A Collection of Ruins

Chapter 2 - White Knuckles and Sweaty Palms (Ellie)

Elieanora

 

The pads of my fingers tore, the skin gripping to the coarse ground until it was little more than tattered shreds. The police chief and his daughter became nothing more than figures in the distance as I rose from my crouch.  My eyes swung to the shadows where I knew he would be found. Rats liked to lurk in the dark.

Blaine Delaney had been abandoned to the streets of the Metropolis at the tender age of twelve. Gangly and pale, he had a shock of perpetually greasy blonde hair and red rimmed eyes that were continuously bouncing from one point of focus to another. Now at eighteen, Blaine was the king of the Street Rats and our way in. The Met-Wall would prove useless if Rebels found way underground.

“Blaine.” It was a growl that gave voice to what those of the Met called 'savageness'. We called it survival. 

“Now, now, Ellie.” The kid smirked; I needed him and he knew it.

My fingers tapped a rhythm against the sheathed blade resting on my thigh. Satisfied as the kid faltered, vulnerable as he doubted himself and his worth just for a moment. You could remove the kid from the broken home but you couldn’t remove the broken from the kid.

Truth. The blood that had been spilled for it was not something I could allow again. There were better things to die for.

 “Time to go, Ellie.” And just for an instant those red rimmed eyes softened. Just an instant. Silent acknowledgement of the bond that kept him loyal, a bond that stemmed from dead fathers and streets covered in grim.

Everyone knows that to be a legend is to be dead. So we let ourselves be forgotten until we were no more than ghosts, relics of a past long gone. 

Nobody noticed as I slipped from the steel cage that was the Met, carrying weapons and covered in blood.

                                                                                        * * *

Dust and bones, the Miracle Mile stretched out before me, welcoming me home. The Miracle Mile, they said, as if it were because of some great divine intervention that our stretch of dirt had yet to succumb to the virus. Through scratches, cuts, bites, the sickness had seeped throughout a nation. People began to drop within a day. Whole cities obliterated, until it seemed, we simply ceased to exist at all. Five days; that was the beginning. Daughters turned on mothers, fathers turned on sons; until our houses cried crimson and the streets ran with blood. So desperate in their attempts to destroy the disease that instead, they destroyed each other. 

In the beginning people – so desolate at the thought of hurting those they held close – waited. Waited for the implications of the disease to become clear. They didn’t wait too long after that. People infected became crazed, infecting as many others as they could, some imbedded instinct usually urging them home to end their families. Because no one survived the disease.  Once the disease had you in its claws, and it bit, five days was the longest you would live. Five days. The exact amount of time it took for the Metropolis to build its gate and shut its door.

                                                                                      * * *

The sickening thud that came from the house two doors down was the only thing that gave voice to the violence that happened within its walls. Ronan had stopped screaming years ago.Worn cracks upon the walls, fissures from all the pain, spreading, reaching, growing.  Searching for the family that had once been housed inside.  A lost mother, an abusive father, a beaten son. Waves of uselessness crashed upon me, threatened to drag me under, as all I did was watch. Watch, even as I knew that Ronan was being tormented. The pedestal Ronan had placed his father upon had once been ten feet tall.

Ten minutes. It takes ten minutes before Ronan makes his way to where I’m sitting on my porch – I counted. He takes a seat as both of us observe the damage done to our homes, rather than damage done to Ronan’s face. Houses reduced to no more than piles of rubble, others barely hanging on by a thread, just likes those who lived inside them. A collection of ruins.

We won’t talk about it; we never do. Sterilis is no place for the weak, only the hard and strong can survive here. Everyone left on the outside of the Met-Wall who had survived the initial first five days had all flocked here. Sterilis the home of the brave. Not many of them made it.

“Ellie.” I looked up as Matt approached, keeping his distance from Ronan. “Ellie, you’re going to have to come down to the Pit. We’ve lost another.”  

Ronan and I stood as one; years of practice kept our faces masks of indifference whilst Matt’s portrayed nothing but raw pain.

“Careful there, Mattie.” It was a snarl; “Walkin’ around with a facial expression like that, people are gonna guess your roots, city boy.” 

Matt’s head whipped up and his mouth opened, no doubt to deliver a spitting retort about the injustice of indifference in the face of death, but he snapped his mouth shut at the last second. Good. Nobody spoke to Ronan about injustice and pain. Not when nobody suffered more at the hands of it than him.

“Which reminds me,” Ronan’s voice had become cruelly gleeful and I braced myself as the three of us continued to walk. “Ellie is finally sending your sorry ass home.”

Because somehow, I had become the leader of our band of Rebels – Ronan’s father was the only adult left and no longer suited for anything let alone the care for a group of kids.

“Ellie—”

It took me a minute to respond as the stench of the Pit began an affront on my nostrils. Jesus, it had gotten bad.

"No.” Short and snapped, I would not allow Matt to spin me another pretty story. Tales from the Metropolis, where they all apparently wondered why we had denied ourselves entry from the Met. Didn’t we hope for the better world behind the Met-Wall? Didn’t we hope for a better world, period?

“You came with the promise of answers, Matt, and you couldn’t deliver. Your asylum depends on you gaining them. We need you for the barcode on your arm. You will re-enter the Metropolis, Blaine will give you safe passage. From there you will get the girl and bring her to us.”

“Or we will just cut the arm off.” The feral smile on Ronan’s face was a testament to how much he meant it.

A young girl lay prone at the entrance to the Pit – the place we buried our dead. I lowered until I was crouching next to her, my thumb rubbing over the stark black word tattooed onto the skin of her inner wrist – HOPE.

Don’t they know? When this is the world you wake up to everyday, hope dies.