A Collection of Ruins

Prologue - Children Don't Burn Alone (Ellie)

Ellie

Click, click.

Weak winter sunshine spilled through the window, creating shadows to encroach upon the room; mimics of the madness that threatened to encroach upon the world. 

My bag smacked against the floor, drawing my father’s attention. 

“Morning sweetheart,” His southern drawl cruel in the way it comforted, even as he prepared to leave. Again. The bullets he was loading made a click each time they sunk home.

Click, click.

The sound that heralded violence and gave cause to ignore our own. Because, even now, the screams from two doors down reached my ears. My hand clenched hard around the back of the chair I stood in front of.  

Dad’s eyes flicked from my hand to my face. “Sometimes the job—”

 “Changes people, I know.” Because, somehow, it had gone from protecting the innocent to punishing them. Those who were left became the ones who were left behind. The disease was destroying people from the inside out.  

“I won’t be back for dinner tonight. There’s five dollars on the table get yourself dinner on the way home school alright?”

Five dollars for a meal. The economy was on the rocks again, and nobody was feeling it more that we were. Trailer park road, because it was a trailer park, despite the fact that technically every house was a double wide, and yet we were the only place that had yet to hit critical.

Once the madness struck, it had been a matter of days before cities and towns alike fell from infection, but not here. Dad said it was because the people of Sterilis were decedents from the hunters themselves, I thought it was because we were just used to hurting our own.

The children went to school and watched – not the teachers, but the seats where students should be but weren’t – and mourned, because even at this age, we knew what it meant. The able bodied men and women picked up guns and turned them towards each other. And it was all we could do.

You couldn’t kill the disease; just the person carrying it. 

Click, click.

“I’m going,”

It was what I said, what meant was I’m going, but you’ll be here for me when I get back, won’t you? Yet I didn’t ask the question; not when I knew the answer was likely to – one day – be a no. 

“Okay. I love you.”

It was the last time I would hear my father say it.

* * *

The moan that woke me hardly disguised the hurt it held, this was a hurt so large it couldn’t be contained. My bleary eyes blinked and focused on the clock; half past eleven. I’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table, waiting for him to return. And he had just burst through the door, causing it to slam against its frame, his gait slow and stumbling.

His blue eyes – carbon copies of mine – were bloodshot, his mouth agape as a low rumbling punched its way from deep within his chest. Skin that had once been flushed full of life was now so pale it spoke only of death. I stood stock still – frozen – and could do no more than watch as the man who had once been my father raised his arms revealing fingers that now dangled strips of diseased flesh. Fingers that were reaching for me, reaching for me—

I jerked myself from within his reach, falling from my place at the table, hitting the ground with a thud. Pain was an electric current running up my spine.

That time, the groan sounded as if he were trying to speak my name. “Elieanora…”

I scrabbled backwards, reaching in earnest for a gun, just as he lurched forward and gripped my ankle and yanked.

I released a grunt of pain and strikes out against him- my own father, my foot connecting with his flesh, forcing him to surrender his hold on my ankle.

I quickly moved myself backwards on the ground, retrieving the gun from the place where it had fell when I had almost grabbed it. I pushed myself even further backwards so my back was against the wall, distancing myself from Dad so I had some time to check the gun for bullets before raising the gun, just as he grabbed my ankle once more, dragging me towards him. The trigger was worn and cold, just like the figure grabbing at me. I closed my eyes for a brief second, I couldn’t allow myself to be consumed with feelings of guilt and grief. Not yet.

Bang.

The pressure on my ankle eased, and the house itself dared not make a noise. Even the wind outside was eerily silent in the wake of the gun shot.

“Daddy?”

He just lay there.

My father just lay there.