Jane Higgins - The Bridge

Lev was dead.

I don’t even know how – caught by a flying piece of building in the night maybe, or knocked about by looters or hostiles, or trampled by people escaping north, or he might’ve just keeled over with a heart attack. But, the thing is, no one had noticed. It was the middle of the day, and no one had noticed a dead guy propped up on the edge of the square.

That’s when I let myself hear what I’d been thinking all morning. No one is coming. No troops in their jeeps. No police. No emergency services. No one.

St John’s was teeming with people, all of them arguing. They crowded the steps and the wide-open doors, eyeing me as I went through. Inside they’d reorganized pews and occupied side chapels; piles of belongings were strewn everywhere. Downstairs in the crypt, I found Dash with Fy and Sol, and, unfortunately, Jono.

Dash stormed over to me as I came down the stairs. ‘ Where have you been? We thought they’d got you.’ She grabbed me in an almighty hug and I figured I was forgiven, temporarily anyway. Jono and Fy were sitting together on a bench. Fy looked exhausted. Sol was roaming around the crypt. He arrived at my elbow and said, ‘Hi, Nik. Did you find Macey?’

Jono looked up. ‘Macey? Why were you looking for him?’

What would I have given to have Lou there instead of Jono? Anything at all, that’s what. ‘No reason,’ I said. ‘Just to say good-bye.’

‘Is that so? How friendly of you.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Just you and your secret squirrel ways. Anything you’d like to tell us?’

‘Sure. I know where there’s a secret lunch stash with bread and cheese and pickles…’

Sol’s eyes lit up. ‘You do?’

‘No. Sorry. Kidding.’

‘But I’m starving.’

Dash put an arm around him. ‘Me too. If these guys can just lay down their weapons for a minute, we might be able to think about food and how to get it. What d’you say?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Good idea.’

But Jono pushed on. ‘Did you find out what ISIS wanted you for?’

‘Nope. Do you want lunch or what?’

He gave me a narrow stare then turned to Dash. ‘What can I do?’

Dash had become team captain, which was fine by me. She was easily the best at it.

‘We’ll go and look,’ she said. ‘You and me and Nik. Fy, you stay here with Sol.’

Sol grabbed my arm. ‘No! I’m going with Nik.’

He was wound up tight as a top. I could feel him trembling. I looked at Fy. She was sitting on the edge of a bench staring through us. I said, ‘You know, I think I’ll stay. You ISIS-types don’t need me.’

Jono turned for the stairs, muttering, ‘That’s for real. C’mon, I’m tired of doing childcare.’ Dash looked from Fy to Sol, said, ‘Yes, that makes sense,’ and followed Jono up the stairs.

‘Dash?’ I called after her. ‘Careful, yeah?’ She gave me the thumbs up, and was gone.

We found some blankets and cushions in the minister’s room at the back of the crypt and made a pile of bedding under an icon that glowed gold and blood-red in the dusty light that spilled down the stairs. The blankets were coarse and hairy and the cushions were hard but better than nothing on the flagstone floor. I played number games with Sol. Fy watched us and after a while she started to sing under her breath. Sol curled up and went to sleep.

I went upstairs then, to look about. It was chaotic. Some people had come because their homes were damaged, but mainly the place was full of people who were too afraid to go home in case more mayhem hit. They’d dug in to wait for help to arrive, and the way they did that was to have endless meetings, mainly entitled (as far as I could hear) ‘Who Should Be In Charge Here?’ and ‘Why Hasn’t the Army Arrived Yet?’ I told one or two people about old Lev, and said shouldn’t we move him because even beggars deserved some respect and anyway, the dogs would be out tonight and did they want him chewed on, and bits of him dragged around the square? I didn’t actually say that last part, but I hoped their imaginations would get to work on the problem. That prompted yet another meeting.

Mid-afternoon, Jono and Dash got back. They’d scored three sticks of day-old bread, a jar of meat paste, some tins of corn, and four bottles of water. Also a lot of stories about hostiles rampaging across St Clare and Sentinel. ‘Word is,’ Dash said, ‘they’ve taken the riverside between Torrens Hill and Moldam North. Someone said they’ve got Watch Hill and the Central Comms building, but that can’t be right. I’d say they’ve taken some pockets here and there along the riverbank and that’s it. They must know they can’t win. They’ll be back over the bridges by morning with the gates locked behind them. Count on it.’

Around sundown, the minister of St John’s, who was looking very hassled and beleaguered by now, took Jono and me across the square with some sheeting and we hauled Lev back into the churchyard. The minister said that when the Services arrived Lev would be dealt with properly, and in the meantime did we want to say a few prayers for the old guy?

We said okay, and we all went back into the crypt and lit a couple of candles on the small altar there and sat on the benches. Jono said some words, and then Fyffe said some better ones, tears streaming down her face. Because, of course, Lev wasn’t the only dead person we were thinking of. Dash nudged me to say something, but I shook my head. The lump was too big in my throat and, anyway, I couldn’t see the plan or the reason behind this one at all. Lev – well, maybe Lev’s time had come, I don’t know. But for the rest… as far as I could tell it was a futile, stupid, meaningless waste. And that’s all it was.

The minister said we could sleep down there if we wanted though it wasn’t exactly the Ritz, and we said that’s okay, we were too tired to notice. When the lights went off for black-out we left the candles burning. I sat with Sol and played a memory game with him until he went to sleep. Then Dash said to me, ‘Where did you go? This morning. You scared me, disappearing like that.’

‘I wanted to look around, see what was happening.’

‘Why not come with us?’

‘Tell you later.’

She was silent then, which was a bad sign, but the truth is, I didn’t want to tell her about my encounter with her ISIS buddies. I lay down and watched the candlelight flicker across the ceiling and thought about Lou and Bella, and Dr Williams. I heard Fyffe crying, muffled against Jono’s shoulder, and I guess I cried too.

I thought about the people who’d done this. The Breken on Southside – also known as Soulside and Suicide on account of what happened to city folk who strayed over there. Southsiders, Shantysiders, Shadowsiders – they had lots of names, most of them unrepeatable.

What did we know about them? They were barbaric, we knew that – they kidnapped children for spare parts and fed aid workers to the river. They’d started coming here from Oversea, and from out of the Dry, four, maybe five, generations ago, and by all accounts they were still coming. They were running from their own wars, and from lands made unliveable by the breaching of the mega-dams in the South, the power-station meltdowns in the East, and everywhere, the desert, the spreading Dry. They wanted our land and our water and they’d take whatever else they could. In the early days they’d overrun the whole south side of the city and only ISIS and our troops prevented them from teeming over the bridges and taking the north as well. The vids from the unmanned drones that ISIS put in the air showed us two cities now: ours – the real city – and its shadow, a crowded, dark, derelict place where savage twins of each one of us watched over the river and made plans to replace us.