Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) (45 page)

“To the end?”

“To the end.”

Don squeezed his thanks, too weak to even nod.

Alexander looked around at the bare cliff-side. “Where?”

Don took a breath to brace himself and pointed to the very lip of the cliff. “There.”

Alexander didn’t move for a long time, and Don didn’t have the strength to urge him. He could only wait and focus on dragging air into his burning lungs, which crackled like old paper bags with each inhalation.

Not long now. Just keep breathing. This is the last stretch.

Eventually, they started shuffling again and the cliff came closer.

They kept going until they were a few yards from the precipitous edge, then Don stiffened and forced himself to look at his new friend. “Here’s good.”

“You’re sure you want to do this, Don?”

“I’m sure.”

“We could go back. I could try for help …”

Don clapped his arm despite all the pain and the gathering darkness in his peripheral vision, and he laughed. “Don’t sugar-coat it now. I’m glad. I get to choose. You gave me the choice.” He reached up to Alexander’s shoulder, each inch he raised his arm feeling like a thousand-foot climb, and squeezed. “Thank you.”

“It was a pleasure, Don.”

Don nodded. He made to go, then turned back. “What will you do?”

Alexander’s eyes twinkled.

“You’re going back to your people, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I told you things are going to get bad back there.”

“That’s why I have to go back. Even if it’s just to die with my family.”

“Why?”

“Because none of this would be happening if it weren’t for me.”

Don nodded. He tested his strength, loosening his grip and taking baby steps away into the grass. When he was sure he could stand on his own, he held out his arms to keep his balance. Though every joint felt like it were made of glass, and his feet might shatter any moment from the strain of bearing his weight, he took a decisive step back. “Good luck,” he wheezed.

Alexander nodded solemnly. “Go to your wife.”

Don turned away smiling, and ambled his way painfully to the cliff edge. In moments the wind was striking him full across his flank, icy and angry and primal, and he was staring hundreds of feet straight down. The sea roiled upon the rocks below, a foamy mass of bubbles. He longed to feel the sea again, just one last time, to run on the beach with Billy. He had lived so long without any kind of silliness—the kind of life-giving stupidity that made it all worthwhile. He should have done more things just for him, for the just because, instead of spending so many years slaving away, trying to control everything.

“You were always too serious.”

Don looked sideways and felt like he was melting into the ground. Miranda stood at the pinnacle of the cliff edge, her hair as healthy and shining as the day he’d first met her, waving like a golden flag in the sea breeze. She wore a simple white summer dress, spotted with blue flowers. Her face was full and impish, pink and soft and spattered with freckles. It was the woman he had known before the sickness had touched her, not the desiccated remnant he had buried in the dandelion fields behind the farm.

The woman who had married him when all he had to offer were a few potato fields in the middle of barren nowhere. The mother of his child. His Miranda.

“You’re here,” he said.

She smiled, serene and coquettish. “You look terrible,” she said, her voice sultry and smooth, warm and comforting like fresh butter on hot bread.

He wheezed his way through a laugh. “I don’t feel too good, love.”

“The same sickness that took me. It was my fault.”

“No.”

“Yes. The same sickness that was in my veins.”

“We were careful to keep Billy safe. But somebody had to take care of you.”

“Don …”

“It’s not your fault. We can’t choose the cards we’re dealt.”

She stepped light and dainty through the grass and folded against him, resting her head in the hollowed crook of his shoulder, like she had when they had been young and brave and indestructible. His skin puckered into gooseflesh at her touch, yet her body seemed made of air, light as fluffy down.

Can she really be here? She’s been dead months.

He didn’t believe in an afterlife, never had. Yet that didn’t matter a bit, looking at her now. She had come back to him.

“You did well,” she said, sniffing and breathing deep as the ocean air swept over them.

He sighed as he swayed on his feet. The darkness in his peripheral vision was growing thicker, narrowing his view of the world as though he was looking at it through a telescope. “I failed. I failed you all.”

“You didn’t fail anybody. We owe you everything. You never gave up. Lesser men would have crumpled into the ground or turned to drink or run out of their family. But you stood. You’re a good man.” She wrapped her arms around his chest. Though he felt no pressure there, he groaned and sank into her.

“I tried,” he muttered.

“You did more than that. You made sure Billy had a chance.”

“She’s lost, Miranda. I lost our daughter.” He was almost weeping now.

“Sshh.” She pressed a long manicured finger to his lips. “She’s here, in this place. Back home there was no place for anyone with a heart. She would have had to become a killer to survive. But here … she belongs here. She has important things to do.”

“What important things, Miranda?” He brushed her hair behind her ear, nuzzling the soft curls of her hair, breathing in her scent. Lemons, she smelled of lemons. “I’ve seen some funny things lying in that bed. I know she’s important. But what is she meant for? Where is she heading?”

“I don’t know. But getting here was worth the price.”

He nodded. He knew it was true. There was no arguing.

“She’ll be safe?” he asked.

“There’s no telling. We gave her the best chance she could have had.” She raised her head and whispered softly in his ear. “We have to let her go.”

He shivered, his eyelids drooping. The darkness was thickening still, and the pain was fading. He should have felt relieved, but instead he was only afraid. With his body the way it was, the pain going away could only mean that he was slipping away. He didn’t know how he was still standing; each moment he swayed more and more, and the wind threatened to blow him hard to the ground. “I’m cold, Miranda.”

Her sweet voice in his ear: “I know. Not long now.”

“Will you stay?”

“Until the end.”

“And then?”

She pulled away from his chest and looked into his eyes, radiant with the sun at her back. “Look at those eyes.” She grinned. “Big bear eyes.” She took his hand and took a step closer to the cliff edge, and he followed. She peered over the lip, turning her face into the wind and looking down the pristine coastline in all its chalky beauty, cast in hues of fading heliotrope as the sun’s last light faded.

She let go of his head and turned to face him, her dress afloat in the wind, composed and perfect as a wax doll. “Come on home.”

He nodded, and closed his eyes. He knew what he had to do.

But he needed a moment. It would take all the strength he had left to do it right. Then something had changed—there was an absence in front of him.

She’s gone
.

Miranda wasn’t by his side any more. There was only the grass, the chalky precipice, and the rolling surf far below. He almost wept, but shook himself.

Stay focused. You’re at the end. One last step. You can do it.

He crept forward until his toes were upon the cragged lip, and he took in the waves and the infinite sky one last time. He was looking at the world through a telescope now, a long dark tunnel that stretched on forever. The pain faded to a dull ache deep in his bones. He was tired, done. He had done what needed doing. Now he could rest.

He closed his eyes and held his arms out to the side.

Miranda’s voice uttered from the wind, “
Come home.
”

Don leaned forward, and then he was falling. All the while his stomach fluttered and the rocks rushed up toward him, he was smiling.

Sarah walked the cobbled streets of New Canterbury for a long while that night. Everyone else was too shut up tight in their homes to notice her making her way around the cobwebbed, dilapidated ruins at the edge of the city, away from the pools of precious light afforded by their power reserves. Her white dress glowed in the night, spotless and pure under the full moon. The dress plimsolls she was wearing were ungainly on the uneven cobbles, but with the rifle in her hands, she felt sure.

Nothing stirred but the trickling Stour, a blanket of twinkling reflected stars on black waters nearby. She breathed deep and walked sure, feeling Robert by her side. It was a silly thing, to think that being married could change anything; it was just a ring and a few words after all. She didn’t believe in God.

But everything had changed. She felt more a woman than she had ever done before. People had always been kind, what with her divvying out the city’s literature and schooling the children. But she had always been the nice girl, the gawky one bumbling around in her warehouse. Never before had she felt maternal power in her bosom like this. She was the mother of the city, now. She knew it, and she saw it in others’ eyes.

And her husband could never leave her. A part of Robert had nested inside her and gave her new strength, and a part of her now rested in him. She could almost feel his hands on her now, hear his voice uttering the minutiae of her surroundings, calling out things to notice and be wary of, muttering plans for mounting their defence come morning.

Which is exactly what she would do. At first light she would rally the city’s guard—her guard. Pride was a thing to be cautious of, but she had been afraid to even touch a gun only days ago, and now she had taken a troop of those just like her, and made them a force worth reckoning.

Sarah smiled as she patrolled the city streets, a white wraith in the night.

Sometime after midnight, Allison and Heather appeared together on the roadside. By their stillness and the fixed hold of their gazes, she knew they had been watching her for some time. “What are you two doing here?” she said.

“Come inside, Sarah,” Heather said, her hands clasped at her sides.

“Shouldn’t you be in the clinic?”

“There is no more I can do for those people.”

“Fine. Get some sleep, then. I’ll need you come sunrise for militia duty. We’re going to practice, and practice, and keep going until we tear those targets apart.” She moved forward over the cobbles, stepping carefully, making her way past the both of them. “Nobody’s getting past us,” she muttered. “We’ll kill them all.”

She felt their eyes on her, and a well of anger rose up in her chest. She hated that feeling, the visceral sense that they were worried about her, as though she were unhinged or crazy.

And? How do you think you look?
said a voice deep in her head.
Your books go up in flames and you turn into Xena the Warrior Princess?

She almost laughed at herself, but caught the giggle in time. She couldn’t afford to play silly games now.

“You haven’t eaten,” Allie said. “Your feet must be all blisters by now, in those shoes. Just come inside, you stupid mare. Let us fuss over you.”

A swell of affection almost knocked Sarah off her course. Again, she almost succumbed to laughter. But she twisted her face into an expression she knew could melt ice, and glared at the two of them. “I’m not sure what you think is going on,” she said, “but we don’t have time to put our feet up. Look around, there’s nobody else left. We’re in charge. Us.”

“That’s why you need rest. People are looking to you, Sarah, and they need to be able to rely on you. There’s no sense in you patrolling out here by yourself. Come on in with us, eat a hot meal and get some rest, and …”

“Take off that dress,” Heather said.

Sarah looked down at herself, a white figurine amidst crumbling ruins of a bygone world. “I’m still wearing it,” she said. And it was so. She had been wandering around for hours, and the veil still trailed from the back of her head.

“Come on inside,” Allie said.

Together, Allie and Heather took Sarah’s arms and guided her inside, crooning over her and muttering soothing words.

Sarah wanted to tell them to quit being so ridiculous, but she found that her mouth was glued together and her feet felt like they were made of lead. Maybe they were right. She was getting weak. “Fine, I’ll eat.”

“And you’ll sleep.”

“Fine.” She stepped under the hall’s roof and shivered as she was embraced by the warmth of the hearth fire in the far corner. She hadn’t noticed how cold she was. Her stomach growled like a snarling dog. She sighed, sagging onto a bench and looked at her hands, feeling the tightness of the dress squeeze the air from her lungs. She propped the rifle beside her, and suddenly it seemed ten times heavier.

“What can I bring you?” Heather said.

“A change of clothes,” she said. “And a blanket.”

“You can’t sleep here. We’ll get you to bed.”

“I’m not going home. I don’t want to set foot in that place until Robert gets back.” She glared at them until Allie nodded.