Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever (28 page)

With our usual brilliance, we managed to arrive at the river nowhere near any of the bridges.

Vin
groaned and sat down on the cracked Geocrete a few metres away from the channel. “Just a moment,” he said. “Just give me a moment.” He clenched his fists and pressed them against the sides of his head, like he was trying to squeeze something out of it. I figured that by now he had the post-Beppie brain crawl, the sick feeling that some big worm is crawling around inside your head, looking for a way out and not caring which part of your brain it has to force its way through.

I moved a little closer to the channel and looked down at the brown river rolling through it. My hands were dark red and blistered. Every inch of my skin throbbed under the Bluesuit. The river rolled on, deep down in the Geocrete, lapping at the edges. The sound was rhythmic, rushing, splashing. I longed to bathe my hands and face in the soothing and refreshing water. I’d tried dipping one hand in Tapo at our last store, but it stung and left my skin stickier than it was before. The channel, though, was too deep, the river too far away. Even if I lay on my stomach I’d never reach it. If I dropped into it, I’d never clamber back up the smooth walls.

As those thoughts ran through my head, the first body went by. Half floating, half submerged in the swirl of brown, she swept past me. A woman with long, dark hair waving in the current and a single pale swollen arm slightly lifted out of the water. I thought for a moment she might be alive and reaching for help, but the only thing moving was the river. She rolled over in the current, and her arm swayed up and down, as if beckoning me to come and join her. For a moment, I let my muscles relax, let the pain of my burns seep through my body, imagined myself taking a step closer to the edge. Imagined letting
myself
topple over and fall, spinning in the hot fetid air, until I sank into the water, entwined my arms with hers and just let it go. Let it all go.
The staring eyes in the pulpy faces in the windows.
The picture in my head of my parents, scraping their fingertips to blood, trying to escape the StayClosed.
The bodies we’d seen on our way here, hanging, poisoned. The couple who’d split each other’s belly open with ButcherSharpies, sprawled on the sidewalk outside the store they’d taken them from, surrounded by their slimy insides, each holding a knife in one hand, their other hands clasped together. I could fall into the water and let it wash me clean — wash it all away, outside and in. The muscles in my legs twitched.
Just one step.
Then a half step.
One of my feet slid forward, involuntarily, scraping against the Geocrete…

A cough from behind me broke into the rhythm of the rushing water, interrupted the flow of my thoughts. “I’m ready, mano. Let’s go. Gotta find us a bridge, then we’re over to the Other Side, getting us some Beppies. Oh yes, gotta have some of those Beppies. Some SunGear, get us all healed up. Get us goin’, mano, get us goin’ real good. If you could, mano, just help me up here.”

I turned and saw
Vin
, rocking on his butt, trying to lift himself up using only his legs. His arms were coiled tightly against his chest. His body had just moved into spasm, which meant he must have been fighting the brain crawl for hours. He was strong, stronger than I thought. He was also in more trouble than I’d thought. Spasm started with the shoulder and arms, but in an hour or two it would move to his legs. Within a few hours after that, he’d be curled in the fetal position, in silent agony, with his mouth frozen closed as the spasm moved to his internal organs. And if he’d taken enough Beppies, he’d never uncurl again. I’d read Disposals hated Beppie deaths. They had to break bones to get the corpses to fit into the narrow incinerators.

I glanced back at the water. The woman’s body was long gone. And
Vin
needed me. He, at least, still had something to live for, even if it was just Beppies.

I grabbed one of his curled arms and hauled him up. I had no idea where we were. “Right or left?”

“Always right, mano, always right.” He managed a kind of grin through his stiffening lips.

Once he was up,
Vin
moved along pretty well, even if it was more of a shuffle than a stride. We followed the Geocrete riverbank for so long it felt like we were walking in a straight line, although I knew it had to curve slightly to
encircled
City Central. Right or left, it didn’t matter; we had to come to one of the bridges eventually.

What we came to was the ruins of a bridge. Dented Metallo panels and frayed cables hung from both sides of the canal — in the middle was nothing, just a great gap under which the river rushed onwards, oblivious.

Neither of us said anything, but our steps slowed as we grew closer, even though it was clear there was no way over the river here. The remains of the bridge couldn’t have crossed a utility unit, let alone a river.

We stopped and surveyed it in silence. “Didn’t know the electricity going out could do this,” said
Vin
. His voice was utterly toneless; I couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.

I lifted my eyes from the wrecked bridge, gazing across the wide expanse of Geocrete that lay between the river and the low, shabby buildings of the Other Side. The sun was rising, almost over the horizon now, but the shadows seemed deeper there than over here. Some trick of the dying sun. I kept looking, peering into the spaces in between the buildings. The answer had to be over there — and I saw it. “There, between the buildings.”

For a moment
Vin
was silent, then his voice hissed in my ear.
“Phrocking little beasts.”

The deepest shadows between the buildings moved, flitted around, stopped momentarily and then moved again.
People.
Going about their business, whatever that might be. Masked, covered, shielded in the dark carapace of SunGear.

“They blew the bridge,” said
Vin
. “Keeping it all for
themselves
, keeping the Funbos, the Beppies, the whole krig for themselves.”

Not to mention SunGear and large amounts of easily accessible food, drink and hope. But I didn’t mention that to
Vin
. The Beppies were enough for him.

“Next bridge,” said
Vin
. “They can’t have blown them all.” He turned and walked away, continuing on the strip along the river. “Walked” was generous; we’d been moving for half an hour or so and
Vin’s
progress, hindered by his seizing muscles, was now more of a tilt forward. But his legs kept moving, kept churning along the Geocrete, and I followed silently.

Of course they’d blown them all. By the fourth ruin, even
Vin’s
strength couldn’t keep him moving any more. He slumped down, first in a stiff-legged sitting position that he couldn’t maintain. Groaning, he toppled onto his side, his arms frozen against his chest, his legs starting to curl up towards his belly.

I looked around, studying the buildings that lined the Geocrete riverbank on our side, looking, without hope, for a door that would open. I’d scanned every building we’d walked past as we circled the river, but I hadn’t seen a single one we could get into — StayClosed windows and doors had sold big in this suburb. Probably for safety since they lived so close to the Other Side. It was the same in the streets we’d walked as we approached the river — we’d found our last enter-able store hours ago.
Vin
couldn’t make it back that far. I wasn’t even sure I could.

That was when I noticed the people. The first people I’d seen on our side of the river for hours — well, the first living people.

There were about twenty of them, 50 meters or so further along the riverbank, in a neat line, dipping containers attached to long cords or wires into the river and then passing them back along the line. At the end of the line, a couple more people loaded the containers on to a metal trolley, with two shelves and little wheels underneath. When the trolley was filled with containers of all shapes and sizes — Metallo bowls, plastic boxes, TuffChina jugs, and those were just the ones I recognized — the two people loading the trolley would push it away, and two more people would appear from the shade between the buildings with an empty one.

There was something odd about the people. I raised my hand to shield my eyes a little from the rising sun. They were smaller than I was used to. Most of them were hunched over; some moved awkwardly, as if their bodies were twisted.
Olds.
They were a group of Olds who must have gained permission to escape their 100-year Disposal for some reason – which meant most were probably veterans of the Illusory Wars.

They moved slowly, but rhythmically; not rushing, with a plodding rhythm even an Old could likely keep up for hours. Not just that, but they moved with purpose. They were working towards something that didn’t involve crossing the river.

I was immediately interested in finding out what they were up to — but I was also envious of the water they were hauling up. I longed more than ever for the cool of the water to escape the pain in my skin, even just for a moment.

My legs were moving before I’d even thought it through. As I drew closer to the group, one of the men at the front of the line raised a hand and said something I couldn’t hear. Immediately the person at the front hauled up a container, only half full, and everybody in the line apart from the man who’d raised his hand withdrew silently into the shadows between the buildings.

The man who waited was less bowed over than most of them. He
stood,
legs slightly apart, both hands in his pockets, relaxed, as if he was waiting for a ‘cino at a café machine. His hair was silvery colored and his skin was only slightly pink. These people had shelter, and it was somewhere not too far from here.

I stopped a few meters away from him.

He nodded at me. “Good morning.”

“Good morning. I was wondering if I might borrow one of your containers of water.” I held out one of my dark red, blistered hands.
“Just to soak a bit.
And for my friend —” I tilted my head back at
Vin
.

He hesitated for a moment and then beckoned to the shadows. A hunched lady
scurried forward, bearing a small Metallo bowl of brown water, handed it to the man and then scurried back. He held it out to me. “It will only help for a moment,” he advised.

“I’ll take a moment.” I carried the bowl carefully over to
Vin
and scattered some water over his face. I couldn’t see his hands, enfolded somewhere against his chest. I wet my hand again and dripped water over his head and the back of his neck, then did the same to my own head and neck. It smelt bad. I wondered if it would kill us if we drank it. Not that we had much choice. I held the bowl to
Vin’s
mouth; he mumbled something, and then tried to drink. Most of the water spilled. Despite the color and the smell, I drank the rest,
then
carried the bowl back.

The Olds were back in their line, hauling, passing, filling. The old man stepped out of line to
receive the bowl, and another Old stepped forward and another back to smoothly fill the gap.

I thanked him for the water and we stood together for a moment, watching the Other Siders. There was no fear now, no flitting between buildings. They walked on the other side of the river, in SunGear-clad groups of two or three, sometimes looking over at us, sometimes simply walking. It was hard to tell if they were guards, watching for any attempt to build a bridge, or just going about whatever business they had to do over there.

“They look inhuman in those masks,” said the old man.

“It is inhuman, what they’ve done.”

He shrugged. “It’s only what we’ve done to them for decades.”

I’d always thought those blank SunGear masks had no expression. But as I watched the Other Siders glancing over at us I suddenly thought they did. They looked smug. “Do you think they turned off the electricity?”

The old man shook his head. “I think they just saw a chance and took it. The electricity — I think that’s got more to do with the crack in the Vault.” I looked at him blankly. “Over on the east side. It’s been in the FloScreen news for months.”

“I don’t watch the news.”

“Ah. Well, the government swore there was no danger.”

“I hope they’re behind StayClosed.”

A smile split his pale cheeks. “I’m sure they are.”

“You seem to be well organized. Had you thought about building a bridge?”

He shrugged.
“Too old, too weak.
They’re waiting for us anyway. They’d have us tipped into the river before anything we built even touched the other side. Some strong young men like you, though…” He glanced over at
Vin
, in his distinctive fetal position, and frowned.
“Beppies?”

I nodded. “Not long, now.” Phrocking
Vin
. I’d tried so hard for him and now he was going to die anyway.

The old man hesitated.
“Might be able to help you.
If we could still get some into him.”

“You’ve got Beppies?”

“Plenty where we are.”

“Could we … would you … please?”

He hesitated again.
Then nodded.
“Sun’s come up; it’s time we headed out anyway. Think you can carry him?”

Normally, no way.
But today was no normal day.