Norman glanced to Allison, arching an eyebrow.
She merely shrugged.
He couldn’t help but notice that she no longer looked to him in the same way; no longer were her eyes expectant, but instead comfortable, almost complacent.
They entered the clinic’s back room and laid eyes on a filthy young man lying in the nearest bed.
Norman felt something stir in his gut at the sight of him, something unexplainable that tugged at his attention, but he couldn’t quite place it. He shook his head, and kept in step with Allie.
“Keep still, Charlie,” Heather said.
The young man screamed as she applied her fingers to his leg, squeezing hard. He tried to claw at her, to get away, but Lucian grabbed him by the shoulders and held him down.
“Stop moving.” Despite being no louder than a whisper, Lucian’s voice shook.
Charlie looked furious, his eyes red and his throat emitting a deep hum, but he lay back nevertheless and set his arms down on the mattress.
Norman limped to the bed, weary of being back in the clinic so soon. He looked over to his own bed in the corner, still unmade. The sheets were probably still warm. By the time he’d turned back to Charlie, a palpable tension filled the room.
Charlie was barely into his twenties, with a small torso and spindly arms. His eyes were deep-set in his ruined face, and his bloodstained neck was filthy with slicks of grime. Just like the men they’d hunted down after Ray’s murder.
Again, he felt a tingling at the back of his mind. But he couldn’t quite place it.
“How’s the leg?” Lucian muttered.
Charlie spat a tendril of saliva that landed upon the bridge of his nose.
Lucian hardly reacted. His arms remained crossed over his chest, and his eyes remained set. All that moved was in his mouth, which formed a strict, paper-white line. Several moments passed. Then, slowly, he took his left arm from its locked position and wiped away the spittle. A stifled sound rumbled in his throat, and he shifted slightly so that Charlie could see the rifle slung over his back.
Charlie turned away, his face strained and emotionless. Norman thought he saw a glimmer of fear in his eyes.
“There’s no way for me to be sure. But if I had to guess, I’d say he has a closed fracture on his left tibia,” Heather said. She locked eyes with Charlie. “Try to lie still. Don’t move until I can get you something for the pain.”
She moved up to the remains of Charlie’s face, turning his head left, then right. “Move your head in a circle.”
Charlie jerked his head in a haphazard, jagged motion, wincing. “It feels fine,” he grated. “My mouth hurts.”
Heather yanked his jaw down and stared into his mouth, clicking on a penlight. “You have a gash on your tongue and a few missing teeth.”
Charlie pushed her away, massaging his chin. “How many?”
“Four.” Her voice was cold.
She’ll treat him, Norman thought. He’s her patient. But she’s not happy about it.
He knew that she was strong enough to keep her urges at bay, above mindless spite. Yet he couldn’t help wondering whether she’d have been part of the mob on Main Street if she’d never taken the Hippocratic oath—whether any of them could have been, if they hadn’t had so many people looking to them.
It was frightening to think so. But he’d seen good people do things of late he would have thought beyond them a year ago, Lucian chief among them. It was almost as though he hadn’t really known some of them at all.
Alex sat down on the bed. The springs creaked under his weight. “We’ll take care of you,” he said, “but you’re going to tell us what we need to know.”
Charlie’s eyes grew as he bolted upright. He winced momentarily before speaking, slurred, “No!”
“You’ll talk or we'll throw you into the streets,” Lucian breathed.
“I can’t!”
Lucian’s face became an image of untainted fury. He ripped the rifle from his back and pushed the barrel against Charlie’s temple, his teeth bared and his eyes searing.
Norman and Heather moved to stop him, their wild cries blurred into a wordless groan.
Lucian ignored them. “Better yet,” he said slowly. “Instead of waiting for you to die of your own accord, I’ll tell everybody exactly who you are, and why you’re here. They’ll blow your brains right into the gutter.”
Charlie jerked. Tears burst from the corners of his eyes and his mouth fell ajar. His bleeding gums shone under the fluorescents. “Please!” he yelled, “I can’t tell you anything! I don’t know them!”
He raised his hands, pleading. “Please,” he whispered, “please. I met them just over a week ago. I was with my dad. He and I had been on the road for a few days, just looking for some food, like everybody else.”
He paused, staring around at them, his eyes darting from one to the other. Lastly, he turned to Lucian, and paused.
Norman held himself at the ready, ignoring the shooting ache in his chest, determined to lunge for the rifle if it came to that.
A muscle jumped in Lucian’s jaw. The crevasse on his brow brimmed with sweat, but after a final grunt he took the barrel of his rifle away from Charlie’s temple.
Charlie hesitated, but, under their watchful gaze, continued, “They came during the night. Put guns to our heads. Told us that we’d do whatever they told us, or we’d die right there…”
He looked to Lucian. “You people are just the same.”
“We’re not like them,” Alexander said, giving Lucian a stern glance. “Just continue, please.”
Charlie sighed. “One of them,” he muttered. “He didn’t speak all that much at first, but later—when he’d sent the others away—he gave us some kind of…recruitment pitch. He said he was gathering an army.”
“Who was he?” Norman said. He blinked, surprised that he’d spoken. He’d been caught in Charlie’s words. His breathing had grown shallow.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I didn’t see his face. He wore a cloth over his head the whole time, like a mask.”
Norman felt a chill run up his spine as the man with the neckerchief appeared in his mind’s eye. He could feel Alexander and Lucian’s eyes move over him, but tried to ignore them.
“They took my dad,” Charlie was saying. “They didn’t want me, said I was too weak, or wasn’t motivated…or something. I don’t remember. But they took Dad. While he was away with them I was kept with the others.”
“Others?”
“Women and children, mostly. They kept us under guard and made sure that we didn’t leave.”
“Where?”
“A building, not far from here.”
“Where?”
“Never saw it before then. I think it had been a tower block once, but the top half had fallen away.”
Heather turned to him with a pan of water, a dripping sponge in hand. “Why would they guard you?” she said, dabbing at his face, smearing blood across his chin.
“Insurance. To make sure nobody who went with them ran away.” He swallowed. “They were making people do some pretty bad things. Sick things.”
They exchanged looks.
“Who are they, really?” Norman said.
Charlie shrugged. “It’s like I said: They just found us and took my dad for some mission.”
“Mission?”
“That’s what they called it.”
“What kind of mission?”
“They wouldn’t tell me, but they’ve got it in for you. Everything that they said was about you.” Charlie looked around. “What did you do to them?”
“Nothing,” Lucian said. “We did nothing.” Then, almost too abruptly, “How many of them are there?”
Heather finished wiping away the blood and set the bowl aside, observing Charlie’s face critically. After a few moments of poking and prodding, she disappeared from the room.
“From what I saw, two dozen or so.”
“From what you saw?”
Heather returned to the bedside holding a small black box in her hands. She thumbed the lid open and took out a long silver needle. “You’ll need stitches,” she said.
Charlie looked revolted. “You’re going to knit my face closed?”
Heather paused, her brow set. “If you’d prefer, I could just leave it to rot from infection.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m a doctor.” Her lip had curled. “But don’t tempt me.”
“Charlie, focus,” Alex said. “How do you know that there are more?”
“It was the way they talked. That man—the one with the mask—spoke with too much…what’s the word? Conviction?”
He grimaced, his face bunching up as Heather applied the needle to his face. He gave a stifled whine of discomfort as the needle punctured his cheek.
“What happened to your father?” Norman said.
Charlie took longer to answer than before, growing pale. He spoke stiffly, keeping his cheeks and jaw still as Heather worked, moving only his lips. “I don’t know. That’s why I was here. I convinced them to let me on one of their missions. I was hoping that maybe I’d run into him.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t know where he was! He hadn’t shown up for three days.”
Norman stiffened. “And you came into the city through the sewers?”
Charlie nodded.
“To attack me? You were with Jason?”
There was a pause.
“They didn’t tell me that they were going to hurt you,” Charlie muttered, his eyes downcast. “They were just talking about sending a message.”
“But like you said: They’ve made people do some pretty bad things,” said Lucian. “So you knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.”
Charlie said nothing.
Norman felt a surge of nausea at the thought of Jason. Yet, behind the churning in his gut, that prickling sensation was still pulling at his attention. The way in which Charlie angled his head, and the manner of his speech, were somehow familiar.
“If all you wanted was to find your father, then why did I find you crawling in our sewers two days later?” Lucian asked, leaning close to his face.
Charlie cowered, clutching the sheets, apparently having forgotten about the needle imbedded in his face. “I fell,” he squeaked, his eyes pleading.
Norman released a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. The longer he watched Lucian, the more certain he became of an impending breaking point. The bloodlust in his eyes was unmistakable, but at the last moment Lucian seemed to regain control and straightened back into a standing position, folding his arms once more. “You fell?”
Charlie nodded, grunting as Heather cut into his cheek once more. “I was supposed to guard the manhole: our escape route. I was at the top of the ladder, and I heard somebody shouting from the other side of the street.”
Norman looked to Allie, who nodded.
“Just after I found you,” she said.
Charlie waved his hands in embarrassment. “I panicked, and it was raining. The ladder was wet. I fell down the chute, landed on top of my leg.”
Lucian cleared his throat. “And what did they do when they found you?” he said.
Charlie lowered his head, his eyes growing red and his voice weak. “They left me. I begged them. I begged. But that man,” he said, looking up at Norman, “the one with the mask. He took one look at me and led the others away.” He swallowed, lowered himself onto his pillow, and closed his eyes.
Heather pulled the thread taut, closing the wound on his cheek. Crafting a neat knot, she cut the line deftly.
Alexander stood amidst fresh silence, his eyes glazed. “I believe you,” he said. “We’ll fix your leg. Then you can decide where you want to go.”
Charlie barely responded, his face red as a plum and swelling.
Alexander turned to the others. “Does anybody else have anything to say?”
Silence stretched out as they looked around at each other.
Heather excused herself. “I’ll check on you in an hour or so,” she said over her shoulder.
Charlie nodded glumly.
“You too, Norman,” she called as she left the room.
Norman barely heard her. The odd sensation that had been tugging at his bowels had finally sharpened into focus. It took him by such surprise that he swore aloud.
Charlie bore a striking resemblance to one of the men they’d hunted down after Ray’s murder: the emaciated man who had been so unwilling to fire on them, whom Lucian had shot dead, whose body they had left to decay in the forest, unmarked.
They had killed Charlie’s father. Not a misguided fool who’d taken the wrong men for company, but a hostage. An innocent man.
VII
Norman straightened gingerly, and fresh pain tore across his chest. His legs throbbed. He let the hoe in his hands fall to the ground and sucked a deep breath, turning away from the half-dug furrow at his feet.
The film of putrescent slush in the fields had finally been cleared away. Their pace had slackened of late, but at Alexander’s return, people had been all too ready to burst into action. With startling vigour, people had leapt to work, filled with new life.
Norman stood a small distance apart from the main body of activity, working in small bursts whenever he could manage it. Heather had repeatedly insisted that he stay in the clinic, but merely being near Charlie had been enough to unsettle his stomach.
The sun was half-obscured by the distant forest, but it was still sweltering out in the open. Any stray breeze was lacklustre, claggy.
The others on shift didn’t seem bothered. Their bodies arched amidst shortening shadows, turning the soil with shovels or tearing at remaining weed stalks with blunted scythes, fervent, possessed by common will.
A guard patrolled fifty yards away, an automatic rifle slung over his back. Farther away, another figure paced amidst the spreading furrows. Though he saw no others, Norman sensed that a great many more surrounded him.
He couldn’t get used to all the guns being thrown around. They’d kept the armoury locked up tight for years, guarded at all times. Now, it seemed that every second person brandished a rifle.
He bent over with a grunt and struck at the ground. He looked at the pitiful track that he’d dug in the ground and sighed. He wiped away the band of sweat on his brow after a further minute, cursing under his breath. His arms felt like blocks of lead. His chest was on fire.
“You should go back,” Robert said, brushing past. His huge arms were making light work of the weed-ridden ground, carving vast furrows with each stroke. Sweat glistened on his dark skin, accentuating his bulging biceps.
Norman felt a pang of jealousy at the sight of his powerful movements, wishing that he could just take a breath without feeling as though he were at death’s door. “I’m fine,” he said.
Robert straightened, towering over him. “You look like the Reaper,” he said. “It could take you a while to get back to being yourself, so don’t push it.”
“I’m fine,” Norman repeated, stabbing ineffectively at the ground. “How’s Sarah?”
Robert nodded. His clipped hair sprayed droplets of sweat onto the newly exposed earth. “She’s good.” He wiped his top lip with a free hand, not quite hiding a frown.
Norman waited for him to elaborate, allowing a courteous silence to stretch out.
“I mean, she’s not doing too well with the siege,” Robert blurted, his eyes slanting as he turned away. “She’s a trooper, though.”
“You’re getting along well?”
“Sure. She usually spends her time with her books in the warehouse, but she stays at home with me now.” He paused for a moment, looking skywards. “It’s nice,” he said. “A nice change. So long as I’ve got her, all this is just a bump on the road.”
Norman tried to smile, to congratulate, but in the next moment he found
himself doubled over, gagging and spitting in the dirt.
“Go back,” Robert said firmly, hacking away. “I think I can cover your load.” He cast a wry grin at the thin tract at Norman’s feet.
Norman sighed, trying to hold onto his lunch. “Alright,” he gasped. “You win.” He dragged the hoe in his wake, retreating to the city. “I can hear my brain frying.”
Robert called after him, “Rest up. Just make sure you’re ready by nightfall.”
VIII
“You just have to give it time,” said Heather, prodding Norman’s bare chest.
“You’re sure?” He tried to keep the pain from showing on his face. “I’ve been walking around nonstop and it’s exactly the same.”
Heather snapped off her gloves. “It’s not going to heal in a day, and definitely not in a few hours. I told you: broken ribs take weeks, sometimes months. And I can’t be sure that you don’t have other injuries. Especially your head. You need to watch it, and make sure you tell me if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”
She swung the overhead lamp out of the way and stood, heading towards her desk on the other side of the room. She rifled through the various detritus upon it, returning a short time later with a small plastic bag containing shrunken bark.
“White willow?”
She nodded. “Painkiller. It’s all we’ve got. Don’t overdo it. It can cause gastric problems if you take too much, but you’re not going to be much use to anybody like this.” She handed him the bag. “Chew it up, one piece at a time, every six hours or so. Too much and it’ll kill you.”
“Comforting.” He took the bag and peered at its desiccated contents. It didn’t look inviting, more like dried mouse droppings. He didn’t relish the thought of putting the stringy, dried pulp anywhere near his mouth, but thanked her nonetheless.
She gave a loose salute. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “I have to have the caskets ready before…” She left with a sigh.
Only a moment of silence endured before a voice rang out from the gloom.
“I’m a dead man,” Charlie said. He was sitting up in his bunk, his cheek knitted closed by Heather’s stitches, and his injured leg stuck out at an odd angle. His face was catatonic, unblinking.
Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Page 25