The Silver Spike

LXXV

When the monsters began sliding across the sky Smeds suffered an attack of caution. Able to think of nowhere else to run, he headed back to the ditch.

The guy he had kicked was still there, twitching once in a while. He backed off and watched, waiting to see what the guy would do. After a while the guy woke up, dragged himself out, and tottered off. Good. Now he had a place to wait for Fish. He went over and around and entered the culvert from the northern end, passed through, and sat down to wait.

Fish showed up a forever later, standing over there on the footbridge. He didn’t have the other blue bag. Damn. Smeds whistled just loud enough to carry to Fish, waved cautiously.

“What happened?” he asked when Fish arrived. “Where’s the other bag?”

Fish explained.

Smeds told his story.

Fish said, “We need to get out of here, then. Let’s get the stuff. We might be able to get out one of the breaches if there’s any more excitement. With the spike up for grabs we can count on that.”

They got the blue bags, which they rubbed up with dirt, and Smeds’s pack, and headed for the area where the wall had been breached. The city was a place of ghosts. The living cowered behind locked doors and barred windows, praying their gods would keep them safe from the terrors without and the cholera within.

The occasional cry of a cholera victim made Smeds think more of haunts bedamned than of the living in pain.