Jonesbridge

by M. E. Parker

  Sindra saw the buildings of Old Town, down in the valley, from the path to her factory every morning. It had always intrigued her, and though Old Jonesbridge was locked up inside the compound with the factories and domiciles, it was off limits to slogs.

  “I’m the mule man. Between shifts, I care for the mules, among other things.” He pointed to a crumbling clock tower that once tolled over the bustling village of Jonesbridge. “Well, that’s where they keep the mules. I can be seen walking this road. You can’t, so keep quiet.”

  Sindra followed instructions, walking quietly behind Errol, who hopped on his crutch. Even though the path was dark, it was out in the open, and it made Sindra nervous. She dropped to her knees to keep out of sight at the slightest hint of a ghost on patrol or a search light until they rounded a bend where the path widened into a road. Pangs of rail-walker nostalgia struck her when they finally reached the cluster of buildings that resembled a town.

  Old Town Jonesbridge consisted of a network of narrow bricked streets pocked with craters, flanked by defunct shops that clung to their ancient charm. Some signs still hung above gutted structures, as though no one had told them they were no longer needed, pictures of a coffee cup or a pair of boots and man in a western hat holding a mug. Footprints of extinct streetlights, robbed for their metal, led to the center of town where the clock tower oversaw it all, crowned with a giant Pegasus weathervane, though nothing of its mechanisms remained. These were all familiar sights to Sindra who’d explored many bygone towns along the rails. It even possessed a different smell than the rest of the Jonesbridge complex, an earthy scent like damp wood, something she associated with the way a spider web might smell.

  “Okay, let’s go.” He positioned his crutch and squeezed through an opening in the wall into a dark shell of a structure. “Follow me. Hold the back of my smock.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He glanced back at her, a flicker of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.

  “To see Lalana, of course.”

  Chapter 11

  Though he’d only been gone four days, as he returned to the compound for Sindra, Myron no longer recognized 14-C as his home. After he’d tasted freedom out on the rim, everything about Jonesbridge had changed in his mind. He tiptoed up the stairs, keeping out of sight. Passing by rooms, he expected to hear morning noises, groans of awakening day shifters hauling off the cot, clicks and clanks of stove doors opening and closing, but he realized he had made it too late, after the day shift had already begun. Instead, he saw a line of slogs shuffling back from night shift.

  Myron ran to his domicile where he noticed a strip of tape across the door that stretched from one wall to the other. He stopped short of ripping the tape, realizing they had set a trap for him, so he headed for Sindra’s room to wait for her until the day shift ended. The return trek into the compound had taken all the fight he had left for the moment, dodging patrols on the rim, trip wires, crawling though a dark fissure under the fence where coyotes had setup housekeeping. He’d sustained a bite on the nose and a deep wound on his hand where teeth marks remained, but stalking the nighttime like an animal had suited Myron. He’d experienced the simple freedom an animal enjoys every day, coming and going as the elements dictated, and though he had never given much credence to the spirit Custodians, he thought there might actually be a coyote Custodian spirit that nobody spoke of, one that he’d now bonded with in blood.

  On the sixth and final floor of 14-C, he found her door and turned the handle, opening it to an empty room. He checked the corridor again and entered her quarters. Under the cot, he saw her possessions. She had plenty of coal and an extra smock laid out by the basin, ready for her next shift. Myron sat on the cot and smelled her blanket, a scent he had kept with him since the last time they were together.

  All his dreams now possessed her face. If he took her from his dreams, they disappeared, no more dreams, no more beach or palms trees or creatures of the sea, no more escape plan, no need to do anything at all. The nagging fear that Sindra may have taken the blame for the ghost’s murder led Myron to one conclusion after another, all leading to horrible visions of her freshly limed body lying in the deadyard. He had not seen a murder in his time in Jonesbridge and had no idea as to the punishment. If only he’d looked up sooner during their ration raid or managed to fight off Coyote Man before he struck, Sindra would still be with him. They might even have made it across the Gorge by now.

  Every hour he added to the wait amplified his nightmares as he wondered what he would do, how he could go on if Sindra did not open the door and walk into this room after her shift. The day he smuggled out her star, the longest day in Jonesbridge, now took second place to today as he sat on Sindra’s cot, holding her smock, willing her to somehow appear, a day that finally came to an end when the official curfew siren sounded. He waited. When he could wait no longer, Myron cracked open the door and noticed a shadow on the corridor wall, praying for Sindra’s face to appear. Instead, he looked up to see Saul.

  Their eyes met briefly, first as shift mates and fellow countrymen, both out past curfew, empathetic, then as predator and prey. “Shirker!” Saul yelled, pointing at Myron. “Myron Daw!”

  Myron shoved Saul aside on his way through the door, effortlessly, the way an overloader bladed passed a stack of garbage in the salvage pit. He ran to the walkway, stopping at the rail, staring down into the swill pen.

  “Myron Daw!” Saul screamed again. Myron saw as many as six ghosts scrambling for the stairs. He ran to the end of the row of quarters and glanced over the rail, ghosts everywhere—all running for him.

  “Myron Daw,” Saul cried again, standing at attention, his outstretched finger pointing at Myron. Ghosts ran from both ends of the corridor, planning to sandwich Myron on the top floor of the domicile quad. The only way out was down.

  Six floors up, Myron threw one leg over the rail and hurled himself over. The air whooshed by his ears. He lost his breath as he landed in the grasp of the suicide nets that surrounded the domiciles on the second floor. He struggled to make it to the edge, hoping to escape into the darkness, but his feet got tangled in the net. He tugged harder. Ghosts ran down the stairs on either side of him.

  Myron freed his legs and rolled off the net, falling from the second floor, landing hard on his side. He crawled toward the dark space between the quads, finally getting up to run when they closed in on him, discipline rods drawn. He steadied himself and tightened his stomach in preparation for the blows from the rod, which came sooner than he expected. One, two in the stomach, three on the back. Then he folded to the ground. He squirmed, clutching his ribs at the feet of several ghosts until they lifted him to his feet and led him to the administration complex at the heart of Jonesbridge.

  • • •

  Myron waited in a dark room with a slit of light emerging from under the door. No one questioned him or accused him of anything. He just sat there imagining one horrible thing after another that must have happened to Sindra in the four days he was gone, going through all of the things he could have done differently, itemizing his failures, and realizing that yet again, he’d made the wrong decision. Sitting and waiting, anticipating, his fear grew until the door opened and four ghosts hoisted him to his feet and led him out.

  At the end of a corridor, Myron passed through a shadowy doorway, his hands bound with binding twine. Ahead of him lay a narrow passageway, wide enough for his shoulders but too low for him to proceed without ducking his head. The march came to an end in a cavernous chamber bisected by a canal that ran underneath the walls on either side. A mill wheel three times Myron’s height sat partway submerged in the center of the waterway. Chains dangled from the wheel that glistened in the torchlight.

  The sight of Rolf, shackled, standing by the wheel shocked Myron as he rounded the corner, crossing the canal on a catwalk flanked by two guards. Myron stood at attention, watching as they escorted Rolf up a ladder to the top of the wheel where they secured him longwise al
ong the curve with chains. “I didn’t kill anybody,” Rolf insisted, jerking at the chains as the ghosts tightened them.

  The ghost in a control room pulled a lever. The wheel spun, taking Rolf head first into the murky water where he stopped, completely submerged. Myron shook his head and backed away as the ghosts forced him onto the top of the wheel, where he fought until his knees buckled, held fast with the pull of the chains. Water dripped from the chains, reminding Myron that these restraints, the ones clenching down on his thighs and chest just came from under water, where they would certainly return. Still in the open air, still taking breaths, Myron tried to prepare himself for the horror Rolf was experiencing at that same moment, when the water would rob him of breath.

  Myron had learned to swim in the stream behind his grandfather’s house, in waters yellow with sulfur and mud, but he’d never learned to hold his breath and put his head under. That silent breath, hearing his own heartbeat in his chest with a suffocating wet blanket all around him frightened him, so much that he never went into water too deep to stand in. He’d experienced the horror when he went under helping Sindra across the canal, the chemicals in his nose, the burn in his lungs. As the wheel began to turn, his head aiming downward toward the water, Myron sucked in a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut.

  The wheel creaked. As Rolf emerged from the water on the other side he gasped just as the water swallowed Myron. A white coldness enveloped him, as though he had stepped into a frozen sun. He heard voices, Rolf’s shouts above him, but he couldn’t make out the words. He held his breath until his chest might split apart and the wheel began to turn. When he came up on the other side he opened his mouth as wide as he could and bit at air, like a fish on land.

  “Myron Daw, you stand accused of the crimes of shirking four days, possession of books and other contraband, and the murder of Civil Colleague 5432.”

  “But he was alive when I saw him,” Myron yelled still catching his breath. “I was protecting Sindra. I didn’t kill him.”

  The wheel rotated. Myron’s head started toward the water, chains still dripping from his last trip. As the rush of water bubbled around his ears, he heard Rolf’s voice. He tried to parse the muted syllables, wondering what Rolf was saying, if he was telling them Myron had done it, if Rolf was a suspect or a witness. Without air to his brain, Myron couldn’t think. He could only concentrate on not breathing in the water until the wheel turned again.

  “This process will stop when one of you confesses.”

  “I hit the guard. But he was still alive. He started to chase me. I didn’t kill him.”

  The wheel turned. Myron’s head ached as the water rushed around him, his hair suspended in the liquid.

  “Why were you behind the domicile quad?”

  “They were ravaging Sindra. I had to help her.”

  “Where did you go after you hit the guard?”

  “Back to my domicile.”

  “Rolf says you chased the guard.”

  “How would he know? Rolf wasn’t there.”

  The wheel began to turn, and Myron realized he had made a fatal error in his panic. “Wait, wait,” he yelled, sucking in a breath right before he went under. Above him Rolf’s voice, deep and urgent sank down through the water in dull bursts. Concentrating on keeping his breath, Myron tried to replace the darkness with Sindra’s face. When the wheel turned again it stopped midway, with both he and Rolf out of the water on the sides of the wheel, Rolf upside down on his way into the water, Myron head up. He could hardly hear over his own gasping.

  “Rolf Bucker, Myron Daw has implicated you in the murder.”

  “What? No. I didn’t, Rolf. I swear.”

  “Myron Daw, Rolf has implicated you.”

  “No, I didn’t. Myron, tell them what you told me. About a wild man,” Rolf yelled, upside down on the other side. His voice crackled, a sound Myron had never heard come out of Rolf’s mouth. “Please tell them, Myron!”

  After a few moments of silence, a door swung open to the control room. Two men remained at the controls, an administrator of some sort and a ghost, but the man who walked through the door Myron recognized as Cyril, the salvage factory administrator.

  “A wild man?” The administrator asked as he glanced over to the control room, his voice almost a whisper. “What sort of wild man?”

  “Ask Myron. He knows.”

  “I don’t know,” Myron snapped. “A Coyote Man.”

  The administrator stepped up beside Myron and pulled on the chain, nodding to the water. “What wild man?”

  “He lives on the rim. I don’t know where.”

  The salvage administrator raised his hand, and the wheel began to turn. Myron rose around. A splash signaled Rolf’s entry back into the water. Two ghosts unchained Myron from the top of the wheel. He climbed down the ladder where the salvage administrator waited. He shook his hands, trying to get feeling back into his fingers, now off the wheel and out of the cold water, finally unbound.

  “Where did you see this wild man?”

  Myron couldn’t take his eyes off the part of the wheel that was still under water, expecting it to rotate up so that they could unchain Rolf, but the wheel did not move.

  “What did he look like?” The salvage administrator slammed Myron against the wall. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. He’s covered in hair. And he wears goat fox skins. He’s been out there a while.” Myron held his hand out at nose level. “About this tall I guess.”

  The wheel still hadn’t moved. Bubbles surfaced around the edge. “What about Rolf?”

  “What’s this about?” the other administrator joined them. “All this talk about a wild man. We have our murderer.” He pointed to the bottom of the wheel. “Let’s go.”

  With his eyes fixed of Rolf’s silhouette in the murky water, Myron noticed the chains stop moving from struggle, the froth around the wheel had ceased, and the water grew still. Rolf had paid someone else’s price.

  “Let’s go see about this wild man. If it’s true, we may have more problems. Get a squad, and Myron will take us out to find him.” The other administrator slapped Myron’s legs and arms into adjoined shackles and led him to the two ghosts by the door.

  Emerging from the wheelhouse chamber, the brightness outdoors stung Myron’s eyes. He looked up and saw the sun perched high in a blue sky. He squinted and looked away, turning around to the soot-stained fortress of red brick behind him. Steel refinery #4 had gone silent. No boilers humming, no motors turning, and above its towering smokestacks—no smoke. Same with #3 and #2 beside it. No lights, no electrical hum. Nothing, just hundreds of workers filing out of the buildings in bewilderment.

  “Come on. Get going.” The ghost to Myron’s left gave him a shove.

  The strap that joined his ankle shackles had just enough slack for Myron to scuffle in half strides as he led the team of four ghosts and the salvage administrator out to Coyote Man, though Myron had planned to lead them anywhere but where he thought Coyote Man would be. With each step he heard in his mind the whimpering howl of coyotes yapping at each other late at night. Unlike other dog-types, like the wolves of the legends, coyotes didn’t possess great strength or even speed. They were opportunists. They made do, adapted to a changing environment, utilized what others had discarded—much like salvage. In this ability, they were free and strong. Now that he had awakened his inner coyote, he could feel the bristles standing up on the back of his neck. In his time in Jonesbridge he had never seen the sky this clear and the factories this silent, a sun so bright that it warmed the skin on his arms. Something was not right.

  They left the compound through the supply depot gate, the same spot he had last seen Sindra, and when they reached the area near the cave entrance, Myron collapsed onto a boulder and pointed with his bound hands. “I don’t know. It all looks the same out here.” He took a deep breath. His chest still ached. “Maybe it’s that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction of Coyote Man’s cave.

 
After an hour of Myron leading the squad in circles the head ghost stopped them. “This is a waste of time. Keep watch on this hill. Eyes peeled for for a wild man to show his face. You first,” the head ghost said pointing to another ghost with a black stripe on his shoulder. “Three of you rotate in eight hour shifts until I give the word.”

  The ghost assigned to the first shift, a man not much older than Myron, had a worried expression. “Just one of us?” He cleared his throat. “Against a wild man?”

  The head ghost sighed and ripped a pistol from a hidden holster under his smock. Only the Defense Administration had guns, or so Myron thought. The head ghost spun the chamber and locked it into place with a click. He pulled the discipline rod from the other ghost’s hand and handed him the pistol. “There’s one in the chamber—a real bullet. If he shows up. Shoot him right in the eye.”

  The ghost turned the gun over in his hand, inspecting it with wide eyes. “H-how do I do that exactly?”

  “Just point this end,” he said, nudging the end of the barrel, “where you want to shoot and squeeze the curved part by the grip.”

  “Okay.” The ghost sat down on a boulder.

  “And stay out of sight.” The head ghost sighed, shaking his head. “If there really is a wild man out here, he’ll be cautious.”

  “Wait,” the salvage administrator said, confronting the the head ghost. “We want to question him. Do not kill the wild man. Do not kill him.”

  “Okay, disable him for capture and questioning. But if you can’t detain him, kill him.” The head ghost shot the administrator a suspicious glance.

  It worried Myron how close the ghost on watch really was to the cave entrance, but he had managed to keep them looking in the wrong direction.

  Chaos greeted Myron when the other three ghosts and the administrator returned him to Jonesbridge through the supply depot. Under a clear sky, bright sunlight reflected off the railroad tracks. Dozens of slogs in disarray scuttled out in the open, unproductive. Myron recognized one of the people right away, Millie, his commissary clerk at 14-C. She looked frantic, and Millie never seemed the type to lose her cool.