by H T G Hedges
With a sudden dislocation, it occurred to me that I couldn’t go back there. At the same time, I recognized that I had nowhere else to go either - no cash, no ID, no phone. On some level I must have known all this already, but full recognition still came with a bump.
"One of those isn’t a problem, at least," Corg said, which meant that I must have been vocalizing all of these thoughts rather than keeping them confined to my head.
"What do you mean?"
"Open the glove box," he said with a small smile. I did as I was told. "Now reach in and feel around the catch."
I fumbled for a moment with the metal clasp. Just when I was I was getting pissed at him for jerking me around, the lock popped in with a click and the false ceiling of the compartment slipped down, revealing a large, fatly stuffed brown jiffy bag of the type that’s always filled with cash in the movies. I had a look inside and it was filled with cash; all different denominations, most slightly dog-eared, none of them new, definitely enough to last us for some time.
I whistled. "Any other surprises?"
"There’s a sawn-off taped under my seat." There was a twinkle in his eye, but I could tell this wasn’t a joke.
"So where do we go?" I asked.
"Well," Corg said, more cheerful now than at any point since we'd left his apartment. I guess he just needed some direction. "I’ve been thinking about that. Seems to me the law is not our friend any more, right?"
I nodded.
"So I guess we go where there is no law." The sound of the wipers was loud in the pauses between his words.
"It’s time we headed over the bridge."
Wildlands
Old Links Bridge loomed ahead, a great, grey path to nowhere. After all the rain the river was high and rough, iron waters flowing in a fast torrent, swirling and bubbling not far below us as I leaned against the hood of the car and tried to ignore the wind whipping the rain into a frenzy about my head.
Corg dialled a number from his mobile when we stopped and let it ring a couple of times before hanging up. We were waiting for a callback, he’d said, and so we had sat in tense silence, expectant for his phone to buzz. Eventually the long minutes had gotten too much for me and I’d been forced to step out for some air.
The river was surging, swollen from all the new fallen water, pushing dangerously at its banks. If the storms didn’t break soon then it was going to flood for sure. I pictured it, rising up and swallowing the long expanse of bridge, spreading hungrily over roads and sidewalks in an insatiable, dirty iron tide.
With this mental picture came another childhood memory popping like a bubble from out of my subconscious, another event I hadn’t thought about in years. They were coming thick and fast recently.
I must have been about ten or twelve when the town we lived in flooded one winter. The season had been particularly mild, they had said on the television, and the rains unprecedentedly strong. There was a creek ran through the base of the town, down from the old rail yard where we used to hang out and play and this had grown fierce and wild with all the rain, spilling its edges and swallowing the yard.
And it wasn’t just the rivers either, I remember hearing my parents talk about it, caught snatches of the news, about how all the fallen water had saturated the land and couldn’t run off anywhere but instead just kept piling up and up until half the town seemed to be underwater. I think they evacuated the whole lower end to the high-school where everyone had to sleep on camp beds in the gymnasium for a couple of days.
My best friend and neighbour at that time was a kid the same age as me named Tony and his old man had a boat - a small thing no bigger than a canoe steered with two plastic oars. Staring at the water below me, I could picture every facet of that boat like it was only yesterday: the rubberized layer around the top, the black plastic of the rowlocks, the peeling paint around the base where it was painted the green of old leaves to the off-white tarnished finish of the body. Tony and I had spent a couple of days in that thing exploring the town we grew up in, seeing it in a way we never had before.
Everything had looked completely different in the flood. The spreading water had turned familiar pathways and gardens into an exotic alien landscape of blue green pools that shone like glass. Buttoned into rain slickers, with the drops drumming down onto our hoods, making a perpetual noise that was like being under canvas, the two of us intrepidly explored our new world of watery byways and waterlogged streets.
Often we would travel in silence, the only sound the splashing of our oars in the water. We could have been alone in all the world, or so it seemed to us at the time, although in retrospect I suspect memory has edited the scene to remove the support workers and community members battling pretty much around the clock to halt the rising tide.
Our fun came to an end when we stumbled across the bloated corpse of Henry Loomer, who everyone called Old Henry, a drunk who was well known throughout the town. The first we knew of Old Henry was as a strange shape in the water, bobbing against the ebb and flow of the swell. At first I think we thought he was a piece of debris, carried on the current, but when Tony leaned out of the boat, oar extended, and prodded the mysterious shape it floated round to face us.
Henry was swollen and discoloured by his time in the drink but we recognized the tangle of his beard and the camouflage coat he always wore and we started screaming and hightailed it back to dry land and our parents as fast as we could pump the oars through the water, kicking up a foam of waves in our wake. We thought we’d uncovered a murder, I remember, but in the end it was decided that Henry had just wandered off in his cups and it was exposure that had done for him in the end.
I hadn’t thought about that winter, or Tony, for what felt like an age. He moved away when we were both teenagers but I heard from him from time to time. He had gotten into Snowboarding in a big way, and was good at it too the way I heard it, maybe good enough to go pro. Then I heard that he’d died in a car crash – ploughed his car straight into a tree after some party or other the year after we both would have finished college. I sighed, remembering. Tests had shown that he was coked up to his eyeballs when it happened.
The cold spray of the choppy waters splashed at my face, startlingly cold and brutal. It forced me back from my memories and I turned to see that Corg was at last on the phone, his face lit by its cold white light, looking tense and wooden. I watched him, feeling a growing unease at his body language, until he hung up. I gave him a few moments for composure, in case he needed them, before heading back, the river gurgling menacingly at my back.
"OK," he said as the door bounced shut behind me, "We’re in. We cross and we drive and wait for them to call again with a place to meet."
I knew that he had crossed the bridge before, something I myself had never done, but I had no idea how often, or who Corg’s contacts were or, come to that, why he seemed so edgy as he put the car into drive and edged onto the floating span.
Our tires sounded oddly loud on the old surface of the bridge, another grand structure from a forgotten age. Twin pillars loomed on either side, braced against the backs of two great stone lions, one roaring, one poised and regal, both now ravaged and distorted by the elements. On either side the river thundered and churned.
"Watch your step," Corg said at last as we reached the end the bridge, breaking a contemplative silence, illuminating some of his concerns.
"When we get there. These people are serious so don’t fuck around and don’t give them a reason to get pissed off."
"After the night we’ve had?" I asked innocently, and we drove on in silence, Old Links Bridge and the river behind us slowly receding into memory.
It soon became clear that the news reports on what was happening on the old side of the City across the bridge had not been the product of simple hyperbole. In fact, if anything, the stories had fallen short of reality. It was a war zone.
Straight off Old Links we encountered a sign welcoming us to the Old Quarter. The original words were messily erased,
scribbled away under a layer of red paint and someone had amended the sign so that it now read, "Welcome to the Wildlands," in spiky bold letters. Several holes in the sign that looked they had probably been made by small arms fire added to the general feel of the piece. I cut a glance at Corg but his eyes were locked firmly on the road ahead.
To begin with the streets were deserted, but all looked as if they had recently seen action and bore the pock-marking scars of bullets and the ashy legacy of fire. Here and there chunks of missing brickwork and holes on the sidewalk suggested a history of explosives at work. One building we passed was missing a whole front wall, the debris from the destruction spewed out and smouldering over the road.
"What’s been happening here?" I asked aloud, staring at the destruction all around but Corg only shrugged his big shoulders, looking around him with as much confusion as myself.
"I don’t know," he admitted, pale in the weak light of day.
"But you’ve been over here before?" I said, "Wasn’t it the same last time you were here?" Corg shook his head a little guiltily.
"No," he said, "Not like this. It was bad, getting worse every time I came over I guess, but nothing like this." He drove on in silence but I could tell he had something else to say. "I haven’t crossed the bridge for quite a while," he confessed at last, burdened by a heavy conscience.
"How long?" It wasn't really such a surprise, after all, things couldn't have deteriorated so fast or so far overnight.
He screwed up his face as he thought about it. "Six months," he said in the end. "At least."
More broken buildings floated by and small, tragic, pieces of everyday life began to show up on the street, little things in the main – chairs, plates, a discarded toy. At one point we were forced to veer around the burning wreck of a van pushed across the way in a makeshift road-block. It all looked disturbingly like something from a war movie. I had never seen anything like it.
A hollow feeling was rapidly building in my gut as the lifeless minutes ticked by.
"How did you get involved over here?" I asked at last in an attempt to fill a growing ominous silence as well as answer a question I had always wondered about. I think Corg too sensed the need to fill the empty air as he leapt at the chance to expand on a part of his life he usually kept pretty close to his chest a shade more eagerly than, perhaps, he otherwise would have.
"You ever meet a guy called Zach Mellor?" he asked, by way of starting his story and I shook my head. "Well, Zach and me used to be pretty tight, once upon a time. He ran a garage near where I used to live, over on Coble Avenue? Anyway, Zach and me used to hang out a fair bit, drink and play pool in the back of his shop mostly." He paused to weave around a stack of tyres that stunk like a dentist’s drill in full spin.
"One day, Zach tells me about this poker game he’s a part of, plays a couple of times a month."
This detail didn’t hold any surprises. Along with his other vices, Corg never could resist betting on cards. He wasn’t an inveterate gambler but he was definitely a sucker for a flutter. Actually, that was wrong, Corg’s problem - in my experience at least - was not that he couldn’t resist a bet but that he was never that good at picking the odds.
"The thing about this game, Zach told me," Corg continued, carefully manoeuvring around a chunk of fallen masonry, "Was it was over the bridge." He paused dramatically, "There was no way I could turn that down."
Through the window I saw the first sign of life we had encountered since crossing Old Links. A group of figures were gathered conspiratorially around a steel trash-can from which yellow and red flames danced merrily in stark contrast to the muted colours on display everywhere else.
They scattered as the light from our headlamps swept over them, melting back into the tunnel system of buildings at their back, casting long, distorted shadows in the twin beams. They wore scarves and bandanas over their faces, hoods up so all you could see of their features were their cold, serious eyes. They wore dark, stealthy colours, nothing too bright, browns and muddy greys in the main. In the brief glimpse I got before they slipped away I could see that all of them were armed and all of them looked like they meant business.
Corg watched the shadows as we passed, alert to any threat that might emerge from them but they remained empty even after we had moved on. He returned to his tale only after we had covered some further empty distance and seen no other indications of life save the two of us.
"Zach took me across the bridge, that first time. You can’t imagine how different it was to what it is now. This was a couple of years ago, back when people still crossed over regularly, back when the train still ran this way even." Corg’s face clouded briefly in memory.
"That first time, it was the middle of summer, there was some kind of street party going on, all night. It was real hot that day, I remember, and everyone was out in the street and there was beer flowing everywhere and people letting off fireworks. I never did find out what it was all for."
I looked around at the gloomy, rain drenched streets, at the rubble and debris everywhere, and tried to picture Corg’s party of memory. Somehow I couldn’t marry the two scenes together.
"Anyway, Zach got me in on the game. It was outdoors, in the ruin of this old theatre, lit by a couple of floods and a whole bunch of fairy lights all hooked up to a generator, I think. Big table set up and everyone sat on little garden chairs. It sounds funny, it looked funny, but there was some big money floating over that table."
He sighed. "Well, I did alright by myself that night, nothing fancy, but I came away on top." He glanced over at me from his vigil on the road, "I know what you’re thinking," he said, "But it’s true I did fine. You know me - we’ve played a few hands in our time - I never make a big win; I either break even or lose everything, guess I’ve got the wrong mentality for it."
"Your poker face isn’t great," I said but he waived that aside.
"So I did OK," he repeated, "But Zach, he bottomed out completely. I’d left the table by then, first I heard about it was him whispering in my ear in that old crabby voice of his. I was talking to this dynamite red-head, turning on the old Corgen charm, when Zach comes up and whispers “Corg man, I’ve made a deal with some people.”" He looked reflective for a moment. "Never did get her name."
"Turns out Zach had come up with a solution to his problem and that fix involved me." Ahead of us a beaten-up people carrier burst onto the road, packed with more hooded, masked figures. We both tensed, waiting to see what was to come, as Corg eased off the accelerator so as not to come too close. For a long moment the driver stared at us, the face of a skull adorning the scarf that hid his features, giving him a leering, devilish quality.
And then they were turning away from us, apparently deciding we weren’t worthy of interest. We were both clearly able to make out the glint of automatic rifles as those in the back turned their attention on us for the brief moments of their retreat.
Corg let out a long, shaky breath, rubbing a hand over the bald dome of his head in a familiar nervous gesture.
"Zach had already told them about me and about the car, seems he’d thought about his bright idea some time before but never mentioned it. To me, well, it sounded pretty dumb but I felt my hands were tied – Zach was a friend and I held the key to his fix, so what was I going to do?"
So, I agreed to a one off, ferrying a couple of crates of knock off hooch across the City to pay off his debt, then bringing the money back to the right people. When I came back, they were pretty happy with me, offered me another run and I went for it: it was pretty good cash - I mean it was just skim to them I could tell, but it helped me out plenty."
"Weren’t you worried about getting caught?" I asked, curious.
"Sure," he said. "Not as much as I should have been though I guess. I was figuring myself the big man and lauding it over Zach who, they made it pretty clear, wasn’t welcome at their card table anymore. Seems they weren’t very impressed at him getting someone else to pick up his tab."
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br /> He stared at the road for a while. "I lost track of Zach in the end, sort of drifted apart. I think he was pissed that he wasn’t allowed in on the outlaw lifestyle as he saw it. But I’ve got no illusions, you know, I’m just an errand boy as far as these people are concerned. I mean they gave me a phone and a number to call in case of a problem but it’s them who set the dates, I’d just show up. Guy called Ray was my original point of contact, I’ve met others too, even the boss, but Ray’s always the one that calls, seems like a good guy, but we aren’t buddies or nothing."
"Is it Ray we’re waiting on to call us back now?" We'd decided as soon as we saw the lie of the land that staying put was not an option, so we circled, waiting for a call we hoped wouldn't be too much longer.
Corg shook his head. "No," he said, "Whoever answered before wasn’t Ray. Said Ray’s dead. Whoever it was, he didn’t sound real pleased."
I looked around at the desolation passing by my window under a dark morning sky.
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.
"Seems like a lot’s happened in six months," I said.
Corg didn’t say anything as his phone started to ring.
We pulled into an empty two storied car park and made our way to the top level. Like everywhere else it was deserted apart from the odd, abandoned and burned-out husks of old vehicles. In common with everything else I’d seen since our crossing, the place was a mess.
They were waiting for us as we pulled out onto the top level, a small group of figures, serious silhouettes against the darkening skyline. It was cold up here and their breath plumed in little clouds as they waited. The bulky shape of a van was parked off to one side, engine gently idling.
One of the figures detached itself from the others as we killed our engine and got out of the car. He was tall with dark hair swept back from his face and matted with rain. Despite the weather he wore an incongruous pair of expensive looking wraparound shades to counter the growing murkiness of the day.