The Ruins Book 3 by T.W. Piperbrook

Author:T.W. Piperbrook [Piperbrook, T.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Script Publishing
Published: 2017-09-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28: Bray

"Kirby!" Bray shouted again, looking over as she clutched a savage wound on her arm. Blood dripped from the teeth marks of a demon, staining her clothes. Bray's knuckles were bloodied from the punches he'd landed trying to escape, or to defend her. She looked as if she might fight some more. Her face wore the resistance of someone who was ready to die, but Bray wasn't ready to give up his life. Cullen looked as if he were in a stupor, but he wasn't fighting. All around them, the demons pressed close.

After separating them from William, the demons had half-dragged, half-led them through the gate in the wall next to the shimmering building. Now they stood in the western end of the dirt courtyard that spanned the first part of the settlement, the same one Bray had seen from high up on the floors of the big building.

"We need to stay alive!" Bray yelled to Kirby, not for the first time.

He needed to say something—anything—so she would outlive this moment.

"I will not be a slave," Kirby spat through clenched teeth at the demons, and at Rudyard. Ollie, Avery, and a handful of uninfected men stood next to him. "Not again."

"It is not worth your life," Bray implored her.

"Listen to him. He's smart." Rudyard laughed from outside the circle.

Bray looked around. In the center of the courtyard, far past them, piles of ashes sat where bonfires had burned. To the south of the courtyard, he saw the first rows of the small, square buildings that extended far back into the city. Women clad in dirty pants and shirts stared at them from inside the doorways, or outside. Some looked as if they had been in the process of hanging laundry, or cooking food, when they heard the commotion. More than a couple held babies. All of them had haunted eyes.

Of course, no one came to help.

The short buildings extended beyond the first rows and as far as Bray could see, but he knew they ended at the wall. Most of the dwellings had cracks, or were pieced together with scraps of rock or metal. The smell of demon stench and dung filled the air. Even if he had noticed the squalid conditions from the building's highest floors, Bray wouldn't have seen the truth. Toward the eastern side of the settlement sat the taller buildings with large chimneys. Past them was one side of the fenced-in area within the wall that he'd seen from higher up.

None of those observations helped him now.

He looked over the heads of the demons and at the wall through which they'd been brought. The gate was closed. Assumedly, most of the population of New City was still out in the fields, tending crops, or in some of the buildings, working, or eavesdropping. William was gone.

He turned his attention back to Rudyard and the people next to him. Shortly after they came through the gate, Ollie and Avery had appeared, along with a half-dozen vicious, bear-sized men.

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