Jane Higgins - The Bridge

But Dash pulled the beetle chugging to the gutter. ‘It’s true, Nik. We’re in Moldam North already. We’re gonna end up at Port at this rate.’

‘There must be a way through,’ said Jono. ‘They can’t be holding the whole bank – that’d mean they had all the bridges. No way could they have all the bridges. They’d need firepower and organization way beyond what they’ve got.’

‘We don’t know what they’ve got,’ I said.

‘You might,’ said Jono.

‘Jono,’ said Dash. ‘Leave it!’

I said, ‘If they’re so disorganized, how in the hell are their roadblocks so well armed? And where the hell is our freakin’ army?’

‘Go and ask them,’ said Dash.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

‘I’m not kidding. We need to go north and we’re not going north. I don’t know how much longer this fuel cell will hold up. You can talk to them – you could be one of them. Go, ask.’

‘I’m not one of them!’

‘Okay, okay, but you could be. If the cell gives out while we’re still here, we’re stuck. We could be there by tomorrow night if we can just get through. Ask them how far they’ve got, that’s all.’

‘Got my vote,’ said Jono.

Fyffe stopped praying in that whispering way of hers and said, ‘We’ll make it. I know we will.’

Silence from everyone. I listened to my heart hammering.

Dash said, ‘I’ll keep the engine running – if they sense you’re a city kid just take off back here and we’ll run for it.’

‘Dash, if they sense I’m a city kid, they’ll shoot me.’

Jono said, ‘Scared, are we?’

‘Jono—’ said Dash.

I got out of the car and looked back at their faces – wide eyed and pale under the dirt. I must’ve looked as bad. ‘Yeah,’ I said to Jono. ‘I think we are.’ I looked at Sol. ‘Back soon.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t go.’

I went to look for a roadblock.

I headed back to the cornerwe’d just come around and stopped in the doorway of a tiny shop that a week ago had been a friendly little lunch bar. A whitewash scrawl on its broken window announced cheese rolls and meat pasties, which, in different circumstances, might have depressed me – we hadn’t eaten anything for a whole day. A street sign on the wall said Moldam Road. Behind me, the road ran down to the river through terraced houses hung with signs about rooms to rent, money to lend, old gear to buy and sell. A couch, a table and chairs, and a flatscreen sat on the pavement outside one of them, and I wondered whether that was looters busy looting, or some brave soul thinking, why should business stop for war? In the distance Moldam Bridge, the Mol, arched against the afternoon sky.

Ahead of me the road climbed a hill through more of the same. About twenty houses up was the roadblock we’d just been turned back from – four people were sitting on the pavement smoking. They were Breken, and they had guns.

Taking armed hostiles by surprise seemed like a bad idea so I walked into the middle of the road. Of course, walking up a hill with hostiles training guns on you isn’t such a great idea either. I made myself put one foot in front of the other while my brain was spinning in panic about how was I going to ask anything without them thinking there was something odd about this scruffy kid – like, why does he look so terrified and why is his Breken so bad?

They watched me climb. One of the men stood up, but the others just kept on smoking and talking. I was hoping one of them would come down towards me, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pack, but they waited until I’d almost arrived, then the one on his feet motioned me over.

I was still wearing what I’d hauled on in the dark on Tuesday night: sweatshirt, jeans, and boots, all stinking of smoke, thick with dust, and ragged from the rubble of smashed-up buildings I’d crawled through looking for food. Dried blood too – Lou’s blood, and Dr Williams’. The Breken man, on the other hand, looked clean and deadly. He was a southerner – dark, and head to foot in dark clothes, with the assault rifle slung on his shoulder like it was part of him, a cherished part at that. He was years older than the others and looked like he knew how to be in charge. He said, ‘Where are you going? And where’s the car you were in?’

I looked out east across Morstone Flats, mainly so I didn’t have to look at any of them, and nodded towards the sea. ‘They sent me to ask – how far is it safe to go? Can we get to the sea?’

He was watching me, narrow and suspicious. ‘How old are you?’

Not a direction the conversation was supposed to take. The others stopped talking to watch. ‘Seventeen.’

‘Why aren’t you in a squad?’

What the hell was a squad? Assorted answers sprang to mind: no squad would have me; my mother wouldn’t let me; I’m on leave from one. I settled for the shrug. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t happy with that.

‘What’s your bridge?’

Worse and worse. I said, ‘St Clare,’ hoping I’d get the same reaction as at the first roadblock.

But he raised an eyebrow. ‘St Clare? That so? Why do you sound like you’re fresh out of the Gilgate sewers then?’ The rest of them laughed.

That would be because Mace, who I talked this barbaric bloody language with, came from the Breken township at Gilgate, which I couldn’t exactly say, so I pulled out the shrug again. He said, ‘Which is it, then?

‘Gilgate,’ I said.

‘Thought so. You should be in a squad—’

A crack of rifle-fire sent everyone diving. My interrogator moved so fast I didn’t see how he did it – I had barely hit the ground and he was sending off a barrage of shots and yelling instructions to his band. Two of them ran towards the houses under his covering fire. The other one, a woman, lay on the street in a spreading pool of blood.

I took off.

Down the street, round the corner, fast, with the gunfire close and loud. I skidded to a halt by the beetle and swung inside, yelling at Dash to get moving – get moving now!

It was empty.

The beetle was empty.

They weren’t in it, they weren’t under it. They were nowhere. I stared up the street. Maybe they’d heard the gunfire and run for cover. Maybe Jono had convinced them to leave me behind.

The firefight in Moldam Road stopped as suddenly as it had started. Up ahead I saw a figure in an army uniform running across the street. If that was the sniper, the Breken would be close on his heels. I watched for a while, but none of them appeared, so I headed after him, shaky with relief. We’d found the army at last.

They were down an alleywayamong overflowing bins of stinking rubbish – Dash, Fyffe and Jono, and two soldiers. One of the men swung his gun up at me and I skidded to a halt, but Fyffe called out, ‘No! No! He’s ours!’ She came running and grabbed my arms.

‘They took him! They took Sol!’

I was looking over her head at the others and saying, ‘Where’s Sol?’ when I realized what she’d said. It punched the breath out of me and everything went slow and distant: the soldier kicking through the rubbish; the other one pacing at the far end of the alleyway, gun at the ready; Dash sitting propped up against a wall, pale as sin and Jono next to her with his head on his knees.

I looked down at Fyffe’s dirty, tear-streaked face. She had a graze swelling purple and bloody on her forehead. She tightened her grip on my arm. ‘The Breken took Sol. Jono hit one of them but they hit him with a gun and they stomped on Dash’s leg and knocked me down and they took… they took Sol and we have to go after them.’