CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

“Hold on tight.” Then, “Tighter!” screams the Boy.

Horse was sliding downslope through the scree that abutted the shattered remains of the road leading to the bridge. The Boy held on for dear life as Jin clung to him.

The guards at the bridge raised their weapons to port arms, as if this act, as it had so many times before, would bend the offenders to their will.

You said, Sergeant, Surprise the enemy and the battle might just be half won, Boy!

Horse checks a fall and the Boy yanks him on to the road and straight toward the bridge.

The riders who had followed their trail, at the top of the hill above the bridge now, began to fire down upon them. Their shots were wild and the sentries at the bridge began to scatter, fearing they were being shot at by invaders. A wild shot hit the chest of one of the Chinese bridge guards with a loud thump, knocking him to the pavement.

Horse crashed past two guards and raced onto the bridge, straining hard for the distant far end.

Great iron cables ran skyward toward the suspension pylons, but other numerous cables that once were connected to the roadway had fallen onto the bridge or lay draped in great coils spilling over the edge. It even seemed to the Boy that the bridge hung lower on one side. A few ancient trucks, decrepit with crusted rust, littered the bridge at odd angles.

“Stay to the right … it’s the safest side!” screamed Jin above the bullets, above the clop-cloppity-clop-clop of Horse’s sprint along the old roadway of the bridge.

The gusty wind dragged at the Boy’s long hair as he looked behind them to see riders and horses tumbling down the steep slope leading to the bridge.

I have a lead and a little time. That is good. But I’m riding into the unknown, and that is bad.

For a moment he felt the familiar fear that had chased him all his days. But the embrace of Jin, her thin arms about his chest, reminded him of wearing the bearskin in the dead of a winter storm.

At the end of this bridge, somewhere, there must be a cave like the bear cave for us.

Halfway across the bridge, the Boy could see the concrete piles of once–San Francisco. Huge jutting slabs of gray concrete rose up into small mountains, stacked at different protruding angles. Only a few emaciated buildings remained upright.

‘The destruction is almost complete here,’ thought the Boy, and in the moment he had this thought, his eyes, searching the rubble, watched as it began to slide in rising chalky yellow sheets of dust.

He blinked twice, assuming his eyes must be watering in the wind of the hard chase.

But now the road underneath them was shifting to the left, twisting, almost.

Cables above were waving back and forth. High and ahead, one ripped loose from the roadway and swung wildly across the bridge, sweeping a rusting wreck off the side and into the ocean below.

In San Francisco everything was shaking. Dust was rising everywhere. One of the tall buildings collapsed into itself and was replaced by plumes of thick brown dust billowing up into the bright noon sky.

Cables sang sickly in a high-pitched whine. The Boy could hear explosions as rusty metal bolts, gigantic, tore themselves away from their foundations on the bridge.

The shaking increased and the Boy drove Horse hard for the far side of the crossing.

It was only when they passed down the off-ramp and onto the other side of the bay, clearing the last of the sagging, shearing, crying, bending cables that the Boy breathed. He wheeled Horse about to check their pursuers and could see nothing of them.

The shaking had stopped and the air was filled with the sounds of birds calling and dogs barking.

The animal noise rose.

“Earthquake,” whispered Jin, shaking. “A big … one.”

The Boy turned Horse back to the once-city.

A moment later rending metal, groaning in chorus, sheared through the quiet.

When they turned back, Jin, Horse, and the Boy watched the Golden Gate Bridge twist and then crash into the ocean.

Later, they rode along the only avenue clear enough to pass through the city. It was a wide thoroughfare running along the waterfront. Every building was a pile of gray concrete and dusty redbrick. Pipes and rebar jutted from the wreckage like nerve endings caught forever in the act of sensory stimulus. What had not disintegrated into gigantic piles of rubble lay either heaped atop another building or forever fallen off at some odd angle.

“At least they cannot follow us now that the bridge is down,” said the Boy.

“But they will,” replied Jin.

They came upon the remains of a military defense. Artillery pieces lay scattered about, their long barrels blooming like sunflowers.

“Why will they follow?” asked the Boy.

“Because … they must,” replied Jin.

The Boy chose a narrow avenue through the rubble that led into the heart of the once-city.

They climbed up where buildings had spilled themselves into one another and crossed streets littered with explosive sprays of redbrick thrown outward.

“They cannot let me go,” said Jin. “Because they are afraid of mixing with … the …”

“The barbarians.”

“Yes. The barbarians.”

Shortly they entered an open space. Gothic cathedral arches rose out of the debris, as did splintered beams of wood in front of what was once a small park.

They watched and listened within the silence of the place as Horse turned to the wild grass that survived in the park.

They drank water from their skins to wash away the floating dust.

“It is dangerous to be here. The rubble could shift at any time,” he said.

“Very. The old city … is a very dangerous place. We … will not want to be here for … long.”

“What lies to the south?”

“I have only heard … there are ruined cities in the south. But many have burnt down or are little more than … ruins. There is a fishing village along the Pacific Ocean beyond a city that faced south into the sea and burnt down long ago. I … have been there once, when I was a girl.”

“And beyond that?”

“The war … before the battles here … the big war was fought there. Many ‘nukes’ and … chemicals. The land is said to be poisoned and filled with monsters.”

“Oh.”

He brought her toward him and they kissed in the quiet and shattered remains of the square.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Even if we must go past the monsters?”

She kissed him again.

“Yes.”

The rest of the day was long and hot. At times they had to walk Horse up long hills of dangerous rubble, picking their way through the broken rock and twisting rusted metal.

In the late afternoon the wind picked up and they could hear the sound of bones dully knocking against each other in a haphazard fashion.

“No one else lives here?” asked the Boy.

“There are dogs and ghosts. The dogs … are very wild.”

Dusk was falling to gloom as they rode slowly down the long highway leading away from the city. In the darkness ahead the Boy saw a building standing off by itself. It was only two stories high. It was long and squat.

M-O-T-E … he spells.

Probably “motel.”

He left Jin atop Horse in the parking lot as he checked the ruined place. All the doors had long since been torn off. He found the evidence of campfires in the bathtubs of most of the rooms.

Someone had stayed here for a time, but not for long. Now they were gone.

They took a room downstairs. The bed was little more than exposed coils and springs. He pushed it against the wall and tried to clear the floor of debris as best he could. There was a large hole in the wall leading to the next room. He led Horse through the doorway of that room and settled him for the night.

“I’ll be back,” he told Jin.

He was gone for some time, and when he returned he brought wood and placed it in the bathtub for a fire.

Once the fire was going he gave her the last of Horse’s corn and they chewed it and drank cold water.

He watched her dark eyes staring into the fire.

“Are you happy still?”

She turned to him and smiled.

“So happy. So … free.”

‘Other women are not like you,’ he thought as he watched her. ‘Most—all the ones I have ever met in all the villages and places like the Cotter family’s old dark house—are merely possessions to be had by whoever is strong enough to take and keep them. But you want to find out who you are and you will let no one own you. And I do not think anyone could keep you if you did not want to stay.’

“It will not be easy. But in time we will find a place and make it our own,” he said.

“We will,” she agreed softly.

He pushed the frame of the bed against the doorway of the room and draped a blanket across it. The Boy hoped this would help hold the heat of the fire in the room. About the hole in the wall between rooms he could do nothing. Their breath was now forming tiny puffs of moisture in the cold night air.

When he turned back from securing the doorway, he found Jin at the end of the room near the door to the bathroom, close to the fire.

She had wrapped herself only in the bearskin.

She beckoned him within.