Jonesbridge

by M. E. Parker

  “What’s happening?

  “I don’t know. Drainage?” The water level reached their knees, continuing a slow rise to their waists and then chests. They lifted off the ground treading, rising with the water until Myron’s head struck the top of the tunnel. “Stay up.”

  “It smells so bad. I can’t breathe.”

  “Brimstone.” Myron coughed, now unable to stand. “Munitions plant.” He treaded water, keeping his mouth and nose as close to the top as possible.

  “I don’t want to drown.” Sindra gasped for air as Myron helped her stay above the waterline, pulling her to a spot where the ceiling had a recess, until a current tugged at Myron’s feet, pulling him downward toward the crawlway he’d discovered earlier. The water began to recede slowly at first until it drained completely as fast as it had risen. Myron and Sindra collapsed in the mud. “At least we now know this tunnel leads somewhere.”

  Myron’s body aches extended all the way from the tip of his head to his toes. He would have sat there motionless and stared into blackness if not for the adrenaline that fueled his effort down the throat of the tunnel, wiggling around jagged rocks and over mounds of bricks and mud, hoping to beat the next rush of water. Sindra crawled behind him, never lagging out of reach of Myron’s foot.

  Slithering through the crawlways like a snake along a trail of sulfur mud and only the Great Above knew what else, Myron was glad for the first time that he couldn’t see anything. Seeing the glop he pressed his hands into or the muck that dripped on his head, seeing how small the space really was might have frightened him more than going in blind. He found it easier to focus on one inch at a time rather than imagine how far it was to Bora Bora.

  Myron couldn’t tell how long they crawled, it felt like an hour, but he eventually reached an opening and managed to sit up without hitting his head on the ceiling. He stretched his arms and legs, and let out a sigh of relief when the outline of Sindra’s face materialized. “Light.” He pointed behind her.

  Sindra helped Myron to his feet. She slung his arm over her shoulder and they tramped down a pipe toward a growing circle of light at the end. If he had focused on all of the possibilities, he would’ve lost his courage, but now that they’d made it through, all those potential problems bombarded him at once. Where would they come out, he wondered—and dreaded. Hopefully they would step out somewhere near Iron’s Knob, maybe even close to the chapel or the bunker, anywhere as long as it was outside the compound perimeter. He even considered, with the rushing water, they might have gone all the way to the Gorge itself. Regardless of where they emerged, there was no returning the way they had come.

  Myron shielded his face. Even the subdued light from a dull sky shrouded in smoke stung his eyes when they reached the opening.

  “What is that?” Sindra braced herself and took a peek outside the mouth of the pipe.

  Myron joined her. A stream of water still trickled from the pipe into a canal that spilled directly into the Great Gorge only two hects away. “That’s the bridge. The one and only way across the Gorge.” Everyone arrived in Jonesbridge either blindfolded or in a windowless train car. Myron had never seen the bridge this close with all the detail that his imagination had supplied.

  The width of the crossing accommodated four ground transports abreast, and Myron also counted four rail tracks. The length of the famous suspension bridge, what his grandfather had touted as an engineering marvel first begun during the dying years of the Old Age some two hundred years ago, stretched as far as Myron could see and disappeared into haze and smoke. From their vantage point, he could make out two suspension towers and so many cables they formed a spider web in the sky.

  “We have a problem.” Myron studied the horizon in all directions.

  “What?”

  “That Gorge is even bigger than I thought.” Myron was unsure if he had squirreled away enough coal to fuel his airship that far. He had planned for a rapid ascent into the cloak of a smoke bank and then a descent gradual enough to sail them to the opposite side of the gorge.

  “I can’t even see the other side.”

  “There’s that—and there’re ghosts all over the place. Defense, too. And train guards. Artillery.” Myron slapped his hand on his forehead. He’d always known they would have no chance to get across the bridge, or through the Gorge, but seeing it, he never imagined such a bustling hub of activity. He counted two trains parked in the depot, dozens of train crew offloading crates onto mule drawn carts.

  “Wow.”

  “There’s the perimeter fence. Looks like we’re outside the compound.” Myron craned his head behind them, seeing a sheer rock face, the same as on either side of the pipe. “Keep down,” he whispered and stepped out onto the wall of the canal edging along in the opposite direction of all of the activity. The first place he found to leave the canal bank, Myron cut through a few shin pines and hid behind a boulder. The fence, crisscrossed with wire and sharpened points of wood, rose in front of him and stretched from the bridge to the horizon.

  “Look.” Myron pointed to a supply train unloading crates, all labeled Level 3 Rations-D1 and emblazoned with the same curious red biohazard rings around the circle that the ceramic-hinged plate had.

  “Ration crates.” Sindra’s eyes widened. “I’m so hungry.”

  “Me too.” Myron imagined that a pregnant woman might need to eat more often than everyone else. He figured that maybe one of their problems had been solved if they could make off with enough food to survive until they made their flight over the Gorge.

  When the train crew finished unloading the ration crates, a heavy gate swung open over the rail tracks for the train to pull out of the depot, leaving the crates unguarded. The slow moving train had to first make a turn through the roundhouse and out of the compound, which would allow them just enough time to pilfer extra rations.

  “Wait here. No reason to risk both of us going.”

  “Let me do it. If it’s one thing I’m good at, it’s swiping stuff,” Sindra said.

  Myron nodded. “Don’t get greedy.”

  “I know. Just what we can carry.”

  “I don’t see any guards now, but keep an eye on me,” Myron insisted. “I’ll signal you if someone is coming, and you get out of there.”

  “Okay.” Sindra darted to the large pole that hinged the gate and skirted around it, keeping low and waiting for her opportunity.

  Myron had lost strength. They needed to eat, but he knew this was risky. A rush of excitement ran through him. Since the day he arrived in Jonesbridge, he had planned for this day, all the preparation, smuggling supplies to the rim, dreaming of the crystal blue sky as he rose above the haze in his airship, and once they trekked to the secret bunker, the time would finally come.

  He watched Sindra, crouched by the fence as though she might pounce. After he lost his mother and grandfather, Myron had convinced himself that no person would ever mean more to him than his own survival until he met Sindra, but everything meant more to him now. Risks seemed greater than they once did, now that he had someone to lose.

  When the depot platform cleared of workers, Sindra slipped through the gate. Myron held his breath. He heard a noise behind him. Blood rushed from his head trying to figure out what made the noise. He turned around suddenly to a human wall of fur. A moment later everything went black.

  Chapter 8

  On all fours, Sindra crept through the gate and edged along the berm of gravel that supported the railroad tracks. The twin rails bore the weathered patina of black iron on the sides, and on top, the wheels of moving trains had burnished the metal to a silvery sheen. Even the smell of the creosote timbers reminded her of the free life walking the rails.

  Sindra stared along tracks as they disappeared into a wall of haze on the bridge, a living rail that actually led to a destination where workers loaded and unloaded supplies. The other end of the line drew her as though she could stroll up the tracks, hopping from one timber to the next until she reached a quaint
village nestled in a sunny meadow.

  In the territories to the South, where Sindra’s clan of rail-walkers wandered, the rails they traveled often ended in blown-out bridges, collapsed tunnels, dead ends where the track simply stopped, destroyed many wars ago. With the rails cut off, without the trains, bits of civilization withered away the way a toe purpled from frost bite. First a toe, then a foot and a leg, then two; towns grew smaller and farther apart, until only their carcases remained.

  Voices and footsteps sounded from beyond the crates. Sindra searched for Myron on the other side of the fence, for an all-clear signal, but she couldn’t spot him anywhere. The perimeter fence, a structure she had never seen with clarity until today, rose to the height of three people stacked foot to head. At a distance, winding through the haze at the base of the hills, it looked like a solid structure. Up close, she could see it for what it was, precarious and uninviting, and anything but solid, composed of metal lattice tangled with razor wire, easy to see through, difficult to penetrate, especially with spikes jutting out from the ground on either side spanned by more tight rolls of razor wire.

  As they always did when she was afraid, the tips of her fingers tingled as she wedged between two columns of crates stacked five high, wondering what happened to Myron, if she should run back now or stay for the food. Old Nickel once told her on the rails that survivors seized opportunities, casualties shied away from them, and this opportunity had presented itself as if by providence. They had emerged from the tunnel at the supply depot. The gate was open. Ration crates lined up for the taking, and with the life inside her demanding more, hunger had taken the reins of her judgment.

  Sandwiched between the crates, she noticed that not all of them were the same. Though she couldn’t read the words, the symbols differed. One set of crates displayed a green square underneath the writing, and the other set, emblazoned with a red circle and three partial red circles coming out from the center, caught her eye.

  Too bulky to carry, she’d have to open one of the boxes and take what she could stuff into her smock. When the train behind her released its steam with a whoosh, smothering any noise she might make, Sindra punched a hole in the nearest carton with her thumb and peeled the top back. Inside, dozens of beige protein sticks lay side by side under butcher paper wrap. She grabbed one and bit off the end, chewing, swallowing and biting again to quash the rumble in her stomach.

  Sindra had possessed a weakness for food even before she got pregnant. It was how she acquired her rail-walker name, Pumpkin Stew. She had run with the clan for nearly three months before they finally bestowed her with a name. All rail-walkers got their names the same way, from something that stood out about them, some little detail that caught on. Old Nickel earned hers from the coin pendent she wore around her neck, said it was an ancient currency from before the Great Zeolot War. They called Sindra Pumpkin Stew because she was first in line for pumpkin stew and first to come around again to scrape the bottom of the pot.

  How she wished she could dig into a bowl of turnip and pumpkin stew at that very moment. Those protein sticks tasted the same way they looked, gray and dry with an after hint of sour rye, a flavor she had not yet grown accustomed to her entire time in Jonesbridge.

  “Looks like we’re light on Civility rations again. Go ahead and get this other lot to the slog ration station.” A voice on the other side of the crates said.

  Sindra froze. She scanned the brush where she and Myron had squatted earlier. She couldn’t spot him anywhere. No signs of him, no movement, nothing. He wasn’t there. Her breathing quickened. Even in the frosty breeze, a sweat broke out on her forehead.

  “What’s the difference? Just give ’em some of the slogs’ ration.” Another voice said. Sindra held her breath and remained like a statue.

  “We can’t do that.”

  “It’s good enough for us, ought to be good enough for them.”

  “I don’t make the rules. Blue square, Civility. Red circles—Industry,” the voice said.

  The shadow covering Sindra shrank suddenly. Above her, two crates disappeared, moments later, two more. She hunkered lower, rolling herself into a ball, still scanning for signs of Myron. He should have warned her somehow, given her signal to get out of there.

  Fingers wrapped around the box closest to her head. Sindra gathered as many protein sticks as she could and shoved the rest over on the loading dock. As the boxes tumbled into the shins of the two men, she bolted for the gate.

  “What was that?”

  “Thief!”

  The gate had already begun to shut as Sindra arrived. Behind her, the shuffle of footsteps gained ground. She turned sideways and slipped through the closing gate, sliding her arm through first, then wiggling her body through the narrowing space, preparing to run as fast into the hills as she could. As she pulled with all her strength, a pair of hands around her arm yanked her back, and the gate began to open again. She tugged, wrenching her captor’s hands around the gate pole and broke free before the gate swung open enough for the team of ghosts to get through.

  “Stop!”

  They gave chase. Sindra weaved through shin pines, staying ahead of them until dull pain struck her ankles. A discipline rod thrown from behind tripped her into the brambles, scattering her cache of protein sticks across a patch of gray snow. She landed face down.

  Ghosts on either side of her hoisted Sindra to her feet. “What do we have here?” a ghost asked. He twisted Sindra’s hand over to look at her tattoo. “Slog—shirker, thief.” He tied Sindra’s hands behind her behind her back.

  “Come on.” A ghost nudged her with a discipline rod, pushing her toward the gate.

  She twisted around for one last look at the empty spot where Myron should have been, hoping for a glimpse of him, moving brush, a flicker of flesh darting into the shadows, but she saw no signs of him.

  “Careful, this one’s a biter,” one of the ghosts remarked before he gave Sindra another push to keep her going. They passed through the gate and beyond the platform where the ration crates once stood. “Take her to Industry Admin.”

  Every step Sindra took in the direction of Jonesbridge erased a hard-fought step she and Myron had taken in the other direction. Her stomach growled and her legs ached, and she had no more energy to put up a fight. The closer she got to the Jonesbridge compound, the more those dreams she shared with Myron faded until they washed away in the shadows of the smokestacks. Myron could travel lighter now without her to weigh him down.

  As was the custom when a slog shirked duty, other slogs were notified who it was that had not pulled their weight. “Shirker!” The ghost to Sindra’s right shouted as they walked through Jonesbridge. “Shirker!” He acted as a town crier with news, and the slogs filed from their factories hearing him shout.

  Her hands bound behind her back, the ghost platoon paraded Sindra, the apprehended shirker, down the brick paths of Jonesbridge though hundreds of her fellow slogs. Some jeered, others spat, but many kept their heads down, refusing to look at her. The spectacle continued through familiar sectors of Jonesbridge, the down run of the Yarin Canal, green with yellow streaks by the time it reached the salvage factory, Tool and Die, ore, the coal yards, but her shame continued beyond the baths and the orientation block, further than Copper, Iron, Munitions, and Assembly to the Administration sector where the admins dwelled in domiciles with water basins for cleaning and panes of glass on the windows to keep out the wind and choking clouds of sulfur. She arrived at last to the place where the Superintendent wielded his authority, where his communications originated, and where he cast the die for the their future.

  The Industry Administration building resembled an ornate, imposing factory on the outside with high walls and soot-stained brick. Intricate gargoyles of workers with bulging muscles dutifully guarded the façade over a frieze etched with scenes from the construction of Jonesbridge and the digging of the Great Gorge. Sindra labored up the twenty-seven steps to the entrance, to the two doors that rose to a h
eight of a four story domicile quad. Two limestone statues flanked the doors, on one side, a man mining with a pickaxe, and on the other, a woman fastening a rivet to a beam.

  One look at the high vaulted ceiling as she stepped through the doors made Sindra feel as though her stomach might turn. Three tapestries draped the wall opposite the entrance, making them the first thing anyone would see. The largest showed the mustachioed Superintendent of Industry wielding a sledge hammer. Beside it, a woman with a flowing mane of auburn hair held a sickle in mid-swath over a golden pasture of wheat. The other one depicted a man with a rifle and a pair of binoculars surveying a battlefield from the edge of a precipice.

  The sounds of her footsteps echoed across the expansive hall as the two ghosts escorted Sindra to a booth in the far corner of the room.

  “Industry Colleague R231-B,” a woman behind the desk called. She wore thick glasses and also used a magnifying lens to read the scribble in the journal. Her chair creaked as she twisted back and forth, shuffling papers. “Step forward.”

  Sindra limped into a square yellow box painted on the floor, holding out her hand for the clerk to verify her identity by her tattoo. Sindra’s ribs still screamed every time she moved from the blows she’d sustained during her capture. Even though she stood only an arm’s length from the administration clerk, the woman behind the desk still squinted, needing heavy lenses to see her.

  “Full day’s shirk.” She positioned her magnifier on another open journal. “Compound breach. Ration theft,” she muttered. “Resisting authorities.” She clicked her tongue several times. “And, all on a day when you were expected for interrogation in the murder of a civil guard, which in my estimation makes you an accomplice.” The woman shuffled through a stack of papers. “My, my, this is bad.”

  “But I—”

  The clerk held up her hand. “Don’t make it worse.”

  Sindra stifled her tears until they began to seep out. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to maintain composure as she anticipated the punishment the clerk had in store for her.