Norman knew they would be invisible if the men looked up. There wasn’t enough light to reveal their profiles against the sky, for the stars were veiled and the moon had retreated behind a silver spattering of cirrus.
Through his binoculars, he observed their unsuspecting quarry.
One of the three men—the youngest, judging by his slimmer, gawkier outline—was tending to the fire. His hunched shoulders and violent stokes suggested that he was irked, perhaps angry.
The other two argued in hushed voices, gesticulating without pause.
A few pre-End tin cans lay discarded nearby, their contents warming over the flames. Two rifles were propped up against a nearby rock, their barrels glinting.
Their attire was ragged and haphazard: overcoats muddied and basted top to tail with grime; footwear that looked to be patchwork-sewn walking boots; and packs that appeared limp and empty, sparse for light travel.
They had paused often over the last few minutes to look over their shoulders, but the argument the two elders were having had dulled their senses.
“Who are they?” whispered Richard. He and John had caught up with them after Alexander had delivered his announcement at the cathedral.
Norman had groaned when they’d materialised from the night at the edge of the city. Neither of them had much in the ways of field experience. The fact that Lucian had, in his haste, neglected to send them packing was just another misgiving to add to the pile.
Norman shrugged. “They don’t look like any of our people. I haven’t seen them before. Do you recognise them?”
Richard shook his head.
“There was nobody from the city out tonight,” Lucian said. “Just Ray.”
John murmured so close to Norman’s head that he started. “We can’t rule that out,” he said. “They could be lost.” He sighed, brushing his hair back from his portly face, centimetres from Norman’s. “Or they could be emissaries from London. They could have missed us. It’s not hard to walk right past us if you don’t follow the roads properly.”
All theory, Norman thought, watching him. All classroom wisdom.
John hadn’t been out of the city—or his classroom, even—for over a year. All he knew came to him from the mouths of others, rather than his own eyes.
But it seemed that he had been told about the amber halo that lit up the city like a monstrous firefly at night, suspended in the eternal dark of the wilds, courtesy of the streetlights.
Nobody answered him, but Norman could see exasperation reflected in several pairs of eyes.
He turned his attention back to the men below. By now they had let their argument rest and retired to the fireside, a sullen silence heavy over their shoulders. The youngest passed each of the other two a bowl. Even up on the ridge, Norman could smell tinned beans.
He would have known that decades-old stench anywhere. At winter’s peak they’d subsisted almost entirely on the last of the tinned food. Now he feared he’d never clear his nose of it.
The gawky youth then sat in a heap on the grass, his head dipped.
“They’re not ours,” Lucian muttered. “Look at them. Their clothes are rags.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Norman. “Look at how run down we got at the coast.”
Lucian was unperturbed. “No, there’s something about them. It’s too much of a coincidence to find them here—right here.”
John uttered a nasal note of disquiet. “Lucian, don’t—”
“Be quiet.”
“But—”
“I said shut it, DeGray. Save it for the blackboard.”
John looked to Norman for help, almost as though he expected him to reprimand Lucian for his indecency.
Norman could only stare back at him, biting back shame, until John’s shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly.
That hurt worse than the pleading stare—the disappointment. It stung at his flesh.
Spurred into life, surprised by his own actions, Norman gripped Lucian’s arm. “We’re not killing them,” he said. He wasn’t sure what had awoken in him, but suddenly he felt a force driving him forward, an unseen will, acting through him, one that applied a pressure that wasn’t only physical to Lucian’s arm. He swallowed, and muttered, “We’ll approach on foot.”
Lucian almost smiled—as though, somewhere deep behind his bloodlust, he was relieved—but then his face twisted into an angry sneer. “By foot? And do what?” he hissed.
Norman took his pistol from the seat of his trousers and deposited it behind his hip, where it wouldn’t be seen, but could be easily reached. He then lifted his trousers higher and buckled his belt one notch tighter so that his footfalls would be deadened.
What the hell am I doing? he thought.
Pushing himself into a crouch, he made for the forest. “We’re just going to have a talk,” he said. “That’s all.”
*
Alexander strode into the infirmary and made a beeline for the old man.
“What's going on?” Heather said, poking her head from her back-room office.
“I need to talk to him,” he said, settling down beside their bloodied guest.
Heather shook her head. “He's deep under. I wouldn't bother. Didn't Ray tell you what you needed to know?”
Alex glanced at her and then back to the old man. “Ray's dead,” he muttered.
Her face fell. “He’s what?” She hurried into the room. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he's dead. We found him up at the mill. Murdered.”
“B—wha—by who?”
Alex shrugged and shook the old man’s arm. “I don't know. Creek and McKay have gone after them.” His jaw tightened at that. He’d almost cried out in anguish when he’d heard from the armoury guards that Lucian had headed off into the wilds—and that he’d taken Norman with him.
Heather sighed and held her head in her hands. She then began to shake, silently weeping. Alex watched her clutch at one of the beds, ready to catch her if she fainted. With the colour disappearing from her face, she had to suck in deep breaths to regain her composure. “How could somebody get into the city without us knowing?” she said, hiccoughing.
Alexander nudged the old man once more. “If somebody wants to get in, they can. There aren't enough of us to cover all the streets, all the fences. The city’s built too tight.” He paused, and fought back the urge to swallow. “Besides, I'm sure they've been here before.”
“What do you mean by that?” She lurched forwards and took Alex's hands away from the old man's frail body. “I've drugged him. He won't be awake for hours—Alexander, what do you mean, they’ve been here before?”
Alex took to searching the man's clothes. “Whoever killed Ray knew where he lived, and they knew how to get out again without being seen.”
He paused with his hands immersed in the remains of a tattered trouser pocket. When he withdrew his fingers, they were wrapped around a folded piece of paper.
“What’s that?” Heather said.
Alex shook his head and slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t know. I’ll look at it later.”
Without another word, he nodded to her and left the room.
*
Norman had descended into the depression without breaking a single branch, and was now secure behind the trunk of the enormous oak. John had somehow shifted his bulk with equal success, and was stooped beside him. Crouched behind neighbouring trees were the others.
They signed to each other in the shadows, with the three strangers only twenty feet away.
Norman pointed to the flanks of the clearing: Go around.
Lucian nodded and led the others off into the darkness. John left the oak’s trunk without protest, stumbling once too often to excuse his presence. Norman tracked their silhouettes until their weapons appeared to be nothing more than extensions of their bodies. By the time they were settled, their outlines blended seamlessly with the blackened underbrush.
A single ghostly shadow, however, remained pressed
against the trunk closest to Norman.
It was Richard. The whites of his eyes pleaded to be allowed to stay.
Norman signed for him to go and join the others, but he didn’t move an inch. His eyes flashed with defiance, and then he ambled towards the oak despite Norman’s shooing waves.
“What are you doing?”
“Maybe Lucian’s right: maybe my Master—DeGray—is out of touch. I’m tired of being useless. I need to be out here, in the thick of it. I need this.”
“You’ve never even been—”
“You need somebody else to go with you. They might attack on sight if it’s just you.”
Norman made to protest, but instead sighed. This was no time to argue. They were on the clock.
“Fine,” he said. “On three.” He ran a hushed three-count, and then they stepped out, hands raised.
*
As Norman and Richard moved into the firelight, there was a moment in which the three men looked up from their food and only stared, too dumbstruck to respond.
And then they burst into action. Norman froze as they leapt to their feet and grabbed their weapons, raising them to shoulder height as they stalked forwards. He couldn’t help glancing to the trees, afraid that the men would be dead in seconds, before he could ask a single question. He would need to act quickly, before Lucian felled them.
“Who are you?” the youth bawled. His pencil-thin face was dominated by his bared teeth.
“We’re from the city,” Norman said. “We’re looking for somebody.”
The eldest of the men, hollow-cheeked and loose-skinned from severe malnourishment, frowned and gripped his rifle tighter. “What city?”
“Canterbury,” Richard grated.
The older man spoke again, lacking the hostility of his younger companion. “Who are you looking for?”
Norman lowered his hands. “A murderer.”
The friendlier man blinked. Now that Norman observed him in detail, he could see that he stood apart from his peers, dressed differently. “Canterbury…” He turned to his companions. “Isn’t that where Jason was… But you said…you promised that you—”
“Shut up! If you ever want to see your boy again, shut it right now!” the younger man screeched.
The older man fell silent. Suddenly he looked frightened.
Norman hesitated, taking further stock of the other two men’s clothes, which were grimed by putrid plant matter. A pungent odour was coming from each of them. “We’re not here for revenge.” He did his best to emphasise those words, for Lucian’s sake. “We’re looking for answers. Now…lower your weapons. I’m sure we can work out some kind of deal.”
The younger man sneered. “Answers? You mean you’re looking for a neck to tie a noose around. You expect us to put our guns down so you can drag us off to the wicker man?”
“Like I said, somebody was murdered.”
As he spoke, Norman’s attention was drawn to the final man, whose eyes alone unsettled his gut. A neckerchief had been pulled up around his nose and mouth, and long hair hung about his cheeks. Only his eyes were visible—eyes that Norman thought, for just a moment, he might have recognised.
The thought was fleeting, but enough to make him start.
“Why should we tell you anything?” the younger man jeered, raising his rifle to eye level. “What made you think that you could just follow us and expect to walk away? You people are all the same. You think that you own the country, trespassing on other people’s property, snooping around places you have no business with.”
His hands were shaking with anger. The barrel of the rifle wandered from Norman’s head to his chest. “You’re the reason that nobody’s got anything to eat. You’re the reason that nobody has the balls to go within a hundred miles of London. You’ve stripped the place bare!”
At that, he cocked his weapon and took aim. “I don’t think that we’ll be letting you run back to rustle up a posse.”
“Peter, wait,” the older, emaciated man whispered.
The youngest flinched at the use of his name. “Shut up!” he whispered.
“Just wait. I knew you were up to something, but…not killing people!”
“One more word and I’ll shoot your boy myself when we get back.”
“Just wait. Think about it.”
The man with the neckerchief kept still, his eyes darting back and forth between the other two. He’d lowered his rifle to his side, and showed no sign of interfering. In fact, he took a step back, away from them, towards the shadows.
“You can’t just kill them,” the older man muttered.
“I said SHUT UP!” the young man screamed. He licked his lips and took a step towards Norman. His finger crawled towards his rifle’s trigger, and began to depress it. “I’m gonna enjoy thi—”
Norman closed his eyes as a high whine rang through the air, accompanied by an explosion of splintering wood. For a moment he thought he’d been shot, and waited for the pain to come, but none did. Instead, he felt a gush of air soar over his head, towards the three men.
Movement erupted from the surrounding forest as dark shapes emerged from the gloom, surging into the clearing.
Peter yelled in shock, whirling in circles and spraying bullets into the trees. His companions wasted no time. They threw themselves behind bushes, tall grass, and any other cover they could find.
Another bullet whizzed past Norman’s ear and he flinched instinctively. And yet, he felt stupefied by the silent man’s gaze. The two of them had locked eyes across the clearing, even amidst the storm of gunfire.
Those eyes burned into him, hypnotising him. Everything had slowed to a crawl.
He was glued in place, unable to move. In a moment he’d be shot dead—he had to move!
But those eyes. He recognised them.
A tickling under his skin, behind the scar above his ear—
A rough fist grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to the ground. Over the gunfire he heard Richard shout something incoherent as he landed on top of him.
Norman drew his face from the dirt just in time to watch Lucian pass the campfire, his body cast in brilliant crimson tones that caught the wild whites of his eyes. In a fraction of a second he had drawn his automatic and fired.
A wet splatter and a scream of pain answered the shot, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Norman turned to see one of the men topple out of sight with a bloody hole in his chest: the emaciated man. The one that had tried to save them. His limp body rolled over the ground, coming to rest upon the gnarled roots of the giant oak.
Six shapes swooped in from the right, sending bullets snapping and bouncing around in the clearing. The tooth-rattling din threatened to burst Norman’s eardrums. He struggled to his feet, slipping in the mud and passing the scattered remains of the fire. He raised his pistol to the man with the neckerchief, now fleeing. “Stop,” he bellowed. His voice was barely audible over the hail of bullets. “I said stop!”
The man paused for only a moment, at the edge of the clearing, and stared back at him.
Norman caught a glimpse of his eyes once more: a rich, shimmering green.
Emerald eyes. Eyes he’d seen before…
Norman jerked as something stirred deep in his mind, something buried in the fog that obscured his youth, something he’d long forgotten.
Then the man turned and melted into the dark.
*
The night was well past its zenith when Alexander finally forced himself to look at the scrap of paper from the old man’s pocket. As starlight splashed across it, it seemed to exude a malevolence of its own, one that threatened to taint his skin.
He only hesitated once before his patience waned and he unfolded it with a curse.
There was no reason to suspect anything of it, anyway. In all likelihood it was nothing more than a sentimental keepsake that the old man had picked up on his travels, or perhaps a cherished letter from before the End—
But it was neither. Bef
ore he had even finished unfolding the sheet, he recognised the handwriting upon the page.
He stared, open-mouthed, while a pigeon hooted outside the open window.
What he saw made his blood run cold.
*
“Did you find anything?” Richard said as Lucian and three others returned to the clearing.
Lucian kicked a charred log in two. “Nothing,” he panted. “They just disappeared.”
Norman was crouched over the body of the emaciated stranger, patting his pockets. The rank odour of perspiration and urine rose from the body in waves.
“They didn’t leave any tracks?” Norman asked.
Lucian shook his head again. “Nothing from that quiet one,” he said, “he’s just gone.” He gripped Norman’s shoulder. “I couldn’t see from back there. Did you get a good look at him?”
Norman shuddered at the memory of the silent man’s emerald peepers. Unsure of why he was doing it, he shook his head. “What about the other one?” he said.
Lucian cursed. “There’s blood everywhere. He made a right mess when he ran off. I don’t think he’ll last long by himself.”
Norman looked out at the darkness. Then he sat down on a log beside the dead man, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand. “He wasn’t like them,” he said. “He was trying to help us.”
“He hung out with the wrong crowd.” Lucian’s expression flickered. “We can’t save everyone, Norman.”
Richard crouched beside Norman. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know I messed up.” His face had fallen, his expression sorrowful, repentant. “I just got in the way. Maybe if I’d just done what I was told… I just wanted to help.”
Norman heard him as though from far away. But despite his weariness, he forced his hand to Richard’s shoulder. “No,” he said, “you saved my life. Thank you.”
Richard still looked ashamed, but a glimmer of a smile played on his lips. “All the same, maybe I’ll stick to the classroom from now on.”
Norman managed a smile. “Don’t count yourself out just yet.”
“At least we scared them off,” John said, tying a haphazard bandage around the arm of one of the guards. The bullet wound was already bleeding through. He was eyeing Richard carefully, a slight frown upon his brow.
Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Page 16