Trepidation | Trepidation Trilogy | The Empty World Sequence

Thirty-Five

Where there had been trees were charred trunks. Where there had been grass, mud and frost. Where the Seine had run, a low icy river crept past a mound of rubble into a ruined city. The city appeared, in late afternoon, in the inclimate early winter of the year, as a gray, fog-shrouded mass of broken towers and spires. Around it, elevated roadways stood dormant and fractured, as if by the tail of some large imaginary beast.

      The line of vehicles running into the remains of Paris shifted to one side to avoid massive chunk of rebar and asphalt fallen from interchange above. There were no other vehicles, no traffic around this ghost city that had once housed millions.

      Sitting in the back of the Jeep that pulled her trailer, wrapped in bright red cloak, Claudia wept, and was for miles the only spot of color in the drab surroundings. All the soldiers with them wore black. Those with her had known of Paris, but only she had lived there.

      Claudia pushed the beads of blood from her face and eyes with the ball of her thumb and really looked.  She had practiced this repeatedly with David, sat through lessons with Daerick or Estasi; even Rachael had offered training. Now, Claudia looked on Paris with eyes no human possesed and saw.

      A squat collection of ruins was once part of a university, transformed for her vision into a more graceful structure and then ghost figures moved in and out of it. Students had marched here with picket signs. FREE GAUL! LIBERTE! The Students had marched and then with force of their mass stopped vehicles. Later, a young man had received a bomb from one of the Protestant Underground with instructions to go and place it near the overpass of the roadway.

      Elsewhere, a building with once bright sign swinging slowly from electric cables had been a theatre, had shown old movies and had raised funds to restore damaged film. On the Day of Bombs, the far wall had been blown in and hundreds had been slain, crushed as they watched Casablanca.

      "We'll always have Paris."

      On this street, where lingering debris forced them to stop and clear the way, three female Wolfbreed had been lined up and shot. A building ahead had been inhabited by snipers loyal to the Protestant Underground for many months during the fall of Paris.

      Bridges on which lovers had met had been washed into the river. These gaping holes in the ground and scorch marks were what was left of the Paris Metro. Stations had been planted with little bombs like seeds and sprouted into powerful explosions that killed many in fire and heat then ripped through the layers of street above.

      Here and there along the way, a train car sat on the cratered sidewalk above and showed signs that for a time, at least, it had sheltered survivors.

      Those buildings that had survived were the most modern, the steel-framed towers found in so many cities, necessitated by the bureaucracy of building safty codes; they could withstand earthquake, internal explosion, impact, tornado or a dozen other calamities. These stood, offices and hotels, sometimes banks or colleges. Their automated robotic window cleaners and scrolling electronic signs no longer functioned, and most seemed ominously empty by lack of light within.

      One of these the Americans must have stayed in. Others could have sheltered a number of refugees. They dotted the city, these towers, sometimes panes of glass missing or having a section impaled by car or older building.

      Row houses remained in many blocks and narrow roads. So long as no major transit station or government building had been close by they were spared. Some had to be, Michael still lived in Paris. So the Metropolitain Noir still operated.

      Yet, it was devastating what had taken place. Now, as night fell, it grew colder still and flickering lights were all that marked the scattered places of human or inhuman habitation. Notre Dame had been spared. The great Gothic Cathedral stood on the Ile de Cite, trees struggling to live in its grounds and several stained glass masterpieces missing where it had rippling plastic for windows.