After a moment of quiet, when it was clear the other mules had backed down, Owen asked Chester, “Is it a dangerous place, where we’re heading?”
Chester leveled his eyes at Owen, and snickered. “You really need to learn when to keep quiet.” He looked down at his food container again and then up at the eyes of the other mules fixed on him. He sighed and said, “I can’t say for sure, honestly. I’ve been near this way, a few years back. We went closer to the Richmond Fever Lands that time. Made the mistake of drinking from the James River. Felt it for days.” A weak cringe flashed over his face.
“Anyway, most of the bandits along our route congregate near the north-south tube, which is to the west of us, so we shouldn’t see any trouble. That’s one of the reasons we went this backwoods route. This way there are a few fishing villages, like Tappahannock, but not much else. These villages probably don’t have enough warm bodies to mess with us, even if they wanted to. But even those out by the tube don’t want any trouble, really.”
“What’s the tube?”
Chester smirked, again amused at Owen’s ignorance. “It’s a big, hollow cylinder that goes north–south, to the west of the 95 highway. Sometimes it goes underground. They used it to transport big loads of stuff back in the Old World times. According to your railroad friends we’ll be near a branch of it when we arrive tomorrow.”
“What about the stories we hear about raids on bike platforms? Why don’t the bandits do that anymore?”
“I’m sure it still happens, but they’ve gotten smarter over the years. If you think about it, life is hard enough without worrying about us harmless Spokes, especially with them being close to the fever lands and all. And then there are other bandits—and never mind the retchers. Why pick a another fight?”
Another mule spoke up. “I heard there used to be hundreds of thousands of them back in my granddads time. Now there are fewer, while Spoke numbers are increasing.”
Chester laughed. “Yeah, it may be there just aren’t enough of them left to put up a fight. In any case, there’s been a kind of unspoken agreement to leave each other alone. Then again, we don’t know if that’s true where we’re headed. I’ve never been there before.”
This take on the bandits was a far cry from the horror stories and caricatures he’d heard in Seeville. But it made sense. The bandits were just people trying to survive, just like Spokes.
“Have you seen any of Richmond?” Owen asked.
“The thing about Richmond, or any fever land, is that there really isn’t much left to see,” Chester said. “Every once in a while someone does go in. Heck, there are lots of broad paved roads heading in to Richmond, and even some living trees and flowers. It can be tempting.”
Chester finally finished with his container and put it down. “But I once met a fellow who went into the Washington Fever Lands. He told me enough. He was one of those New Founder types, all hopped up on the Old World presidents and their ilk. When he came back, he said there was nothing to see. He said he could have walked right over the White House—you know where the Old World’s rulers lived—and wouldn’t have known. The only thing he came back with was the fever. He died just a couple days later. It sounds funny that you could be sick just from walking through a place, but I believe it. Drinking that water from the James River tells me enough. Heed the signs. Those places are real sick, no matter what they look like.”
“What about other Old World cities?” Owen asked. “Do we know if there are any big ones still standing?”
“Well, I doubt many books were written after the nukes fell, so it’s hard to say. But I can tell you up north people say a lot of the big ones are gone, like Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore. In the south as well, near the Spoke border is a town called Atlanta that got nuked. The people up north, they get funny when they talk about New York. They call it the black hole, so it could’ve been nuked too, I guess. I don’t know about other places over the sea, or in SLS lands for that matter.”
Owen again marveled at the enormity of what was lost from pre-Detonation times. Did they really hate each other so much to not only kill millions, but also create these everlasting patches of death? Sometimes he felt sympathy for the Essentialist way of thinking—the thinking that the earth had punished the Old World people for poisoning it. He would never say it aloud, though.
Chester was looking around the circle. Some of the other mules were fidgeting. “Us mules don’t like to talk about the Detonation too much, though. We die from the fever lands, we die from the retchers, and we have people falling to the ground like a pretzeled wheel at the bike towers. There are too many riddles caused by the Detonation, and too many of those riddles tend to get us killed. Sometimes it’s better to just forget about the riddle so you can get on with your day. Best to focus on something simple, like keepin it between the ditches, you know.”
They stared into the fire in silence for a while, and the mules started to adjourn. Eventually, the railroad folks came back, whatever scheming accomplished. Owen hoped they would pull him aside and update him. He hoped at least Preston would say something, anything. But they promptly left for their tents without a word.
Owen sighed and called it a night as well.
SMOKE STEAMING FROM THE SNOUT
In the morning the campsite around Flora serenaded her with a symphony of squelches as their footfalls in the moss released the waters absorbed by the night’s rains. A chill had also descended, giving each breath a perceptible vapor.
After Mehta had scouted the environs, they made out eastward again. The grade kept fluctuating, but thankfully not too steeply, or it would surely have resulted in some nasty falls on the muddy ground.
The sun was soon shining, and it rapidly warmed up the air. By the time they had made it into Spoke farmlands, their boots had dried.
Mehta and Rosalie posted flags on poles sticking out of their backpacks, so as to not be mistaken for Essentialists. The flags featured the sigil used by the mercs; the silhouette of a man standing guard with a rifle and shield, with yellow vertical stripes prominent on the torso.
They encountered a trail headed in an easterly direction, which Mehta directed them to follow after checking his bearings. Their plan was to make contact with a Spoke the mercs knew in the town of Culpepper. From there they would be escorted to Seeville by train.
In the distance they could see farmers doing their work, or livestock roaming around, but no other signs of life. These farmers seemed to not be paying attention to passersby. Rosalie had explained that it was unlikely they would encounter resistance outside of a major town. It had been many years since the Essentialists had dared venture into Spoke lands.
“Do you feel any different, being in Spoke territory?” Cecile asked.
Flora eyed Ember and Mehta. They were far ahead in their column, out of earshot. Rosalie was also far away, having fallen behind to stalk a groundhog with her crossbow. Regardless, Flora chose her words carefully. “I’m not like most Essentialists,” Flora said. “I knew a man who was born in Spoke lands, near Lynchburg. He told me about Spoke life as a child. So Spokes aren’t scary to me. Although maybe it’s changed since then.”
“It has, and it hasn’t,” Cecile said. “Not many trains back then. That’s the big push right now. The line goes all the way up to Kingston and down to Jacksonville. In a couple years it will reach all the way up to Pembroke in the north. It’s really changing things. Helping them get more organized.”