Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (47 page)

The child’s eyelids flickered. As he stirred, the others gasped and bent close. Alex stood very still as something somewhere deep in his mind sputtered and chugged to life. The boy…

A stinging blow came from nowhere, and Alex wheeled away into the rain, turning to find Lucian before him, fists bunched, his face a picture of agony.

“I know what you did!” he roared.

“Lucian, what are you doin’?” Agatha cried.

Lucian ignored her, taking a threatening step forwards. “I know it.”

Alex held up his hands. “Lucian, James—”

“I heard the shots. I heard him screaming. You would never have come down if they had come from Malverston.” His eyes bulged from their sockets. “It was you. You killed him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Lucian’s eyes searched the air, flitting back and forth as his lips worked. Alex could see the cogs turning in his head.

“The girl.” Lucian fell slack, just staring now, all the anger gone out of him. “You…”

Alex said nothing. Agatha and Oliver had remained by Norman’s side, just out of earshot, but their gaze on him felt just as potent, burned just as deeply. He made to lay a hand on Lucian’s arm, but Lucian recoiled as though he were a leper.

“Don’t. Don’t.”

“I had to. To save him.”

“But you didn’t save him.”

“I tried. You have to believe me.”

Lucian swallowed hard. He seemed to have aged in the past few hours; some spark of youth had winked out, replaced by haggard callousness. “All my life I’ve believed you. We all have. But James…”

“I did everything I could.” Alex took a step forwards.

Again, Lucian backed away. “You used him, like you used all of us.” He shook his head. “Damn you. Damn you.”

Alex rushed forwards and pulled Lucian’s head to his chest, and Lucian came limply, beating feebly at his arms.

“Damn you!”

“I’m sorry.”

They remained like that until Lucian’s fists stopping windmilling and he stood with his head lowered in Alex’s grasp. Alex let him go and took him by the shoulders. “We can’t stop now.”

“How? He was the one, wasn’t he?” Lucian muttered. “The one with the destiny.”

Alex looked to the boy twitching between Agatha and Lincoln and swallowed hard as an idea solidified in his mind.

Am I really going to do this?

Yes. There was no other choice.

“Maybe not,” he said.

He approached Norman as the rain slicked off his brow and into his eyes. Norman blinked, squinting up at the world and whimpering. He tried to grab at his head, but Agatha took his hand gently down again, crooning and hushing.

Alex stepped between them, gesturing for them to give him space. Crouching down beside Norman, he thought of the boy’s parents, the lackadaisical sheep who had inhabited their homestead for so many years—feckless lumps to his eyes, for all the vision they had ever had.

They had never once shown a sign of desire for the Old World, nor interest in the artefacts they horded from the wilds. Never had they been
awake
. The boy was on the road to being the same. James had pressed Alex to teach Norman, but Alex could never bring himself to entertain the notion. Every time he looked into his eyes, all he saw was the place where light should have been, but none shone; a sad and lonely sight, like that of an extinct hearth.

No choice. It has to be one of us, one who knows our ways. He’s young enough. Maybe I can change him.

All the while in his mind’s eye, that twinkling brilliance of the boy with the emerald eyes.

“Norman, can you hear me?” he said. “I know you’re afraid. I know it hurts. But I need you to listen to me.”

“W-what’s going on?” the boy moaned. “Who are you?”

Alex looked to Oliver, then Agatha, saw the sunken dismay on their faces, and sighed.

“Friends,” Lucian said over Alex’s shoulder. His voice broke as he croaked, “We’re friends.” His brow was twisted into a twitching frown. He pursed his lips and nodded. “Go on.”

Alex could only stare at him for a moment, then turned back to Norman. “What do you remember?”

The boy only blinked, his eyes searching the city above their heads, breathing fast. “I-I…”

Alex hushed him, laying a firm hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m going to take care of you.”

Norman’s eyes rolled around to focus dimly on him. A fine boy, a nice boy—but that spark… that spark was just not there. How could Alex overcome that basic element so vital to it all?

I’ll do it by doing it. The mission demands it.

He crouched low over Norman Creek, begging forgiveness from the heavens as he whispered into his ear: “Let me tell you a secret: some people have a destiny…”

James tried to scream and found he couldn’t move. Lightning bolts of pain throbbed upon his face.

In his head echoed the tumultuous crash of wood, the roar of fire, the flash of live embers rushing down and mashing under his eyelids. It was burning him! He was being burned alive, he was—

Light swam above him, cool yellow shafts of morning glory. Somewhere, a bird twittered a snippet of morning chorus. He lay on a soft bed. His body was whole, still very much alive; he knew as much because pain threaded every inch of him, as though it were a resonating piece of glass on the brink of shattering. And his face—his face!

God, let me die. Let me die, now. I can’t take it, I can’t!—

“Don’t move,” said a voice beside him.

He inched his head to the side and caught sight of a small, blurry outline. He blinked his eyes into focus, and his heart burst open.

Beth. She’s alive!

He made to surge forwards, but his entire head rang like a bell and he sank back with an agonised cry. With the pain came the realisation that the person sitting next to him wasn’t Beth, but Melanie. He sobbed quietly as liquid fire crawled over his skin, and he concentrated on breathing, nerves tortured as though dug from his flesh and rubbed with sandpaper.

“Lie still,” Mel said, standing over him and gripping his hand.

He squeezed back with everything he had. He heard her grunt, but he couldn’t loosen his grip. “Wha-what?” He coughed and moaned at fresh pain running from his tongue down and into the meat of his chest.

Crackling. I can hear my lungs crackling.

Why had they pulled him here? If he was this close to death, better they had shot him like a lame horse.

He searched her eyes as his own streamed silent tears, begging for death.

“You’ll live,” Mel said, squeezing his hand in return. “You have a chance if we keep the bandages clean. The doctor said—”

James managed to mouth around his aching face—every minuscule twitch felt like pressing his head into a pool of molten lead.
Doctor?

Melanie nodded. “I found one in the next town. He dressed the burns, used ointments to cover your… your face. He kept you asleep for a long time, to let it heal. He said you should be dead—that anybody else would have died.” Her eyes glittered with something that might have been fear. “But you didn’t die. He was here so long I ran out of things to trade, and Mum”—her brow darkened—“Mum is Mum. But I have medicine.”

James turned from her, shaking his head despite the pain.

Just go, leave me to fade away.

She leaned over farther. “I’m the big girl now. I’m taking care of you.”

James swallowed, bracing himself for the exertion, and wheezed, “Beth?”

The modicum of light left Mel’s eyes. She turned from him and busied herself with something behind her. Glass tinkled, metal clattered. When she turned around, she had a straw dropped into a tumbler filled to the brim with light amber liquid. The acid smell hit his nose.

It seemed moonshine qualified for medicine now.

Even shaking his head or pressing his lips together was too much. The pain increased by the moment, creeping towards unbearable. In moments he would begin screaming, whether doing so would split his face wide open or not.

When the straw came within reach, he lunged and sucked desperately. His throat clamped shut on contact with hard liquor.

It’ll either dull the pain or make me go blind
, he thought.

It seared his blistered lips, gums, and throat, but he sucked greedily until it sent him into a coughing fit. The convulsions sent fresh ripples of pain through him and Mel had to use both hands to keep him still, but already he could feel the alcohol at work, marbling his mind.

When the coughing stopped, the world warped, turning of its own accord as though somebody rotated the ceiling about his head. The pain remained, but the urge to scream had passed. He risked talking and heard his rasping voice as though from a great distance. “Beth…”

“We buried her.” Mel’s eyes were dry, but the same emptiness stole into her gaze.

James gave her a lingering stare. With the alcohol inside him, an agony all the greater came crashing in; something no drug or poultice could treat. “Take me,” he said. “Let me see her.”

Mel shook her head. “The doctor said we can’t move you. He left for Penzance yesterday. If you fall, I don’t have anything left to trade. If the burns get infected, you’ll die. You have to—”

James reached out to grip her sleeve, pulling her close. He saw fear—or was it revulsion?—in her eyes at being so close to his face.

“Take me,” he said. “Please.”

She swallowed hard with an expression so much older than he would have thought possible for her tiny round face and nodded. It took a long time for her to reposition him, incrementally lifting his torso and stuffing pillows under his back to prop him up. Then came the business of swinging his legs out, swollen yellowish-purple lumps. He had to stop several times to groan and cry, the salty tears stinging his face—a fine garnish of misery from the powers that be.

Melanie straw-fed him more liquor, until the world undulated without pause, before she risked trying to get him into the wheelchair. Even then he screamed, a high-pitched wail trapped mostly inside his own head, for his jaw remained immobile, held shut by an entrapment of bandages. Eventually he was trussed up in the seat, and she pushed him out into the street.

Outside people hauled baskets of peaches in for packing on trade waggons. It was harvest time, and all hands had been brought to bear. The fields had yielded their bounty and filled the dusty ramshackle streets with round bags of vibrant colour. The atmosphere was one of quiet contentment. There was no sign of a single guard.

So it all really happened. We did it…

No. Mel and the other Mooners were the ones who had fought and died. They had freed themselves.

James almost jerked onto the floor when he caught sight of the dishevelled lump of cinders that had once been the town hall. It stood alone, the square quiet and abandoned—as though nothing of any consequence had ever passed there at all.

Mel wheeled him away from the topsy-turvy streets and up to a slight rise. James realised that this was where he had been with Beth most often, overlooking the peach fields with the wind in their faces, when every movement had been heart-stopping, every word a separate passion.

Upon the crest of the rise, a tiny white cross had been erected in the grass. There was no epitaph, no date, no name.

“I think she would have wanted it that way,” Mel said.

James stood over many minutes, ignoring the pain, no longer feeling but accepting it. It took him a long time to take the three steps to the cross and kneel before it in the grass, tearing up handfuls of grass.

She’s really gone
.

“I tried, I…”

He couldn’t finish. Speaking made him realise just how
wrong
his face felt, as though he had no mouth at all, instead just a gaping hole. He knew he would never look the same, never be anything but a freak. And without Beth, what was there to live for?

A chill swept over him, a queer shiver that swept through his burned skin and penetrated to his core. It was the same feeling that had driven him north and parted him from Beth in the first place, so long ago it seemed like another lifetime. When a voice emerged from somewhere inside him, it wasn’t the same as the dark-eyed man in the caves of Radden, but something else entirely.

It’s time, James. They tried to keep me out, keep us apart, but now you’ve seen what they are. At last, we can be together.

The voice bore a silken, lilting tone that could have been benign, almost beautiful, were it not for an undertone of flatness. It was as though something were missing, some key component lost in translation; the near-perfect but yet emotionless emulation of a cold, calculating machine.

You were lied to. All your life, they all lied. Time to realise the truth.

James saw: deep down under his grief and fury, a door opened, one that had always been there but had been held closed. Through it truth shone like moonbeams. Their whole existence, the world after the End, the mission—everything had been a lie. They were never supposed to survive.

But there was hope. He could fix it. It might take years, but he could bring them all back to righteousness… and when he did, they would all be together again.

Your beloved awaits. But first, you have work to do.

Far away, he heard young Melanie Tarbuck speaking over him, her ten-year-old voice hard as diamonds. “Somebody has to pay for this.”

The pain came afresh, steeling into him, becoming one with his flesh and forever entombing him. He welcomed it with open arms, for amongst the agony he glimpsed their real destiny. James wept upon the ground as that pain turned to bile, and in turn became boiling, unending rage.

Alexander stood alone, robe wrapped tight around him in the bleak afternoon light. A high wind had blown down from the north, washing the colour out of the world. Lucian strolled out from the farmhouse to stand by his side. They remained together for a long while, not speaking, just looking out.

“I forgot how good the view is out here,” Alex said. “That’s why we chose this place. The land’s so flat. It’s like you could hold it all in your hand… Makes what we’re doing seem that little bit easier, doesn’t it?”

Lucian said nothing.

Alex held his robe tighter to him. The cold had more bite than usual, but perhaps that was just psychosomatic. He had felt constantly exposed of late. He cleared his throat. “We can’t stay here anymore.”