The Bridge

by Simon Winstanley

  She wriggled Marcus’ bag off her shoulders and carried it more loosely. To make this work, she’d have to give up the very last of their supplies. With any luck, their lack of food and water wouldn’t be an issue; she and Marcus would soon be at the Warren. Right now though, she had to make the soldier believe that she belonged here. To blend in, she had to behave as though the precious resources in her hands meant nothing to her.

  To start attracting his attention, she coughed loudly and then muttered some choice curse words at the bag. With a look of disdain on her face she pulled a small ration pack from the bag and dropped it like a piece of litter.

  She continued walking towards him, allowing the bag strap to trail carelessly across the ground. From the corner of her eye, she could see him looking in her direction.

  “What do you want?” he frowned.

  Despite the stress of the situation, it was a relief that he was speaking her language; it would make the deception easier. She came to a halt in front of him and pulled the travel permit from her pocket.

  “General Napier authorised this car,” she replied, handing him the document.

  While she continued to search through the bag, the guard began to check the paper’s details.

  Marcus had suggested using Napier’s name because he’d seen it in several of the Archive files. The hurriedly scrawled signature that Marcus had added probably bore little resemblance to Napier’s actual signature, but they both agreed that the soldiers were too lowly to have seen the real thing. What was important was the authority that the name itself conveyed. That, and the fact that it had come from someone within their own perimeter.

  While the man deliberated, Sabine pulled the last of their water from the bag.

  The man looked up from the form, “I heard that Napier’s dead.”

  She took a single mouthful from the full water bottle, then tossed it aside.

  “Who knows,” she shrugged and casually added, “If he is still alive, I wouldn’t want to be the one who fucked up, would you?”

  She saw him take a glance at the potato chips she was about to discard.

  “You want any of this shit?” she raised the shoulder bag slightly.

  As he assessed both her and the bag, he began reaching to his side.

  “Sure,” his hand returned with a pen and he began signing the paper.

  She could see he was signing his name next to a string of numbers and letters; the car registration number that Marcus had also written on the permit five minutes ago.

  He took the last of her precious supplies and held out the authorised permit.

  “Get this over to the Dead Line,” he pointed to the long line of vehicles outside the perimeter.

  She realised that, in his eyes, everyone in the queue was already considered dead. Doing her best not to react to his callous description, she took the permit. The piece of paper in her hand was now the most valuable object she’d ever held.

  The man instantly lost interest in her and stepped aside to delve deeper into his new-found bonus.

  Sabine wasted no time and forced herself to calmly walk over to the gatehouse. She handed the countersigned permit to the barrier guard and pointed to Marcus’ car.

  In order for her act to be convincing, she knew she still had to behave like none of this mattered. She saw the barrier begin to lift but then had to turn away.

  Walking slowly along the road, she heard one of the soldiers behind her shout an instruction. A second later an engine started, but she didn’t dare to turn around.

  Her heart missed a beat when a helicopter swept noisily overhead and swiftly landed somewhere on the other side of the train. Apparently some people were rich enough to jump the train queues altogether.

  She forced herself to look straight ahead.

  The wet sheen on the road glowed brighter and she could hear the hissing approach of car tyres. Keeping her face neutral she kept walking and slowly looked behind her. Through the car’s open window, Marcus spoke.

  “Keep going slow,” he said, “I’ll stop ahead.”

  She watched him continue to drive away, all the while resisting the urge to break into a run. She risked another slow look behind her.

  Apparently Marcus’ advancement to the front of the line hadn’t been well received. Another vehicle had pulled forward and was revving its engine.

  She turned away and saw Marcus stop the car in an area where the street lighting had failed. The car’s lights went out and it disappeared into the darkness.

  At the same time, she heard a gunshot ring out.

  As though a starting pistol had fired, she found herself sprinting. The wet road hammered by under her feet until she arrived at the car and dived in through the open door.

  A cannon-like boom broke the air behind them; the vehicle near the barrier had exploded.

  She slammed the door shut and Marcus hit the accelerator. Above the squeal of the tyres on the wet road, she heard multiple gunshots being traded.

  “Damn!” Marcus shouted as they sped past another carriage, “We’ll be in the wrong place for the Warren!”

  She saw that most of the train’s loading doors were already closed. The other vehicles were already aboard. Ahead she saw a single pool of light was spilling out onto the road. The doors there were still open.

  “Là!” she pointed.

  Marcus slammed on the brakes and, gripping the wheel tightly, swerved through the open door. The side of the car clipped the carriage entrance, slicing off the wing mirror and jolting them to one side. He hauled on the wheel and sped on through the carriage’s partitioned sections, the roar of the strained engine reverberating off the close walls.

  Ahead, she could see where the previous cars had stopped. They were a single partition away, but Marcus was showing no signs of slowing.

  “Marcus!” she shouted.

  “I know!” he yelled back as he glanced upward.

  The shutter-like partitions between carriage segments were beginning to close.

  Seeing him take hold of the handbrake, she hurriedly grabbed for the seatbelt; a motion that caused it to lock up several times. Pulling the strap as evenly as she could manage, it now cooperated with her.

  The closing shutter shot overhead and a metallic screech passed through the car, punctuated by a snap as the aerial was sheared away.

  As Marcus yanked the handbrake, her seatbelt clipped into place and the rapid deceleration threw her forward. With a tyre-squealing shriek, the deceleration increased; Marcus was now almost standing on the brake pedal.

  She braced herself for the collision with the car in front of them, but the impact didn’t arrive. Their car rocked to a halt. She looked up to see that they’d stopped, mere centimetres from the car in front.

  Marcus was still gripping the wheel tightly and through the window beyond him she saw that they’d boarded with only seconds to spare. Perhaps prompted by the unfolding chaos in Calais, someone had forced the departure of the Eurotunnel train.

  They were already moving.

  THE LAST TRAIN

  Clearly this eventuality hadn’t been planned for, thought Bradley. The small entranceway to the carriage, piled high with boxed laptops, drones and ammunition, had never been intended for use as a holding cell. The soldier who’d been sent in to search him looked nervous and apologetic as he placed a small plastic tray on one of the boxes.

  Bradley knew that the smartphone nestling in his pocket was no longer an item of power that held a wealth of Archive information. It was an incriminating piece of evidence in Napier’s murder.

  From what little he’d been told, he understood that the smartphone had begun recording images moments after Napier’s death. He felt sure that something could be invented to explain why his photo had appeared within Napier’s auto-recorded images, but being caught in possession of the phone itself was nothing less than damning.

  With a slight jolt, he felt the whole carriage begin moving again, sideways. It seemed they’d begun t
he process of sliding the carriage in through the side wall of USV3. With any luck, he thought, they’d be sealed up until the lunar shards had finished their assault.

  “Apologies, Sir,” the soldier began patting down his arms.

  “You’re just doin’ your duty, son,” he said, raising his cuffed hands in order to appear compliant, “Protecting the old world.”

  The soldier continued his search, patting at Bradley’s sides. When his hands reached the pocket level they stopped; he’d located the smartphone on one side of his jacket, and the single-shot pistol on the other. Without comment, both items were removed and placed into the plastic tray, then the body search continued. A selection of loose change and a bunch of keys on a rabbit’s foot keyring were placed in the tray a few seconds later.

  The soldier examined the firing chamber of the gun, checking that it was empty. Apparently satisfied, he replaced it into the tray and picked up the smartphone. He turned it over in his hands and studied the serial number printed on the back. Momentarily, he appeared to freeze.

  Bradley knew he’d identified Napier’s phone.

  The soldier carefully put it back in the tray and appeared to take half a step back, assessing the pistol that lay alongside it. Perhaps subconsciously, he began wiping his hands on his uniform.

  The carriage stopped moving. Bradley knew they must now be within USV3. In a moment, the outer doors would seal and this would become his world for the foreseeable future.

  “Son,” he lowered his voice and looked the soldier in the eye, “Who’d you think built the roof over your head?”

  Although Bradley himself hadn’t lifted an ounce of dirt, his corporations had footed the bill.

  The man opened his mouth to reply but then changed his mind.

  “That’s what I thought,” Bradley stared, “Now, with the world going to shit… we’re gonna be startin’ a whole new regime down here. And I just know I’m gonna need people I can depend on. People like you, or people like… well… just about anybody else who wants to take advantage of my considerable generosity.”

  He saw the man’s eyes flicker. The calculation of potential benefits was no doubt whizzing through his mind.

  “Mr. Pittman, Sir,” he kept his voice low, “I just want a quiet life for my family.”

  Unlike some of the other men he’d encountered over the years, this man’s expression contained no greed, just a weary desperation that longed for normality. A desire for a normal life was something Bradley could understand all too well. It also meant the man would be easier to manipulate.

  “Good,” Bradley replied and pointed at the man’s hands, “Now, I’m guessin’ in all the fuss you forgot to wear your gloves. The only fingerprints that anybody’s gonna find on that phone, is yours.”

  He heard voices outside the carriage; one of them he recognised as his daughter. Soon she would enter the carriage and the questions would begin. Whatever else came to light, he knew that Sarah must never find the device on him.

  “So, I suggest you take that phone outta here and destroy it. Do that, and the quiet life is yours.”

  “And the gun?” the soldier glanced at it.

  “An heirloom, you might say,” Bradley recalled a memory, “Sentimental value only.”

  Putting Napier’s phone into his uniform pocket, the soldier pushed the tray of other belongings back to him, “I just want my family to be safe.”

  “You do your job,” Bradley reclaimed his property, “and we ain’t never gonna speak ’bout this again.”

  Without a word, the soldier opened the door and left him behind.

  Now that the door was open, his daughter’s voice reached him more clearly, “Where is he?”

  It seemed that the people outside didn’t know exactly how to respond. When she began repeating her demand, he called out to her.

  “Hold your dang horses there, Pumpkin-pie,” he walked to the door of the makeshift cell, “I’m comin’, just hold on there.”

  On the tracks outside the carriage, he saw her smiling up at him.

  “Dad! I thought that…” she then noticed the metalwork around his wrists, “wait a min- handcuffs?”

  “Long story, Sal,” he smiled back at her, “These fine folk think I’ve done somethin’ that I didn’t. But we’re gonna straighten it all out real soon, I promise.”

  •

  Having just broken through from the Warren, Monica was now standing on the Glaucus Dock stairwell, high up within the USV.

  Way below her, she could see the circular layout of the underground survival village. Power failures were causing the lighting of entire segments to flicker on and off. She and the others from the Warren were about to enter a fantastically chaotic situation.

  She watched as a train carriage made its way in through the USV’s outer wall. From this height, it almost looked toy-like.

  She was about to continue her descent, when a small flash of motion caught her eye. Without moving her eyes an inch, Monica reached to her belt, unclipped a pair of mini-binoculars and raised them into position.

  It took her a moment to re-sight the distant area, but she found what she was looking for. In the shadow of the carriage, she could see two people who were trying to hide.

  From their builds, she was sure that they were male and female. At that moment, as if the pair were sharing a common thought, they looked upward and started to climb up the rear of the carriage.

  Looking at the woman, Monica thought she was seeing her daughter, but it was just her mind playing tricks; she knew that Kate and Douglas were still safe in Iceland.

  The man looked very much like Marcus. The more she watched him evaluating his surroundings, the more she realised that it actually was him. Remarkably, ‘Blackbox’ had lived up to his former hacker alias.

  “Bloody indestructible,” she grinned.

  Against all odds, Marcus had made it back from the assignment, which presumably meant that the woman with him was Sabine Dubois.

  Suddenly the carriage began to move off. Not sideways, as it had entered the USV a few minutes ago, but in the direction of the tracks.

  The carriage was briefly illuminated by Samphire Station’s ambient light and she saw them both holding onto thin access ladders at the rear. The carriage passed into the darkness of a tunnel section, and she lost sight of them.

  She’d never briefed Marcus on the specific layout of the USV; it hadn’t been part of the return plan. For the time being, he’d have to do what he did best.

  ADAPT

  As the carriage emerged from the short tunnel section, Marcus and Sabine continued to cling onto the rear ladders.

  Blinking several times to adjust to the change in light, Marcus could see that the carriage was now making its way around a large circular track; one that appeared to wrap itself around the circumference of the entire subterranean space.

  When he looked out, he could see a vaulted dome; massive structural supports lined the interior space, arching steeply overhead to meet at the apex. Although Monica had told him various tales of how it had all begun, he’d never appreciated the sheer scale of it. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that someone had buried an entire village.

  In order to survive, he and Sabine had smuggled themselves into the USV atop a sideways-moving train. In the process of getting here they’d lost everything. All their resources were gone. They had no food. No water. No way back to the Warren. Hell, he thought, he didn’t even have a computer.

  Still gripping the carriage’s rear ladder, Sabine pulled herself closer to him.

  “Marcus,” she spoke over the rushing air, “What goes-we to do now?”

  The recent effects of Woods’ inhaler were beginning to wear off, but he understood the gist of what she’d said. In truth, he didn’t know what they were going to do now.

  The lunar shards must surely have begun impacting the Earth, he thought. Even if he and Sabine were found and imprisoned, they’d made it to a place of safety.

  Th
e carriage jostled and he felt the inhaler in his pocket dig into him. It was a timely reminder that they hadn’t quite lost everything. Perhaps they could yet depend on their wits to survive here in USV3.

  “Adapt or die,” he muttered to himself.

  “Quoi?” it seemed she hadn’t understood him.

  On many occasions he’d been forced to adapt to new circumstances. It seemed he was about to be tested again. He opened his mouth to reply to her, but realised it was too late. The carriage was beginning to slow down. Given the scale of the place, it wouldn’t be long until they stopped.

  Lights were flickering on and off within the domed space. Clearly something wasn’t right. In the carriage below him, he could hear panicked voices trying to cope with something chaotic. Sometimes, he thought, chaos was useful.

  Marcus knew that, in moments like these, people deferred to authority figures. As Sabine had recently proved, once inside a defensive perimeter, a different set of rules applied. Authority was simply a matter of confidence.

  The inhaler’s effects were almost gone, but he managed to phrase one last general idea to Sabine.

  “Boîte Noire,” he purposefully inflated his chest, “Faire autorité.”

  As the train stopped, he saw Sabine’s frown disappear.

  Moving rapidly, they climbed down the carriage’s rear ladder and manoeuvred themselves onto the platform. Sabine had been wearing the overalls with the loose arms tied around her waist, so he quickly tugged at the fabric and widened his eyes. Taking the hint, she rapidly began untying them and pushing her arms back into the sleeves.

  Although there were many civilians gathering around the carriage, a soldier was heading in their direction and had already made eye contact.

  Without looking away, Marcus walked purposefully towards him and adopted a frown. Keeping up his fast stride, he tried to think of a random name. When he was only a few feet from the soldier, he stopped sharply.