A suburb on the ocean, within sight of the great city, offered plenty of good scrounging, and the trio of travelers quickly found street and motorway maps.
The board room at the top of a twelve-story office building allowed them to survey the situation.
Out on the rooftop patio, once reserved for monkey mammals in suits, they leaned on the railing and watched the setting sun turn the windows of the distant skyscrapers several shades of pink and orange.
Giona’s voice was very small, so Jimox and Teina couldn’t be sure they got her name right, but she seemed happy with it. The pair of mortals had read about intelligent ghosts, but had never before experienced one that wasn’t either stuck somewhere, or craving to move on to . . . whatever awaited them in a better place. Giona seemed to fit into neither category. She danced on the patio railing as the sun found the western horizon.
Jimox and Teina went inside to make some dinner.
A few minutes later, Giona noticed they were gone and dashed in to see what they were having.
The morning sun in the east brought a new, more practical perspective to the next phase of the journey. The skyscrapers were now just silhouettes, so the two monkey mammals lowered their eyes and considered the miles between here and there.
NEBADOR Book Eight: Witness 72
An elevated motorway began not far from their office building. Teina followed it with her spyglass. “Looks like it goes right to downtown. I’ve never been in a city this big.”
“When I was here with my parents, we went everywhere in trains, sometimes underground.”
“Best I can tell,” Teina said, holding in a grin while still looking through her spyglass, “they’re not running.”
Jimox waited a second, then burst out snickering.
Giona, barely visible in the daylight, seemed to love the joke, and danced for joy on the patio railing.
Although they sometimes had to walk, even carry their bicycles when they came to wrecked or burned cars, they soon discovered the motorway had several advantages.
The streets below seldom went straight from anywhere to anywhere, and the map confirmed that such a journey would be long and winding. Thick weeds and overgrown bushes added to the tangle. Some of the surface streets were so choked with burned cars that passage, except on foot, appeared impossible.
Also, packs of wild dogs roamed everywhere. Giona squeaked something that might have been monsters. But to everyone’s delight, the dogs never seemed to get up to the elevated motorway.
“There’s nothing to eat up here,” Jimox speculated, “except two monkey mammals they don’t know about. And no water . . . or shade.”
Teina nodded as she scowled at the ruined, burned city below. “I can’t decide which is uglier — up here, or down there. Did we really come all this way just for this? ”
NEBADOR Book Eight: Witness 73
Jimox cringed. “Um . . . we came all this way to see what we could see. If we decide to go back home, we’ll do it knowing what’s here, instead of always just wondering.”
Teina nodded, stepped back from the railing, and looked east, toward the skyscrapers that were getting taller as the travelers got closer.
Like a strand of a spider’s web, the motorway approached downtown, then joined another that completely encircled the heart of the great city. Empty streets and walkways, like canyons in desert badlands, carved their way into the very middle, dark and shadowy.
“They’re waiting,” Giona whispered, but neither monkey mammal heard her tiny voice.
The arrangement of motorways quickly gave Jimox and Teina an idea.
They didn’t feel ready to explore the heart of the city, and agreed that when they did so, it would be on foot. So they decided to just follow the elevated motorways around the city until they spotted something that looked safe and homey.
A sprawling steel and glass convention center looked as cozy as a parking lot. The nearby hotels were as inviting as bee hives.
Next, hundreds of warehouses marched in line, street after street, silent and still. Most were tightly closed and locked to protect things no one would ever buy again. A few had burned.
A tangled motorway interchange forced the travelers to stare at the map, trying to figure out which elevated road went where. Like a ball of knotted string, it was only unraveled after they followed each strand with a pencil.
They warily entered a short tunnel that took them in the right direction,
NEBADOR Book Eight: Witness 74
pistols and flashlights in easy reach. From a burned car in the darkest part came the growl of a mother dog and the whimpering of puppies. The dog stayed hidden, so the travelers slipped by without stopping.
Giona came floating along behind, humming a little tune that no mortal ears could hear.
After pedaling for a few more minutes, a cultural area came into view, with a library, city hall, court house, and music hall. Gardens and small parks in between the buildings were weedy and overgrown, but still somewhat green.
“This is starting to look a little more interesting,” Teina declared, dismounting after scanning the area.
Jimox joined her at the motorway railing, but faced the other direction to keep watch, pistol in hand. “Maybe we can learn more about the plague in city hall.”
“I hope so,” she said, focusing her spyglass. “Way fewer dogs than in the suburbs.”
Jimox started swatting at something buzzing around his head.
“Mosquito?” Teina inquired, lowering the spyglass.
“Oops, sorry Giona,” Jimox said, “I didn’t know it was you. It’s hard to see you in the daylight. Teina, I think she wants to show us something.”
The barely-seen spirit, still spinning and making the loudest sound she could, led them to the far side of the motorway, forcing them to climb over the center divider.
Teina noticed Jimox keeping watch to the east, so she kept an eye on the west. “I wonder what’s so important . . .”
They came to the far railing, on the side away from downtown, and beheld the city’s grand old railway station. Set among towering shade trees, it appeared completely intact.
