Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Page 9

  But he didn’t fall. She caught him.

  Now it was her hand wrapped around his, all the more vice-like. She said nothing, nor did he; the two of them merely stared at one another, and the endless times they saved one another’s lives echoed between them. Then Lincoln crumpled onto her, a single gasp escaping his lips. He clutched at her shawl, and felt her fingers run through his wispy shock of white hair.

  “Don’t leave me, not here, not alone,” he hissed. “Please.”

  Her voice had regained its sharp and measured edge, yet through it a note of softness twinkled. “I’m sorry.”

  They remained there like that for a time, glad for the contact. Lincoln took hold of himself, rising from her chest with all the dignity he could muster.

  “They’re all gone, aren’t they?” she said.

  He drew a long sigh. “Soon,” he said, “soon we will all be gone.”

  The survivors of the End had grown elderly, even those who had been young and fresh when the Old World departed—even Alexander.

  “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Evelyn said. “After all we’ve given, the lives that were sacrificed.”

  “It was always going to escalate.”

  “But to end like this…”

  “End? No, this is not the end.” He took her hand and pressed it between both of his. “Our greatest achievement was always in showing just how inextinguishable the flame of civilisation really is. Even if we all fall here, somewhere and some time, there will be others. And they will know what we did here.”

  She gave him a thin and watery smile. “Tell me it was worth it, Oliver,” she said. “Tell me I lived a good life.”

  He brought her hand gently to his lips. “My lady,” he whispered. “There was never a better life lived.”

  Then it was him taking her into his arms. Clumsy rattling footsteps arrived from the depths of the tower, accompanied by exhausted panting. Lincoln didn’t turn from his embrace with Evelyn as somebody arrived in the doorway behind them. From the little wheezing sounds, he recognised Latif Hadad.

  That boy knows more about machines than his fellow man. I forgot to add tact to our syllabus.

  “Yes?” he said, injecting gruffness into his voice.

  “The… the…” Latif seemed utterly incapacitated.

  “Spit it out, you great lump!”

  “We… we’re picking up…”

  Lincoln shot a reproachful look over his shoulder but paused when he caught sight of Latif. The boy was pale and blinking, not so much exhausted as shocked. He waited a few moments, then Latif seemed to snap somewhat from his reverie.

  “We’re picking up a signal.”

  “Yes, Mr Hadad,” Lincoln said, a sinking sensation in his chest. “That was days ago. We played it before the council. I trust this is ringing bells?”

  Has the boy snapped?

  Latif blinked again, shook his head, and, incredibly, laughed. “Not this one.”

  Lincoln wasn’t sure who tensed first, himself or Evelyn. All he knew was the next moment they were both inbound upon the pale-faced lad. He seemed to come fully to his senses as they bore down; pure and blind excitement took root. He laughed again, bunching his fists.

  “I caught a signal from another frequency. Another voice. Music!”

  Lincoln was halfway to casting a hand dismissively through the air when Latif took a step closer.

  “Music, you old fools. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Never, ever, has he dared disrespect me in front of Evelyn. He’s forgotten himself. He… he tells the truth.

  “The Blanket must be fracturing,” Latif said, wringing his hands. “After all this time, it’s breaking up.”

  “When did you last sleep? Because if you are mistaken…” Lincoln kept his tone stern, but there was no fight left in him.

  The mere mention of this, the possibilities…

  “Oliver?” Evelyn said.

  Lincoln said nothing. Slowly, from somewhere he thought might have died forever inside him, a smile crept up from the darkness and tickled the corners of his mouth.

  Latif laughed again. The dusty Old World office, full of computer monitors and long-forgotten files, came momentarily back from the dead like a corpse animated by an electric shock.

  “Walk with us,” Evelyn said. She sounded powerful, her old unstoppable self. “Say it all, and say it slow.”

  VIII

  Alexander Cain pushed aside the drawn curtains of his fire-lit study and cursed around a mouthful of wine.

  They were everywhere now, leagues of ragged people crawling from the forest. Over the past few hours they had gathered like lobotomised farm animals upon his lawn, staring around at New Canterbury and one another; first a handful, then a couple of dozen. Now there could easily have been a hundred out there, sitting between the flower beds and garden gnomes, unpacking meagre packets of food and water and sharing them out.

  Alexander stood watching them, wavering on the spot with wine dripping from his beard. When some of them looked over towards the house, he dropped the curtain back into place and turned to the fireplace. The room swam before him, a portrait of the Old World: every inch of wall-space occupied by some oil canvas or photograph, originals taken from the nation’s many galleries; upon a great network of scattered trestle tables lay antique bric-a-brac from every period and culture; and around them, lining the entire back wall from edge to edge, a library of books to give even the mountains of volumes in the vaults beneath the city a run for their money.

  But these books did not belong to the city. They were not meant for the furtherance of the mission. These were his books. His sanctuaries.

  For so long this place had been his palace, a great bubble of trapped Old World atmosphere from which he drew his strength and solace.

  Now they seemed little more than bags of pulp, slowly rotting on the shelves. Whispers of voices long vanished into the ground, their genius forever lost; the great tower of cards with which the knowledge of the Old World had been built, fallen.

  Alexander wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders and wandered towards his armchair by the fire. Dropping heavily into it, he glowered at the leather-bound volumes as though they whispered about him, taunting and giggling between themselves.

  I shouldn’t have come back. I should have stayed out there in the wilds. They’d be better off without me. Now I have a private crowd waiting for me to appear like some cult leader come to save them. Perfect.

  Alexander raised the wine bottle halfway to his lips, then sighed as he turned it in his grip to look at the label.

  Le Pin, Pomerol, 1987

  The exquisite Bordeaux had been in his private collection for at least ten years. He’d looked it up once: it had sold for over a thousand pounds per bottle. He had been saving it for the day that had for so long nestled in his imagination: their day of victory, when the Old World was reborn, the nation united in a fervour of new innovation, and Norman took his place to lead them to a new tomorrow.

  He hadn’t pictured this, quaffing straight from the bottle, alone and unwashed in the dark. Hiding from everyone who might look to him.

  Sneering at the bottleneck as it hovered towards his lips, he took another swig, hiccoughed, and thrust it away from him. The tannin burned his nostrils as he forced it down, and he slammed his fist on the leather armrest, fury exploding from the seat of his gut.

  “Why do they have to come now?” he snarled. “What do they want from me? I have nothing left to give. Why? Why would they come?”

  He pulled the blanket even tighter over him, chewing his lip and sinking in the chair. “Why?” he muttered.

  “’Cause you are Alexander Cain,” said a brittle, voice from the doorway.

  Alexander moved without thinking. Through the drunken haze, his hand plunged towards the revolver on the table beside him and waved it in the general direction of the door. He squinted through watery eyes at the figure hanging by the threshold, hunchbacked and shapele
ss under a simple white robe he recognised only too well.

  Only a handful of elders wore those robes: the Alliance’s founders. And only one remained here, besides himself.

  Alexander dropped the revolver to his side, speechless, as Agatha tottered into the fire’s pool of light, the flickering flames reflected in the pallor of her ancient face. Fair and serene, she had long haunted New Canterbury’s streets, a benign ghost of a world departed. Right now she seemed anything but benign. Her milky cataracts moved over the room, a gaze that threatened to blister the walls if it lingered too long.

  Not long ago, Agatha had been lost to the clutches of dementia, a yielding shell. For the past year, when famine had gripped the city and everyone had only waited for her to die, she had seldom recognised him at all.

  Old, she had said, over and over, cradling his face. You’re so old.

  No longer. Presently she shook with rage. Alexander had not seen his mother in over forty years, since the morning the End had taken her away, but that morning she had glowered at him with her hands on her hips, demanding to know why he hadn’t prepped for his English exam. Right now he saw her reflected in Agatha’s tempestuous glare. The heat of the fire in the grate seemed to dwindle in the wake of her shadow as she looked slowly from his wine-soaked beard to the pulled curtains, then to the gun, and finally, to the bottle in his hand.

  Shame climbed Alexander’s throat, and he could only stare forlornly back, heavy drunken breaths whistling through his nostrils.

  “Who are you?” she muttered, her lips pulling back from her teeth.

  Alexander’s chest fluttered, and his mouth fell ajar. He mouthed with no words to give. His shoulders slumped as he drew several heaving sighs and brought up his free hand to cover his eyes. “I’ve failed them, Aggie,” he slurred.

  He heard her footsteps come closer. When they reached only a few feet away, he made to explain himself, to somehow make her understand. Before he could sit up, the bottle was ripped from his hand, and the world went dark for an instant as her fist collided with the side of his head.

  Not a slap, but a tiny-fisted punch, straight to the ear.

  Shocked, Alexander watched her turn in a whirl of robes and stride back the way she’d come.

  “Aggie!” he cried, dazed. “Wait. They’re out there!”

  “Yes, they’re out there!” she stormed, turning on her heel. “More of ’em come by the minute. Why do you reckon that is, eh?” Her eye twitched, and she pointed a bony finger at him, stabbing. “’Cause of you! They come for their messiah! The one man everyone in this Alliance has got faith in.”

  He swallowed thickly and cast his gaze into the fire. “I led us here, to this. If it weren’t for me, none of these people would be on death’s door. They’re better off without me.”

  “They hold by a thread, Alexander. I am doin’ everything I can, but in the blink of an eye I could be gone, back to some dribbling wreck—some old biddy askin’ where she is and what’s for dinner.” Her lips trembled under his blazing gaze, and she yelled, “What are you doin’?”

  He looked to her helplessly. “I left London because I thought I would only bring the worst of it down on their heads. Then I got it into my head that my people needed me back here. But when I got here, they had more fight left in them than I did. Sarah and Allison are the ones they look to now.”

  “Mrs Strong and Ms Rutherford’s courage aside, we will never be ready for what’s coming. We need everybody, Alexander.”

  “Their militia is out there now, by their order. I… I don’t know if I could ever have brought them to stand.”

  “That so?” She thrust her finger in the direction of the curtains. “So why are there people from all over the country gatherin’ outside, just hoping you might show your face and give them one last shred of hope? They wait for you! They need you as much as the rest of us. Please, please, you’ve got to be strong.”

  Alexander shrugged, dropping his eyes to the carpet. “There’s nothing for me to do. I have nothing left to give.”

  Agatha stilled. Straight-faced, she upended the bottle, emptying every drop onto the carpet. Stonily, she said, “Stay here in your cave. Don’t you dare show your face until you’re sober.”

  Then she turned and left him. The heavy mahogany door of his house—a three-storey mansion of over twenty rooms, left empty and gathering dust in the famine’s wake—slammed shut with a reverberating boom that made him flinch.

  He remained slouched in the chair for what seemed an age, his head smarting and his vision undulating. Once it finally settled, he stood in a fit of sobs, spinning on the spot, meaning to tear every last book from the shelves. As he turned, his arms flung limply out to the side, catching the top of one of the trestles and scattering bright, tattered packages onto the floor.

  Orange and purple wrapping paper, bound in faded ribbon, moth-eaten but still whole. A gift tag attached to one lay open before him. Through the drunken haze, his mother’s delicate handwriting resolved into view: To our darling Alexander on his 19th birthday…

  Something round and hard stopped his throat. Over forty years had elapsed since he had first read those words, alone in his parent’s home, in the minutes immediately following the End. But all that time seemed but a flicker, a blip in his memory, for right now he felt no wiser than he had then. Just as afraid, and clueless.

  He stooped carefully and picked up the packages. Gathered in his arms like swaddled infants, the fire’s flames glinted in the wrapping’s golden filigree. For an insane moment a voice in his head urged him to throw them into the flames, watch them curl up in the grate. Instead he set them gently upon the mantelpiece, one on top of the other, and stepped back.

  If they could see me now, what would they think? Would they even be able to look at me?

  How could they possibly have been proud, if they knew all the hurt he had brought to the world, even if he had been trying to save it? As he stared at the beaten, sad packages, his father’s voice echoed in his head: Alex, some men have to put in the hours. They have to fight for everything they get. Men like me. But other men have something different, something else on their side. Some men have a destiny. And you got that, boy. You got that in spades.

  The same words Alexander himself had repeated to those whose destinies he had crafted. Little Norman, who had never wanted this life; and long before that, James…

  Alexander gritted his teeth as his father’s voice returned again and again: Some men have a destiny.

  Where had it got him? To this place: knowing that he was responsible for both sides of the coin; the Alliance and their few twinkling hopes, and for the scourge that might bring it all to an abrupt, bloody end. He whirled from the grate and headed for his bedroom. It was time to throw some cold water on his face.

  IX

  Charlie woke to the sound of screaming. At first he thought his dreams, fuzzy half-remembered images of his parents, had chased him into the waking world. But once their faces faded from his mind’s eye and he was on his feet, gun at the ready, the screaming continued.

  The campfire beside him still licked skywards. He couldn’t have slept more than an hour or two. He blinked his aching eyes wide and stared into the dark, crouching painfully on his bad leg, perceiving the spread of fires across the treeless plain upon which the army had camped. By their glittering combined light he picked out silhouettes against the stars and the great swathe of the Milky Way.

  The screaming came from his left. He ambled away from the fire. Darkness consumed him within a few paces, and he had to step carefully over the uneven ground. A misstep into a rabbit hole would mean a broken ankle. His leg was almost healed, but an injury now would put him out of action. He had no illusions: weakness would not be tolerated this late in the game.

  He forced himself to slow despite the urgency of the screams and inched his way by starlight.

  It’s so peaceful, he thought absently. The wind in the grass, the silver trees under the moon.

 
; It took him a moment to realise that in transit, the screaming had become entirely academic. The horror he had felt in his heart on waking—the instinctive gut-yanking fear that came at the sound of genuine human anguish—had faded to a blank nothing.

  Christ, I don’t feel anything.

  He was close now, only yards away. The screaming clawed at his ears and threatened to give him a headache. But his pulse was entirely steady. He realised he sought the screaming for curiosity’s sake alone.

  No, that can’t have happened. Not to me. She sounds like she hurts so much. I… I don’t feel a thing.

  He paused in the darkness and gripped his head. Suddenly everything seemed so confused, the past few weeks a daze. How could it all have happened in so short a time?

  Could it really have been only last month that he and Dad had been on their way to Kent with a cart full of preserved apples? Everything seemed so much brighter in his memory. They hadn’t had anything in all the world but that stupid old cart and the clothes on their backs, but they had had each other.

  New Canterbury had taken all that away from him. That grey old sack of shit, Lucian McKay, had been the one to put a bullet through Dad’s chest.

  It had been him upon whom all of Charlie’s rage had been fixed. James had promised revenge when he had found Charlie crawling through the forest. So Charlie had taken the grey bastard north with them, intent on keeping him alive just long enough to let him see the army in all its glory, to know that his friends would soon join him in oblivion.

  But when the time had come to take his revenge, James had let McKay and his friends go free.

  He turned his back on me just like them. But I’m still here, marching right by his side, like it was nothing.

  What else could he do? He had seen enough second-guessers cut down over the past few hours to know that there was no slipping away, no backing out.

  Do I really want this? Can I do this?

  For a moment he wasn’t sure. But then he remembered what the good people of New Canterbury had done to him when McKay had dragged Charlie screaming into their midst. Their trampling feet, saliva raining down on him, a turbulent writhing mass looking to carve off pieces of him. They were no different.