When I’ve asked, he hasn’t told me much other than that he thinks Tyr has given him a ‘gift.’ But I know he’ll tell me when there’s time. He hasn’t wanted to freak out the Whites, who are still struggling with their new situation.
Actually, Sienna hasn’t been that bad. She’s stayed quiet, and we’ve had some time over the past few days to talk as we’ve driven our way west and north, trying to reach these mountains. She understands that this is a matter of life and death, and she’s a brave girl. She’s scared, but she’s moving forward.
Her mother . . . not so much. At least I’ve finally learned her name. Sophia. But other than that and an incessant worrying about her daughter, she’s been nearly catatonic, sleeping much of the time while fretting her way through the night.
At least she cooks. In her hyper-concern for her daughter’s wellbeing, she’s insisted on cooking every meal at night, and she’s a good hand with the things we’ve brought with us. Much better than my method of taking the animal, skewering it, and roasting it over a fire with little else other than scrounged greens or berries.
“So, how do we proceed?” Anton White asks, shouldering his own pack. We’ve distributed everything out over the past few days, all seven of us carrying something, although Tym, Anton, and Brandon are carrying the heaviest loads. Lance is willing, but if something happens, I want him able to move as quickly as possible.
“We need to get across that gorge. It’ll at least slow down whatever pursuit there is,” I decide. “It’s weak, but it should hold us.”
“You sure?” Lance asks quietly. “We can always find another bridge.”
“No, it’s across we go,” I declare. “If the Hunters or werewolves catch us with our backs against the gorge, we’re screwed. I’d rather face them with their backs to the gorge.”
“Then may I suggest we go in small groups?” Tym suggests quietly. “Lance and Brandon first, then the Whites, then you and me. That way, there’s never more than five hundred pounds on the structure at any one time.”
“And it keeps security on both ends,” Brandon adds. “Nice idea.”
It’s quickly decided, and I watch in trepidation as Lance and Brandon start across, sticking as much as they can to the left side of the bridge. It’s the side with the least damage, and as they reach the middle, they separate even more to distribute their weight, Lance pushing ahead twenty feet in front of Brandon until they reach the other side.
It’s a heartstopping two minutes, and when they step off on the other side, Lance flashes us a thumbs-up and I let out my held breath with a whoosh. “Okay, White family, you’re up.”
With knowing the bridge is safe, I worry less about the Whites as they cross, Anton White holding his shotgun warily as they scurry across the gap. When they reach the other side, I shoulder my pack and look at the truck. “What should we do with this thing? I feel bad abandoning it.”
“It served us well,” Tym agrees. “We should send it into the gorge, though. Maybe it’ll hide our path.”
I nod in agreement, and a minute and one large rock later, the truck with its cart goes over the edge and plummets into the gorge, the remains of our non-packed supplies tumbling down after it.
I do feel bad. In a world where there’s still so little that my furniture includes a salvaged frame from the Pre-War and most people see nighttime light as a luxury, watching the high-tech electric vehicle go tumbling down to shatter on the rocks below feels almost like a sacrilege.
“Come on.”
I feel exposed on the bridge, the rusted metal and concrete providing no cover to me at all. Instead, the wind whips through my hair and grit tries to get in my eyes as Tym and I walk quickly, making our way over the bridge and to the other side.
“Wish I had some Gauss rounds left,” Lance says when we’re across. “I could take out the rest of the bridge in two shots. It’d make a huge headache for anyone on our trail.”
“I can provide,” Tym says, shrugging off his pack. “Back everyone up. This may be . . . messy.”
We back off a hundred feet, and I watch in utter shock as Tym walks a few feet onto the bridge before clenching his fist and punching the decayed blacktop between his legs.
“Holy fuck,” Lance whispers as we feel the earth literally shake underneath our feet. The left side of the bridge sags, and Tym quickly goes to the other side and punches again. This time, the end of the bridge falls, sagging for a few seconds before something halfway down the bridge snaps and the entire half of the bridge tumbles into the gorge, leaving a stump that extends into the middle, twisted in the middle where a single beam tried to hang on longer than the others.
Tym walks back over and picks up his bag. “Let’s go.”
“Wait . . . wait just a fucking second,” Lance says, laughing like a fool, excited for what we just observed. “When the hell did you get that level of strength?”
“I guess I’ve got a story to tell,” he says, stopping. “Might as well eat up the miles with the tale.”
I’m still shaking my head in amazement and disbelief at Tym’s tale as we crest a mountain and the sight before our eyes leaves everyone taken aback. In the distance, maybe fifteen or so miles away, lies a graveyard.
At least, that’s what I think of it as. The city is huge, and even after the devastation of nuclear weapons, the steel frames of some of the buildings stab into the air taller than anything in modern society.
“My god,” Anton White whispers as he sets his shotgun down to grab a drink of water. “They must have had a million people living there.”
“Maybe more,” I reply. “There were stories in the archives about cities in America that had ten million people in them. The first time I read that in the Academy, I thought maybe the writers had made a mistake or something had gotten corrupted in the data. I mean, there aren’t ten million in what used to be the United States now, I don’t think.”
“Who knows?” Brandon says. “It’s not like someone’s running around taking a count. Still . . . that city . . . huge.”
I nod, looking at the ruins of what had to have once been a majestic city against the mountains. Suddenly, Lance laughs, breaking the sad reverence. “Anyone want to play Way Back?”
Sienna giggles, nodding. “Okay . . . Lance, what were those two big buildings down there for? The ones that look like big bowls?”
I wince, prepared for a Lance-like monologue of perverse activities and sexual escapades. Each of the two destroyed stadiums is huge, big enough to hold the entire population of Solace twice over within their badly worn seating areas ringing the inner field. I’m reminded of other buildings I’ve seen and have often wondered just what would cause fifty or sixty thousand people to gather in one place.
He surprises me, though, when he purses his lips and strokes his chin. “I don’t know, Sienna. What do you think?”
“Games,” she says after a moment. “Look at the big space in the middle. Field that big, you can either play games or you can plant crops.” She laughs merrily. “I don’t think anyone would pay money to watch corn grow.”
It’s quirky, and it makes me laugh. It’s logical, it makes a funny image in my head, and it reminds me how smart Sienna is. She turns to Lance with her big blue eyes, eager for his approval, and it makes me smile softly.
She could do worse than looking up to Lance.
Lance, for his part, smiles back. “You may be right, Sienna. But . . . what if the sport was farming? Like, who can plow a row the fastest?”
Sienna giggles. “That’s silly.”
“No, I’m serious,” Lance says in that voice that tells me he’s totally not. “It would be a major event, twice a year. The Spring Festival and the Fall Festival. The Spring Festival, of course, was all about preparing the ground. Plowing, hoeing, planting seed. I bet the smaller stadium was for big guys like Tym, doing bull wrestling or something. You could easily get ten or twenty thousand people to see someone like Tym wrestle an angry bull with his bear hands. But t
he big stadium they’d do just what you said, growing things . . . and then come harvest time, it was the big festival. Harvesting, threshing, corn shucking . . . it might have drawn spectators from all over the area for events.”
“Uh-huh,” Anton White says, chuckling. “And you’d get that many people to watch farmers?”
“Well, the legends say that only one in a hundred people were farmers,” Tym rumbles, having his own bit of fun with it. “Maybe they were so good, so skilled, that they were famous and respected. The best farmers in the country were rich and powerful people indeed.”
Sienna’s eyes are wide and she giggles, shaking her head. “You two are just being silly. Come on.”
Sienna heads off, her mother with her, and Anton White gives Lance and Tym a nod. “Thank you. For the laugh.”
“We’ll keep her safe,” Lance assures him. He adjusts his pack, giving me a knowing smile as he walks past me. “Huge, giant games . . . three-day festivals of—”
“Tying up cute guys who are sweet but don’t know when to shut up another few minutes,” I finish for him, smirking. “At least not while Sienna’s around?”
Lance nods and hurries to catch up with the Whites, Tym following behind. As I stride off, Brandon stays next to me, looking out over the city. “Penny for your thoughts.”
Brandon chuckles, glancing over. “The guys told you that they still use those in Bane for real money, right? A penny’s pretty valuable.”
“So are your thoughts.”
“Just wondering,” Brandon says, smiling at my comment. “Will we ever reach these heights again? A city of a million people, stadiums bigger than an entire housing block in Solace, built just for leisure, I would guess. I’d love to go down there just to see if we could learn about them.”
“Not yet,” I muse, looking down. “Not for . . . well, I’d say fifty or a hundred years still. Cities that big were plastered in the war. Even after sitting abandoned for so long, there’s no safe way to travel through that zone without protective gear.”
“Guess it isn’t that important. I just would want to know if we can do it. If we can ever be great again.”
I look out at the city, wondering myself. Did the people down there feel safe at night? Or did they have to carry swords to cross the darkness? The archives were short on a lot of those details. Did they think that their culture was great?
I don’t know. It’s a thought that’s been on my mind since that statue in the Scorched Earth, the one Tym, Lance, and I found before we rescued Brandon.
“We can,” I reply quietly, walking along. “Those pre-War humans, they weren’t perfect. They made mistakes. They were in many ways weaker than we are. But they laughed, they loved, they cried. They had families and formed cities and nations. They, in all their imperfections, created not just a city of a million but nations that spanned from ocean to ocean. They flew to the moon. Supposedly, somewhere out there, there are chunks of technology that humanity built and sent to the stars just to say, ‘We’re here . . . we’d like to talk.’ If those humans could do that . . . we can do the same. More, even.”
“If we can stop Bane from taking over.”
I nod and roll my neck. “Not if . . . when. Because that’s one mistake they made. They slowly, over the years, killed off their gods. They forgot, they let themselves think that they were beyond any need of the gods. And in forgetting, they made themselves weak. I don’t plan to make that same mistake.”
“And what are you going to do?” Brandon asks. “Slay the god of death?”
“If I get the chance . . . yes.”
Brandon stops on the road and looks at me in shock. “You’re not bullshitting, are you?”
I stop and look back at him, shaking my head. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it by myself. And it’s not going to be easy. I’m going to need some help. But yes, I’m serious. I won’t rest until the threat from Bane is eliminated. And there’s only one way to do that. With his immortal heart on the point of my sword.”
Chapter 27
Cerena
“Ugh . . . I thought you said that the cities were deserted.”
The stench lifts up and over the horde in a physical miasma, cloying and spreading out in a warning. I’m glad for that, at least, because as we look down on the zombie army below us, a mass of seething, stinking undead humanity that is larger than any I’ve ever even heard of before, my heart chills in my chest.
“How the hell have they not been seen before?” Lance asks, stretched out, like all of us, on his stomach. While we’re above the zombies and they’re a good half-mile away, there’s no reason to test their rotting eyes more than we have to. “That’s a group larger than all of Solace.”
“The mountains . . . and the gorge,” Tym murmurs. “Zombies can’t climb well, and the gorge is impassible other than the bridge. It keeps them contained, funneling them away from Bane and Solace.”
It makes sense but doesn’t really change the situation. On our left is a mountain. It towers, steep and somewhat climbable but quickly leading up to the thin air beyond the snowline. There won’t be any roads, any trails, or any shelter up that high.
Behind us is the road back toward the city we passed yesterday, and the way back toward Bane and Solace. By now, the werewolves have to be on our trail, and every minute we pause here is another minute that the pack’s closing on our tail. I don’t know if Lucian’s still in charge or if he has some underling leading the hunting pack right now while he licks his wounds, but I do know a number.
Twenty. The average werewolf pack can cover twenty miles an hour when they’re not searching house by house. They’re probably going slightly slower, maybe ten to fifteen miles an hour. Slower than we were pushing the truck, but those miles are evaporating minute by minute.
That gorge isn’t going to stop them forever either. No matter if they have to detour for ten, twenty, or even fifty miles, they’ll be able to make up the deficit moving three to four times faster than we are. It’s just a matter of how many hours we have and how much we can throw them off in that time.
We can’t stop. But in front of us and to our right is a zombie army of at least ten thousand. They haven’t detected us, but that isn’t assured.
“Options,” I whisper, rolling back away from the edge of the road. Sienna and her mother are already backed up, supposedly to comfort the girl. In my opinion, though, I think Sienna’s doing the comforting. I’ve almost written Sophia off, which is disappointing after her showing the guts to come out and talk to me at night. But at least her father’s doing his best to help.
“Up into the mountains,” Anton White says, coming to a kneeling position while keeping his shotgun ready. “It might not be comfortable, but we can make it through enough to get around this mess.”
“Go back,” Brandon says. “The werewolves will just chase us down in the mountains. They can handle the cold a lot better than we can. The dead heads are moving away from the city, so if we backtrack a few miles, we can loop around behind them. That herd won’t be able to turn around fast enough to keep up.”
“And bring us too close to the city!” Anton growls. “I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to radiate my daughter if I can avoid it!”
“Keep your voice down,” I hiss, holding up my hand when Brandon looks like he’s about to answer. “Those rotters can hear just fine.”
Anton’s face reddens, but he nods. “My point stands. I won’t take my little girl closer to that death zone. In case you haven’t noticed, there are no Solace autodocs around for us to get a quick little decontamination from.”
“I wonder,” Tym says suddenly, quietly, rolling to a seated position. “What if the zombies were put in our path?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, glad for the distraction. I don’t need Brandon, who seems to finally have buried his issues with Lance and Tym for the time being, getting pushed into a new fight with a man who is obviously just trying to protect his daughter.
; And he’s right. This isn’t a normal mission, where I could risk myself getting a dose of radiation or a minor injury since I knew I could stumble my way back to Solace half-dead and be assured of getting healed. Right now, even a minor cut or injury is something that has to be treated the old-fashioned way. All we’ve got are the contents of two med kits and a few things the Whites packed.
While Tym and Lance apparently heal more quickly than regular people, and maybe Brandon does now as well, I doubt Sienna White has such recuperative abilities.
So the distraction helps.
“According to Lance and his dream, the gods can see many areas of the Scorched Earth,” Tym says quietly. “And we know they can communicate with their offspring.”
“In various ways,” Anton says, looking back at his daughter. “Apparently, though, Sulis doesn’t see fit to talk to hers. Not a very helpful goddess in that regard.”
“True, but a question for another time,” Tym says. “Tyr has reached out to me, Loki has reached out to Lance, and Bane has reached out to Brandon.”
Anton looks up in surprise at that, and Brandon nods. “I didn’t know that one.”
“It’s not something I’m proud of,” Brandon admits, looking down. I know it took him a long time to admit it to me, and even now, his heritage isn’t something he makes light of. “But yes, he’s spoken to me in dreams.”
“So you think we’re being watched?” Anton says, running a hand through his hair. “Then why run at all? If they know where we are, they’re just going to chase us until they can corner us. Why not find the best spot for us to mount a defense and tell them to bring it?”
“Because while the gods can view, they can’t control everything,” Tym says. “Tyr cannot help me if I tumble down this embankment. Loki cannot help Lance if he makes Cerena so pissed she decides to castrate him.”
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