by Bobby Adair
Ethan was infected.
Were it not for Ethan’s confession, she wouldn’t have known. Although it was rumored that many of the unclean were overtaken by delusion, Ethan was coherent, and she begged and pleaded with him not to turn himself in. But Ethan was resolved. He’d sworn to abide by the town’s rules; he wouldn’t see his wife and son killed for his mistakes. Before she could stop him, Ethan departed to see the town officials.
A day later, he burned.
Even now, Ella still bore guilt from his decision. Every time she looked at her son, she saw a fatherless boy, a boy as lost and alone as she’d felt in Davenport when her own parents had died. If she could’ve done things differently, she would’ve fought harder for Ethan to stay. She should’ve broken the town’s rules; she would’ve found refuge from the unyielding brutality.
If she had, Ethan might’ve still been alive.
But even that wouldn’t have protected her son.
Chapter 35: Ella
William was still scratching his neck when they reached the base of the mountain. A few seconds later, he turned his attention to the forest. Bray was slinking along, keeping cover between the trees, and he motioned for Ella and William to do the same. They followed his instructions.
Ella eyed the sheathed sword at her waist. She was still petrified to use it. What if she swung and missed? What if she lost her balance? She found herself wishing she’d paid more attention to the swordfights at the harvest festivals. If she had, she might’ve gained some insight on how to maneuver. For now, she was more comfortable with her knife.
She maintained a close eye on the forest around them.
Although they’d escaped the soldiers, there were bound to be others. Especially when the first batch didn’t return to Brighton. She could only hope that the guards would relax their search. How long would they look for a lowly woman and child? Hopefully Ella and William would be able to hide until they were forgotten. It wasn’t the greatest plan, but at the moment, she didn’t have any others.
Although it’d been years since Ella had seen her relatives, she could still picture her aunt’s and uncle’s faces. The last time she’d seen Aunt Jean and Uncle Frederick had been when William was six years old. They’d come to visit Brighton. At the time, she and Ethan had been going through a difficult harvest, and her aunt and uncle had helped them. Uncle Frederick had lent her a hundred silver. Ella envisioned the coins in her bag and felt a twinge of guilt. She didn’t have much, but when she got to Davenport, she’d find a way to pay him back.
Ella was hit with nostalgia, and she dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Her sleeve was covered in blood. She looked down at her dress. The entire garment was ripped, bloodied, and dirt-stained. Ever since leaving Brighton, it’d only gotten worse. Each encounter had left a mark on her, battle scars made of filth and fluid. She needed to clean herself off before reaching Davenport. She needed to clean William. Bloodstains would lead to questions, and questions would lead to capture.
Bray, on the other hand, could get away with his appearance. He was a Warden, after all, and they were expected to be road-weary. She’d have to make sure he knew to stop. Ella drew up alongside him.
“Will we be traveling near the river?”
“Not really,” he said. “Unless you want to get caught.”
“I don’t think we should go into town looking like this.”
He looked her up and down, as if assessing her condition for the first time. “I’ll get you new clothes when we get there. But you’ll need to pay me for them.”
“Won’t they have already seen us by then?”
“You can wait by the outskirts, and I’ll bring them to you.”
Ella pursed her lips, not quite satisfied with the answer. In her flurry to leave Brighton, she realized she hardly given enough thought to what they’d do when they got there. What if the soldiers arrived first? Surely the guard knew of her relatives in Davenport. Her hope had been to get a head start, seek out her relatives, and beg them to keep her hidden.
What other choice did she have?
Her mind strayed to worst-case scenarios. Davenport had the same rules about the unclean. What if her aunt and uncle turned her in?
She pictured the way her aunt and uncle had looked at William when they’d first seen him. He’d only been a few years old, then—barely old enough to toddle, and not yet old enough to talk, but they’d had taken an immediate liking to him. They’d even mentioned how nice it would be to live closer together. Ella had entertained the possibility for some time, thinking up plans to move to Davenport. But that had been before Ethan had gone to battle, and before he’d been burned.
Neither had come to bid Ethan farewell. It wouldn’t have been proper.
It’d been five years since they’d visited Brighton. She swallowed her misgivings. Her first priority was getting to Davenport. She fell back from Bray and rejoined William. The boy was walking a few steps behind, and his eyes roamed from one side of the forest to the next.
“Are you all right, William?” she whispered.
He nodded, but she could see fear in his stare. She stopped walking and grabbed hold of him, suddenly fearful that he was losing his coherence. He stopped to look at her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again, more insistently.
“I’m fine.”
“You look pale.”
“I’m fine. Nothing’s the matter.”
She noticed he was avoiding her gaze. She gave him a motherly stare. A few seconds later, he let her in on his thoughts.
“Am I going to eat people, Mom?”
Ella bit back tears. She pulled him close and held him against her, listening to the steady throb of his heartbeat. How long would she be able to get this close to him? Would it be a day, a week, or a year? She opened her mouth to comfort him, but found herself choking back a sob instead.
Chapter 36: Ivory
After spending most of the morning on top of the mountain, Ivory backtracked for half a mile to a broad prairie. He spent the first part of the morning hunting for rabbits. Jingo would appreciate the gift. There’d be no rabbits in the ruined city. Ivory bagged several before he headed back for the cliff and found the trail that led down the mountain.
He zigged and zagged his way along the narrow path, careful to tread lightly and stay alert. At the slightest misplaced noise, he’d hide under a bush or behind a thick tree, far from the trail. The realm of the twisted men was not safe for anyone uninfected by the spore.
To be discovered was to risk death.
The trip down the mountainside was slow. But it always was. When in the demon’s realm, one often had to choose between speed and caution. Ivory’s uncle had taught him caution was always best. Keeping a cool head, thinking, and hiding were so much easier than running, and those skills had saved him countless times when he’d been unfortunate enough to come to the attention of a demon.
Working his way through the ruins was slow. Slow time passed while he hid, watching his surroundings, listening, and dashing to the next hiding spot—always in the shadows, always in underbrush. To walk the trails worn clear by demon feet invited disaster.
The fallen megalith was his goal. When his uncle was still alive, they worked together scavenging the enormous pile of rubble on every trip. As his uncle had explained, the most recently fallen towers had an abundance of accessible metals. The other crumbled structures had either been picked clean by past generations of scavengers, or the exposed metals were more rust than usable steel.
It was almost midday when Ivory made his way up on the northern side of the giant mound. In the years since the building fell, he’d never scavenged this side. For whatever reason, he and his uncle had started scavenging on the southern side, and had eventually worked their way West. With all of the easily accessible metals go
ne from those two sides, Ivory decided to continue the pattern on the northern side.
Up on the rubble pile, he didn’t worry too much about being spotted by demons. There were plenty of places to hide. He kept the same rules he held when working through the city—while scanning the area, he stayed out of view, and when he was sure that no eyes were on him, he stepped out and gathered the metals he’d spotted.
He was following that procedure when he stepped quickly across a long flat piece of old wood, assuming—badly—that the wood was simply lying across other rubble. Halfway across, he realized the wood felt soft underfoot. His first thought was that it might give way. He pulled his arms close to him in preparation for a fall. Better to land on a shoulder and get a bruise rather than stick out a hand to brace himself and snap a wrist.
Ivory’s foot continued to sink. His leg was through a hole and up to his knee. He stomped his other foot down on the wood to catch his balance, hit rot, and the whole slab fell away beneath him. He reached out to grab something… Anything. But everything in his reach was falling too.
Ivory’s feet hit something solid and uneven. He was off balance and not coming to a stop. Wood, rocks, and other bits of debris fell with him. He tumbled over big chunks of stone and down a slope, rolling and bouncing.
He collided with a floor of flat stone. Bruised, scraped and trying to catch his breath, he realized he’d stopped. Around him was darkness. High above him, sunlight poured in through the hole he’d created. He cursed himself for his carelessness. Stepping on that piece of wood was a mistake that could’ve killed him. It still might.
Ivory listened for the sounds of demons in the darkness around him. He heard nothing.
He waited and didn’t move.
Not even small animals hid in the permanent shadows down here. Or they did and they were frightened into silence by the intruder.
Birds twittered in the air outside.
Ivory was sure he was alone.
He sat up and wiggled his fingers and toes. He bent his elbows and knees. Then he took a deep breath. He touched his hand to his head. He’d gotten a good bump while tumbling. Only a tiny bit of blood came back on his fingers. He’d gotten lucky. Nothing seemed broken, and nothing was bleeding—at least not bleeding enough to worry over.
Peering into the darkness, Ivory got to his hands and knees, then to his feet. Despite years of ancient dirt and fallen debris, the floor was well preserved, patterned in an array of colors and designs—all finer than anything he’d seen in Brighton and covering the entire space around him. When the building above had collapsed all those years ago, it must have left a cavity, a great banquet hall a hundred feet across, with sloping walls of rubble and a ceiling supported by nothing that Ivory could make out in the gloomy shadows high above.
With his eyes following the pattern on the floor to where it disappeared beneath the rubble, he tried to make out what the pattern represented. Did the plants, animals, and curving lines represent anything? Probably not. Few things the Ancients constructed made any sense.
If the building above hadn’t collapsed, creating barriers of debris, Ivory wondered how far he could have walked in this subterranean realm. Could he have traveled all the way through the Ancient City and to the borders of the town? Ivory laughed at himself for such a silly idea. Still, he liked to imagine what life had been like in the time of the Ancients, before the ruins, before the demons.
He sighed as he noticed a glint of metal in the rubble that surrounded the floor.
It was time to turn his tumble into good fortune. Confident that he could quickly make the climb back up to the surface should he come across anything dangerous, he chanced a walk lightly along the edges of the floor, perusing the wall of crushed old stone, broken glass, and pieces of metal. Some of the pieces were so large they’d be impossible for him to remove, even with the help of a dozen men.
Along with the giant beams of steel and rusted ropes—ropes that seemed to grow right out of the broken stone—pieces of rare metal were mixed all throughout the debris mounds. Ivory saw hard steel, the kind for swords, broken into pieces small enough to load into his bag. He also found steel that didn’t hold an edge for long, but never rusted. He found pieces of aluminum, light and permanent. It was no good for making cutting weapons, but it was a prized material for making spear shafts, and it was highly prized for arrow shafts like the ones in his quiver. Those arrows flew far and true. Much better than wood.
The blacksmiths back in Brighton eagerly bought those metals, turning them into all manner of tools and weapons. Although the metals were contraband—going to the Ancient City was forbidden, after all—the blacksmiths didn’t acknowledge their origin, and Ivory didn’t speak of it.
Ivory contemplated exploring further, but put the thoughts out of his mind. He needed to get moving if he was to get to Jingo’s. Without delay, he collected as many pieces of metal as he could easily carry in his bag.
Ivory took one final glance at the trove of metals in the rubble all around and made his way carefully up the pile of debris to the hole through which he’d fallen. When he climbed out, the sun was higher in the sky. Ivory took his time scanning the ruins around him, making sure he was alone. He covered the hole with pieces of large debris, ensuring they were strong enough to be walked across. He didn’t want some wandering demon discovering the cavern by accidentally falling in just as Ivory had. If that happened, his discovery would get turned into a warren full of stinking monsters. His trove would be lost.
When his stash was hidden, Ivory worked his way back down through the rubble, heading in the direction of the tower where Jingo had made his home.
Chapter 37: Ella
“How far?” Ella asked.
Bray was several steps ahead of her. They’d been trekking all morning, and it felt like they were getting close to Davenport. In spite of that, Ella’s memory was far from trustworthy; it’d been years since she’d made the journey, and distances seemed much different now than they’d seemed in her childhood.
“Not far,” Bray affirmed. “When we get close, you’ll see the tops of the buildings over the trees. We should be there by midday.”
Ella felt a swell of relief. Since leaving Wanderer’s Peak, she’d been expecting the worst—bands of soldiers lurking behind every cluster of trees, packs of demons springing from all directions. So far, the journey had been quiet. Ella had spent much of the time ruminating on the events that had occurred over the past few days, reliving the choices she’d made. She assumed there’d be many days like that to come. She was surprised she’d even been able to sleep in the cave.
Her brain flashed to images of the soldiers she’d stabbed in Brighton—blood spraying from wounds she’d inflicted, groans emanating from opened mouths. She tried to recall the rousing speeches she’d heard given to soldiers before they marched off to battle. She’d never been a part of them, but she’d eavesdropped. The soldiers trained on a field several streets removed from town, and she’d passed by while making her way to the merchants. The leaders spoke of courage in battle—about giving up one’s life for the protection of the townsfolk, about making decisions fearlessly.
Wasn’t that what she’d done?
She didn’t believe the town’s teachings—that women were weak, and that only the hardest hearts could prevail. The noblest people she’d encountered were those that were not only able to fight, but also to feel. People like Ethan. People like her uncle. Those were the people she aspired to be like, and those were the people she wanted William to admire. For as long as he lived, she’d impress those values upon him.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the forest deaden. The transformation was subtle. At first, the birds stopped chirping, then the insects ceased their chatter. The wind died. Ahead of her, Bray stopped, as well, and was holding his blade at the ready. Ella scann
ed the forest.
Something was close by. She could feel it.
The air had taken on a fetid odor—a stench that permeated her surroundings and almost made her gag. She pressed a hand to her mouth, holding her breath to avoid taking it in. Beside her, William did the same. She knew the smell.
Demons.
Around Ella were trees and underbrush, but in the distance, she could see the light of a clearing. Bray gazed through the trees. After surveying the forest for several seconds, he put a finger to his lips and beckoned them onward.
They snuck to his side. With each step, the smell thickened, as if the scent were a ghost and they’d walked into its embrace. As they approached the clearing, Bray sank to a crouch. Ella and William mimicked his posture.
Several hundred feet across the clearing, shapes, hunched and lump-covered, crept through the grass. If Ella didn’t know better, she might’ve mistaken them for primitive animals grazing in an open field.
“Stay still,” Bray said.
Ella wanted desperately to run, but she obeyed the Warden. As much as she distrusted the man, he knew the ways of the demon. And out in the wild, that knowledge was greater than currency.
The infected were moving in the opposite direction, surveying the knee-high grass. Although their movements were erratic, the longer Ella stared at them, the more she could pick out a pattern. Several creatures were leading the group, as if they were generals of some infected band of troops, directing their men through the terrain.
Ella looked over at Bray, trying to swallow her fear. “What are they looking for?”
“Us, most likely.”
“They know we’re here?”
“Possibly. Either that, or someone else is passing through.”
