Jane Higgins - The Bridge

Over the years, quiet times had come, both sides drawing breath, but then the fighting would surge again as our troops went over to try to establish some order, or the Breken regrouped for an assault on one of the bridges.

But they’d never taken a bridge. They’d never crossed the river in numbers.

Until now.

Help did arrive, but it took three days, and consisted of a single harassed-looking officer from Information Services on foot with a message. The message was this: Things will soon be under control. Could people please go home, or if they had friends in the north, now might be a good time to visit. Thank you and God bless you all. And now, he had a list of rendezvous centers to visit, so please could he just get on with it?

In the uproar that followed, a woman at the back called out what everyone was thinking: Wasn’t the Breken strategy to rip out the center – Watch Hill and the core of the major services – scare the population north, and walk on in? After all, comms were down, and we hadn’t seen anyone from the army, police or emergency services for three days. So wasn’t this message an admission of defeat?

The yelling went on for some time after that, but the officer was ready for it: Did this woman not understand that the Breken were a rabble with no chance against our own superb fighting machine? Did she not have confidence in the General? And would she like to give her name, because a reply from the General could certainly be arranged.

That shut everyone up. The man gathered up his case, slapped on his Services cap and stalked out. Then people went crazy. Dash led us back to the crypt where we held a council of war. We decided to find our own way north to deliver Sol and Fyffe home to Ettyn Hills, then Dash and Jono were coming back to be what help they could. They were still ISIS cadets, after all, and proud of it. And me? First things first, I said. Let’s get out of the city.

But how were we gonna do that? The trains weren’t running. Dash could drive and so could Jono but what were the chances of just happening on a car? Slim to nonexistent, or so we thought. But then we came to Fettlers Lane and the beetle. And that seemed to convince Fyffe and Jono that God was On Our Side. Which, if true, would’ve been helpful four days before, but there didn’t seem much point in saying so.

So that’s how we came to be driving up Fettlers Lane in a broken down taxi-cab looking for a road north.

What we found was a roadblock. A barricade of old furniture had been thrown across Drummond St, and five people stood in front of it. Three men, two women. They had assault rifles slung over their shoulders, and faded red bandanas over their faces. Breken.

Dash gripped the wheel. ‘O God… ogod, ogod, ogod… I could run them down. I will – will I? WILL I? ‘ But the beetle had zero acceleration and the rest of us were yelling, ‘They’ve got guns!’ She braked.

A boy – dark like me, and maybe my age – came towards us and peered at Dash. Lucky for us, we could’ve been theirs. We looked like looters. We were ragged and filthy. I could pass for a southerner and the others were fair enough for easterners. The boy shouted over his shoulder at his band, and then let loose at us with a stream of Breken. Beside me, Dash stared straight ahead, her eyes on the hostiles and maybe her thoughts on how easily she could gun the engine and do them damage. Sol leaned over my shoulder to get a better look. Fyffe pulled him back.

I looked at Sol and put a finger on my lips. Then I leaned out the empty doorway on my side and stood up so the Breken boy would have to look at me over the top of the cab and not at the others inside. He spoke again, another stream of Breken. I sent up a silent prayer to my mother and to Lou and to whoever else might listen, and answered him, in Breken. He didn’t even blink, just carried on. ‘What’re you doing here?’

‘Looking round,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re not front line, are you? Just scavengers, yeah? What’s your bridge?’

I tried, ‘St Clare,’ the closest one to school, and he seemed to buy it.

‘Found anything?’

‘Just this,’ I slapped the beetle’s roof, amazed and relieved that this was working.

He shook his head. ‘You should never have been let through. You better get back by dark or we might mistake you for them.’

Then, miraculously, he waved us away. Dash reversed down the street at speed, and took the first corner she could find. She pulled up outside a smashed-up cinema with red curtains waving through broken glass doors. Somewhere nearby a kid was wailing, or maybe it was a cat, but the street was deserted.

Dash leaned on the steering wheel. Nobody spoke. Then she hit the wheel with the palms of her hands and looked daggers at me. ‘How? How did you do that?’

Sol started to whimper. Fyffe hushed him and said, ‘Macey taught you, I guess?’

‘Was it Macey?’ said Dash.

‘Course it was,’ I said. ‘Who d’you think?’

‘Why did he?’

‘Why? He’s from over the river. It’s his language. So what?’

Jono chimed in helpfully from the back seat. ‘So, everything. Jeez. For all we know you’re one of them. A plant. A sleeper!’

‘Shut up, Jono,’ said Dash.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I’m not hanging round with any Breken-speaking—’

‘Stop!’ said Fyffe.

‘Any Breken-speaking what?’ I said.

‘No, stop !’ Fyffe took Jono’s hand. ‘We’re in trouble here – and maybe Nik is the answer to our prayers. I mean, we prayed to be looked after, didn’t we, and here’s Nik, able to get us through.’

‘You never told me,’ said Dash, still boring holes with her eyeballs.

‘What’s to tell? I speak some Breken because Mace does, and he practically brought me up. You maybe noticed that it’s not the most popular language in school, so I guess I didn’t speak it aloud. All right?’

No. Not all right.

‘What else haven’t you told me?’

‘Dash…’

‘What else?’

‘Nothing! Dammit!’

‘What about ISIS?’ said Jono. ‘They must know. That must be why—’

‘Listen,’ I said to Dash. ‘We’re taking Sol and Fyffe home, remember? Can we try and do that? Because, I’m just guessing here, but it might not be as easy as we thought.’

She looked straight ahead out the windscreen and didn’t speak. I rubbed my hands over my face and stared out the window too. Rubbish gusted across the wreckage of shopfronts and the sky was lowering to gray; maybe it would rain soon.

‘Nik?’ Sol.

‘Yeah, buddy?’

‘Can we go home now?’

‘Yep. Just as soon as we sort something out.’

‘Okay… When?’

I looked at Dash.

‘You should have told me,’ she said. She gunned the engine and we took off.

We met more roadblocks through the afternoon. And the same story at every one: men, sometimes women, with guns and questions.

‘What do they say?’ asked Dash after we’d been waved away by another one.

‘Nothing much. They ask what we’re doing.’

‘And what do you say back?’

‘I tell them we’re scavenging, exploring, that kind of thing.’

‘I don’t get it. They always wave us east, never north. I thought they wanted to scare us north and leave the city to them.’

Jono stirred. ‘Hey, yeah. That’s right. We’ve been going east all this time. Can’t you ask your brethren to let us through?’

In a fight with Jono, I’d be the one surfacing with fewer teeth than I took in and fewer bones in working order, but there’s times, I swear, there’s times it’d be worth it, just to see how far I could get. I bit my tongue and shut up.