Morgan Nyberg - Since Tomorrow

Frost turned back toward the Town end of his bridge. The soldiers had stopped advancing. Frost raised his bow. He aimed low, so the arrow would bounce and continue if it landed short. He tried to allow for the wind.

King stood beside Frost, barking like mad.

To the north Will saw Wing and the others on Fundy’s Bridge. But he turned in the opposite direction and sailed down a concrete embankment with his arms thrown wide for balance and carried on running across boggy ground toward Fundy’s house.

So that his bow would not get in the way he backed through the layers of heavy plastic covering the doorway. There was a woman’s shout of fear as he burst backward into the room. He stopped and lifted his bow to begin to say what he had to say, but he found he could not speak. He had no breath. He leaned on his knees and rasped air into his lungs.

A woman in a long dress came and helped him toward a couch, from which rose two women holding babies. But once there he shook his head and would not sit. He turned to the people in the dim room. He held his bow up again, but still could not speak.

The room was full of women. Most of them wore dark floor-length dresses and had their hair hidden under headscarves. There was also a woman in camouflage trousers and a man’s dirty dress shirt. She was one of the addicts who had stayed at the domicile. She smiled tentatively. Little Skytrain sat in the middle of the floor among the bare feet of the women. Like the others, he watched Will.

Among the women there was one man, who sat on a skin rug near the fireplace. He wore Will’s grandfather’s old gold-rimmed glasses and his grandfather’s square-toed leather shoes. Another man now entered from an adjoining room. It was old Moses, in his patched suit, clutching his bible. He gave Will an angry stare. Behind him Solomon came in. He pushed past Moses and went to Will. “Where’s Noor?” he said. “Is Noor coming?”

Young Surrey now stood in the door to the stairwell. He seemed reluctant to come any closer.

Will could finally say to the room at large “Get your bows. Hurry.”

Moses took a quick step toward Will. He said “What?” and held his bible as if he might strike Will with it. Solomon poked Will and said “Where’s Noor? Where’s Noor?”

The plastic over the door to outside parted. A one-legged man with a T-shaped crutch made out of two-by-two came in. He nodded briefly to Will and said “Langley’s attacking!”

Will shouted “Get your bows! You can all help!” But there was now such a commotion that he was ignored.

The man with the crutch came close to Will. “Is that what Frost says? Does Frost say come with our bows?”

Will looked back silently for a second before saying to the man “You can all help.”

The man gave Solomon a swat with his crutch and nodded toward the door that led to another room. Solomon said “No! I want to see Noor!” The man swatted him again. Moaning loudly, Solomon went through the plastic that covered the door. A few seconds later he came back, struggling under a messy armful of Daniel Charlie’s bows. He dropped these at the feet of the man with the crutch, whom he regarded with an expression of fear and fury.

The man with the crutch shouted to the room “Listen! Listen! We’ve got to help. If we don’t help, they’ll kill the rest of us.”

The first to come forward and slide a bow from the tangled pile was the woman in the camouflage trousers.

Will gripped Solomon’s arm. He said “Noor says she wants you to help.”

Will ran full out, but Solomon kept pace with him. In the rain and the fading light Wing and his men watched them race toward them up the shallow slope of Fundy’s Bridge. Wing ran a ways down the bridge to meet them. “What does Frost want us to do, Will? Tyrell says stay here, but…”

Solomon continued past Wing to a man from Fundy’s crew, one of the survivors of Langley’s attack on Fundy’s farm. In his quacking voice Solomon shouted “Noor says we got to fight! We got to fight! We got to fight!”

Wing laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. They walked the short distance to the others as Will caught his breath. The men all watched him. There were only three of Fundy’s crew. Among them was a boy near his age. Wing’s men were there too — Nordel, Bridgeport, Pender and Mitchell.

Solomon was still haranguing Fundy’s man. “Let’s fight! Noor says!”

Will was unhurried now. He said loudly to Solomon “Noor says Solomon has to be quiet and listen.”

And so Solomon could do nothing but try to convey his message with flapping hand signals and by waving his bow, and with body-feints toward the Town end of the bridge. Except for his low whines and the scrape of his sandals on the pavement and the hiss of the rain and wind, it was almost quiet. But when the wind dropped for a few seconds there were shouts from Frost’s Bridge a quarter-mile away. There were screams that caused the men to stiffen as they tried not to look in that direction.

Will cleared his throat. He said “One of the strongest weapons of offensive warfare is the surprise attack.”

For a few seconds no one said anything. Then Wing said “What?”

Will said “Von Clausewitz.”

“What? Will, please. Just tell us what Frost wants us to do. Do we stay here or what?”

One of Fundy’s men pointed down the bridge the way Will and Solomon had come. He said “What the hell?”

The women had reached the foot of the bridge. They all carried bows. The young woman in the camouflage trousers was well out in front of the rest.

Will said “Only when we cut off the enemy’s line of retreat are we assured of great success in victory.”

Wing thought for a moment, said “That don’t sound like Frost.”

Will stood there looking at Wing. He turned for a second to watch the pack of women in their long dresses running up the bridge through the rain. He turned back to Wing, stood there looking at him again. He said “Grampa says follow me.”

Then he was running toward the Town end of the bridge with Solomon and the boy at his side. The wind and the slap of their steps and the clatter of arrows in the plastic bags at their sides drowned out the distant screams.

The wind was like a hand in the air that batted the lengths of cattail cane toward the upriver edge of the bridge. Deas said “Langley’s even talked the wind into working for him.” Then he shouted and fell, and there was the crack of the 22. But he rose again and took his weight on one foot and did not even look down at the red blotch on his poncho at the thigh. He fitted an arrow and let it fly and then fitted another. Like the others, he aimed downriver, off the side of the bridge. And now, like the arrows of the others, his arrows bounced upriver on the wind and swooped into the midst of the soldiers.

As they fitted their arrows Frost’s people crouched in two files behind the car-metal shields of Airport and Boundary. They stood, shot and crouched again. Airport and Boundary rested their shields at an angle on the pavement. There were deafening crashes as crossbow bolts struck the shields and ricocheted upward.

Airport and Boundary could not support the shields and use their bows at the same time. Airport reached behind him and dragged Salmon around to take his place. Her one arm was enough to hold the shield. She sat there with her head ducked, holding the shield at the necessary angle. Boundary swapped places with Brittany, who fit easily behind the car trunk lid. He and Airport stood and stepped away from the shields. They reached mechanically for arrow after arrow in the bags at their sides. There was not a second when the air between Frost’s people and the soldiers was not swarming with cattail canes tipped with sharpened metal.