As I Walk These Broken Roads

by DMJ Aurini

  The streets were clogged with dead vehicles. Raxx pulled over next to Wentworth, and they agreed it was time to proceed on foot. The trick was figuring out where – their vehicles would stand out and draw attention in this automotive graveyard if any scavengers happen to stop by.

  On the far corner of the intersection was the answer they needed; a multi-storey parking garage. It was built ruggedly, with no windows, just wide gaps between support columns, designed with functionality, not aesthetics in mind. It seemed to have survived the blast relatively unharmed.

  Raxx nosed his way over a curb and into a parking lot, and eventually found a route to its main entrance. A black-and-yellow wooden barrier, its paint chipping, had survived the nuclear fire, but under the truck’s grill it snapped off easily. Inside the vehicles were parked in orderly rows and dead halogen lights hung from the ceiling. Their way was clear until they reached the fourth level; there they found a minivan which had been about to enter the ramp to the fifth and final level blocking both lanes. The rubber from its tires was melted into the floor and its axles were rusted. There was no way they were going to move it.

  They settled for parking on the fourth level in the darkest corner they could find. The chance of anybody walking up there by accident was low; aside from their own vehicles there was nothing of value in the garage.

  When they shut them down the engines echoed for a split second, almost wistfully, then they faded and the garage was full of concrete silence.

  For half an hour they stood in the shadows, watching and listening, waiting to see if anybody had heard them arrive. Thankfully, the vehicles in the garage had been unoccupied when the bomb hit and there were no charred remains for them to ignore. They stayed sharp and the time passed slowly.

  Checking his Datapad for the third time Wentworth saw that thirty-three minutes had passed since their arrival. Neither of them had seen or heard anything during that time other than a flock of pigeons and a large rat. “I think we’re good,” he said to Raxx, slinging his rifle, “not that I expected anything. We’ve still got about four hours of daylight left, let’s pack up and get going.”

  “So you wanna sleep outdoors tonight? I was thinking we might as well, we’ll get more accomplished that way.”

  “Yeah, agreed. We should pack light though – I want to leave space for anything interesting we might find.”

  Raxx took his rucksack while Wentworth took his duffle. Within a few minutes they’d made it down to ground level and were heading north, passing under the highway. The downtown core loomed ahead.

  Chapter 32

  The buildings were immense, blocking out most of the sky and casting long shadows. When they spoke they whispered, but they didn’t speak much. As they passed under the highway, its chalk-white supports on either side of them, their footsteps echoed hollowly. Somehow an ancient poster was still up, taped to one of the columns and fluttering in the wind.

  A brief open space followed after they passed under the highway; a park in front of a stadium, off to their right. Then the avenue they were on turned into a tunnel. They walked in silence now. For some reason the wind died down in this brief underground passage. A red cigarette pack lay in the gutter, standing out even in the gloom. It seemed to go on forever even though they could see the end of it, not more than a hundred meters from the entrance. When they finally got to the other side they stopped and stared.

  “Holy Hell…” said Raxx.

  The buildings they’d seen before were nothing compared to the ones confronting them now. They kept stretching up and up until they had to crane their heads back to see the top. Before it had been the proximity of the buildings which blocked out the sky; now it was their magnitude. All of the glass was gone from their windows, and their exteriors were a uniform grey from the dust, with dirty streaks where water had run down. Few were fully intact, and the debris of the fallen littered the streets ahead, sometimes the piles were several stories high. Behind them they could now see that the cause for the tunnel; dozens of train tracks running above it. This must have been the major transit hub for the great city.

  The debris started at the first intersection after the tunnel and stretched on as far as they could see. Slowly they walked up to it trying to understand its magnitude. They stood there; Wentworth lit a cigarette, Raxx put down his rucksack and started making trial attempts at climbing the pile, seeing if it was possible. The dust spiralled up with the wind while dead leaves and garbage blew about in corners.

  Finally Raxx gave up. “I don’t know how we’re going to get past this. We could climb it, but it’d be slow going all the way. Dangerous, too.”

  Wentworth had been looking about him while Raxx spoke. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s go see if the subway system hasn’t collapsed.” He indicated a stairwell going down into the earth.

  They walked down the stairs. The bottom was filled with debris and a set of glass doors, spider-webbed into small granules but still in the frames. Wentworth used his rifle to beat on one of them; the safety glass resisted with a rubbery consistency, but after his third strike it broke and sprayed pellets into the interior. For a second he felt like a vandal before shaking it off.

  A cool wind was blowing out through the empty frame; it carried the hint of mildew. Somewhere in the distance water was dripping. They foyer they’d stepped into opened up into a labyrinth of turnstiles, stairwells, and confectionary stands. There were newspaper kiosks but their contents were long decayed. There’d been people in here when the bomb went off, but the blast hadn’t hit them directly; they’d been allowed to decay. Their fragmented skeletons and tattered clothing didn’t look real.

  The two men turned on his flashlights and started exploring.

  The subway was convoluted, three dimensional, and counter instinctive. For half an hour they wandered its upper level, investigating the stands, maintenance hallways, all of its nooks and crannies. They discovered things which were technically useful, but generally worthless: brushes, mops, old currency, and magazines; they picked them up, looked them over, then left them. The only exception was some news magazines, brittle but still readable, that Wentworth pocketed. Occasionally they’d see something – a missing fire extinguisher, a knocked over garbage can – that suggested that others had been through here before, but if so it had been a long time ago. The dust was heavy on the floor, and Wentworth was uncomfortable with the prints they were leaving.

  Eventually they made it down to the lower levels. The tunnels were still intact. A soft, keening wail filled the air. Their electric light gazed endlessly into the darkness. They were several stories below the surface now, in the city’s calcified bowels.

  They hopped down to the tracks and started walking.

  One by one they reached the different stations. Many were blocked, but some were still passable. One exited at a street-level intersection, blocked by rubble on all four sides. In it they found an overturned delivery truck carrying water filters, a few of which they stored in Wentworth’s duffle. Another opened up into the City Hall plaza. They walked through the paved area, examining the statues and monuments. The streets surrounding it were a mess of broken down vehicles and collapsed buildings. They walked towards City Hall itself. It was built of glass and steel, and somehow the glass had survived the years, dirty though it was. Looking in they saw the silhouettes of people outlined in black against the walls. A shudder went down Wentworth’s spine as he realized they were the shadows of those who’d been standing there when the bomb hit, burnt into the walls with radiation. They left the building and kept exploring.

  The last exit they checked took both of their shoulders to lever open. They stepped through the doors, and climbed up the rubble covering the steps. When they reached the street level there was nowhere to go, only a small area where walking was possible. Something caught Wentworth’s eye. High up, on an uncollapsed building, were the blue and yellow colours of a faded billboard. It depicted three bright faces above a corporate logo; a dark haired
woman, reposing in a bath; an old man smiling happily; a child laughing. Had anyone believed it back then, he wondered?

  By this time evening had arrived a slight drizzle had started up. They decided to retreat back to the shelter of the subway tunnels. They got a fire going and Wentworth shot a rat. They debated whether or not to eat it at first because it was albino and hairless, but the Datapad picked up no traces of radiation so they agreed to cut out the fatty bits where poisons would have accumulated and cook up the rest. Wentworth watched the spit, while flipping through one of his news magazines. Raxx, meanwhile, practised dry-firing his new shotgun. He already had the drills memorized; he was now balancing a coin on the front sight while trying to pull the trigger gently enough not to upset it.

  The afternoon had been exhausting. Aside from the water filters, they’d come across nothing of value. Even the magazines Wentworth had picked up were short sighted and deluded; there was little insight to be garnered. Just a deep sense of irony.

  It really was a graveyard. What was left was no more useful than the dates written on tombstones; without a context, it was meaningless.

  The rat seemed to be finished so Wentworth gave a shout to Raxx. The meat was tough but nourishing. He’d flavoured it with some spices they’d brought with them, and it was better than any rations. A pigeon might have been tastier, but their weapons were too high calibre for the tiny birds, and besides, it was raining outside. They ate in silence, sitting in a tiny alcove along the subway track, while the flames flickered in time to the wind currents flowing down the tunnel. Their dark and greasy surroundings only emphasized their gloomy feelings.

  Raxx spoke after chewing the meat off his last bone and throwing it in the fire. “It makes you wonder, what’s the point? I mean, here we are in the city and it’s never gonna be what it was. Everything’s broken and the people who could’ve fixed it are long dead. So why do we bother?”

  Wentworth pulled a flask out of his pocket and handed it over to him. “You’re thinking about Blackstock, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, that and my uncle,” he said, taking a swig.

  Wentworth accepted the flask back and took a swig of his own. “These conversations always go better with a bit of alcohol lubricating things,” he said, lighting a cigarette. The distant rain shower was just barely audible while closer at hand there was the echo of water dripping somewhere in the tunnel. “Part of the reason you’re asking me is because you know, with my history, that I can’t say ‘your family,’ or some other bullshit– ‘your community,’ ‘your girlfriend,’ ‘your little malformed child,’ or whatever.”

  “I figure you’ll give me an honest answer. Saying any of that stuff, well, that’s just avoiding the question. Family and community can only matter if something else matters.”

  Wentworth grunted out a laugh. “Yeah, those answers are philosophical suicide. Well... I don’t know Raxx. I wonder about that sometimes, why I’m still wandering around like some derelict. I don’t really know. But... maybe this is bullshit... or maybe not, but I think it’s more interesting being alive than dead – and dead’ll come soon enough, anyway, I figure. Besides, I figure I ought to do something about the shitheads of this world. If I can. Sometimes I can. Maybe…”

  He lapsed into silence and took another swig from the flask.

  “At least the whiskey here is good.”

  Raxx barked a dry laugh. Then another. Wentworth grunted in response. This elicited another laugh out of Raxx, and slowly it grew until they were both having a good chuckle. Neither of them said anything more, retreating into their own thoughts. They continued to pass the flask back and forth while the fire burned low.

  Finally, as Raxx was thinking about getting out his sleeping mat, Wentworth spoke. “So I finished that book you gave me.”

  “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Well, at first I didn’t think too much, thought it was just a bunch of mystical nonsense. But then he starts talking about real world problems. So I read it again. Now I’m reading it a third time – I’m halfway through it but I think I know what he’s getting at. You know how he talks about the Classical and Romantic approaches to knowledge? At first I thought he meant the scientific and mystical approaches, before I figured out the context.

  “He says the Classical approach is exemplified by things like manuals, blueprints, and design sketches – all the boring analytical stuff that comes along with tech. You can see why I’d mistake Classical for science – but science isn’t that. Science is a hell of a lot more than that. That’s where the Romantic comes in. For Romantic he talks about his friend who appreciates the motorcycle in its final stage, as a beautiful machine, a ticket to freedom, but doesn’t want to understand the underlying principles. His friend wants a magic carpet, not a motorcycle. That’s why I mistook Romantic for Mystic – but it’s not that. See, why does a Mechanic build a motorcycle in the first place? It’s because he’s building a Romantic ideal. The author’s friend can only see the Romantic, and completely misses the Classical underpinnings.

  “But the Romantic isn’t just prettiness, it isn’t just merely aesthetic – and aesthetics don’t equate to useless. That’s why he mentions the incompetent mechanics. The guys who just read the manuals, put in their time, and don’t care about the end result – to them it’s just a paycheque.”

  “The technicians.”

  “Yeah, the technicians. Just like his friend is only living in the Romantic world, the technicians are only living in the Classical world. Not only are their lives empty, they’re also incompetent. Because they’re not looking at the bike as a whole, because they’re not caring about it, they end up screwing it up worse than it was in the first place.

  “The whole idea behind machines is that we can understand them, we can figure out what makes them work, and design them to do what we want them to do. We use our understanding to make ourselves greater.”

  “That’s why I’m a Mechanic, man. It’s all something that I can understand, that I can use to change the world into what I want it to be.”

  “It’s all math.”

  Raxx’s brows furrowed. “Yeah... I guess it is.”

  “The book got me thinking. You know Raxx, before I read it I used to be one of those Romantic guys – I never realized that I could figure out the whole machine, I only fixed the parts that I’d been taught to fix. You’re not like that, you don’t let ignorance get in your way. You learn what you don’t know, and chart a path through it. Except in one field.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Wentworth pulled out his Datapad, and tossed it over to the prone form. Raxx caught it, holding it apprehensively.

  “How does this thing work?” asked Wentworth.

  “...I’d say that it does your thinking for you. What am I supposed to say?”

  “At its base level, it’s nothing but electronics. The same stuff you were using to put together those radios. It’s a machine, just really, really small – electrons and nuclei bouncing off one another, nothing but mathematics, ones and zeroes, clicking like clockwork. It’s a completely different sort of machine, but the principles are the same, the math is the same – it’s designed to think for you, but your truck is designed to drive for you. You decide how much thinking it does. You could figure it out just like anything else.

  “At their core, there’s no fundamental difference between trucks and computers.”

  Raxx stared at the screen, watching the cursor blink. “You just might be on to something there.” He handed it back and lay down again. “You know, I was taught that all of the old tech was evil... but that was just my tribe. Other are okay with machines, but everybody says that those things are what started the war. I gotta think about it first.” He pulled out a cigarillo and lit it, staring up at the ceiling. “You know, it’s funny that the book got you thinking about mechanics, but me it got thinking about ethics. See, here’s
the thing - let’s say you want to be moral. Well, where do you start? The first thing you gotta do is gain knowledge. What’s the difference between a good act and an evil act? It’s the situation. Something’s that’s right to do in one situation would be wrong in the other, and vice versa. Even if you’re just talking about giving someone a kiss, well, it doesn’t take much imagination to think of situations where that’d be rude, or even evil. And it gets more complex from there – when and how should you punish? When and how should you be kind? Both can hurt people, in different ways. It’s all about knowledge – learning about people, families and relationships, and even tech – it all goes hand in hand.

  “You know, in some ways it was a big relief for me. I already knew everything that was wrong with my family, but I didn’t believe it. Man, there was some seriously unhealthy stuff going on there. But I’d always learned that truth came from the majority – so if everybody else thought what was happening was okay, who was I to speak different? But, see, that book showed me what the difference was – how I could know that I was right–” he sat up suddenly, resting on an elbow. “Do you know what it is? Do you know how we can tell that we aren’t the crazy ones? It’s because we listen to different ideas. We’re not locked up to the first idea that gets in our heads. Logic is just math, isn’t it? And math’s the same for everyone.” He leaned back again. “How about you show me how that machine of yours works when we get back to Sauga? It’s probably about time I learned.”

  Wentworth nodded. The fire had burnt down to embers. “Do you know what else is funny? In a way, that book did the same thing for both of us.”

  “How so?”

  “It got us to realize the difference between blindly accepting facts, and critically thinking about them. You with your ethics, me with machines... but even then, you and I, we’ve always been doing that, haven’t we? Sure, we’ve both been affected by our environments, but both of us have always sought after free thought... and there’s nobility in that. Anybody half-intelligent can be trained to think, but some people have it innate. The born free-thinkers.”