CHAPTER 20
The City Destroyed
When the city came into view before them, the three travelers stood speechless, gazing out over ranges of hills standing dark against the western sky. They could see that this had once been a city—to the right, a cluster of tall buildings still stood, tall beyond anything Lina had imagined. But they were no more than shells of buildings, hollow and broken, their windows only holes. Through some of them Lina could see the sky, turned scarlet by the sunset.
All else was a windswept wasteland. Whatever buildings had once been here had long ago fallen and crumbled into the ground. Earth and dust and sand had blown across them, and grass had grown over them, softening their outlines. Here and there traces of ruins remained—they looked from this distance like outcrops of stone, hardly more than jagged places on the smooth slopes. Faint lines of shadow showed where streets must once have been.
Lina stared, trembling. This was far, far from the city she had imagined. Not even the version she’d revised for the Disaster had looked like this. This couldn’t be called a city at all anymore. It was the ghost of a city.
Even Caspar seemed daunted. He craned for-ward, his hand shading his eyes. “It looks somewhat destroyed,” he said.
“It looks completely destroyed,” said Maddy.
They got down from the truck and stood beside the oxen.
“A trick of the light,” said Caspar, squinting harder. He pulled his glasses from his pocket and put them on. “When we get closer, no doubt it will look different.”
“How do you plan to get closer?” Maddy asked him, and for the first time Lina saw that a few yards in front of them, the road came to an end. There was an edge of broken pavement, and beyond it a great slab of roadway slanted downward. It had stood on pillars once; you could see a few of the pillars still standing, and rods of thick wire twisting out of them. From here on, the road was a chaos of concrete, gigantic chunks leaning against each other. There was no way the truck could go on.
The sun was nearly down now, and the brilliant red of the sky was fading. Between the ruined buildings drifted a gray mist, and the wind blew more sharply. Some white birds soared high above, screaming.
“It used to be so beautiful,” said Maddy. “I’ve seen pictures of it in books.” There was a tremor in her voice. Lina looked up and saw that tears stood in her eyes. “I knew it was destroyed,” Maddy said. “But not like this.”
“What happened to it?” Lina asked.
“It was the wars,” said Maddy. “They must have been . . .” She shook her head. “They must have been terrible,” she said.
“What were they about?” Lina asked.
Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And the people who lived here? What happened to them?”
“All killed, I suppose,” said Maddy. “Or most of them.”
Caspar was frowning at the shadowy wilderness that lay below. “In the daylight,” he said, “I’ll be able to see how to proceed.”
“Proceed!” Maddy grabbed Caspar’s arm and wrenched him around to face her. “Are you out of your mind?”
Caspar yanked his arm away. “No,” he said. “I am not.”
Maddy swept her hand out toward the city. “It’s miles and miles of buried rubble!” she cried. “Streets buried under fallen bricks and broken glass! Mountains of concrete and melted metal! Sand and earth blown over it all, and grass growing on it!”
Caspar nodded, his face grim. “Right,” he said. “A challenge. You were right about bringing this one along.” He tipped his head toward Lina. “Someone small and light, that’s what I’ll need. Going to have to do some tunneling.”
“No, Caspar,” said Maddy. “You must give up this idea. You can’t find anything there.”
“I can,” said Caspar. “I can find it, I have the numbers, I have it all worked out.” He plunged one hand into his pocket and scrabbled around and brought out a scrap of paper. He snatched his glasses off, put the paper up close to his eyes, and squinted at it. Lina took a step closer to him and peered sideways. The paper was black with scribbling, a tangle of words and numbers and cross-outs. “Forty-seven east,” muttered Caspar. “Three ninety-five west.” His eyes flicked back and forth between the paper and the dark hills before him, flicked faster and faster. “Seventy-one,” he mumbled. “It’s just a matter of . . . In the daylight . . .” He caught sight of Lina. “What are you staring at?” he said.
“Nothing,” said Lina. She felt suddenly sick and frightened. Maddy was right. Caspar was out of his mind.
The sun disappeared behind the farthest hill, and darkness fell. Maddy turned back toward the truck. “We’ll camp right here tonight,” she said. “We still have enough water in the buckets.”
They set their blankets on the side of the truck away from the wind, but Lina shivered and couldn’t sleep. After days of longing to arrive at the city, she wanted nothing now but to leave. This was a terrible place, full of angry ghosts and sad ones. When she closed her eyes, she seemed to hear their voices—shouts and screams and a dreadful sobbing—and to see flashes of fire in the smoky sky, and sheets of flame sweeping through the streets.
A wail escaped from her. She couldn’t help it, she felt so afraid and miserable. A moment later, she heard Maddy’s voice close to her ear. “Let’s talk for a while,” Maddy said.
“Okay,” said Lina. She sat up, wrapping her blanket around her. Caspar was pacing up and down on the other side of the truck, muttering to himself. “What about him?” she said.
“Don’t worry,” answered Maddy. “He’s lost in his calculations.”
A gust of wind shook the truck. Its loose fender clattered.
“I hate it here,” said Lina.
“Yes,” said Maddy. “Terrible things happened in this place. You can still feel it.”
“Were the people in those old days extremely evil?” Lina asked.
“No more than anyone,” Maddy said.
“But then why did the wars happen? To wreck your whole city—almost your whole world—it seems like something only evil people would do.”
“No, not evil, at least not at first. Just angry and scared.” Maddy was silent for a moment. Caspar’s footsteps came closer, crunching on the gravelly ground, and then receded again. Lina inched a little closer to Maddy. “It’s like this,” Maddy said at last. “Say the A people and the B people get in an argument. The A people do something that hurts the B people. The B people strike back to get even. But that just makes the A people angry all over again. They say, ‘You hurt us, so we’re going to hurt you.’ It keeps on like that. One bad thing leads to a worse bad thing, on and on.”
It was like what Torren had said when he was telling her about the Disaster. Revenge, he’d called it.
“Can’t it be stopped?” said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit where rocks weren’t digging into her.
“Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning,” Maddy said. “If someone sees what’s happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction.”
“Reverse the direction?”
“Yes, turn it around.”
“How would you do that?”
“You’d do something good,” said Maddy. “Or at least you’d keep yourself from doing something bad.”
“But how could you?” said Lina. “When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?”
“You wouldn’t want to,” Maddy said. “That’s what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
Lina wondered if she was strong enough to be good. She didn’t feel strong at all right now.
“Time to sleep,” said Maddy.
Lina pulled the blankets over her head, but still she could feel the wind and hear the oxen making low, uneasy sounds. She heard Caspar still pacing, too, and muttering under his breath.
I want to go home, she thought. And for the first time, the picture that arose in her mind was not of the dark, familiar buildings of Ember but of Sparks under its bright sky. She thought of Dr. Hester’s house, and the garden blooming in the sun, and the doctor puttering with her hundred plants. She thought of Mrs. Murdo sitting in the doctor’s courtyard, basking in the warmth, and Poppy playing with a spoon beside her. Even Torren was in the picture, proudly arranging his possessions on a window ledge.
And of course there was Doon. He should have been her partner on this journey. If he were here with her, she’d feel less afraid. She missed him. Maybe when she got back to Sparks, he’d be tired of hanging around that boy named Tick and be ready to be her friend again.