The Road That Wouldn't Go

Chapter 1 - The Bridge That Stayed

Afterwards, Waymark could not stop returning to the bridge.

Not the crossing. The moment before it, when he still believed everyone would reach the far side. Himself included.

It went like this.

Waymark knew the route had failed before the bridge did. Routes failed in people first.

They failed in the pause before someone stepped onto them.

In the hand that reached for a railing no longer attached to anything.

In the child who looked down once and became unable to look anywhere else.

The elevated service road had split between two buildings, leaving twenty feet of open air where concrete had once carried ambulances, delivery vans and maintenance crews above the lower streets of East Larkham.

Below, traffic remained where the fall had stopped it. Cars pressed against one another beneath rain and old ash. A bus lay across two lanes with its roof torn open. Figures moved between the vehicles, too quickly when they crossed the gaps and too slowly when they thought no one could see.

Vampires had learned patience before most people had learned fear properly.

Waymark stood on the wrong side of the break with eleven civilians behind him.

Ten standing.

One held.

The held boy was perhaps eight. His left leg bent below the knee in a direction that made counting it feel cruel. A woman Waymark assumed was his mother carried him with both arms locked beneath his back and thighs, though her right hand had begun to slip.

She had not complained. That made her more dangerous to herself.

“Put him down,” Waymark said.

The woman stared at him. What she saw did not help. A man who had crossed a broken floor towards the fire instead of away from it. Both forearms wrapped in cloth that had been white that morning, the left wrapping lifted from underneath by something that had stopped being bone and had not yet finished becoming anything else. He held his jaw slightly open on one side, because the socket beside his back molar had opened again and closing it cost him a second he had not budgeted.

Nothing about him looked like rescue arriving. It never had. That was most of why it worked.

“No.”

“You’ll drop him.”

“No.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m holding him.”

The words came out through her teeth.

Behind her, an older man pressed both hands against his side. Blood had passed through his shirt, coat and the cloth someone had tied around him. A teenage girl supported him with one arm while holding a fire extinguisher in the other.

The extinguisher was empty. She had kept it anyway. Waymark respected that.

He looked across the break. Glimmerwright stood on the far side beneath the remains of a concrete canopy.

Her hard-light bridge crossed the gap in a narrow white span, bright enough to hurt the eyes and thin enough to make every person approaching it question whether light remembered weight.

She had made it wide enough for one body at a time. No railings. No wasted brightness.

Everything else she held had begun to fail. Three angled barriers of hard light stood between her and the service-ramp entrance behind her. The nearest was already cracked, white lines spreading through it whenever something struck from the other side.

The second barrier had lost its lower corner. The third flickered.

Glimmerwright held all four structures with both hands raised.

Bridge.

Barrier.

Barrier.

Barrier.

She had been brighter once. Waymark remembered photographs taken before the fall, when newspapers had called her architecture beautiful. Bridges arcing over rivers. Shelters unfolding around burning flats. Ladders and ramps built from light while crowds applauded because no one had yet understood how much of her body each structure required.

Now her skin had gone pale around the mouth. Blood ran from one nostril.

The bridge remained.

Waymark touched his tongue to the empty space beside his back molar. The wound there had reopened. He tasted iron and grit.

“Move,” Glimmerwright called. Her voice crossed the gap cleanly.

The vampires behind her struck the first barrier again. It bent inward.

Not light bending.

Her.

Waymark turned to the civilians. “You cross one at a time.”

No one moved.

He pointed to the teenage girl. “You first.”

She looked at the injured man leaning against her. “I’m with him.”

“You go first. Then he goes.”

“He can’t walk alone.”

“I’ll bring him.”

The man shook his head. “Take the child.”

“The child’s leg is broken,” Waymark said. “He crosses after someone proves the bridge holds.”

The mother looked at him with open hatred. Good. Hatred moved better than terror.

The teenage girl tightened her grip on the extinguisher. “What if it doesn’t?”

Waymark looked at Glimmerwright. The bridge shivered under rain. “It holds.”

The first barrier cracked from top to bottom.

Something pushed an arm through the white fracture.

The limb smoked where the light touched it.

The vampire did not pull back.

Glimmerwright closed her left hand.

The crack sealed around the arm.

There was a wet tearing sound from the other side.

The hand fell onto the concrete near her boots.

It kept moving.

“Now,” Glimmerwright said.

The girl stepped onto the bridge.

Her first foot landed flat.

The light dipped.

Only slightly.

She froze.

Waymark moved behind her and pressed two fingers between her shoulder blades. “Walk.”

She took another step.

The bridge held.

Rain passed through its edges and became steam beneath it.

The girl moved faster.

Halfway across, she looked down.

Her balance changed immediately.

Waymark caught the back of her coat. “Look at her.”

He pointed towards Glimmerwright.

The girl lifted her head.

Glimmerwright stood beneath the canopy, arms raised, blood bright across her upper lip.

“Keep looking,” Waymark said.

The girl walked.

Glimmerwright lowered one hand for less than a second when the girl reached the far side. Just enough to catch her shoulder and move her behind the canopy support.

The bridge dimmed.

The second barrier broke at its lower edge.

A vampire came through on hands and knees.

Its face had been burned away from one side. Teeth showed through the cheek. One eye remained, fixed on Glimmerwright.

She turned her wrist.

A blade of hard light formed across the broken opening and cut through the vampire’s neck.

The body fell.

The head rolled into the first barrier and remained there, jaw working.

The bridge brightened again.

Waymark looked at the old man. “Your turn.”

“I’ll fall.”

“Yes.”

The man blinked.

Waymark took his arm from the girl’s shoulders and pulled it across his own. “I’ll stop you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No.”

The answer seemed to offend him. That helped.

Waymark carried more of the man’s weight than he admitted. His right knee shook beneath it. The socket in his left shoulder had not settled properly after the last arrival. Every step dragged pressure through his jaw, his ribs and the small hard mass growing beneath the skin of his forearm.

A marker waiting to be taken.

Not yet.

They reached the bridge. The old man stared at the light. “I used to work over there,” he said.

Waymark followed his gaze. The building beyond the gap had once been a municipal office. Half its windows were gone. The upper floors burned behind black smoke.

“Which floor?”

“Six.”

“Don’t look for it.”

“I had a desk.”

“You don’t now.”

The man almost laughed. It became a cough. Blood touched his lips.

Waymark placed the man’s first foot onto the bridge. “Step when I step.”

They moved together.

The bridge dipped lower beneath two bodies.

Glimmerwright’s knees bent.

Waymark saw it from halfway across. “You’re losing height,” he called.

“I know.”

“Drop the third barrier.”

“No.”

“The approach is empty.”

“It isn’t.”

Waymark looked beyond her. The service ramp curved down between the buildings. Nothing moved there.

Then one of the shadows beneath the ramp railing lifted its head.

Another shape rose behind it.

Not one route of attack.

Two.

The vampires had circled below.

Glimmerwright had seen them.

Waymark had not.

He hated her for that briefly. Hating the person who noticed more was easier than admitting what they had saved.

The old man stumbled.

Waymark tightened his grip.

The bridge tilted.

Not from their weight.

The first barrier had given way.

Three vampires came through together.

Glimmerwright threw her right hand outward.

A wall of light struck the first vampire and drove it into the second. The third dropped beneath the force and crawled low, fingers splitting against the concrete as it pulled itself forwards.

Glimmerwright changed the angle of the nearest barrier.

The lower edge met the floor.

The vampire’s arm was trapped beneath it.

Then its shoulder.

Then its head.

The light pressed down.

Bone cracked.

The bridge thinned beneath Waymark’s boots.

“Stop defending,” he said.

Glimmerwright looked at him across the gap. “Walk.”

He did.

He got the old man to the far side and passed him to the teenage girl. “Pressure on the wound.”

“I know.”

“More pressure.”

“I am.”

“Then use your knee.”

She stared.

“Both hands on the cloth. Knee against his hip. Don’t let him turn.”

The girl obeyed.

Waymark turned back.

Nine civilians remained.

The mother.

The injured boy.

A pregnant woman in a supermarket uniform.

Two men wearing council maintenance jackets.

An elderly couple.

A delivery driver with half his scalp darkened by blood.

And a woman who had said nothing since Waymark reached them.

She stood nearest the broken edge.

Too near.

Waymark crossed back.

The bridge felt colder now. Hard light should not have temperature. Glimmerwright’s structures always did when she was nearing collapse. The cold came from her.

By the time he reached the trapped side, the silent woman had moved one foot closer to the drop.

Waymark caught her sleeve. “No.”

She looked at him.

Her eyes had emptied without becoming calm.

“I can’t cross.”

“You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t need to.”

Something returned to her face. Confusion.

Waymark pointed at the ground beside him. “You need to stand there.”

Then he pointed halfway across the bridge. “Then there.”

Then the far side. “Then there.”

She began to cry. Not loudly.

He moved her behind the two council workers. “You go after them.”

One of the workers looked towards the barriers behind Glimmerwright. “How long?”

Waymark ignored him.

He pointed to the first council worker. “You.”

The man stepped onto the bridge without argument.

The second followed only after Waymark caught his coat and dragged him back.

“One at a time.”

“There isn’t time.”

“There isn’t bridge for two.”

The first man crossed.

The vampires struck Glimmerwright’s remaining barriers again.

The third barrier failed completely.

It did not shatter.

It vanished.

The sudden absence made Glimmerwright stagger.

Two shapes climbed over the service-ramp wall behind her.

She turned.

A hard-light spear formed from her elbow to fingertips.

She drove it through the nearer vampire’s chest.

The second caught her wrist.

Its skin smoked.

It did not release her.

Glimmerwright twisted and made the spear wider inside the first body. Light split ribs, spine and back.

The dead weight dragged the second vampire sideways.

She kicked it against the canopy support.

The bridge flickered beneath the crossing man.

He shouted.

Waymark stepped onto the light from the wrong end.

The added weight forced the span lower.

“Keep moving.”

“I’m going to fall.”

“Yes.”

The man’s face changed at the answer.

Waymark reached him, put one hand against his chest and shoved.

The worker stumbled the final three steps and fell onto the far concrete.

Glimmerwright turned her shoulder against the vampire holding her wrist.

Hard light burst between them.

The vampire’s fingers came away burning.

She did not look at the wound.

Waymark did.

Four deep cuts crossed her wrist where nails had reached skin before the light formed.

Blood ran into her palm.

The bridge pulsed.

Her blood entered the structure as shadow.

“Drop it,” Waymark said.

“No.”

“I can mark back.”

“You have one left.”

He looked down at his forearm. The hard mass beneath the skin had grown long enough to lift the flesh around it. A piece of his body calcifying itself into direction.

“One is enough.”

“For you.”

Waymark said nothing.

Glimmerwright’s face hardened.

The second council worker began crossing behind him.

Waymark turned. “I said wait.”

The man kept coming. “My wife’s next.”

The pregnant woman had taken his hand.

One body.

Then two.

The bridge bent sharply.

Glimmerwright cried out. It was the first sound she had made that belonged to pain rather than instruction.

Waymark moved towards them. “Back.”

“No.”

“Back.”

The worker gripped his wife’s wrist.

“They’re through.”

Behind them, the last of the barrier light had begun to fail. Vampires pushed through the gaps between the remaining angled planes. One lost an ear to the light and kept moving. Another pressed both hands to the barrier until its fingers burned down to blackened bone.

The pregnant woman looked at Waymark. “Please.”

He had no useful answer.

He reached them. Placed himself between their weight and the drop. “Walk together.”

Glimmerwright looked at him. He saw the objection. Then saw her bury it.

They moved.

The bridge became no wider, but Waymark felt its force redistribute beneath them. Glimmerwright had changed the internal structure. Not a flat span now. A central line carrying most of the load, with the edges little more than reassurance.

The woman’s foot slipped from the useful part.

Waymark caught her under the arm.

The council worker tightened his grip on her wrist.

Too tight.

She cried out.

“Loosen it,” Waymark said.

“I’ll lose her.”

“You’ll break her hand.”

“I don’t care.”

“She will.”

He loosened his grip.

They reached the far side.

Glimmerwright’s right leg folded. She caught herself against the canopy support with her shoulder.

The bridge remained.

Waymark pushed the couple clear and turned back again.

Six civilians.

The elderly couple crossed separately.

The delivery driver crossed with blood running into one eye.

The silent woman reached the middle, stopped breathing and sat down.

Waymark went to her.

The bridge vibrated beneath his knees.

“I told you I couldn’t.”

“You were right.”

She stared at him through tears.

Waymark crouched. “Hold my coat.”

She gripped it.

“Stand.”

“I can’t.”

“Then let your hands do it.”

She pulled.

He rose slowly, taking her weight with him.

The hard mass under his forearm shifted.

Pain sharpened from wrist to elbow.

The marker wanted out. His body had learned badly. It prepared escape whenever he feared being trapped.

He brought the woman to the far side.

The bridge behind him narrowed by another inch.

Two civilians remained.

The two maintenance workers had crossed.

The mother still held the boy.

The mother had watched everyone else go. Now she stood at the edge with her son pressed against her chest and terror working through the muscles of her arms.

“I’ll carry him,” Waymark said.

“No.”

“You’ll need both hands.”

“No.”

“The bridge is narrower.”

“No.”

The boy opened his eyes. He had not spoken before. “Mum.”

She looked down. “It’s all right.”

It was not. The boy knew. Children usually did.

“Let him,” the boy said.

The mother’s face broke. Only slightly. Enough.

She lowered him into Waymark’s arms. He was lighter than he should have been.

The broken leg shifted.

The boy screamed once and bit down on the sleeve of Waymark’s coat.

Waymark carried him towards the bridge.

The mother followed.

“One at a time,” Glimmerwright said. Her voice had weakened.

Waymark looked across. She no longer stood beneath the canopy. She leaned against it.

The remaining barrier was gone.

Hard-light blades moved around her instead. Small shapes. Quick shapes.

They cut at hands, faces and knees as vampires came from the service ramp and the lower wall.

Too many. Glimmerwright did not have enough structure left for walls. So she had made edges.

The bridge trembled.

“I take him,” Waymark said. “She follows.”

“No.”

Waymark stopped.

Glimmerwright’s eyes stayed on the approaching vampires.

“You bring him. I bring her.”

“You can’t leave the anchor.”

“I am the anchor.”

A vampire came through the failing light and struck her from the side.

She hit the canopy support.

The bridge flared white.

Waymark nearly lost the child.

Glimmerwright drove a hard-light spike backwards through the vampire’s throat.

It fell against her.

She pushed it away.

“Move.”

Waymark stepped onto the bridge with the boy.

The mother made a sound behind him.

He did not turn. Turning added time. Time had become weight.

The boy’s teeth remained locked on Waymark’s sleeve. His body shook in short hard movements.

Waymark crossed.

At the centre, the bridge thinned until light showed around the soles of his boots rather than beneath them.

The child’s mother shouted his name.

Not Waymark’s.

The boy’s.

“Craig.”

The boy released the sleeve.

“Mum.”

Waymark looked back.

The mother had stepped onto the bridge.

Glimmerwright was behind her. Not following. Holding the woman’s shoulders from the solid side. Keeping her aligned with the centre.

The vampires reached them.

One struck Glimmerwright across the back.

Her hard-light blades vanished.

The bridge dropped.

Waymark fell to one knee.

The boy screamed.

Waymark wrapped himself around the child and felt the open air pull at them.

Then the bridge rose again.

Glimmerwright had caught it.

Not the vampire.

Not herself.

The bridge.

Waymark stood.

“Walk,” she said.

Blood covered her teeth.

The mother moved.

A vampire bit into Glimmerwright’s shoulder.

She did not turn.

Light formed inside its mouth.

Its head burst apart in white fragments and dark blood.

The mother reached the centre.

Waymark carried Craig towards the far edge.

The bridge brightened under his final steps.

Not stronger.

Spent.

He reached solid concrete and passed the boy to the teenage girl. “Hold his knee. Don’t straighten it.”

The mother was still crossing.

Glimmerwright remained on the wrong side.

Three vampires held her now.

One at her shoulder.

One against her back.

One tearing at the arm she had raised towards the bridge.

The light came from that arm.

From the hand they had not yet broken.

Waymark touched the hard length beneath his forearm.

One marker.

One arrival.

He could cut it out.

Throw it behind Glimmerwright.

Reach her.

He could arrive with enough speed to take the vampires from her.

He could reach.

The blade in his belt was already in his hand. He pressed its point into the raised skin over the marker.

Glimmerwright saw. Even across the gap. Even through the vampires around her.

She shook her head.

Waymark pushed the blade deeper.

Her expression changed.

Not fear.

Anger.

She opened her free hand.

A hard-light plane appeared between Waymark and the bridge.

Not blocking the civilians.

Blocking him.

The mother stumbled against it from the other side.

Glimmerwright adjusted.

The plane became a narrow channel, forcing the woman towards safety.

Waymark struck the light with his fist.

It held.

“Move it.”

Glimmerwright said nothing.

A vampire tore into her raised arm.

The bridge flickered.

The mother ran the final steps.

Waymark reached through the channel and caught her wrist.

Pulled.

She fell beside her son.

The bridge remained empty between them.

Waymark looked across it.

Glimmerwright had gone to one knee.

The vampires pulled her backwards.

Her raised hand stayed forward.

The bridge stayed.

There was no one left on it.

“Drop it,” Waymark said. She could not hear him. Or chose not to.

The hard-light plane kept him back.

He cut into his forearm.

The blade opened skin.

Blood ran around the white mineral ridge beneath.

He dug for the marker.

Pain travelled through his teeth.

Glimmerwright looked at him one final time.

Then she closed her hand.

The blocking plane vanished.

So did the bridge.

Waymark stepped forwards into nothing.

The teenage girl caught the back of his coat.

The delivery driver caught her.

Together they dragged him away from the edge.

Across the gap, Glimmerwright fell beneath the vampires.

No light returned.

For several seconds, the route between the buildings contained only rain.

Then one small strip of white remained.

Not a bridge.

An afterimage clinging to the broken concrete where her hand had pointed.

Waymark pulled the half-formed marker from his forearm. It came free wetly.

Calcified blood.

Bone mineral.

Something pale and sharpened by his body’s insistence that every destination required damage.

He held it between his fingers.

He could throw it across.

He could arrive.

The civilians behind him were crying, counting, pressing cloth to blood and calling one another by name.

Craig called for his mother.

His mother answered.

The injured old man remained alive.

The silent woman had begun breathing again.

Eleven civilians.

All across.

Glimmerwright was not.

Waymark closed his fist around the marker until its edge cut his palm.

Reaching her would not bring her back.

The lesson came too late to save anyone.

It remained anyway.

Behind the broken service road, vampires fed beneath the place where the bridge had stayed long enough.

Waymark stood with the people Glimmerwright had saved and understood that arrival was not rescue.

Not without return.

Not without someone left alive to hold the other end.

He carried it out of that place and did not set it down.

There was a shelter he would never reach, and a keeper of names inside it, and a wall he had never seen with her name already on it.

He did not know that yet.

He knew only the far side, and the eleven who had crossed, and the one who had not.