I moved a little closer to the channel and looked down at the brown river rolling through it. My hands were dark red and blistered. Every inch of my skin throbbed under the Bluesuit. The river rolled on, deep down in the Geocrete, lapping at the edges. The sound was rhythmic, rushing, splashing. I longed to bathe my hands and face in the soothing and refreshing water. I’d tried dipping one hand in Tapo at our last store, but it stung and left my skin stickier than it was before. The channel, though, was too deep, the river too far away. Even if I lay on my stomach I’d never reach it. If I dropped into it, I’d never clamber back up the smooth walls.
As those thoughts ran through my head, the first body went by. Half floating, half submerged in the swirl of brown, she swept past me. A woman with long, dark hair waving in the current and a single pale swollen arm slightly lifted out of the water. I thought for a moment she might be alive and reaching for help, but the only thing moving was the river. She rolled over in the current, and her arm swayed up and down, as if beckoning me to come and join her. For a moment, I let my muscles relax, let the pain of my burns seep through my body, imagined myself taking a step closer to the edge. Imagined letting myself topple over and fall, spinning in the hot fetid air, until I sank into the water, entwined my arms with hers and just let it go. Let it all go. The staring eyes in the pulpy faces in the windows.The picture in my head of my parents, scraping their fingertips to blood, trying to escape the StayClosed. The bodies we’d seen on our way here, hanging, poisoned. The couple who’d split each other’s belly open with ButcherSharpies, sprawled on the sidewalk outside the store they’d taken them from, surrounded by their slimy insides, each holding a knife in one hand, their other hands clasped together. I could fall into the water and let it wash me clean — wash it all away, outside and in. The muscles in my legs twitched. Just one step.Then a half step. One of my feet slid forward, involuntarily, scraping against the Geocrete…
A cough from behind me broke into the rhythm of the rushing water, interrupted the flow of my thoughts. “I’m ready, mano. Let’s go. Gotta find us a bridge, then we’re over to the Other Side, getting us some Beppies. Oh yes, gotta have some of those Beppies. Some SunGear, get us all healed up. Get us goin’, mano, get us goin’ real good. If you could, mano, just help me up here.”
I turned and saw Vin, rocking on his butt, trying to lift himself up using only his legs. His arms were coiled tightly against his chest. His body had just moved into spasm, which meant he must have been fighting the brain crawl for hours. He was strong, stronger than I thought. He was also in more trouble than I’d thought. Spasm started with the shoulder and arms, but in an hour or two it would move to his legs. Within a few hours after that, he’d be curled in the fetal position, in silent agony, with his mouth frozen closed as the spasm moved to his internal organs. And if he’d taken enough Beppies, he’d never uncurl again. I’d read Disposals hated Beppie deaths. They had to break bones to get the corpses to fit into the narrow incinerators.
I glanced back at the water. The woman’s body was long gone. And Vin needed me. He, at least, still had something to live for, even if it was just Beppies.
I grabbed one of his curled arms and hauled him up. I had no idea where we were. “Right or left?”
“Always right, mano, always right.” He managed a kind of grin through his stiffening lips.
Once he was up, Vin moved along pretty well, even if it was more of a shuffle than a stride. We followed the Geocrete riverbank for so long it felt like we were walking in a straight line, although I knew it had to curve slightly to encircled City Central. Right or left, it didn’t matter; we had to come to one of the bridges eventually.
What we came to was the ruins of a bridge. Dented Metallo panels and frayed cables hung from both sides of the canal — in the middle was nothing, just a great gap under which the river rushed onwards, oblivious.
Neither of us said anything, but our steps slowed as we grew closer, even though it was clear there was no way over the river here. The remains of the bridge couldn’t have crossed a utility unit, let alone a river.
We stopped and surveyed it in silence. “Didn’t know the electricity going out could do this,” said Vin. His voice was utterly toneless; I couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.
I lifted my eyes from the wrecked bridge, gazing across the wide expanse of Geocrete that lay between the river and the low, shabby buildings of the Other Side. The sun was rising, almost over the horizon now, but the shadows seemed deeper there than over here. Some trick of the dying sun. I kept looking, peering into the spaces in between the buildings. The answer had to be over there — and I saw it. “There, between the buildings.”
For a moment Vin was silent, then his voice hissed in my ear.
