Ruins (8 page)

“One way to find out,” Sam said, returning the leather pouch to his satchel. He ushered Nicholas inside and pushed the front door to, stopping short of shutting it completely.

A bare bulb dangled from the ceiling and it, too, was black on the inside, as if somebody had blasted it with a blowtorch. At some point, a fire had raged within these walls. When that might have been, Nicholas couldn’t guess, but the stench of that gutting inferno festered and poisoned the house’s every pore. The house was sick with unease.

“What do you think?”

Sam was talking to him.

“About what?”

“You know,” Sam said, waving a hand at the air. “Are you getting anything?”

“Other than a headache?” Nicholas said. He saw from Sam’s expression that now was no time for jokes. “No,” he added, assuming that Sam wanted to know if he could sense anything about their surroundings – other than the obvious. “Nothing.”

Some of the tension left Sam’s shoulders. His pupils were large in the dark, like a bird’s, and the shadows the fedora cast made him appear oddly menacing. Nicholas had always seen Sam as a jovial spirit. Recent events had definitely changed that.

“We’ll take it one room at a time,” the old man uttered softly. “At no point do we enter a room alone. Keep an eye out for anything... unusual. False walls, drafts, cold spots. Snelling could have hidden something here.” He paused and reached round to his back, exposing his teeth briefly in a grimace, as if the tendons in his shoulders had pulled. His hand returned clutching a small pistol. “Precaution. Get behind me.”

Nicholas followed the old man’s back through the house. He’d been right; it was a dump. Every room was black and burnt. Desolate as a fatigued hearth. Graffiti was scrawled here and there. Distended pink letters that must mean something to somebody. An empty vodka bottle lay in the fireplace. The kitchen was full of leaves and there was a sleeping bag abandoned by the sink. Upstairs, every room was empty. There wasn’t so much as a mattress or a toothbrush. The house had been picked clean long ago. Even the toilet had been removed.

Sam knocked on every wall. He pulled up floorboards and peered into the cobwebby recesses. But there was nothing other than skittery spiders, which Isabel chased into corners. Nicholas would have laughed at the cat, but Sam’s desperation filled each room with a dark cloud blacker than any of the walls.

Back by the front door, Sam scratched his forehead. “Nothing,” he muttered to the floor. “Not a blasted thing.” The frustration bunched up his jowls. He seemed to have pegged everything on this, but he’d been chasing ghosts. Snelling was dead. The trail ended here in an infuriating, burnt-out full-stop.

Nicholas looked away, anywhere but at Sam, and noticed Isabel dabbing at something down the hall. A door under the stairs.

“What about there?” he asked, nodding in Isabel’s direction.

“There’s a draft,” Isabel noted, scurrying out of the way when Sam paced up to the door.
His boots must look like elephant feet to her
, Nicholas thought.

Sam tugged the little door open and peered down a set of concrete stairs. There was a faint light.

“Basement,” he said gruffly, checking his pistol. “Stay close.”

Together they descended. For some reason, the flames that had engulfed the rest of the house hadn’t touched here. When they reached the foot of the stairs, Nicholas was grateful for the stink of must; it was preferable to the stench upstairs. He peered around.

It was more of a cell than a basement. A tiny cement square with an even tinier, grime-caked rectangle meekly filtering sunlight inside. It was filthy. The floor was covered in dust, and by the far wall there was a curious dark shadow that looked like–

“Blood,” Isabel announced, her nose hovering centimetres above the stain.

“Fresh?” Sam asked.

“Relatively,” Isabel said. She dabbed at the mark daintily. “It is dry.”

Nicholas lingered by the stairs. His head buzzed. At first he thought it was the fetid air, but now he wasn’t sure.

Sam wandered to the far wall and scrutinised the exposed bricks. Just above the bloodstain, holes had been drilled and there was a metallic residue lightly dusting the brickwork. The floor, too. There were strips where the cement floor was darker, as if something heavy had once rested here.

What sort of object would make marks like that?
Nicholas thought.

“Something was here,” Sam murmured, easing himself to his knees. “Something was here and it’s been taken.”

Nicholas frowned. The buzzing intensified. Something was needling at him, tugging at his insides like a fish hook. Before he knew why, he asked: “You knew one of them, didn’t you? One of the people that was turned?”

Sam’s concentration broke. He cast Nicholas a fleeting look then puffed out a breath, straining to get up from the floor. “It happened just after you left,” he told the wall. “Snelling. He attacked a friend. A good friend...” Sam paused and Nicholas could see that this was difficult; this was the reason, perhaps, for the old man’s desperation. “He turned Richard against us, somehow. He became indistinguishable from a Harvester. And he wasn’t the only one.”

“What happened to him? Richard?” Nicholas asked. “I mean, did you find out how to get him back?”

Sam’s answer fell like the lid of a coffin.

“No.”

Nicholas didn’t hear him. His head had started spinning. His stomach roiled and churned. That awful but oh-so-familiar feeling had returned; the feeling that normally meant nausea was about to be the least of his problems.

“Uh, Sam,” he began, but Sam’s gaze had already darted to the ceiling.

Had there been a noise? A faint footfall? A breath or a whisper?

Nicholas tensed. Listened. Isabel squashed herself up into the space where the wall met the floor, ears cocked.

Nicholas’s stomach cramped and he suppressed a groan. Sam looked at him and his face set to stone.

“Blast,” he muttered. In what seemed like a single step, he was beside Nicholas, then jabbing the air with a finger.
You
.
Follow me. Upstairs.

Nicholas sucked in a breath and nodded.

Sam set a boot on the bottom step, then crept up the staircase, pistol raised. Nicholas followed with Isabel at his heels. He didn’t know what the house was trying to tell him. Whatever it was, it was making him want to empty his stomach right here on the stairs. This feeling. It was a warning. Like that day on the bus just before Malika had attacked. But what was the warning this time? He tried to focus on breathing, not vomiting. Not imagining what kind of monster might be laying in wait just upstairs.

He bumped into Sam. They’d reached the top of the stairs. Sam put a finger to his lips and eased the door open. He stuck his head through.

Nicholas waited. Isabel pressed to the side of his leg, her tail coiled about his calf.

Sam disappeared into the hallway and Nicholas stood motionless, listening.

Silence. Nothing.

Nicholas realised that he was holding his breath and he released it slowly. A faint sound came. A shuffle, perhaps. Maybe just a dry leaf skating across the floor.

Nicholas edged into the hall. Then froze.

Sam stood facing the front door, not moving. He had become a living statue.

Nicholas frowned and moved closer. The sick feeling had gone, but there was no relief. Only concern. The look on Sam’s face was terrible. He’d gone deathly pale and his lips trembled.

“Sam?” he ventured. “What is it?”

It took Sam a moment to register Nicholas’s question.

“There was somebody there,” he croaked eventually, barely talking above a whisper. His eyes were fixed on the front door, the pistol shaking.

“Who? Who was it?”

Sam looked like he’d seen a ghost. Whatever the older man had seen, it had stuck him to the spot, and unease prickled hotly through Nicholas.

“Sam? Who was it?”

Before Sam could answer, an almighty crash resounded from upstairs.
More than just a crash
, Nicholas thought.
A detonation
. The ceiling rocked above them and a mixture of dust and ash cascaded in delicate swirls. The blast sent a shock through Nicholas’s bones.

Sam was at the front door in an instant, jerking the handle.

But the door didn’t open. Somebody had locked it from the outside.

Another deafening roar and this time half the ceiling collapsed. A burst of orange briefly lit the stairwell and Nicholas fell against one of the walls, staring up in horror. Charred carpet lolled though the hole in the ceiling like a dried-out tongue and chunks of burnt wood littered the floor.

Nicholas’s mind went blank. He couldn’t feel the wall against his back or the floor under his shoes. His ears rang and he barely noticed Sam hurry into the kitchen, then dart back into the hallway just as the room behind him erupted in a maelstrom of flying debris.

“DOWN!” Sam yelled.

But Nicholas merely stared dumbly back. What was happening? There was nobody else in this burnt-out tomb, but now the tomb was collapsing around them and they were going to be buried in the wreckage. Hundreds of tons of wall and wood and brick were going to crash onto them, smash their bodies, crush out every last breath.

It took a sharp prick in his leg to snap Nicholas to his senses.

“The house is falling apart!” Isabel shrieked. “If you don’t move we’ll die!”

That did it. Nicholas plucked the cat from the floor and raced over to Sam, who was holding open the door to the basement. As Nicholas dashed inside, he just had time to appreciate the full force of another bone-shaking detonation that took out the living room.

Knocked from his feet, he tumbled down the final few steps and only just caught himself as he hit the floor.

“Damn,” he croaked, appreciating how close he’d come to cracking his skull open on the concrete. An even more desperate thought seized him.

Sam!

Coughing up dust, Nicholas raised himself from the ground. A hand reached out and helped him and Nicholas saw that Sam had made it down just before the blast. They were both covered in grey filth; the innards of the house all over them.

“I thought–” Nicholas mumbled, but Sam had already limped over to the tiny, cell-like window, appraising it quickly. He seemed to comprehend that they’d never fit through it. They’d torn down into the one room that seemed safe, only to find there was no way out again. Nicholas cursed, extricating himself from the floor.

A cacophony of explosions erupted above their heads. Nicholas had no idea how long they had before the entire house collapsed. He tried not to think about it, instead staggering over to the wall that had been drilled with holes. Sam was already there, touching every brick, jabbing and pushing like it was some kind of medieval slot machine. Nicholas did the same, assuming they were looking for a loose brick, a chink in the wall’s armour that might yield and release them from this prison.

Debris crashed through the cellar door and there were flames now, lapping eagerly over the ceiling. The heat assaulted them in waves and Nicholas began to sweat all over.

Then one of the bricks moved.

It shifted inward under the weight of his hand and he shoved it harder. The brick grated against its neighbours, complaining with every centimetre, but then it was through. Nicholas heard it hit the floor on the other side.

A broken rectangular hole grinned at him.

“Hurry,” Sam urged, seeing what Nicholas had done.

Together, they seized at the bricks framing the gap and wrenched with everything they had. Mortar crumbled and the book-sized blocks came away in grating protests to be dashed to the floor. Above them, the ceiling started to sag and the flames lashed closer, eager orange tongues straining for them.

“Isabel,” Nicholas called, and the cat was at his side, the blacks of her eyes like little inverted moons. “Can you fit?” he asked.

Isabel squinted at the hole in the wall and launched silently at it, rippling into the shadows beyond. Nicholas and Sam continued to wrench at the wall. Finally it gave. Shoulder to shoulder, the duo staggered through into the welcoming blackness.

The cool against Nicholas’s skin was like an eskimo’s kiss. He reached out his hands to prevent himself from blundering into anything.

“There is an exit,” Isabel’s sharp tones rang, and Nicholas had never been more grateful for her ability to see in the dark. “To your left. It’s up in the corner, two wooden panels like a trapdoor.”

Nicholas stumbled against Sam and together they edged through the darkness. The sounds of carnage from Snelling’s house were still audible, and Nicholas wondered why nobody from the neighbouring houses had come to help. Perhaps they had tried, but found no way of getting inside.

“There,” Sam said. There came a rattle, the sound of Sam grunting with effort, and then the world opened up to them like a box of chocolates.

The sky was pink and raw, something out of a comic book, and they rushed up into it, gasping at the clean air.