A World In Ruin (Vol. 1): Deer Among Wolves Read online

  Deer Among Wolves

  A World In Ruin, Volume 1

  Rebecca Fernfield

  Published by Redbegga, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  DEER AMONG WOLVES

  First edition. February 23, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Rebecca Fernfield.

  Written by Rebecca Fernfield.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  COPYRIGHT

  ALSO BY REBECCA FERNFIELD

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Hello! From the Author

  Next Book in the Series

  About the Author

  Other Books by the Author

  For my family.

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright 2020 Rebecca Fernfield

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  DEER AMONG WOLVES is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ALSO BY REBECCA FERNFIELD

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  A World In Ruin series

  (A survival after the apocalypse mystery series)

  Deer Among Wolves

  A Walk Among Wolves (forthcoming)

  Hunted by Wolves (forthcoming)

  A World Torn Down series

  (A post-apocalyptic survival series)

  The Road to Ruin

  The Savage Road

  The Outcast’s Journey

  The Path to Despair

  The Route to Justice

  The Road to Redemption

  A World Torn Down omnibus edition

  (A novel of survival after the apocalypse)

  A World Torn Down

  Blackout and Burn series

  (An EMP survival thriller series)

  Days of Fire

  Nights of Fire

  Land of Fire

  Town of Fire

  Blackout and Burn omnibus edition

  Blackout & Burn

  Mortal Skies series

  (A science fiction survival horror novel)

  Mortal Skies

  Mortal Skies 2

  The Kielder Experiment series

  (A science fiction novel of horror and suspense)

  The Kielder Strain

  The Alaska Strain

  The Kielder Legacy (forthcoming)

  Dead City

  A Dystopian Thriller series

  (forthcoming)

  Dead City: origins

  Dead City

  Rebel City

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lincolnshire Wolds

  The hanging was scheduled for that morning.

  The image of a breathless Frank Galbraith standing in her doorway as he had delivered the message, repeated in Terri’s mind; ‘He’s to be hanged. Day after tomorrow.’ Frank’s eyes met hers only for a second before flitting away to the garden beyond the kitchen window. Then, shoulders rounded, head stooped, he had turned to leave. She had stared after him, eyes locked to his disappearing figure, until a fluttering sensation had broken into her horror, and she had stroked a hand across the slight swell of her belly. Now, in the dim first light of morning, flanked either side by towering hedgerow left uncut for the past sixteen years, she sat astride Cal’s motorbike, listening to the sputtering growl of its engine, expecting each grunt to be its last. A relic even before Terri had been born, the vintage engine strained as it climbed the hill, and she willed it to keep going for just a few more miles.

  Illuminated by the headlamp’s cone of yellow light, Terri followed the crumbling central white lines along the bend in the road, ducking to avoid the overhanging branches of poplar and elm. Riding around a tangle of spreading hawthorn, she noticed, with a short-lived spark of joy, that the first buds had opened to white blossom. In the coming weeks great drifts of creamy mayflowers would line the roads, and the air would fill with the heady scent of their pollen.

  The blossom meant that she had managed to survive the winter, she was less certain of surviving the day.

  Returning her attention to the engine, she listened to its gravelly chugging as the bike worked its way up the hill. To get the Triumph running, and fill its tank with enough petrol for this journey, she had called in every favour owed and made promises that left her feeling soiled and grubby. The talons dug a little deeper, and the pain in her gut sharpened as she remembered the greedy leer in Beecham’s eyes as he stood beside the barrel of fuel in the workshop, tube in hand, demanding that she fill the tank ‘right now’. ‘Go on then,’ he’d nagged. ‘Suck it! Suck it so I can dream of you paying me back’. His laugh had been throaty, creasing the pock-marked skin of his cheeks, and he’d licked his lips in a lascivious way that made Terri’s toes curl and her fists clench, but she’d held back from punching the toad, forced a smile, and took the tube in her mouth, ignoring his intake of breath as her lips closed around its end; Beecham was the only townsman who had even considered bartering with her for a tank of fuel, and she couldn’t risk pissing him off. She shuddered, pushing back thoughts of new debts owed that couldn’t be written off with a thank you, and focused instead on powering the bike up the hill whilst keeping the revs as low as possible to eke out the single tank of fuel Beecham had agreed to part with.

  As the bike rounded the final bend, and the road widened to the flat expanse of the top road, the view opened to the fog-bound estuary beyond and the megalithic columns of the bridge that joined the troubled south bank to the struggling north. On the north bank, beyond the spreading forest of deciduous trees, skulked the charred city of Hull with its blackened tower blocks scratching at the sky like charcoaled fingers. The derelict hospital sat beside the broken fingers. On the south bank, beside the bridge, but hidden from view by the rolling hills of the Wolds, was Terri’s destination—the town of Barton.

  Terri powered the bike forward, shifting up a gear with a lurch, pulling the throttle back too hard. “Shit!” she hissed, glad that the others weren’t around to witness the amateurish gear change of her newly acquired riding skills. She had begged Marvin Longstaffe, one of the oldest survivors, to teach her to ride and, after agreeing to re-stock his wood pile for the next three months, he had given her two short and awkward lessons watched by a heckling audience.

  Ignoring the mockery of the small crowd of onlookers that had gathered to watch her painfully inadequate efforts, she had focused on Marvin’s every word, questioning where she didn’t understand, asking him to repeat his curt instructions until she had gotten the hang of first kick-starting the old motorbike, and then riding it around the field, changing gears, increasing her speed, slowing, then stalling the engine as she tried to stop. Several of the older men had shaken their heads or laughed, the younger had shouted insults. Cheeks burning, she had taken a breath as she sat astride the bike, and waited for the tremble in her hands to subside; learning to ride the bike, whether alone or surrounded by scornful men, was something she had to master. Thinking of the coming journey, and with renewed determination despite the laughter, she had given the kickstart a heavy stamp. The bike had roared back into life, and she had ridden past the men slowly, ignoring their jibes, noticing how Suzie Ludlow stood watching her pass with barely suppressed hate whilst leaning against one of the men with far more intimacy than was seemly for a newly grieving widow.

  The bike gave another rough cough, and crested the hill from which the river, and the town beside its bridge, could be seen. Slowing to a stop, Terri scanned the rooftops, swallowing against a drying mouth. With hands tight around the handlebars, she waited until the queasy sensation of nausea ebbe
d. Not since those first traumatic days when plague had morphed from a mesmerising story on the news, to a horror that had putrefied her own home, had she felt the talons of fear digging into her belly, and tightening around her heart, as sharply as when the small market town of Barton came into view.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Some weeks earlier

  “Was the man dead?” Ren asked as his father took a sip from the cannister, eyeing the vessel with a large degree of horror as his lips touched the metal rim.

  “Indeed he was, son. Indeed he was,” his father replied offering the cannister to Ren who declined, the boy’s stomach churning at the thought of his own lips touching the dead man’s cup. “Go on, son, drink!” Again, the cannister was thrust towards him, but Ren shook his head, refusing the drink with an ‘I’m alright’, and the water was passed back to his mother.

  “Mum, I don’t-”

  “I washed it, son.” Ren’s Mother held the cannister to the sun as though proving its cleanliness. “I washed it before I filled it with the water.” Light glinted from the beaker’s shiny surface. “Thanks be to the Lord for providing.”

  “Thanks be,” his father echoed. The dull clop of hooves, and the crunching grind of wheels along the tarmac, filled the silence for the next moments until his father said, “You need to drink, son.”

  The words held an edge of reprimand and Ren waited for the lecture—food and water were sparse, you had to take what the Lord offered, even if sometimes it wasn’t palatable. Sure, dad, but this isn’t another hedge brew of nettles and dandelion leaves, it’s a dead man’s water!

  True, Ren, but then a dead man doesn’t need water, nor food, only the living do. And we, son, are the living. We are the fortunate survivors. We are not forsaken. Blessed be.

  Blessed be.

  Ren was used to searching through the houses, ‘collecting the Lord’s offerings’ as his mother called the tins of food, or packets of dehydrated soup and pasta that the damp, or the rats, had yet to find. He was used to seeing the bodies too, but they were old, sixteen years old, if what the elders said was true about the Great Death, and this one had been fresh, without rot. Each time they ‘collected the Lord’s offerings’, the pickings were thinning, the tins harder to find, the packets usually spoiled, and finding the dead man’s caravan, with some provisions, and the horse, Ren had to admit, seemed miraculous. He allowed himself a wry smile; it was sure to become one of his father’s miracle stories, evidence of the Lord’s forgiveness—yet again. To Ren, it seemed unfair that the Lord should forgive his family, but not the man lying dead on the verge now several miles down the road.

  “I’ll have some later,” Ren lied, swallowing to relieve his drying mouth. Drinking the dead man’s water was more than he could stomach. Perhaps tomorrow the sense of creeping disgust would have faded enough for him to partake of this particular ‘offering’, but for now, the image of the man lying on his blankets at the side of the road, eyes sunken, cheekbones unnaturally sharp, his lips pulled back over yellowing teeth in a deathly grin, was burned into Ren’s memory. There had been a fetid stench of rotting fish too, and the man’s skin had a blue tinge. Sol had noticed the smell first, pinching her nose with small fingers, and complaining loudly. Mother had reprimanded his sister, urging her to become quiet as their small convoy had moved towards the gypsy wagon stopped beside the road. The old rifle had been removed from its carry case and held, fully-loaded, across Father’s chest. ‘We’ll just walk past. It’s probably just another traveller—like us,’ his father had said as they grew close.

  The caravan fascinated Ren. Four huge, wooden wheels held what amounted to a brightly painted wooden box topped by a curved roof. Paintwork of dark green shone in the early spring sunlight. Decorative wood, painted bright yellow, rimmed the curved roof. The wagon reminded him of the daffodils that were already flowering in the hedgerow. ‘So pretty!’ his mother exclaimed as they approached. ‘Look, Sol,’ she had said with excitement to his sister, it even has pretty curtains!’

  There had been no sign of the owner, and the only movement along the lane had been a horse tethered to the back wheel, its head bobbing up and down, nose nuzzling at last summer’s wilted grass, rooting for the fresh growth beneath. Ren doubted the dead man was just another traveller ‘like us’; in all his fourteen years on this earth, he had never met anyone that compared to his family.

  “So ... us taking his stuff ... that wasn’t ...” Ren took a breath before continuing, his father’s reaction uncertain, “stealing, then?”

  His father’s lips thinned momentarily. “Of course not, son. As you know, in our time of need, the Lord delivers.”

  “And so, ... he delivered a dead man?” Ren pushed.

  A burst of laughter, and his father patted the horse’s flank. “Aye, and a means of transport too.”

  “And a house!” Sol called from her perch on the caravan’s bench. A tiny version of their mother, Sol’s wiry brown hair lay in neat and tapered braids on her shoulders, her slenderness obvious even beneath the layers of vest, t-shirt, checked shirt, and denim jacket that her mother insisted she wear. Large green eyes, edged with dark and curling lashes, sparkled with excited energy.

  His father’s smile broadened, eyes crinkling with a joyous glint beneath the broad rim of his hat as he looked from his daughter to his wife, “Aye, little one, and a house.”

  “Blessed be!” Sol clapped her hands and rocked against her mother as the horse tugged forward.

  “Blessed be,” their mother returned with a smile and slid an arm around Sol’s slim shoulders.

  It took until the sun was at its highest before the concrete pillars of the bridge came back into view. They rose dark and massive from the blanket of green around its base as though splitting through the thick forest to reach for the heavens. The ingenuity of the people who had created the wonder already belonged to a mythical past. In the distance the road ended in yet more green, the road cut off by a bank of trees, but as they neared the end, it became obvious that the blockage was an illusion and that the road opened out to a roundabout with a central reservation of overgrown shrubs and trees. To the left, a derelict mega-pub, its low rooves lumpy with moss, windows dull with the dust and rain of the past sixteen years, sat in hulking silence, joined only by the trees that had grown through the crumbling tarmac of its wrap-around carpark.

  “Keep a lookout, lad.” Father pulled the gun across his front. “Eyes peeled.” A bead of sweat had appeared at his hairline.

  Ren gripped the horse’s bridle as his father walked a little ahead, checking between the trees of the central reservation, the shrubs surrounding the pub’s fence, and between the abandoned cars. Like the pub’s windows, the cars were heavy with dust, the windows grimed and black with mould, but any interest Ren had in exploring what lay behind the windows had died a long time ago, just like the passengers and drivers rotting inside. As with the houses his family searched through, the cars were death chambers, the final resting place of the Deaduns, the poor souls taken by the plague two years before his birth. The cars seemed more frightful than the houses; the Deaduns were so close. Sometimes the Deaduns rested up against the glass, and you could see their hair, or the shrivelled skin of their blackened cheeks, squashed up against it. Back home, before they had to leave, he’d play a game with his friends, Norris and Tilly.

  In the town, the survivors had ‘cleaned’ the surrounding streets in the early years after the Great Death but, in other parts, the bodies remained in their cars, or lay in their beds. In one car, a baby Deadun sat shrivelled and black, still harnessed in its seat, and the mother’s corpse - he could tell from its clothes and hair that is was a woman - sat in the driver’s seat, one hand splayed against the glass, its head on the steering wheel. He would take it in turns with Norris and Tilly to creep up to the car and cover the woman’s hand with his own, pressing each fingertip against hers, a thin sheet of glass the only barrier. It sent a shiver that tingled in his fingertips then shot along his arm when his skin touched the glass, and he would force himself to stand beside the car whilst every cell in his body wanted to turn and run. Whoever lasted the longest after the sun dipped below the horizon, and the light faded to black, won.