The Wasteland Saga by Nick Cole

Author:Nick Cole [Nick Cole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2013-09-25T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

“Hold on tight.” Then, “Tighter!” screams the Boy.

Horse was sliding downslope through the scree that abutted the shattered remains of the road leading to the bridge. The Boy held on for dear life as Jin clung to him.

The guards at the bridge raised their weapons to port arms, as if this act, as it had so many times before, would bend the offenders to their will.

You said, Sergeant, Surprise the enemy and the battle might just be half won, Boy!

Horse checks a fall and the Boy yanks him on to the road and straight toward the bridge.

The riders who had followed their trail, at the top of the hill above the bridge now, began to fire down upon them. Their shots were wild and the sentries at the bridge began to scatter, fearing they were being shot at by invaders. A wild shot hit the chest of one of the Chinese bridge guards with a loud thump, knocking him to the pavement.

Horse crashed past two guards and raced onto the bridge, straining hard for the distant far end.

Great iron cables ran skyward toward the suspension pylons, but other numerous cables that once were connected to the roadway had fallen onto the bridge or lay draped in great coils spilling over the edge. It even seemed to the Boy that the bridge hung lower on one side. A few ancient trucks, decrepit with crusted rust, littered the bridge at odd angles.

“Stay to the right … it’s the safest side!” screamed Jin above the bullets, above the clop-cloppity-clop-clop of Horse’s sprint along the old roadway of the bridge.

The gusty wind dragged at the Boy’s long hair as he looked behind them to see riders and horses tumbling down the steep slope leading to the bridge.

I have a lead and a little time. That is good. But I’m riding into the unknown, and that is bad.

For a moment he felt the familiar fear that had chased him all his days. But the embrace of Jin, her thin arms about his chest, reminded him of wearing the bearskin in the dead of a winter storm.

At the end of this bridge, somewhere, there must be a cave like the bear cave for us.

Halfway across the bridge, the Boy could see the concrete piles of once–San Francisco. Huge jutting slabs of gray concrete rose up into small mountains, stacked at different protruding angles. Only a few emaciated buildings remained upright.

‘The destruction is almost complete here,’ thought the Boy, and in the moment he had this thought, his eyes, searching the rubble, watched as it began to slide in rising chalky yellow sheets of dust.

He blinked twice, assuming his eyes must be watering in the wind of the hard chase.

But now the road underneath them was shifting to the left, twisting, almost.

Cables above were waving back and forth. High and ahead, one ripped loose from the roadway and swung wildly across the bridge, sweeping a rusting wreck off the side and into the ocean below.

In San Francisco everything was shaking.

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