Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3)

by Manners, Harry

The gates of Canary Wharf rumbled shut as Marek held his rifle aloft and headed west. High above, an electric sizzle cut the sky in two, and thunder sounded again, directly overhead this time. Great waterfalls of dust rained down from the rooftops. As they moved out onto a dual carriageway, one cohesive amoeba engulfed by miles of nothing, the first drops of rain darkened the asphalt.

  By the time the walls had fallen out of sight, the heavens had opened in earnest, and the rainstorm crashed down over them and the once great city.

  II

  Billy shivered, curled into a ball. The canvas sack in which she hid was soaked, jostling violently with the horse’s gait under her. The nausea was intense.

  Only the cold eating away inside her kept her from vomiting. Every nerve thrummed, every finger and toe screamed. The Frost was everywhere now, woven into the fibres of her clothes, hanging in every molecule of air. She felt she would drown in the swathe of treacle-thick death left in the Bad Men’s wake.

  Holding on meant being strong, like Daddy had told her. She had had to sneak into the sack on the back of Norm’s horse, which hadn’t been easy, especially with so many people looking to him. But she had wriggled, and crawled, and she had made it. Now she wished she hadn’t.

  It seemed that the world wouldn’t stop spinning if she lay still for a hundred years. Since leaving the burning city they ridden without stopping, hours of stifling headaches that abated only when she poked her head into fresh air—she had only dared a handful of times, lest they saw her. She knew they couldn’t send her back, but maybe they would leave her.

  She wouldn’t be left again. She still had no idea what she was supposed to do, but she knew she had to be there. Even if Norm and his friends won, the Frost would come.

  A little while ago they had sped up to a canter, driving the horses through unending meadows. Billy risked a peek through the opening in the sack’s neck and caught sight of dark shapes racing parallel to Norm’s horse. Not far away Allie bounced up and down, her clothes hanging slick and heavy with rain and her hair flagging out behind her. Ahead was Robert, who looked like he would tear the world apart with his stare.

  Rain splashed her face, freezing and stinging. The clouds overhead were monstrous, black things hanging low over the plains. Not far away a ghostly outline of great spires filled the horizon, made hazy by the downpour.

  Billy gasped at the sheer size of the city—so much larger than those she had seen on her travels in Enger Land. How could men build so much?

  Awe gave way to dread as she noted the clouds over the city’s centre, where the buildings thrust up into the storm and out of sight. The clouds there had whipped into a whorling vortex, reaching black tendrils down towards the ground.

  It was starting.

  III

  Trafalgar Square looked much the same as the rest of London: frozen in time, scattered with red double-decker buses and cars, cleared of the clothes and goods of the Vanished by scavengers long ago. The air still seemed to hold some memory of its bustling history, where flocks of tourists and city workers had passed between the fountains and statues over the centuries.

  The bronze lions stood untouched by forty years of solitude, the fountain beds were filled with leaf litter and dust, and the great central column atop which Nelson surveyed the slumbering metropolis.

  Marek crouched low in one of the divots lining the square’s eastern edge. They had dug these foxholes years ago, long before the compound walls had gone up, miniature trenches set behind the weathered window frames of chain stores and souvenir shops. Along his flanks, he sensed the others join him in a unified gaze trained upon the storm.

  The far side was barely visible through the slashing rain and a heavy mist that had come with the storm. Coupled with the ever-decreasing light, it had cut their visibility down to less than a hundred feet.

  He knew they would come through here. He felt it. But they wouldn’t know the army had arrived until they were right on top of them. That gave them the element of surprise, but it also meant they had to be ready. They wouldn’t get another chance.

  A patter of feet behind him signalled the return of a scout, a man named Ian with a jittery avian likeness. “Well?”

  Ian panted, shaking his head. “Mist is too thick. There’s no way we could have seen our hands in front of our faces out there.”

  “The bridge—did they cross the bridge?”

  “There’s no way to know. You can’t even see the Thames.”

  Marek turned away with a scowl. Why did the weather have to turn now?

  Every part of him sang with tension, every sinew screwed tight. He thought of checking on the others, but stopped himself. In the forty minutes they had been holed up here, he had tuned their positioning and attention to the optimal. They were as ready as their motley crew of civilians, mercenary guards, ambassadorial security and traders could be made.

  Ian settled down beside him, and the roar of the slashing rain overtook them. Thunder shook the city, and lightning glanced off myriad panes of glass, casting the city aglitter in flashes of twinkling white. Hunkered against the wind, with their breath frosting the air, five hundred heads bobbed just in sight.

  “This stinks,” Ian said.

  “Quiet.”

  Ian grumbled. “I don’t like it. They should be here by now.”

  “I said quiet!”

  A moment of silence passed, then Ian muttered, “They could have gone right past us and we’d never know. What if they’re at the walls right now?”

  Several faces turned towards them, visibly concerned.

  Marek couldn’t allow the slightest break in concentration. He rounded on Ian. “Look, I know they’ll come through here. The road behind us leads right to the gate, and they’ll know the gate is the wall’s weakest point.”

  “You can’t know that—”

  Thunder thrummed the air directly overhead like a titanic gong, accompanied by a flash of lightning that sent everybody flinching. For a horrible instant Marek thought he’d been shot. He reached out to steady Ian’s rifle barrel as it bucked in his hands, and waited for the rumble to dissipate. They looked at one another, and Marek allowed himself a smile.

  Ian returned it, laughed unsteadily. “Phew, I thought we were—”

  A black figure hurtled into view from above, crunching against the pavement. A tangle of broken limbs were visible for a moment before a rain slicker fluttered down to cover the body: one of their lookouts, his face frozen in open-mouthed surprise, a neat red bullet hole punched through his chest.

  “Ready!” Marek roared. He hunkered down behind the door frame of what had once been a Starbucks while his vision narrowed to a funnel, the sounds of the storm grew faint, and his finger hovered over the trigger.

  When they appeared, they did so without warning. From the riotous obscurity of the storm, suddenly and totally, they were there: thousands of figures lurched from the mist. Their battle cry reached Marek a moment later, the wild screams of those made feral and mad by hunger, desperation, and hate. With astonishing speed they covered the square, pouring over the statues and fountains and vehicles as though such obstacles were but leaves upon a forest floor.

  Marek didn’t have to give the signal. The first wave brought the air alive with cracks and whizzing ricochets, sending half the encroaching front line toppling back. Falling like sacks of wheat, they were trampled by their comrades, who rushed ever onwards, a single subconscious behemoth.

  Return fire crashed down from surrounding buildings, and those in the square scrambled back for cover. Marek jumped behind the door frame and yelled, “They’re using their unarmed as fodder, laying down covering fire until the ground troops get close enough to use what they got. Get your bayonet ready, Ian, we—Ian?”

  He turned, saw the bloody pulp of flesh that had been Ian, spilled over the counter beside him. Marek leaped out and fired once more, taking out two more before he was forced back.

  Too many. Far too many.

  He had been
hoping they would attack in waves. But that wasn’t the way of this beast. They had sent in everything they had.

  We can’t hold ten thousand for long, not if they don’t care how many they lose. How could I not have seen this coming?

  Metal sprayed the Starbucks and reduced the panelling to pulp. Marek curled into a ball until there was a let-up, then threw himself out into the street and dived through the adjacent window, skittering into an old souvenir stall. Five wide pairs of eyes stared from sheltered nooks, trapped and shaking.

  “Keep fighting,” Marek said. “We have to hold them.”

  “We can never stand up to that!”

  Marek pulled them out one by one. “We’re going to. We have to.”

  They fired, were hit, kept firing. Despite the Alliance’s relentless barrage, thousands of ragged bodies had crossed the square and were upon them. In moments the sky became blotted out by their writhing shadow, and puddles of rainwater ran red with blood.

  *

  Alex tripped clumsily up a flight of stairs, pushed by an overzealous guard at his back. Any thought of resistance was kept in check by the will to see this through. Beaten or not, he wouldn’t cower. Ahead of him, James and the boy, Charlie, ascended to the top and vanished from sight.

  As he too stepped from the stairwell, the guards manhandled him into an office much like the countless others in the skyscraper, around twenty storeys off the ground. From here they had a clear view across the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf. The wall-height windows were blacked, weathered to opaqueness by the howling winds and driving rain. A shorter intermediate building cut off any wayward onlookers from street level. The air was heavy about this place, the panic-inducing atmosphere of a predator’s den.

  “This is where you watched us, during the siege.”

  James said nothing, heading towards a small slit excised in the glass to look out. In his reflection Alexander saw a blazing, mad certainty—an unstoppable drive to finish a job half-completed. If Alexander could have looked him in the face just then, he was sure he would have seen fire in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Charlie said beside him, gripping his arm and leading him towards the centre of the room, which had been cleared of stationery and desks, leaving only their ghostly impressions in the dust.

  Alexander grunted as he was forced down onto his knees, and his bindings were cut. Massaging his wrists, he addressed Charlie from the corner of his mouth: “You could let me go, Charlie. I know you don’t want this.”

  A stinging slap arced across his face. Charlie hissed, “Shut up!”

  Alexander cupped his cheek and rose up slowly, lowering his voice still further so not even the other guards could hear. “You’re not like them. There’s still time to stop this.”

  Charlie crouched behind him and made a show of fixing Alexander’s kneeling position, yanking the threads of his bindings off his arms. “There was, once upon a time. You remember, don’t you? When your friends trampled me half to death, and then you left your mutt to put a bullet in my head.”

  “Lucian was never going to kill you.”

  “Don’t lie to me. You might be lauded as some great sage by peasants from here to Penzance, but I don’t give a crap. I see you: you’re nothing. So don’t even bother. I’ve picked my side—and I picked right!”

  “Then why are your hands shaking, Charlie?”

  Charlie froze, then rose sharply. “Make sure he doesn’t move!” he barked and made his way towards James.

  Alexander watched him adjust his limping stance from hesitance to a sheen of familiarity, but it was surface level.

  He may be my only chance, Alexander thought. He’s not yet too far gone. I may not fool him, but he doesn’t fool me, either: he’s chosen the wrong side, and he knows it. He’s trapped.

  Charlie drew level with James and said, “What now?”

  “We watch.” Alexander realised that James hadn’t really been looking out into the city at all, but rather into the office’s reflection: right at Alexander and Charlie.

  He knows. Of course he knows. How could he not?

  But if that was so, why keep a chief lieutenant so close when they could stab you in the back at any moment?

  The answer clicked in Alexander’s mind. Even after all this time, he could read James’s mind like a book—a mind he had formed with his own hands.

  The boy is why I’m here. I’ve already seen one city burn; another won’t add anything. The boy’s the final demonstration. That’s how he’s going to finish me: a battle of wills.

  “We should kill him now,” Charlie said.

  “No. We watch.”

  “This fight is done. They don’t stand a chance. We don’t even have to stay; nothing’s going to stop them now.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to watch our plans come to fruition, to see the job done,” James said.

  Charlie looked over his shoulder, but this time Alexander didn’t see anger or hate in his gaze, but barely veiled fear. “We should kill him.”

  James returned his attention to the tower. “We have messengers returning. I want their report.”

  Charlie hovered on his mangy leg, sweeping an uncertain look about the room as though some angel would leap forth and save him, then staggered from the room and descended the stairs.

  Alexander, James, and the complement of guards watched the storm rage over Canary Wharf in strained silence. Contrasted with their long walk through the reverberating streets, everything seemed hauntingly quiet.

  “When all this is done, what are you going to do with the people marching under your sigil?” Alexander said.

  James replied after a beat. “I never did anything with anybody. I let them choose.”

  “Is that what you call burning towns and kidnapping an entire country? Burn or convert? That’s a choice?”

  James didn’t rise to it, his voice measured. “People have to live with the consequences of their actions.”

  “What did any of them ever do to you? It was me who wronged you.”

  “It’s not what they did that matters, but what they didn’t. This island let itself get swept up in your sweet narrative and turned its back on the truth.”

  “The Alliance spreads nowhere near across the country!”

  “For once, you undersell yourself. Your name is known in every hamlet and hole in the mud across all the land, and the sickness you bring as though bearing gifts has eaten into the very fabric of this world. If we don’t cure it now, we will never know freedom.”

  “All I ever tried to do was help—”

  “No, Alex. Enough. All you ever did was what you wanted. I can’t let that decide our fate.”

  Alexander couldn’t contain himself any longer, his voice rising to stentorian roar. “So your answer is to cull us like cattle? Because of something I did—I, alone? They deserve to die because of me?”

  James whirled from the window and crossed the floor in a few bounding strides, his balaclava falling away and his head descending to Alexander’s height. “You deserve to die. You, and only you. But that wouldn’t solve anything, and it won’t change the past.”

  Alexander muttered, “Neither will genocide.”

  James’s gaze flickered with something sick and, perhaps, not quite of this world. “The genocide of the innocent is part of what this world is now. I’ve seen it. The End changed things, forever. A new peace. But you and your meddling, everything I helped you do and everything you’ve done since, threatens that new balance—something we have to put right before it’s too late.”

  He stepped around to Alexander’s side and crouched beside him, sweeping his arm skywards, above the towers, to the vortex of blackness hanging over London, arcing down as the maw of some great beast descends upon its prey. “See balance restored before your eyes.”

  The cold in Alexander’s limbs throbbed, pulled to the forefront of his awareness. He realised James cared nothing for beliefs, ways of being or justice—not even about the wrongs he had do
ne or those who had succumbed to the mission’s fervour.

  This was about the End.

  He was always different, always had power. Something’s got ahold of him, working through him… something bad.

  “What are you doing, James?” he hissed.

  James gripped his shoulder. “I’m putting things as they should have been from the start, Alex. There’s only one scratch of truth to be had: we were never supposed to survive the End. We’re nothing but shadows in a world that doesn’t belong to us.”

  Alexander couldn’t break his gaze from the black storm clouds. “What is it?”

  James whispered into his ear, “What you always taught me to reach for: our destiny.”

  *

  Marek dived from the souvenir store just as it was overcome by a flood of men and women bearing sharpened farming implements and kitchen knives. Tucking and rolling, he discarded his rifle with a curse and managed to curtail a headlong tumble with his elbow.

  He glimpsed a bloody raw patch upon his forearm but didn’t feel a thing, already pushing to his feet and pulling his hunting knife from its sheath. Before he could lament how small it looked compared to the blades crushing limbs and hacking flesh all around him, he swept forwards.

  He slashed across the hand of a middle-aged woman bearing down with a woodsman’s axe, and she screamed, jerking back, shocked from her murderous reverie. For a moment, a person stood before him, her mask of fear pulled back. Then she was gone again as she snarled and swung wildly.

  Marek knew he had won. The axe handle was as long as her torso, and she had nowhere near enough mass to counteract the head’s momentum. Like the rest of her comrades, her skin hung in loose folds from her bones. He was surprised she had strength enough to stand.

  Marek was small, and his weapon was but a thimble to hers, but he had speed on his side. Untrained and top-heavy, the woman toppled forwards, and he sidestepped with ease, not letting himself move until it was just right, and cut deep across her knuckles.

  She shrieked and the axe clattered to the floor. The horror written into her face almost stopped Marek, but he had been waiting for it—for the humanity, for the fear, for the begging—and before she could utter more than a screeching plea, he put the knife down behind her collarbone.