That started her crying. That they were alive. That Ravi wasn't.
"Ravi's dead," she said, and he cried more at that. He pulled her vomit-sticky head up and held it close to his chest. "But there's something else."
He sniffed and laughed. "What else?"
"I'm pregnant."
It felt strange to say the words, because it wasn't even a living baby. It was just a thing, an experiment maybe, but still, it was Ravi's, and it was right to cry for Ravi, just as it was right to be happy some part of him remained with her.
His eyes searched hers. "You are?"
"It's Ravi's, from after he died. It's complicated. But it's hope, Lucas. I know about the Lyell's. I know about the false cure, the trap, all of it. This baby," she touched her stomach, "there's something special about it. It gives us a chance."
His eyes narrowed. "You know about the Lyell's?"
She nodded. Through her tears she laughed, because you couldn't only be broken and afraid. Being broken and afraid didn't give you strength, or not the right kind of strength. Feeding off that would make you like Amo, and she wasn't going to make that mistake again. She'd done it once when she had nothing else to live for but Ravi, when she would have killed any of her own people who got in her way, but now she was a different woman.
She was going to be a mother.
She held Lucas' head and smoothed the tears from his cheeks. "It's going to be OK," she said, and kissed his forehead. That only made him cry more. "We'll figure it out."
"Maybe it can cure Jake," he whispered, and that caught her attention.
"What happened to Jake?"
Lucas pulled away. The misery sank into his eyes deeper, pushed there by the hope in her voice. "He's got advanced stage Lyell's. But maybe, if you're right…"
He tailed off. Anna didn't need to ask. She nodded, then she pushed herself to her feet, pulling him up after her. People milled around them. Someone was crying. Many bodies remained down, coated with a thin layer of soot. Amo was gone, that was clear.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked.
Lucas laughed. He touched her stomach gently.
"I think it's you."
* * *
Eight thousand miles to the west, Lara woke from another nightmare.
The RV was moving; always moving, though slower every day. There was no reserve fuel left, and the turgid stuff they siphoned en route was slowly gumming and corroding the engine. When it failed, there would be no hope of fixing it. Perhaps they would find another. Perhaps they would continue on foot.
The rolling siege with Witzgenstein was going badly.
Seven more reserves they'd been to, and all of them had been burnt out, with fewer and fewer resources left for them each time. Some fuel, some scraps of food. It wasn't enough. They tried to supplement; once they went off hunting for a secondary cairn, but it was burnt out too.
There was no decent food left in the world but ancient snack bars and protein powders salvaged from Yangtze centers. Occasionally they found random outcroppings of roadside fruit, and managed to shoot the odd wild animal from the road, but it wasn't enough to feed nearly eighty people. There was no fuel but the thick stuff they pumped up from beneath gas stations, and that was slowly killing their engines. Already they'd abandoned half their vehicles behind.
It left them no choice but to keep going east. The range on their convoy was so tightly limited. Perhaps they could make it to New York and start from scratch, at least that was the dream Lara kept repeating, but Witzgenstein had them now and would surely not allow it.
So they were starving. They crawled along roads in a fog. Lara was hungry and tired and not thinking clearly. The few people left with her were the same. She only had to glance in the rearview mirror to see the extent of their failure; a convoy of five vehicles, down from nine.
Some of the children were gone. Many of the adults. Taken, or deserted. What difference did it make? Lara couldn't be awake all the time. She didn't have the strength. Every time she woke she saw Witzgenstein, grinning in the dark of Drake's RV. Promising her ashes and suffering. The children didn't even cry out when they were taken. Every time they abandoned an RV, more people remained behind. They got down on their knees on the road and waited for their savior to come. Seeing them like that in the rearview mirror had made Lara sick, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn't feed them, so what else were they supposed to do?
She rubbed a hand over her temple. Dirty, sticky with old sweat. Out the windshield it was before dawn on some road in Kentucky. Crow sat at the wheel and drove, bleary-eyed himself. They hadn't heard anything from Amo since he'd left. They were alone here, and the dream of New LA had more than fallen apart. It had been shredded and looted, with only the dregs left behind.
Perhaps twenty-one children remained, and those hungry and growing thin. None of them understood what was happening, but few had the energy left to cry. A few adults had vied with Lara for control, as their conditions grew worse, but now nobody had the drive.
"Surrender," Greg had told her, before she pulled away from him and his little group somewhere in New Mexico. He'd been one of the first. "She'll have mercy."
Lara had known otherwise. She'd kept hoping. But hope had been a vain mirage.
Now the nightmare came back to her, drifting across the darkness over the wild forests outside. It was a new vision now, no longer a great white eye over a burning New LA, but a black one that hung in the air over a broken man on a barren plateau. She knew without seeing his face that this was Amo, though he trudged with a limp and his shoulder hung slack from an amateurish sling. He was alone. He had failed too. He trudged north.
She blinked.
"Ready for your shift?" Crow asked.
Even Crow was beaten. His deep reserves of strength couldn't stand up to losing so many of the children. It had torn the heart out of them all. What was the point of going on, with all hope for the future gone? With Vie and Talia gone? Yet Lara couldn't stop. To stop would mean to die.
Yet she was beaten. It hurt to her core to admit that. What did dreams of Amo's failure matter if she had nothing for him to come back to? She'd been beaten and there was no way to fix it. Witzgenstein had left them eight messages now, and they were all the same.
On your knees
They had no ammunition left, no vehicles, no base of operations, no time and no hope.
In the nightmare there was also a group of shambling ghosts, each striped strangely black and white, walking under a black flag that flickered and whipped in the wind. They were headed west, shivering and glitching in and out of existence, toward a place where thousands of frozen bodies lay waiting. Something about that image terrified her. At the very end there was a great flash, and a suck and a blast, and then the dream ended.
She shuddered.
Crow was watching her. Once he would have asked if she was all right, if she needed a little more time before she took the wheel, but he didn't have the energy for that. Perhaps he didn't care. He waited for her because it was too hard to insist. She hadn't eaten anything for three days, when they'd stopped briefly to raid a convenience store already ravaged by time and wild dogs, only to find a few melted candy bars left stuck under the counter.
But she wasn't ready. She couldn't keep doing this.
She looked at Crow, wondering if she was strong enough for what was to come, if he was. He was already losing some of the prodigious muscle that had always made him so impressive. His shoulders were wilting, and this was all that lay ahead of them. Every cairn dashed. Every supply cache burned. Scavenging off the ruins again, with too little time before the winter to plant a new rotation of crops.
The sores on her thighs were getting worse. Sitting for long hours brought it on, but none of the others were willing to drive. They lay in back and raged, or slept, or stared forlornly out of the window, and she couldn't blame them. Witzgenstein hadn't threatened them. She needed them. Maybe they'd be punished for a time, but once they'd proved h
ow much they loved her, once they'd been on their knees long enough to crush any dream of future dissent, they'd be welcomed.
But none of that mattered, because there was no choice any more.
"I'm pregnant," she said.
Crow regarded her with slow, sleepy eyes. It didn't mean much to him, maybe. Another mouth to feed. She'd hidden it from him as best she could; hidden it from all of them, herself most of all, but she couldn't keep going on that road.
Starvation would kill the child inside her. It was barely a seed now, just as Robert had told her in a dream so long ago, but she could not live with it dying. Not for her pride, not when Janine would almost certainly let it survive, just to take pleasure in stealing it away as her own.
"What?" Crow asked breathily. He saw the reality of their defeat.
A tear raced down her cheek. She hadn't wanted to tell anyone like this. It was never supposed to be like this, but this was the truth and you couldn't run from that. They were refugees, and if she had to beg so her unborn child would survive, she would.
"I wasn't sure before. I took a test. It's true."
Crow deflated further, like an old birthday balloon. It was another final straw heaped across their backs.
"We can't do this any more," he said.
"I know."
For a time they sat in silence, not looking at each other, only gazing out at the dusty road as this new truth fell. Somewhere out there was was Amo, and Anna, and Witzgenstein. The world marched on, and didn't care. The dream of New LA was truly gone.
Crow reached out a hand. His forearm looked withered in the bright noon light, like a tough old root. "Come on," he said. "We'll go together."
More tears came. He was strong, still. She took his hand, and together they trudged out of the RV. The passengers in back watched them with wide, empty eyes.
On the road they stopped in front of the RV, side by side. Lara scanned the horizon, but the tears in her eyes made it all a blur. Possibly Janine was watching them even now. The humiliation was complete. Amo had left, and everything had fallen.
So she fell too, onto her knees.
The blacktop was hot, even through her stained, threadbare jeans. Her tears became sobs.
Crow dropped down beside her, and together they knelt, until the people in the convoy limped up, and one by one joined them in defeat.
They knelt. They wept. They waited for Witzgenstein to come.
* * *
I drive, and when the gas runs out I walk. It gets colder fast, and there are steppes; vast expanses of gray nothing where the black eye can spread out above like a thundercloud. I suppose this is Georgia, round the far end of Turkey. Or maybe it's Russia. I should put on warmer clothes, but I'm too tired to make that many decisions.
By day my feet bleed. By night they bleed too. It's easier just to walk.
At some point I splint my shoulder but it doesn't hold well. I know it's healing wrong, but it doesn't matter. I try not to think. My wrist too, it fuses weirdly, so my fingers don't really work. This is what I am now.
I walk.
I find a bicycle and I ride.
Barren steppes give way to barren tundra. Soon there'll be snow everywhere, but I hardly feel the cold. I'm numb.
I walk.
Sometimes I dream, and what I see are endless vistas filled with the ocean, all staring at me. They breathe as one with one giant lung, and they blame me with every breath. I know this. I stand there and take the blame. I know what I did.
But I also know that it wasn't only me.
There are steps to take, that will lead me forward, and they aren't hard to see.
If Anna was right, then the T4 was designed. Her false cure was designed, and so the apocalypse was made from scratch. Somewhere, someone dreamed up a nightmare scenario just like this, and willed it into reality.
It's thoughts of that person that keep me alive. That keep me trudging north.
Because I feel something different now. There's something on the line that's new; a hollow in the darkness above, far to the north, that I only feel when I'm walking. When I drive it fades, lost in the roar of the engine, but when I walk, and everything is perfectly still in this dead world around me, I feel it.
It speaks only to me. Through the long night it calls my name. It wants to see me before I die, and I want to see it too. I'm finally aiming myself in the right direction: at the people who made this hellscape, who did this to us all, who reduced us to this face-tearing savagery.
I'm going to tear their faces off. I'm going to make them suffer, and nothing will be too harsh. I will have justice for seven billion souls lost. I may be battered and broken, but in truth I am stronger than ever. I can pull birds out of the sky with a thought. I can stop deer running in the fields with the flick of an eye.
I send the pulse out over the line as a promise, to let them know their days on this Earth are numbered. No quarter will be given. No mercy offered. Every drop of blood shed shall be repaid a thousand-fold.
Because I am the lash for their sins, and I am coming.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading The Lash! I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. As an independant author I'm keenly aware of how many great books there are out there, and I appreciate you taking the time to try this one. Would you consider reviewing it on the shop site and/or Goodreads?
It doesn't matter how many stars you give or how long/short your review is, as long as the review is honest. Honest reviews from readers like you are the lifeblood of indie authors, affording us visibility and social proof in a highly competitive market.
Thank you!
Shop links
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As a thank you for sampling my work, I'd like to offer you my free Starter Library of 2 post-apocalypse thriller books- one of them is The Last, the other is titled Mr. Ruins, and tells the story of an ex-marine after an apocalyptic global resource war, and his battles with a monstrous figure who wants to swallow his soul- Mr. Ruins.
You only need to click here and enter your email to get Mr. Ruins:
You'll also get special offers, free books and discounts, as well as being first to know when Zombie Ocean #8 is ready for launch!
In addition, I'm always looking for beta-readers to join the Ocean Elite, who get free copies of all my books, a month before anyone else, forever, in exchange for reviews on launch day plus any beta-reading/typo-spotting you'd like to provide.
If you'd like to join the Ocean Elite, please send me an email at [email protected], including the link to a review you've placed on any shop site, and I'll happily make you a member.
Now, read on for the first chapter of Mr. Ruins, Book 1 of the Ruins War!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks as ever to the Ocean Elite: Katy Page, Pam Elmes, Renee Beauchamp, Melissa Dykeman-Abourbih, Alyse Wolfard, Steven Kenny, and Brita Morrow for racing through and providing such useful, in depth feedback and literary criticism.
- Michael
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael John Grist is a bestselling British writer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years and now lives in London, England.
He writes science fiction and fantasy thrillers, and used to explore and photograph abandoned places in Japan, such as ruined theme parks, military bases and underground bunkers. These explorations have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.
OTHER WORKS
Zombie Ocean (zombie apocalypse)
1. The Last
2. The Lost
3. The Least
1-3 Box Set 1
4. The Loss
5. The List
6. The Laws
4-6 Box Set 2
7. The Lash
Ruins War (science fiction thriller)
1. Mr. Ruins
2. King Ruin
3. God of Ruin
Ignifer Cycle (epic fantasy)
1. Ignifer's Rise
/> 2. Ignifer's War
0. Ignifer's Tales - short stories
Short fiction
The Bells of Subsidence - 9 science fiction stories
Bone Diamond - 9 weird fiction stories
Non-fiction
Into The Ruins - Adventures in Abandoned Japan
Mr. Ruins
A vicious and visionary SF thriller. Gritty cyberpunk for the 21st century.
With the planet ravaged by devastating tsunamis, the last of humanity survives on a floating raft of neon-lit slums high in the Arctic Circle. There Ritry Goligh, an ex-marine broken by the horrors of the Arctic War, seeks only to drown his losses in liquor and lust, until a powerful stranger named Mr. Ruins appears. He offers Ritry a Faustian pact: the peace he's sought for so long, in exchange for his soul. And Ruins won't take no for an answer.
In the churning magma of a mind's Molten Core, seven battle-scarred marines forge to life in a burning sub-lava ship: Doe, Ray, Me, Far, So, La and Ti. All they want is to survive their mission, but none of them know what their mission is, or what the cost will be if they fail.
Twin stories spiral like uranium atoms in a nuclear bomb in this action-packed sci-fi labyrinth, spinning closer until at last they clash in a riot of fresh SF ideas.
'Inception' meets 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', packed with blood, twists and space marines of the mind.
MR. RUINS (EXCERPT)
The needle enters Mei-An's eye socket smoothly, nestling beside her bright white eyeball and passing back into her brain. She barely flinches, though I know it's uncomfortable as hell.
She's a pretty young half-Asiat, maybe 28, and I can't imagine what she's doing out here in the skulks. She came in to my graysmithy building an hour ago with a hunted look in her eyes, asking for a very specific inject: a hand-made combination of languages and vocational skills. It's plain she's running from something, but it isn't the job of a graysmith to ask questions.
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