Jo Treggiari - Ashes, Ashes

Aidan was an uncomfortable thought. Lucy pushed it away. She wasn’t going to see Aidan. She was going to stock up, rest, and figure out where she would live now. Aidan was where people were, and where food was, that was all. She cupped her hands, scooped up more lukewarm water, and dribbled it over her head and neck, then smoothed her hair down as best she could. The road was flat for a few hundred yards. Beyond that it dropped off again, but she couldn’t tell how far. She walked, watching out for loose rubble. In places the mangled tarmac was marked with a broken white line, but it was no longer straight. It deviated from the middle and twisted suddenly and disappeared. She estimated that she was around Second Avenue and 92nd Street, although acres of road and earth had been shifted in the big quake, the landscape completely reconfigured. Sometimes she thought it looked as if a toddler had built a city out of blocks and then knocked them all down in a rage.

Lucy had reached a gorge that was as big as a canyon. It went down about forty feet and then climbed back up nearly the same distance in a series of trenches like giant steps. There was no way around it—it crossed the entire width of the ridge. When she finally pulled herself up the last craggy slope, bruising her knees in the process, she found herself on top of a plateau. Straight ahead of her was a deep, wide ravine, and stretched across it, ridiculously fragile, a suspension bridge. It swung in a gentle rhythm, although there was no breeze. This must be the Grand Canal. For a minute or two Lucy looked across the chasm. She chewed on her lip. Sweat trickled down her back and her heart thumped painfully against her breast bone. It was so high. The bridge was anchored on her side by several loops of rough-looking braided rope attached to an outcrop of rock. Lucy tugged on it and then stepped onto the bridge, which dipped with her weight. Each step created vibrations that traveled the length of the bridge and then bounced back, throwing her off balance. She crept forward, holding on to the rope supports with both hands, her arms outstretched to their full length. She tried to keep her eyes on the far side, but she couldn’t control her gaze. It was drawn to the ground far below. The channel bed was almost completely dry. The two downpours they’d had at the beginning of the Long Wet were not enough to flood it yet. Sharp rocks and rubble were strewn on the bottom, along with mounds of garbage. She saw a baby stroller, a dented refrigerator with its door hanging loose, wads of rain-soaked paper, tattered clothes and blankets, the twisted wreck of an old metal bed—the kind they used to have in hospitals, with wheels and coiled springs.

The rung she shuffled onto snapped with a sharp crack, half of the wood breaking off jaggedly and spinning out into the air. Her already weakened ankle twisted. Her foot went through the hole; the weight of her body threw her forward onto her knees, and the bridge swung crazily from side to side, tilting so that she was no longer on a level surface. Now one edge was vertical. She was being tipped off. She grabbed at the ropes, burning red stripes across her hands, and halted the fall. For several minutes she didn’t move. She lay there sideways with her head hanging over the edge, waiting for the bridge to stop swaying and right itself again. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase the image of the rocks sticking up like spearheads at the bottom of the canal. Slowly she shifted her weight toward the middle. The bridge leveled out. Once her heart had stopped pounding, she pulled her foot from the hole. Like a bear trap, splinters of wood had pierced her jeans and the sock she’d tied as a bandage over the bone. Her ankle was ringed with scrapes like tooth marks. She moved from her knees to her feet and began to inch her way forward again. Her teeth chattered so hard, her skull hurt and her jaw ached. By the time she got halfway across there was a sheen of sweat across her face, which she dared not wipe off, and her legs were trembling. She forced herself to keep moving. When she stepped off the bridge onto firm ground, her legs gave way beneath her.

After a few long moments with her head down around her knees, Lucy got up again. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck with sweat and her damp arms clung to the lining of her leather jacket. Her throat was parched and her stomach growled with hunger. In the forefront of her brain was the fervent hope that wherever Aidan was, it would be straight ahead and not across any more suspension bridges. She looked around at the dilapidated buildings, the mountains of pulverized concrete and twisted girders. This may have been a neighborhood before, but now it was just the shell of one. A path, barely discernible, snaked through the rubble, disappearing a dozen yards ahead between the remnants of two brownstones, their roofs missing, their foundations sagging so that they almost touched at the top. The Hell Gate. The question was, were you entering hell going in or coming out? As far as she was concerned, the jury was still out on that one.

The terrain was unpredictable, and in most places sharply inclined on crumbling slopes made up of equal parts soil and man-made materials. Cinder blocks, sandbags, and planks of wood shored up the various levels like a humongous ladder. She followed the track—so narrow a goat would have had a problem with it. She went slowly, testing the ground, which was loose and studded with rocks. She kept her eyes open for people. Scavengers. Bands of roaming thieves who scoured the streets for anything that could be reused or resold. Rumor was they stole the fillings out of the mouths of corpses.

Suddenly Lucy was conscious of a hum not far ahead, down the next hill. She unclasped her knife, making sure it slid freely in the sheath, and pulled her leather jacket tighter around her body. It was too hot for leather, but it gave her confidence. She hoped it made her look tough. She walked slowly toward the noise, unable to tell if it was machinery, music, or the buzz of human voices. A guide rope was fastened to stakes where the edge of the hill dropped precipitously, with white flags of cloth tied onto wires to make the way clear. Wooden pallets were laid over deep puddles. She stopped. A curve in the trail along the edge of a crag revealed a view of the settlement below: tents clustered like mushrooms, lean-tos made of rough pieces of plywood. She was barely fifty feet above the source of the jumble of noise. She ducked down, feeling nervous all of a sudden. Lying on her belly in the loose dirt, Lucy peered over the edge. A few pebbles rattled down the slope. Just ahead, the path dropped down and opened onto a crowded square.

A wide road, which had somehow escaped devastation, rose high over the canal and ran southward; small walking alleys radiated in all directions, leading to more plywood shacks and, farther up, to the other suspension bridges she had seen from a distance. The central area had been part of the big street. You could tell because it was relatively flat and by the broken white line running down the middle, but the surface of the tarmac was cracked and uneven, giving it the appearance of large black paving stones. Reappropriated awnings and large lengths of canvas were slung on poles around the edges as protection from the sun’s heat and the rains, but the middle circular area was clear.

More people than she’d seen since she left the emergency shelter massed in small groups. They seemed to be mostly children and teenagers, with a sprinkling of gray heads, which didn’t surprise Lucy. It was the middle-aged population that had suffered from the plague the most. People like her parents.

She heard the hubbub of human voices. They sounded excited, happy. And unexpectedly she heard music. A guitar, she thought, and a few singers. People jostled and bantered; some pushed wheelbarrows piled high with broken appliances, and others lounged cross-legged on long benches. Smoke gusted from a massive fire pit. A large black pot steamed above it. Lucy scanned the crowd for Aidan, unable to stop herself from feeling a jolt of excitement at the thought of seeing him again and ruthlessly reminding herself that she didn’t like him.