William Dietrich - Getting back

"What if we see bodies?" Iris worried. "I don't want to see bodies."

"I don't think there'll be anything left by this time," Daniel reassured. In truth he was unsure, and uneasy at the thought himself. He didn't want to find buildings of bones.

"I don't think we should go in at all," Raven said.

They ignored her. It was curiosity more than need. They were in too much of a hurry to thoroughly explore or salvage anything in Gleneden, but the roads they were using to get ahead of Rugard led them to the New Town and they'd all quietly wondered how much remained. Or how much had been lost.

As they entered they saw that many stores had been looted and a few buildings had been torched. Yet taken as a whole, very little had been destroyed in the panic that accompanied the plague, and it was only the obvious hollowness of the towers and emptiness of the streets that proved disquieting. Everyone was subdued, morbidly wondering what it must have been like to have a civilization- in all its complexity and anxious energy and optimistic enthusiasm- suddenly snuffed out. Careers, romances, dreams, and regrets: all suddenly gone, rendered insignificant, by the breath of bioengineered plague.

The planned and hastily erected community was a snapshot of early twenty-first-century architecture, its retro style tempered by cost-conscious design and its warmth compromised by the demands of transportation. Human-scale pedestrian malls were backed by car-dictated parking lots, and tower villages were separated from each other by a moat of expressways and empty, overgrown lawns. Faded and streaked billboards and powerless neon announced sales of products that no longer existed. Directional signs pointed with names that were now obsolete. The architecture and layout were as precise as the geometrical design of a computer chip, and just as inhuman. Without people, it was just a collection of boxes. Instead of human skeletons they found automotive ones, the metallic carcasses of cars scattered now like corroding bones. The pavement had cracked and plants had rooted, spreading across the detritus of leaf litter and dust that had accumulated atop the impervious layer. There were vines and scrubby weeds and the buzz of insects, all announcing that the inhabitants of Gleneden were dead.

Daniel realized the desolation was slowly making him angry. "These people were abandoned just like we were," he said. The group had stopped at an intersection, instinctively huddling together.

"Left with no hope at all," Amaya added.

The quiet was gloomy.

Raven looked irritated, as if this journey through a dead city was designed as an affront. "They weren't abandoned, they were quarantined," she corrected. "There was no cure, so it was imperative the plague not jump to another land mass. It wasn't ruthless, it was… necessary." She looked around grimly at the empty office and condominium towers.

The trekkers regarded her with distaste. "And that pragmatism is what you worked to protect," Daniel said.

She bit her lip. "It's cruel to individuals. I don't deny that."

"And now you're one of those individuals. Outcast like we are."

"Yes."

"Think of the souls that were lost here, Raven. The individuals. How long would it take you to write down their names? This place is a sin. A crime."

"Don't you think I see that! But think of the souls that were saved elsewhere by this abandonment, or are saved every day by an economic and political system you think is so heartless." She wasn't going to back down. "Think of the billions that have tolerable lives because of the United Corporations order you call stultifying. This tragedy is an embarrassment, but it doesn't discredit that system, Daniel. It underlines its necessity. This shows how fragile all of human society is, how thin the civilized and technological veneer is that keeps out the darkness. That's what I've worked to protect."

"This wasn't caused by a breakdown of civilization! It was caused by its culmination! How can you defend the scientific arrogance that led to all these deaths?"

"How can you not admit the worth of the scientific and political expertise that has allowed more humans to live today than ever before in history?"

"Raven, this is a mausoleum," Ethan objected. "I mean, come on."

"Because of one accident," she amended with exasperation. "Before that it was a city, with life and laughter, created as part of a system I still feel an allegiance to. Of course this is wrong. All of it. All of Australia. If I get back, I'll be working to expose that. But not the rest. I can't not believe in the rest. I can't give up on the rest. I have to believe in something."

Daniel looked at her sadly.

She wouldn't tolerate his pity. "What do you believe in besides your wilderness nihilism, Daniel? What do you believe in besides running away?"

"I believe in what feels right," he said quietly. "I believe in what we are, instead of what we build." He glanced around. "I believe that United Corporations lost something along the way- not their soul, but our soul, and that we've come to a place like this to get it back. Not this city, but this continent."

"Even if that were true, not everyone can come here."

"Maybe everyone doesn't have to. Maybe it's enough to have the wild for the few who truly need it, and who bring back its spirit to the rest. None of this would be so wrong if they allowed us to get back. It's the keeping us here that's so wrong."

"Now you're going in circles, contradicting yourself, just like in the tunnels. It's your determination to get away from here that makes the lesson of Outback Adventure so right."

Her dogged certainty irritated him. "I'm not- "

"Enough!" Ethan held up his hand. "This is the debate we'll get to have if any of us can get past Rugard and back home. For now we have to keep moving."

"I think we should look around a bit," said Amaya. "Raven and Daniel both have a point, and here in this city we've got both worlds: the technological and the wild. Let's see if there's anything worth taking."

"Don't take!" Oliver exclaimed. "It's bad luck!"

"Just for an hour or two," Amaya said. "It won't hurt."

Some of the trekkers nodded. They were looking speculatively at the stores, wondering what might still be worn or acquired after more than three decades.

"It would be fun to go shopping again," Iris said.

"Fun not to have to pay for anything," Ned added.

"No!" Oliver said. "This is a bad place, a dangerous place. We need to move on! Too many died here, I can hear them."

"We're just looking around a bit," Amaya said. The others nodded. "Why don't you and Angus go ahead and wait for us at the end of town?"

The native Australians reluctantly agreed.

"All right, we meet back here in two hours," Daniel told them. "Be careful in these old buildings!" He looked at one of the towers. "I'm going to go up to one of these rooftops and try to see the ocean."

The office tower was fifteen stories high, modest by the standards of the city they'd come from, boxy and plain. Still, it was imposing after months in the wilderness. Daniel recognized the name at its base from the corporate subsidiaries and institutional advertising elsewhere: Coraco. Industrial mining and development. The security pod in the central lobby was deserted, of course, and its news kiosk was frozen in time. Many of the periodicals had been shredded by rodents for nests, but a few pages of the Gleneden Paradise revealed a yellowed November 19, 2023.

"Illness Spreads," one headline stated. "Massive Relief Effort Promised." Had that been the day of panic? The day of realization that no relief was actually coming, that there was no escape, and that the only alternative was blind flight that became as hopeless as staying? What about the few who'd survived, like Oliver and Angus? He remembered from his college days the dire prediction of what would occur if the bizarre arms races of the twentieth century had ever resulted in nuclear war: "The living would envy the dead."