Brink (The Ruin Saga Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

companions. Red mist fizzed into the air as they dropped to the cracked pavement, and the procession of carts, horses, and trailers scattered like insects. Then the air filled with cracks, whines, and screams, and Alexander ducked back under cover.
    So close, they were so close to home. Only fifty feet separated them from the safety of the fortified walls of the compound around Canary Wharf Tower. But it was all open ground without a speck of rubble to shield them. The bastards had known right where to spring their trap.
    The guards up on the compound’s walls returned fire, still yelling for Oppenheimer’s group to flee, but Alexander doubted they were hitting their marks. The majority of the enemy had likely fled already, ducked back into the endless tracts of chrome and steel that made up the city’s bulk. They would never find them if they searched for a week.
    Although he was stranded behind the pillar of the underground parking lot, which exploded and fragmented as rounds ricocheted all around him, he had a sense that there was little of Oppenheimer’s group left to save. It had been the same since the ambassadorial convoys had started arriving from the outer settlements. They had been under siege for days.
    Forty years ago, before the Old World had come crashing down, commuters had squeezed along these streets in their millions. The skyscrapers had gleamed then—steel and glass spires that stood testament to man’s dominion over all the world. The concrete, too, had been fresh and smooth, and the air had been alive with radio and microwaves, transmitting billions of messages and voices.
    Things had changed since the End. The City of London, the small nexus that lay in the centre of London’s sprawling bulk, was a city no longer. It was a mausoleum. No computer had whirred nor phone trilled for decades. All the electronics had turned to dust that day, at the same time as almost every man, woman, and child had vanished suddenly, leaving empty clothing crumpling to the ground and a cascade of falling jewellery.
    Only a few had survived. The Early Years had almost finished them, but humanity had pulled through. Since then, they had all faced countless trials and tribulations, but none as bad as now. A famine had levelled any crop worth harvesting, and a blood feud had erupted across the land. An army was gathering, bearing down on the last remnants of civilisation. All that stood between them and a new Dark Age were a few thousand precious souls.
    Five of whom had just been blown away on the street outside.
    Alex gritted his teeth as plaster exploded from the pillar around his head, shredded by shrapnel. Blinking the sting from his eyes, he looked around at the others crouched in the parking lot, breathless and filthy after their long cross-country ride. They’d had only seconds of warning, having flung their horses and themselves under the first cover in sight. Oppenheimer’s party had been moments behind, but they had arrived from the other direction and hadn’t been so lucky. The narrow city street had funnelled the convoy into a neat line stretching directly before the enemy skyscraper, right into the firing squad’s line of sight.
    It was a turkey shoot.
    “Sons of bitches!” Marek Johnson roared over the racket, inches to Alexander’s right. “Cowards, rotten cowards.” The tendons in his thick neck tensed, and his face screwed into an ugly mask of burgeoning fury. Thickset and powerful, he looked absurd crammed between a ticket turnstile and the rusted carcass of an old Audi. His grip on his rifle tightened, as if he were preparing to leap from cover.
    “Stay down!”
    “I’m not leaving them out there.”
    “There’s nothing you can do.”
    “Bullshit!”
    He was scrambling to his feet when Alexander risked losing a hand, reaching out across the two feet of open ground between them. Marek easily had twice Alexander’s mass and was twenty years his junior, but nevertheless, Alexander felt the