Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

Comment: publishers@cox.net

Go to Chapter:   Prolog  
 1    2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25  
26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50  
51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60  

Monopol City

a novel

by John T. Cullen

53.

As Tedda stepped out from the elevator, she heard the mechanisms inside the left tunnel squeal and grind irrevocably to a stop. Tortured metal ground on tortured metal as axles seized, wheels stopped turning, cables twisted, and reality itself bent out of shape. There would be no way back now.

She stopped and put on her field jacket, because it was chilly. The rucksack and web belts went over that. As an afterthought, she even put on the poncho over the whole lot, though there was no trace of rain.

Tedda stood on a street in the far suburbs of what had been greater Monopol City. The night sky gleamed with a weak ambient light. Telltale flickers of green aurora danced on the far sea. Tedda walked among ruined blocks of buildings, many of which had sunk into the decay of failing rules. The streets still worked, though few street lamps did. A few corner lights still flickered a weak, sickly greenish color. Many of the city blocks had simply vanished, so that she was walking through an astonishing landscape of streets and sidewalks among flat empty lots. It looked more like a city waiting to be built, rather than a city and suburbs that were vanishing block by block as the energy for the world died away. She strode along, her breath coming in vapor as the chilly air received it.

Closer to downtown, tall buildings still stood. All the neon was out. The great billboards were darkened and askew. Parts of letters were missing. She could make out faintly the dull signs of Green Station, Blue Station, Red Station, and so forth—all the same uniformly muddy brown. Some of the skyscrapers had collapsed into piles of rubble. Many of the trees had turned gray and died. There was very little life here. There was a pervasive, autumn-like smell of burning wood or leaves.

Downtown itself, within the loop of the original monorail like on the board game, still had some electrical power. Tedda wandered among the huddled, homeless few people remaining in the ruins of their formerly great city. The sidewalk cafes were long abandoned. A few spindly tables and chairs remained piled together. From the absence of wood, Tedda guessed that the denizens of this lost world had been burning every bit of wood they could get their hands on to keep warm.

It was indeed chilly here. She shivered and kept climbing over piles of rubble. Men, women, and children huddled bleakly together in corners and nooks. They huddled around fires and cooked what little food there was. They regarded her with hollow, hopeless looks. "Has anyone seen Edgar Hedrock? Alton-Edgar Hedrock? Nobody?" They all shook their heads bleakly and returned to their fires.

She finally succumbed to exhaustion. Clambering up in to the dusty, dirty ruins of Green Station, she found a trolley stuck amid fallen metal power girders. In its final moments of operation, the train must have rushed onto a twisted tie, for it sat askew just as it had come to dead stop amid screeching brakes and showers of sparks. The windows were gone, and the seats covered with white guano from now-vanished birds. Afraid of disease, she climbed up-slope to the motorman's compartment. The driver, before leaving the damaged vehicle, had dutifully closed the door, and so it remained. Tedda let herself into the dry, dusty space that smelled faintly of motor oil and mouse droppings. Propping herself on the short couch with her head against the down-sloping wall and her booted feet pulled up, she fell into an exhausted slumber.