As I Walk These Broken Roads

by DMJ Aurini

  “Yeah?”

  The response seemed to confuse and anger the youth even more. The kid’s eyebrows knotted as he searched for a response. “Doncha know this ain’t no derelict bar?”

  Wentworth spent another few seconds examining him before responding, wondering if he should point out that this was Visitor’s wing. “No, I didn’t.” He turned back around, hoping the idiot would leave.

  It took the kid a while to respond but when he did it was clear he wasn’t going to let things lie. “Hey, donchou turn your back on me, derelict!” There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor as he got up.

  Wentworth turned his head around and the youth stopped in his tracks, halfway between their two tables, staring at him, chest heaving as he breathed through his mouth. Something in Wentworth snapped.

  With the sudden burst of adrenaline he stood up, hearing the table and chair clatter and the cutlery shatter. All of his pent up frustrations exploded at once. Maybe it was the kid’s vacant gaze. Maybe it was the ‘derelict’ epithet. Or maybe it was just the mouth breathing. Whatever it was he found himself standing with his pistol drawn and pointed at the kid’s skull before he had a chance to think.

  He immediately regretted it. He’d upped the ante when he should have been talking his way out of it. He was only helping this idiot cause trouble. But it was too late to back down. In the background he heard the rest of the patrons as they caught on to what was transpiring. He held the pistol in a firm grip, willing the kid to back off, watching his eyes through semi-polarized lenses.

  One’s eyes are nearly impossible to control; they’re hardwired to the brain. The kids were wavering. They ticked to his left. Back off, thought Wentworth keeping his gaze steady. They wavered again, unable to choose. Then they twisted, darting to the right. Wentworth was moving before the kukri was drawn. The curved blade was dangerous; he could feel the kid preparing to slash it in a downward arc. He twisted the pistol in his hand, catching the blade on his finger guard, swirling it clockwise to the right and away. His left hand caught the boys wrist and he hooked his right foot behind the boys ankle, toes curled slightly upward, cupping it. He pistol whipped him, then dropped the gun and grabbed his shoulder, going down with him as the kid fell backward. Guiding the shoulder, he allowed the momentum to bring his opponent’s elbow down on his knee while keeping a firm grip on the wrist. There was a loud crack as the elbow bent backwards and the kukri clattered to the floor.

  The silence lasted a split second. Other patrons were still scrabbling out of their chairs by the time it was done.

  The kid blinked twice in confusion. Then his eyes widened in pain. He began shrieking.

  Shit, Wentworth looked over at the table he’d knocked over and the shattered remains of his plate and glass. Idly he kicked away the kukri.

  He looked at the bartender, and pulled his money clip out. “Sorry about the dishes. Let me cover that.” He glanced around the bar. Mostly foreigners like himself, but a couple of locals were there, cigarettes dangling from long holding stems. The wary gazes were split between him and the kid. “How about I buy a round for the house, seeing as how I interrupted their meals?” He lay another wad on the counter, and saw a slight nod in response from the bartender.

  He picked up and holstered his pistol; there was still no round in the chamber; then pulled the duffle bag from under the turned-over table. The kid was whimpering pathetically now, rolling back and forth on the floor while clutching his bicep, the forearm hanging at too-straight an angle. He pulled a couple more bills out, and dropped them on the writhing form. “I hope that’ll cover his medical expenses,” he said to the bar at large.

  Then he vaulted over the wrought iron fence, and disappeared down the service corridor.

  * * *

  Saxony grunted as he lifted the crate up to the loading dock, Jeremy took it and put it on the forklift’s palette. Despite cool air he was sweating.

  “Oy, gents!” The two of them glanced over. Approaching them was a foreigner dressed all in black with a duffle bag over one shoulder. “Is this here Anderson’s shipment?”

  “Who?” asked Jeremy.

  “Anderson, I just rode with him outta Steeltown.”

  “Sorry guy,” said Saxony, “This is nothing but farm crops we got here. You’re with one of the highway traders?”

  “Yeah, I was just supposed to be guarding for him, but then one of his kids sprained his ankle, so now I gotta help him unload. It’s a big shipment, whole bunch of electronics.”

  “You must mean for Gizzer’s shop?” said Jeremy.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right – is this loading bay C1?”

  “No guy, this is C2. Only local stuff in here. Any highway merchants, they all go over to the other side – C1 should be the first. Hey, you know you can even cut through Complex, there’s a door just over there.”

  “Nah, I just came from there – it’s locked on the other side, I was hoping maybe this was the right place. Guess I just gotta go for a little walk, then.”

  “Uh, locked? Shouldn’t be,” said Jeremy, “Tell you what, the keys are just over there in the key box, how ‘bout I go open it for you.”

  “That’s alright, you guys are busy. I’ll just take the long way around, if I can squeeze past you. Thanks, though.”

  “Sure. No problem, guy.”

  * * *

  Raxx was underneath his truck inspecting things when he heard Wentworth’s voice.

  “I come bearing gifts.”

  “Oh, hey man.”

  Awkwardly he crawled out from underneath. Wentworth had laid his duffel bag on the hood and was rifling through it. “I saw this stuff for sale and I thought of you.” He pulled out a large black vest with large shoulder pads and covered with pockets and handed it to him. “Try it on.”

  Raxx slipped it on over his sweater. It was heavier than it looked and a bit loose, but comfortable enough. “Nice, what is it?”

  “Fragmentation vest. It beats the hell out of those football pads of yours. Won’t stop heavier calibers, but it’ll keep you safe from most rifles and explosives. Here’s the other thing.” He handed over a longarm made of slick, moulded plastic, with a drum magazine and a bull-pup design. “It’s a proper combat shotgun with a constant recoil system. Fully automatic, twenty round mag, and a hell of a lot nicer on your shoulder. I’ll show you how it operates later.”

  Raxx hefted it. It was much lighter than his old shotgun but it looked well made. “Well, thanks man. Did you get anything for yourself?”

  Wentworth shrugged, “Just this.” He held up a piece of tubing roughly thirty centimetres long with a trigger at one end. “It’s a grenade launcher. But it’s rusted all to shit, and Lord knows where I’m going to find some ammunition for it.” He shrugged. “I got it free with the other stuff.”

  “How much it set you back?”

  Wentworth grinned. “Enough. Don’t worry about it though, I figure I owe it to you for having my back so many times.” The smile left his face and he stared out at the horizon. “Listen, I don’t know about you but this place is starting to feel a bit too civilized for my tastes. Plus I can’t stop staring at that tower in the distance. What do you say we go check out those ruins east of here?”

  “Yeah, sure thing. And yeah, I know what you mean, not much is happening here. But first I got something for you, too.” He grinned widely and wiggled his eyebrows. He went around to the back of his truck, gesturing for Wentworth to follow. “Here put this up against your ear.” He handed him a black disc connected to a wire. Wentworth listened while he picked up a similar unit. “Breaker-breaker-one-niner,” he said.

  “Breaker-breaker-one-niner,” came the tinny voice in Wentworth’s ear.

  “I got the idea the other day while we were listening to the radio. Radio’s easy enough to do, you don’t even need expensive parts. Now we can talk when we’re on the road.”

  “Right on,” Wentworth nodded in admiration.

  “Just le
t me clean a few things then we can get going.”

  Chapter 31

  This was it then – the last of the forgotten highways. No traffic, no destination – only the bones of the great civilization.

  Wentworth pressed the button connected to his headset. They were still testing the radios, as well as working out what sort voice-procedure patois they’d be using. “Romeo, this is Whiskey. Radio check; over.” A second later Raxx’s voice answered.

  “This is Romeo. Loud and clear, buddy, looks like they’re working fine – over.”

  “Roger that, Romeo. Whiskey out.”

  The echoes of their engines echoed for kilometres up and down the sound-barricaded corridor.

  Wentworth had taken lead again, negotiating a path forward. Vehicles littered this highway. Their electronics blown out, most were parked on the thin shoulder, but many still littered the main paths of travel. They threaded their way through, encountering no difficulties, but vigilant for any scattered debris from some of the multi-vehicle wrecks they saw.

  The hulks flashed by, one by one, empty of occupants. Nobody had cleared this highway.

  On either side, the occasional building could be seen over the barricades. All of them had their windows blown out, and most showed signs of fire damage. Empty tombs, flitting by. There was no human life here, little animal life, and only the occasional patch of green struggling in the piles of dirt that had accumulated on the shoulders. But despite all the decay, the highway stayed good to them.

  Up ahead the ruins loomed. They kept dipping behind the horizon, or hiding as they curved around a bend, only to reappear larger and more decrepit. Wentworth ignored them, his eyes were focussed on the road ahead.

  “Whiskey, this is Romeo – you figure we’ll find anyone out here?”

  “Whiskey – better hope not. This place is putting me on edge, and I figure anyone else out here will be feeling the same. Better ready your weapons when we stop, just in case, Over.”

  “I hear that – Roger. But I don’t see any tire marks, so we shouldn’t have to worry.”

  “I feel like the rules don’t apply here… Out.”

  Billboards started to appear, thirty meters tall, on either side of the road. Their paint was faded, and their products forgotten. Fire damage was becoming more common, gutting the high-rises. The distant sky would blink through as the windows aligned.

  “Hey, uh, Whiskey – you see that? What that going on with the road up ahead? Over.”

  They were passing an off ramp, up ahead the road appeared jagged, its sides twisted and distorted. “Whiskey – Yeah, I see it. We should slow down and check it out – Over.”

  “Roger, out.”

  They slowed their vehicles, coming to a stop. Raxx’s truck groaned as he pulled the parking break. He got out and walked over to the idling motorcycle. “What the hell do you think caused this?”

  Wentworth had been studying the mess in front of him since they stopped, trying to figure it out. The road came to an abrupt end three meters above the ground, sixty meters ahead. In between was a mess of shattered concrete, steel rebar, and I-beams. He knocked out the kickstand, and got off of the motorcycle. He pulled out a cigarette. “One of the bombs, maybe.”

  They walked towards it. This had been one of the highway’s major intersections, almost a full cloverleaf. He spotted the remains of a railway which had run parallel to them, as well the avenues beneath the highway. Parts of the wreckage suggested there’d been a short tunnel here, three or four layers of transport. Now there was nothing but crater.

  Raxx looked up at the sky, as if imagining the bomb’s detonation. “Huh. Maybe. The buildings around here look like they might have been hit with a blast wave centred here.”

  Wentworth smoked, stretching his knees. “I was about to say that we ought to get off this road, anyways. The wrecks are getting denser, the closer we get. You up for a bit of urban navigation?”

  “It’s not like we have much choice.”

  * * *

  Every aspect of the landscape was getting denser. Along the side streets were single-dwelling homes and residential neighbourhoods, but the main drag stayed commercial. Everywhere tall buildings lined the streets, refusing to topple. It was hard to imagine how many people had lived here.

  The going was much slower than on the highway. Cars were everywhere. Mostly they were parked along the sides of the street, and passage was still possible, but occasionally there’d be the remnants of a multiple-vehicle accident blocking an intersection, or abandoned cars and trucks parked lengthwise across a street. Once they came across a bus which was flipped on its side and wedged in against the buildings. Bit by bit they made their way further east, backtracking when necessary, going on side streets and through residential neighbourhoods, over wild lawns and down alleyways. The towers were growing larger each time they saw them.

  Litter and refuse were everywhere. Waxy advertising flyers blew about, water stained and faded. Newsprint and other cheap papers lay in the gutter, grey and yellow lumps covered with lichens and moulds. Everything was rusted, the street lamps and traffic signs. The wooden benches had rotted over the years, and the cement had shattered wherever water had seeped in and froze. The few remaining plants growing on narrow strips of earth and in sidewalk cracks were black and misshapen, their flowers off-colour with mottled spottings. There was no sound but the howling wind and clattering detritus. Their passing was a brief interlude, the growl of ancient motors before returning to the silence of abandonment.

  The path forced upon them eventually took them to the waterfront. Residential buildings lined the street and stretching out to the east they could see the overgrown remains of parks and beaches. Wentworth stopped his motorcycle and pulled out his binoculars, looking for any signs of habitation. The occasional tumbleweed rolled along the wide avenue, but aside from that there was no movement. Like everywhere else in this city the plants were twisted and mutated, poisoned by the radiation and left over pollution. Without fertilizer and care they’d stopped growing strong. After a few minutes Wentworth put away his binoculars and looked over at Raxx, parked next to him.

  “I don’t see anybody out there. That beach looks like it’d be good for travelling on – free and clear as far as I can see. I’m going to stick to the pathways, but I think your truck should be able to handle the sand.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. Let’s go.”

  Wentworth drove over to the nearest concrete walkway and once he was facing in the right direction he gunned his engine. The cement footpaths were cracked and rough, but free of hazards. Raxx eased over one of the concrete embankments, then in low gear he tested out the sand’s surface. Satisfied, he notched up the speed to match Wentworth’s.

  They were making good time finally, they kept the speed low, under fifty, and they ran into no obstacles. Sometimes Wentworth had to jog left or right as the path curved, and Raxx needed to compensate whenever he felt the sand shifting, but they were making progress, closing with the ruins.

  The park was extensive and in places they could see the highway they’d been on earlier, it now ran parallel to the waterfront. They passed tennis courts, waterside bars, and marinas. The skyscrapers were getting close enough to make out the windows.

  Eventually the park ended and was replaced with commercial buildings. They manoeuvred their way back onto the streets, then took an onramp back onto the highway. It was raised up on concrete posts, and gave them a long view in either direction. They kicked up the speed as the city spread out before them. Billboards passed on either side, on top of buildings or high steel posts. Rising above the skyscrapers was the jagged spike they’d seen while en route to Sauga. It was a narrow cement tower, smooth, without windows or accoutrements. The top had been torn off, ragged steel rebar hung out of the gash. They passed an eight vehicle pile-up, a commuter bus crushed into the backs of the automobiles in front of it. Over the years they’d rusted into a single mass. Drawing closer, they could finally see the bas
e of the tower. Leaning against it were the remnants of the red and white saucer which had once sat at its pinnacle. It was fallen and shattered, debris sprayed everywhere.

  They were now close enough to see that the downtown cluster had been thinned out. At a distant all the skyscrapers blended together to create a consistent skyline, but here, now, up close, they could see the gaps where buildings had collapsed. Only about one in four was still standing.

  The cars were getting denser, and they had to slow their speed for the truck to work its way around them. These vehicles were in worse condition than the others they’d seen. Their tires were blown out and their glass was missing. None of them had upholstery inside. And there was something else...

  “Gas tanks are gone.”

  “Say again Romeo?”

  “I just noticed, Whiskey. All of these vehicles had their gas tanks explode. You can see the marks on the road under them.”

  It was the fireball, he realized. All of these cars had been hit by the fireball when the bomb went off. That’s when he noticed the bodies – he’d been passing them for a while without realizing it because they were nothing but dark, charred husks. The fire and the elements had left little behind.

  They’d slowed to little more than a jogging pace. They were almost all the way into downtown, buildings looming on either side, but the traffic of the dead was getting worse. The cars were skewed out perpendicularly or rolled over. On his motorcycle Wentworth was still able to make it through, but Raxx was running into problems. The broken tower with its fallen disk, the one which pointed up at the sky like an accusing finger, passed by on their left. Spotting an off ramp in the distance Wentworth radioed Raxx and suggested they take it.

  They managed to make it there and thankfully the ramp itself was free of cars. They realized why as they exited onto a street level intersection of wide avenues – a smattering of vehicles had coasted off the ramp at the very end, engines dead but wheels rolling, spreading out through the intersection and pushing the vehicles already there onto the sidewalks.