Chapter 4: Mississippi

Freeport sprouted out of the marshland like a fungus. Small boats bobbed at docks that parted the water like thin fingers. Leaning houses on tall posts rose from the soggy ground.

The Brown River was a sleeping giant, broad and serene. To the north was an algae-caked wooden bridge on ropes and pulleys, currently retracted to allow a barge through. To the west was a grey haze. Lily spared it a single look, but even that was almost more than she could bear.

So was Freeport. There had to be a thousand people sitting in the shade of the shacks, or moving through narrow streets and across crooked walkways. Maybe more. It was loud, odorous. People kept touching the horse.

Lily uncurled her fingers from 74's coat and slid down. Her ribs barely twinged; she suspected they'd been bruised, not fractured. Thankfully. She couldn't afford weakness.

The horse flicked its tail and danced sideways as 74 dismounted too; it lipped at his shoulder, and he patted its thick neck absently as he surveyed the waterfront. The boats. The southern flow of the current.

Lily’s good mood vanished like smoke. "Let’s go."

She’d forgotten what real cities were like. In Delphi people only gathered in orderly lines. Even the Undermarket had been silent, fear hanging lower than the tunnel ceilings. Nothing like this riot of noise and smell and color grating on her nerves.

Maybe she should try to appreciate it. How long would it be before she saw another person, let alone a town? No, that thought was worse.

Vendors hawked wares or grilled anonymous chunks of meat over open flames. Gangs of ragged children darted through the crowd and under the nervous horse's belly. Muddy, slat-ribbed dogs sniffed rubbish piles.

Lily scanned storefronts unsuccessfully for the universal trading post sign, two arrows in a circle. She saw the red cross of a healer painted on the upturned hull of a wrecked boat, braced and converted into a shop, and a dark, smoky wayhouse with a crudely drawn bed painted on the wall.

The brothel was obvious; a stylized wire heart was suspended over the door. Women sprawled outside on bench seats torn from old vehicles.

One woman appeared at 74's side, walking backwards. Her hands shook as she grabbed at him, her pale arms showing telltale scabs.

"Hey, gorgeous," she smiled, eyes a little too wide. "Stop for a while?”

74 shouldered past her without breaking step. Lily thought the woman would've had better luck coming on to a pile of firewood.

A small, dark voice whispered that this was probably where Jean had been coming with his wagon. Maybe this woman and all the others had been delivered the same way.

If Lily thought too hard about it she'd rip Freeport apart like a tornado, so she stopped thinking and walked.

—

The trading post clung to the edge of dry land, one of the last buildings without stilts. It was the shell of an ancient, wingless air machine, metal ribs curving behind crumbling grey skin.

Vegetable plants sprouted from corroded tin cans. A disemboweled Coalition troop transport rusted under an overhang where a stained yellow dress hung flapping in the breeze like a flag. Swaybacked tables held everything from Coalition-issue civilian work uniforms to boxes of eyeglasses and buttons.

The scrawny woman perched on an upended bucket watched them with attentive eyes, picking her remaining teeth with the tip of her knife.

"Give ya good deal for that horse," she said, in a high, nervous voice.

"How good?" The horse ducked its head toward a tomato plant, lips curling up from yellowing teeth, and Lily jerked on the bridle.

"Scattergun," said the woman, leaning over to hawk a glob of mucus into the dirt.

Lily folded her arms. "This is a lot of meat."

"Shooters come dear," the trader said. The mutie dog at her feet looked up with a halfhearted growl, extra eye lolling glassily.

If she told him to, 74 would break the trader's arms. It was tempting, but in the end there was no need for violence. After thirty minutes of haggling they left the shop horseless, Lily with a scattergun over her shoulder and a spacious new pack heavy with food and water.

74 exchanged his black coat for a less conspicuous one, and took a handful of miscellaneous ammunition and two antirad boosters in a case that still bore Coalition factory seals. Or so he claimed.

That was all. Lily brandished one of her new meal packs at him, shaking it until he accepted.

They walked to the docks in silence. Their association had been conditional upon reaching this river, and on its banks their partnership was finally coming to an end.

Lily had expected to feel a weight lifting, but instead the burden grew a few pounds heavier. The Wasteland loomed over her like a thunderhead, a vast nothingness that she'd soon be crossing.

Alone.

What if the Coalition was right. What if it just stretched on and on until it ended on the shore of an empty sea, littered with refuse from dead continents?

But Lily knew that wasn't true.

No two boats moored at the docks were the same: flat-bottomed barges with their crews on deck wielding long poles and puffing homemade rollups, deep-keeled vessels buoyed by algae-slick pontoons, patchwork metal skiffs with small alkie motors.

The ferry sat low in the water, broad and ugly. A weatherbeaten man shouted out a last call for New Columbia from the deck.

Do you know how much they pay for Operatives in Dallas, Jean's ghost whispered.

Lily ignored the planks swaying under her feet and the brown water gurgling away on all sides. “Well. Guess this is it.”

74 motioned to her heavy pack. “You must be going north.”

“No.” Lily lifted her chin. “I’m crossing the Wasteland.”

His face blanked out. “You’ll die.”

Anger flared like a brushfire in her chest. “Eventually. So will you, so will everyone. Except I’m going to do it on the other side.”

“There is no other side,” 74 pressed on, low and urgent. “You can’t—”

“I can and I will. Go, your boat’s leaving.” Lily pointed at the crew untying the lines. “Look.”

74 looked. When he turned back he was expressionless again. He pressed the flat case of antirad boosters into her hands, then turned on his heel and walked up the gangplank, handing off the ammo to a crewman in payment.

He didn’t look back. Lily didn't know why she'd expected him to. She didn’t know why it mattered.

The crew shoved off from the dock with their long poles, but she didn’t stay to watch. She couldn’t pick 74 out on the crowded deck anyway.

Behind her, the river carried the ferry away. Beyond the river the Wasteland stretched out deadly and unmeasured, but somewhere even beyond that there was a place with no Coalition and no Union, someplace green and good where the bombs hadn't fallen.

It had to be there. She had to find it.