Beyond Hope (Tales from the Brink Book 3)

by Martyn J. Pass

  “Yes,” said Alan. “They'll stay that way too, won't they?”

  The boy stopped smiling and looked like he was about to cry.

  “Ignore my friend,” said Sarah, taking a piece of jerky from the pouch in her pocket. “He's had a long day.”

  The boy took the gift and his crooked smile returned. Then he dragged a box over to Ziggy's side and she used it to climb down, feeling the stiffness in her hips and the agony of her ribs waking up again. He led the horse away and Sarah shifted the box to Alan's mount.

  “Does picking on little kids make you feel better?” she asked.

  “In a place like this?” he replied. “Yes. It'll do him good to feel a bit of fear. Look around you - there isn't a single guard on duty or a scrap of any kind of defence to be seen anywhere. Any clown who wants to come in here can just walk right on in.”

  “I noticed that. Worrying, isn't it? Especially being so close to the Slavers.”

  “Very.”

  Moll had seen off the local dogs that’d come sniffing when they'd arrived but one dusty looking mutt stayed and they began eyeing each other up, tails wagging and ears pricked.

  “She's made a friend,” said Sarah.

  “I'm not having anything to do with it,” he said, unfastening his luggage. “Any puppies will be your fault. When I have to drown them you'll be the first to cry.”

  “You wouldn't?” He nodded and she landed a fist right in his shoulder.

  “What the hell was that for?” he cried.

  “You'd drown puppies? Seriously?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why say it?”

  “It was a joke.”

  “You didn't warn me, remember?”

  The lad came running back, taking the reins of Alan's horse. Before he could get away, he grabbed the boy's apron and pulled him back.

  “Here,” he said, putting a handful of boiled sweets into his dirty palm. “Brush and hay for the beast please.”

  The boy trembled and looked stunned until Alan released him and he almost dragged the horse into the stable with him as he ran away. Sarah shook her head.

  “What?” he laughed.

  They walked towards The Piggle, shouldering their luggage and rifles the short distance to the open bar. The hag watched them with squinted eyes and when they dropped their heavy loads in the corner, she hobbled along the length of the planking until she was close enough to jerk her head by way of greeting.

  “You stayin'?” she asked. “Got rooms to spare.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “One room please.” She felt, rather than saw, Alan shoot her a look and she turned towards him. “It'll er... be safer that way.”

  “Of course,” he replied but his face had flushed red. “I'll pay.”

  “No, it's okay, I've...” She rummaged inside her pockets but he'd already put a small plastic bottle on the bar. The hag saw what it was and snatched it away quickly before anyone else could see it.

  “For that,” she whispered. “Best bed, food and as much as you can drink.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I'll send a boy up to ready your room. In the meantime, do you both want a drink?”

  “Yeah,” said Sarah. “I could do with one.”

  The hag waddled away and came back with two of the cleanest pint glasses she had yet even these were scratched and worn. Sarah looked at the foaming head and then at Alan who'd already taken a mouthful from it.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Pretty good,” he said, wiping his beard with the back of his hand.

  She drank some and agreed. Then they sat at an empty table near their bags which was simply an overturned oil drum and two stools made from smaller barrels. There was a strong smell of horse and machinery and all kinds of human odour in the air. It was crazy and frantic and charged with a kind of electric energy, like it was a living thing, pulsing as people came and went and animals wandered freely up and down the muddy streets.

  “You seem shocked,” he asked.

  “It's a strange little place,” she said. “I didn't realise it was on our doorstep.”

  “I think that a lot of these communities are happy to be left alone. They run themselves, they keep their own ways and oftentimes they don't like outsiders. This seems to be a kind of niche, a place only a few know and maybe people just ride past without realising it's here. On the other hand they're clearly sending their produce on to somewhere. It might be worth finding out who's buying it from them.”

  “That's a good point. You're thinking it could be them?”

  “It's possible. If that's true, it would explain why they've no walls and no guards. They wouldn't be worried by their allies, would they?”

  The glasses were soon empty and the moment she put hers down another boy, a little older than the stable hand, was on them in a flash and had replaced them with two more. The lad looked at Moll and smiled before speeding away.

  “It's growing on me,” she grinned.

  By the time their second pints were reduced to the dregs of white suds at the bottom of the glass, the boy returned to tell them that their room was ready and that the fire was lit. They thanked him and Alan gave him a couple of boiled sweets from his pocket.

  “Where do you keep getting those from?” she asked, collecting her things.

  “Maybe one day I'll tell you.”

  The room was on the top floor of the farmhouse, up two flights of deep stone steps and facing the open square of the village. The hallways stank of damp and the wallpaper, faded and black with mold, was starting to come away in great curling sheets. The floor beneath their feet had once been carpeted but this was now bare in places and torn up in others and the stench clung to it, making her feel a little queasy.

  Their room, however, suffered from none of this. It was the biggest room in the entire building and it boasted clean walls, a large, open fireplace and even swept wooden floors. It was warm when they entered and the big king-sized metal bed had been made with fresh, clean sheets.

  “Our best room,” said the boy. “Mildred must really like you.”

  “Mildred?” asked Sarah.

  “The lady at the bar.”

  The boy closed the door behind him and she could hear him running away down the hall. She dropped her bags onto the floor and went to warm her hands at the fire with Moll at her side, sensing the heat already.

  “Nice,” said Alan.

  “I don't know what you gave her but I hope you have more of it.”

  “They were painkillers,” he said, taking off his heavy coat and hanging it on a peg on the door. “For her troubles.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “It was nice for both of us. We got special treatment, she got relief. Works both ways.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and bounced a little, testing the springs. Then she kicked off her boots and lay back, letting out a long, low sigh.

  “That's nice,” she said. “Just like home.”

  Alan went and sat in a deep, plush armchair near the fire and Moll headed for the rug in front of the flames and flopped down onto her side.

  “Someone doesn't need telling twice,” he said. “I feel like doing the same.”

  “It's been a long day, hasn't it?” said Sarah, letting a yawn escape through her lips. “At least I'll get a chance to read in a room like this. It isn't the same trying to follow the words with moonlight.”

  “You should carry a candle with you,” he said. “Or build a big enough fire when you camp.”

  “Is there nothing we can do?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “About the fact that books from your time are disappearing. One day there might be no more copies of a certain book or whole stories might be lost, never to be told again. That bothers me, now that you've said it.”

  “Someone will tell the story,” he said. “That's what we do. We tell stories for the same reasons that people like to enjoy the fire - to keep the cold away.
It doesn't matter if one particular book is lost, a dozen more will carry us back there, to that world we long for but just can't seem to get to. None of those worlds ever has only one way into it.”

  “Have you always loved books?”

  “For as long as I can remember. Even when the disaster happened, I looked for books in the ruins or gathered them up to store somewhere safe. Even the ones I miss might be on a computer somewhere, waiting to be found. I need that release. I need to know that there's somewhere better, somewhere I belong, even if I can only look at it through a small window made from paper and ink.”

  She turned onto her side and stared at him, wondering how he could even exist. A man so divided, so different in his two selves yet composed of the same materials. He was a walking, breathing contradiction.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I agree with all of that. I read from very early on in my life. Papa found our home hidden out there and when he saw the library inside it, untouched, he knew he had to have it. No one argued when Pine Lodge was founded, no one contested it. We moved in and he used those books to teach me to read and write. After that there wasn't a day that went by without me opening up those pages and diving headfirst into the story. It was one of the greatest gifts he could ever have given me.”

  “That's true enough.”

  “Do you have one with you?” she asked. He went into his bags and took out a small paperback that had curled slightly on the bottom-right corner of the cover. “Read some to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. But not there.” She patted the space on the bed next to her. “Here. With me.”

  He got up out of his chair and she moved to the other side of the bed. Then he lay down with his back against the metal bedstead and she shuffled into him, resting her head on his chest, listening to him breath. She felt at peace in his arms, calm and safe and the moment he began to read she closed her eyes and felt his fingers gently moving through her hair.

  He read to her and the words echoed down the ages with the phrases and sounds of a people long gone from the world, with ideas and hopes and dreams that had perished when the light had gone, when the radiation cloud had sailed by and when the Scavengers had murdered them. They were as foreign as a mistral wind, as a Siberian winter and a long lost piece of their creations, buried for someone to find. Her heart was alive with it and she wished that he'd never stop, that the final page wasn't somewhere up ahead and that he'd read to her forever.

  Eventually she saw the blank spaces and the end of the chapter and she spoke.

  “How long has it been?” she asked.

  “Since what?”

  “Since you held a woman like this before.”

  He didn't answer straight away. She could feel his heart beating beneath her, thumping a steady rhythm in concert with his deep, methodical breathing. He was choosing his words. She knew it. She could almost hear it as he thought through what he wanted to say.

  “I don't remember,” he whispered. “How long since you were last held like this?”

  “Far too long. The last person who held me was Meggy. Just before the end.”

  He said nothing. His fingers continued to move, exploring, teasing the strands and finding knots, then moving past them.

  “Read some more,” she said and he did. He read about a hero and a villain and other things but it wasn't the words she was hearing but the voice. Not just Alan's but all the voices that ever told a story, that ever spoke in such a way that she felt hope again; hope that things really would be okay after all. There was strength in those words; written by someone from long ago writing to people he'd never meet about things his readers might never see again. It was almost as tragic as the story she found herself in now.

  “She was my life,” she finally said, placing her hand on his where he held the book. “She was everything to me. I carried her for so long and then one day she was there, in my arms, and she was real, not just a bump. I've never been so happy and I don't know if I can ever be that happy again.

  “When she died, I wanted to die too. I was nothing, just a shell, a cold, empty thing like Papa. I understood now what he was feeling day after day since my mother died. It wasn't living anymore; it was a perpetual death, without end, without hope.”

  He put down the book and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her close. She needed that safety; she needed that place where hope might have a chance of growing and the fear of telling him everything was almost too much to bear.

  “Then you came and I could see it in your eyes. It was there too! The pain. The cold. The sorrow. You know exactly what I'm saying and, even though you haven't said a word, I know you understand, I know you get me and what I'm feeling. You need me as much as I need you.”

  She turned, looking up at him, her hair falling across her face, moistened by her tears. When she looked into his eyes, she saw the same thing there, waiting for her, begging her to risk everything for him.

  “They're all gone,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Everyone I've ever known, dead, beyond hope, beyond saving. Every time I felt I was saving them, more were dying every day. I was so...”

  “Lonely?” she said.

  “Yes. I'd left so many behind, so many that I couldn't save and yet I was still alive, still trying to make a difference and wondering why I was bothering. Was there any point?”

  “There's always a point.”

  “Is there?” he said.

  “You have me,” she said. “You have us.”

  “But I feel-”

  “Guilty for being alive?” He nodded. “ And for having something just for yourself. But you're allowed to, Alan; I'm giving you permission to want me. All your life you've run around after other people - just once you can let someone run around for you. I want to do that, I want to be the reason that you keep going, that you're able to face the years ahead because you remember me, you remember what we have. I want that more than anything.”

  “But why?” he asked as she sat up, looking him in the eye. “Why me?”

  “Because, my dear Bear - I love you. I have done since I first saw you, the real you. I can't walk away, I can't let you face this alone and if by giving you my years I might help those you're going to help, then I'll happily give you all my days on this earth. Please, just love me the way I know you can. The way you were meant to.”

  Their lips met and they kissed, wrapping themselves around each other as the dusk came and the night broke in through the window. When the stars came out, they found them both wrapped up in each other, loving each other until the morning came and with it a fresh, new hope for the world and for themselves.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When she woke Sarah found herself being warmed by the sun that came through the window in horizontal slants, cutting through the floating motes. Moll had somehow crept unnoticed onto the bed and lay on top of their feet as she snored with the softness of a kitten. Alan slept on, exhausted from days on the road and he hardly moved as she rested her head against his chest and looked out through the glass.

  The day was clear but cold with a light frosting on the window through which she could see the occasional flock of birds soar slowly past. The sounds coming from below were nothing more than faint rumbles, snatches of conversations and the occasional clash of pots and pans. Had it not been for the knock at the door, she could have stayed that way for hours but when the second knock came she knew she had to answer it before he woke.

  Pulling on her trousers and sweater, she padded towards the door and gathered her hair into a tail before knotting it behind her head to at least attempt to look presentable. But before she opened it, she pulled her rifle out of its case and cocked it, hiding it behind the wall out of sight.

  “Yes?” she said to the boy standing there looking ashamed and awkward.

  “Mildred asks if you want any breakfast?”

  “What's on offer?”

  “Gammon, eggs and potato.”

  �
��Any bread?”

  “If you like.”

  “And a jug of water,” she said. “Bring it here, thanks.”

  “I will,” he replied, turning to leave.

  When she closed the door, Alan was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face like he'd slept for weeks. In the light of day she saw that his naked body didn't bear a single scar or blemish and there wasn't an ounce of fat to be found anywhere.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Breakfast is on its way.”

  “Thanks. I hope there's coffee.”

  “I doubt it but we could boil some water if you want. There's some beans left in my bag.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He stood up and, taking her by the waist, kissed her before smiling. “The bad news is we've got work to do.”

  “I know,” she replied. “Sometimes I think we always will.”

  “Not always. We might get a break now and again. In my experience it's worth taking time out once in a blue moon to enjoy the finer things in life.”

  “Such as?” He grinned.

  “Beer. Food. A good book.” She slammed a fist into his chest and he let out a grunt. “Maybe a good woman too, if I have the time.”

  “You'll make the time, I promise you.”

  The food came and it was better than they could have hoped for. They ate it sat on the floor with the plates between them, sipping cups of black coffee while the morning life unfolded like a pantomime in their ears, put on for their enjoyment. On a few occasions Sarah got up and looked outside to see it, taking it all in like it was brand new, fresh and full of colour. She knew he was watching her all that time and it thrilled her, made her feel loved and wanted and she tried not to think about the reality of what was waiting for them out there. The fiction would have to do; there was just no other way that they'd both get through the coming days otherwise.

  When it was done and Moll had licked the plates clean, they got dressed and gathered their things, taking one last look at the room together.

  “That was nice,” she said and he agreed. “We should come back here one day.”