Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (25 page)

James took a slow, ponderous breath. “Let me ask you something. When you found me—when you looked into that crib and saw me for the first time, did any part of you wonder? Did you ever have an inkling that one day that little creature you found inside would be sitting next to you about to end everything you ever cared for?”

Alexander, over what seemed like a millennium, turned from the city to face him. Despite himself, he blinked at the ruined face: the sunken flesh and the naked gums protruding through denuded cheeks, the missing masses of bone and patches of scar tissue. His immediate thought was that he really had died, gone to a place where undead things roamed. But those eyes were just as alive as the last time he’d seen them.

James glowered. “That’s it. How does it feel to look at your work? There was a time when I would have done anything in your name. I would have killed for you, or given my own life. The destiny you gave me, like something wrapped up pretty in ribbon, made me special—made me better. I thought it was my duty to go out there and enlighten them all—poor defenceless cretins hugging to the edge of the world, waiting for us to come along and save them. We had the divine right to poke our collective heads into other people’s business and do as we pleased… for the good of the mission.”

He mused, a contemplative hum. “Say it like that enough times, and you see just how seductive it is. But keep on saying it, and you realise something else: just how much gall it takes to start you down that path. All it takes is one person to get the ball rolling, but that person… they need the kind of strength that comes once in a generation. A god among men. Or at least, that’s what they have to think of themselves.” James inched along the log. The pigeon upon his shoulder bobbed closer, fixing Alexander with eternal mocking stares. James finished, “Men like that can only ever be one thing inside: tyrants.”

“Spare me,” Alexander said. “To raise this scourge, to do the things you’ve done, that is the work of a tyrant. What I did was what nobody else dared. I tried.”

“What you
did
is take the world into your hands and mould it as you saw fit, and never mind what anybody else ever wanted.”

“That’s what it takes to save the world.”

“The world never needed saving, Alex! Except from you.”

Alexander couldn’t break his stare from that terrible, scarred face. “My whole life, people have second-guessed and condemned me for being what I am, and all the while they’ve lined up behind me and let me make the hard decisions. I’m not sorry for what I’ve done, and if I could do it over again, I’d do it the same way.”

Those emerald eyes flickered. “That’s it: the bare truth. You wouldn’t change a thing. Even the things that make you a monster.”

“I don’t have to explain myself, least of all to you. If things had played out differently, you’d be exactly where I am now.”

“But they didn’t
.
You made sure of that.” A pause; the fire in James’s eyes tempered seemingly through force of will. “I have to thank you. You’re exactly right: if you hadn’t, I’d be right here with you. I’d have become the villain. What you did, Alex, was show me the light.”

“That what you call this?” Alexander gestured to the treeline, where the space under the canopy had thickened to a treacle-like sludge, undulating and alive.

“That down there is the truth laid bare.”

“That’s a mob stoked to commit mass murder.”

“Don’t even try to turn this around. I’ve done nothing but bring them together. Alone, wronged, they were weak; together, they can find justice for themselves.”

It was Alexander’s turn to lean closer. “Are you going to tell me that you played saint and led the good people of the wilds to a new beginning? I saw the outpost in the forest. I saw the bodies, James. I’ve done some terrible things in my life, but I never killed anybody unless I had to.”

James’s eyes bored into his, and Alexander returned his own stare, and for a crackling moment the urge to leap upon James surged through his mind. A short scuffle, a single blow to the head with a rock, and it would be done. Decades of uncertainty and worry, of looking over his shoulder, would be over. Either that, or his own story would come to an end, but at least then he could rest.

What would it change? He’s telling the truth about one thing: he’s not leading those people anymore. He’s just uncaged them.

Uncaged, after burning, kidnapping, twisting, torturing.

“Don’t punish them for what I did. Nobody wants this.”

“Nobody ever wanted this, Alex.”

“What you’re doing is… It’s genocide. If you start this, it won’t stop here. They’ll keep going, and you know it. They won’t stop until there’s nothing left at all.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“But
why
? Just tell me why. What will it change?”

“It’s not about changing what’s done. It’s about justice and the future. It’s the only way we can ever begin to choose our own destiny. That’s something you’ll never understand: that the choice is what matters. Whether we succeed or fail, live or die—it doesn’t matter; it’s the choice to rise or fall that makes a life worth living.”

Alexander licked his lips. “You’re right. I’ll never understand that.”

“And that”—James leaned down into the grass and picked
Alice in Wonderland
from the dirt—“is how you corrupted everything you ever touched. After everything that happened between us, you haven’t learned a thing.”

“Don’t pretend that this is for anybody but yourself. You’re just another thug out for revenge.”

“Everybody down there has had the same things taken from them. We’re all the same.” A sick, terrifying smile stretched over James’s gaping lips. “We’re your children just as much as the rest of the Alliance.”

“I did what I had to.”

James nodded. “For the mission.”

“That’s right.”

They turned to face the city, side by side, just as they might have done if things hadn’t gone so terribly wrong. A momentary peace blossomed when it was possible to forget the amorphous shadow hidden in the forest, even the pulsating ball of ice in Alexander’s chest.

James flicked through
Alice
as the darkness spread from under the trees. Muttering lines and passages of the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen aloud, he ignored the emerging figures entirely. Alexander wasn’t fooled: he sensed James’s attention trained upon him, drinking in the horror spewing from that icy prison inside him. He knew they would come in these numbers, but to see it for himself, right here in front of him… There were no words.

Men and women, old and young, armed and not, poured from the forests bordering New Canterbury like ants bursting from a freshly-trampled mound. It seemed as though the Vanished themselves had returned to reclaim the Old World.

James inched so close that his scarred lips were but a few inches from Alexander’s ear. “See your new world, oh creator,” he whispered. “Tell me, do you see that it is good?”

The multitudes numbered in the thousands. Most bore arms: from machetes to axes and pitchforks with those more emaciated wielding sharpened lengths of salvage. A smaller proportion—which still numbered over two thousand—carried guns. Most were pistols or single-shot rifles, things of antiquity or meant for buckshot, but more than a few had the unmistakable form of military-grade automatic rifles. The parade of human flesh kept coming until it flanked the city’s entire western edge, stretching from the Stour to the beginnings of the foothills where Alexander sat. With the river blocking the way to the south, and the abandoned parts of the old city to the north and the east, there was no escape.

Not least because of their own roadblocks. They had bottled themselves in.

We prepared for a siege, to be worn down over days. Not this… this is going to be over before it starts
.

“Don’t do this,” he whispered.

“It’s done.” James remained an inch from his face.

Alexander’s thoughts turned to Agatha, Sarah, Allie, Heather… everybody down there following their lead. It was really going to happen. They would all just vanish. Was that how it would be told in times to come: the wicked who succumbed to the righteous deluge? Was that how they would be remembered?

“Do one thing for me. Kill me first,” he muttered.

James laughed, a vicious sound that tore at him like a vulture stripping carrion. “Kill you? This was never about killing
you
, Alex.”

“I can’t watch this.”

“Now
that
is what it’s about. Killing you would serve no purpose, because men like you are like forces of nature. If we put you down, another would rise. But turn all that on its head and leave you the only man standing… now that’s poetry. A shepherd without a flock, lamenting until a sad, lonely death that nobody will remember.”

Alexander turned, aghast, to one who had once sat in his lap and asked about the magic of the Old World. “What happened to you?”

“You happened, Alexander.” James touched his shoulder, tucked
Alice in Wonderland
under his arm, and stood from the log.

Alexander became aware of others converging on him. Not predatory, not murderous, just there, cementing his imprisonment. Hands landed on his shoulders.

James nodded to the cast-iron clouds. “So foul a sky clears not without a storm, messiah.” He stalked away down the hill towards the city, followed by an entourage of a dozen men. Alexander’s hands were bound behind his back. Cut off, adrift from home, he watched as those in the fields approached New Canterbury, and the first shots were fired.

“
Peter did not feel so very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do
—” Sarah blinked, her mouth ajar. The book in her hands tumbled from her grasp, its pages crumpling against the floor. The classroom full of beady-eyed kids started.

“What’s wrong, Ms Fisher?” hissed Eddie Petrie, leaning forwards.

“She’s Mrs Strong now,” said Helen McKendrie earnestly, all pigtails and missing front teeth. “Mrs Strong, what is it?”

Sarah only swallowed, rocking on her feet. Something had passed through her, so visceral that she was sure somebody had crept up behind her and stabbed her in the heart with an icicle. Her hands folded over her bosom as she leaned against the desk for support.

They’re here
, she thought. She had never felt anything like it in all her life, but somehow she just knew.

Outside, the ghostly wails of hundreds of people across the city penetrated the schoolhouse. The others felt it too. For a paralysing moment the classroom rang with silence, and over thirty terrified pairs of eyes stared at her. Instinct clawed for her to gather them in the smallest crevice she could find, threatening to overwhelm her thinking mind.

No! I will not be that
.

She took a powerful breath through her nose and strode for the door. “Children, up, everybody up now!” She clapped her hands so loud that they burst upwards out of surprise, clinging to her flanks as she passed. Without a break in her stride she flung the doors open and took them all at a jog into the hallway. “Careful, no pushing. Stick together!” She headed for the main door, took another steeling breath, and emerged into the street.

Had it really been so dark all morning? The light seemed so
thin.

Screams rang out from every direction. Unseen in side streets and alleys, she could hear people running. She hoped they were heading home, or to the cathedral, and weren’t trying to flee the city. If they managed to get over the roadblocks…

She couldn’t afford to think about that now. There was only one task at hand: getting the kids to Agatha.

“All right, everybody, time to go see Auntie Aggie. She’s waiting in the cathedral, come on.” She made to set off but stopped herself to look down into their watery, staring eyes. “Don’t stop. Not for anything. Promise me.”

Thirty terrified nods answered.

Sarah sobbed then. Just once.

Then they were running. When the gunfire started in the distance, crackles and bursts that seemed to barrel up the street in haunting echo, the children screamed. Helen McKendrie wrapped herself around a lamp post, shuddering. Sarah swooped on her and peeled her away without stopping. The girl screamed in pain, but there was no time for soothing. There was only time to run. That time wound down fast as the shots grew in volume and frequency. Within moments, the return volleys had started as the militia sprang into action. Quite suddenly, Sarah and the children were in the middle of a war zone.

Norman burst from the trees and skidded to a halt. He dragged Billy in his wake, her head lolling as she muttered indecipherable words. A short while ago she had grown confused and simply stopped. Presently she didn’t even look at the city. The others already lined the hillside, blocking most of the view, but Norman only needed a sliver of sky to see the smoke rising into the air.

We really are too late
.

Lucian was on his knees in the grass, moving fast and talking even faster, checking their scant arsenal. “If we go in via the storm drains, we’ll pop up close to the main hall. Go right under the bastards just like they did to us. We’ve got a few dozen rounds, maybe. I’ve divvied them up.”

Robert snatched his share from Lucian’s grasp and set off immediately down the hillside with enormous bounding strides. He didn’t turn back when they called after him, just turned his head once so they could see his face. His expression said everything, as though he had yelled aloud.

“Just wait. We need a plan!” Norman said without much hope. Robert had already receded to a bobbing dark spot at the bottom of the hill.

Richard shook his head, his voice thin. The rattling pops and whip cracks echoing up from below, coupled with sharp yells of pain and panic, seemed to whittle him by the moment. “What’s the point? We were coming back to warn them. We failed.”

“Boy—” Lucian began.

“What’s the point of going down there to die?”

Lucian lanced up into his face, teeth bared, and pressed a gun into his hands. “Stay here if you want. If it comes to watching my friends die or going down with them…”