A Fractured World: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure (Gallen Book 1) (6 page)

Nine

Tomas eased his foot against the brake pedal. The tyres squealed and the jeep shuddered to a halt.

“What do you think?”

Stone took his binoculars from his coat pocket. He steadied them at the scattering of buildings several miles ahead, sweeping his gaze over a single floor house with boarded up windows and a large barn at the back, wooden frame rotting, corrugated iron roof rusting. The final building featured a long row of boarded up windows with a metal panel door hanging open. Several abandoned cars were out front and dotted on the surrounding threadbare brown grass he spotted shredded tires, empty plastic crates, a burnt mattress, a pile of broken bicycles, several iron drums and a wheelbarrow lying on its side, its single wheel missing.

“Waste of black energy to circle it,” said Tomas, tapping the dashboard. “We could camp for the night.”

Stone nodded sourly.

“I’ll signal,” he said.

Feeling the blow of cold air on his face, he lowered his goggles across his eyes, pocketed the binoculars and unstrapped his rifle from his back. He jumped down from the jeep and disappeared into the brush, keeping low, moving fast. Tomas turned off the engine and looked around. He stretched his arms and yawned. It was dark and the thin breeze rippled the surrounding landscape. He looked for Stone but could no longer see him.

“You okay?” he asked Emil.

She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.

“You’re quiet,” he said, jumping down from the vehicle. He reached for his crossbow. “What is it?”

Wrapped in a heavy blanket, dirty hair falling around her pale face, the patch over her right eye grubby, she shook her head.

“Is this what it’s like for you and Stone?” she said, her voice quiet, dry. “Killing everyday to survive?”

“You didn’t have a problem when killing saved you,” he said, swinging the crossbow onto his shoulder. “You can get out and walk away anytime you want. You got no ties to us.”

He turned his back on her, the words stinging him.

“It’s not the killing,” she said, her voice tiny. “I mean, I understand it, I really do. Does it turn you sick inside?”

Tomas could hear the sadness in her voice. He felt his breath shorten and his heartbeat increase. What was this he was feeling? He was confused and he understood how confusion could cost him his life. He rubbed his tired eyes, ran a hand through his short hair and glanced at her. She was staring along the dark road. She looked miserable. There was no signal from Stone. Tomas imagined he had only reached the cluster of buildings and would now search them room by room. He circled the jeep back to Emil.

“I want you stay with us,” he said. “I don’t want you to go off on your own. We can keep you safe. You must know what it’s like out here. Stay with us. I like, I like you being around.”

She looked at him.

“You know what you’re worth to them all,” he said.

“I just don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

“You and Stone seem to.”

He shook his head.

“Especially Stone.”

“You don’t know anything about him.”

“Then tell me about him. Tell me about you. Tell me about the both of you.”

There was no one around. Stone strapped his rifle across his back and drew his revolver and torch. He switched it on and shone the beam across the back door of the house. A wooden board had been nailed across the top half of the door, covering where a window had once been. He inspected the ground and saw no trap or wire or anything set to signal he was about to enter. The buildings creaked in the wind and the door matched the sound as he eased it open. Darkness and the stench of a rotting body caused him to grimace and recoil.

“Stone was eight when my father found him. Seven or eight. Wandering around out here. He had a knife and tried to stab my father. He was skinny, hungry and frightened. He was covered in bruises. My father tried to talk to him, calm him down, but Stone was wild. So my father left him where he was and kept walking. My mother and sister were there and they tried to reason with him but my father said the child could not be helped. As they went on, Stone began to follow them, from a distance.”

The room had been a kitchen with tables and chairs and a pantry cupboard, the shelves stripped bare and thick with dust. There was a rusted sink with two rusted taps and dirty and broken crockery. A body was slumped in the corner and the smell was unbearable. Stone covered his mouth and nose with his left arm, hand still clutching the torch. He stepped into the next room, edging past pieces of worn and dusty furniture. The room was gloomy. He swept the torch beam around the floor and walls. There was nothing here of any use. A single door led into another room. Revolver gripped in his right fist, he pulled open the door.

“That night my family made camp. A small fire. Cooked food. Hot tea. My father carried a rifle and he heard footsteps approach. He called out but no one replied. And then Stone came out of the darkness, grubby face, skin and bone. He looked at my family and sat a distance away from them. My mother took him some food and he snatched it from her and ate. It was like this for a few weeks. He would follow behind them and then my mother would feed him at night. Eventually, he sat at the fire with them but my father said he never spoke a word.”

The room beyond was a hallway with large black patches of damp on the walls and ceiling. The stench was vile. To his left, Stone saw the front door, heavily barred. There were more two doors here, both open, a bedroom to his left, a bathroom to his right. He stepped into the bedroom and saw another body, stretched out on the bed, rotting. He fanned the torch around the room and saw dozens of framed photographs hanging on the wall. He frowned at them. He had seen photographs before but not this many. They were relics from the Before. He set down his revolver, lifted one from the wall and shone his torch at it; a group of people, a family, a man, a woman, an older woman, small children.

“They found him clothes. His bruises began to fade. My father taught him to fight, to shoot, and to survive. It was years before he spoke. My sister was dying from sickness. I never knew her. No, no, I wasn’t born yet. Stone had become a man. He was a son to my father. They looked different and they had a different voice and different words but they were family. My father began to piece together what had happened to Stone. He learned he had been born in the wasteland. His family had been part of a small community. Then men came on horses. They burned, killed, it must have been terrible. My father said Stone watched his family die. He managed to escape. Fled into the hills with some other children but they never had enough to survive and in the end they fought each other for the food. Stone was the only one to walk away. My mother died having me. I was Stone’s age when my father passed. The sickness.”

Stone smashed the glass frame with the torch and shook free the photograph. His lips curled into a smile as he rolled it up and slipped it into his pocket. He backed out of the room and spun the torch beam along the hallway and into the bathroom. The house had been looted months ago and there was nothing here except dead memories. He crept back through the kitchen and out into the dark night, the wind whistling through the rotten timbers of the old barn and banging the corrugated iron door on the second building. Switching off the torch, Stone sprinted towards it. He burst into a large empty room lined with booths and tables and chairs and a long counter thick with dust and mould. The smell was bad and filled his lungs. He coughed, spat, and flicked on the torch.

“Stone raised me. Taught me what my father had taught him. He wasn’t much of a talker but he showed me everything I needed to know. I’m still here now, thanks to him and thanks to you. Stone still hunts the men who killed his family but we’ve never found them. They must be long dead by now. Look, it’s the signal.”

Stone had flashed the torch three times. Tomas climbed back into the jeep, turned on the engine and pressed down on the accelerator. The engine growled in the stillness of the night as he swept down the sloping road and turned onto the hard ground, crunching stone and gravel. He nosed the jeep behind the old barn and hoped it would be unseen from the road.

Killing the engine, he grabbed his pack and crossbow and led Emil towards the building where Stone had signalled from.

She grimaced as she stepped inside.

“It smells disgusting.”

“The back door is blocked up,” said Stone. “Windows boarded.”

Nodding, Tomas set about making a small fire and boiled water with ground powder stirred in. Stone eased into one of the booths and took out the maps. He spread the map of Gallen across the table, once again tracing his finger across it. The fire crackled and spat. He then opened another map, a more detailed one, straight lines, rooms and corridors. He stared at the map for a long time, only breaking his attention to take a mouthful of hot drink. Emil watched him across the rim of her drink, thinking of the story that Tomas had told her. She looked into the bearded man’s sunken eyes and no longer saw the cold death she had first seen. All she saw now was pain.

“More?” offered Tomas.

She shook her head.

“Sleep,” said Stone, not looking up. “I’ll take the first …”

He stopped. They all heard it. The sudden roar of a bike. Stone shifted back a piece of board covering the window he sat at. He glimpsed the solitary headlamp of a motorcycle coming down the road. Tomas stamped out the fire and rolled across the long counter, dropping behind, crossbow pointing at the door. Emil scrambled behind the row of booths, out of view. Stone went to the doorway, removed the wedge holding the door in place and stood in the corner, in the shadows.

The sound of the bike was a deafening roar and it wasn’t passing. The engine was slowing. The tyres were churning up the hard soil. It sounded as if it was about to crash through the door and roll up to the counter; but it stopped outside and the rider climbed from it, his boots crunching loudly on the ground. There was a scraping sound and the door was gingerly nudged open and the biker stepped inside, a crowbar in his black leather gloved fist.

“Hello,” he called out.

Ten

“Drop it,” said Tomas.

The biker didn’t react. He was an older man, wearing faded blue denim and black leather stretched over a round stomach. He had thick arms and legs. He peered through brass coloured eye glasses perched on a squat nose and was still weighing up the crowbar in his hand against the crossbow pointing at his chest.

“Just you?” asked the man.

Stone pinned the steel barrel of his revolver against the base of the biker’s neck.

“Drop it,” he said.

Wordlessly, the crowbar clattered to the floor and Tomas sprang over the counter to scoop it up. Stone nudged the man towards the nearest booth.

“Sit,” he said. “Hands on the table.”

The biker carefully followed the instructions and rested his gloved palms on the dusty table top. His face was grizzled and he had a straggly grey beard. Tomas leaned his crossbow against the wall and dipped outside to inspect the bike. He glanced around, saw no one and wheeled it into the building.

“You take care with that,” said the biker. “You don’t …”

“Shut up,” said Tomas, walking back to close the metal door and wedge it shut.

He snatched up his crossbow and pointed it at the man’s head. Stone backed away to the counter and lifted a stool to sit on. He kept his revolver level with the stranger. Emil poked her head from the back of the room and the biker looked at her, showing no reaction to her scarred face and patched eye.

“Who are you?” asked Tomas.

The man reached for something in his top pocket and Tomas leaned into him, the tip of the crossbow bolt pressed against a rough cheek.

“Easy, old man.”

He seemed unflustered by the weapons pointed at him and slowly produced a black comb. Tomas eased back and frowned as the man calmly dragged it through his thick grey hair and beard.

“I used to come here years ago,” he said, popping the comb back into his pocket. “Some people tried to open it up. Make it into a diner. Like it was during the Before. That’s what they called them. Place you could eat, have decent conversation. But some guys came and shot the place up.”

He nodded at the bullet holes that riddled the counter and back wall.

“A name,” said Tomas. “Not a history lesson.”

“Lucas,” he replied, grinning. “Just looking for somewhere to sleep. Not looking for any trouble, son.”

“You alone?” asked Stone.

Lucas turned in his seat to answer.

“I am, looks like you’re not,” he replied, leaning from the booth to smile at Emil. “Evening, miss.”

“We could cook you and eat you,” said Tomas, a flash of anger in his eyes.

“I don’t think you’re the type,” snorted Lucas. “You want this place, fine. Let me take my bike and I’ll be on my way.”

“Tie him up,” said Stone.

Tomas fetched a length of rope from his pack and eased Lucas from the booth. The man placed his hands behind his back and did not struggle as Tomas tied his wrists together. Stone watched the biker very closely. The man had years on him, which meant he had survived for a very long time in the wastelands. It was rare to see older men in Gallen. They would all need to be careful. Tomas thrust him down on the dusty floor, next to his bike, and bound his ankles. Lucas shuffled around and leaned his back against the counter.

“I’ve slept in worse places,” he said, untroubled.

Emil took a seat at the counter and stared at the round bellied man on the floor.

“He eats well,” she said, her voice hushed.

“He doesn’t seem afraid of us,” whispered Tomas.

“Should I be afraid of you?” asked Lucas, staring ahead at the door.

Stone pulled on his long coat and hat. He thrust his revolver into his belt and picked up his rifle.

“No one out there,” said Lucas, watching him head for the door. “Might as well stay in here in the warm.”

“We’ll let Stone decide.”

Lucas let out a low whistle.

“That’s Stone? The Tongueless Man? Thought it was him. Let me get a look at the legend.”

The only look he got was Stone’s back. Tomas fixed the door once more.

“How do you know him?”

Lucas shrugged.

“How do you know anybody these days? Always find someone who claims to have seen him kill a lot of people.”

Emil studied Lucas for a short time more then slid off the stool. She walked across to where Stone had been sitting and saw the maps he had forgotten to pack away. She glanced at Tomas, at the counter, right hand resting on his crossbow, staring hard at Lucas. She eased into the booth and saw at once that Stone had stolen more than one map from the Map Maker. She tried to picture the man who had ridden a horse into her village years before but she couldn’t draw his features in her head. She could only remember the words her father had spoken of him, describing him as an odd and disturbing man, but brilliant with a pen, a mind sharper than any on Gallen. Her hands touched the coarse paper and she allowed her thoughts to dwell on Stone, out there now, roaming in the dark, looking for a trap, scouting for an ambush. She thought of his broken life and found it impossible to marry all those years together to the man he was now.
The Tongueless Man.
It was a grisly nickname.

She could hear Tomas and Lucas arguing.

“North,” he was saying.

“You’re wrong,” said Lucas. “Son, trust me, you’re wrong.”

“Who cares what you think?” said Tomas, lifting his crossbow. It scraped loudly on the counter top.

“Why don’t I just kill you?”

“Tomas,” called Emil, getting up. “Please, don’t.”

Tomas raised the crossbow, finger on the trigger. Lucas looked along the shaft of the bolt, the shiny tip aimed at the centre of his face.

“I’ve had guns, axes, swords, bombs, bows, everything pointed at me,” he said. “Do it or not, son.”

There was no fear in the biker’s eyes. He was no fool, he knew the world of Gallen, the creed of kill or be killed, and here he still was, air in his lungs. Tomas listened to Emil’s pleading and tried to force her voice and reasoning from his head and the feelings he had for her from his heart. He wanted to punish Lucas. He wanted to destroy and savage the calmness the biker possessed. He knew he wouldn’t kill the man but he badly wanted to; wanted him to suffer the pain he was feeling inside, wanted him to know the confusion he felt through his loyalty to Stone and the pact of vengeance they had made to the feelings he had for Emil, knowing what they were going to put her through. There wasn’t a single reason to fire. So easy to lodge that bolt in his skull - but for what? The man had nothing he wanted. He wasn’t getting in his way or stopping him from getting where he was going. He wasn’t trying to trap or kill him. He was a drifter, like them, heading nowhere.

“Please, Tomas,” said Emil.

He lowered the crossbow and put it down on the counter. Lucas turned his head away, showing no reaction. Emil let out a sigh of relief and went back to studying the maps.

Tomas reached into his pocket for a food bar. He bit it in half and chewed down the bland flavour, the chemical ingredients surging through him, his stomach becoming full. He looked at Lucas and reluctantly offered him the other half.

“Thanks,” said the old biker, biting into it from Tomas’s hand. “Plenty of these where I’m going.”

Emil looked up from the booth.

”Glad you never took the shot,” continued Lucas. “I don’t mean you any trouble.”

“Are you heading to Chett?” asked Emil.

“That’s right,” said Lucas. “Going home. Been living out here for a long time. Trying to tell … I don’t know your name.”

“He’s Tomas, I’m Emil.”

Lucas swallowed down the last of the food bar.

“Nice to meet you, miss. You too, son.”

He studied her for a moment.

“You’re one of them girls that can heal, is that right?”

“You hunting her?” asked Tomas.

“I’m not hunting anyone, son, just heading home. That’s all. Heading east, towards Chett, not north.”

“Is this what you were both arguing about? Something about north?”

“Emil,” said Tomas. “You need to get some sleep. It’ll be light in a few hours.”

“I’m not tired,” she said, sliding from the booth. “What did you mean about going north?”

“Your friend here,” said Lucas. “Got no sense of direction. The road out there, that’s heading east, a few days ride now and I’ll be home in Chett.”

“But we’re heading north,” said Emil, puzzled. “Away from Chett. Right, Tomas?”

Lucas shook his head.

“Tomas?”

“He’s wrong,” said Tomas, quietly.

“You’re a two or three day ride from Chett,” said Lucas. “You’re travelling east.”

“Emil, trust me, we’re going north, away from the city.”

There was a light tap on the door.

“Are you taking me there?”

Stone knocked again.

“Tomas, are we going to Chett?”

He moved the wedge from the door. Cold air rushed in. Stone ducked inside.

“Clear,” he said.

“Told you it was just me,” smiled Lucas.

Emil grabbed the maps.

“Where are you both taking me?” she flared, rage filling her single eye. “Where are we really going?”

Stone glanced around the room. Slowly, he closed the door and drove the wedge back in place. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his untidy hair. He looked from Lucas to Tomas to Emil.

“She knows,” said Tomas.

“What’s going on with you people?” asked Lucas, looking concerned for the first time. “Maybe I should just clear out of …”

“Quiet,” said Stone, swinging his rifle towards him.

Emil threw the maps, scattering them across the dusty floor.

“I should have known,” she said. “I was so stupid to trust you both. It wasn’t luck that you were holed up in that building. You were waiting for me, weren’t you? I knew it. I knew it all along but I couldn’t get my head round it. You knew those men were hunting me. Were you following them whilst they were following me? I should have seen it. Why didn’t I see it?”

The tears came. Tomas felt his heart sink, his shoulders sag.

“And you, pretending you didn’t know who they were. You must have known they were Red Guard all along? So is there a bounty on my head? Are you taking me back to Chett to collect a bounty?”

“Red Guard?” said Lucas. “What Red Guard? You can’t take her back to Chett, the law says you can’t. Even I know that.”

“Law?” wailed Emil. “What law? Look around, you old fool. This is the wasteland. There are no laws out here.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” said Lucas, shaking his head.

“Nearly fifty, sixty nights ago,” said Tomas. “We came across a man hiding out in the city. He was wounded. He looked like a bandit so we left him. Then he produced papers and begged us to take him home. He was a soldier in the Red Guard, a Sergeant. He said he was part of a group that were hunting for Pure Ones. The reward was a life pass. A place called Hamble Towers.” Emil was shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “He said that by the time anyone returned, if anyone returned, the law would be changed and that Pure Ones would be allowed to be used once again to heal people. I mean, that’s a good thing, right? Saving people’s lives? Emil, Emil, you’ll get to save lives. What can be bad in that? You saved mine.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” she whispered.

“You get us into the city,” said Stone.

“Chancellor Jorann would never approve this,” said Lucas. “I remember him before I left.”

“I don’t know who he is,” said Tomas. “A major named Nuria organised the soldiers and a man named Gozan has offered the bounty. That was what the Sergeant told us. Bring a Pure One to Chett and live a life of luxury. We’ve been out here all our life, Emil. Drifting from one place to another. Never knowing if …”

“I hope you choke on it,” she said.

Stone picked up the maps. “Tie her up,” he said.

She shouted, cursed, fought and spat at Tomas as he bound her wrists and ankles. Lucas attempted to calm her but then she turned on him as well. Tomas sat at the counter once again, leaning on his crossbow, his eyes heavy, his face tired, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Lucas turned his head away and closed his eyes. Emil’s rage seemed to last for hours but it was only a matter of minutes. And then came the pleading and begging and finally the damning and the hate until, exhausted, she drifted asleep, her single eye raw from crying, her face stained with tears. Now and then she exhaled a tiny sob that caused Tomas to jerk awake. Eventually, even he fell into a deep sleep, sprawled across the counter.

Stone shuffled the maps together and put all but one of them away. The wind howled across the land and the building creaked, groaned and rattled. Tomas and Lucas were snoring, almost in tandem. Now and then he heard a pitiful sound from Emil. He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at the photograph he had taken from the house. He touched each face with his fingers, wondering who they were, how their voices might have sounded. He set the photograph down and closed his eyes, trying to picture his own kin, to reach back more three decades into the past and draw their features forward but the memories of were blurred.