Page 55 of Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

Dak didn’t say anything. Adjusted the strap of his guitar case, a moment of fidgeting. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. So Enid started walking. Left the road and cut overland, kicking through grass toward the gap between the couple of hills that stood between her and the ancient city.

“Enid . . .” Dak called, then followed her.

They took the rest of the day to approach the city. The shape of it came in and out of view as they walked past hills, along creek beds, and through stretches of woods. Quickly, surprisingly, they came upon other signs of the pre-Fall world. A stretch of asphalt that hadn’t yet been swallowed by grass. A white square of concrete pavement.

Enid’s foot would hit a solid, echoing step, and she’d look up and around and suddenly see the shape of it: a long, straight dip in a meadow that must have been a road a hundred years before. The land was sunken, the grass a slightly darker color—that was all that marked the place. But there must have been more: buildings lining the road, the rusted shells of cars, signs and lights and all the rest. If she pulled back the overgrowth, dug into mounds of scrub oak, and cut through mats of clinging vines, she would find more evidence of what this place had been. More remains.

The vegetation suddenly seemed alien, a cloak hiding something ominous.

“What do you suppose it was like?” she asked, her voice sounding flat in the muggy air. They hadn’t spoken in a long time, walking silently, somber, as if watching a funeral pyre.

“Doesn’t really matter,” Dak said. “But I would have liked to hear their music.”

A sudden crashing in the underbrush ahead startled her. Startled them both—she reached out, heart racing, and his hand was right there to grab hers.

Cattle. Two feral cows with scraggy ruddy coats and beady eyes lumbered across the one-time road and into the next collection of shadows. She barely got a look at them, their brick-like faces braying and thick legs kicking.

She and Dak both laughed and came together in an awkward hug, bleeding out adrenaline. Looking around one more time, wondering what else was out there and if they ought to be worried.

“What happens if we see people?” she asked.

“We probably won’t see anyone,” Dak said. “They’ll be scared of us. If there’s even anyone here anymore. I don’t see how anyone can live in this wild.”

It was certainly different out here than what they were used to, even with all the traveling they did.

Enid didn’t think anyone would be scared of the two of them—they weren’t much to look at. A couple of kids with bulky packs and blankets tied over their shoulders, not to mention Dak’s guitar. They weren’t a threat—they were targets. She started studying the undergrowth, pulling up fallen branches, and testing them until she found one that was about a foot shorter than she was, that she could easily fit her hands around but still looked sturdy enough to cause damage if she swung it. After stripping twigs and leaves from it, it had the look of a decent walking stick. While she worked, Dak watched

impatiently.

“You look like an investigator with that thing,” he said.

“Bien,” she answered. “Now folk’ll be scared of us.” If they needed it. Maybe they wouldn’t need it.

Dak shook his head and went on, not waiting to see if she caught up or not. She got the feeling he was getting frustrated with her. Maybe she ought to suggest turning around? Maybe she ought to ask him if he was unhappy. Or why he was unhappy, rather. She wondered what he was thinking and couldn’t bring herself to ask, because it would sound like whining. Because she might not like the answer.

She studied the angular, artificial shadows ahead. She wanted to see them up close; that was what she focused on.

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Farther on, Enid put her hands on the bones of one of those ancient structures. A spine of steel emerged from underbrush, thick enough she could put her arms around it, red and rusting, chipped concrete sloughing off it, spotted with fuzzy green moss. Plates of rusty-brown fungus grew out from the base—nothing they could harvest. The growths ate into the concrete, causing the remains of the structure to melt away almost as they watched.

So began a forest of metal, flat surfaces that had edges covered in vines, trees leaning off balconies that seemed to be freestanding, but on closer look it seemed that the walls around them were gone, and only steel frames held them up. Sloping hills of refuse might have been left by giant moles. Enid studied it all, trying to imagine what had been here before . . . and failing. She’d seen pictures of what this had looked like; what she couldn’t see was the transition, how the world in those images had turned into this.

Auntie Kath would know.

“Well, this is it,” Dak said, holding his arms out in presentation. “The ruins.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. Her heart raced; she smiled. There was a strange kind of echoing—birdsong sounded louder here. “Let’s keep going.”

The gaps between steel and concrete had obviously been streets. Some walls still stood—holes indicated where windows and doors had been. Strange, that some parts were so identifiable, yet also ghostly, no longer serving any kind of purpose.

She thought they had come to the end of the city when they reached a wide stretch of broken asphalt, with trees and scrub rooted in decaying black rubble. No buildings, nothing else—but in the middle of this space, more steel, carpets of broken glass crunching under their boots, beaten by weather over the decades. Enid crouched, cleared away some moss and grass, and the pebbles of glass flashed in the light. They walked farther, circling a steel boundary with struts and buckled walls. This had been a single building once, able to encompass some of the towns they’d been to. What did anyone even do with a structure so large?

Even after this, the ruined city continued. For miles, it went on.

Enid hoped to find artifacts. Tools to salvage or a toy or a piece of cutlery to show what life had looked like before the Fall. Maybe even a book—how marvelous would it be to find a book that no one from Haven had seen before. But no, all that had vanished long ago. Already salvaged, buried, or rotted away. So many things just rotted away if no one was there to take care of them.

In the last days, there hadn’t been enough people to take care of much of anything.

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