Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) Read online

  Alex wished he were here now.

  Gunfire still smacked with jarring jolts against the other side of the pillar, but its rate was ebbing. He tore his rifle from around his shoulder and swung around onto his toes, signalling for the others to do the same. Ignoring the aches and pains in his tired old body, he listened with practised patience until the lull reached its zenith, and then cried, “Now!”

  They leapt from cover and fired a return volley as one, peppering the weathered glass of the enemy position until it was fine spray, leaving a gaping hole all along one floor of the skyscraper. Perhaps once, such destruction would have seemed a scar upon the face of perfection, when the world’s economy had been managed from these very buildings, but not now—not among the mosses, the creepers, the fallen ceilings and walls, and all other the signs of Father Time’s work.

  They kept shooting until Alexander was certain the streets were empty, that whoever had survived from Oppenheimer’s party had taken shelter, and then waved to cease fire. They waited in ringing silence as plaster dust rained down on their shoulders and the tinkling of broken windows settled in the distance. Alexander’s legs were screaming from the effort of holding his crouched position—

  Christ, I’m old, he thought.

  But so long as the others were behind him, he would never show weakness, not if it killed him.

  “What’s the situation down there?” came the voice of a guard up on the compound walls. “How many injured?”

  Alex glanced around at the taut, determined faces beside him, and all the smoking barrels of as many rifles. “None!”

  “Mobile?”

  “All.”

  “Can you make it to the gate?”

  Alex darted his head to peer at the stretch of shattered glass on the distant skyscraper. Only blackness met his gaze, the enemy nowhere in sight, for now. They might start firing again the moment they stepped into the light. But so many counted on his strength, and they were so close to safety. They couldn’t afford to be beaten into submission. He trusted every man and woman in his party with his life, but even now he felt pressure on the back of his neck. All the long years he had trained his inner circle to lead others, to be his emissaries—his very flesh incarnate—and still now they were looking to him for strength.

  Some things never changed.

  “We’ll make it!”

  “Good. We’ll cover you.”

  Alex leaned back and swept his gaze over the others. Determined, twinkling pairs of eyes bobbed in the gloom, all trained upon him, all ready to give their lives for the mission; the mission to preserve the world’s knowledge, art, and science for future generations, and prevent the backward slide to barbarism that had already consumed so much of the world.

  They would follow him to the end. That was the story of his life. How many had followed him to their own ends while he had lived on? How many lives had been saved by his hand, against all those cut short by the storm that had raged around him all these years?

  “Are you ready?” he breathed.

  They all nodded without hesitation, and as always, his heart skipped a beat at the recollection of all that had nodded just as solemnly before all the skirmishes that their mission had brought down on their heads. If only they knew of the carpet of blood upon which he walked, or how many of their predecessors’ bodies he had walked over to get to where he was now.

  “The horses?” Marek said.

  Alex looked over to his white mare, milling in the recesses of the lot where they had reined up, watching him patiently in spite of the echoing racket. She had served him well for many years, her white coat as much a symbol of their mission as himself. She watched him even now.

  “Leave them,” Alexander said.

  Tension stole amongst their ranks, for their mounts were among the few horses that hadn’t succumbed to hungry mouths during the long famine. In the vastness of the empty British Isles, where human settlement was as common as in the Arctic Circle before the End, these animals had sometimes been the only friends they had. There would be no replacing them. But still the others stayed at his side, ready.

  “Once we break cover, nobody stops until we’re inside.” Alexander hesitated, then added, “Leave the fallen, even if I’m one of them.”

  The compound gate’s klaxon buzzed, and in the corner of his eye, Alexander saw the gate swing inwards. The parking lot was filled with the rumbling echo of their breath sounds, sharp and shallow. Their window was moments away.

  Then from somewhere out in the street came Oppenheimer’s voice: “Alexander!”

  “Geoffrey! Where are you?”

  “The subway station. We thought we could get under the wall this way. I led them all in here …” A lonely sob rang out across England’s former capital.

  Alexander cursed. They had sealed the old tunnels with concrete just before the siege had begun. There was no way out of the station but the glass-roofed bank of escalators that served as the entrance. “How many are you?”

  His old friend’s harried voice was broken, panicked. “Ah … seven. We have wounded.”

  Alex suppressed the urge to swallow. The others were listening close. Sweat tickled the small of his back as it ran in a stream down from his neck. There had been over thirty people in Oppenheimer’s convoy. That had been the way of all the ambushes thus far. Only the ambassadors themselves and a few lucky stragglers had been left unharmed—the rest, slaughtered.

  The gate clunked open. The guards began calling out from the upper catwalks, balking in protest. But Alexander hesitated. He looked to the others, saw them looking to him now with an air of desperation, and screamed internally. He turned back to the street.

  The enemy skyscraper was still derelict, but there were at least two hundred metres between the station and the gate. It would be only too easy to pick Oppenheimer’s group off once they emerged. Yet the only chance for any of them was now. “Geoffrey, the gate’s open. On five, we’re all going to run. Don’t stop, not for anything.”

  “We’ll be killed!”

  “They’ll cover us from the wall.” Alexander ignored the slick of self-hatred that slithered in his gut, and readied himself. There would be time to make amends later. If any of Oppenheimer’s group made it.

  “One … two …”

  Over a dozen sharp inhalations filled the parking lot, and rifles were slung over shoulders.

  “Three … four …”

  Alexander took one last glance at the enemy position, a black abyss twenty storeys above the ground. Any number of things could be trained upon them right now. But what choice did they have?

  “Five!”

  The world smeared into a medley of colours. Alexander launched himself out into the light, and the air was filled with automatic gunfire almost before he had even cleared the parking lot’s shadow. Panting and cries of alarm flashed by as his younger companions surged past in a blind bid for personal safety, under the protective barrage of fire being laid down by the Kevlar-clad men up on the compound’s walls.

  Amidst the flurry and madness, he caught a few defined snapshots: a guard above his head, teeth bared over the flashing muzzle of his assault carbine; the enemy skyscraper, sporting a fresh gouge in its smooth glass walls on a lower storey from which dozens of gun barrels protruded, heedless of the returning fire; Marek, roaring in pain as he staggered along, clutching a leg that was spurting streams of scarlet; and straight ahead, Geoffrey Oppenheimer and six other figures, sprinting along the street towards them.

  Oppenheimer was an old man, perhaps seventy. He had always been a dignified soul, just like the other ambassadors; a natural leader who believed in peace and justice. And just like the others, he was now covered in the blood of his family and friends, running for his life with wide eyes, his mouth ajar in a scream of naked fear.

  Amidst the panic and frenzy, a single coherent thought flashed through Alexander’s mind.

  How far we have fallen.

  His lungs seared and his legs begg
ed for mercy, but eventually he reached the gate. The others had already dived inside, and those in the courtyard beyond were braying out for him to follow. But he tripped to a halt on the threshold and turned back.

  Three of Oppenheimer’s seven companions lay on the ground unmoving. The remaining four were close, but still thirty metres from the gate. Thirty metres of open ground, a straight shot from the enemy skyscraper. The cover fire being laid down by the guards had lessened the incoming volleys some, but this last stretch was the perfect bottleneck. They would never make it.

  Alexander was running toward them before he knew what was happening. The anguished howls of those in the compound chased him, but to no avail. His feet carried him inexorably into a raining hail of ballistic metal. There was no room for fear, not in the scant moments it took for him to cross the distance to the bottleneck.

  A curious certainty had fallen over him. For while the enemy was barbarous, it still had a master. And while most had no clue who could be at the helm of this scourge, Alexander did.

  Then he was crossing the last few feet to Oppenheimer’s remaining four, passed by them—enduring the briefest and most intense expressions of bafflement he had ever seen from them—and then skidded to a halt, throwing his arms wide. Eyes squeezed shut, teeth gritted until his jawbone crunched upon his skull, he came to a standstill in the dust of the Old World, and waited to die.

  And then there was silence. Sudden, absolute silence. The gunfire had stopped dead.

  He gasped, blinked in the midday glare, frozen with his arms thrown high, a static five-pointed star upon the crumbled tarmac of Canada Square. Even those crying out for him on the wall were silenced. For a time that seemed like forever he stood there staring ahead at the line of gun barrels, all trained upon him, but none firing a shot.

  Then a single voice broke the silence. “Alexander!” Norman Creek bawled. “What are you doing?”

  Alex peered over his shoulder and saw men and women he would have called friends lining the walls of the Canary Wharf compound in their dozens—no, hundreds—all staring without a mote of movement among them. Mouths hung ajar and eyes were wide, and Alexander couldn’t blame them. He should have been dead.

  Even from so far away, despite the sun, he picked Norman out from their ranks. A crooked, slender silhouette propped up by a cane and capped by a crop of unruly dark hair, he stood upon the catwalk directly over the gate. Their eyes met, and Alexander suddenly felt very exposed, naked, and foolish.

  Then he remembered all he risked by being out in the open. There was precious little between him and death. He had risked all his long years of strife, the lives of countless thousands who relied on him, and the mission itself.

  The curious certainty that had overtaken him evaporated without ceremony, leaving him a lonely old relic stranded in No Man’s Land.

  “Get back here!” Norman again, desperate and confused.

  “Alexander,” Marek called from the open gate, the slimmest sliver of his face peeping from the lee of the steel door. “Step back this way. Slow and steady.” He paused, then continued in a voice laced with thinly-veiled disbelief and confusion. “Mr Oppenheimer and the others are safe. You can come back now.”

  Alexander returned his gaze to the enemy skyscraper, and saw that the gun barrels had disappeared. They were watching; he could still feel the pressure of their gaze. But the ambush was over.

  He stared hard into the blackness of the steel and glass spire. “So it really is you leading them,” he muttered. The acidic burn of liquid fear bubbled low in his bowel. All the notes, the signs, the slow and creeping advance of these barbarous hordes upon their homes. All the time he had kept the truth of who was really behind it all a secret, even to those he loved, even to Norman.

  Yet the reality of it all hadn’t seeped in until now, not really. It had taken this, facing the firing squad, literally.

  Ignoring the prickling of the hairs along his spine, he turned his back on the street and walked back to the gate. He forced himself to take his time, not hurrying, passing over tarmac studded with gouges and ragged old vehicles torn to scrap by bullet holes. And the bodies, too. Not only those of Oppenheimer’s party lay scattered around the wall, but also the bloated remains of those slaughtered in ambushes earlier in the week, when the other ambassadors had arrived.

  The stench this close to the compound was nauseating, a black ugly smell that clawed at the back of his throat.

  He made a point to study each of their faces in turn, and they joined the endless parade that had over time followed him in the name of the mission, only to meet their deaths. He didn’t dare try claiming the bodies, not even the children. He alone was being spared a bullet to the head, but how far did their mercy extend?

  His nerve almost broke at the gate’s threshold. It took all his mettle to stand fast and walk unhurried into the courtyard. Hands ran over him, pulling, tugging, buffeting over his clothes and face. A few secured his safety beyond the threshold, Marek’s chief among them. Alexander struggled to pick out any one face from the teeming mass; there were so many. Voices gabbled their joy at his safety. Reverential and fetishistic hands caressed him.

  The klaxon buzzed overhead and the gate swung shut. Those up on the catwalk held firm until it squealed to a booming close, then they too relaxed and turned to look down at him. From the tower itself, Alexander could make out the ghostly images of refugees filling every window of the lobby and several floors above, pressed against the glass, all watching.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” Marek growled in his ear.

  “Helping a friend,” Alex said. He looked at Oppenheimer who crouched weeping over his one remaining young daughter.

  “We could have lost you.”

  Alexander almost retorted that he was nothing special, but caught his tongue just in time. The masses had treated him as a demigod for so many years it had become part of the fabric of who they were. People used to pilgrimage to his home before the famine. Sometimes, he forgot how they all saw him.

  That’s why they all wanted to touch me. I’m something other, privy to secret truths.

  He had just walked towards an enemy that had slain everything it had come into contact with, and walked away.

  You might as well have walked on water, oh great Messiah.

  Norman appeared in the crowd, and those around him bowed back to make room for him, affording him a juvenile form of the reverence being beamed at Alexander himself. Norman had been his disciple long before anyone had called him Messiah. It was hard to see him as anything but the embodiment of all Alexander had worked for. To see him so broken and weak was unsettling.

  He hadn’t turned out to be the man Alexander had hoped.

  A harried, scornful voice rose above the racket, coming from the lobby. “Of all the shameful, reckless, godforsaken imbecilic things I’ve seen in my time, you take the candle and the dish, Mr Cain!” Evelyn Fisher screeched. A wrinkled, regal creature from a bygone era of war and eternal fear in the north during the Early Years, she let her Yorkshire accent cut a swathe through the crowd’s ranks and left a tunnel of bare tarmac between them. Her eyes glowered over the relief swelling on her face. “What were you thinking?”

  Alexander didn’t reply, just walked over to Oppenheimer and crouched down beside him. “Are you alright?”

  Oppenheimer gripped him with a bloodied hand, patting him sporadically on the shoulder while still leaning over his fainted daughter. Her white dress was torn open across the waist, the delicate trailing hem spotted with scarlet. “It’s good to see you, old friend,” he managed to last.

  “Can you stand?”

  “My girl …”

  “Here, let me.” Alexander helped Oppenheimer to his feet.

  I’ll never forgive myself for this. But they need to know we’re still strong. He lifted the young girl like a trophy and held her limp body close against his, her head resting on his shoulder. “We are now all arrived,” he called. “The amba
ssadors”—he swept a hand around, picking them out from the crowd, drawn from across the country—“have assembled, despite the attacks. The council may now convene.”

  Whispers exploded across the courtyard. The council summit of Canary Wharf had been the only true symbol of organised government since the End. Its word represented all the might western civilisation could still bring to bear. Even those in the cragged ruins of the North knew their names. For a long time, they had been the sole power in this land—for all they knew, the world.

  How close it had all come to nothing, and how fast they had been reduced to a rabble of rats hiding behind concrete walls.

  But Alexander wasn’t going to give up without a fight. They might have fallen, but there was life in them yet.

  “Many are still injured,” Evelyn said. “The rest are weary from travel.”

  “Our walls can stand strong for a few hours more, I’m sure.” Alexander looked skywards at the hunks of muscle manning the catwalks around the tower. As one, they stiffened, giving a single unified nod that seemed to bear down on the crowd and soothe the brewing panic.

  Evelyn stepped forward and caressed Oppenheimer’s cheek. “Geoffrey, you old fool,” she crooned.

  “Evie.” Behind the haunted sorrow on Oppenheimer’s mud-splattered face, the ghost of a smile flickered. “We made it.”

  “We did. But we still have a job to do.”

  His eyes hardened. Alexander had seen that look too many times to mistake it—the hardening determination, like a carapace swallowing doubt and fear. “We have a job to do,” he repeated, nodding.