WHEN NELLY HAD brought them to the well-worn trail that would take them to the southwest, she stopped, turning to Bjorn with her arms extended. The big Norwegian was unable to hide the admiration with which he regarded the bald woman. She had managed to destroy Kinzler’s compound without a word, still shackled. The policeman hesitated, glancing at Jori, who technically outranked him.
“If we encountered a salvage party,” Jori suggested, “a leading member of their Tribunal may be able to talk our way through.” Hadrian reached for his knife.
Bjorn seemed relieved as he cut through the cords. “But I am still responsible for you,” he reminded Nelly, who replied with a weary grin.
After the first hour, Dax and Jori took the lead over the steep, icy terrain. Most of the trail followed old roads, apparent not so much from the concrete shards sometimes visible through the snow as from the trees. They followed swaths of trees that were no more than fifteen or twenty years old, twenty-foot-wide ribbons between much taller trees of fifty, even a hundred years’ growth.
They pushed hard, not certain of their destination, staying always on the most heavily used tracks, crossing over crude log bridges erected where highway overpasses had once existed, passing snow-packed campsites showing frequent use by men and horses. As they traveled, the cold bite of the air lessened and the snow began to thin, until finally it was present only in scattered patches.
Twice they leapt to cover as Dax whistled warnings, watching salvage parties ride by, their pack animals piled high with treasure. Once, in the night, they heard the blood-curdling roar of a great beast. Hadrian remembered the tales of zoo predators liberated a generation earlier. At dawn one morning he caught a glimpse of what he would have sworn was a monkey, watching them from a tree.
On the third day, as Dax and Jori paused at a ledge that overlooked a long, low valley, Hadrian realized their journey was over. His companions were puzzling over a row of regularly spaced hills, covered with plant growth but strangely angular in shape, vine-covered mesas that rose fifty, even a hundred feet above the low valley floor.
“Buildings,” he said. “At least once they were buildings,” he amended as he saw the uncertainty on the faces of Jori, Bjorn, and Dax. Now the structures were just part of the landscape, no different from the Mayan temples long ago lost in the jungle. It was as if nature had decided she was finished with the experiment that was mankind.
“But it makes no sense,” Jori said. “Why would buildings need to be so tall?”
“It was just something people did,” Nelly said in a voice that was almost a whisper, glancing at Hadrian. From long experience they knew it was not possible to fully convey to the new generation the mass of population, the mazes of highways, the acres of asphalt and concrete, the transmission lines and millions of automobiles that had defined the old world.
“It would have been a perfect bio sink,” Nelly said at his shoulder. The steep, tall ridges on either side of the valley may have protected the buildings from blast waves, but the deep bowl would have trapped the biological agents that had spread across the landscape.
“For years,” he agreed, remembering how Standish and his party had died there two years after the settlement of Carthage. Even now he was wary of sending any of their party into the valley. But then he saw a thin plume of smoke rising from the opposite hillside. Although the smoke seemed to rise up directly from the ground, with no sign of a fire, fifty yards below it he now spied a clearing whose shadows held several men and horses. He scanned the surrounding terrain, then watched as several of the distant figures disappeared into a wall of vegetation.
“Jonah described it as one of those low-impact buildings,” he explained, referring to the environmentally self-contained buildings that were used for new industrial operations in the years just before the shifting. “It must be built into the hill, underground, with a small entrance from the outside.”
“It’s what Jonah meant when he wrote to me that it might have survived,” Nelly told them. “It would not have been under attack by the elements because it was built into the earth itself.”
As Bjorn led the others down the slope, Hadrian lingered, a vague recollection trying to break through to his consciousness. He scanned the valley floor once more, all the way to the low river bottom where the structures ended, and then the memory burst through. He had been to this town. He had taken his son to a baseball game here, sat in the community park at the river bottom, eating a hot dog and cheering as boys sprinted between bases. Studying the end of the valley, he saw it as it had been then, then as it would have been when Standish had led his salvage party there. It was the deepest point in the valley. The little park had been the biosink where Standish had died.
Staying off the cleared path now meant traversing the thickets that crowded the slopes. It was late afternoon by the time they reached Hadrian’s objective, the square mountain of brush and vine directly opposite the old pharmaceutical factory. It had been a four- or fivestory office building. Most of its windows had been blown in so that impenetrable mats of roots and tendrils crowded inside, extending deep into the interior space. The first-floor lobby area had been stripped by salvagers, its walls now covered with vines. Hadrian paced along the walls, finding a patch of new growth where vines were reclaiming a section that had been torn away by salvagers. He probed the vegetation, discovering a door handle, which he pulled open to reveal a stairwell. He lit a candle and began climbing the stairs.
The door on the third-floor landing gave way when Bjorn and Hadrian put their combined weight against it. He quickly located an office window in which the glass had shattered and pushed the vines aside. They were overlooking the buried factory, only a hundred yards away.
As the others set up a camp in a conference room, he studied the pharmaceutical plant. He saw how the slope over the buried building had been cleared, revealing box-shaped structures that must be skylights and vents. Before the light faded, a large party departed, packhorses full. Only five mounts were left.
Nelly arrived at his side in time to watch as a big man with a rifle appeared and took up a sentry position on the slope above the entry.
“Nelly,” he said. “Tell me why Jonah thought this plant would provide the answer to your problems.”
“He knew it well because it was where his wife worked as a senior researcher, making pharmaceuticals. Cancer drugs mostly.”
“He wasn’t sending you for cancer drugs.”
“No. The plant was a prototype, using simpler technologies based on natural processes and heavy use of water. Fermentation with molds and bacteria. It required lots of water for the vats, for washings, for precipitation tanks. He said it would have the simple lab equipment we needed to refine our aspirin and make permanent supplies of it. If we were lucky, he said, we might find enough vats and other equipment to begin making penicillin. Do you know how many in the camps and Carthage die every year of pneumonia? Penicillin could save most of them. His letters had more and more enthusiasm about the possibilities. He was doing research on his own and reminded us that in the years before the ending there had been many discoveries made for producing medicines from fermentation. The bacteria in the vats replaced entire factories.
“But he warned us that a salvage team had died there long ago. And Kinzler said there was nothing left.” She paused. He saw the pain in her eyes as she gazed out over the dead town. “We don’t need salvage. If I had my way, we’d wait another hundred years before letting anyone into these places.”
“They would have manuals in there,” Hadrian said. “Chemistry books. A library on chemical molecules and how to make them in those vats.”
When Nelly didn’t reply he pointed to the water tower nearly obscured by trees near the top of the ridge, still catching the light of the setting sun. “Is that part of the operations?”
“I have never been here,” she reminded him. “But yes, I would think so. Manufacturing plants had to be self-sufficient by the time this one was built
. It would have had its own water source to run turbines and for all the water used in the process. The tank, and probably a lake to feed it.”
Nelly fell silent as she stared at the entry to the plant with its armed guard. “When he produced the first batches of aspirin, Kinzler was elected to the Tribunal,” she told him. “When he negotiated an alliance with St. Gabriel, he was made chairman.” Then she walked away.
Hadrian watched the stars rise over the ridge and the invisible factory below, recalling how the weapons that had ended another world had also been launched from subterranean bunkers.
When he finally returned to their makeshift camp, Nelly was at the table by Dax, explaining objects the boy had scavenged and piled before him. He gripped a stapler like a treasure, testing it again and again with scrap papers, then gleefully demonstrated a handheld hole punch to Hadrian.
As they shared a paltry meal, their supplies nearly gone, Hadrian explained his plan. The few horses left meant there would only be a handful of men inside. They should try to distract the sentry at dawn, he proposed, then steal into the factory and take the others by surprise.
“You said they have guns,” Nelly observed. When Hadrian nodded she offered a sly smile. “Then I think we just go in conspicuously, parading our prisoners,” she declared, and explained her own proposal.
Jori, Bjorn, and Hadrian took two-hour shifts as sentries. Toward the end of his shift Hadrian found a window on the opposite side where the vines were thinner, allowing a wide view down the moonlit valley. The landscape had been settled for centuries, with the original natives displaced by farmers, then by industrial works as the canal to the ocean had pierced it. For perhaps two hundred years out of millions, it had teemed with human activity, had been a place of mule-drawn barges and bulldozers, steam locomotives and computer-chip factories, marching bands and shopping malls. Then in one sudden storm the humans had been scoured from the landscape.
When he turned at a low whistle from Bjorn, coming to relieve him, Dax was standing at his elbow, silently staring out the window. The boy followed Hadrian down the hall as he handed over the shotgun to the Norger. He was about to find a place to sleep when he saw the unsettled expression on the boy’s face, and he recalled how withdrawn the boy had seemed since entering the town. Picking up two of the lit candles, he handed one to Dax, and gestured for the boy to follow him down the hallway. The salvagers who had visited the building had not been thorough. Offices seldom held much of value for the colony. They had not touched some of the inner doors. Hadrian pulled a fire extinguisher from its wall cabinet and smashed a rusty door handle. The door led into another stairway.
Dax said nothing as they walked down, then paused with wide eyes as they entered the garage under the building. Hadrian raised his candle over a red convertible, its tires flat, its top in mildewed tatters. Dax approached hesitantly as Hadrian reached through the top, popped up the lock, and opened the driver’s door. After a moment Dax reached out and touched the steering wheel, then looked up in disbelief.
Hadrian pressed the latch for the trunk and to his surprise it popped open. He pulled Dax, still in his silent paralysis, to the rear of the car, then recited the names of the incongruous items arrayed before them. A tennis racket. A chainsaw. A baseball bat. A hair dryer. He retrieved the lug wrench and began walking along the other cars, forcing open the trunks with the wrench as he did so. As the boy walked from one to another, gazing at the objects they contained, emotions swirled on his face. Confusion, anger, bitterness, and melancholy.
“This is the world that is behind us, Dax,” he declared, “not the one on the other side.”
HE KNEW HE would not find slumber, so he took the guard shift after Bjorn, letting Jori sleep through her watch. Strange waking dreams came to him as he surveyed the ruined landscape. In his mind’s eye the vegetation retreated and the buildings and streets emerged. He saw cars and trucks, pedestrians entering cafes and shops, policemen directing traffic, the neon lights of fast-food restaurants, a school bus loaded with a high school team, an old woman walking a terrier. He began hearing people making small talk in the corridor behind him, the whirl of office printers, and elevator chimes. He shook his head violently, muttering a curse. He was done with shadow people, he wanted them to leave him alone.
Then suddenly came a scent of licorice, and he wanted more than anything to be with one of the shadows. He stopped breathing, fearful of breaking the spell, as he inched around. His son was wearing the uniform of his junior baseball team, smiling expectantly, his shaggy blond hair jutting out from his cap, a piece of red licorice from his pocket. As the boy raised his glove for Hadrian to toss him a ball, tears welled in his eyes. He did not move for fear of losing the boy, but his son pushed back his wayward hair and patted his glove, as if expecting Hadrian to throw. He took a step forward, seizing on a ridiculous hope that he could touch the boy. But the closer he came, the more tenuous the specter became, until there was only an arm extending from a shadow, still holding the glove.
Bjorn found him at one of the open windows, looking through the vines.
“She’s not in her blankets,” he announced. “She didn’t eat tonight.”
Hadrian puzzled at the tone in the policeman’s voice. It was not anger, but a mix of worry and disappointment. “Nelly needs time to herself,” he said. “As much as she needs food.”
Bjorn stepped to his side and gazed out the window. “She reminds me of my grandmother.”
Hadrian paused, not certain he had heard right. “You remember your grandmother?”
“My mother had a photograph she had brought with her, from before. A strong face like Nelly’s, with eyes like burning wicks. My mother would speak of her so often she was like another member of our household when I was young. My grandmother was a bold woman. Lived alone and had a dory she rowed out in the sea to catch codfish. Always made sure people did the right thing. They said she was the conscience of the village.”
It was an extraordinary speech for the big Norger, the most words Hadrian had ever heard him string together at one time. Nelly was no longer his prisoner. “You’re right, Bjorn. She is the conscience of the village.”
“Sometimes I watch her when she sleeps. It makes me . . .” Bjorn struggled for words. “It makes me feel peaceful. But when she is awake I think sometimes she is afraid of me.” There was chagrin in his voice now.
“She just doesn’t know you well enough,” Hadrian ventured, realizing that perhaps he too did not know the Norger well enough.
“She would listen to you. This is a place of death. Not safe.”
At last Hadrian grasped the plea in Bjorn’s words. “Of course. I will find her,” he replied. His companion gave a relieved nod. He refused to take the shotgun from him, as if Hadrian would have greater need of it.
Hadrian grew more concerned as he searched the open rooms of the floor. He found a gap in the vines over one of the shattered windows and leaned out over the town. The moon was bright now, bright enough to show a narrow track through the thickets that once had been streets, bright enough to cast a silvery pall on the statue that sat atop an outcropping in the middle of town.
He heard, but did not see, the creatures that stalked him as he moved along the trail, cursing himself for not bringing a lantern. When he reached the broad clearing, he saw it was strewn with outcroppings of various sizes, none more than a dozen feet tall. As he climbed onto the one he had seen, it gave a strangely hollow sound. He pushed his foot through the loose snow and matted vegetation to a metal surface. A truck. The mounds were all vehicles abandoned in the town square, covered with two decades of plant life.
Nelly did not seem to notice him. She was staring down the ruined street, the moonlight washing her face. She had been weeping.
He froze as he bent to sit beside her, then quickly swung the shotgun up. A few feet below her sat a black wolf, gazing intently at her. She pushed the gun barrel down. “He’s been here for an hour,” she said. “He likes my singing.
”
Hadrian knelt beside her, keeping the gun ready. The animal was huge, larger than any wolf he had ever seen. He opened his mouth to warn Nelly that the rest of the pack must be close by when she suddenly began to sing.
There was no stopping her once she had started one of her chants. Indeed, after a few moments, he had no interest in doing so. Her deep, lilting song-prayer seemed to wind out into the world like one of the vines, wrapping its tendrils around the heart of any creature that listened. Hadrian stared at her. The wolf stared at her. More tears began streaming down her cheeks but still she sang. Her breath hung about her in the cold air, like a halo in the moonlight.
Hadrian thought he heard segments of old folk ballads, of rock songs, of earlier dance tunes and hymns, all woven into one rich tapestry of sound. She seemed to sing impossibly long between breaths. An owl landed on a nearby tree, turning its horned ears toward her.
When she finally stopped, the silence was like a sacred thing, the time between priests in a cathedral. Hadrian wanted to throw his gun away.
“How often have you come out into the lands?” he asked after a long time.
“Never. I knew I couldn’t bear it.” Hadrian recalled her brooding silences on the iceboat, on their trek along the trail. She had been harboring her fear, not of the jackals, not of the wild animals, but of the ruins she knew she would finally have to encounter. “I still can’t bear it, Hadrian. Ever since we arrived there’s been a terrible weight pushing down on me.”
The wolf below gave a low utterance that hinted of impatience.
Melancholy overtook her face. “It’s his world now,” she said peacefully. “I won’t come back again.”
Ashes of the Earth Page 29