The Dreaming: Dark Star (Book 5)

The bridge, part 1

I turned and looked at the Cambie Bridge... a charred and useless thing. My excitement disappeared. How could this end up right?

As we neared the collapsed bridge, one thing became very clear to me: I should never be able to tranverse the monstrosity. It was something out of a nightmare. During the war, the bridge had been all but destroyed, and since then, what remained had decayed significantly. The concrete holding it together had been knocked out by rain and freezing. What remained was the metal substructure, rusted and failing. It looked like a writhing, rusted beast and the sight of it filled me with dread. There was no way this could end well.

After standing in relative silence for what seemed an age, I finally asked, "There's no other way?"

"Well..." Lyle answered, "I guess we could build a boat." He didn't look convinced. I had seen his hackjob building skills at his house and was convinced that any boat he constructed would drown us all. And the children had no boat building skills to speak of, which left me. I reasoned I could build a boat, perhaps, or a raft. In my childhood we had built plenty of rafts to sail down the river on my grandpa's farm. But the materials required for a raft always included some form of plastic. Rubber tires or plastic barrels and these things had long since degraded. Cracked to pieces. Styrofoam would work—but scrounging any up would be difficult due to its miraculous properties it had long since been pilfered.

The boats had all been taken during the great exodus. As the roads were jam-packed with cars and soon became impassable when the gas ran out. To this day all the roads leaving the city were full of abandoned vehicles.

In the end, I figured it would take at least a week, if not more, to gather the materials for a raft or a boat, and then a few days to build something even slightly seaworthy. And then the crossing wasn't guaranteed to be any safer than the bridge.

"Okay, let's do this," I said at last, after many minutes of contemplation.

The bridge had been a wide, ten lane affair, but only the very eastern portion was still attached to the road, so that's where we headed.

As we neared, the way became increasingly difficult. Nicole and Lyle helped me traverse the rubble and the rest of the children scrambled like a pack of spiders—being accustomed to rubble from a young age.

I began to feel a panic tighten my chest. "Wait!" I yelled. The saying was going through my head, 'If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you?'

"Listen, gather around, I want everyone to hear this."

The children came closer, and Nicole helped me up onto a stable piece of concrete. Everyone stared at me expectantly.

"Listen," I said, "This is very dangerous and stupid!"

"So what are we going to do?" asked one boy.

"Well, I recommend that you don't follow us until we discover it it's safe. This is a really dangerous thing for us to do."

"So, you're going?" asked a little, scruffy girl.

"Well, yes, we're going to try, but I don't think it's a good idea for all of us to go at the same time."

No one said a word. I don't think they truly understood. "You should stay here," I tried to explain. "It's not safe. Just because we're doing this doesn't mean all of you should."

The children all looked at me blankly.

I turned to Lyle, who shrugged his shoulders. "What can we do?" he mouthed.

I felt this sinking pit in my stomach. How had I become responsible for so many children?

"I'm not responsible for your safety—do you understand?

"What is responsible?" asked Nicole.

I rolled my eyes. Right. "I mean, if you hurt yourself or die, don't blame me."

Some of the kids, the ones who nodded, who understood, nodded and looked at me expectantly.

"That's it—."

"That's it?" A boy asked sceptically. "You mean we gotta take care of ourselves? Like we been doing since we was born?

Someone snickered.

"Yes, smart-alec, you gotta take care of yourself. I'm not your mother."

"That's it?" another kid asked.

"Yeah, that's it," I said, feeling stupid standing on a rock telling a bunch of kids something they already knew intuitively. And yet, it didn't reduce my burden. I felt as responsible for everyone as I had a few minutes earlier. Nevertheless, we commenced our dangerous mission to cross the bridge.

It began well, and we were a quarter over the monstrosity and I was beginning to think I had over-reacted when suddenly I heard a scream and milli-seconds later, there was a large splash as of someone falling into the water. It was single-file, with some reckless, brazen kids impatiently taking the lead, followed by Lyle, then Nicole, then myself and a large batch of kids behind me, with Money and Dolphin bringing up the rear.

There was screaming up ahead and I strained to see what was going on—from what I could make out, someone had fallen into the Straight below. I tried to look over the edge, but mistrusted the decaying monstrosity and dared not lean over, so in the end I saw exactly nothing. "What the hell is going on?" I shouted up ahead.

"Tee-Jay slipped!" someone screamed back. I pushed Nicole aside and told the kids to get out of my way. "Get back!" I shouted at the crowd straining to watch the drama unfold. "Back! Get back! Out of my way."

I finally reached the scene of the accident and was despaired to see Lyle on the ground, his fat belly exposed and rend and scraped raw from the rubble. He was stretched like a wet cloth, hung over the edge of a large gap in the bridge.

He looked at me desperately, and I could see desperation writ large on his face.

"What's happening?" I pressed. "Someone fell?"

He shook his head, unable to speak from the effort he was exerting.

"Not yet" a girl said.

"Not yet—tell me what happened."

"Tee-Jay slipped and Ari tried to save and now they're both hanging off of that guy."

"Lyle, you mean?"

The girl nodded and pointed at Lyle.

"Help," Lyle mouthed.

"Rope!" I screamed. Does anyone have any rope? I kicked myself for not thinking about rope before we set off.