Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (51 page)

Alexander led the charge over the crest of the hill, rifle balanced atop his saddle. Six riders banked away to either side, while the rest stayed their course, following him into a headlong descent. The group enveloped the office complex, each rider poised to open fire at a moment’s notice, orbiting the chain-link fence.

Yet, as they reached the valley floor and the horses’ hooves ceased to resonate, the resultant silence was deafening. Not a thing stirred amongst the tower block’s remains. The entire valley was still and quiet, dead as the darkest Old World wreckage.

Alexander blinked, casting wild glances around at the surrounding hilltops, half expecting to see their enemy lining the tree line, ready to strike. For a moment he cursed himself, convinced that he’d led them into a trap—onto low ground, where they could be picked off without trouble.

But there was nobody there.

The others’ war cries trailed off without dignity. They slowed to a canter, then a trot. Then each rider stopped dead and exchanged disconcerted glances with their neighbour.

Alex had been sure that they would be met by an immediate volley of defensive gunfire. But after a further minute of half-hearted circling, nothing had stirred. The building sat derelict, nestled amongst overgrown layers of nettles and ferns.

Quiet as a tomb.

Alexander called a halt, and any residual movement died away. As one, they stared at the main entrance, which had been riddled with ragged bullet holes. A small, crimson lump lay nestled in the grass before the doors, unmoving. Beside it was the unmistakable profile of a stunted pistol.

“What do you think?” Lucian said, close behind Alexander’s shoulder.

“They’re gone.” Alexander urged his mount forwards with a kick of his spurs.

The other men followed suit cautiously. From every direction, they drew closer to the concrete walls. Alexander listened all the while with one ear cocked, and still heard nothing from within the building except for the monotonous whistle of a stray breeze.

But the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end all the same.

He and Lucian were the first to dismount. They alighted on tiptoes and flattened themselves against the edge of the building, beckoning for the others to follow. The ragged hole left in the tower block’s side by its fallen wall was only feet away—a gaping, unstable maw that looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Alex approached it nonetheless. Taking a deep breath, he leapt up onto a slab of fallen concrete. His feet met the surface with an unexpected lack of traction, and he wobbled momentarily before pitching himself towards whatever lay beyond.

He landed with a hollow clatter, squinting amidst inky blackness, and managed to pick out the edges of what looked to be a stairwell. It was cool and damp. A pervading odour rose up in waves, musky but sweet, catching at the back of his throat.

Lucian had leapt in behind him by the time his eyes had begun to adjust, and he could see well enough to tell that they stood upon a narrow landing. One flight of stairs down was a rusted ‘G’, which he guessed indicated the ground floor. The flight above them, however, led to nowhere; the upper landing had fallen away along with the outer wall.

Down was the only way.

With a clatter, three more men joined them upon the crumbling platform. Elsewhere in the building they could hear similar clatters as the others invaded through alternate entrances. They descended towards the rusted ‘G’ and passed through the doorway beneath it. Beyond, the darkness seemed to grow only thicker.

Alex remained upon the threshold for some time, uncertain. Craning his neck, desperate to catch even the smallest detail, he placed his hand on the wall nearest to him for support, and cried out: it was slicked with something akin to treacle.

He drew his hand away, but it was too dark to see even his own palm. Cursing, he stepped through the doorway, nearly yelling in fright when his foot hooked on something lying across the threshold. Freezing in place, he stroked the trigger of his rifle while his eyes roamed the blackness, fumbling with a small torch attached to his belt.

“Think that’s a good idea?” Lucian uttered. “If we’re not alone, we’ll be made.”

Alex held the torch aloft. “There’s nobody here,” he said, and thumbed the switch. A beam of light burst from its tip and pooled against the wall ahead, revealing what lay before them.

Revealing horror incarnate.

“Jesus,” Lucian whispered.

Every wall was dripping with streaks of blood, every surface, every pane of glass and rotten furnishing, contrasting to such an extreme with the grey walls and drab plywood that it seemed to scream out at them. Alex dipped the beam as fast as he could, but still the others’ rush of gasps and bouts of disgusted gagging deafened him.

Turning the torch beam upon the floor, he saw that his foot was wedged beneath the torso of a young woman. Half her face was calm and untroubled, as though she merely slept. The other half had been cleaved away, right down to the naked skull.

A curious mixture of fury and paralysing shock came over him. He turned around as his stomach churned. As though from afar he heard the others retching and reeling away from the carpet of bodies that lay in every direction.

Other shafts of light were spearing into the darkness elsewhere on the ground floor as the other teams reached the lobby. Each revealed only more bodies, carved up and motionless on the ground.

From somewhere across the lobby, Lucian’s voice rang out, “Anybody find any survivors?”

A few nauseated grunts issued from each corner. All reported in the negative. A series of booming footsteps heralded Lucian’s approach. A moment later he was once again at Alexander’s side. “Robert said they tried to fight back,” he said, and shook his head. “Look at these people. They’re wives. Kids. Old folks. They didn’t stand a chance.” He shone his own light on the girl at Alex’s feet, and closed his eyes against the sight of her face. “These people were executed. None of them were armed.”

He fumed. “They were kept here for”—he paused—“what, insurance?”

“That’s what Charlie said.”

“If they went through the trouble of enslaving all these families, how could they afford to kill them?”

“Maybe they were too much trouble. Either that, or it’s an example.”

“To whom?”

“To us.”

Alex left the room without another word, and set about searching the nearby offices, holding a hand to his churning gut. The corridors were empty, dank and rotten. Shining his light on the floor, he saw the remains of a great many pitiful meals, little more than bowls of gruel.

The last room along the corridor was the smallest, and had been swept and neatened. It contained only a desk, upon which lay something he recognised from profile only: a single silver-grey feather. Beneath it was a brown envelope.

A shiver coursed along his spine. He looked over his shoulder and saw that he was alone. Pushing the rickety remnant of the door ajar and stepping inside, he took the rifle from around his neck and leaned it against the wall.

He sat on the chair, cradled his head in his hands, and remained there in silence for a long time. Only when his hands had ceased to shake did he train the torch beam upon the envelope and reached out towards it.

Billy was crouched amidst leaf litter. The branches of trees that had survived the year’s strife danced overhead, having recently taken on a new lease of life. The grass underfoot was shedding the last of its desiccated, straw-like texture, and once again reached for the sky. Green shoots budded amidst the morning dew.

Life was returning to a world that had come so close to cataclysm for the second time in living memory. Birds once again twittered in the trees, and deer once again frolicked beneath the canopies of the land’s youthful forests—forests still growing up around the remains of villages, towns and cities. Even a few hardy flowers had dared to rear their beauteous heads.

Billy had been sitting beneath the sun-dappled fronds of the sheltered copse for over an hour. It offered her all the cover she needed to remain hidden from any onlooker. A tawny owl had remained close by for some time, hooting somewhere out of sight, rustling buckled undergrowth.

Below her, perched upon a rocky incline that led down to a dense scatter of lean-to shacks, were the carcasses of ancient mobile caravans. Around them was what had been a halo of camping tents. The tracks that the newcomers had made in the earth as they’d arrived were still fresh.

She had found the settlement after the last of the food stores in the cabin had run dry. Daddy no longer noticed when she strayed from his beside unless he was sitting up for their daily meal—which now only lasted a mere handful of minutes, due to the pitiful size of their rations. The rest of the time he lay in a daze, slowly fading, growing further from her and the world with each passing day.

Sometimes he spoke nonsense, mumbled about a tower, a city, and a Dark Man. At first it had only scared her, and she had thought it meant Daddy was going to die soon. But then she had started having dreams too. Most of the things she saw were confused, just blurs, but through it all she could make out three men. One was blonde and old, another brown-haired and young. Her waking thoughts were of these strangers. She could have sworn she knew them, but had never laid eyes on either.

Then there was the third: the Dark Man. She didn’t want to believe it was the same man Daddy saw, but when Daddy woke and talked about his nightmares, she knew it was. It was all the same, every detail. The pale young face, the dark cloak, and the strange marks over his cheekbones…

But there hadn’t been time to dwell. They needed food.

Her first foray outside had been fraught with false starts and frightened tears, but after an hour she’d managed to brave the small distance to the cliff side. There, she had discovered that the cliffs formed a ridge, several hundred feet above the inland basin, leading down towards a vast expanse of fields and scrubland, all wild and unpopulated.

She had expected, and secretly hoped, that Daddy would wake and scold her for daring to wander away without his knowledge. But he had still been dazed and only semiconscious when she had returned.

She’d endured a night’s hunger and growing thirst before daring to go out once again, straying into the nearby forest from whence they had come. That time she’d brought back stream water and berries. The water had unsettled her stomach, and Daddy had been furious when she had tried to feed him the berries—for, unbeknownst to her, they had been of a bad kind—and admitted what she’d done. But, despite his anger, he had taken her into his arms and thanked her.

That night he had laboriously sketched and described the safest and most likely things to eat that could be found in the forest, and sent her back the following day, with strict orders to stay close.

And stay close she had, that day. She’d brought back a few handfuls of blackberries and a canteen of water, which she had then boiled under his instruction. They had eaten together after nightfall, and Billy had felt stronger —not only in body, but in mind. She had done something herself. She had taken care of them.

She had, for the first time, taken the edge off the fear boiling away in her gut.

But her newfound strength had been cut down by the fact that, despite her efforts, Daddy had weakened only further by morning.

From then on she had strayed farther and farther into the woods, gathering the items that Daddy had described. Unfortunately, the woodland was too young for very much of anything to have grown to maturity. She was soon forced to stray even farther, far enough to have stumbled across the travellers’ settlement.

From her vantage point in the copse she had watched them a little more each day.

At first, she would never have considered approaching them. Although Daddy now spoke almost constantly of leaving him alone—of leaving him in the cabin and finding people elsewhere—she refused to entertain the idea.

She didn’t mention her discovery. Daddy would only want to investigate himself, something she was sure was now beyond him. Instead, she had merely watched, and waited, as a sense of the ragtag microcommunity had formed in her mind.

They, too, were new to the basin. That much had been immediately obvious. Still very much embroiled in the tasks of tying guy ropes, unpacking their belongings and felling nearby underbrush, their malnourished bodies and travel-weary faces had betrayed their true identities: nomads, forced away from their homeland—just like her, and Daddy…and Grandpa.

They, however, had clearly developed a few skills along the road, and had had more success at gathering than she. Each day they managed to acquire a mouthwatering array of fruits, root vegetables, berries, nuts, fish and smoked meats. As though only to taunt Billy further, they piled their spoils in the centre of their circle of makeshift homes.

While Billy had visited more often each day, and the sparse offerings of the forest had thinned to the point of mere morsels, she had watched them with a sense of overwhelming desperation growing inside her.