Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) (9 page)

He had to leave immediately.

Grabbing the nearest serviceable bag, he set about packing. Scooping up clothes and underwear at random, he cast enormous volumes of his treasured belongings aside, never to be looked at again. Music, video games, textbooks and a great many novels parted in his wake. He continued his merciless assault until stopped by the sight of a single book, which lay in a tangled bed of ancient athletic gear. He dropped his bag and reached for it, sweeping away the heavy coating of dust upon it.

The cover was dark green, plain and very old, marked only by a delicate title of gold leaf: his father’s copy of
Alice in Wonderland
. He took it in both hands, feeling the weight of it, taking note of the ancient stains and frayed binding.

“There’s a story and a half about that book, let me tell you,” his father had said once.

Alex had never asked to hear that story. Now he’d never know. As he stared down at it, his father’s voice echoed in his head once more: “
Some men have a destiny. And you got that, boy. You got that in spades.
”

The book weighed heavy in his hands, heavier by the moment. He lowered it into his bag and forced his eyes away from it, swallowing to clear a solid lump in his throat. He finished packing the rest in just over a minute, and swept a long look around at the room, certain that it would be for the last time. Before nostalgia or hesitation could set in, he turned and descended the stairs. Returning to the living room, he then packed his still-wrapped gifts.

The dog emerged from under the stairs, sensing that something was about to happen, whining at the sight of his bag. He stroked her head, but still she yipped, her shoulders hunched, sensing something at odds with the world as surely as he.

Outside, the sky was beginning to darken as the day came to a close, and he became aware that he was set to sleep in the empty house for the night if he lingered any longer. There was no way he would be able to stand that.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

The two of them left the house within the minute and marched away down the street. Alex was determined not to look back, but couldn’t resist a final glance as they rounded the corner. The dog howled as it passed from sight. He, in turn, gritted his teeth against a fresh slab of heartache.

Then it was gone, and he was heading into the vastness of an empty world.

They walked for an hour before Alex decided to stop and check the nearest house. At first he only found cold coffee collecting dust, bread growing hard in the toaster, and a prepacked briefcase in the hallway. But when he looked closer, he found the owner’s remains: a single bathrobe, still damp, spread in the approximate posture of a lounging person at the breakfast table. A pair of spectacles lay shattered near one of the chair legs.

He returned to the street with gooseflesh blossoming on his arms and neck. Hurrying away, he could no longer ignore the endless piles of clothing. He was walking over fresh, invisible graves.

From then on, as the hours passed, he checked larger and larger establishments, eventually making his way to police stations, schools and office buildings. He found nothing but more clothing, half-eaten food, and myriad half-completed tasks. Gas hobs blazed, air conditioners whistled, and cooling car engines ticked. But there was no hint of an evacuation, or abduction. Every shred of evidence indicated that people had simply disappeared, mid-action.

On several occasions he considered searching for the man he’d seen while Paul Towers had died at his feet. Where had he come from? Where had he gone? Had he even been there at all?

Each time he found himself shuddering with disquiet—the manner in which that lupine smile had fixed upon him had been almost predatory, as though Alex had been but a scurrying ant beneath a magnifying glass.

He never searched for the man. After a while, Alex even found himself pushing any thought of him from his mind.

He slept that night in the living room of a tiny bungalow, which had belonged to a couple of pensioners, judging by its many framed photographs, stagnant atmosphere, and the flock wallpaper hanging from the walls.

After that, he lost track of everything. Time became a dimensionless entity, settling somewhere between a trickle and a relentless cascade. Villages, roads, and towns passed by, one by one, but none yielded a single clue, just more of the same wreckage.

On the second day, the swarms flew overhead: enormous flocks of squawking birds that wheeled and swirled as one, stretching from horizon to horizon and blacking out the sky. He spent the majority of the daylight hours looking skyward. Millions passed overhead, hour after hour; every species Alex could name, and more. They cast shadows abound onto the ruined world of man, occasionally straying too close to the ground and committing suicide in their thousands, colliding with brick walls and plummeting through panes of glass without any attempt at evasion, as though blinded.

They plagued the heavens until dusk had fallen. When the sun rose the next day, they too had disappeared. Alex hoped that they had merely moved on instead of vanishing themselves.

He pushed on, still accompanied by the dog, which insisted on tossing around the bloody remains of brained birds whenever he stopped to rest. He was moving north, never once diverting from an arrow-straight course, following the roads.

At the end of the third day, while he was hopelessly lost in an area devoid of landmarks or signs of habitation, the sky grew dark and mist scaled the hills. Then the heavens opened, and rain began to hammer down over the carcass of the Old World.

Sunlight streamed through the curtains, bathing the bed in an orange glow.

Norman stirred slowly, his body cocooned in the sheets. It was some time before he could bring himself to move, listening to the din of the waking city.

The room grew brighter, and the shifting shadows danced to the birds’ morning chorus. Against the far wall a chintzy sofa lay strewn with his muddied, half-rotten clothing. Surrounding it was a sea of trinkets and half-remembered trophies he’d liberated from countless ruined homes.

As the fog of sleep waned, he found himself disoriented. He could only distantly recall returning home, and had no memory of going to bed whatsoever. The previous day seemed far away and unreal, but the dirt of the wilderness still clung to his skin, matting his hair, and he could smell its concentrated stink high up in the fleshy parts of his nose.

They relied on a cacophony of hastily repaired knickknacks for power. Lighting the city at night commandeered what little they managed to store. Hot water was for daylight hours only, and so he had been forced to slouch away to bed after only a cold, cursory flannel wash.

As wakefulness set in and he hauled his aching body free of the bed, his stomach rumbled to the sound of thunderous growling.

They needed more food. What they had brought back wouldn’t last more than a day or two, even with all the cooks’ tricks and the pitiful portion sizes they had all grown used to.

Rubbing his gut and pulling on fresh clothes, he found his gaze drawn to the walls. Whenever they returned from the wilds, it all seemed more unreal—the fact that endless crowds of people, real people, had once walked the streets outside filled him with unease.

Before the End, his house had belonged to an elderly couple. Their personals spoke of a quiet, contented lifestyle, filling the house with a quaint and wholesome atmosphere that had outlasted not only them, but the entire world. He’d kept it all exactly as it’d been left, every picture and furnishing. It was a comfort to act as custodian to something so undeniably homely. Sometimes it felt almost as though the oldies had simply gone away on a trip, leaving him as housekeep.

Little fantasies like that made the lonelier days bearable.

He crossed the room to crack open the window, shivering as a frosty breeze brushed his cheeks, carrying with it the distant clink of cutlery upon plates and the chattering of sleep-addled voices. Those on field duty were having breakfast in the hall. He suspected that Lucian would be there too, watching for slackers like a hawk as usual—and waiting for Norman to show his face.

But there would be enough time for a shower. He was grimed enough to be stiff as a board. He’d make time. As he grabbed a towel and headed into the hallway, floorboards creaking in his wake, his stomach rumbled once more.

Lucian was staring at him as they sat down, his brow furrowed into its signature pockmarked streak—a wrinkled, vertical canyon between his eyes. Norman averted his gaze, intent on quelling the ache in his belly before the day’s run of trouble began in earnest.

There were around three dozen people in the kitchen, all eating ravenously. Breakfast was eggs and toast, courtesy of their own chickens. Despite the menu’s bold claim, the disappointment wrought by the sight of what actually lay on each plate—half a boiled egg and a single wedge of bread from the Mill’s brittle loaves—pervaded the room.

The building was low and wide, with windows large enough to permit thick shafts of soft dawn light to splash down onto a patchwork of scavenged rugs. A hearty fire crackled in the inglenook at the far end, bathing the air in a woody punch.

But the environs did nothing for the mood. The summer morning was powerless against the grumblings of unsatisfied diners and the racket of empty stomachs.

Manning the cookers was a small group of acting chefs. The city’s more mundane tasks ran on a rota system. Everyone took their turn. Those on the morning shift today looked drawn and tired, discontent at having had to rise before dawn only to serve such a meagre meal.

Norman took a bite of mottled crust, tasted sawdust—Rayford Hubble, the miller, had been adding bulk to make the loaves go further—and turned his gaze upon Lucian. “What do you think?” he said.

Lucian swallowed the last of his ration without complaint and leant back from the table. “I’m not sure we should risk it. We don’t want anybody following us back here. We can’t afford the attention. People are stretched thin as it is.”

“I thought we needed the food,” Norman said.

“We do.” He shrugged. “Your decision. You’re the ‘future king’.”

Norman grimaced. “I hate that.”

Lucian’s face remained set, but his eyes flashed with brief amusement. “I’m not going to help you make every little decision forever. Sooner or later you’re going to have to do it all solo.”

Norman sighed and bent closer, feeling more childlike by the second. “Well, what do you think we should do?” he murmured.

Lucian shot him a glance laced with exasperation.

Norman rubbed his eyes, gritting his teeth. If there was one thing he hated above all else, it was being put on the spot. “We need the food, simple as that,” he said. “We’ll have to risk it.”

Lucian nodded. Norman thought the gorge between his eyes had become a little shallower, but it might have been the light. “Fine. But we need to go now, before it gets late. If we run into trouble, I don’t want to have to retreat in failing light.”

Norman cleared his plate, savouring the flavour for a moment. Eggs had been something he’d only recently begun to eat on a frequent basis before the famine. In his childhood they had been a rare treat. Now, they were once again a rarity.

Then he nodded, getting to his feet. “Have you heard from Allison?” he said.

“Not since last night.”

Norman’s gut rattled with disquiet at that. Lucian’s eyes told a similar story.

“Just how short on supplies are we?”

Lucian belched, stretching skyward as he got to his feet. Despite his stature—his extended fingertips didn’t reach much higher than Norman’s crown—people rarely noticed. His perpetual scowling countenance made him seem a far larger, more dangerous creature, a silver-haired wolverine.

He thought a moment longer. “Hard to say. There are still half a dozen other scavenging parties out there. No telling what they’ll bring back.” He grumbled for a moment. “To be safe, six bags. That’ll get us through the celebration.”

“We shouldn’t be gathering for the celebration this year. There just isn’t enough to go around.”

“Try telling Alex that.”

Norman grumbled, made a quick estimate in his head, and cursed. “It just isn’t going to stretch far enough. Birchington doesn’t have that much to spare. Not half of it would have germinated by now.”

“We could try Whitstable. And we should take Allison. She'll stir up a storm if we leave her here.”

“She’ll just slow us down. How many people could she talk to in a few hours?”

Lucian threw him a look.

Norman hesitated—

How many? The whole city, and the birds in the sky to boot.

—and then nodded. “Right. I’ll get her and meet you at the stables.” He left the hall and stepped out onto Main Street, holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the rising sun.

Beyond a rusted substation transformer from which wires spewed on all sides were three men dressed in blue overalls and hardhats, all looking up towards the top of a rusted pylon. For a moment Norman was nonplussed, until he saw the jagged silhouette of a bird’s nest amidst the cables.