Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) Read Free Page A

precious to people. These were their walls, their food, their books. All set ablaze in a great string of conflagrations that had lit up the whole valley. Her nose wrinkled again, but this time it brought not hunger, but horror.
    The smell of burned meat…
    A hand flew to her mouth. She turned away, uttering an unladylike urgh! and vomited bile into the ash. It sizzled at her feet, cooking off and rising up into her face, eliciting a further bout of retching. It didn’t stop until she was on her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked sheepishly at Bud, but he didn’t laugh or sneer, just offered a sympathetic blink and went back to sifting through the junk.
    “Where’s Doc?” Evian muttered.
    “Here,” called Pepper, screened from view by the chimney stack, the only piece of the burned-out house still standing. “This place is a dud. There’s nothing that’s not melted but a few cookbooks and pots. Nothing to actually cook,” she added bitterly.
    “Let’s move on. The next one will be better,” Bud said, rising from his haunches.
    “I haven’t looked!”
    “Trust me, there’s nothing.”
    “Nothing,” Pepper confirmed.
    Evian pouted. “Fine. Let’s go.”
    Bud looked over the marred paperback in his hands, wrinkled and blackened with the heat, and cast it aside on the table. He filled his pockets with a few salvageable odds and ends—nothing worth trading, the kind of useless trinkets only boys liked: a large silver coin, string, and a few stained playing cards. He gave Evian a brave smile. “We’re doing good. We just have to keep going; soon enough we’ll be back on our feet. You’ll see. We’ll be rich as any king of the Old World before long—”
    A section of the chimney stack crumbled as Pepper burst over a pile of rubble, seeming almost to cleave right through it from sheer panic. Her stout body radiated alarm, and her eyes were enormous in her head. A strangled “ Ack! ” escaped her throat as she collided with them, and the trio spilled across the floor. Before they hit the ground, she was shushing them viciously, clamping her ashy fingers over their mouths hard enough to split Evian’s lip.
    Suddenly a great weight seemed to have fallen over the house, an oppressive silence only enhanced by the distant crackling of remnant embers somewhere in the cellar.
    Evian struggled, but Pepper held fast, tears spilling from her eyes.
    Bud managed to shake her off. She feinted as though daring him to make a sound, but he held up his hands, one warding hand out in front of him, the other held to his lips to show he understood.
    Pepper bared her teeth, fists bunched, snot dribbling over her lips. Her eyes darted in their sockets as she inched back towards the walls.
    What? He mouthed.
    Her lips retracted completely, the snarling leer of a cornered dog. THEM!
    Evian’s stomach imploded to the size of a grape, pouring liquid fear into her abdomen. “Oh no,” she squeaked.
    “ Shhh !” Pepper abandoned silencing them and pressed against the nearest wall, huddling into a shuddering ball.
    Evian cast a desperate glance at Bud, her mouth ajar. Tears stung her eyes.
    She could usually see all his clever plans flitting behind his eyes. Bud always had a plan. But right now, there was nothing in those soft brown eyes but blankness.
    He took her hand and pulled her against the wall alongside Pepper where they cowered in unthinking, shuddering fugue.
    No. They can’t be back. They can’t. They left. They went away. There’s nobody left to burn. They’re all gone.
    Her heart leapt.
    Except us.
    The silence deepened yet again, clawing at her ears. After a moment she realised it hadn’t deepened but only been contrasted by a new noise, one rising from silence like a leviathan from the deep.
    Somewhere out there, beyond the blackened walls, many footfalls upon muddied ground. A great many.
    Evian pressed tighter against the remains of the Pepsi Squad, and they cowered together in a