Dive into The Deep End

Today is your lucky day! Below is a sneak peek at "The Deep End", my contribution to the next Black Beacon Books anthology, Tales from the Ruins. A reminder that the anthology will be released on the 25th of February but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just 99c instead of $3.99. I hope the first few paragraphs whet your appetite...

 

THE DEEP END 

CAMERON TROST

 

I sit here in the dark, stroking the head of my axe and looking through the only gap in the boards nailed across the windows of my thatched cottage, and I wonder how all this will play out.This is the third day we’ve spotted them searching hereabouts,and this afternoon marks the first time they’ve ventured along the street leading into our forsaken village. Dean is slumped in my wife’s patchwork armchair, and his snoring is strangely reassuring. His axe is lying on the floor, within easy reach, and there are two makeshift bows and two dozen arrows leaning against the wall at my feet. We could withstand a small attack and easily dispose of the bodies, but not an offensive launched by the whole clan. The sun has sunk low now. The blanket of night may be what saves us. 

 

In the meantime, all I can do is sit here and hope they don’t draw too near, and while I sit, I can’t help but recall the whole sorry affair. 

 

#

 

I was picking pumpkins when it began. I saw the battered Tesla trundle along the road. The two weary horses pulling what had originally been an electric vehicle capable of doing over a hundred and fifty miles per hour were bound to end up over a grill or in a stew before winter sank its claws in. The road lay a couple of hundred yards from my cottage and was hidden from view at intervals by trees, hedges, and the ruins of a farmhouse, but I could make out the forms of three or four men inside. I wondered why they hadn’t built a simple wooden cart if they were intent on moving around by other means than their own legs. But there was no mystery, was there? Before whatever had happened—before The Breakdown—just about everyone had been dead set on getting their hands on whatever the latest and most expensive crap available on the market was. That, of course, hadn’t changed. Now broken and useless, the Tesla was still as much a trophy as it had been when it was shiny and functional. That hadn’t changed, but something had—we now saw our fellow man without the trappings and fake smiles of the past. We now saw his true self—a mangy dog snarling over a brittle bone.

 

‘What are they up to?’ I found myself asking aloud.

 

The pumpkin in my hands didn’t answer and I looked around half-expecting the mere act of speaking to beckon Brooke back to me. It didn’t, of course. Nothing stirred in the brambles and bracken that swept up to the granite walls of my cottage—our cottage—the home I’d made with a wife who’d disappeared without a trace. And now—but that didn’t bear thinking about. Brooke had set off to collect mushrooms with Dean’s daughter, Taya. They’d left shortly after lunch. They ought to have been back with a basketful each long ago.

 

I looked at the pumpkin and stared west to where a washed-out orange sun was sinking behind the pines.

 

‘Brooke!’

 

Silence.

 

I didn’t like it. This wasn’t like her. She and Taya followed the rules the four of us had agreed upon together. They always stayed together. They never ventured too far—no further than the road.

 

The knot inside me tightened.

 

Birds chirped merrily in the weeping birch that grew by the well, across the potholed track from my cottage, but their song now sounded like mockery. Without Brooke, there was nothing of any beauty or worth for me in this ruined world. Without her, I wouldn’t have had the will to go on after it had become clear her mother had vanished for good. Five winters now since she’d gone—and the sixth was drawing relentlessly closer. 

 

I placed the pumpkin gently by my feet—feet clad in cherry red Docs that had withstood the downfall of society—because I was afraid I’d drop it. I could feel my grasp weakening. There were six pumpkins, two of modest size and four big ones. There would have been more—at least ten—but they had been stolen. Thieves came at night to snatch ripe fruit and vegetables, and even though I had a set-up with string and bells to warn me of their presence, they had soon worked out how to get around it. One night a few weeks ago, when I’d got up to relieve my bladder in the back garden, I surprised a thief stepping over the string encircling my potato patch. He carried a candle in his right hand and I could see he held a sack in the other—but there was also a garden fork leaning against his left shoulder. I was about to grab the axe I kept inside the cottage, by the back door, but he disappeared into the pine forest instead. If I fixed the fence and got myself a dog, keeping thieves away would be easier, but we didn’t need another mouth to feed, and there was a real risk the poor dog would end up roasted on a spit.

 

I fended the thieves off as best I could, but from time to time they struck it lucky. When you face starvation, you do whatever you can to survive, and six pumpkins was enough for us to stave off hunger for several weeks, along with a decent reserve of potatoes, courgettes, nuts—and mushrooms. Dean and I would trap pheasants, pigeons, and hunt the occasional boar to spoil ourselves.

 

‘Brooke!’ I called again, but birdsong was the only reply.

 

It would be dark soon, and waiting like this was no longer an option. Something was wrong.

 

I heard familiar footsteps.

 

‘I don’t like it either, Ewan. Not one bit.’

 

Dean came into view, walking along the track and passing the bramble hedge. The look on his face pulled the knot inside me even tighter.

 

‘It’s not just me then?’

 

He shook his head and I realised his mop of long hair seemed thinner and greyer every time I saw him. The keen look in his brown eyes never changed though. Dean, like me, was a survivor. Every one of the eight houses in our village had been occupied or kept as a holiday home before The Breakdown. All but two—Dean’s and mine—stood empty now. With one exception, the other residents had packed up and left, taking what they could in wheelbarrows and shopping trolleys, intent on finding a better world elsewhere. Deep down inside, I know they never found one. The exception was Jack Sinclair, who’d lost his wife before The Breakdown and his sons in one of the first clan battles that had taken place in the town square shortly after. Leaving home wasn’t on the cards for him, but neither was staying to scratch out an existence. After three days with no news, I’d paid him a visit and found him in his garden shed. He’d put his strongest length of rope to work one last time. 

 

‘It’s not like them,’ Dean said. ‘I looked in the old Burns cottage to see if they were boiling up some herbal tea.’ He frowned and looked me in the eye—a hard look I was unaccustomed to from him.

 

I broke his gaze and glanced at the sky. Twilight was setting in.

 

‘We have to get moving, Ewan.’ And while he spoke calmly, his tone was sinister—almost accusing—and I understood why. We were survivors. We lived for our girls. They depended on us, and we depended on them. But here I was, allowing the knot in my stomach to tighten while I pottered about picking pumpkins.

 

‘We need weapons,’ I found myself saying.

 

He nodded.

 

I took a hatchet and a claw hammer from the windowsill.

 

‘I’ve already walked the track through the pines. There are no edible mushrooms left but no sign of the girls either,’ Dean said darkly.

 

‘The road?’ I wondered. ‘They know not to cross it, but they often gather mushrooms along the ditch.’

 

I handed Dean the hatchet and hefted the hammer.

 

‘Let’s go,’ Dean said. 

 

To be continued!