Lucian’s eyes flickered from anger to soft melancholy, and then a diamond-hard look of wonder. “I hope you are,” he said.
“You do?”
The look of wonder lingered long enough for Lucian to utter, “If anybody’s going to help us—all of us—it’s going to be you.” Then he cleared his throat, shrugging his shoulders with a gruff jerk. “Who cares what I think? It’s your business.”
James smiled. The anger’s spark fizzled, yet the sadness remained. “Then why ask?”
“I just want to make sure that you’re happy doing…whatever it is you’re doing.”
James thought about all those things over the next few moments: all he did, and all he was meant to do. He could feel it all ahead of him, so close that he was sure he could almost reach out and touch it. “I’m happy,” he said finally.
Lucian nodded, looking away, now ensconced in his gruff exterior. “Fine. Sorry I asked.”
James didn’t miss the flicker lurking behind his eyes, something satisfied, maybe even pleased.
They both turned as a scrabbling issued from the forest, just in time to see Oliver and Alex burst from the trees and sprint along the border between sand and soil, spears held aloft. For a single, dangling second, there was a strained silence. Then, from the forest, came the long and reverberating cry of a stag, followed by an almighty rumble that could only have been made by dozens of hooves.
James watched Alex charge along the beach for a moment, glanced at Lucian, and then gave chase. They passed into the shade thrown down by the canopy and caught up with the others in a few bounding strides.
Alex was swinging his head back and forth, glaring into the trees. He seemed to see things the others could not. They followed his lead, sprinting alongside him until he gave a grunt and veered off from the sand, plummeting back into the forest.
James sprang after him, slipping between the thick brambles without breaking a single twig, leaving the others—heavy-footed and uncoordinated—in his wake. He vaulted deeper into darkness, passing between narrow gaps between trees, bounded shrubbery and rocks without effort, and ducked overhanging branches without a moment’s thought. His footfalls made only the lightest of patters. His breathing was deep, calm and unhurried.
He and Alex had spent countless hours in the wilds, honing their senses. But while Alex had grown sharper—his eyes, especially, had become indispensable during a hunt—James had become something else. Over the years, he had felt himself become at home in the forest, one with it.
The Jungle Bookworm, Paul called him. “Ain’t nothing but a dog that can read, that boy,” he’d once said. “Look at him, he’s more at home swinging from a tree than inside.”
But Alex had shot him down. He’d said that they had to be at home in the libraries as much as in the forests. He’d called it the perfect synergy. James didn’t know what that meant, but was sure it was far removed from Paul’s comments.
The others, meanwhile, were still much the same as they’d been before the End. Large, bulky, clumsy and loud, they crashed through the underbrush and tripped over the simplest of obstacles, swearing and panting.
The guttural groans of the deer ahead spurred James on. He could hear them struggling to squeeze themselves through the tighter gaps between branches, beating away at the tight-packed foliage blanketing every surface. Slow as the others were, they were all getting closer.
James let his legs navigate for him, taking a backseat and merely enjoying the run, skipping and leaping at leisure beside Alex, keeping pace as a rabbit would with a snail. Testing his agility, he bounced between twisted roots and the trunks of ancient elms.
Then Alex cried, “Through here!”
Ahead, a clearing had appeared in the trees. They wheeled as one and broke out into the open. Unhindered by snagging underbrush, they sprinted through the wild grass, cast into shadow by the surrounding canopy.
On the far side, the deer herd churned to the sound of thunder. The forest beyond was lined by an impenetrable barrier of tangled vines and overlapping tree trunks. Trapped, they kicked and thrashed atop one another, each fighting to gain the herd’s centre, crying out.
The men raised their spears over their shoulders. James saw Lucian do the same, and hurried to follow suit. A moment later they were all rushing towards the whorling vortex of flesh.
The herd fragmented. James blinked as they rushed outwards in all directions, disoriented. It took some moments for him to realise that a few were heading right for him. Before he could react, he was immersed in a sea of fur and hooves. Deafening yelps of fright sounded beside him until a dull hum filled his head.
He yelled, throwing his arms up and crouching low to the ground, spear wedged against the dirt. The herd flowed around him as a river parts around a rock, leaping back the way they’d come, crashing through vines into darkness.
Then they were gone, and James was left gazing about the empty clearing. The grass had been churned into a ragged patch of ploughed mud. Standing in the very centre, the others had trapped what could only have been the alpha male.
The stag was enormous, standing six feet at the shoulder, swinging its antlers in a great arc to thwart their advance. Its breath rushed from its nostrils in great plumes and an angry gurgle escaped its mouth, freezing the hunters in place. Oliver’s spear protruded from its ribcage, imbedded down to the shaft, more than enough to have already doomed the beast.
Their kill was now a given. All that remained to be decided was how long it would take.
As James approached, blood oozed from the stag’s wound, splattering the flattened grass. He looked to the others, trying to gauge their reactions, but their expressions were blank.
“What do we do?” Lucian said.
“It’s going to charge,” Oliver said. “Get back.”
“Just wait,” Alex said. His voice, unlike theirs, was flat, calm.
Oliver and Lucian each took a step back regardless.
In turn, the stag advanced, emboldened.
Alex stood his ground, half crouched. James’s legs itched to turn tail and join the others, but he kept close to his brother’s side, adopting the same stance, watching his every move from the corner of his eye.
The stag’s breath had become ragged, and its rippling shoulders were trembling. Yet still it stamped its hooves deep into the earth, advancing on them, a menacing roar rumbling in its throat.
“Get back, lads,” Oliver warned.
Neither of them moved, though as James glanced between Alex and the snarling beast, the urge to leap back became near unbearable. The baser nooks of his mind stabbed at his nerve, screaming ‘Danger!’, certain that the stag’s display would give way to a charge. It was only through Alex’s cool, motionless stance that James kept his place.
The charge never came. The stag’s breath became ever more ragged, and in a mere handful of moments its antlers had come to a standstill, its eyes drooping. It milled on the spot for a moment, gave a last-ditch buck of its head, and slumped to the ground. There, it seemed to deflate, wheezing as the hunters regrouped and approached.
“Bold,” Oliver said. “Bold, but stupid.” His face creased into a wry smile. “We don’t see enough of that.”
Alex cuffed James on the shoulder. James began laughing as mirth boiled up in his cheeks, stemming from a slab of relief amidst those dark corners that had screamed for him to run. They laughed together, looking down upon the stag as it drew its last breaths, bleeding out into the grass.
“It would’ve been easier to catch a cow,” Lucian said. “They’re dumb and slow. And they’re everywhere.”
Oliver gave a wordless cry. “Oh, my boy, there’s nothing like a good pound of venison! Besides, plenty of people who’ll go hungry tonight would give their left nut to be standing where you are now.”
Lucian’s face was drawn into a dissatisfied grimace. “I prefer beef.”
“Someday soon you’ll learn that it’s always best to be thankful for a meal.” Oliver’s f
ace twitched. “There’s always tomorrow. Lucky for us, we’ll never be low on steak!” He leaned over and made an exact incision across the deer’s throat, quelling its last jerks. He patted its head, one hand laid across its eyes, a slow and steady hushing sound whistling between his teeth.
Once the body was still, they set to work.
“Looks like we’re eating tonight, lads,” Oliver cried, swinging a freshly butchered leg over his shoulder.
They returned home in the early afternoon, laden with meat, parading towards the front door, expecting to be greeted as heroes. Instead, they received an earful of a bone-shaking scream. James surged forth with the rest of them, but even his sprightly legs couldn’t keep up with Alexander’s headlong charge. He crashed through the door behind the others, spear raised, dumping the meat upon the doorstep.
When he laid eyes on the living room, he froze. The others had done just the same. Together, they took a unanimous step back. Lucian faltered to the side and leaned over in his bloodstained coat, retching at the sight of what lay before them.
“Contractions star’ed this mornin’,” Agatha said from the depths of the room. “Gettin’ to being fully dilated.” Her hair, greying at the temples, had been thrown into a gnarled thatch. “Coulda used you earlier!”
Helen Creek screeched without pause, beet-red and gasping, spread-eagled atop a thick carpet of sweat-soaked blankets. Her dress had been hiked up around her midriff, revealing the tight-stretched skin of her swollen abdomen and the horrors between her thighs. Beside her, Hector sat erect and ashen-faced, grimacing as Helen crushed his hand in an iron grip.
James groaned as his gaze settled upon the blankets and recognised his own bed sheets. Judging by the similar grunts passing the others’ lips, they were seeing much the same. They remained frozen in the hallway for some time, blood dripping from their shoulders.
James wanted to turn away, to back out the door and escape, but his feet seemed cemented to the floor. He looked to Alex, hoping for guidance, and was unsettled to see him white-lipped, his eyes darting back and forth.
“I think you’d best take your brother outside,” he murmured to Lucian.
“We’ll need towels,” Oliver said. “And water, hot water—I think.” He paused. “Why do we need hot water?” he breathed, his lazy eye bulging.
“We’ll figure something out,” Alex said, piling the meat onto a tarpaulin in the hall.
Lucian took James by the hand and guided him towards the door. As they reached the threshold, James heard Oliver murmur, “I hope Agatha knows what she’s doing.”
“So do I,” Alex replied.
Then the two of them were out in the dank afternoon air, and Helen’s screams became muffled.
James tried to clear his throat, but the lump forming there refused to shift, and his knees thrummed with nervous energy. The fresh memory of the awed silence that had fallen over the others kept his mouth dry and his pulse racing.
He’d heard about birth, read about it, wondered about it—sometimes it seemed that all grown-ups spoke about was having babies—but never seen it. It seemed almost otherworldly, akin to reincarnation and the afterlife; something mentioned daily at the breakfast table, but never fully explained.
Lucian was pale. He looked no more at ease than James felt himself. “What happens now?” he grumbled.
James shrugged. He set off around the side of the house.
Patience. Alex’s voice echoed in his mind from countless classroom lectures. Patience is key. Bide your time, and the answers will come.
Fine, James thought. I’ll wait, and the answers will come—come shooting out of Mrs Creek.
He skirted the rear side wall and reached the fence leading to their crop field. He could hear Lucian’s footfalls close behind, but didn’t slow down. He was too busy trying to suppress the images his imagination was conjuring: gory flashes of what might be going on inside.
Without thinking, he made his way to the flimsy cage of scavenged timber that lay nestled near the chimney, crossed by rows of twisted wire such that it formed a coop. He flipped the latch and placed his head at the lip of the entrance, staring into the gloom. His nostrils were filled by the aroma of droppings. Cooing and fluttering emanated from within.
In an instant, the images of blood and guts flickering behind his eyes dissipated. He could almost forget about the others, for they seemed as far away and distant as the crumbling cities upon the horizon. That was how it always was when he came out here. He smiled, and coaxed his friends into view. “Hello,” he said, helpless to keep a broad smile from stretching across his cheeks.
The birds hopped from the shadows one by one. Half a dozen pigeons, plump and well kept, wheeled and followed his guiding hand, pecking at his fingertips.
He reached into a small tin beside the cage and brought out a handful of seed. They set to it greedily, pecking away and jostling each other for room. James let them gorge themselves for a few moments, then withdrew his hand. When he’d been younger, he’d overfed them—he hadn’t been able to help himself. Now they were always looking for their next meal. “Eat it all and you’ll get too fat,” he warned. “Then what good will you be?”
Lucian was standing beside him, looking at the birds with an expression of distant disgust, though James suspected that the brunt of it was being held back out of politeness. “Why do you keep them?” he said, frowning. He backed away with an irked cry when one of the pigeons took flight and darted away behind the chimney.
James shooed the rest into the sky before they could besiege his hand in search of more seed. They followed the first bird, wheeling together and disappearing around the smoking chimneystack. “They’re clever,” he said.
As he spoke, one of the birds fluttered back into sight and alighted upon the roof of the cage, staring at James’s hand, as though hoping to be rewarded for its persistence.
“They don’t look very smart,” Lucian said. The wrinkle between his eyebrows had deepened into a defined crease, and his lip had curled upwards.
James smiled and stroked the bird’s head. “They’re very smart. They were used to carry messages, Before. During the Great War they took mail across whole countries.”
“Which war was that?”
James glanced over his shoulder, frowning. “The First World War.”
Lucian merely blinked. His face was blank.
James shrugged. Sometimes he forgot how little Lucian—or even the other grown-ups—actually knew of the Old World they were trying to save.
“How do you know that they’ll come back?”
“I don’t. But they always do.”
“How do they find their cage? There’s so much land, and it all looks the same. Don’t they get lost?”
James shook his head. “They just know.” He picked a stray feather from the coup’s doorway, twisting it in his hands. “I’m going to use them to send messages too, one day.”
Lucian nodded, but James could sense unease in the way he angled his head to the side. “Is everything you do for this Great Destiny?” he said.
James dropped the feather and turned to face him. His heart sank as he realised that, even after their talk on the beach, Lucian still didn’t believe. “It’s my job,” he said. “I have to do all I can—have to be all I can—for everyone.”
“Without any time for yourself? What kind of life is that?”
He held a frustrated retort back with some difficulty. “There are more important things,” he said eventually.
“And you’re happy to do it? Really happy to give it all up?”
James forced a smile onto his lips, but he spoke with a heavy heart. “Yes.”
Lucian nodded once more, but James still saw doubt festering behind his gaze. He would never understand.
Sometime later, the house had grown quiet, and Alex appeared from around its side. His sleeves had been rolled up to the shoulder, and his arms were slicked with something James didn’t dare guess at. He paused, locked his sights
upon them, and let out a shuddering sigh.
James stammered, “W-What is it?”
Alex’s tired face broke into a gentle grin. “You have a new brother,” he said. He beckoned, leading the way back to the house, which was now deathly silent.
They were led into the living room, where the others stood in a perfect circle around Helen’s grey, exhausted form. They were all whispering to one another, uttering wordless noises of wonderment, enraptured. They parted as James approached, waving him closer.
James looked down on Helen, who lay grey-lipped and sallow-skinned amidst the sodden blankets, and caught sight of the tiny bundle swaddled in her arms. He craned his neck as the Creeks cried and laughed, their faces nuzzled together. Their eyes, swimming with tears, were locked on the tiny pink body between the sheets.
James could only blink as numbness stole along his limbs, and he struggled to take in the new presence, which had been nonexistent only a minute ago.
Then a thump sent them all turning to see Paul in the doorway, hands pressed against either side of the frame, his eyes bloodshot and his face haggard. A near-empty bottle of scotch hung in his grasp. He hiccoughed, staring at the bundle of blankets unsteadily. His eyes softened, then flickered. A long silence stretched out between him and the group, until eventually he grunted. “Devil’s work,” he slurred. “D-Devil…devil’s work.”
A moment of tense silence followed before the others whirled back to the Creeks and resumed in their cooing with renewed enthusiasm, turning their backs on him. Not even Agatha spared him this time, leaning over the pink bundle and blowing raspberries right along with them.
James was the last to turn away. As he did so, he caught the glance Paul cast in his direction: subtle and fleeting, yet narrow, intense and deeply unsettling. Though he wasn’t quite sure why, his guts twisted with a sudden, raw pang of fear. By the time the sensation had registered and he had turned back to the doorway, Paul had disappeared.
He blinked, unsure of what to make of it, but his attention was soon drawn back to the pink bundle in Helen’s arms, and Paul slipped from his mind. Uttering meaningless noises as much as the others, he crouched down beside the Creeks and peered at the newborn baby, grinning helplessly. From a mass of rouge folds of puppy fat, pudgy hands and jerking feet, a pair of watchful brown eyes stared up at him. New eyes, fresh eyes, those of a new brother. “What’s his name?” he asked.
Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Page 33