The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy

by Gary Ballard

  Bridge put a steadying hand on Aristotle’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, big guy. We’ll find her.” He stopped himself from turning that into a promise, as much as he wanted to reassure his friend. Bridge knew as well as anyone there that the chances of finding Aristotle’s grandmother were slim, but he resisted his natural inclination to say so. Better to leave it unspoken.

  “We used to come up here every July when I was a kid. The vacation bible school would bring in some Passion Play troupe to put on a show. Do you realize the kind of effect seeing Christ crucified and resurrected on this backdrop has on a 12-year old? Gram always said a little religion would keep me on the straight and narrow. Not that it did, of course, but that never stopped her. I guess I had to learn my own lessons.”

  “We all do, brau,” Stonewall said. “Mi madre was dead-set on me being some kind of teacher or something, but I had to go play football. Not listening don’t mean we don’t love ‘em.” Aristotle nodded grimly. Bridge left the two talking.

  “So how much support can Stonewall’s friendship buy us?” Bridge asked Bud with a steely directness. “You ain’t just letting us stay here out of the goodness of your heart, and you and I both know we’re unlikely converts. What’s the vig?”

  Bud gave Bridge a wry smile, but his mood was deadly serious. “I do you a favor, you do me one,” he began. “I told you we send out recruiters to the cities, they stay for a month or so and rotate back. Well, one of those cities is Boulder. I had a team of three living near the university. We get a better response from the college kids, though they aren’t always the most committed to the cause when they get down to the nitty-gritty. Now maybe they got out, and maybe they didn’t, but we haven’t heard from them. Juan tells me your man’s grandmother lived near the university too, so I figure if you’re looking for her, she’ll be around the same place as my people. Since you’re already looking, what’re three more names?”

  “And why haven’t you already sent some people to look?”

  “I may have bought this land from Legios, but that don’t mean we’re friends. I’ve seen the news. Those boys are tossing around the terrorism label like it’s going out of style. How much of a stretch do you think it would be to label a bunch of well-armed anti-corporate types living like mountain men as some crazy militia plotting to overthrow the LGL?”

  “Not much of a stretch at all,” Bridge agreed.

  “Juan says you’re the magic man, the golden-tongued con man can charm the panties off a nun. That true?” Bridge just shrugged with a sly smile. “You put my people’s names on your list, you got whatever you need to get it done.” Left unsaid was the other alternative. Don’t help and get senlp ty. t packing.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  *****

  Chapter 10

  November 6, 2028

  11:48 a.m.

  The next few days would be a blur for the trio. Bud was true to his word. He provided room and board, a vehicle with clean papers, and even some discreetly armed muscle when needed. Every day he would wave to the group leaving from the compound’s front gates, and every day as they drove up, he’d be waiting for any word of his people. Every day, Bridge gave him a disappointed head shake and the elder man’s eyes fell to the ground with a grim nod.

  After ordering a general evacuation of the entire city of Boulder, Legios, FEMA and the Red Cross had begun housing the survivors in evacuee camps all over the Denver area. The largest was a gigantic tent city at Invesco Field, but there were others in the city’s convention centers, indoor sports arenas, high school gymnasiums and anywhere else large groups of people could be housed cheaply on short notice. The city had become a snarling mess of traffic. The group was forced to find a parking spot within a few miles of the camps they’d be visiting and legging it all day. Legios wasn’t allowing non-governmental vehicles within a half mile of the camps, citing vague threats on the survivors by “terrorist” groups. The city’s nerves were frayed. Bridge could feel it while walking down the street, read it in everyone’s faces, in their every movement. Most appeared ready to jump out of their skins at the next loud bang.

  Their first attempt to infiltrate the camps was a miserable failure. Posing as relatives of survivors should have done the trick, but the ultra-paranoid Legios officials required that such claims be backed up with proper ID and the name of a relative. Aristotle spent five hours in an “interview” with Legios Ranger and FBI agents, being grilled about everything from his first conviction to his current employment. While Bridge and Stonewall waited outside for the interview to end, they did as much recon of the camp as possible.

  The building was locked up like a maximum security prison as opposed to a place that existed to provide charitable aid to citizens. Stern-faced Legios Rangers with shiny cyberware and shinier guns guarded every entrance. Neither Stonewall nor Bridge could find an opening in the security cordon. Only those with proper badges were allowed in without strip searches, ID checks and intense grilling. Oddly enough, Bridge noticed that some of the Legios uniforms were ill-fitting, as if they belonged to someone other than the wearer. Bridge sidled up to one very bored individual and managed to get him talking. Legios had been stretched so thin by their statewide lockdown that they’d drafted mall guards, priidge sidlevate security and anyone else who could point a gun and look menacing to guard the camps. When asked why the camps were being guarded so heavily, he just shrugged and grumbled something about terrorists and the criminal element.

  While wandering around a service entrance, the two caught a glimpse of something that chilled Bridge to the bone. Many of the aid workers using this back entrance were being fitted into chemical/biological/radiological suits. Bridge took a few discreet snaps with the camera built into a pair of sunglasses he’d purchased. Legios was either being incredibly cautious, or they knew something they weren’t telling anyone. Bridge took perverse pleasure in sending those pictures to Ms. Angst and watching the news feeds explode. Barely an hour after air time, a plastic Legios spokesperson stumbled and fumbled through an impromptu press conference outside Invesco. He awkwardly denied the existence of any contagion with an ashen face. Bridge believed him, of course. If the company had found a dangerous contagion, they’d have nuked the site from orbit rather than cover it up. An irradiated hole in the ground can at least make money as a landfill. Mass graves were terrible public relations, and no one would want to buy real estate at the site of a biohazard.

  Aristotle’s interrogation convinced Bridge that the honest truth would get them nowhere. The bodyguard had been released with nothing more than vague promises that the Legios’ officials would let him know if they heard anything. Underneath the dismissal was the unspoken hint that Aristotle should probably just get the fuck out of the state if he knew what was good for him.

  They changed tactics on the second day. They would pose as survivors themselves rather than concerned relatives. They dirtied themselves up with torn clothes and a few minor scratches, and wandered in without any identification. In case the emergency personnel tried to use fingerprints or DNA to identify them, Stonewall would hang back outside the camps. A few of the Naturalists without a record would accompany them for muscle.

  The first attempt was much more successful than Bridge thought possible. As expected, the aid workers tried to gather fingerprints from the new arrivals. As soon as Bridge’s index finger touched the pad, every computer in the office went dead. Every subsequent attempt to identify Bridge failed miserably. Photographs went blank, video cameras shorted out and the computers would spontaneously reboot. When it seemed the group would get turned away, Bridge feigned a fainting spell, claiming that he’d gone two days without food. The aid workers reluctantly allowed them into the camp with a promise that they’d come back to be processed later.

  They would repeat the process at three more camps that day, and another four the following day. Each time, the aid workers would try to identify them, and each time, their systems would glitch. Bridge stop
ped believing in luck after the second time, and by the fourth he was convinced. Of what exactly, he wasn’t sure, but something strange was happening around them. His first thought was Angie had worked her magic, but she had been unable to do much of anything in the Colorado GlobalNet. Just like the real world, virtual Colorado was locked behind an impenetrable dome.

  “Hey Artie, be careful out there.” He could hear her heartfelt concern bleeding through the connection when he spoke with her about it that night. “No, Iighey mean it. There’s some strange shit going on with this thing and I don’t just mean online. You know how many hackers have just packed up and run off to Colorado? Ten. Ten of the most shut-in, living in mom’s basement, afraid the sun will turn them into dust hackers. I asked a few of ‘em why and they just said they gotta go and snap, they’re gone.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like B@rr@cUd@. Like The White Whale, even.”

  “The White Whale? That fat bastard hasn’t left his apartment since they invented the goddamn jack. How’d he propose to get there, by crane?”

  “I know, right? He got his cousin to come haul him out there. Bunch of others, the more shut-in the nerd, the faster they left. There’s some messed up stuff out there. Be careful, baby.” She seemed on the verge of saying more but didn’t and Bridge let her go.

  Ms. Angst had similar stories. Every picture, every video clip, anything she ran on her vlog concerning Boulder was an instant success. The numbers eclipsed the story she ran confirming Shawnee’s pregnancy. She reported on the exodus of known reclusive hackers pulling up stakes and driving to Colorado. By the morning of the third day, the story had reached the mainstream, complete with video of hordes of pasty white hacker types clashing with Legios Rangers and the National Guard at the Colorado state line.

  Each night Bridge would curl up for bed after a long, exhausting day, but his sleep was anything but restful. He tossed and turned like a pig on a spit, feverish night sweats accompanying dreams he either couldn’t remember or couldn’t decipher. He’d wake every morning with a burning pain in his neck, a phantom itch underneath his scalp and the quickly dissipating feeling that he was forgetting something important. Coal-black eyes with no pupils stared at him from his subconscious.

  Every camp they visited had developed its own ecology, its own food chain of helpless and helpers. The aid workers were a mixed bunch, some of the stern Legios variety, who seemed to resent the need to help these people, and some showing genuine empathy for the survivor’s plight. Each camp had its share of fixers, of guys one “needed to know,” guys who could get things despite the conditions. Bridge would scout the camp until he pegged the need-to-know guy then approach, making sure to point out that he wasn’t there to horn in on the action. More was accomplished in 10-minute conversations with these types than in entire days worth of questions posed to the aid workers. One such go-to-guy was Shaky Peter at the North Hill shelter.

  *****

  Shaky Peter got his name from a random twitch of his left arm, a shaky almost-seizure that gripped the limb at odd times. He was a lithe towering blonde beanng oman" colpole, always stooping over to talk in a conspiratorial manner with anyone shorter than him, which was essentially everyone. As he spoke stooped over, his spiky hair twitching with his enthusiastic motions, his left arm would start twitching, subtly at first but growing in intensity until the wave passed. He never really paid any attention to it whatsoever and when asked, would shrug it off indifferently without explanation.

  Bridge had been in North Hill about two hours when he met Peter, the first hour lost in the glitched Legios screening process. He spent the second hour asking shell-shocked survivors questions about the city, which he turned subtly into questions about getting things. All those questions led to Shaky Peter. Bridge recognized an equal the minute he caught sight of the gaunt giant. Bridge caught Peter’s eye and nodded. Glancing one way then the other, Peter strode awkwardly over to Bridge. The tall man acknowledged that Bridge wasn’t alone, indicating Aristotle standing watch a few feet from him. Before Peter could even speak a word, Bridge cut him off. “Don’t worry, brother, I’m not here to horn in on your turf.”

  The tall rival was taken aback. He leaned away as if struck then bent over with a smile that was all crooked teeth. “That’s good, because I’m not about to let you. Now tell me why you’re here before we see whose boys are harder.” He finished the threat with raised eyebrows.

  “Not here to unzip and compare, brother…”

  “Not your brother. I been working these skels since we wandered out of that hell and I don’t take kindly to slicksters from… where is that I smell… L.A.? This ain’t L.A. and these people ain’t your marks.”

  “Only thing I want is information,” Bridge said. “My bodyguard over there? His grandmother lives… lived in Boulder. He can’t reach her, and you know how much good the official channels are. Little old black lady named Lalasa Freeman, lived near the university. Heard of her?”

  Peter stretched back to his full height. “The university? Did you not see that gigantic fucking dome parked on top of the school? If she was anywhere near there, she’s fucked. Nobody knows anybody that made it out of there.”

  Bridge indicated the hundreds surrounding them. “What about these people? They made it from somewhere.”

  Peter leaned back into Bridge. “Look, I feel your boy’s pain. My grandma was in that shit, I’d be ready to tear the place down with my bare hands. I know just about everybody in here. I know the aid workers. I know the skels. And the ones I don’t know, they know somebody I do know. I ain’t seen anybody living that was close to that dome. Every one of them walked miles to get here. You wanna know why? Their cars wouldn’t work. The buses wouldn’t work. The lights wouldn’t work. NOTHING worked. Water, electricity, GlobalNet, all dead. My goddamn cell didn’t even work until we were halfway here. So you ask me if anyone has seen a little old black lady? She ain’t in my database, know what I’m saying. And if she was where you say she was, your buddy needs to prepare a funeral.”

  He started to turn away from Bridge. “Has anyge.New Roman"one tried going back there?”

  Peter stopped dead in his tracks and whirled on Bridge angrily. “Are you fucking mental?” His left hand started twitching again. Suddenly, the anger drained from his face to be replaced by a cautious understanding. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  “Feel what?”

  Peter pointed to the back of his neck. “The itch. The itch in your jack like it wants to burst out of your neck and go follow whatever it is out there. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it? It ain’t about your boy’s grandmother. You hear that thing calling you.”

  Bridge started to protest but Peter cut him off. “Don’t worry, you ain’t alone. Everybody in this joint with steel in their skull is feeling it. I’ve been smuggling people out of here so they can go back to that thing. I got a group going tonight.”

  “What are they doing once they get there?”

  “Not my problem.”

  Bridge thought it over for a second. The plan he had in mind was crazy. Batshit insane, actually. But he didn’t have a better idea and he did feel… something. He didn’t know what it was, but it all pointed to that dome. The hallucinations in L.A., the dreams, the itch, the hackers, something in that dome was calling out to people with jacks including Bridge. “I want to go with them,” he told Peter.

  The change in Peter’s attitude was immediate, his eyes lit up with greed. “Of course you do. And just what are you going to give me?”

  “The same thing you’d give me,” Bridge said with slick certainty. “You’d know me and all the people I know in L.A. You may have a good thing going here, but who do you know west of the Mojave?”

  Shaky Peter tried hard to make it seem as if he was considering the offer, as if there was any chance he’d say no to such a proposal. The two of them lived and breathed on their connections, on who they knew and what they could extract from their know circuit. Goo
d local connections were golden. Inter-city connections were platinum. Connections to major hubs of the kind of people Bridge knew in L.A.? Those connections were manna from heaven.

  “Let’s talk,” Shaky Peter said, his left arm flapping in an excited spasm next to his side.

  *****

  Chapter 11

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  November 6, 2028

  8:20 p.m.

  Though the residents of the camp were technically free to come and go, in order to be allowed to return, they were required to check in and out at the aid stations. The evacuees were tracked with armbands containing a digital ID linked to a particular camp. Leaving one evacuee camp without returning to that same camp would disqualify an evacuee from receiving any future aid. The mysterious interference had allowed Bridge’s group to move in and out of a number of the camps, but he didn’t want to keep relying on that trick.

  Shaky Peter had the in with a few of the less altruistic aid workers, which allowed him to pass a few evacuees in and out of the camp without ID checks. Bridge admired the simplicity. Aid workers were usually badly paid. Finding the few with a flexible enough sense of morality to perform whatever ethical gymnastics were required to allow them to profit off their altruism was a simple matter. Whether paid by corporation or government, the pay was just bad enough to encourage creative rule bending.

  Leaving a few at a time, the escapees would wander in small packs towards a rendezvous point four blocks away. There they were met by a bakery delivery van. The driver ushered everyone into the back quickly, barely waiting for the last man to close the back door before peeling out. One of the escapees urged the driver to wait for their late friend, but he would have none of it. This coyote was on a schedule and he wasn’t about to deviate from it.