‘Please!’ said Liam. ‘Don’t go yet. We need to know more!’
‘I tell you this … it not safe. North, fighting there never stop. You shou’ go west.’ He pointed east across the rolling fields of barley. ‘East no good too … Dead City, maybe twenty-five mile that way. Poison. Not good for you health.’
He shrugged an apology as his wife tugged insistently on his arm. ‘We go now.’ The carriage’s large wheels rolled forward on to the road as a fan of acrid smoke erupted through the spokes.
Liam coughed and wafted it out of his face and, as it gradually cleared, he watched the carriage clatter, rattle and chug its way along the road heading towards New Pittsburgh, or at least that’s what the hand-painted sign at the junction indicated.
They watched until the carriage was just a faint twinkle of swinging lanterns in the distance.
‘I suppose we should find somewhere to hide before it gets too light,’ said Liam. He looked around. On either side of the roads heading north, south and west, as far as his eyes could see in the grey light of dawn, it was nothing but shoulder-high ears of barley swaying gently and whispering.
They followed the single-lane road heading north. Only a dozen vehicles passed them by; most of them ramshackle-looking carriages, carrying families and their worldly possessions stacked high.
One vehicle in particular sounded different enough as it approached from the distance for Bob to suggest they hide. And they did, crouching in the field amid the stalks of barley as it drew nearer, came into view and eventually rolled slowly past them.
Sal exchanged a glance with Liam.
The vehicle was military, a ‘tank’ being perhaps the most appropriate word to describe it. It looked almost comically top heavy — the approximate proportions of a small terraced house. The top ‘floor’ was a large gun turret that looked like it probably rotated, from which protruded three short-barrelled cannons. At the very top a hatch was open and a tired-looking army officer in a crimson tunic and white sash was smoking a pipe and gazing out across the rolling fields.
The bottom ‘floor’ of the tank was a mass of iron plating and rivets flanked on either side by caterpillar tracks that ground noisily along the tarmac road. The tracks wound round a large solid iron rear wheel and at the front a much smaller spoked wheel. Between the wheels on each side, a miniature side-cannon protruded.
As it slowly passed them by, Sal got a glance at the rear of the tank’s bulky chassis. Iron-plated shutters were open, revealing three panes of glass, like the bay window of a suburban house. Through them she could see, by the muted amber light of a gas lamp, half a dozen soldiers gathered around a table, having breakfast by the look of it, and bunk beds in three-high stacks.
They watched the enormous vehicle trundling its way northwards. The rumble of its engine and the squeak and groan of the caterpillar tracks continued to hang in the air long after they’d lost sight of it in the pallid grey light of dawn.
Liam looked at the others. ‘That looked like a gentleman’s club on wheels.’
An hour later, just after the sun had breached the horizon, they finally came across a smaller potholed lane that branched off the road and led into what appeared to be a small deserted hamlet.
They soon found themselves on a village green overgrown with weeds. The buildings surrounding it were boarded up and derelict. Over every ground-floor window wooden slats had been nailed in place — years ago, by the sun-bleached look of them.
‘A ghost town,’ said Sal.
‘Aye.’
Bob strode towards the door of the nearest building, a chapel. Its timber slat walls were flecked with white paint here and there, but most of it was the dull pale grey of weathered wood.
‘Information,’ his baritone voice rumbled as he reached out a hand to hold down the frayed and curled corner of a notice tacked to the chapel’s door. The others joined him as he read out the faint printed words on the tattered page.
‘Notice of clearance: this settlement has been evacuated in accordance with the War Appropriations Act. It is an illegal act to enter, occupy and/or make use of these properties, which are scheduled to be cleared and used as additional farmland in due course.’
‘It’s an old notice,’ said Sal, pointing at a date in the corner. ‘See? Fifth of June, 1985.’
‘Been deserted for … what? …’ Liam frowned as he struggled to do the maths.
‘Sixteen years,’ said Bob.
‘Right.’
‘I’m thirsty, Liam,’ said Sal.
He realized he too was thirsty. The cool of dawn was soon going to become the cloying warmth of a September morning. They needed to find some drinking water. ‘I suggest we look around, see if this ghost town has a well or a rainwater tank or a spring or something.’
The sun was warming the sides of the old buildings, casting long cool shadows in their wake across weed-strewn front gardens. He could see the remnants of lives lived here: a children’s swing dangling from a rusting A-frame, a mailbox on the top of a post nailed to a picket fence — inside it the dried twigs of some birds’ abandoned nest, a washing line with the tattered threads of laundry still pegged to it, flapping gently.
Liam suspected that sixteen years ago the people living here must have been evicted with little or no warning.
Feeling a pang of guilt — he didn’t know why — he swung a kick at the chapel’s wooden door. It creaked but failed to give.
‘Let me,’ said Bob, casually thrusting one shoulder against it. The door didn’t even bother to try arguing with him; it cracked, surrendered and rattled inwards.
‘Right,’ said Liam, rubbing the sore toe of his foot, ‘let’s see what we can find.’
CHAPTER 32. 2001, New York
Maddy realized she must have been lost in some sort of a daze. The night had passed without her really even being aware of it. She vaguely remembered settling down in the corner of some bomb-damaged warehouse, gathering her knees to her chest for a little warmth and crying. She must have fallen asleep at some point and now it wasn’t daylight that had woken her up — it was someone’s boot, roughly kicking her side.
‘Hey, wakey, wakey.’
She looked up to see two men staring down at her. Soldiers, by the look of them. They both wore something that approximated a uniform: dark blue, almost black tunics; belts; buckles; pouches; and cloth slouch caps. She blinked back at the brightness, reached for her glasses and wiped dust from them.
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ one of them said. His face seemed to be mostly beard beneath the peak of his cap. ‘Gonna have to take you in, girl. Colonel’s gonna want to talk to you.’ He offered her a hand.
‘I’m sorry … am I … am I in the wrong place or something?’
‘Wrong place?’ Beardy-face laughed. ‘Hell, girl, the whole darned sector’s the wrong place.’
She let him pull her up. ‘I’m sorry … I don’t …’ She looked at him. Beneath his peak, his skin was dark, his cheeks speckled with grey stubble. ‘Am I in some sort of trouble?’
‘You’re a civilian in a front-line Union defence zone.’ He shrugged. ‘If the colonel reckons on yer bein’ a Southern spy, you gonna be in a whole world o’ trouble, girl.’
‘S’right,’ said the other soldier, pale as cigarette ash and surely only a couple of years older than Sal. ‘Had us a spy through this way coupla months back, didn’t we, Sarge?’
‘Uh-huh,’ replied the black soldier. ‘Weren’t no girl, though.’ He studied her suspiciously. ‘Either them Southern boys’re gettin’ clever, or they gettin’ desperate.’