He looked for Kirby and William, but he didn’t see them. Were they here, too?
The words at the center of the crowd got louder, and the people in the back grew excited. A few cheered. Bray looked from the people, to the guards, to Levi, Hildebrand, and the other hunters. He recalled what Levi had said in the forest about the fog.
This must be some sort of tribute.
“The gods bring us salvation,” the crowd chanted in unison, responding to whatever Deacon said. Those in back craned their necks to see over the people ahead of them.
Bray sidestepped, trying to get a better view, as well, but all he saw were bodies and fog. One of the guards gave him a look that showed he shouldn’t move any farther. Deacon said something louder.
“The gods thank us for our duty!” the crowd cried.
Another phrase.
“The river gods have given us their blessing!” the crowd answered.
Deacon’s voice rose to a crescendo as he spoke some words that seemed like they were approaching a finale. Finally, his voice grew loud enough that Bray made out the last few sentences.
“To the gods!”
“To the gods!” the crowd mimicked.
Men, women, and children roared and cheered. With the final words spoken, the crowd swiveled in unison toward the south side of the bridge. Some of the shorter people in the crowd stood on their tiptoes. Parents raised their children up over their heads. They seemed excited for whatever came next.
The pit in Bray’s stomach grew as a woman shrieked in terror.
What was happening? Bray’s hand went to his scabbard as the crowd looked from the center of the bridge toward the edge. Even the guards seemed to have forgotten about the hunters, preoccupied with whatever was going on. The scream came again. Louder.
Bray couldn’t get a paranoid idea from his head.
Was that scream Kirby’s?
He took a step forward, but a few of the guards sensed him and turned around, standing shoulder to shoulder, making it clear that he couldn’t pass. They looked at his hand on his sword. He glanced from one to the next, considering a battle, but he knew he’d never win. There were too many. He’d be killed before he got around them and onto the bridge.
He needed to see what was happening.
Taking a risk, Bray broke from the hunters and walked briskly down the road, away from the bridge’s entrance, unable to stop his feeling of dread.
“Where are you going?” Levi called after him, as Bray moved faster.
He didn’t stop, and he didn’t turn around. He headed for a place where he could get a view of the side of the bridge overlooking the water. Thick fog swirled up from the river, obscuring most of the people on the bridge, but he saw several pointing and waving their hands.
The commotion in the middle was moving toward the edge.
Several guards were wrestling with a woman with a white robe. Deacon was next to them, directing them, partially obscured by mist. Bray’s pulse hammered as he strained to identify if the guards were holding Kirby, but the woman was moving too erratically, and he couldn’t be certain who it was through the vaporous fog.
She looked about Kirby’s size.
Panic overtook Bray as the woman screamed again, kicking and flailing, desperately trying to get free. She continued shrieking as they lifted her over the edge of the bridge wall. Frantically, Bray looked back at the bridge and the guards, debating making a run to the middle of the bridge, but it was too late. He’d never be able to stop what was happening. Feeling powerless, he could only watch as the men lifted the woman higher, avoiding her kicking legs.
The men dropped her.
The woman plummeted like a stone, sinking through the fog and toward the water as she issued a last, long, terrified scream. Several children on the bridge mimicked her in high-pitched voices, smiling. And then she was gone.
The crowd roared in appreciation as something hit the water hard.
The screaming stopped.
Bray darted back for the bridge entrance, his burgeoning fear a certainty.
He should never have left this place.
He should never have left Kirby and William alone.
What have I done?
CONTINUED IN THE RUINS BOOK 2
THE RUINS 2
A Dystopian Society in a Post-Apocalyptic World
Book 2 of The Ruins Series
Preface
Welcome to Book 2 of The Ruins.
One thing I enjoyed about writing in the realm of THE LAST SURVIVORS—a tradition I’ve carried on in THE RUINS—is that no one is safe. Just like the real world, where anything can happen, and often does, the characters in these stories have to fight and claw to escape death, a scenario that doesn’t always work out for them.
In Book 1 of THE RUINS, we discovered a realm called The Arches, home to a group of people that, on the surface, appeared similar to those in William and Bray’s former township, Brighton, and perhaps not too different from the people in New Hope (Kirby’s settlement).
As a certain ceremony on the bridge revealed, that might not be the case.
Expect more secrets and surprises as you delve further into the world of The Arches.
I hope you enjoy this second installment of The Ruins.
We will see who makes it out alive.
-Tyler Piperbrook
March 2017
Chapter 1: Bray
“Bray!” Levi yelled.
Bray stopped running in the middle of the road, uncertain whether returning to the bridge’s entrance would mean his death. He stared into the rising fog that rose from the river, which obscured most of the crowd standing on the bridge. Those who he could see were leaning over the waist-high wall, trying to get a glimpse of the woman who had been thrown over the edge. Smiles lit children’s faces and men and women pointed. A few people laughed. Bray scanned the islanders, looking for Kirby and William, even though he was horribly certain he’d already seen Kirby die.
The kicking, falling woman was gone, but her terrified, deathly shriek echoed in Bray’s ears. He’d never forget the brutal sound of her body hitting the water. Her twisted, lifeless body was probably floating with the current, bashing against the rocks as the turbid water carried her to some final resting place. She’d get stuck somewhere, food for scavenging fish and animals.
No one could survive a fall like that.
I couldn’t have done anything, he told himself.
But he didn’t believe it.
Bray looked frantically at the massive bridge, thinking another body would follow—William’s—but Deacon and the guards were retreating. What if William had already been thrown? The islanders disappeared from the bridge railing, presumably heading toward the long, sloping road that started in the middle of the bridge and descended down to the first island.
“Bray!” Levi yelled again.
Bray snapped to attention as two figures approached through the fog. He assumed one was Levi. He wasn’t sure about the other. More cloudy figures stood further back, in front of the massive boulders blocking the bridge’s entrance, watching, waiting. Or planning an attack. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, prepared to draw it and fight a battle with many more than two men, if that’s the way this was going to go.
He wouldn’t let them take him alive.
He held his ground as Levi appeared, holding up his hands, a nervous look on his face, Hildebrand next to him.
“What are you doing?” Levi asked.
Bray kept one hand on his scabbarded sword. “Who was that?” he asked, pointing. “Who did they throw off the bridge?”
“I’m not sure,” Levi said, glancing quickly behind him.
Bray switched focus to Hildebrand and demanded, “Who did they throw?”
Hildebrand looked unsettled. “We came back at the same time as you. We don’t know.”
Bray studied the hunter’s faces for a glimpse of malice or conspiracy—something that might confirm his darkest suspicions a
nd make him pull his sword.
“You’re making the guards nervous,” Levi said quietly. “We need to load in our game. We need to get to the butcher’s. We don’t want to cause a scene.”
Bray looked from Levi and Hildebrand to the dispersing crowd. Through the fog, it looked like a handful of people remained, lingering and waving their hands. Laughing. None looked in his direction. The ceremony—whatever it was—was clearly finished.
Hildebrand nodded over his shoulder. “The guards told us to come get you.”
Bray wasn’t moving. “Why did they throw that woman to her death?”
“She went to meet the river gods,” Levi explained.
Bray shook his head and took a step backward. “She was screaming. They took her against her will. Whatever ceremony this was, she wanted no part in it.”
Hildebrand and Levi exchanged a grave glance. “Not all of our people meet the end bravely, though they are supposed to.”
Bray thought back to the people who had been burned in Brighton—the curdling screams, the begging for mercy, the crackle of burnt skin. None of those images made him feel any better about what he’d witnessed.
“I realize you have different beliefs than us,” Hildebrand said. “We can explain more, but we should head back, before the guards get concerned and escort us.”
Bray didn’t miss the subtle warning. He looked away from Levi and Hildebrand and across the fog-covered road, certain that guards were hiding in places he couldn’t see to reinforce the suggestion. He saw nothing except the few parts of the steep, snow-covered mountains visible through the encroaching fog. It took every restraint not to dart away, weave into the forest, and take his chances in that mist. If he got enough of a head start, he might get away.
But William.
What if William was still alive? What if he was cornered, sick, and scared? What if he was next to die, if that had truly been Kirby?
“I need to make sure my friends are all right,” he said.
“If the boy is as sick as you say, he’s probably back at your house. In any case, we won’t find any answers out here.” Levi pointed up the road, where the silhouettes of the guards shifted impatiently. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll find out where your friends are,” Hildebrand assured him.
Bray’s pulse pounded as he watched the soldiers. He took his hand off his blade, but stayed alert and ready to draw it. He followed Levi and Hildebrand up the road and to the bridge’s entrance, still not certain he wasn’t walking into a battle. All he saw were the silhouettes of the guards in front of the boulders and the waiting hunters. He didn’t see Deacon, his closest soldiers, or even Bartholomew and Jonathan. It seemed most of the crowd was gone.
They could’ve killed me already, he told himself, but that was no guarantee of his safety.
The guards stood in a row in front of the boulders, watching Bray with stern faces. A few had their hands close to their flat swords. The hunters took in the scene with confusion, looking from Bray, to Levi, to Hildebrand.
“It’s okay,” Levi said, sounding almost as nervous as Bray as he held up his hands to explain to the guards. “He doesn’t know the traditions.”
Bray looked from one guard to the next. He wanted to grab someone, stick a knife to the person’s throat, and demand answers, but he knew he’d be killed before he got that far. And what would happen to William?
“You’re lucky Deacon didn’t see you,” the woman with one arm muttered. “You almost caused a scene. You could’ve interrupted the ceremony.”
The woman watched Bray with a firm glance. Or was it a dare to do something? Bray looked past her and through the gap in the boulders on the bridge, catching sight of a few stragglers leaned against the walls, talking and smiling as if they had watched a pig pull or a harvest race, instead of a woman plunging to her death. No Kirby or William.
Unable to hold back his question any longer, he asked, “Who was the person in the white robe?”
“I couldn’t hear her name from here,” the one-armed woman said, shrugging. “She was one of the chosen, sent to the river gods by Deacon. What more do you need to know?”
One of the guards spat on the ground. The others gave him stony stares.
“Where are my friends?” Bray didn’t need to clarify whom he was talking about. Everyone knew. He wanted to fight his way to William, to hack through these people until he got answers.
“We don’t know where they are,” the one-armed woman said. “Our job is to keep the bridge safe. That’s it.”
A crunching noise ripped Bray’s attention to the bridge. Several men Bray didn’t recognize wheeled wooden carts from the fog behind the boulders, coming out onto the road and stopping when they realized they had entered a tense situation. Curious looks crossed their faces as they stared from Bray to the soldiers, realizing they might witness something.
One of the male guards stepped forward, gesturing to the one-armed woman. “Like Petra said, we don’t know where your friends are. But if you don’t want your game, we have plenty of hungry mouths to feed.”
Bray bristled.
“We’ll find your friends after we get our kills inside,” Levi promised him, grabbing Bray’s arm. “Come on. Let’s load up our things.”
Bray allowed Levi to pull him toward the carts, but he didn’t stop watching the guards as he bent down and helped the hunters load their game.
Chapter 2: Bray
The hunters collected the kills they’d been dragging and laid them on the carts. A few shrugged off heavy, meat-filled bags and secured them to be wheeled away. Bray kept his bag. He looked across the bridge, hoping to see William or Kirby, but he could not see the other end through the fog. He couldn’t erase the thought that he was being fed lies and was about to be jumped. Levi and Hildebrand glanced at him a few times, concerned, or maybe judging his reaction. Bray fought the sickening feeling in his stomach that told him Kirby and William were already dead. A rash move would mean the end of him.
When the carts were full, the hunters began wheeling them through the gaps next to the boulders with the assistance of the helpers. The soldiers stayed behind.
Hoping he wasn’t making a last mistake, Bray fell in line behind the others.
The smell of dirty clothing and sweat hung in the air as they entered the bridge where a thousand people had stood packed against each other moments earlier. Fog swirled up from the river, revealing bits and pieces of Bray’s surroundings. A few people stood by the bridge’s southern edge, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of the tossed woman, who had likely drowned, if she hadn’t died on impact. There was no sign of Deacon or his closest soldiers, no sign of Kirby, William, Bartholomew, or Jonathan. Bray didn’t even see Flora.
A few guards stationed on either side of the bridge appeared in the mist, scrutinizing Bray as they watched the hunters and helpers pass.
Levi wheeled his cart close. “Your friends are back at the house,” he whispered. “I’m sure of it.”
“Why couldn’t the guards assure me of that?”
“You made them nervous.” Hildebrand took the other side of Bray.
“They didn’t look nervous to me,” Bray muttered.
“They’re used to keeping order. Occasionally, some of the family members don’t obey the ceremony’s rules.”
“Family members?” Bray asked.
“The relatives of the people who are sent to the river gods,” Hildebrand said. “Those who are lifted by the fog and brought to the heavens. Almost all of the islanders gather to watch.”
“The fog ceremony is supposed to be a joyous occasion,” Levi said quietly, looking at a few more soldiers, who were walking ahead and spurring along some loiterers. “Not all take it that way.”
“Like I said before, sometimes the chosen aren’t as willing as they are supposed to be, even though Deacon is sent an omen from the gods, telling him it was their time,” Hildebrand clarified. “Occasionally the family members need to be calmed down. De
acon’s Trusted and the bridge guards ensure everything runs smoothly. The will of the river gods must be heeded.”
“So who was on the bridge?”
“We’ll find out,” Levi answered.
Bray didn’t wait for Levi or Hildebrand to get an answer. As soon as the fog swallowed up the closest soldiers, he wheeled his cart toward a man and a woman that were chatting by the bridge’s edge. The couple fell silent as they saw him coming. The woman looked as if she might start in another direction, but Bray pinned her with a hard stare.
“Who was thrown from the bridge?” he demanded, in a low, insistent tone.
The woman, who had ratty hair and a face covered with freckles, watched Bray. She looked at the man beside her nervously, as if she hadn’t expected the question. Or maybe Bray had scared her. “Ava, I think,” she said.
“That wasn’t it,” the man cut in. “It was Evelyn.”
The man and woman looked as if they were concocting a story. Or maybe they were afraid of coming face-to-face with one of the strangers they’d been hearing about. Movement out of the corner of Bray’s eye distracted him. He looked behind him to see one of the bridge guards walking through the fog, waving an impatient hand.
“The ceremony’s over. Everyone needs to get back to work.”
Taking the opportunity to get out from underneath Bray’s gaze, the man and woman scooted away. Bray watched them disappear with a feeling of dread in his stomach.
They neared several more groups as they reached the middle of the bridge, taking a turn and starting on the sloping road toward the island, but the people hurried away before Bray could ask them any questions. Several soldiers walked ahead, perhaps clearing the way for the hunters, or making sure Bray didn’t ask any questions. A sick feeling stuck in Bray’s gut as he considered what he’d walked into.
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