He fumed. “They were kept here for”—he paused—“what, insurance?”
“That’s what Charlie said.”
“If they went through the trouble of enslaving all these families, how could they afford to kill them?”
“Maybe they were too much trouble. Either that, or it’s an example.”
“To whom?”
“To us.”
Alex left the room without another word, and set about searching the nearby offices, holding a hand to his churning gut. The corridors were empty, dank and rotten. Shining his light on the floor, he saw the remains of a great many pitiful meals, little more than bowls of gruel.
The last room along the corridor was the smallest, and had been swept and neatened. It contained only a desk, upon which lay something he recognised from profile only: a single silver-grey feather. Beneath it was a brown envelope.
A shiver coursed along his spine. He looked over his shoulder and saw that he was alone. Pushing the rickety remnant of the door ajar and stepping inside, he took the rifle from around his neck and leaned it against the wall.
He sat on the chair, cradled his head in his hands, and remained there in silence for a long time. Only when his hands had ceased to shake did he train the torch beam upon the envelope and reached out towards it.
XXVII
Billy was crouched amidst leaf litter. The branches of trees that had survived the year’s strife danced overhead, having recently taken on a new lease of life. The grass underfoot was shedding the last of its desiccated, straw-like texture, and once again reached for the sky. Green shoots budded amidst the morning dew.
Life was returning to a world that had come so close to cataclysm for the second time in living memory. Birds once again twittered in the trees, and deer once again frolicked beneath the canopies of the land’s youthful forests—forests still growing up around the remains of villages, towns and cities. Even a few hardy flowers had dared to rear their beauteous heads.
Billy had been sitting beneath the sun-dappled fronds of the sheltered copse for over an hour. It offered her all the cover she needed to remain hidden from any onlooker. A tawny owl had remained close by for some time, hooting somewhere out of sight, rustling buckled undergrowth.
Below her, perched upon a rocky incline that led down to a dense scatter of lean-to shacks, were the carcasses of ancient mobile caravans. Around them was what had been a halo of camping tents. The tracks that the newcomers had made in the earth as they’d arrived were still fresh.
She had found the settlement after the last of the food stores in the cabin had run dry. Daddy no longer noticed when she strayed from his beside unless he was sitting up for their daily meal—which now only lasted a mere handful of minutes, due to the pitiful size of their rations. The rest of the time he lay in a daze, slowly fading, growing further from her and the world with each passing day.
Sometimes he spoke nonsense, mumbled about a tower, a city, and a Dark Man. At first it had only scared her, and she had thought it meant Daddy was going to die soon. But then she had started having dreams too. Most of the things she saw were confused, just blurs, but through it all she could make out three men. One was blonde and old, another brown-haired and young. Her waking thoughts were of these strangers. She could have sworn she knew them, but had never laid eyes on either.
Then there was the third: the Dark Man. She didn’t want to believe it was the same man Daddy saw, but when Daddy woke and talked about his nightmares, she knew it was. It was all the same, every detail. The pale young face, the dark cloak, and the strange marks over his cheekbones…
But there hadn’t been time to dwell. They needed food.
Her first foray outside had been fraught with false starts and frightened tears, but after an hour she’d managed to brave the small distance to the cliff side. There, she had discovered that the cliffs formed a ridge, several hundred feet above the inland basin, leading down towards a vast expanse of fields and scrubland, all wild and unpopulated.
She had expected, and secretly hoped, that Daddy would wake and scold her for daring to wander away without his knowledge. But he had still been dazed and only semiconscious when she had returned.
She’d endured a night’s hunger and growing thirst before daring to go out once again, straying into the nearby forest from whence they had come. That time she’d brought back stream water and berries. The water had unsettled her stomach, and Daddy had been furious when she had tried to feed him the berries—for, unbeknownst to her, they had been of a bad kind—and admitted what she’d done. But, despite his anger, he had taken her into his arms and thanked her.
That night he had laboriously sketched and described the safest and most likely things to eat that could be found in the forest, and sent her back the following day, with strict orders to stay close.
And stay close she had, that day. She’d brought back a few handfuls of blackberries and a canteen of water, which she had then boiled under his instruction. They had eaten together after nightfall, and Billy had felt stronger —not only in body, but in mind. She had done something herself. She had taken care of them.
She had, for the first time, taken the edge off the fear boiling away in her gut.
But her newfound strength had been cut down by the fact that, despite her efforts, Daddy had weakened only further by morning.
From then on she had strayed farther and farther into the woods, gathering the items that Daddy had described. Unfortunately, the woodland was too young for very much of anything to have grown to maturity. She was soon forced to stray even farther, far enough to have stumbled across the travellers’ settlement.
From her vantage point in the copse she had watched them a little more each day.
At first, she would never have considered approaching them. Although Daddy now spoke almost constantly of leaving him alone—of leaving him in the cabin and finding people elsewhere—she refused to entertain the idea.
She didn’t mention her discovery. Daddy would only want to investigate himself, something she was sure was now beyond him. Instead, she had merely watched, and waited, as a sense of the ragtag microcommunity had formed in her mind.
They, too, were new to the basin. That much had been immediately obvious. Still very much embroiled in the tasks of tying guy ropes, unpacking their belongings and felling nearby underbrush, their malnourished bodies and travel-weary faces had betrayed their true identities: nomads, forced away from their homeland—just like her, and Daddy…and Grandpa.
They, however, had clearly developed a few skills along the road, and had had more success at gathering than she. Each day they managed to acquire a mouthwatering array of fruits, root vegetables, berries, nuts, fish and smoked meats. As though only to taunt Billy further, they piled their spoils in the centre of their circle of makeshift homes.
While Billy had visited more often each day, and the sparse offerings of the forest had thinned to the point of mere morsels, she had watched them with a sense of overwhelming desperation growing inside her.
This morning, she had awoken with no pretence about the purpose of her visit to the copse: she would have to steal. She would take only enough to see her and Daddy through the next few days, and then she’d be strong enough to brave the scrubland farther afield. But today, there was no choice.
What she had seen once she’d arrived, however, had driven all thought of food from her mind. She’d fallen upon her haunches amidst the ferns, unable to move, staring down at where the settlement had been, until the wind had kicked up nearby leaves and twigs into the deep pile now nestled against her thighs.
It had clearly burned some time during the night. All that remained of the tents were their blackened profiles against the ground, and a few skeletal support wires. The caravans had been rendered buckled shadows of their former selves, their walls blistered open, having spilled their contents onto the ground outside. Everywhere, myriad personal effects lay charred and unrecognisable beneath a thick layer of grey-white ash. The food was
gone.
No effort had been made to put out the blaze. Nothing had been dragged clear of the flames. Not a single body littered the ruins. The campsite merely lay smouldering in the midst of the sapling forest, as though man had never passed this way. No cries of sorrow sounded from beneath the trees, and no trail of survivors graced the undergrowth.
They were just gone.
“Enjoying the view?”
The voice, low and smooth, trickled over her shoulder and into her ear, seeming almost to creep up on her from behind. Her heart skipped a beat as she whirled in the grass, ready to run or scream. But she was stilled by the sight of the figure standing over her. She knew his face. “You,” she whispered.
“Me,” he said.
“You…you’re not here. You’re the nightmare man. You’re not real. You’re a dream!”
A smile grew on the man’s beautiful face, right below a pair of eyes surrounded by dark streaks. If those eyes hadn’t been so razor sharp, he would have looked funny, like the Pandas that Ma had used to show her in picture books. But this man was anything but funny. “Do I look like a dream to you?” he said.
She flicked her head down to look at his long black overcoat, and his feet planted in the grass, which parted around his ankles. His overcoat fluttered in the wind. He was real, alright. She couldn’t have spoken if she had tried, so hard had her jaw clamped shut, and so she shook her head.
He crouched down beside her and gestured to the conflagration. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said.
“Did you do it?”
His eyes widened. “Me? No.” Absurdly, he smiled with genuine good humour. “No, this isn’t my style.”
Despite the mirth in his eyes, Billy’s guts quivered, and she cowered in the grass. “Who are you?” she said.
He shook his head, suddenly impatient. Urgency filled his gaze. “There’ll be time for that later. I need you to listen close.” He swept an arm at the camp. “You see this? It’s just the start. If you don’t do exactly as I say, there won’t be a soul under these stars who can escape what’s coming.”
Tears were splashing from her cheeks without check. Though he spoke softly, he frightened her more than even the devil who had taken Grandpa. The air around him seemed alive. “Please go away!”
“Billy.”
“I want my Daddy!”
His gaze bore down on her with such intensity that she froze in the grass. “Listen, child! Listen well. Or else your Daddy will be but one of countless to perish in fire. You’re special, Billy. You can make all the difference.”
“Me?” she squeaked.
“You.”
Despite herself and all her writhing guts, she asked, “How?”
The Panda Man spoke fast, his voice having fallen to a whisper. “Something is brewing on the horizon, something you’re a part of, something that will decide the fate of not only this world, but many. Maybe all.”
She blinked. “I don’t understand…”
He shook his head, ever more impatient. “There will be time for answers later. Right now I need you to find some people.”
“Who?”
“I think you know.”
For a moment Billy could only frown up at him. Then the faces from her dreams danced in front of her eyes; the two men who seemed to hover over her bed each morning.
The Panda Man nodded with a knowing glint to his smirk. “That’s right. I need you to find them before it’s too late to change what He’s done.”
“What who’s done?”
He didn’t seem to hear her, glancing away at the horizon. “He’s upset the balance.” A scowl brewed on his alabaster face. “So much depends on the here and now, yet all these silly men ever do is think of themselves. It needs to be put right. We have little time.”
Billy hesitated. “I can’t leave Daddy. He’s sick. Please, just go away and leave us alone!”
“Your father will be fine, for a while. Right now, I need you to get up out of the dirt. There’s work that needs doing.” He straightened, his long coat billowing around him, and offered a hand.
Billy’s breath shuddered in her throat. “No,” she cried. “Leave me alone.”
“If you don’t, your father will die. I guarantee it.”
Billy sobbed, but offered her hand. It was seized by a grip of immense strength, and the Panda Man’s eyes glittered. “Good,” he muttered. Then he hauled her up in a hail of browning leaves and set her on her feet.
Billy brushed herself down, dazed, and took a breath to steady herself. “Where do I go?” she said, straightening up to meet his gaze. But he was gone. All that remained of him was a fading rustle in the grass, a groan in the bark of the copse’s trees, and a single departing whisper on the wind. “It’ll come to you. Find them, Billy. Find them.”
XXIX
Norman shuffled without pause, passing each guard yet again as he circled the catwalk, orbiting the tower. They paid him no notice, their eyes trained beyond the wall, but he was glad for their presence nonetheless.
The city’s shadows seemed alive today, boiling away where the sun’s glare couldn’t reach, as though plotting, murmuring.
He kept his gaze fixed a few feet ahead of him. It was easier to keep walking that way—in a trance where time was unhinged, one which kept his thoughts and chest pain at bay.
By the time he came to a standstill, the sun had fallen low in the sky, and his ribs were throbbing, coupled with an icy pinch in his chest that had taken seat not long after Alexander had departed. The heat of the day was ebbing, but it was still far too warm to explain the chill that now seemed to surround his heart, a raw, gnawing cold.
He’d passed out by the stables after Allie and Richard had left him. It couldn’t have been for very long, as he had still been alone when he’d come to, but it had been long enough to bring him back to his senses. By the time they’d returned, regret and deep shame had set his cheeks burning and his stomach tied in knots.
He’d said things he didn’t mean, done things he shouldn’t have in front of people who were relying on him. He’d made a fool of himself. And there was no way to take any of it back.
A few hours of rest—with Allie watching over him—had been enough to cement an even state of mind. But still the pain had persisted enough to drive him back outside—to pacing the catwalk—in search of distraction.
He wondered just how long it would take the pain to fade. He now suspected that it was down to more than just the broken ribs. Something told him that, somehow, it was connected to the nightmares, and the scar upon the side of his head.
But right now the pain seemed distant. His mind had turned elsewhere.
When he’d been resting, he had endured a bout of restless twitching, and dreamed a dream all too familiar: the city, the storm, the yelling young faces, and the leering figure.
Looking out at London’s skyline now, there was no doubt in his mind that it was the very same as that city’s. This time there had been nothing vague about the dream; every detail had been rendered in sharp relief. He had not only tasted the stagnant mud, but felt the grit between his teeth, felt not only the icy rain upon his skin but also the weight of his sodden clothes. The bolt of pain above his right ear had this time seemed closer to a white-hot steak knife embedded in his skull. The voices of those standing above him had reached his ears—still distorted and meaningless, but audible.
It had all been more substantial. More real.
But most noticeable of all had been His return: that strange, leering figure. The first time Norman had had the dream, he’d been standing off to one side, watching. This time, however, he’d been standing directly behind Alexander and Lucian, the dark marks beneath his eyes casting his face in shadow. He had leaned between the bellowing figures, smiling, and repeated the words that now haunted Norman’s every waking thought: “Remember, Norman. Remember. You were all there.”
Norman shuddered. There would be no more sleep for him today.
A noise
finally drew him back to the catwalk: scuffling footsteps, approaching from the tower. At first he suspected it was one of the guards changing shift, but the silhouette passing over the catwalk was slighter, more feminine.
Allison materialised from the tower’s shadow, approaching with unmistakable purpose.
He tried to smile, but faltered, the shame of his earlier outburst arresting his lips. Instead he turned away and waited, leaning against the catwalk. From here he was looking out across the Thames, which cast a silver-blue glare across the city, one that enamelled the crumbling shells of glass and steel behemoths. The monuments of long-dead men momentarily struck him dumb—as the Old World’s remains had done countless times before, and would never cease to do—as Allison continued to grow closer, until her face was mere inches from his.
“Can’t sleep?” she whispered.
Norman drew a great sigh. “It feels like the whole world is holding its breath,” he said, “just waiting for something to happen.”
She nodded. “I’ve never liked it here,” she said. “It’s too quiet.”
“It’s always quiet.”
“Yes, but here it’s different. Not just silence but…an absence. Like there’s something missing that isn’t quite gone…just a ghost of something greater.”
“I suppose all that’s left are ghosts of greater things.”
She shrugged. Moments later, she sidled an inch closer. “Do you ever wonder where they all went?”
Her words died on the wind, and Norman couldn’t help swallowing audibly. “Sometimes,” he said.
She shook her head, her eyes glassy. “It’s hard to think of so many people. And they all just… I can never begin to imagine what it was like for the elders, what it was like to watch it all go, and know that they had to carry on.”
“Alex always said it happened fast,” Norman said. He snapped his fingers—though they both knew the snap was coming, it made them jump—“Just like that.”
She shook her head once more. “Why?” She paused. “Why them? Why then, and only then?” She shivered. “Why are we still here?”
Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Page 38