کتاب 09-13

13

The farther north they went, the less it seemed they were driving on the Earth. Dunes of gray ash had drifted across the road, sometimes so high and so wide—islands of pale fluffy grime—it seemed wisest to slow down and steer around them. The landscape was the color of concrete. Carbonized trees stood on either side of the road, shining with a mineral gleam under a sky that was steadily turning pale and pink. Nothing grew. Harper had heard that weeds and grass recovered swiftly after a wildfire, but the soil was buried under the caked ash, a whitish clay that permitted no trace of green upon it.

The breeze gusted, grit fluttered across the windshield, and the Fireman turned on the wipers, which smeared long streaks of gray across the glass.

They had been on the road for perhaps twenty minutes when Harper saw houses, a line of mobile homes, on a ridge to the east of the car. There was nothing left of them. They were black shells, windows smashed out, roofs collapsed in. They flickered past, a line of warped aluminum shoe boxes, open to the sky.

By then they were only doing twenty miles an hour, the Fireman weaving in and around mounds of ash and the occasional tree across the road. They passed above a stream. The water was a trough of gray sludge. Debris was tugged reluctantly along in the filthy drink: Harper saw a tire, a twisted bicycle, and what looked like a bloated pig in denim overalls, its ripe, spoiled flesh swarming with flies. Then Harper saw it wasn’t a pig and reached over to cover Nick’s eyes.

They went down into Biddeford. It looked as if it had been shelled. Black chimneys stood amid collapsed brick walls. A line of baked telephone poles stood in a long file, looking for all the world like crosses awaiting sacrifice. Southern Maine Medical rose above it all, a stack of blocks the color of obsidian, smoke still fuming from the interior. Biddeford was an empire of ruin.

In sign, Nick asked, “Do you think most of the people who lived here got away?”

“Yes,” Harper told him. “Most of them got away.” It was easier to tell a lie with your hands than when you had to actually say a thing.

They left Biddeford behind.

“I thought we’d see refugees,” Harper said. “Or patrols.”

“As we head north, I suspect the smoke will intensify, and other toxins in the air. Not to mention all the ash. The air could turn poisonous very quickly. Not for us, mind you. I think the Dragonscale in our lungs will look after us. But for normals.” He smiled faintly. “Humankind may be on the way out, but we have the good fortune to be part of whatever is next.”

“Yay,” Harper said, looking at the acres of waste. “Look at our good fortune. The meek shall inherit the Earth. Not that anyone would want what’s left of it.”

The Fireman popped on the FM band and twiddled through a haze of static, past muted, distant voices, a boys choir reaching for a high note in an echoing cathedral, and then—through the haze—the sound of a leaping, almost goofy bass line, and a man bemoaning that his lover was determined to run away, run away. The signal was faint and came through a maddening crackle and pop, but the Fireman leaned forward, listening with wide eyes, then looking at Harper.

Harper stared back, then nodded.

“Do I hear what I think I hear?” the Fireman asked.

“Sure sounds like the English Beat to me,” Harper replied. “Keep driving, Mr. Rookwood. Our future awaits us. We’ll get there sooner or later.”

“Who knew the future was going to sound so much like the past?” he said.