After a few long moments with her head down around her knees, Lucy got up again. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck with sweat and her damp arms clung to the lining of her leather jacket. Her throat was parched and her stomach growled with hunger. In the forefront of her brain was the fervent hope that wherever Aidan was, it would be straight ahead and not across any more suspension bridges. She looked around at the dilapidated buildings, the mountains of pulverized concrete and twisted girders. This may have been a neighborhood before, but now it was just the shell of one. A path, barely discernible, snaked through the rubble, disappearing a dozen yards ahead between the remnants of two brownstones, their roofs missing, their foundations sagging so that they almost touched at the top. The Hell Gate. The question was, were you entering hell going in or coming out? As far as she was concerned, the jury was still out on that one.
The terrain was unpredictable, and in most places sharply inclined on crumbling slopes made up of equal parts soil and man-made materials. Cinder blocks, sandbags, and planks of wood shored up the various levels like a humongous ladder. She followed the track—so narrow a goat would have had a problem with it. She went slowly, testing the ground, which was loose and studded with rocks. She kept her eyes open for people. Scavengers. Bands of roaming thieves who scoured the streets for anything that could be reused or resold. Rumor was they stole the fillings out of the mouths of corpses.
Suddenly Lucy was conscious of a hum not far ahead, down the next hill. She unclasped her knife, making sure it slid freely in the sheath, and pulled her leather jacket tighter around her body. It was too hot for leather, but it gave her confidence. She hoped it made her look tough. She walked slowly toward the noise, unable to tell if it was machinery, music, or the buzz of human voices. A guide rope was fastened to stakes where the edge of the hill dropped precipitously, with white flags of cloth tied onto wires to make the way clear. Wooden pallets were laid over deep puddles. She stopped. A curve in the trail along the edge of a crag revealed a view of the settlement below: tents clustered like mushrooms, lean-tos made of rough pieces of plywood. She was barely fifty feet above the source of the jumble of noise. She ducked down, feeling nervous all of a sudden. Lying on her belly in the loose dirt, Lucy peered over the edge. A few pebbles rattled down the slope. Just ahead, the path dropped down and opened onto a crowded square.
A wide road, which had somehow escaped devastation, rose high over the canal and ran southward; small walking alleys radiated in all directions, leading to more plywood shacks and, farther up, to the other suspension bridges she had seen from a distance. The central area had been part of the big street. You could tell because it was relatively flat and by the broken white line running down the middle, but the surface of the tarmac was cracked and uneven, giving it the appearance of large black paving stones. Reappropriated awnings and large lengths of canvas were slung on poles around the edges as protection from the sun’s heat and the rains, but the middle circular area was clear.
More people than she’d seen since she left the emergency shelter massed in small groups. They seemed to be mostly children and teenagers, with a sprinkling of gray heads, which didn’t surprise Lucy. It was the middle-aged population that had suffered from the plague the most. People like her parents.
She heard the hubbub of human voices. They sounded excited, happy. And unexpectedly she heard music. A guitar, she thought, and a few singers. People jostled and bantered; some pushed wheelbarrows piled high with broken appliances, and others lounged cross-legged on long benches. Smoke gusted from a massive fire pit. A large black pot steamed above it. Lucy scanned the crowd for Aidan, unable to stop herself from feeling a jolt of excitement at the thought of seeing him again and ruthlessly reminding herself that she didn’t like him.
And there he was, taller than she remembered. His shaggy blond head, his red sweatshirt. He leaned against a crumbling wall that was covered in faded posters and graffiti. As she watched he threw his head back, laughing at something his companion, a girl standing very close to him, said. The girl reached up and smoothed her hand across his face. Even from this distance she was striking. Her thick black hair so sleek it looked oiled and a jumble of silver bracelets on her tanned arms that caught the light.
Lucy wasn’t sure what to do. She’d crossed miles of treacherous ground. She’d lost everything but what she carried on her back. And now she just felt like crawling away. She couldn’t imagine walking downhill into that crowd of people. Knowing her, she’d probably trip and fall. The buzz of dialogue almost hurt her ears. She wasn’t even sure if she remembered how to start a conversation. “Hi,” she said experimentally, and her voice cracked.
On the other hand, they had water, and whatever was cooking above the fire smelled good. Dusk was approaching, and the thought of sleeping out here was daunting. She could cut through the settlement to link up with the Geo Wash Bridge farther north if she meant to keep on going. Or backtrack the way she had come, across the rope bridge again, and then go miles around, and that was an unbearable thought.
She stood up, brushed the dirt from her clothes. Her hands crept up to her hair. The humidity had matted it into the corkscrew curls she despised. She spat on her fingers and dragged them through the unruly mass, but it was no good. She scowled. This was stupid. She didn’t need anybody. There was no one down there whose opinion meant anything to her. She squared her shoulders, shrugged the backpack into position, checked her knife, and took one last look around.
Suddenly she stopped in her tracks. She saw a billow of dust coming from the south along the road. Not a cyclone. This hugged the tarmac, and it moved fast and low. The cloud dispersed, and now she could see a line of vans speeding toward the square. Four white vehicles like delivery trucks, but unmarked. The same type of van she’d seen crawling through her neighborhood sixty days after the plague arrived, searching out the sick and dead, dragging people from their homes. “Sweepers” was what the TV anchors had called them. Cleaning up the mess. Her eyes darted to the thronging crowd. She remembered what Aidan had said, that the Sweepers were hunting survivors now. She was gripped by a fear so strong, it cramped her belly. She was still too far away; the vehicles were moving too fast. How could she alert them?
She waved her arms in the air. No one noticed, not even when she jumped up and down. She could yell, but her voice would be drowned by the tumult of voices below. A sound. Something unexpected. Something that would carry across the square. She pursed her lips. She was pretty good at wolf whistling, a skill she’d mastered to annoy Maggie. But her throat was too dry, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She couldn’t whistle, but she had an idea. She filled her lungs and howled, a long wail that cut through the air like a knife.
CHAPTER SIX
SWEEPERS
The mournful cry seemed to echo. Down below people snapped to attention, froze for a long moment, and then the jumble of noise started up again. There was some laughter and excited chatter, as if it were a prank. Heads turned this way and that looking for the source of the howling. Then someone screamed. She heard shouts: “The Sweepers are coming!” and a dozen arms pointed at the speeding vans barely one hundred yards away now. So close that Lucy could hear the rev of the accelerators, smell the sharp odor of gasoline. They arrived in a column, the exhaust fumes and the dust boiling up along the road behind them.
And then, like an anthill kicked open, people were running everywhere, making for the alleyways, melting into the shadows. It seemed like everyone was yelling. Kids disappeared under tarps and into tents. It was chaotic, but in a way it seemed rehearsed. Aidan was lost in the tumult. She leaned forward, crouched against the ground, searching the crowd for his bright sweatshirt, and found him bent over an old woman who was frantically trying to tie the corners of her blanket together around a pile of fruits and vegetables. Shriveled apples rolled in the dirt. A child stumbled and fell, screaming when he scraped his palms on the rough surface. Aidan scooped him up. A boy and girl, eight or nine years old with identical rats’ nest hair, scabby knees, and dingy undershirts, squatted under an awning with their arms around each other. Two older kids threaded their hands through a column of bicycle tires. They could barely walk with their load. The dark-haired girl yelled at them and they dropped the stuff and scuttled off. Lucy pressed her body into the earth, lifting her head to see. She had a clear view. The square had emptied out. About fifteen or twenty people remained, and most of them seemed to be Lucy’s age. A few of them picked up rocks and sticks from the ground. Some pulled short knives and slingshots from their pockets. They spread out in a thin line. Their faces were set and grim.