Knifepoint by Edward W. Robertson

Author:Edward W. Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: virus, post apocalyptic fiction, science fiction series, breakers, post apocalypse novels
Publisher: Edward W. Robertson

19

"Did you ever think of this stuff not in terms of ruins," Mauser said, "but as just another form of terrain?"

Raina glanced up from the empty houses. "No."

"People used to call it the concrete jungle, and that's not a bad description. There's all kinds of goodies if you know where to look. There's also horrible things that could kill us at any moment, but at least there are a million places to hole up in, too."

"Did you see something?" Martin said.

"What? No. No, it's totally clear. But the fault in the whole jungle analogy is that there are roads in a city. If you were in a hurry, you could walk across the entire LA Basin in a day. How long would it take you to cross thirty miles of the Amazon? Eternity, because the poisonous frogs would get you first."

Martin swirled his canteen and took a drink. They were a few miles inland and it was notably hotter than along the coast, heat simmering off the asphalt. "It's kind of like a prairie. Except you can't see more than a couple blocks ahead of you. And there are lots of places to hide."

"So it combines the attributes of both the jungle and the wasteland," Mauser said. "Does that mean it's unique? Raina, what do you think?"

"That you should shut up and watch the road," she said.

"Oh really?" He gestured to the barren streets. "Think we'll angry up the ghosts?"

She did, in fact, but knew better than to say as much. The old people didn't believe in those things, but the old people had grown up apart from death. She had grown up within it. She was sensitive to it in a way these people never had been. Maybe their senses had been drowned out by being surrounded by living cities rather than the waste-jungle they were currently crossing, but she could feel the places where the dead had dropped their bones. That's why the ship in the bay was no good. Maybe that was why there was so much fighting back on the peninsula. The spirits were angry. You couldn't see them, but you could feel them, and they made you angry too. Maybe it would be best to move to a place where no one else had ever lived.

She just shook her head. "Time spent talking is time not watching."

"That's a weird thing to say," Mauser muttered. "That's one of yours, isn't it? A little Raina-ism."

They reached a stretch of burned-down houses and charred apartments. Raina detoured around it. Too little cover there. Too many spirits. Sun slammed down on parking lots and dusty cars and neighborhoods with scrawny yellow lawns hardly wide enough to separate one house from the next.

Mauser pointed to a green sign at an intersection. "405's a few blocks from here. If I'm remembering my cultural institutions, that should take us all the way to the Getty."

"It's a raised highway." Raina jerked her head at the lanes strung over the road to the east. "You'll be able to see us from a mile away.

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