Jonesbridge

by M. E. Parker

  The landscape reminded him of all he endured to get here, the oppressive heat of summer and the frozen winters, the parched earth tainted with blood and toxins, wandering directionless for months through the Nethers with Cyril who spouted venom for the enemy the entire time, an enemy that turned out to be more humane than his own people.

  Sindra hadn’t uttered a word since she joined him in the basket. She stared at nothing, frozen mid-sob. He wanted to console her, to apologize for being selfish and stupid, for messing up their escape and breaking the rudder. He longed to hug her and tell her everything would be okay in the end, but as he surveyed the other side of the Gorge, he saw the E’ster camp and realized that everything would not be all right—far from it.

  Though he stoked the fire, adding as much coal as would fit, the balloon maintained a gradual descent. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Sindra peeked over the edge of the basket. “What?”

  “We’re going down.” He sighed and inspected the balloon. “Or—the ground is higher over there. Can’t tell.” Either way, their current course would land them in the middle of the E’ster camp.

  Sindra moved to the center and peddled, causing the propeller to turn. “So we can’t steer, but no way are we going down.”

  Coyote Man studied the E’ster armaments, giant steam-driven landships constructed from vessels that were no longer sea worthy, rolling on colossal wheels. They were equipped with counterweights and catapults that launched their bombs over the Gorge. They’d edged closer and closer to the Gorge to increase their range until the bows jutted out into the noxious darkness of the abyss. He heard the grind of machinery as the catapults drew taut. The familiar sound made his stomach tighten.

  He’d lived as a coyote for three years now. It had saved his life and polished the rust off of his soul, and in that time he’d learned that he had no enemies, no reason to fight anyone for anything other than for his own cave and a sip of water. Now, he had no appetite for returning to the Eastern Bloc, hero or otherwise, or living amongst the humans who’d destroyed everything beautiful in the world.

  “I know those people.” He pointed to the E’sters. “The ghosts, yeah, they’re bad—but nothing compared to the dregs of humanity the Eastern Bloc sends into battle.” He eyed the airship’s trajectory. “You’d be better off back there.” He gave a nod to Jonesbridge.

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Sindra pushed him in the chest.

  “Chasm knows what will happen to you down there. I can’t protect you from those curs.” Crossbow bolts arced up at the airship, the first round falling short. “They’ve spotted us. Up is the only way. We’re too heavy.”

  Sindra worked the bellows, stoking the fire, blowing onto the coals. “What do we do?”

  “This is my fault. I’m the reason they found Jonesbridge in the first place. I’m the reason Myron is back there, and you’re up here.” He kissed her on the cheek, imagining the kiss he never gave his daughter. “Take care of that baby and ride this thing as far as you can—as far as the wind will take you.” He thought she could make it. He’d never seen people as resilient and tough as the slogs in Jonesbridge. It seemed that they could endure just about anything that would kill a normal person.

  The airship listed when Coyote Man straddled the basket.

  “Wait! What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you a chance.”

  Before finding Jonesbridge, he and Cyril had wandered the Nethers, each of them with a vial of poison on a chain around their necks, an emergency measure in the event that the Nethers swallowed them whole as it had every tracker before them. They could end it all by a stomping on a demon’s tail, so they called it, with one bite into the vial.

  He’d spent countless hours near death with that vial in his mouth, ready to bite, praying Cyril would crunch down on his first so he could have a moment’s peace before doing the same, but Cyril never did. And Jonesbridge would have driven him to use his vial long ago if the orange shirts hadn’t taken it when they stripped him clean and left him in the hole for dead, before the coyotes had shown him how a man should live. High over the Gorge, with the wind sweeping his beard, he closed his eyes, picturing a coyote den, and readied himself to finally bite into his vial of poison.

  “I’m coming, Nick,” he shouted and slid over the edge of the basket.

  “No!” Sindra screamed, her eyes trained on Coyote man’s fall, arms and legs outstretched until the darkness of the Gorge swallowed him. “I can’t do this alone.”

  As the E’ster landships creaked closer to the rim of the Gorge, maximizing their range, without thinking, Sindra loaded more coal into the pot, and the life inside her gave her abdomen a kick, a tiny confirmation that she truly carried a living being, one that hadn’t been snuffed by the black whisper, one who’d survived the shirker coop and starvation, someone she would die to protect.

  No time to mourn or cry, no time to regret or give up or feel sorry for herself; she had a responsibility now, a future human growing inside her and a breath of wind to ride on, and no wish to make Coyote man’s sacrifice all for nothing. Stoking the coal, refueling, stoking again, heating the fire, white coals, again and again she stoked. “Up. Up, up. Go.”

  A crossbow bolt penetrated the basket, missing Sindra’s leg by a hair. She continued to stoke the fire and noticed that with only her weight, the airship had changed course. The E’ster landships grew smaller beneath her, the E’ster battle cries lost on the wind.

  The battlements looked so small and harmless from this height, but the higher she rose, the more formidable the Gorge looked, snaking around Jonesbridge like a tourniquet. The earth groaned, sending a shiver down the length of her body. Behind the line of advancing E’sters, a fissure opened under the weight of the landships as they inched closer to the edge. Their bows creaked and the bank of the Great Gorge gave way beneath the three largest landships, spilling them and their crews into the depths with percussive blasts in succession. A noxious cloud rose from the Gorge followed by more explosions that shot pain through Sindra’s ears. A hoard of E’sters ran from the edge, some hanging on to ledges before plummeting with a chunk of earth. A chain of soldiers dangled, hand in hand, until the darkness plucked them from the bank. What was left of the E’ster attack settled back and out of range, but they still numbered in the hundreds.

  Sindra kneeled in the basket, afraid to move, as if the higher she ascended the more fragile the sky became, afraid she could shatter it with a single poke. She peeked over the edge, back to Jonesbridge, at the clouds of smoke that suffocated the valley. Somewhere down there she imagined Myron gazing up into the sky, thinking about her. The frigid air gave her chills, and she warmed her hands over the burning coal, adding fresh fuel to the fire.

  Alone in the Nethers, a girl, now a woman, pregnant, with no food, no water and no idea which way the wind blew her, except that she sailed toward the setting sun. Not safe to land, not safe to stay up in the air, not safe to set one foot in the dead soil of the Nethers where the carcasses of ancient snakes lay petrified in white chalk, not a safe world for a newborn child nor for her mother, but whatever happened to her now, she would live or die free from the shackles of Jonesbridge.

  As she rose above the lower layer of smoke and clouds, the sun, halfway set, fanned rays of pink and orange across the horizon. Sindra marveled at how peaceful and warm the sky over a battlefield could be, a sky marred with the reflection of the dying ground beneath it. When the sun settled behind the blue outline of the mountains, a single star twinkled into view. Sindra patted down her smock in a panic, not feeling its points, praying she hadn’t lost it. From the hem of her smock, she pulled out Sindra’s Star with relief and held it to the horizon with one eye closed, as if to hang it in the sky.

  She collected what remained of the coal from the bottom of the basket and put it into the coal bin where the embers popped. The fires of the E’ster battle camp had faded behind her, and the entire heaven of stars opened above her. Nothing but p
hantom peaks and dark valleys stood between her and the horizon. The silence frightened her. For the first time in her memory, she heard no turbines humming, no groan of machinery, no barges or trains, no whistles or marching feet of workers, only nothingness, as though she had stuffed wads of burlap into her ears.

  As much as she wanted to crash the airship and run to the edge of the Gorge to wait for Myron, Coyote Man knew the E’sters, and the Nethers, and he’d given his life for her to ride as far as the wind would take her. Old Nickel used to tell her while walking the rails that trusting feelings over common sense was like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the grim reaper to follow, so she would stay airborne as long as she could. Myron was so far away from her now, but she had the star he’d given her and the dreams he’d shown her, and a face to remember, a vision she would keep fresh in her mind to one day describe to the child she carried.

  Commited now to her freedom and a new life for her child, Sindra kept the coals hot to get as far away as possible. The higher she rose, the more numbing the air became. Sindra shivered as she stoked the coals, staving off sleep for as long as she could, for what seemed like hours, until she nodded off against the bellows, beside the warmth of the glowing coal.

  • • •

  Sindra awoke to the sound of water lapping against the airship and a breath of heavy air. A wave sloshed over the side of the basket, adding to the pool of water at her feet. She licked her lips, salt. The water made her skin tingle as she splashed trying to stand up, wrestling with the balloon draped over the coal pan.

  Another wave pummeled her across the face as she stared into an endless body of water in front of her, and behind her, dozens of small islands interconnected by salvaged debris. Sindra had heard of great bodies of water, even before she met Myron, but she’d assumed they had either all dried up or were nothing more than Old Age fairy tales. She had always heard the oceans had died, but she’d never wanted to say that to Myron. He’d turned out to be right.

  She soaked in the sights of the ocean as she drifted with the current toward the collection of debris, fearful of spike-toothed sea creatures lying in wait for fresh meat. In the side of the largest of the landmasses, tall white letters formed the word, H—-L-L-Y-W-O—D. The name of the island or a welcome message, Sindra didn’t know, but she wondered if it said Bora Bora, though she had no idea what letters would spell that. If she had found Bora Bora, it looked nothing like Myron’s postcard.

  Floating bridges constructed of amazing materials like rubber tires, planks on lines of plastic bottles and airplane fuselages, things she’d never seen in the salvage pit, fanned from all sides of the mountain island with the H-llywo-d letters. Salvaged garbage, fashioned into dwellings, covered the entire island except for the area around the letters. Men and women, kids, too, came and went, and along a pier in front of the dwellings, two moored boats bobbed on calm waters, while at the far end of the island, several windmills fashioned from airplane wings churned in the coastal breeze.

  When the current brought her to the edge of the pier, Sindra climbed out of the basket, praying she would see no orange shirts or administrators or E’sters with bones in their beards. Her eyes connected with a woman carrying a basket. The woman put the basket down and pointed at Sindra. Several people dressed in patchwork clothes approached, not to arrest her or violate or harm her, but to welcome her. She glanced back in the direction she’d come from, where the haze of the sea had replaced smoke and ash, and knew that if she had made it, thanks to Myron’s airship, that Myron could too.

  Chapter 20

  Droplets of water plopping on Myron’s head had turned to trickles. The liquid reeked of chemicals, stagnant sludge worse than the Yarin Canal, and Myron was certain that it came from the Gorge, that this R1 Facility from the Old Age spanned the underbelly of the chasm. If the Superintendent had been bluffing when he spoke of a breach, Myron clung to his hope that he could somehow navigate the rubble, something he had gotten good at recently, and emerge on the other side, free from the gravity of Jonesbridge, the way Sindra had.

  He edged to the corner and eased his eyes around to see Cyril pointing his pistol at the Superintendent, who stood, as instructed, with his hands locked behind his head.

  “Look at it. There’s no way through.” The Superintendent nodded toward the crumbled corridor, now ankle-deep with water.

  As Cyril opened his mouth to reply, an explosion rocked the ground above them. A concrete beam dislodged, tumbling from the ceiling. It struck Cyril on the head. His body jerked. The gun fired, and the Superintendent fell, face first, into a deepening pool of water.

  Myron froze as the ground trembled. He eyed the impassable corridor, scanning for an opening. When he spotted a crawlspace, a gush of water dashed his hopes. After another explosion, he hunkered down, readying himself to make a run back out the way he came, but seeing the Superintendent’s arm twitch as he tried to raise himself out of the water made Myron pause.

  The ceiling groaned. Cracks opened in the walls. Another explosion. Myron inched toward the Superintendent, keeping an eye out for debris. The Superintendent coughed and hung his head when Myron rolled him over. A trickle of blood seeped from his abdomen. He was unconscious and unresponsive, but he was still alive, while Cyril’s run had ended, crushed beneath a pile of concrete.

  Myron leaned the Superintendent against a stone block with his head out of the knee-deep water. At its current rate the water would fill the R1 Facility completely with toxic sludge, swallowing Myron, the Superintendent, and all the Old Age evidence of S.L.O.G.’s in less than ten minutes. He could make it if he ran now, but the higher the water rose the harder it would be.

  He didn’t want to leave the Superintendent, still breathing, to die in the company of the man who’d shot him. But what had the Superintendent done to deserve rescuing? He wore hardy clothing, ate real food, lived in a warm barrack with running water, while Myron rubbed his skin with sand and pissed in the snow. Myron held him responsible for directing the orange shirts to steal the people of Richterville to toil away in Jonesbridge as patriotic slaves, and the one who ordered an execution of the elders, like Myron’s grandfather, who either wouldn’t have survived the trip, or could no longer work fifteen hour days. A brute, holed up in his tower, who never showed his face to the people he commanded, gracing them with a daily admonition of guilt and fear—or was he a hero to the alliance? The one who’d made the tough choices, found workers who could survive the harsh climes of the hills to keep the hope of a people alive. Had he been the one to take charge when all others had lost hope, putting each person to their given duties according to abilities, making use of every resource, evading the E’sters’ detection, and saving them all? While Myron fought with his question, the water continued to rise.

  He positioned his shoulder on the Superintendent’s stomach and hoisted him over his shoulder, slumping under the weight of the man who outweighed him by half. Blood smeared across his arm from the Superintendent’s wound. Red hit the water and swirled into a pattern with the black and green slime that floated on top. The lights flickered. Myron trudged through the cavernous map room, allowing the Superintendent’s legs to float behind him to alleviate some of the weight.

  As the water rose, the air grew noxious. His nose burned. The water stung his skin as though it were filled with prickly pin bushes. The Superintendent groaned. Myron repositioned him and forced through the thigh-high water. Another blast crumbled the wall into the corridor. Water rushed through the ceiling. Myron pulled through the torrent, towing the Superintendent toward the elevator shaft.

  As both his legs cramped, he pushed passed the pain, visualizing the images on the S.L.O.G. wall, of the slogs like him and their evolution, who could survive the elements and eat toxic food. Inspired by the thought, he yelled “I am a slog.” His voice echoed through the stone corridor until the rising water snuffed it. On the verge of tears, he whispered again with pride, “I am a slog from Richterville.” He imagined the super h
eroes from Old Age story books, transformed by radiation or experimentation that spawned wondrous abilities, making Myron wish being a S.L.O.G meant that he could fly.

  At the end of the corridor Myron waded into the elevator. He dropped the Superintendent with a splash and yanked the lever. Steam shot from the vent. It sputtered, and water cascaded from the elevator as it rose and fell trying to escape the weight of the liquid, until enough water spilled from the open elevator door as it rose. Myron slumped in the corner, staring at the bleeding man across from him. Did he truly hate the Superintendent? He didn’t know. Maybe hate was just an Old Age word, an expensive sentiment reserved for a world and a time that could afford it. The Superintendent was not just a voice, but a real person, vulnerable, on the verge of death, and regardless of which side Myron fell, whether monster or hero, Myron couldn’t just let him die.

  As soon as the elevator cracked daylight, another explosion sounded from the Gorge. The elevator ground to a stop with a violent jerk just as it reached the top. Steam hissed. The mechanisms emitted an unnerving slow creak. Myron rolled the Superintendent out, and following a high-pitched twang, the cable snapped, and the elevator plummeted down into the R1 Facility for the last time, permanently sealing the only other way out of Jonesbridge.

  Myron tugged the Superintendent by his belt, up out of the quarry, leaving a thin trail of blood. When he reached the top, he spotted four ghosts on patrol, racing toward him.

  The head ghost pulled his gun, aiming it at Myron. “Step away. Slowly, hands in the air.”