Indestructible (Indestructible Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

The red sky is darkening. Not because night time is finally showing itself, but because there’s a storm on the way. Bruise-purple clouds gather overhead, and the rumble of thunder makes the air vibrate. At least it isn’t an energy blast this time.

The hazy outline of a town appears on the horizon. Spindly trees reach from the ground like clawed hands. Cas slows his pace as we get close enough to see that there’s a fence around the outside. Metal, linked chains. A barrier against outsiders.

“What d’you think?” Nolan murmurs to Cas as we catch up to him just outside the place where a gate’s been fitted into the fence. Topped with spikes.

“Not friendly,” says Cas. “But what did you expect?”

Nolan shrugs. “The last town wasn’t fortified.”

“It wasn’t near the divide,” says Cas.

The divide?
He must mean the fault line, the place the first earthquake split the earth, cutting England in two. I’ve been on the road for so long, I’ve no idea whereabouts we are. Global maps don’t matter when the whole world is falling apart. I know the camp’s been moving north, keeping as far as possible from the coasts in case another tsunami hits, crossing a strange landscape of untouched countryside interspersed with Burned Spots where the energy blasts hit. The blasts first struck the cities, mostly, places with high populations. The small Oxfordshire town I used to live in was mostly safe from the first wave of disasters, not close enough to the coast or the fault line to suffer anything more than small tremors.

Then the fiends came.

My mind pushes the memory away. It’s not important now. What matters is survival, from one day to the next. That much I learned from Randy and the others.

“I’m going,” I tell them. “My camp was coming here anyway.”

Cas gives me a flat stare. “Go ahead.”

But I don’t move. Several people approach the gate from the other side. I tense automatically, wishing I’d searched the house for weapons. Even my pocket-knife would do.
Stupid. How could you forget?

Two men peer at us through the gate. “Strangers aren’t welcome here,” one of them says.

Cas rolls his eyes. “Told you so.”

“We aren’t here to cause trouble,” says Nolan. “We just need somewhere to stay until the storm passes, and to pick up supplies.”

“There’s no room for you here,” the man says. “We won’t open our gates to strangers, not when there’s all kinds of unnaturals running around. Those fiends aren’t going to take
us.”

“We saw some,” says Nolan. “Not far from here. We can help.”

“You brought them to our doorstep?”

The others move closer. They have guns, and a clicking sound tells me at least one of them is pointed right at us.

“Okay, okay.” Nolan raises his hands. “Actually, we came to fight them off. I hadn’t reckoned on you being unhospitable, especially—”

“When we’re the ones saving your worthless lives,” says Cas.

You could hear a pin drop. Or several barrels click.

“What did you just say?”

“Cas,” says Nolan, warningly.

One of the men sticks the barrel of his gun through the bars of the gate. Cas raises his eyebrows.

“I wouldn’t do anything hasty,” he says, quietly.

I shiver. His tone is smooth as steel, and even the guy with the gun looks momentarily cowed. But he recovers, shifting his weapon.

“Your kind aren’t welcome here,” he says.

I can sense that he won’t budge. None of the men are even looking at me. But they won’t trust me as long as I’m with the men in the red coats.

“Go. And don’t come back.”

“Fine, then,” says Cas. “You—”

“Cas!” says Nolan. He turns back to the gate. “Sorry. We’ll leave.” He gives me a guilty look, as though wondering if I’m going to try my luck with the guards.

But something about the walled-in town repels me. Maybe it’s the memory of the explosion, fresh in my mind. In a place like this, there’d be nowhere to run.

I survived when I shouldn’t have. Why? I want answers. I want to know what I am. Right now, sticking with these two’s the best chance I’ve got.

We take to the road again. It runs alongside the town’s fence, which makes me edgy for some reason. I’m as scared of what’s on the other side as I am of what’s out here.

This is the world we live in now. People put their own survival first. The men in the red coats appeared the same time as the fiends did, so they’re untrustworthy by default. That’s all I could glean from Randy’s and the other adults’ urgent whispers the day we saw the men in town. It might even have been Cas and Nolan we’d seen. Not that it matters now. I have to rely on two outlandishly-dressed strangers. Surviving the impossible has become part of my existence.

A roaring noise tears through the otherwise still air, makes me spin on the spot, my heart freefalling.

The fiends are back.

CHAPTER THREE

Cas’s blade flashes as he pulls it from a sheath at his waist, beneath the bright red coat. I wonder fleetingly why the two of them are dressed so conspicuously if they want to avoid attention, then something more important hits me.
Why
didn’t I grab a weapon?

The men at the gate have gone. They must have slipped away the instant the cries sounded.

Nolan curses. “We’ll have to draw them away.”

“Gladly,” says Cas.

“But…” Nolan glances at me. I try not to let my fear show, but my legs itch to run as far as humanly possible.

“She’s none of my concern.”

Another screech rips through the air. I give Cas a defiant stare
. Go on, then. You’re going to let the fiends tear apart an innocent girl? Can you live with that?
Most likely, yes. My body trembles, but survival means more to me than pride.

“Fine, you heartless asshole,” Nolan says. “You can have your battle. I’m taking her somewhere safe.”

Ordinarily, I’d tell him I could speak for myself, but my low-level fear rises as I glance behind and see at least four distinct shapes in the distance. We’re outnumbered even if these two have crazy superpowers. Even if
I
do. I back up several steps.

Nolan sees where I’m looking and his eyes widen. “Hell,” he says. “Our two fiends brought their friends.”

“And I’m not sticking around here to die,” I say.

“Fine,” Cas says. “I’ll draw them away from the town. You take the girl that way. Away from the divide.”

Normally I’d object to him calling me ‘the girl’, too, but he’s already running towards the fiends. They’re close enough for me to make out their outlines now. Cas runs faster than I’ve ever seen a human move. He’s already closed half the distance between us.

“Come on,” Nolan mutters, beckoning me. “He’ll be all right.”

Strangely, I believe him. After all, Cas made short work of those two fiends earlier. These men are something else. But the feeling of being hunted descends on me again.

I follow Nolan around the town’s outskirts, until we find another road. We’ve made the right choice. A forest sits ahead, thick branches spread wide as though forming a net to keep the monsters out. A hiding place.

We keep moving, treading through the thick undergrowth. That a place like this can still exist is a strange feeling. The world’s cities were engulfed in flame, but the forests survived. Branches arch over my head. Nolan’s on edge, constantly looking behind us. His red cloak swishes behind him. I want to ask so many questions, but the habit of keeping quiet and listening out is ingrained in me by now. I want to hear if the fiends are close by.

A rustling sounds in the canopy overhead. My heartbeat kicks up.
It’s just a bird,
I tell myself. But the layered branches could hide anything, and the idea that I’m unarmed, in the company of a stranger, knots my muscles with tension. When another, louder rustling echoes in the branches, I snatch up a fallen branch with a pointed end.

Nolan raises his eyebrows. “You do know that won’t be any use against one of those fiends, don’t you?”

“I’m not an idiot,” I say.

No weapons can harm the fiends.
But Cas’s knife did
.

“I know you might not trust me,” says Nolan, “but I really do want to help you. You…you might be exactly what we’re looking for.”

I watch his expression. He looks sincere, but I don’t put down the branch.

“Why’s that?” I ask. “Who exactly are you, anyway?”

“It’s… complicated.” He gives me a look, like he’s assessing me. “You heard that man at the town. People don’t trust us.” He glances up at the canopy. Strips of moonlight peek through gaps in the branches, painting the scene in monochrome. It gives the illusion that the world outside might look the same as it did before the sky turned to fire and the earth to ashes.

“Why don’t they trust you?”

“We aren’t like the rest of you. Humans,” he clarifies. “That’s not to say we’re not… human. But normal people don’t see us that way.”

“And why’s that?”

“We can do things normal people can’t.”

Like Randy said. Summon fire…

“Like the fiends?” I say.

He gives me an assessing look. “Not like the fiends. We were around before they were.”

“You’re not telling me anything,” I say.

“We don’t give up our secrets easily.” A slight smile curves his lips. “But then, neither do you.”

I can’t argue with that.

“Tell me a little about yourself, at least,” he says. “Where were you born?”

I hesitate.
Don’t talk to strangers.
But telling people my home town hardly matters now. Not when it doesn’t exist anymore.

“A small town. You won’t have heard of it. It was in Gloucestershire. Where are we now?”

“Scotland.”

I stare around. “Seriously?” I suppose that explains the mountains.

“Yeah, near the border. Not that we have an up-to-date map.”

No one does anymore. There used to be satellites that could let you track your location from your mobile phone or computer. But they’re just bits of junk floating in space now. The energy waves short-circuit most technology, and the earthquakes and other natural disasters took care of the rest.

“Where are we going?” I ask, inwardly cringing that I’m implying I’m depending on him in any way.

“To our camp. It’s hidden. Cas will meet us there.”

He’s still not telling me everything. Maybe he’s as distrustful of me as I am of him. Randy was the same. In the two years we travelled around, I never really learned much about him. Other survivors were eager to share their life stories, but he acted as though the world had always been this way, like survival mattered more than memories. I never decided whether I agreed or not. I
wanted
to hang onto the past, of course, but old pain doesn’t matter when you’re starving and hunted. Now, it makes questioning Nolan difficult because I’ve tamped down any curiosity for so long, I don’t even know what questions to ask.

“Why did you come to the house?” I say.

Nolan flashes me a glance. “We were chasing the fiends,” he says.

I’d thought as much. “You can kill them.”

“We can.”

“If I go with you, can you teach me how to kill them?” I watch his face carefully.

“If you want to learn, then yes,” he says.

This changes things.
Not that I had anywhere else to go anyway, but the idea of actually being able to kill the monsters…

I picture myself wielding a knife like Cas, slicing the monsters apart. Fighting back. Not running. Something kindles inside me, amongst the ashes the loss of my companions has left behind.

Hope.

“You want to kill them,” says Nolan. “Did… did they kill someone important to you?”

The words stick in my throat. I don’t talk about her. I haven’t said her name aloud in over a year. I clench my hand, fresh anger at the fiends rising. I
will
stay alive. For her.

“My sister. She was only seven.”

“I’m sorry.”

I say nothing, letting silence slide between us again. He slows his pace, head tilted as though listening for something. All I hear is the branches whispering to each other, the crackle of leaves beneath our feet. He gaze sweeps from side to side. He’s anxious.

More rustling overhead. My fingers dig into the bark of the branch. I stop.

A figure drops to the ground behind us. Cas.

“What’s happening?” Nolan asks, his voice low.

“They’re coming.”

The forest explodes.

Trees split, branches fly in splinters as the fiend lumbers towards us, cutting a path of devastation through the woods. It’s too fast for me to do anything but jump back, feet catching in a net of brambles. They tangle around my ankles, and blood beads on my hands when I pull myself free, wasting valuable seconds.