“How much it set you back?”
Wentworth grinned. “Enough. Don’t worry about it though, I figure I owe it to you for having my back so many times.” The smile left his face and he stared out at the horizon. “Listen, I don’t know about you but this place is starting to feel a bit too civilized for my tastes. Plus I can’t stop staring at that tower in the distance. What do you say we go check out those ruins east of here?”
“Yeah, sure thing. And yeah, I know what you mean, not much is happening here. But first I got something for you, too.” He grinned widely and wiggled his eyebrows. He went around to the back of his truck, gesturing for Wentworth to follow. “Here put this up against your ear.” He handed him a black disc connected to a wire. Wentworth listened while he picked up a similar unit. “Breaker-breaker-one-niner,” he said.
“Breaker-breaker-one-niner,” came the tinny voice in Wentworth’s ear.
“I got the idea the other day while we were listening to the radio. Radio’s easy enough to do, you don’t even need expensive parts. Now we can talk when we’re on the road.”
“Right on,” Wentworth nodded in admiration.
“Just let me clean a few things then we can get going.”
Chapter 31
This was it then — the last of the forgotten highways. No traffic, no destination — only the bones of the great civilization.
Wentworth pressed the button connected to his headset. They were still testing the radios, as well as working out what sort voice-procedure patois they’d be using. “Romeo, this is Whiskey. Radio check; over.” A second later Raxx’s voice answered.
“This is Romeo. Loud and clear, buddy, looks like they’re working fine — over.”
“Roger that, Romeo. Whiskey out.”
The echoes of their engines echoed for kilometres up and down the sound-barricaded corridor.
Wentworth had taken lead again, negotiating a path forward. Vehicles littered this highway. Their electronics blown out, most were parked on the thin shoulder, but many still littered the main paths of travel. They threaded their way through, encountering no difficulties, but vigilant for any scattered debris from some of the multi-vehicle wrecks they saw.
The hulks flashed by, one by one, empty of occupants. Nobody had cleared this highway.
On either side, the occasional building could be seen over the barricades. All of them had their windows blown out, and most showed signs of fire damage. Empty tombs, flitting by. There was no human life here, little animal life, and only the occasional patch of green struggling in the piles of dirt that had accumulated on the shoulders. But despite all the decay, the highway stayed good to them.
Up ahead the ruins loomed. They kept dipping behind the horizon, or hiding as they curved around a bend, only to reappear larger and more decrepit. Wentworth ignored them, his eyes were focussed on the road ahead.
“Whiskey, this is Romeo — you figure we’ll find anyone out here?”
“Whiskey — better hope not. This place is putting me on edge, and I figure anyone else out here will be feeling the same. Better ready your weapons when we stop, just in case, Over.”
“I hear that — Roger. But I don’t see any tire marks, so we shouldn’t have to worry.”
“I feel like the rules don’t apply here… Out.”
Billboards started to appear, thirty meters tall, on either side of the road. Their paint was faded, and their products forgotten. Fire damage was becoming more common, gutting the high-rises. The distant sky would blink through as the windows aligned.
“Hey, uh, Whiskey — you see that? What that going on with the road up ahead? Over.”
They were passing an off ramp, up ahead the road appeared jagged, its sides twisted and distorted. “Whiskey — Yeah, I see it. We should slow down and check it out — Over.”
“Roger, out.”
They slowed their vehicles, coming to a stop. Raxx’s truck groaned as he pulled the parking break. He got out and walked over to the idling motorcycle. “What the hell do you think caused this?”
Wentworth had been studying the mess in front of him since they stopped, trying to figure it out. The road came to an abrupt end three meters above the ground, sixty meters ahead. In between was a mess of shattered concrete, steel rebar, and I-beams. He knocked out the kickstand, and got off of the motorcycle. He pulled out a cigarette. “One of the bombs, maybe.”
They walked towards it. This had been one of the highway’s major intersections, almost a full cloverleaf. He spotted the remains of a railway which had run parallel to them, as well the avenues beneath the highway. Parts of the wreckage suggested there’d been a short tunnel here, three or four layers of transport. Now there was nothing but crater.
Raxx looked up at the sky, as if imagining the bomb’s detonation. “Huh. Maybe. The buildings around here look like they might have been hit with a blast wave centred here.”
Wentworth smoked, stretching his knees. “I was about to say that we ought to get off this road, anyways. The wrecks are getting denser, the closer we get. You up for a bit of urban navigation?”
“It’s not like we have much choice.”
Every aspect of the landscape was getting denser. Along the side streets were single-dwelling homes and residential neighbourhoods, but the main drag stayed commercial. Everywhere tall buildings lined the streets, refusing to topple. It was hard to imagine how many people had lived here.
The going was much slower than on the highway. Cars were everywhere. Mostly they were parked along the sides of the street, and passage was still possible, but occasionally there’d be the remnants of a multiple-vehicle accident blocking an intersection, or abandoned cars and trucks parked lengthwise across a street. Once they came across a bus which was flipped on its side and wedged in against the buildings. Bit by bit they made their way further east, backtracking when necessary, going on side streets and through residential neighbourhoods, over wild lawns and down alleyways. The towers were growing larger each time they saw them.
Litter and refuse were everywhere. Waxy advertising flyers blew about, water stained and faded. Newsprint and other cheap papers lay in the gutter, grey and yellow lumps covered with lichens and moulds. Everything was rusted, the street lamps and traffic signs. The wooden benches had rotted over the years, and the cement had shattered wherever water had seeped in and froze. The few remaining plants growing on narrow strips of earth and in sidewalk cracks were black and misshapen, their flowers off-colour with mottled spottings. There was no sound but the howling wind and clattering detritus. Their passing was a brief interlude, the growl of ancient motors before returning to the silence of abandonment.
The path forced upon them eventually took them to the waterfront. Residential buildings lined the street and stretching out to the east they could see the overgrown remains of parks and beaches. Wentworth stopped his motorcycle and pulled out his binoculars, looking for any signs of habitation. The occasional tumbleweed rolled along the wide avenue, but aside from that there was no movement. Like everywhere else in this city the plants were twisted and mutated, poisoned by the radiation and left over pollution. Without fertilizer and care they’d stopped growing strong. After a few minutes Wentworth put away his binoculars and looked over at Raxx, parked next to him.
“I don’t see anybody out there. That beach looks like it’d be good for travelling on — free and clear as far as I can see. I’m going to stick to the pathways, but I think your truck should be able to handle the sand.”