Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (11 page)

The sun beat down on the field without mercy as it reached its highest point in the sky. Blinding rays struck Norman’s face as he struggled to focus on the middle distance, his eyes scrunched down to slits.

The tension was palpable. Gathered atop a slight rise at the periphery of an expansive field, all was still. Not man, woman or horse moved an inch, nor made a sound.

Norman adjusted his stance, bouncing atop bent knees as he concentrated on his target. A single bead of sweat made a break for his chin, escaping from its kindred upon his half-fried forehead.

And then, with practiced precision, he swung the club in his hands. “Fore!” he bellowed. His voice was rendered thunderous by the many echoes that returned from the valley floor.

The white ball soared skywards from the tee at his feet, becoming a mere speck and disappearing into the sun’s glare. After several long seconds there was a distant thud as it struck earth somewhere out of sight.

“Slouching,” Lucian grunted. “Try straightening your back more.”

“Remind me why we’re doing this,” Norman said, turning to him and handing over the club.

“We have to wait. I’m not making a beeline for home if somebody’s watching.”

“There’s nobody out here.”

“We don’t know that. Now stop your whining and move. It’s my turn.”

Norman stepped over towards his mount, from which hung what they’d managed to gather, along with the sack that contained the butchered swine, and felt the knot in his stomach loosen slightly.

They had risked lingering in the field for enough time to strip it bare. Most of the fruit would need culinary magic to make it edible—let alone palatable—but they had done well, and there was a chance the meat would add enough to the pot for the city folk to enjoy a decent dinner. The stag from the coast had been a prize in itself, but the pig had grown fat enough on the allotments’ fetid slop to at least double their meat stocks.

At Lucian’s insistence, they had taken a winding route home, and halted several miles from the city. They now stood in a valley that marked the northern edge of their territory, where they had stood watch for over an hour, waiting for any weary refugees who might have followed them.

Norman wasn’t quite sure of when the golf had begun—only that at some point they had found the rusted club and basket of balls in the high grass, where some poor sod had left them forty years ago as he’d vanished from under his white flat cap—but in the midday heat it didn’t seem to matter. He was glad for the distraction.

He sat on the grass beside Allison and the two of them watched Lucian take his swing, hunchbacked to the extreme, contrary to his own advice.

She sniffed. “Did you have to make me come out here all day?”

Norman looked at her for a second, found that there was nothing to say, and then turned back to Lucian.

He saw her eye twitch in his peripheral vision. “I don’t believe in keeping things a secret. If people are starving, then everybody deserves to know.”

“The whole world’s starving.”

“Not like them! My god, Norman, you can’t be serious. We’re living like spoilt royalty compared to them.”

“We don’t
know
anything,” he said patiently. “We haven’t even got reports from the other scavenging parties yet. We should just wait until we have all the facts before we go telling people about our…unfounded conclusions.”

Allison bristled, but then seemed to restrain herself. “Fine. It’s your decision. I just wish you’d tell us what we’re going to do sooner rather than later.”

Norman straightened, then looked down at his hands. It was some time before he could bring himself to say, “You shouldn’t look to me for answers, Allie. I’m not a leader.”

Allison looked taken aback. “But you will be,” she said, frowning, as though stating that the sky was blue.

“I didn’t ask to be.”

Lucian cleared his throat and fixed Norman with a pointed stare.

Norman made to speak, but then registered Allison’s confused expression and closed his mouth. “Don’t listen to me,” he sighed. “I’m just tired.”

She looked relieved, and sank back. They lapsed into silence for a while and took turns swinging the club, sending ball after ball sailing down into the valley. After half an hour, Allison spoke up once more. “How did it happen?” she said.

Norman closed his eyes, dreading whatever was coming, lying in the depths of the wild grass. “How did what happen?” he mumbled.

“We’ve all heard the stories. People talk and whisper about you, but nobody’s ever heard it from the horse’s mouth.” Her eyes scanned him carefully, and Norman began to wonder whether her name being drawn for scavenging duty in Margate had been entirely down to chance after all. “You said you didn’t ask to lead us. So somebody picked you, didn’t they? You were chosen.”

She was staring at him with rapt fascination, as though she had been granted a private audience with a figure from a fairy tale. “It was Alexander, wasn’t it? He chose you.” She inched closer. “When?”

For a long time, he didn’t answer, trying to catch Lucian’s gaze. But Lucian kept his back turned to him, visibly rigid, wilfully deaf. Eventually, Norman bowed his head and nodded. “When I was a boy,” he said. “Just after I lost my parents. At least, that’s the first I remember of it.” He picked at a stray blade of grass. “They tell me that my parents put me up for it when I was born, but…the accident that killed them… I got hurt too. I don’t remember anything before it all that well.”

Allie’s voice was hushed, “What
do
you remember?”

He squinted skywards, recalling the flashes that sometimes invaded his dreams. He didn’t mean to say a word—had a mind to tell her to mind her own goddamn business—but then his lips moved of their own accord. “A storm.” His voice had grown cold, distant. Words formed without thought, as though somebody else were speaking through him. “I think it was just after the accident. I’m lying on my back…the rain is cold. My head hurts.” Norman frowned as a twinge of genuine pain flashed just above his right ear—behind the twisted scar that lay just above his hairline—before that strange, detached voice continued, “Alex is standing over me. He’s saying that it’ll be all right, that he’ll take care of me. And then he says something else. He has a secret. He says it’s my destiny…my destiny to save it.”

Allie’s voice, a mere whisper, “Save what?”

“The world.”

A brief silence rang in his ears before she answered.

“Just like that?” Allie said. “Right there and then?”

Norman nodded.

She hesitated before uttering, “Do you think you’ll ever remember…what happened before?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe not. It’s been almost years…” He felt an ugly smile blossom on his lips and glanced up at her. “I’m not holding out for it.”

Lucian was quiet, readying his latest swing, but Norman knew that he’d followed their every word.

Allison was still staring. “How do you tell somebody something like that?” she said. “That they’re going to have to take care of everybody?”

Norman sat up and brushed his hair from his eyes. He looked away, towards a distant rise, where the wind turbines that powered New Canterbury revolved in the listless midday wind. Watching them made the words come easier, but he still spoke haltingly. “That’s not what bothers me. I get that we need somebody to keep carrying the torch. I really do. It’s that he used that word…told me it was my
destiny
.”

Allie’s eyes met his. “Why does that bother you?”

He laughed, but his wan smile slid from his face as he said, “Because there’s no such thing as destiny.”

Don woke late in the afternoon. He rubbed his cheek, numb from being pressed against the lip of the prow, and groaned as the boat was buffeted by an errant wave, holding still until a spell of nausea had passed.

The day had been warm and muggy. Land was by now a long way off. A distant shadow that loomed where water met sky was all that remained of the heath-capped cliffs. He tried to judge how far away it was. It couldn’t have been very far compared to what still lay ahead, but it certainly looked as though they had crossed an impossible distance.

The old man was snoring under the awning in the stern. With each honking breath he drew, the hull resonated. Only his feet protruded from the awning’s shadow, but by their inclination it was clear that he was flat on his back.

Don sat up, groggy, and blinked sleep dust from his eyes. His skin felt leathery and his mouth was dry. He took one of their canteens and half-emptied it, but his thirst was unquenched.

He would need more soon if he was to retain his senses, but for now he returned the canteen to the awning’s shade. Even as he did so, he felt the fresh moisture upon his chapped lips begin to drain away.

All of their planning, all of the time they had spent preparing for the trip, and they hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the fact that they’d need so much water. They’d used over half of their reserves already.

He cleared his throat, fighting cottonmouth and year-old hunger, and brought out the grubby folds of their map, which fluttered in the breeze while he checked their course against the old man’s compass.

A shuffling eventually disturbed him. Billy’s tiny profile had been invisible until she’d lifted her head, crouched beside the awning. Don blinked in shock, seeing her afresh. Her eyes looked enormous amidst her hollowed cheeks. She scarcely resembled the plump, freckle-faced munchkin he’d been raising a year ago.

His little girl was starving.

He beckoned her, and she crawled over to sit in his lap. Don continued to check the map with his arms looped over her shoulders. She peered at it for a while, bemused, and then said, “Are we there yet?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

“I don’t like the sea anymore. We’ve been away for too long. We should go back.”

Don put the map down. “We’ve only been gone a few hours.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’re all hungry.”

She wrinkled her nose and looked up at him, a coy smile touching her lips. “Where are we going?” she said.

“Billy…”

“Pleeaaase.”

Don grumbled and then retold the story of their journey to the new land, embellishing it as usual with improvised speculative details. Billy listened in a trance and smiled at the fantastical legend of the New Land.

Afterwards, the two of them sat in silence and listened to the old man sleeping under the awning. They watched the sun begin to dip, rolling to the waves’ rhythm.

“You were asleep for a long time,” she said.

“Was I?” Looking at the sun, he made a rough estimation of where it had been before he’d dozed. “It can’t have been that long.”

“It was forever.”

He smiled. “No, it wasn’t.”

“It’s daytime. You always tell me not to sleep in the daytime.”

“Grandpa and I were busy last night. We didn’t get to sleep. You, on the other hand,” he poked her ribs, drawing a giggle from her lips, “got a comfy twelve hours.”

Billy’s smile remained, but it soon grew thin. “I did?”

“Yes.”

When she spoke again, her tone made him look away from the horizon. “I dreamed.”

“You did?” Something about her expression made him press, “What about?”

A brief pause. Then she said, “Ma.”

Don’s throat clicked as he swallowed. They sat through the silence that followed in the same manner as they had many times before. He knew that he needed to say or do something to break the silence, to bring their thoughts away from Miranda. But nothing came to him. Her absence was still too raw, and the shock of her loss too fresh. He could only hold Billy closer to his side as his own tightened larynx failed him.

“I dream of her most nights,” Billy said. Her voice had a hollow edge, devoid of engagement.

“You do?”

She nodded. “They’re memories, though, from…before. When I wake up I can remember how she smelled. Do you remember how she smelled, Daddy?”

Don stroked her hair. “She smelled of lemons.”

Billy frowned. “What’s that?”

“A fruit. But I haven’t seen any for a long time.”

“Oh… I don’t know what they smell like. Like Ma, I suppose.”

“Yes, like Ma.”

“I dream of her, but she has no face. It’s fuzzy, like a drawing. Will she go away if I forget her face?”

“No, she’ll never go away.”

“But how can she be here if she has no face?”

Don sat back and sighed. “It’s all still there, you’re just not thinking about it right. You’ve got to think about something you did together.” He kissed her forehead. “Try thinking about the Christmas before last,” he whispered. “You remember? How she cooked that enormous turkey, the one that grandpa fed double because it never shut up?”

She nodded, but was otherwise deathly silent.

Don’s throat had grown narrow, but he pressed on, “We ate all those gooseberries by the fire. I’ve never been so full in my life…” He held back a laugh. “She taught you that dance… that…”

“Foxtrot,” Billy muttered.

“Yeah.” He kissed her scalp once more to hide the tears welling behind his eyes. “And we sang until the sun came up. You remember?” His voice wavered near the end of his sentence, but Billy didn’t seem to notice.