Ruins of the Fall (The Remants Trilogy #2)

by Nicholas Erik

  Martin makes a sniffling sound, too deliberate to be from the cold. “They have all sorts of things. They’re really good scavengers, man.”

  “And are the Oshies nasty scavengers?”

  “Everyone’s nasty when they need to be.”

  It’s the cogent thoughts that throw me. Life is mostly about expectations. When you’re bracing for crazy, lucid insights gut punch you. Probably would have the same reaction if I stumbled upon an orphanage out here. The contrast might fry my brain.

  “So we’re doing this,” I say. “I’m driving through.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re gonna die if you’re screwing us. I’ll kill you before they can get you.”

  He turns and smiles, his yellow teeth and sunken eyes making him look like an exhumed demon. But it’s not scary. More just emblematic of the times.

  “Martin loves drugs,” he says. “He doesn’t screw around about drugs.”

  Some things are best left unanswered. I climb back into the cab and put the truck in drive.

  And then we enter the gauntlet.

  From the smoke, I was expecting a densely populated town like the Gunpowder Hills. What I find is a cluster of ten cabins, a general store and a bar. No one comes out to greet us. I pull right into the middle of the buildings—what one could consider center square—and cut the engine. The fuel light blinks. We’re running down to our last few gallons of diesel.

  Smoke puffs out of the general store’s chimneys. The other buildings are dormant.

  Too late to make a fast escape, now. They’ve probably been watching us for the past fifty miles. Or it’s possible they haven’t—no one expects visitors this far up north. A wicked wind chill reminds me why when I step down from the truck. I leave the empty rifle on the seat.

  Evelyn murmurs, having fallen asleep somewhere along the fifteen miles of single-lane cars. With the endless white expanses stretching out around the tiny frozen settlement as far as I can see, I’m beginning to think that the one-lane highway was created to pass the time, rather than for any practical reasons.

  No eyes lurk behind the curtainless windows. No one greets us.

  “Hello?” I call. “I’m here to trade.”

  A wolf howls in the distance. Not quite the response I was looking for. I step towards the general store, which has the word “store” painted on it in a number of different languages.

  A foot of powder up against the wood indicates that no one’s been in or out since the last snowfall. I knock anyway, lest I be mistaken for a thief. The laws of the Frozen Wastes are pretty easy to imagine: most people will be shot on sight. You have to give others a compelling reason to let you live.

  The dull thud is swallowed by the whistling wind. Light footsteps crumple in the snow behind me.

  “Not much trading going on,” I say.

  “Martin was last here a year ago.”

  “It would’ve been nice for Martin to tell me that before I spent the last of our fuel.”

  He points towards the window. “Maybe we don’t have to trade at all.” Before I can say anything, he drags a fistful of ice off the ground and hurls it at the glass. The pane shatters with a splintering crack.

  Immediately, my heart rate rises. “Why the hell did you do that?” I imagine that we’ve just failed an invisible test—whether we, as outsiders, are trustworthy. But none of the cabin doors open. No one comes rushing out. I begin to breathe easier. Martin walks over to me. Even in the sub-zero cold, I can still smell the faintest trace of sick on him. “Here.” He holds out a hand.

  “What is it?”

  “I found it near one of the other cabins.” He walks over to the window and begins scraping away the jagged slivers in the frame. “Don’t worry.”

  I stare down at what he handed me.

  It’s a human finger.

  22 | Operations

  The Oshie’s outpost is abandoned, frozen in time. The smoke in the general store is the exhaust from a still-functioning heating system. Small pockets of blood and overturned mugs paint a picture of struggle. But most of the cabins, once we smash our way in, are relatively untouched. I stare at the hardened bowl of oatmeal sitting on the hand-carved wooden table.

  Whoever came through and killed them, though, was kind enough to leave the cupboards well-stocked. As much as I don’t want to admit it, sparing Martin was the right move.

  The general store holds the greatest bounties, so I let Evelyn take care of it. She’s got her .38 ready, in case Martin pulls any bullshit. But his mind is too far gone to make any elaborate plans. He raided the pharmaceuticals cabinet, and has spent much of the last few hours in a babbling stupor.

  I’m thankful she gets to babysit him, instead of me.

  There’s a journal next to the oatmeal, which I thumb through. The writer doesn’t say much interesting about the Frozen Wastes, or the Oshies—other than the fact that living on land, after years of surviving at sea and on ocean platforms, is like heaven.

  I’m starting to think a lot of these people have really low standards. Then again, I guess going from turbulent ocean to a permafrost encrusted wasteland is like venturing from a bar filled with dudes to one filled with that one girl who, if you squint hard enough at the end of the night, is passable.

  Survival has always been about lying to yourself. Making due with pretending that not good enough is more than enough.

  I close the journal when it starts rambling off into what happened. The writing is fast and hurried. Quite frankly, whatever happened here doesn’t matter, except to those who lived and died through it. Like our own little skirmish on the edge of the Lost Plains, history will swallow it up so that, a hundred years from now, it never really will have happened at all.

  I think about the lonely cross in the middle of the field. How long until Carina is covered in frost? Maybe it’s already happened.

  I stand up from the table and give a final scan of the room. I’ve already taken all the food stuffs, anything that might be worth trading. In the far corner is a small wooden cabinet, crafted by an imperfect maker. The doors aren’t quite hung straight.

  Doesn’t matter. When I look at what’s inside, it’s the jackpot.

  An operational map of the Oshies’ plans.

  I trace my finger along borders, looking at the Gray Desert. They’ve already established a series of outposts there. The map has no scale, but one of the dots is a little bit south of Seattle. Despite not knowing who these ocean-faring people are, a little burst of hope rises into my throat.

  Surely they won’t have given into the scout party without a battle. True, that means when I finally set foot in the Gray Desert, I’ll be entering a warzone. But, that conflict might just buy us the time we need to reach the Gifted Minds Institute in time.

  A violent tremor causes me to drop the map. I slump to the floor, all my synapses firing at once. My foot seizes uncontrollably, banging against the wood in a haphazard rhythm. It’s like I’m watching all this—my body failing me, mind fraying in all directions—but I’m helpless to stop it.

  My fingernails dig into my palms so hard that they rip through the cold-cracked flesh. Head knocking against the cabin’s walls, vision shuttering off and on, I just try to hang on.

  Five minutes later, covered in a cold sweat, it stops. The map is a crumpled mess, from where I’ve rolled and stomped on it. I drag myself over and try to smooth it out with trembling fingers. Fortunately, it has not been ruined.

  Evelyn comes by the cabin’s broken window and looks in.

  “What’d you find?”

  “Our salvation,” I say.

  “Not you, too,” Evelyn says. “The last hour, I’ve been hearing from Martin about how one time he saw Jesus in the bathroom of a dive bar in Soho.” She leans in to take a closer look. “It’s getting bad, isn’t it?”

  “Could be worse.” I try to plant my palm against the hard floor, show that I’m all right. But it buckles under the weight, and I crash down. “I’ll be oka
y.”

  “Let me help you,” she says, starting to climb into the window. Lilacs sweep through the small, cozy room. The fire I lit on the stove crackles merrily. Another time, another era, this could be a place to getaway, forget all your troubles.

  But in my life, it’s just a checkpoint, not a reprieve. We have to keep rolling through. “Just…keep going with the store.”

  “You look like you’re about to die.” She’s hanging halfway inside, waist over the window sill.

  “I got it, Ev,” I say, the strength in my voice startling me. Ramses barks in solidarity. “Just finish up.”

  “All right.” She drops back into the snow with a light crunch, gives me a final look, then treks back to the general store.

  I drag my hands across the rough floorboards and open up the map again. This was one of only two outposts in the Frozen Wastes. The other is closer to the Atlantic Ocean. Not the direction I’m trying to head. The rest of the vast territory is simple blank.

  I swallow hard and then I smile.

  The way people have been acting as of late, that can’t be a bad thing.

  23 | The Gray Desert

  The long drive across the Frozen Wastes is the best kind of boring. No surprises, no setbacks and no unpredictable strangers to deal with. Whenever we see signs of a settlement, or smoke on the horizon, we immediately make a detour.

  Martin grumbles about this, once he runs through his stock of prescription meds. But he gets to ride in the cab, now, so he can’t complain all that much.

  Strangers are a wild card more dangerous than any faction. At least there’s an idea of what Blackstone and the others stand for. Out here, you could stumble upon things far worse.

  It’s the middle of February by the time we reach the border of the Gray Desert. Fortunately, the Oshies’ outpost was stocked for what seemed like years of independent survival. There were so many supplies that we couldn’t fit all of them in the poor truck.

  Evelyn slows down as we approach the broken gates. They’re little more than a pile of jumbled rubble. The 9.3 quake did a number, even this far North. She’s been doing much of the driving, since my hallucinations have gotten worse. Ramses is now a constant companion, a hundred pounds of imaginary, annoying dog barking and whining incessantly in my ear.

  For her part, she seems to have escaped the brunt of the damage. Occasionally she’ll get a funny look in her eye, and I’ll know that she’s having a little flashback. But, for whatever reason, the residual effects haven’t hit her nearly as hard.

  We’ve heard nothing about what’s going on in the former North American Circle. I suspect that’s about to change.

  The motor chugs and growls as the truck comes to a stop. A splintered sign nearby indicates that we’re about to connect with I-5 on the other side of the border. And British Columbia—The Best Place on Earth—bids us farewell.

  It’s midafternoon, but a sort of ashy film covers the glowing sun. Whether it’s because of the volcanic eruption, or simply because the day is overcast, I can’t tell.

  “Why’d you stop,” I say. My head pounds. The last couple weeks have been brutal. I glance at Martin, who also looks to be in pain, although for different reasons. At least there’s someone to commiserate with.

  “Eventually we’re gonna have to walk,” Evelyn says. “Want to make sure you’re up for that.”

  The words sound unappealing, but I put on a steely expression and say, “Yeah, that won’t be a problem.”

  “And him?”

  “He’ll have to make his own decisions,” I say, glancing at the shaking man in the throes of withdrawal. “He’s been all right.”

  Annoying at times, sure. Could do without the third person affectation. But we wouldn’t have made it this far without him, and allies are in general short supply.

  “And you swear that it’s along Interstate 5?” Evelyn says.

  “That’s what I’ve seen.” Putting our lives in the hands of my misfiring neurons is quite the leap of faith. But it’s not like we’ve got any other great options.

  She puts her foot on the accelerator, gently maneuvering through the wreckage. We pop out the other side, where a sign welcomes us to the United States. The Circle never really got around to fully putting their stamp on this place, even when it was called the Western Stronghold. Vestiges of an old civilization abound.

  We travel another fifteen miles before the interstate becomes impassable. A thin layer of ash covers everything that isn’t touched by the frost.

  I wake Martin.

  “Martin is sleeping.”

  “We’re walking,” I say, then I get out. I help Evelyn pack what we can carry—food, mainly, and the pistols and munition we found in the general store. I have the operational map tucked safely on my back pocket. The outposts are all further south, presumably because the climate is a little more hospitable, even if the terrain is chewed up.

  The heavy pack digs into my shoulders. I watch as Evelyn adjusts the straps on hers. We hand Martin the lightest load, and he almost crumbles beneath the weight.

  “Martin can’t carry this, man,” he says with a whine. His frame is slightly less gaunt, but he still can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. “I can’t do it.”

  I rub my mouth and cough. The ash is fine, carried everywhere by the omnipresent wind. Recalling Sid’s vicious respiratory infection, I take a precaution, stripping away a spare shirt. I tie the strips together around my mouth and nose.

  Evelyn and Martin do the same. It’s not exactly high-tech, but it’ll have to do for now.

  Then we begin to walk. Two miles later, according to the markers, we hit a sign that tells us that Seattle is 119 miles away.

  That means, altogether, we’re more than 200 miles away from our destination. I run the calculations in my head, and they’re so discouraging that I don’t even bother to say anything. Martin is breathing heavily on the frozen side of the interstate.

  Evelyn comes up to me and says, “We need to keep moving.”

  “We’ll never make it,” I say. “Fifteen miles a day, that’s over eighteen days, probably closer to a month with all the breaks we’ll need to take.”

  I already miss the bullet-battered truck, missing half its windows. But the chunks of concrete in the road are overturned like a giant suddenly decided to tramp through. I can only imagine what the center of the earthquake zone looks like. Even the Rems’ dirt bikes would be hard to squeeze through.

  I glance back at the forest of felled Douglas firs, toppled against each other like twigs tossed into a pile by a small child. The destruction is absolute, and we haven’t even reached civilization yet.

  The peeling paint on the green sign also tells us that a motel is up ahead. Six miles. By the position of the half-obscured sun, I figure we might have four hours of daylight left.

  “We need to reevaluate,” I say. “Get to the motel.”

  “If it’s still standing,” Evelyn says. “Look at this place.”

  I shiver as a stiff wind whips a cloud of dust past us. “It’s only six miles.” Not feeling like it’s only six miles. It might as well be a thousand. The motel seems further than the entire stretch of the Frozen Wastes we already rode across.

  “You’re sure you can make it?” Evelyn says. The only part of her face visible is those endless brown eyes. They’re marked with concern, a million subtleties that I could spend a lifetime trying to sort out.

  “Yeah, we can make it,” I say. “We gotta.”

  Three miles in, and Martin collapses from exhaustion. Evelyn examines him and shakes her head.

  “He’s not about to die, but if he keeps walking, who knows what happens.”

  “Fucking junkie,” I say, the vitriol of my own words surprising me. Then again, I’ve been dealing with a hell of a trip myself. My head pounds, Ramses won’t leave me the hell alone, and the visions only seem to get more intense with physical exhaustion.

  Worry floats in Evelyn’s eyes. She’s out here alone, and th
ere’s no way she can handle us both. Not to mention whatever is lurking in the overturned terrain that lies ahead.

  Martin groans and sinks deeper into the ash and snow.

  “No, no, don’t go to sleep,” Evelyn says. She presses firmly against his thick jacket, but he just grins and smiles, clearly off somewhere much more pleasant. Then she pulls off the piece of fabric covering his mouth and slaps him as hard as she can.

  This gets him awake. He sits half upright, confused. “Something hit Martin.”

  “That was me,” Evelyn says.

  “Oh, you want to cash that check from earlier,” Martin says. “Don’t worry, baby, I knew you would wanna sleep with me.”

  Then he slumps back to the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a tree sags and moans, then goes crashing to the ground. I feel the shockwave tingle in my boots. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. Birds flutter away from the forest, spooked by the sudden disturbance.

  I turn my attention the ruined interstate. It stretches on endlessly, tumbled chunks of roadway dotting every inch of the viewable horizon. My mind searches for a way that we could’ve gotten the truck through, despite the obvious impossibilities. A man will try to rationalize anything when he’s half-frozen and dead-tired.

  Adjusting the heavy pack on my shoulders, I stare out in the distance for a beat longer. There’s a tranquil, odd beauty to the empty landscape. Like how everything’s gonna be, when human’s no longer exist and the earth is reclaimed by simpler life forms.

  “Here,” I hear Evelyn say. “Come on, take a deep breath through your nose.”

  There’s a familiar snuffling sound, and Martin’s suddenly alive. “You said we were out.”

  “I lied,” Evelyn says. “Aren’t you happy?”

  I raise an eyebrow at the barren landscape. Crisis momentarily averted by the very habit that will kill him if he keeps going. Irony.

  Sometimes the right move is the wrong one.

  We arrive at the Pacific Lodge just as the sun is ducking below the horizon. Martin’s narcotics are beginning to wear off, and Evelyn has to prop him up the last few hundred yards. We pass an ash and frost encrusted van in the otherwise empty parking lot.