, but there doesn't seem to be much to find out here.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “I came through the tunnel a few years ago. I was born in Paris to Anglo-Russian parents and one day they wanted to come home. We started off but it proved such a hard journey that it's taken a long time to get here.”

  “Really?”

  “We stopped at Calais, thinking maybe we'd stay there and make a life for ourselves. We were wrong. The settlement was attacked and the survivors fled under the sea. When we arrived it was to a pocket of the rad cloud and a lot of us died, my parents included. I've been walking ever since, looking for somewhere to die.”

  Sarah said nothing. She was stunned by the frankness of the man and his tale but when she looked at him she saw that he was smiling.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You believed me,” he said, chuckling to himself.