Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

Alex checked his body and saw that the front of his shirt was gone. The flames had eaten through the flesh of his belly, such that a horrific mash of charred skin and blood-red muscle tissue lay where his navel had been.
    Alex flung his hands to his mouth as a wave of nausea swept over him. He turned away to the grass and vomited with a great heave. Fighting black rings encroaching in his peripheral vision, he fought his way back to Paul, who now had only one eye half open, unfixed and catatonic.
    “I don’t know what to do… I’m sorry,” Alex breathed. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… There’s nobody here. I—I…”
    Hyperventilating, he looked around in desperation for the figure once more, ready to surge to his feet and drag the static onlooker from the shadows. But his eyes were met only by the sight of the old oak, unblemished by the figure’s presence. He’d vanished, just like everyone else.
    Alex accepted it without argument, too blank and addled to cope with any more. He was spared instant insanity only by Paul’s sudden bout of gargled choking. Alex grabbed him by the collar. “Hey,” he yelled. “Hey!”
    Paul’s eyes flew open. For the briefest of moments he stared skyward, his face blank, almost peaceful, and then he began to vibrate against the ground. With his feet hammering the floor, he whined while his head snapped back and forth in vicious spasms.
    Alex could only moan, clinging to the writhing body. “Are there others?” he cried. “Are there others? Please, tell me!” He was wailing now. “Tell me there’s somebody else!”
    No answer. It took almost a minute for Paul to become still. Alex checked for a pulse, then stumbled back, sat on the kerb, mouth open with shock, and put his head between his knees. “This isn’t happening,” he whispered to the grass. “This can’t be happening.”
    When he finally stumbled away from Paul’s body, he didn’t bother searching for the eyeshadow-wearing figure again. He probably hadn’t even been real. Instead, he wandered back towards the rise of Lovers’ Leap.
    He stumbled back through the streets and across the park. Countless piles of clothing and jewellery passed underfoot, occasionally accompanied by handbags, briefcases and infants’ pushchairs. It all seemed to glare at him, daring him to stray too close.
    He skirted each item in a daze, ascending the hill without as much as a single glance from his path. His mind was muggy, enamelled, too shocked to register much of anything. In what seemed only moments he was scaling the steep incline that marked the crest of the Leap.
    It would be fine. He would signal for help. By now the government or army had mobilised a response to the terrible accident in the Moor, and were on their way in full force, accompanied by herds of gabbling reporters from around the world. He would be surrounded by press, harried by intelligence officers for an explanation, tested for alien probing, and dragged into the limelight as the sole survivor of the Radden Moor Disaster.
    But he would be alive. He would be safe.
    He sobbed as the desperate, paper-thin sentiment cracked and fragmented in the face of what he knew awaited him just on the other side of the rise. As he tore his way over the crest of the Leap and looked down upon the lands below, he saw that his imagination’s worst predictions hadn’t been far wrong. But that did nothing to lighten the blow.
    From here he could see for miles over the countryside—the entirety of Radden Moor and a crowd of neighbouring towns, along with the stretch of dual carriageway that snaked between them.
    Far away, nestled in a nook of coastal mountains, was Bleakstone Down, and perched directly above it the village of Lorndale. On any other day they would have appeared as little more than distant smatterings of antiquated spires and chimneys. Today, they were invisible behind a column of smoke as black as the one rising from Radden Moor, courtesy of a blaze that