Jonesbridge

by M. E. Parker

  Myron’s head bobbed and he realized he had fallen asleep. His heart raced as he hopped to his feet. He cracked the door open, thankful for the dark horizon. He wondered how long he had slept, minutes, hours, and he had no idea whether he should go now, or wait to see if the break whistle hadn’t yet blown. Of all times to lose focus. Myron kicked his cot and rubbed his face.

  He shook his canteen with his ration of fresh water, only half full. Inching the door open again, he stepped out to the corridor, checking both directions for patrols. With his bundle in hand, he shut the door behind him. The floor creaked as he made his way toward the stairs. Up against the wall, Myron peered around the corner to the swill pen, still angry that he didn’t know whether he was early or late and whether Sindra had understood his directions, whether she would make it without him.

  Ghosts changed shift midway between slog shifts so that any gap in coverage would go unnoticed because slogs would either be asleep or at work. Exactly when they underwent this change of guard remained a mystery to most, but Myron made so many trips out to the bunker where he stored his airship parts that he had memorized every movement of the ghosts on patrol. Each night after bed check, if he had something to add to his contraption, Myron sneaked to the chapel through the tunnel and followed the creek bed to a concrete bunker constructed in a long ago war where soldiers aimed through a slot and shot at their enemies. That’s where he’d found his flashlight, something they wouldn’t have tonight. Getting to the grate behind the domicile had been easy compared to what he was about to try.

  Two ghosts rounded the corner below and entered the empty courtyard. They were not the same ghosts Myron had seen before bed check. He knew immediately that he had slept through the break whistle. They had already changed shifts, and Sindra was probably already out there somewhere along the route he had worked out, scared and wondering where he was.

  Nightshift lasted twelve hours. Ghosts changed over midway, giving him and Sindra six hours to get lost on the rim by the time day shift started. Myron pulled his arm short of punching the wall and darted to the stairs, praying they still had most of those six hours and that he could make it to the other grate unseen.

  On each floor he hid in the shadow and waited for the spot light to pass, then took another flight of stairs. On the ground floor, the light came close to catching him, and he winced as though a flame had singed his hair. He hadn’t explained the spotlight to Sindra. If the Great Above really did watch over people the way his grandfather claimed, maybe she would make it.

  Myron felt like a field mouse as he zipped from wall to wall, through housing blocks he never got a look at, and though they were identical to his own, each block hid the mystery of the thoughts holed up inside them, a personality that reflected the shift and the job of each individual it housed. By the time he made it beyond 12-D, he could see the canal glistening under the dim lights of adjacent factories.

  Access to the Yarin Canal from the salvage factory side would have made their escape much simpler, but at night the lights from the factories illuminated that bank, along with most of the water. The raised walkway on the opposite bank cast a narrow shadow, concealing a ledge about as wide as Myron’s foot where the brick that formed the wall of the canal met with the substructure of the walkway above it, where the ghosts roamed on patrol. Myron shimmied down a signal pole to the ledge, alarmed that he was halfway to the other grate and had seen no sign of Sindra.

  The coal barge that shuttled loads of coal from the trains to the factories passed with a low rumble as Myron tied his bundle to his waist and lined up inside the shadow of the walkway. He prepared himself for the trek down the canal, a waterway flanked on both sides by steep walls. A slip from the ledge he stood on would send him into the frigid water with no way to climb out.

  Step after step he hugged the wall, almost losing his balance where the scum build up grew slippery. The humming of countless turbines vibrated in his ears. The smell of the canal watered his eyes as the wake from another barge sloshed up over his feet. Creeping along a wall covered in slime, he feared, would take more time than he had.

  Boots of patrolling ghosts pounded above him along with harsh voices stolen by the wind. The ledge narrowed further until he had to turn his feet sideways. Then Myron shut his eyes, concentrated on the beach scene in Bora Bora, and worked toward the salvage factory inch by inch reminding himself that Sindra had been a rail-walker. She had honed the art of sneaking. She could make it.

  When the Yarin took a turn and branched in two, Myron realized he had almost arrived. The narrower canal, drainage from the salvage factory, oozed with the smell of the sanitizer they used. Even at night, with only the reflection of the factory lights, the green luster of the water flickered. Here the steep walls on either bank tapered away to sloped earth. Myron stepped from the tiny ledge to the slope and lay back to catch his breath.

  He had never seen the factory from the opposite bank. The way it rose from the water’s edge, speckled with lights from windows that overlooked the salvage bay. Beneath the turbine hum and the muffled clanks of slogs at work, Myron heard what sounded like sniffling. He leapt to his feet, scanning the darkness under the bridge. He jogged toward the sound, heartened by it and dismayed at the same time.

  “Sindra,” he whispered. On the lighted bridge above him, three ghosts stood sentry. Myron hopped from shadow to shadow. “Sindra.”

  “Myron,” her faint voice returned. “What happened? Where were you?”

  Myron arrived to find Sindra inches away from the water with her knees pulled up to her chest. He held a finger to his mouth and pointed to the bridge directly above them, but the nearby turbines created such a racket that he figured no one could hear them whispering anyway.

  “I thought you left without me. I tried to make it across, but—” Sindra pretended she hadn’t been crying “—I can’t swim, Myron. I thought I could, but I don’t know how.”

  Myron put his arm around her and kneeled down. “How long have you been here?” He hoped to estimate how much time they had.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, Sindra.” Myron held out his hand and lifted her up. “I can swim. I’ll help you. We’ll make it, but we have to stay under the bridge.”

  Myron dipped his foot into the canal. The freezing water shot chills all the way to the top of his head. “When the warm slurry hits the water, that’s when we go.”

  After a few minutes, they heard a rush of liquid from underneath the factory spill into the canal. From the outtakes it whirled into a spiral of chemical sludge. Myron waded in, motioning for Sindra. He stuck a leg in the water first and then both legs until he was in up to his waist. The icy water felt like a thousand pinpricks until the hot waste water mixed in. Myron worked his arm under Sindra and eased in all the way, now feeling as though he would pass out at any moment.

  “We have to hurry.” Under the cover of the bridge, he pushed off the sludge on the canal bed toward the other bank, his teeth chattering. He kicked his legs and pulled the water with his free arm. Based on the smell and the noxious slicks on the surface, he hoped he could keep both their heads from going under. Supporting Sindra while his body threatened to freeze into a motionless lump, he pulled the water, swimming as his grandfather had taught him until he felt the bottom with his toes. Afraid that the canal would swallow them both, Myron heaved Sindra in the direction of the opposite bank, and in doing so, he slipped, submerging his entire head under the muck.

  Ahead of him, Sindra reached for his hands and dragged him out, where she fell onto the bank, rolling Myron up out of the water with her. Myron’s chest heaved violently. He couldn’t stop coughing.

  “Myron.” Sindra put her hand under his head.

  He could taste chemical fumes on his tongue and feel the glop in his nose. He rolled to his stomach and vomited, still coughing. With one hand cupped over his mouth to muffle the sound, Myron crawled up the bank with Sindra still in the shadow of the bridge. The hacking c
ontinued, making his lungs feel as though something had shut a valve off in his chest.

  “What was that?” Above them two ghosts leaned over the bridge. A beam of light crisscrossed just beyond Sindra’s foot.

  Myron clamped both hands over his mouth and concentrated on taking tiny breaths through his nose, but the noxious stink in his nostrils made his eyes water and his chest heave. His quieter coughing, now lost in the drone of the nearby factories, finally subsided. Behind them, a sliver of gray twilight rose on the horizon. Rather than six hours, they had less than one.

  “We have to get dry,” Myron whispered. He struggled to his feet, light-headed from his coughing fit and feeling feverish. He led Sindra to a rectangular slot that vented the furnace fire for the factory. Inside, an orange fireball roiled over a bed of coal. They lay beneath the vent, Myron considering the real possibility that with the illness and the cold this night could be his last, and a warm current washed over him, engulfing him in wool and lace.

  Chapter 7

  “Wake up, Myron.”

  He rejoined the world with Sindra slapping his face.

  “The sun’s coming up.”

  Crawling first, he got to his feet and followed the wall as far as they could before reaching an open area they would have to cross to get to the opposite side of the salvage factory. Peach and gray hues had overtaken much of the eastern sky, but they still had cover of darkness. From a distance, all the factories and smelters blended into one, but up close, they differed in so many ways. The smells and sounds of tool and die and the machinists, the smelters, all worlds unto themselves with mechanisms, and in a matter of minutes, the bricked paths before them would fill with slogs and ghosts, one line heading to work, the others off to the domiciles blocks.

  Flat up against the wall, Myron leaned out, saw four ghosts heading their way and motioned to Sindra. “We’ll have to go around.” In a half-squat, he jogged across the path to the Requisitions facility where slog foremen checked out specialty tools and supplies for their crews. He jumped over a short wall and lay flat underneath the line of sight from the window. Sindra followed. They slinked on their bellies like a couple of rock lizards to an acid slag drainage ditch for the iron smelter and followed it to the aqueduct that supplied water to the boilers. From there they circled behind the ghosts to the spot where Myron had seen the other grate.

  This wooden grate resembled the one behind 14-C in every way. It was the same size and shape, and it had the same light rust color as the ground, almost unnoticeable. This tunnel had enticed Myron since the first time he saw it but the traffic and all the eyes near it made it inaccessible except during a shift.

  “This is it. Ready?”

  Myron caught Sindra staring off into the distant mountains on the other side of the Gorge. She nodded and he hoisted the grate open to reveal a dark hole with no visible bottom unlike the one they traveled through to the chapel. Almost a foot below the opening, a ladder led into complete darkness. The sky had lightened. The first shift whistle blew, fifteen minutes until the paths would fill.

  He took a deep breath and climbed down behind Sindra, repositioning the grate overhead. Rung by rung they descended. The ladder creaked with each step, loosening in places with their weight. Above him, Myron watched the square of light shrink to the size of a ration token.

  “Myron, the ladder ends.” Sindra’s voice trembled.

  “Do you see the bottom? Can you step down?” Myron twisted, craning his neck for a view around Sindra.

  “No. And there’s nothing below.”

  Once when he and his grandfather had come upon an abandoned well, his grandfather had dropped a rock and counted until he heard the splash to estimate the depth. From his bundle of supplies, Myron pulled out a nut he planned to use on his airship. “Listen.” He held his hand out straight and dropped the nut. A plop sounded somewhere between the counts of three and four.

  “I’ll go first.” Myron climbed down behind Sindra on the ladder. “Once we drop, there’s no going back. If this tunnel dead ends—”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Myron counted to three and pushed off the ladder, bracing for the hard impact with the ground. Moments later, he landed in a mushy soup of earth where he sank all the way to his knees. He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear a faint trickle of water.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Farther than I thought. It’s a mess. Like quicksand.” He tugged at his legs mired in mud that made a sucking sound when he jerked his foot out.

  “Quicksand? Hang on, I’m coming.”

  “Wait. If this doesn’t go anywhere, you can climb back out.”

  The pinpoint of sky above him gave just enough light for Myron to see the old red brickwork under a wet film of soot and mud. Each step took its toll on his energy, freeing one leg, only for the other to sink down again. He worked in the direction of darkness until he met a wall of rubble. He walked his fingers across the edges of the stones in a panic, lamenting the justice of escaping one prison right into another one.

  “Myron.”

  The damp walls of stone and muck muffled Sindra’s voice. When his hand located a void in the stone, he slithered through to a crawlway and out again. “Come on. I think there’s an opening.”

  Sindra plopped into the mire behind him where Myron extended his hand and pulled her toward him into complete darkness. “I can’t see a thing. I’m scared, Myron.”

  “Me too,” he whispered.

  Each step forward required Myron and Sindra to grope for openings in the crumbling rock, as this pitch black tunnel snaked more than the one to the chapel. Every dead end stopped Myron’s heart until he finally located another way through. “Looks like we’re going to have to crawl.”

  “I hate this. Closed in spaces. It’s so dark.” Sindra let out a shriek and slapped at the rocks, hitting Myron on the nape instead.

  “Let’s take a break.” Myron squinted, squeezed his eyes shut, and then held them open, hoping he would see something: Sindra, a stone, the ground, anything, but he only stared into the void. The mud had grown shallow as they moved farther into the tunnel, the walls more sloped, giving them a place to get off their feet. Sindra sat close beside Myron where they hugged each other for warmth.

  “Somewhere up there, they’re looking for us by now.”

  “Yeah.” Myron shivered. His chills and fever had worsened rapidly. He imagined the admonition the superintendent would deliver this morning: Two slogs wanted for questioning in the murder of a dutiful civil guard, not only shirked their duty but fled in what can only be taken as an admission of guilt.

  “You don’t—think differently about me, do you?”

  “What do you mean?” Though Myron suspected what she meant.

  “Last night. What happened with the guard.”

  “Oh.” Myron had tried to forget what he’d seen, Sindra being ravaged by that ghost. He couldn’t imagine such a thing, a man forcing himself on a woman in a physical way. Though he knew that the animal inside him had been trapped and caged long ago—from the first day he arrived at the Jonesbridge Smokeworks to focus on the progress of industry for the greater good—Myron still thought about physical pleasure. It was intended for two people to share, not for one to steal from another. “Just sorry that had to happen.”

  “Bug and a few others tried to get on with me sometimes when I slept on the rail, but I could fight off the rail-walkers. Here—I can’t.” Sindra hugged Myron tighter. “The ghosts come in the middle of the night. Sometimes they don’t even wake me up first. I’m just a carpie to them. They give me extra rations to keep me thick.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “And you know that all girls get sterilized in Jonesbridge. That’s the first thing they do.”

  As far as Myron knew, what they explained during orientation, was that child birth and child rearing were delicate procedures best left to qualified people. Such activities disrupted production and caused distractions within the populat
ion. Civility raised and educated children to ensure the safety of future generations. But none of it ever made any sense to Myron. Industry needed more workers. Defense needed more soldiers. Women should have babies all the time, slogs, ghosts, Ag, whoever, babies everywhere to fill the gaps. The way they operated now, soon there would be no one left.

  Sindra leaned her head on Myron’s shoulder. “The thing is, I don’t think the procedure worked on me,” She finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A girl just knows these things, Myron. Women have regularities, even barren women have them, or they can, but when they stop…” She rubbed her face. “There are other changes, too. But that doesn’t matter. I think I’m pregnant.”

  “How’d you keep it from Doc?” Myron did know that if Doc ever discovered her condition, he would do the sterilization procedure again, better this time.

  “That hack has such a loose fitting he wouldn’t know the difference between a baby and limestone block.”

  Myron hadn’t seen Doc since the last time he purpled a toe to the frost. Doc had given him a mouthful of billet thistle and a leather strap to bite down on, and then he’d snipped the toe off with a pair of red-hot snips.

  “I’m glad though. Not that all that other stuff happened, but to know I can still bear a child. I want to keep my womanhood, Myron, and no one can ever find out that I have.”

  Myron and Sindra pulled as close to each other as possible and, leaning against the damp wall, fell into a shivering sleep. Myron dreamt of giant winged creatures swooping down to bite the heads off of everyone in Jonesbridge. They carried them to a nest high on Patriots Pass and recycled them into useful weapons. With his fever fueling one fitful dream after another, he awoke suddenly to a whooshing sound. His eyes popped open to blackness.

  “Sindra. Wake up!” he shook her shoulder. Water began to rise in the tunnel, flowing from the direction they had come.