Project - 16 Read Online Free PDF Page A

their
own cities across the sea and wondered with amazement whether it
could happen there too.
     
    I found a hand print on the bonnet of an old Ford and the
drying puddle of urine beneath it, soaking into the crumbling
tarmac. It was smaller than my own hand and it was the man's left,
used to steady himself while he pissed up against the car. There
was no band on the third finger.
    I walked on and found more disturbances in the dust. One of
them had stepped in a patch of mud that had risen through a crack
in the road and left a dry footprint a pace onwards. A third was to
the far left hand side of the road meaning they'd spread out in a
line. All three had been here. All three had gone over the hill and
down into the city and I'd have to follow. I didn't want to, that
was for certain, and I checked the magazine on my pistol, flicking
the safety off. It was insanity to go there given that any number
of the buildings were on the verge of collapsing and the roads
themselves were prone to caving into the sewers below. On top of
that great packs of dogs roamed the streets, living in the hollowed
out shells of shops and pubs, eager to sniff out their next meal
and track it down. Why they stayed there instead of going out into
the country was beyond me, but they were there all
right.
    Cautiously I followed the tracks down a long street lined
with crumbling houses, brick and concrete cracking with age, some
even falling apart to expose dust filled insides like a thousand
year old corpse. More cars. More rusting heaps still parked where
they'd always been parked. Children's push bikes, the bones of a
bygone age scattered around overgrown graveyard lawns. A skeleton
of some large animal. It was all the detritus of a man-made
sepulchre and I hated it. I wanted out the moment I started heading
in. It was oppressive and stifling and stunk of death - namely my
own death.
    I pressed on, following the patterns in the dirt that became
fewer and far between but were still easy to follow. They'd kept
along this road in a uniform line, perhaps breaking away here and
there to examine a house or a car, but more or less they kept on
until they reached a junction marked by the mangled wrecks of two
large transport trucks. They'd collided bang in the centre of the
cross roads, one coming down the road, the other coming from the
right. The door of one had been wrenched open and the brittle
remains of the driver had been dragged out. The cab was empty and I
climbed up to look inside, confirming my suspicion that the three
of them had looked inside. The dust had been disturbed around the
glove box and there were hand prints all over the dashboard. I
guess that there was always a chance that others had missed
something, especially in an unlikely place like a glove
box.
    The tracks went on down the road to the city centre. I
followed, gathering pace a little as I went, eager to get it over
with and get out. I descended another sloping street, turned right
and followed the traffic of a dozen smashed cars until the tall
high-rise office blocks could be seen between the towering oaks
that had once lined a quaint street that was now overgrown. It was
here that I really did consider turning back.
    There were cars blocking the entire tarmac strip leaving only
the pavement on the left hand side to walk on. I found their spoor
and it was clear that they'd walked in single file, but on top of
their muddy footprints were another set, another cluster of
markings - that of a dozen padded feet.
    I fought the feeling to just turn tail and run, to never look
back. It froze me on the spot and I realised I was holding my
breath - and the grip of the pistol. It was an agonising time of
deciding between doing the sensible thing and doing the right
thing, the choice that best fit with my own ethos. But was it my
ethos, or the ethos passed down to me by my Dad? What would he have
done and what should I do? All this fired through my mind in
moments but to me they felt like