Fragments (36 page)

Heron snorted. “Does it matter?”

Kira watched the water roll by and sighed. “I suppose not. What do we do?”

“We’re not getting Afa across without a bridge,” said Samm, “plus we’d soak the radio,
and I don’t trust its claim of ‘water resistance.’ I say we follow the riverbank until
we find a bridge intact.”

“North or south?” asked Heron. “This time the question actually does matter.”

“According to our map we’re still slightly north of Denver,” said Kira. “We’ll go
south.” They turned their horses around, Kira whispering encouragements to Bobo and
patting him softly on the neck. The riverbank itself was impassable, not just along
the shoreline but several yards back from it, nearly a full quarter mile in some places.
The ground was either too steep or too swampy or too dense with trees, and more often
than not all three. They followed a narrow highway as far as they could, though more
than once they found that it had wandered too close to the river and sloughed off,
washing away into the relentless flood of water. When that road turned away they moved
to a different one, though the story was similar there and occasionally worse. The
first bridge they found looked across to the biggest city since Chicago, but this
bridge was destroyed, just like the last one. The second day they found themselves
trapped where the road had been completely washed away, surrounded on one side by
the river and the other by a lake, and were forced to backtrack several miles. Here
the wetlands stretched well over a mile from bank to bank, probably more than two,
though Kira couldn’t help but wonder how much of her estimate was accurate and how
much was helpless frustration. It was beautiful, alive with birds and flowers and
fireflies turning lazy circles over the marsh, but it was also insurmountable. They
found a new road, prayed that it would take them to a bridge, and followed it south.

After two days of searching they came to the village of Gulfport, more under the water
than over it. Heavy stone pylons marked where a bridge had once stretched across to
the much larger city on the far side, but except for some girders peeking forlornly
from the surging river currents, nothing but the pylons remained. Kira swore, and
Afa slumped painfully in his saddle. Even Oddjob, usually eager to wander during their
pauses in search of green shoots to munch on, seemed too depressed to move.

“It’s got to be the river that took out the bridge,” said Samm. “These cities were
too small to be a factor in the war, and none of them are military targets. I think
the river’s just too . . . big for its own good.”

“Two big for our own good, too,” said Heron.

“Somebody had to cross it first, right?” asked Kira. She nudged Bobo’s flanks and
walked him farther toward the water’s edge, peering around the bend in the trees as
far south as she could see. “I mean, somebody had to build the bridges, and somebody
had to cross before that.”

“Not with Afa they didn’t,” said Heron. Her tone of voice seemed to imply that they
should leave him behind for the sake of the mission, but Kira didn’t even bother to
glare at her. She did shoot a glance at Afa, though, mostly asleep tied into his saddle,
head bobbing in and out of consciousness as the painkillers warred with uncomfortable
sitting position.

“We could build a raft,” Kira said. “There are plenty of trees, and if we want to
brave that sunken city, we could find planks and boards all over the place. If we
build a raft big enough, we could ferry the horses across, and Afa with them.”

“The current’s a lot stronger than it looks,” said Samm, but Kira cut him off.

“I know,” she snapped, more harshly than she intended. “That’s why we haven’t tried
crossing it before now, but what are our options? We’re on a tight schedule as it
is, even before we took a two-day detour in the wrong direction. We need to go west,
so let’s . . . go west. It’s that or head south for another couple of weeks.”

“You’re right,” said Samm, “but we don’t build our own raft unless we have to, and
if we get to the point where we have to, we’ll know we’re essentially doomed. Look
at that town over there—these were all shipping towns, using the river to haul freight
back and forth in the old world. All we have to do is find a boat that still floats
and use that.”

“So far all the big towns have been on the far side,” said Heron. “Unless you want
to head back north two days to Moline. I don’t remember any convenient barges lying
around up there.”

“Then we keep going south,” said Samm, and angled Buddy farther down the road. “We’ve
come this far, we may as well keep going.”

“Is that a good reason to keep going?” asked Heron. “‘We’re getting really good at
failure, we may as well stick with it?’”

“You know I’m not very good at sarcasm,” said Samm.

Heron snarled. “Then I’ll put it more plainly: This is stupid. Kira has her own reasons
for coming out here, but I’m here because of you. I trusted you, and I’m trying as
hard as I can to keep that trust alive, but look at us. We’re in a swamp, lost in
a dead country, just waiting for the next attack, or the next injury, or the next
little stretch of muddy road to just fall off into the river and drown us.”

“You’re the best one of us,” said Samm. “You can survive anything.”

“I survive because I’m smart,” said Heron. “Because I don’t get myself into the kinds
of situations that could kill me, and frankly, that’s the only situation we’ve even
been in for weeks.”

“We can do this,” said Kira. “We just need to calm down a little.”

“I know we can do it,” said Heron. “As much as I complain, I’m not an idiot—I know
we can cross the damn river. I just want you to assure me that we should.”

Kira started to speak, but Heron cut her off. “Not you. Samm. And please tell me it’s
not because of this”—she waved her hand angrily at Kira—“whatever-the-hell-she-is.”

Samm looked at Heron, then out across the river. “It’s not enough, is it? Just to
follow; just to have faith in someone bigger and smarter and better informed. That’s
how we’re built, that’s how every Partial is wired—to follow orders and trust in our
leaders—but it’s not enough. It never has been.” He looked back at Heron. “We’ve followed
our leaders, and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose; we do what they say and
we play our part. But this is our decision. Our mission. And when we’re done, it will
be our victory, or our defeat. I don’t want to fail, but if I do, I want to be able
to look back and say, ‘I did that. I failed. That was all me.’”

Kira listened in silence, marveling at the strength of his words and the force of
his conviction. It was the first time he’d really explained himself—beyond the simple
“I trust Kira” statements—and the sentiment was the opposite of “I trust anyone.”
He was here because he wanted to make his own decision. Was that really so important
to him? Was that really so rare? And how could it possibly sway Heron, who was already
so fiercely independent? She might have been a Partial, like them, but Samm was appealing
to something in his and Heron’s collective experience that Kira was realizing she
didn’t understand. Samm and Heron stared at each other, and she could only guess at
the link data flowing between them.

“Okay,” said Heron, and turned her horse to follow him. They started south, and Oddjob
followed, and Kira brought up the end of the line, lost in thought.

The Mississippi led them to more flooded towns, most even smaller than Gulfport: Dallas
City, Pontoosuc, Niota. Niota held another former bridge, reaching across to the first
major hills they’d seen in weeks, a promontory bluff and a town called Fort Madison.
Niota was in better condition than the last three villages had been, and they waded
in as far as they dared, searching for anything they could use to float across. Samm
found one end of a barge tipping up from the river at an angle, but nothing still
holding to the surface. The current was, indeed, stronger than Kira had expected,
and she waded back out of the eerie, underwater town as soon she as she could.

“Well,” said Heron, flopping down beside her on the grass. “We’re still stuck, but
we’re soaking wet. Remind me again how that’s an improvement.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kira. “As hot and muggy as it is here, you’ll have something new
to complain about any minute now.”

“Let’s get back to Afa and the horses,” said Samm. “We can make it another ten miles
today if we keep moving.”

“Wait,” said Kira, staring at the sunken city. Something had moved. She scanned it
carefully, shielding her eyes from the bright glares and flashes reflecting up from
the surface of the water. A wave surged, and it moved again, big and black against
the glimmering water beyond. “The barge is moving.”

Samm and Heron looked out, and Kira whispered to wait, wait, wait . . . and then another
wave sloshed against it and it moved, almost lightly. “It’s still buoyant,” said Samm.
“I thought it was sunken.”

“It’s moving too freely to be pinned,” said Heron. “Maybe tied down?”

“And if we untie it,” said Kira, “maybe we can use it.”

They shucked their guns and heavy gear and waded back into the city, this time kicking
off and swimming when the river grew too deep to stand in. The river was strong, but
they kept to the lee side of the buildings, moving hand over hand along the roofs
as they picked their way toward the barge. It flapped faintly against the current,
nearly the farthest object from the shore. They hoisted themselves onto the last building
out, watching the trapped barge from the roof.

“It’s definitely moving,” said Kira. “As soon as we cut it loose, it’s going to pop
right up and float away.”

“We’ll have to tie it to something else on a longer line,” said Samm. “We’ll want
a safety line on whoever goes out there anyway.”

“One-two-three not it,” said Heron. “But I will get you a rope. The last building
we passed was a hardware store.” She slipped back into the water and Kira followed,
not wanting to let anyone—even someone she vaguely mistrusted—enter a ruined, flooded
building alone. They touched off from the wall and felt the current catch them, carrying
them south between the buildings even as they tried to swim east to catch the next
one. Heron caught hold of the rusted rain pipe with one hand and reached for Kira
with the other, grabbing her as she rushed by. Kira felt something solid beneath her
feet, probably a car or the cab of a truck, and pushed off from it as Heron pulled
her toward the hardware store. Kira caught the windowsill, grateful there were no
shards of glass poking out from it, and ducked her head below the surface to swim
inside.

There was a foot or so of air in the building, trapped between the ceiling and the
top of the river, though a faint breeze and a shaft of light showed that the air was
kept fresh by at least one hole in the roof above. The damp atmosphere had covered
the ceiling and the visible portion of the walls with moss, and Kira brushed some
from her hair as Heron surfaced beside her. “Looks pretty well scoured out by the
river,” Kira told her, for most of the Sheetrock on the walls, and anything once attached
to it, had long ago been washed away.

“There’s bound to be something lower,” said Heron, and they maneuvered to the widest
stretch of southern wall—it was less likely here that the objects they needed, and
indeed the swimmers themselves, would be swept out to the river beyond. Heron dove
first, staying down long enough that Kira began to get seriously worried, before popping
to the surface and brushing her coal-black hair from her face. “No rope,” she said,
“but I think I found some chain.”

“Let me look,” said Kira, and tucked herself into a duck dive down against the wall.
She tried to open her eyes and found the water too dark and muddy to see in. She felt
something heavy and coiled, slicker than rope but smoother than chain, and tried to
lift it. It budged slightly, but was too heavy to move. She jumped up, breaking the
surface and grabbing the wall for support. “I think I found a hose.”

“Is that strong enough?”

“It should be, if it’s long enough.”

Heron pulled her knife from its sheath, popped it open, and bit it in her teeth before
diving down. Almost a minute later she bobbed up with the knife in one hand and an
end of the hose in the other.

“How long can you hold your breath?” Kira asked.

“Biologically superior,” said Heron. “I keep telling you. Take this, the other end
is still stuck to the shelf with a zip tie.”

“Probably why it’s still in here,” said Kira, but Heron was already gone. She surfaced
a while later and nodded: success. Kira began coiling the hose as well as she could,
and stopped after the first twenty coils. “This has got to be at least a hundred feet.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Heron, and gripped a portion of the hose as Kira ducked back
out of the open window. Kira bobbed up farther south than she’d intended, looking
up to see Samm watching from his roof. Was he smiling to see her? Of course he’d been
worried with them gone so long, but Kira found herself hoping that he was worried
about her, specifically, rather than just the success or failure of the search for
rope.

She pushed the thought away and held up one end of the hose. “Hose,” she said simply,
short of breath as she struggled against the current. She worked her way back to Samm’s
roof, and he pulled her up. Heron clambered up behind her, not looking nearly as exhausted
as Kira felt. Samm pulled up the looping lengths of hose and coiled them on the mossy
shingles. He pointed back through the sunken city to the shore, where Heron’s horse
Dug was watching them solemnly.

“I think that’s the best place to try to land it,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty clear
shot, depending on how deep it rides, but it looks like a pretty shallow barge. If
we head back that way and tie off one end of this to . . .” He paused, studying the
bits of architecture that poked up above the water. “That light pole. I can swim out
from here, tie this off, cut whatever’s holding it, and then we can tow it in to shore.”