Chapter 13 A Journey through Ruin
A JOURNEY THROUGH RUIN
Icould feel the poke of eyes boring into me from all sides as I entered the dining hall for breakfast the next morning. I debated turning around on the spot and walking back outside, but the appetising smell of coffee reached my nostrils first, and my stomach grumbled pleadingly.
I was grateful for the insufficient window size and its resulting lack of light as I proceeded on my walk of shame towards the buffet tables, my steps uncomfortably loud on the wooden floor.
As quickly as possible, I helped myself to a cup of coffee and some dry cereal.
Then I swiftly stalked off to the table from which Kevin had waved me over.
“Are you good?” Monika asked me in a voice so full of concern it sounded almost sorrowful.
She placed a tentative hand on my shoulder, signalling that if I fell apart in tears, she would be there to catch me in a hug. It took an immense amount of self-restraint not to start laughing.
“I’m fine, honestly,” I assured her. “I had a nice evening. Don’t you worry about me.”
I couldn’t help but blush deeply. As if it weren’t enough that everyone knew just what I did last night and why, somehow the fact that I enjoyed it made it that much worse. Luckily, all the lads except Dave were looking shyly into their own breakfast plates.
“My god, you did have a nice evening, didn’t you?” Dave smacked the table with his palm, laughing.
His Cheshire grin was at its widest, and his eyes scrutinised my own face so relentlessly that I blushed deeper yet.
“Yes, I did. Now, can we please change the subject?” I said flatly, pushing my cornflakes around the bowl with a spoon.
“But he forced you!” Monika objected in outrage while Dave said, chuckling, “That’s fortunate. I could almost forgive him for being a knobber if he can give you a good time. You’re glowing this morning, I swear to god.”
I groaned, burying my face in my hands, whereas Monika continued her protests, “He’s horrible. He is so violent! And it’s like he’s enjoying all this!”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, resisting the urge to point out that so was I, to some degree. “He might surprise you. He sure surprised me ...”
But even as I spoke, I could sense my words ringing hollow. The unexpected intimacy of the previous night, the startling discovery of safety and connection, seemed impossible to convey with mere words in harsh daylight. After all, logic could hardly explain something that defied it.
“Oh no, no, no.” Dave shook his head vehemently. “Renny, no. I don’t mind if you have your fun with that grandiose bastard. Use him well, and I’ll commend you for that. But you mustn’t fall for him, hun.”
I made a disgruntled noise at the back of my throat.
“Just imagine he make same suggestion, but he isn’t such a ...” Monika trailed off, searching for the right word.
“Hot daddy?” Kevin suggested, and Dave elbowed him playfully as I nearly choked on my coffee.
“What do you do then?”
“Close my eyes and think of England,” I deadpanned amidst laughter. “Now, for the last time, can we please talk about anything else?”
“Fancy an outing, Ren?” Einar found me in the hall after breakfast, and my heart fluttered at hearing his voice.
He touched my shoulder briefly, but just long enough to evoke the sense of closeness we had shared the night before.
“An outing?” I raised my eyebrows at him.
“You promised me something, remember?”
The expression on his face was pleasant enough, but his voice was all let’s-get-down-to-business. I felt almost scorned.
He led me to the deserted hall in the opposite building, the one underneath his lodgings. Four men already waited for us, sitting around one of the tables.
Russell smiled at me, a set of large, crooked teeth partly obscured by his copper beard.
“Hey luv,” he greeted me. “I ’ope this lucky bastard let you get some sleep las’ night.”
They all chuckled, and for about the tenth time that morning, blood bloomed hotly in my cheeks. I felt Einar’s hand stroke my lower back in an unspoken apology.
“Why do you think you need to worry about my sleep and not his?” I retorted feebly, but they all roared with appreciation.
“This is Jean-Luc,” Einar introduced me to the oldest man.
“You are, or were, the manager of this resort, right?” I asked as I shook his hand, recognising his name.
“That is right,” he confirmed in a slight French accent.
He was over fifty, a little, wiry man with a greying buzz cut.
“And this is Finlay.” I shook hands with a tall Scotsman about Einar’s age who had rich dark hair and prominent green eyes.
“Albert.” The man with the unusual, rounded accent took my hand with the least amiable expression of them all. “Right, and now that we’re all friends, you’re going to take us to the bows,” he said harshly in a tone suggesting he considered introductions nothing but irrelevant pleasantries.
He wasn’t much taller than me, the top of his head barely reaching above Einar’s shoulders. He was slender in build and sinewy, but there was speed and quiet aggression in all his movements that made me instinctively wary of him.
“Of course.” I nodded without betraying my discomposure. “How do we get there?”
“We’ll take Jean-Luc’s jeep,” Einar told me. “Russ and Finlay will stay here, the rest of us will go. You’ll come along to help us find the place. You said you left them on a beach. Do you know its name or the name of any towns in its vicinity?”
I scanned the room as if for clues, taking in the vacant tables and a long-abandoned napkin under a chair in the corner.
“Uhm, it was in the Northwest. A camp was nearby, and the sign read something like ... ostrich.”
“L’Ostriconi?” Jean-Luc suggested helpfully, and I nodded without any degree of certainty.
“Good.” Einar pursed his lips with satisfaction, and instantly, my mind exploded with memories of the previous night.
Good girl.
I shivered, and he fixed me with a sinful stare, as if reading my mind.
“Now, will you promise to behave if I let you have your bow back, Ren?” he asked me and crossed his arms while straightening up to his full height.
“No way in hell!” Albert spat out before I had a chance to do anything more than swallow.
“I am not sure that’s a good idea either.” Finlay voiced his opinion in a significantly less hostile tone and with an apologetic smile cast in my direction. “Sorry, lass, not until we know ye a bit better.”
“It would be unfair to take her out unarmed. Or to expect her to defend herself with only a knife,” Einar pointed out reasonably while looming close enough to emphasise the diminutiveness of my stature with the intimidating solidity of his own.
“No offence, love, but you don’t strike me as particularly equipped for close combat. ”
I shrugged with a grimace, indicating plainly that none was taken.
“But if we give you a bow, you will be able to defend all of us, won’t you?”
“Unless she decides to shoot us all instead ...”
“Why would she? She has nothing to gain by doing that. Well, what do you say, darling, can I trust you to behave yourself?”
A slight change in Einar’s posture brought his face imperceptibly closer to mine, as if he had just started leaning in for a kiss.
Despite the glacial quality of his eyes, something blazed in them like a furnace.
Brave darling ...
“Yes, please.” The corners of my mouth twitched more with excitement than humour. “I’ll be very, very good.”
We set off in the early afternoon. Jean-Luc drove, and Einar sat next to him in the front, while I was in the back seat with Albert, who reeked of cigarette smoke.
He seemed as pleased about that particular arrangement as I was, looking sourly out the window on his side for the most part but occasionally casting displeased glances towards the bow and quiver perched next to my legs.
The motor roared loudly to life, and the wheels screamed in protest on the gravel path.
Not a word could be heard over the noise, and we were all silent until we rejoined an asphalt road.
The passage over the nearby mountains was uneventful. The stark rocky terrain was cut through with low-growing shrubbery, forming patterns vaguely reminiscent of blue cheese. We drove by a small lake, its surface impossibly azure and gleaming in the midday sun.
Then we descended into the neighbouring valley, and the scenery changed drastically.
The surrounding nature became lush and green, lined with trees and grasses.
But everywhere we looked, the idyll was marred by desolation.
We passed a crashed car with its passengers’ rotting bodies scattered on the road around it.
We quickly rolled up our windows, pieces of clothing pressed against our mouths, gagging.
As we went on, we came across burnt-down houses, more corpses, more wrecked vehicles.
Like over waves, we sailed across the mountains, up and down, and soon we could see the coastline in the distance, the sea sparkling brilliantly in the sun.
It got warmer in the cabin as we exited the higher regions, and I took my sweatshirt off, perspiration erupting underneath my arms and breasts.
We drove through a village overrun by cannibals.
We saw them lurking between houses, trudging on dried-up begonias that had plummeted from windows above.
A lifeless body of a teenage boy hung out of a window, his flannel shirt dark with blood.
The nearest furies stirred when we passed them by, their tortured growling audible over the engine’s roar.