Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (14 page)

A few more, “No.”

“We’ll never bow down to what life throws at us. Not this city.”

Almost everybody, louder, “Never!”

“Are we going to forget the faces of those we’ve lost?”

“
NO!
” they bellowed.

“Then let’s get to it. Hang the bunting, fetch the cider, slaughter the livestock, ready the china.” He clapped his hands together with a deafening boom. “
We’ve got a feast to prepare!
”

Eyes lit up like lanterns festooned with oil. Morose sniffing had become wide-eyed glee in a single stride. The crowd rounded the corner buzzing with excited mutterings, half-suppressed giggles and a spring in its step.

Norman had watched the Shepherd wield his flock with mounting awe.
This is what they expect of me?
he thought.
What
he
expects of me? I could never do that—not in a million years.

And yet, despite his admiration, as soon as they were out of sight and Main Street was deserted, his thoughts turned back to the questionable fruits they had picked. He lurched forwards, leading his mount, and pulled Alexander aside. “Alex, we can’t go ahead with the celebrations.” He reached into the sack nearest his reins and pulled out a handful of half-rotted fruit. “What we found today might not do us any good. We’ll be lucky if it’s fit to feed the horses…” Norman stopped, frowning. “Alex?” He wound down to a halt, his argument forgotten.

Alexander wasn’t listening. He stood stock-still, and the plastic smile had fallen slack on his lips. His eyes were focused not on Norman, or the berry-red slush in his outstretched hand, but on the pylon above their heads.

He followed Alexander’s gaze to see a bird perched upon the lines, silhouetted against the sky. A pigeon’s silhouette. “Robert’s been trying to get rid of them for days, but they keep coming back,” he said, glancing between Alexander and the cooing figure. “What’s the matter?”

Alexander’s mouth bobbed without a sound. His cool composure had dissolved, and Norman thought that, for just a moment, he could see fear in his eyes. “We’re not cancelling anything,” he said. He sounded distant, unlike himself. Then he stammered, “I-I have to go.” His hand had risen to his forehead, shielding his eyes. He suddenly seemed disoriented, almost unsteady on his feet. “There’s some business I have to attend to. I’ll find you later.”

He stumbled away, leaving Norman alone on Main Street, baffled, with the pigeon’s shadow bobbing on the cobbles beside him.

By that evening, preparations for the End Day feast were in full swing.

Not a word had been said about cancellation, even after the other scavenging parties had returned, and their own stories of death and destitution had spread to every ear. With the city’s sullen mood finally on the verge of breaking, Norman didn’t have the heart to speak up.

Despite searching for the remainder of the day, he didn’t see Alexander again until the following evening. Nor, in fact, did anybody else.

The rowboat hit sand with a shuddering jolt, neatly sliding from the sea onto the windswept beach. There, it slumped onto its side, and its three occupants fell with it, rolling into the surf.

All was still for some minutes while the breeze kicked up the shifting dunes and a flock of gulls screeched above, wheeling around to circle the wonder from across the sea.

Then, one of the limp, dehydrated figures stirred. A haggard middle-aged man struggled to lift his head and clap eyes on his surroundings, uttering a breathless cry when he saw what lay before him.

Alien land loomed beyond the beach, primordial cliffs, grey skies, and an endless, unbroken forest.

Don swam up from unconsciousness towards sunlight. It was tough, tiring work, like throwing off a lead duvet. Shapes loomed from fuzzy oblivion: two bodies, one large and one small, and beyond them a blurred tapestry that could have only been land.

A sound escaped his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a scream. They had made it.

Through heavy-lidded eyes he could only vaguely make out Billy’s figure. But he could make out her chest—rising and falling, rising and falling…

She was alive.

Satisfied, he sank back towards blackness for a while, and rested.

At some point he began struggling up the beach on his hands and knees in a series of bursts that he would later only recall in brief flashes. Somehow, he managed to drag Billy with him, and even to return for the old man.

The inevitable happened just after the three of them had passed the tideline. He began coughing. A single throat-clearing jolt was enough to send his lungs into spasm. He hadn’t the energy to do anything but ball his hands into fists and try to keep his airway free of sputum until it had passed.

Afterwards, he laid gasping, tasting blood, not daring to move. A steady pain was pulsing through his abdomen and his head felt fuzzy, his thoughts distant and diffuse. Between the pain and the disorientating roar of the surf, he lost track of time. Staring down at the sand, he was content to remain there for as long as the day lasted.

On several occasions he oscillated between waking thoughts and vacant darkness. The world would settle into focus for a few moments before darkening, pulling away and vanishing.

After an amount of time that could have been anywhere between a few seconds and several hours, he was strong enough to sit up and look around. The boat was where he had left it down by the water, lying on its side. Their things, however, had been unloaded and set in the dry sand, such that they cast a long shadow over his body.

Billy was beside him, cross-legged in the sand, gazing at the land spread out before her and surveying the coast from end to end. When Don moved into a more dignified position, she started. “You were asleep,” she said.

“What? No, no, I was just tired. You know I get tired a lot at the moment.”

She shook her head, smiling. “You were snoring.”

“I was?” Don looked down at his spread-eagled impression in the sand, firmly set and comically accurate, a strict mould of the contours of his face. “How long?”

Billy looked stricken, and glanced at the pocket watch dangling from his belt. “I don’t know time, Daddy,” she said.

“You can tell time.” Despite his exhaustion, he kept his voice firm and pointed to the sky.

Billy glanced at the sun and hunched her shoulders, shying away from it. “I can’t,” she said.

“Of course you can.”

“I don’t like to. You can do it better with your watch. The sun isn’t as good, you said.”

Don sighed and used their piled supplies to haul himself to his feet. He took a deep breath as a pang of land sickness nauseated him. “Roughly,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “How long, roughly?”

Billy scrunched up her face. After a few hesitant stutters and false starts, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Don leaned against the boxes and rested his head in his hands. “Billy, I know that you can tell time. You’ve been able to do it since you could talk.”

She looked unsettled. “I don’t like to,” she said. “I like your watch. I like you to tell time.”

Don caught her glancing at the pocket watch; an intrigued, but distantly frightened look, as though she suspected that it contained untold powers, which only adults had the wisdom to wield.

Don nodded. “Alright,” he said.

She looked pleased to be rid of the conversation, and resumed scanning the coast.

Don attempted to gauge how long had passed himself. There was no question that the shadows had shifted, but the sun was still high in the sky. He decided that it couldn’t have been longer than an hour.

He approached the tideline and craned his neck, trying to peer around a distant peninsula blocking their view to the south. Besides the boat and themselves, there was nothing distinctive about the landscape at all. They alone seemed to break the landscape’s perfect symmetry, caught between the four elements of sky, sea, sand and forest.

“Where are we?” he said.

“New land,” Billy said. “It is New Land, isn’t it, Daddy?”

”I don’t know. Wherever it is, it definitely isn’t home.”

She made a noise of bemusement. “It has a name. Enger Land?”

“England.”

“That’s a funny name. I think Enger Land is better.”

Don straightened when a shadow appeared from the forest and made its way towards them. His momentary shock gave way to recognition as the old man’s unmistakable figure emerged from the shade of the treetops, stumbling and cursing his way across the sand. After what seemed like an age, he reached them. Dropping an armful of dried wood in front of them, he dusted his hands and gestured to it with a cry of satisfaction.

“What’s this?” Don said, inspecting a twisted lump of dried root.

“Fuel, dear boy.”

“Good.”

“We’ll stay here for the night. There’s no sense in wandering now. We’ll only get lost.”

Don looked around at the barren dunes. “We’ll be seen,” he said. “The beach is too open. We should move inland.”

The old man gestured to the trees. “There’s nobody there.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Past the trees, there are more trees. That forest is thick…it looks like it goes on for miles. There isn’t a break in sight.”

“So?”

“So? No water, no room, no animals. There’s no reason for anybody to be anywhere near here. So we’ll stay the night.”

Don thought of arguing—wanted to argue—but the old man had already set about constructing a plateau in the sand upon which to build their fire. He avoided Billy’s eye and started helping the old man without another word.

Once a nest of flames was crackling in the sand, the three of them stretched out beside it in silence, listening to the surf as the sun began its long descent. After a while, the old man brought out a small pile of bruised fruit. They cut it into slices, perhaps too thin in an effort to make it last, but it was still far from a satisfying meal.

The old man threw a spare stick into the flames and let loose a high-pitched titter. “We were aiming for Bristol, but I climbed a hill on the other side of the trees… I don’t see anything.

“I think we must have overshot. The winds were against us. They must’ve won, pulled us around the head of Cornwall and into the Channel.” He lapsed into silence, but still looked troubled.

Don waited a few moments before prompting him. “Where are we, then?”

The old man thrust out his bottom lip and shook his head. “I don’t recognise this coastline. We were drifting for a whole day.” He laughed again, but there was no humour in it. “Portsmouth? Brighton? Maybe even Hastings… I don’t know.”

He looked unsettled for a moment longer, then his face cleared, and a thin smile touched his lips. “Still, spilt milk and all that—”

Whatever that meant,
Don thought.

“We’re here. That’s all that matters. We should just get some sleep and see what we find tomorrow.” He lay down and closed his eyes.

They lapsed into silence.

Don lay with his back to the sea and kept watch over the trees, unable to shake the creeping sensation that had settled along the back of his neck.

Billy sat beside him, twiddling the remains of the matchstick they had used between her fingers as her eyelids grew heavier. She inspected the charred tip, her brow furrowed, and said, “How do you make matches?”

Don smiled. “Will you ever stop asking questions?” he said.

“I don’t know. Maybe when I know everything, like you and Grandpa.”

Don settled into the sand and gazed at the sky. “I have no idea how to make matches,” he said.

Billy recoiled. Her face contorted, as though she’d tasted something bitter. “What?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you know everything.”

“No.”

Billy looked at the match, offended by its existence. She turned it over in her hands and threw occasional glances in his direction. “If you don’t know how to make matches, then how do we have them?”

“We found them.”

“Who made them?”

“Others.”

Billy looked about. “Where are they?”

“Gone.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know.”

Billy seemed confused by the concept of there being knowledge that Don didn’t have immediate access to.

“You need phosphorus and potassium chlorate to make matches,” the old man said without warning. His eyes were closed, but his voice was strong and awake. He sounded amused by the turn of events.

Billy looked at the old man and then back to Don. “You lied?”

Don blinked, taken aback. “No.”

“You
do
know everything.”

“No.”

“Grandpa knows how to make matches.”

Don leaned over and pulled her towards him. “Grandpa’s older than I am, and so he knows more than I do.”

“How does he know more?”

“He asked his father questions, like I asked him questions and like you ask me questions. But I never asked him how to make matches.”

What Don failed to mention was that his father had survived the end of the Old World. Billy knew nothing of it. To her, their lives were merely the latest in an eternal struggle for survival in a world full of inanimate knickknacks.