Chapter 9: On Foot
After a long space of time, sitting in the dark with their ears strained, they still had not heard the beast returning. Eventually, Bard’s wish to learn overcame his terror enough for him to whisper;
“What was that thing?”
Drifter shook the dust from his hood. “I don’t know. I thought I knew the creatures of the dark by now...but it would not listen to me.”
Moving over to the hole, he peered out cautiously. Nothing could be seen except for the parked car and the evening sky spreading reddish-purple over the ruined city. There was no sign of the marauding griffin or any other living thing on the move. Kitchen knife still held in his hand, though it was hardly a lethal weapon against something so large and armored, Drifter made his way out over the fallen slabs of stone into the open.
“It’s clear. Come out now.”
Bard crawled out, wiping dust and the mud of tears from his face. His glasses had survived the ordeal intact, though he carried them in one hand. Standing up, he blinked around shortsightedly before fixing them in place. The only signs that the monstrous beast had been there was the scrape marks on the stone and the fallen slabs in front of the crack. That, and a few dings on the hood of Drifter’s car.
“I don’t know what sort of animal could have become a beast like that,” Drifter muttered, moving over to make sure the hood could still open and shut easily. “Mutations abound in this wrecked world but no completely new species can appear...unless it isn’t a regular beast at all but a sort of demon...”
He paused, face tilted up to the sky as he considered this idea. Bard had gathered his wits together again and felt a little ashamed of his obvious terror. Shuffling his feet on the ground, he put on a sullen frown.
“Drifter, I was terrified.”
“Mm?” The man turned back to him, eyes focusing on the present.
“I said, I was afraid!”
Drifter shrugged. “So was I. When I looked up from my work and saw that giant thing hopping off of the rubble I thought we were both dead.”
Bard stamped a foot on the hard cement. “But I was so afraid I didn’t know what to do! You acted fast and saved me because of it!”
“True.” The loner nodded once, moving around towards the driver’s door. His limp was a little more pronounced than usual. “Self-preservation takes some practice. You’ll learn.”
He opened the door and leaned on it, giving the boy one of his withered half-smiles. “If the world doesn’t end, first.”
---
The great, darkened halls of the Academic Archives echoed to a soft footstep. Reddish light came down through one unbroken window, beaming onto a desk piled with books and papers. A woman in a long, purple robe with the hood pushed back came to stand in the light, the better to see the words on the page of a book she held in one hand. The paper was old and yellowed, faint brown marks showing where it had been creased or accidentally dampened in years gone by. But the ink was still dark and crisp, the illustrations gravely legible. Loran’s eyebrows rose as she read down the page.
She had been digging through the great archives continually since Drifter had dropped her off. Except for brief pauses to rest and cache her food supplies, she had been reading books and papers. Now she looked from the words to the old ink illustrations, following each line and curve of two pictures on the opposite side. One showed a door set into what looked like black stone. There was nothing else depicted around the door or stone, no sign of what the entrance led to. It was a plain, dark-colored door with a large key hole in the front and no other mark on it. The other drawing was of a key. A large key stamped with a branching symbol.
“The Gate of Eternity,” Loran read over the words again, this time aloud, “no one has been able to open the gate with any means, technological or otherwise. It is said that only the key made for the lock can budge it. The legends also say that the door will only be opened at the end of our world, bringing on the end of the apocalypse. This is what earned it the name it now bears. When the gate opens, eternity begins and the world ends.”
The woman let the book sag to hang limply at he end of her arm. Her gaze traveled slowly to the window, her dark eyes squinting against the light.
“Rubbish.”
After a moment, she slid the book onto the desk with many others, folding her hands into her sleeves. A chill not related to the coldness of the huge, dark building had come over her.
“But he believes it.”
She stood for some time pondering this enigma, before turning back to the desk and carefully tucking a few of the papers into her robe. With decisive footsteps she began to trace her way out through the vast labyrinth of shelves and halls which made up the little-ruined structure. Whatever was behind that gate, it would most likely be dangerous if it was so carefully locked away. But it might also be important to her quest, hold some clue as to why the Greenspark had fallen and what the meaning of the relics really was.
---
Bard frowned at his traveling companion for a few minutes, not understanding his reference to the end of the world. Deciding that it was just a pessimistic view of life, he asked timidly, “so, what now? I mean, did you find out what was wrong with the car?”
Drifter nodded, sliding into the driver’s seat. With a gesture, he asked the boy to go around and sit in the other side. Once Bard was in place, Drifter explained, “impurities in the fuel, like I thought. But worse than I imagined. Some of the crystals must have been bad. The processor, feed tube and cogitation chamber are grimed. Junk’s got down into the distribution needles and plugged them.”
“Well...can you fix it?”
“It would take hours,” Drifter shrugged. “Maybe even days. Without cleaning solution of any sort it would be a slow process of taking things apart and polishing them by hand. It’s not worth it.”
Bard’s forehead contracted in worry. He was feeling utterly worn from the shock of the griffin’s pursuit and his mind was fuzzy. “So what do we do?”
“Forget making a fire. Sleep here tonight.” Drifter patted the seat affectionately. “Pack our more important possessions and continue in the morning. On foot. It will be dangerous, hard work and I would give almost anything for the car to be running again. Anything but the key. As it is, we aren’t too far from the Native sector. Ten or twelve miles. It shouldn’t take long to walk, if we’re lucky.”
“If we’re lucky...” Bard repeated the words, taking off the glasses to rub at his eyes. He couldn’t imagine being more unlucky than they had been so far. The car broken down, a griffin attacking them and his guardian left behind dying. The only thing that could be worse is if there had been nothing to eat for supper.
As if knowing his thoughts, Drifter slung the bag from the back into his lap. “Eat something.”
Bard picked out a few dried fruits and other traveling rations, eating them slowly as he felt weariness pressing down on him. He fell asleep afterwards, just pushing the bag aside and curling up with his head on it. The boy had put his glasses back on, but now they hung askew on his face.
Drifter watched him as the light failed, remarking the openness of his pale face. He had not been burnt, physically, by the fall of Greenspark. Only the vision of the people struck down and dying outside of the dome darkened his brow with a touch of the scorch. He understood the harshness of life much more than most teenagers his age would have in the world before. Yet far less than Drifter did now.
The next morning Bard awoke to the dim rays of the morning sun playing on his face. He sat up stiffly, righting the spectacles on his nose. Everything came into focus and he saw that he was alone. No one sat on the seat beside him or was in view outside. A fear crossed his mind that he had been abandoned. Maybe Drifter thought him too useless to bring with him. Curling his hands into fists, Bard wondered how long he could survive on his own with what was in the car.
But his foolish fears were banished a moment later when Drifter came stalking with his peculiar gait around the corner of an imploded building and approached the car. Slung over one shoulder was a thin, charred stick with some sort of small, dead animals strung on it. Under one arm was a bundle of blackened sticks and dry moss.
Bard got out of the car with a feeling of relief and waited for him.
“Hot food for breakfast.” Drifter dropped his burdens on the cracked sidewalk, untangling a slingshot from one arm. “I even found a fancy lighter to start the fire.”
He reaching in a pocket and withdrew a large, silver lighter with green four-leafed clovers inset on the side. It made a sandy noise when he shook it, proving that it still had fuel.
“Are those Vollans?” Bard asked of the meat.
With a nod, Drifter dropped to one knee and began arranging the fire. Soon they had a nice flame, low and hot, burning sheltered by broken slabs of stone. The little creatures roasted over it, skin crisping while letting out thin, tasty aromas. Bard brought a slice of bread to toast for each of them, eating it with the slivers of meat picked from tiny Vollan bones.
“We had pigeon a lot back at the tower,” he remarked, “Dick stewed them in a crock until they were all brown and tender, just swimming in gravy.”
“Sounds good.” Drifter flicked a bone into the nearby ruins. “Someone else recently told me that pigeons were worth eating. I didn’t see many of them in my sector. Then again, that fellow also said he ate algae.”
Bard grinned. “Well, seaweed’s good. You ever eat seaweed? We had that and fish, too, when we could make it to the seaside for a day.”
Drifter closed his eyes as if searching his memory. “I think I’ve eaten seaweed, in the time before the disaster. They wrapped it on little crackers, pale orange crackers that crackled when you bit them...”
“Norisenbei.”
“What?” Drifter’s eyes came open sharply.
“Norisenbei. Rice crackers with seaweed,” Bard explained, “Or Norimaki-senbei to be more correct, I guess. I read about them.”
“I see.” Getting up, Drifter took the uneaten Vollan and rolled them in strips of the white cloth from the back of the car. These, with the little provisions left in the package Loran had given him, he rolled together to make a larger bundle. He set it outside, picking up Bard’s sack from the seat.
“What’s in here, other than food?”
“My other shirt. And, well...a book.” Bard looked up out of the corner of his eyes, expecting Drifter to laugh at him or scold him for carrying something so impractical. Instead, the loner reached into the car and brought out a worn, rectangular object.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Would you mind if another joined it?”
Bard got up and came over to him. “No. What sort of book do you have?”
Handing it to him, Drifter went back to digging through the rear of the car.
“A dictionary.” The boy turned it over in his hands, thinking that it was an odd piece of writing for the taciturn wanderer to carry with him.
“It helps keep the mind clear.” Drifter pulled out a few objects to stuff in his pockets, including what looked like a flashlight. “One of the things that saved me from insanity, just after the disaster.”
“Oh.” Bard tucked it abruptly into his sack.
“I’ll show you how to play the game with it, later.” Drifter shot him a look over his shoulder, adding, “you’d be good at it.”
After that he asked if the boy wanted to take some of the white cloth as a cape, to keep warm on the cold nights ahead. But Bard shook his head, not wanting the extra weight. He was already wearing a good shirt, thick jeans and a brown jacket of clumsy make that he had once tailored for himself, using a pattern from a book and an old pair of curtains to make it. With that and the sack, he felt that he would have enough to carry.
Drifter locked the car behind them, taking the keys. He seemed to hesitate for a minute with his hand over an odd switch on the dash, but then shook his head and closed the door without touching it. Picking up his own bundle, he took a reading of the sun and sky with his pale eyes.
“This way.”
They set off walking along the sidewalk, grit from the destroyed buildings crunching under their feet. It was only then that Bard realized he had little idea of why they were trying so ardently to reach the locked gate. But he was working too hard keeping up with Drifter to voice his questions at the moment. Despite his thin and weak appearance, Bard was used to walking all over the Academy sector, including the pilgrimages he and his guardian made to the ocean. But Drifter walked with a swift, long stride which soon had Bard panting. It was strange to watch him move along, as he limped without it slowing him.
They walked for a few hours down cracked sidewalks and across littered streets, the silence intensified now that they were out in it instead of traveling through it in the enclosed car. There were no engine sounds from the vehicle to break the eerie quiet, only their footsteps and breathing. At one point, they came to a great chasm opened up across the road, ten paces wide and disappearing into the rubble of structures on either side. Bard knelt beside it, peering down into a subterranean world of broken cement, packed earth and dangling wires. A few metal pipes spanned the gaps, or hung broken off at violent angles. Far down, the crack terminated in a span of darkness he could not pierce with his gaze.
After a brief rest they circumnavigated this crack and continued, finally arriving at a huge sign built of steel pipes painted to look like logs and sheet metal striped to be planks. The paint was starting to come off of the sheets in ugly, rusty patches but the words on it could still be read; 'Native Sector’.
“I read about this sector,” Bard said as they stood looking at the sign, “a long, long time ago it was open prairie inhabited by tribal people. 'Natives’ so to speak. They were granted this land to live on ‘as long as the grass grew and the sky stood above’. But eventually they were assimilated into the rest of the country and spread out, leaving this land for the city to be built across. That’s how it got its name.”
Drifter regarded him curiously for a moment, before reaching into a pocket and taking out Dick Chelsea’s scroll. “Here. You’re good with words. Find out what steps we’re supposed to take next to find the gate.”
Bard set his sack of goods down to accept the scroll. Opening it with care, he read over everything silently. Then he chose a piece to recite aloud, “‘Take the path between the great oaks marked by death and the rocks that reach towards the sky. Follow it northwards for the first quarter of a mile.’”
He looked up with a shrug. “That’s the original. Dick’s notes say 'These archaic trees and rocks are long since gone. But I think if you follow the main street north for the same length it should get you to the next landmark, which still stands.’”
“Simple.” Drifter accepted the scroll back. “What is the landmark?”
“A tall rock, like a column of stone, with ancient carvings on it,” Bard explained, “it was encased in glass to protect it when the city was built.”
“It is back to its natural exposure, now.” Drifter switched his bundle from one arm to the other. “It should only take a few minutes to reach it. Come on.”
With a sigh too soft for his companion to hear, Bard picked up his own sack and slung it over his shoulder. When Drifter moved off he plodded after, wishing that something would happen to stop them for a longer rest. And, only a few minutes later, it did.
On their right-hand side was a long strip of buildings, all small businesses broken up by the disaster. The other side had larger, more separate structures which might have been hotels, personal palaces and the like. The two travelers had just come up even with a mostly-intact garage on the right when they were hailed by a sound from within it. It was a voice, high and scratchy like that of an angry cat.
“Hey, hold on there, friends. Don’t walk past so quickly!”
Drifter froze, head whipping around to fix the speaker with his gaze. Half-hidden in the shadows of the garage was a rickety table, propped up on one end by rubber tires stacked in a heap. Seated on a cut in half barrel behind it was a man so bony he reminded one instantly of a praying mantis or other famished insect. His face was crooked, sheltered by a broad-brimmed hat decorated with hanging shards of metal. The mouth grinned awkwardly, missing teeth leaving dark gaps throughout it. His clothes barely clung to his narrow, drumstick shoulders and his hands spread to each side were like claws. In front of him on the table were a variety of minute objects. Peering closely at them, Bard thought they were cards and dice.
“I said, don’t walk away so fast!” the shriveled figure repeated, “come join me for a few minutes, pass the time in delightful games of chance. Relax! Enjoy yourselves!”
Drifter shook his head. “Thanks. Life is enough of a gamble without.”
“But there are prizes to be won as well.” The man leaned over his table, distorted face taking on a cunning look. Bard noticed for the first time that his hands were both burnt almost black with the scars of the Greenspark.
With another shake of his head, Drifter started to move off.
“My prizes are not to be taken lightly,” the cardshark insisted, standing up, “come play against me before I make you!”
Drifter just kept striding steadily along, not even looking back. Bard trailed behind him hesitantly. Suddenly there was a crash and a screech behind them, followed by the sound of running feet. Bard stopped in his tracks, spinning around to see the crazy, thin character dashing towards them, a knife held in each hand and his mouth open in a maddened snarl. He ran with surprising speed, chest thrown out and long, gangling legs swinging. It only took a heartbeat for him to overtake the boy, upon which he swung one of his blades at him with an insane scream of rage. Bard stumbled aside, swinging his sack up to protect himself.
One of the knives slashed through it, ripping open the bottom. The other blade was stopped mid-air when Drifter caught the gambler’s wrist.
“Leave the boy alone.”
“Aghn! You wouldn’t play with me!”
The thin man flailed out with his free hand, taking a stab at Drifter. In a move almost too fast for Bard to follow, Drifter twisted the cardshark’s wrist, forcing the knife from it, and struck out with a flattened hand at his free arm. Both knives dropped clattering to the ground, while Drifter kneed the man in the stomach, struck him on the neck and forced him to his knees. Another blow and the bony figure was sprawled across the pavement, groaning distantly. It had all happened within a minute, so quick Bard was left blinking.
Drifter rubbed one hand with the other, giving a shake of his head. “The scorch bit that one deep.”
“But, you...” Bard couldn’t find the words for a moment. Collecting himself, he said, “that was some sort of martial arts, wasn’t it? What sort? Karate, Kung Fu, Jiu Jitsu?”
Stooping to pick up one of the knives, Drifter returned, “I don’t know. I made it up. Another of those things that kept me sane after the Greenspark fell.”
Straightening, he held out the blade hilt-first to the boy. “Here, you need a knife. Might as well take this one. Unless you prefer the other?”
Bard hardly glanced at the blade as he took it. It was formed in a dagger-shape with a brown handle, tiny cross hilt and long blade. He was still staring at Drifter through his round glasses. “You just made that up?”
“That’s what I said.” Drifter turned away from the downed man to start walking again. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Bard was forced to hurry to keep up, juggling the new knife and his torn sack all the while. “Yeah, but...it sounds pretty incredible.”
“Incredible:” Drifter began, “not credible; surpassing belief; too extraordinary and improbable to admit of belief; unlikely.”
The boy blinked at his back. “That’s right.”
“What is unlikely about it? People had to make up every type of fighting at some point. The quiet of a destroyed world, the pain of a fresh wound and the cracked cement at the edge of your mind all act as focusing elements. Especially when what neighbors you still have are literally trying to eat you alive. So I learned to concentrate. On learning things. On living. Whatever I put my mind to, it ate up to fill the void of what had been. Including inventing a new form of martial arts to protect myself.”
Drifter finally paused, whipping around to fix the boy in the burning light of his gaze. “Do you understand now?”
Startled, Bard stopped in his tracks and leaned away from him, clutching the sack like a shield. “Y-yes sir.”
“You know.” Drifter gave him one of his dead smiles. “You’re a terrible liar.”
He turned back to walking, leaving Bard feeling like he had just been raked over hot coals and out onto the hearthstone, confused about where he had come from and why he had been allowed to live. More than ever he did not understand this terse, enigmatic personage he had been forced to go on pilgrimage with. But he found himself oddly wishing, for the first time, to understand more.
Drifter frightened him. But his hints at a terrible past made Bard wonder if he had always been so difficult to understand, or if it was his rights of passage into a brutal world which created his taciturn exterior.
“Do you want me to teach you?” Drifter broke in on his thoughts.
“What?” Bard looked up from the darkened pavement they were traversing.
“My fighting skills. Whatever you want to call them.” Drifter glanced over his shoulder. “It isn’t hard to learn, since I simply made it up.”
“Well, I...I’m not as strong as you.”
“It doesn’t take strength to learn. To learn is to gain strength. Besides the fact that fighting by that method is more about focus and precision than brute strength.”
“Maybe...” Bard stopped to point at a large object over on their right. “Wait, is that the rock pillar?”
The buildings on the right-hand side of the road had given way to an open area, circular and about a hundred yards in circumference. In the center was a splintered shell of glass. The broken glass ringed one half of a large column of rock, a finger-shaped boulder, standing pale and jagged. On one side the other half of the pillar had broken away to crash through the glass and smash into the tiled ground, cracks running all thorough the stone. Ancient scribbles, animals and figures like a child would draw, could still be seen marked on the two halves of the pillar.
After inspecting the stone both from a distance and close up, Drifter asked the boy to interpret the next stage of the journey. This was a longer and more vague section of the map, which Dick’s notes could only partially translate. It told them to go towards the setting of the sun until they came to a mineral springs (fancy spa, Dick wrote) where they would then turn north again and travel for ‘two day’s walk’. After that they should come to what Dick’s notes described as a great park of science and nature, where the Gate stood. Dick was unsure what would be left of the park, but there should be signs of scientific buildings, fences directly around the Gate and a thicket of conifer trees near the entrance to the whole place.
“Two or three days still before us, hm?” Drifter put a hand to his chin. “At least we seem to have lost that monster.”
Bard agreed heartily with this. He had been afraid of seeing the griffin appear over the horizon ever since they left the car. So far, there had been no sign of the great scaled beast. But he worried that it would still follow their trail and overtake them with its great wings.
They stopped and rested for a few moments beside the shattered monument, before continuing in a westward direction down a side-street. They wound their way between buildings, walking in cold, damp shadows or in the bland reddish light of the open streets. The empty buildings with pools of melted metals or dripping glass at their feet watched the travelers go by. The sun glared off of the fractured bones of society, exposing its shame to the world.
At some points the travelers were forced, even on foot, to find new routes or climb over heaps of rubble on their way. Bard noticed that Drifter’s limp became more pronounced as the day drew on. Late in the afternoon, when the sun had not yet set but was dripping towards the horizon, Drifter called a halt.
They were in a courtyard paved in white and gray tiles. It stood on a slight incline, the buildings along the lower half of it all knocked down to such a degree that the street below and beyond could easily be seen from where they stood. On all other sides of the tiled area the buildings were crumpled, but still formed a high wall of masonry. A row of pillars stood intact on one side, sheltered by an overhanging roof. This is where Drifter directed their camp to be laid.
Once again Bard was sent to get fire wood. This time no incidents occurred and he brought back an armful to add to the few twigs Drifter was already starting. Soon they had a little blaze hidden from outside view by a row of cracked bricks, which also reflected the heat back towards the travelers. Left-over roast rodents were their meal.
After eating Drifter stretched out in the shadows, away from the fire, and apparently fell asleep, head pillowed on one arm. He was more weary than usual, his wound paining him from the strain that had been put on it. Bard, not as tired as the night before and more nervous, stayed awake for some time, watching the blurred stars come out in the dark sky and listening. Just listening, for anything flying or stalking towards them.