Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (42 page)

Lucian watched her go, then headed back to the others.

“It’s dangerous here,” Oliver was saying.

“We can’t… I…” Agatha’s face had become a haggard wreck.

Alex spoke over them, a hard-edged baritone. “We’re going home. It’s finished here.”

“We can’t leave them. We have to bury them,” Lucian said.

Alex laid a hand on his shoulder, and for a terrible moment Lucian recoiled. “Norman’s bleeding. We have to get him back, or we’ll lose him too.”

Lucian looked at Norman unconscious in the grass, his head tightly wrapped in gauze and his body swaddled in a makeshift stretcher.

Just a kid… and now he’s got to live without his parents because of one stupid mistake. Will he ever forgive us?

It didn’t matter, because Lucian knew he would never forgive himself. One thing they could do was get him home and get him well.

“Okay,” he said, fixated on the ruin behind them, and the glistening skyline of the newly liberated Newquay’s Moon. “Let’s go.”

Latif sat back from the radio and sighed. It was done.

Fighting exhaustion, barely balancing on the stool, he stared at the worktop and gathered his strength. He had sent the distress call on every channel the Blanket had relinquished, over and over, for two hours. Cycling back and forth between the channels, finding them with the same guiding force working through his fingers, homing in on blissful breaks in the unearthly squeal, he had sent his voice into the world.

All his life he had dreamed of talking with those elsewhere, anywhere, bringing back what the Old World had taken for granted.

Now it rang hollow inside him. To find all this, when the barbarians were quite literally at their gate. It would all be for nothing, and when the smoke cleared and this generation had passed on and the world had been consumed, nobody would ever know what they had done here.

They won’t know anything because they won’t
be
at all
, a voice said in his head.
If we don’t win, there won’t be anything left
.

He shuddered, shaking it off. He didn’t believe in that crap.

But nothing could rid him of the certainty that had set like cement in his gut. He simply knew it was true. Just as he knew that his voice would be heard.

He had hit the nail on the head when he had said it to the old man: there was something out there fighting for them. It might have left them to struggle and die all this time, watching and waiting, but now—just this once—it had stepped out of line to guide him. Out there, just maybe, it had told others to listen.

He shucked and stood, shedding his blanket from his shoulders and flexing. His work here was done. It was time to go do what he could outside.

Latif paused at the workshop door and looked back. “This better work.”

He headed out into the courtyard, flexing legs that had grown unused to walking of late, approaching the wall and scaling the catwalk stairs. Ignoring the rain, he checked the wall for signs of weakness, not through concern but by force of habit.

The last of the nursing volunteers were moving their antiseptic baths into the tower, and a few burly men hauled the last of the food stores inside. It seemed they felt it just as keenly as he did: the unyielding sense that a ticking clock somewhere had come to a stop.

Latif drew parallel with Evelyn. “May I?”

She didn’t respond for a moment, standing drenched in her shawl, which stuck unceremoniously to her body, her hair lank around her face. She stared for so long he thought she might banish him, but instead she reached out and cupped the back of his head. “You’re just like him, you know,” she said.

“The old man?” Latif scoffed. “Never in a million years, not that old goat…” He cleared his throat. “I’ll never be as wise as that.”

He caught a wry look from her in the corner of his eye.

“Do you think we’ll be heard?” she said.

He could only shrug. It was so cold now, so very cold—a thousand tiny insects nipped at his bones. The clouds were lower every time he looked up, as though the sky itself were falling.

Maybe it is
, he thought.

A gush of fear ran through him as he realised all this was really happening. While he had dallied with the radio and everybody had moved around him, he had lost himself in the work. Only now did the realisation truly hit home.

Something squeezed his fingers, and he looked down to see Evelyn’s hand around his.

The ice in her gaze thawed, and she squeezed tighter. “You scared?”

Latif nodded as the wind rustled his hair and the rain slashed down without end. At the far end of the dual carriageway stretching away from the gate, a dark mass had appeared at the edge of sight, made fuzzy by the storm. A hard sphere formed high in his throat. “I’m scared,” he croaked.

She blinked as a reverberating rush faded into audibility: the roar of thousands of voices. “’Atta boy,” she said.

“You son of a bitch!” Charlie barked.

Jason vanished in a blur before Charlie’s knuckles could come within ten inches of him. A moment later Charlie’s cheek was a mass of pain, and the world hazed over. Then he hit the floor, his gammy leg splayed awkwardly to one side. “How could you? They were our people!”

He whirled onto his back and looked up at the wolfish thing standing over him. He was on the verge of throwing another insult when Jason’s long curved blade swept down to touch his chin.

“Stay still, pup,” Jason said. “Very still.” He cocked his head, observing Charlie with the curiosity of a child watching insects scurry under a magnifying glass.

Charlie looked at the bleeding, torn people around them. Grit and pebbles lay embedded in faces, razor-sharp metal sticking out from bellies and shoulders. They had lost over a thousand people back in the square, half of them cut to pieces by their own artillery.

Jason had given the order. Before Charlie had been able to fight his way to the front line to countermand the order, the damage was done, and the fight in the square had been over.

“How could you?” he spat. “Our own!”

“No, not ours. We are not brothers. They’re just things.” He waved to those bleeding out not ten feet from him. “
Things
.”

Charlie looked to them, gaping.

Why don’t they kill him? There are a hundred people in earshot. They could cut him down in a moment.

But could they? Looking at Jason afresh, all hope drained out of him. Their sheeplike, languid forms watched, just watched. They visibly wilted as Jason turned to survey them, holding out an arm as though in welcome.

“Anybody have anything to say?” he called. He grinned, a horrific thing that sent Charlie’s nerves crackling. “No? Then what are you still doing here?”

The silence that followed could have stopped hearts. Ever so gradually, those still able to walk headed east, towards the Alliance compound. Jason’s mad stare persisted until the trickle had become a steady flow. Those whose blood oozed over the ground watched from the pavement with long, laboured breaths, babbling in horror as they were passed without a second glance.

“You can’t do this,” Charlie said.

“I am doing this.” Jason danced the tip of his knife over Charlie’s cheek. “Are you going to stop me, little boy?”

Charlie remained frozen in place, watching the blade sweep down under his chin and up over the other cheek. He winced as it rested against his temple and pressed inwards sharply, slicing his hairline.

“I asked you a question, pup.”

Charlie shook his head fractionally.

“I don’t hear you.”

“No.”

The blade carved fire along his cheek and Charlie grated his teeth until it was level with his ear. Then the knife dropped, and blood beaded on his chin.

“I’ll take it from here—oh, and I’ll be back for you after. Run if you like. I’ll find you.” Jason winked. “Have fun.”

Then he was gone after the others.

Charlie lay dripping blood as mortar pipes pushed past him, moving east, while the main body of the army passed in earnest.

Suddenly he felt hollow. Not horrified, but empty. He was nobody.

Thousands passed, staggering on legs barely working, dead-set eyes trained forwards, following the ragged mass that had consumed them. They vanished into the storm, and Charlie was left with the fallen.

His father’s voice spoke inside his head: “Time to wake up, boy. Time to get out of this.”

No! I won’t let them get away with it.

He couldn’t give up. It was all he had left.

Ambling to his feet, he steeled himself against the long searching gazes of those dying beside him and limped away in the wake of the army—Jason’s army.

The storm gathered about the compound, smothering the Isle of Dogs in milky tendrils. Evelyn shivered constantly but no longer felt the cold, nor even her feet under her; all bodily senses had abandoned her.

Distant rumblings and cracks reached them; the sounds of stone and metal being torn and people dying. The world seemed to be losing depth and focus, a fading so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. It was as though reality itself was fizzling.

“Ma’am, you should go inside,” said Marek’s deputy, a wall of muscle towering over her.

She turned her stare on him, and he stalled. She enjoyed a glimmer of satisfaction. She might be old and frail, but she wasn’t done yet. “I am going nowhere.”

“It’s time to seal the tower.”

“Then do so. I am not going to cower in my keep.”

“We can’t protect you out here.” He gestured between her and Latif. “Neither of you.”

She waved a sharp hand at him. “If I am to die, I will do it standing!”

From the corner of her mouth, she said to Latif, “You get inside while you can.”

He jerked. “Run? Now? Get lost… Ma’am.”

“Oliver is preparing whoever can put up a fight. If the walls fall, we’re going to need everyone. He’ll need your help.”

“I can’t help them!”

“You’re no good here. Go, darling. Please.”

Latif looked forlorn, blushing. The noise ahead was building, the ghostly sighing of some titanic being on approach.

“I’ll be back. As soon as we’re secure.”

She pulled his hand from her arm. “Go on.”

He whirled and pattered down the stairs. She watched him cross the empty courtyard and vanish into the tower lobby. The doors slammed shut behind him, and she caught a few winks of activity through the revolving doors as hasty barricades were thrown together on the marble floor.

The catwalk’s length was lined with dozens of their best fighters. They were few, but she stood among the closest things to soldiers this world had to offer.

Let them come
, she thought.

Lightning arced overhead. As one, they stared into the mist. Then from the monotonous rumble of pattering rain, noise from ahead, and the skies. The medley boggled her momentarily, and she searched for the source.

The strange double rumble took on form simultaneously, resolving into the roar of voices ahead, and a strange whine from the sky. The darkened streets morphed into a rushing mass of people, more people than she had seen together since the End, sprinting for the compound. Above, the whine became ear-splitting as somebody bellowed, “Get down!”

The next instant, a section of the wall to her left spattered into a thousand pieces as fire burst upwards. Evelyn blinked, dumbstruck.

“No,” she breathed. “No, they can’t have—”

Another section of the wall detonated. Evelyn saw the deputy running for her, shouting inaudibly. He came to within five feet of her when the air became a solid wall, and a giant hand thrust her clear from the catwalk. She tried to scream as fiery teeth chomped at her legs, but it was too late.

Darkness.

Marek ran. His leg throbbed, threatening to buckle, but he kept going. Everywhere, other survivors from Trafalgar Square were shot in the back as they fled.

Christ, we’re being mown down.

There was nothing else for it. If they stopped for cover, they would be swarmed in seconds. If they crouched, their gain would diminish, and they would only be easier targets. All they could do is run.

“Keep going! Don’t—”

A ginger-haired woman he had been reaching for dropped out of sight, red mist spraying Marek’s cheek.

Canary Wharf loomed from the mist that had entombed it, amorphous shapes emerging from the milky blanket. Relief flooded him as he picked out the antlike figures on the catwalk. They were so close!

Another minute and they would reach the gate. It would be a huge risk to open and close it in time, but they had to take it: there were still two-hundred people out here, two hundred they couldn’t afford to lose.

Marek got ready to give the order. They would have to time it perfectly. In his mind he was already scaling the catwalk stairs to take control, picturing the battlefield in his mind, where he would concentrate fire—

A whine he recognised all too well built suddenly overhead, plummeting down with ferocious speed.

“Get down!” Marek yelled with everything he had, tearing something in his throat.

The ground shook as the wall vanished in a hail of rubble. Hammering down from above, no less than a dozen shells landed together and obliterated the wall along a twenty-foot stretch.