Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series (24 page)

CHAPTER 25

The thought that Tynan could wake at any moment pushes me to hurry. With nothing to carry and a few bites of jerky inside me, I feel stronger and walk fast along the train track. It runs only a mile before it veers west. This flat, open land is crossed with hard roads and lumped with the rubble of low buildings. I leave the track and walk the roads, pointing myself always at the mountain.

For the first few miles, the buildings lie far apart, set away from the roads. As with the other city, nature has been reluctant to reclaim this concrete plain. Trees huddle in tight bunches, and weeds straggle up from cracks. This is a dusty, thirsty place.

The city ahead is smaller than Cramen. The biggest buildings are half the size of those towering monsters. The outskirts have a crushed and demolished look, like the buildings have been bashed down instead of left to sag and rot through the ages. Cars angle and lean in disarray, unlike the tidy lines of the other city.

As I walk from the openness of the outskirts into winding tangles of smaller streets at the edge of the city, I can’t help but think this area was destroyed with a purpose. Rusted, twisted metal beams thrust out of bramble-encased mounds of rubble. The roads lie strewn with all kinds of objects I don’t recognize. Posts and signs have been knocked down. Here and there, great mounds of ivy seem to resemble the shapes of large houses slouching under the weight of time. In places, rich forest has overwhelmed the ruins. In others, the land seems permanently poisoned.

After two hours, I’ve covered several miles, staying on the bigger roads, keeping to the middle of the concrete. All the while, I’ve kept the mountain straight ahead. I look over my shoulder frequently, but so far there’s no sign of Tynan. If he’s not dead, he surely will follow me. He will know I wouldn’t turn back now.

I stop for a brief rest where two wide, concrete roads cross. For the past mile, the forest has begun to give way to more ruins—burned-out steel and concrete buildings, scorched black and covered in centuries of grime. Some still have glass in their windows, but most look like a giant came with a huge hammer and torch to beat them down.

Even among this destruction, I feel ghosts lurking in the ruins. They watch as I walk by. I feel their curiosity, their hunger. The land is steeped in a bitter resentment. Even though my clothes haven’t fully dried, I feel compelled to cover up. I dress and strap Tynan’s knife to my thigh again, its cool presence reviving a little confidence.

I rest at this crossroads, studying my options. Each road angles away from the mountain, one toward its western side and the other toward the eastern side. Do they keep splitting, ultimately wrapping around the mountain? Do they converge again before the mountain’s foot? Prophecies didn’t say anything about this part of the journey.

The east road seems to run along the bottom of a line of low, empty hills. Going that way, I could get a good view of the area. The road to the west runs deeper into the city, toward the tottering husks of tall ruins.

The east road calls to me. The empty hills are much less scary than the city. There are no signs to point the right way. Which road would Dane take?

Which road would Tynan take?

I don’t have time to think about it. I fear the city. The image of that ashen, leering skull fills me with dread. But that skull didn’t attack me; wild dogs did. I can overcome fear. I can’t overcome wild dogs, and I can’t overcome Tynan.

I slip my boots back on and take one deep breath, then launch myself down the western road toward the city. With hours of daylight left, and a late-rising moon that should give good light as long as the weather stays clear, I can go a long way. I won’t reach the mountain’s peak tonight, but if I walk most of the night, I can likely reach it by midday tomorrow.

The road continues to be mostly clear and easy traveling, and within a half mile I begin to pass smaller side roads that branch off this one like veins in a leaf. Most are crumbled and heavily overgrown. At each, I consider straying from this road to try a more direct, southerly route to the mountain. But I stick to this path, which rewards me with a gradual turn south.

Ahead, buildings less than half as tall as the ones in the bigger city wait for me. Simple rectangular boxes, battered and broken but enduring. The road I’m on twists away and then back, but it always points toward that center. Thick ivy and brambles shroud the shapes of cars, big and small, some crushed or even turned upside down.

In only an hour, I near the center of the city with the tallest buildings. An incredible, violent destruction occurred here. I think that even another thousand years of nature’s work wouldn’t hide the pain and anger that lingers over this place. At some of the bigger crossings, I have to scramble around or climb over large mounds of concrete, metal, glass, wood—rubble gathered into huge barricades.

Only a few hundred yards from the city’s center, I slip while climbing over one of these piles and crunch something under my foot. It’s bone. It looks like the bones of a human arm and hand. I don’t stop to examine it, but within another hundred yards I’m tiptoeing around dozens of crumbling skeletons and avoiding the empty gazes of pale skulls. Each time I see one, I whisper a tiny prayer for the poor soul whose remains will lie exposed for eternity.

The tall buildings are little more than metal frames ringed by piles of shattered glass. Concrete, stone, and brick are battered and gouged and scorched where they still exist at all, and only piles of rubble remain in some places. The lower buildings, if they still look like buildings, lie as vacant as the skeletons I avoid.

In the middle of this devastation, a strange change comes over me. My fear of the ghosts melts away. I no longer feel accusation and anger from the spirits that hang over this place. Instead, I feel the sorrow and regret of a destroyed people.

As I walk, I think constant prayers for the people that were here. I ask constant questions about how they could do this to each other, to themselves. I know the answer because I’ve seen it firsthand, seen it repeated in my own home. And as I walk, I feel the need to be witness to these lost people. To be their forgiver.

Suddenly I find myself amid the tallest buildings of the city. They don’t loom above like concrete canyons, towering monuments to an ancient culture. They slump before me, exhausted by the shame of ages past. I don’t know why, but I feel a sudden, overwhelming urge to go into one of these buildings.

I stand in the middle of a crossroads, two wide streets intersecting between four towers, and I look at each of the towers in turn. They’re all charred and mangled, but their steel skeletons stand sturdy. I pick the one that feels the least menacing and broken.

Picking my path carefully among a clutter of ancient remains, I reach the front doors of the building, their glass shattered and their frames mangled off their hinges long ago. I step through the opening into a dank and mildewy gloom. Rotting chairs line one wall, and a thick, decaying counter confronts me at the far side of the entryway. Behind it, a simple door stands open.

I go through and find a stairway, intact and empty, leading up into a blackness that rivals a Subterran cave. No way am I going into that darkness, but I feel called that way. I need to see into the past, try to understand the ancients if only a little bit. The mountain can wait fifteen minutes.

If only I had a torch,
I think.

Dane is clever in situations like this. What would Dane do?

I return to the entry and poke at the chairs, which are covered with brittle cloth, dried and crumbling. I cut long strips with Tynan’s knife, exposing a thousand bugs that skitter and scatter away. When I’ve wrapped the cloth around sticks of the rotting wood of the chair’s frame, I light it using flint stored in the hollow handle of Tynan’s knife. It flares and disappears in a puff, too dry to stay aflame but good for tinder. Without thinking much, I saw away the legs from my pants, which are now dry and scratchy. They will burn just fine for my torch, and I don’t really need my legs covered anyway.

I climb the stairs, passing floor after floor, each bearing a faded, etched sign that indicates how high I’ve climbed—
2nd Floor, 3rd Floor, 4th Floor
—until I can go up no more and the sign says
Roof Access
on a door with a metal bar across it. I pull on the bar, but the door doesn’t budge.

I try pushing, and the door screeches forward. It grinds out a few inches, letting daylight stream in through a small crack. I set the torch down and stomp it out, then lean my shoulder into the door. After a few pushes, the gap is wide enough to squeeze through.

The roof is flat and broad, thick with a layer of rotted leaves and debris. Where the door has swept the crud away, the roof looks brown and half rotted. I step carefully out onto the mess. It seems to hold my weight, and with each cautious step I inch closer to the low wall edging the building all the way round.

To the south, the mountain stands looking over everything. When I reach the top, I’ll be able to see for miles and miles in all directions. The peak looks a lonely place, visible from everywhere but conspicuously isolated.

To the east, the city dissolves at the base of a range of abrupt hills. To the west, the city grows bigger until it runs into another ridge. To the north, the city slumps into a seemingly endless sprawl across a wide, flat plain until it meets the expanse of bay that almost killed us. From here I can even see the high, arched bridge that crosses it.

The road I walked rips a ragged scar through both the empty plain and the ruined city. A strange mix of relief and regret pull at me as I look for Tynan staggering along that road but don’t see him. Maybe he’s dead, or maybe he gave up. But I don’t believe either of those. He’s out there, somewhere, trying to find me.

The ruins of the city slouch humiliated before me. The people here—ten thousand times the number that perished in Tawtrukk and Southshaw—lie forgotten and abandoned. I gaze over their city and think about them. My heart aches for every one of them.

I think about their humanity, their loves and their hatreds, their dreams and their disappointments. I think about the fear they must have gone through in those final days, the terrors of the war and the crush of knowing their children would never grow up.

All these things I imagine for them. All these things I raise in silent prayers. Forgive them, Lord, as they were unable to forgive each other before the end.

I think of the empty skull in the pile of ash. Forgive that one, Lord, and all the others like him. Forgive the ones that killed them.

And, Lord, forgive the one I stood over in the chapel in Southshaw as he died, asking me for absolution.

Tears come to me as I think of him, bleeding away his last minutes on the floor of the sacred place he helped destroy. I thought I did not have the power to absolve him. I thought I could not bring him peace. But I was wrong. That power is not reserved for Semper, I realize, as tears now stream unrestrained down my cheeks. He didn’t need a church authority to absolve him. He only needed a witness, someone to acknowledge his remorse and regret.

I raise my arms out as if to grab the entire city in an embrace.

Lord, I pray, let them all have peace. Every one of them. In Southshaw. In Tawtrukk. In Subterra. In the mountains. In the empty city. In this place. And in every other place in the world where the War brought suffering. Lord, I absolve them all. Let them finally have peace.

I say this prayer as I turn north, west, south, and east. At last I put my hands down and close my eyes with a deep breath. When I open them, I look to the east, trying to see the high, faraway mountaintops of Southshaw.

The snow-washed peaks stand stark against the darkening eastern sky. A dozen vultures circle nearby, over the golden ridge of hills that mark the edge of the city. The afternoon sunlight makes the hills almost glow.

Something on the ridge moves.

A single, dark figure walks along the hilltops, heading south. He’s far away, but his silhouette is clear enough.

He stops. He puts his hand to his forehead to shade the sun from his eyes. I think he’s looking this way. After a moment, he starts again, but not south toward the mountain. He walks down the steep, empty hillside. Directly at me.

I don’t wait. I run back to the open door, ignoring the rottenness of the roof, and I fling myself down the stairs which are now dimly lit by sunlight falling through the open door. I run out into the road again and don’t slow down. The mountain is due south.

I knew Tynan would find me. I knew he would never stop. Never.

If I hide, he will find me. I could evade him for a while, but how would I survive? Berries and leaves got me this far, but I’m no hunter. I’d rather face Tynan before trying to survive on cockroaches and beetles.

I could let him come and try to set a trap. I’m smart enough. I could catch him somehow. Make him fall through a weakened roof, perhaps. But he’s clever, too. He survived the war with Tawtrukk. And I have no bait other than myself.

If I try to flee back to my parents, he’ll catch me. And if he doesn’t, I’ll be ripped apart by wild dogs or mauled by a mountain lion, or worse.

No matter what I choose, the end is death or capture. I would prefer not to die, not yet.

My only hope is to convince him not to hurt me.

I must make him remember that what he truly wants is not standing here. What he truly wants is hidden in a box buried under a white stone marked with a black cross on the top of that mountain. He wants to be the one to discover what the ancients left behind. He wants to bring God’s word back to the people. He wants to be Semper.