Steel People Chapter 2: Bones of Giants

If you missed the first Steel People and want to read it, click here. If you want to hear it narrated by

Terrance Ó Domhnaill

, click here

Maybelle stopped walking so sharply she kicked up a cloud of sand. I kept walking until our eternally linked hands dragged me to a stop so I kicked up my own cloud of sand.

I retreated back to her side, then looked at her. She was staring across the sun-blasted plain and the faint blue thread of the river bisecting it. There was nothing but yellow and dark blue and sky blue, until they all merged into the glaring distance.

“Look ahead, can you see it? The gates of the river. We’re almost there.” She pointed straight ahead. Her arm shined as the sun reflected off the dried river mud. I shielded my eyes with my hand and two great shadows emerged from the blaze. The horizon was actually bold, with a thin gap where the river wove through.

“Oh, it’s the Osage dam,” I said. I felt relief at a landmark.

“I heard the steel people built it to hold back all the water and stop the land from dying,” she said.

“We did. It was a last resort after all this had already turned to desert,” I said. “It only turned to desert after we’d drained all the ground water dry and drunk the last clouds from the sky,” I added quickly.

“The steel people reaped the earth to the bone, and grew their own divine justice,” Se said. She pulled me into her embrace and pressed her lips to my ear. “You didn’t do that. You are no longer one of them..”

I held her close and nodded into her hair. After leaving the Dallas harbor, the clouds had vanished and only the hot sun and pale sky remained to hammer us. The trash and weed wastes became hot, packed sand that left us caked white up to our thighs, and bit our skin if we sat on it in the daytime We’d tried shielding ourselves with our ponchos, but the dark, waterproof nylon had only gathered up the heat and baked us faster.

So we’d painted ourselves in pale river mud as armor, and now we were a single grey post woven together, with her hair billowing as a flag in the waste. Here we survived.

She kissed my cheek. “When we find a rivertalker I will stand as your voucher so you can become a river person. They’ll cut a line through my arm as a mark that I vouched for you. Then we can be together forever.”

I shivered again. “I’m the luckiest person alive.”

“No, I am,” she said, and kissed my lips.

The gates grew as the day went on. Until their expanse blocked the evening sun and finally, after many days, shade kissed our skin and cooled it.

I grinned at Maybelle. “The river gates are protecting us.”

That grin faded when I looked up and behind the gates in detail, in the last light of the setting sun.

The Osage dam had been meant to create a reservoir in the middle of the dying southern great plains. It had already collapsed when I was born. I watched a documentary about it in school. Then our own sea walls had been breached by a hypercane, and I’d left the steel people forever.

It was a wall of bleached concrete and steel rising 425 feet high. A jagged gap ran through the middle third. The river frothed through the wreckage in the center and sprayed out. I strode into the river until the current was up to my knees. It pushed against me so hard I had to dig my feet in on the ground and trudge forwards. The sweat that had been evaporating off me for weeks now began dripping off my brow.

“You’re not swimming up that, silly,” Maybelle said.

I shrugged and returned to shore. “We need another way up.”

“We’ll find one. I can climb, can you?”

I looked up. “I grew up in a city, of course I can climb well. Where to, though?”

“I can see a few ledges we can stop and rest at,” she said. “Let’s look in the morning.”

We did the same thing every night. We washed the mud off, made a fire from scavenged dead wood, set up our still, then laid out our net in the river and baited it with some fish from our previous catch. This far from Dallas, the river at least had catfish. They were foul and needed thorough cooking, but they were something.

We ate dried catfish with our last can of vegetables scavenged from a Dallas ruin. Then we lay down for the night, bellies still growling. Maybelle flopped down and her hair tickled my chest and neck. I hugged her close.

She turned over to look at me, and walked her legs up until they were curled around me. “We’re going to rest a day and celebrate when we get over, okay?”

“What if we fall?” I said.

“Then…” she sighed.

I nodded back. Alone, we were a nub of bone being ground down. I shivered at the thought. She trembled too. I knew then; if one of us fell, the other would jump. I could see it in my mind for a brief horrible instant. We could not survive alone, and would not prolong the inevitable.

The last thing I saw was her eyes sliding shut as if she were dead. Her gentle breathing comforted me, and coaxed me into slumber.

Then, orange sunlight in my eyes. “Hey love.” I shook her awake.

We packed up camp. Our trap had netted two decent sized catfish. I killed them while she refilled our water bottles from the still.

We smeared each other with river mud, being careful to get every nook and cranny. Only then did we tie our gear over our shoulders and set off.

We spent the morning studying the gates. There was a ladder that descended halfway down, until it ended in open air where the dam had shattered. I pointed it out.

“There’s a ledge below it. If we make it up there, we are free winds,” she said.

We followed the riverbank until we were directly below the ladder. It was at least 200 feet straight up to reach it.

“Ready?” she said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. We took off our sandals and tied them around our necks. Maybelle bit her lip as she searched the jagged façade for an opening the right size and shape to grab onto. For all the broken concrete it was like finding a needle in a haystack. Then she leapt up, dug her fingers into a crack I hadn’t seen, then walked her legs up. In seconds she’d found a series of deep cracks worn by the wind and winter ice. From there she scampered up with joyful ease.

I leapt up and got the ledge she’d used. I was tall enough to just reach up and grab the bottom-most crack, and pully myself up. From there I followed her step for step. She moved quickly. I hurried to follow and not lose sight of her path.

The first ledge was an overhang and she twisted a bit, feeling around with a hand for a grip. I stopped below her and watched. She seemed perplexed from my view under her armpit. Until she compressed herself and leapt up, taking my heart with her as she got her fingertips onto the edge and hauled herself over.

I had bigger fingers and toes, and I had to maneuver a bit before hauling myself up the edge with my longer reach. I sat beside her and looked down.

“That’s one-hundred feet,” I said.

“I know,” she said and beamed at me. Sweat dripped down her forehead. “Did you see that jump?”

“I did. That was scary,” I said. “Please be more careful.”

She was already moving on.

“There’s writing here, on the inside, look,” she said, and pulled me by the shoulder.

The ledge was what was left of a platform within the dam’s structure. I crawled past her under the broken steel doorway, and saw the reinforced bricks that filled its concrete structure. On the ceiling, a metal sign was installed.

“Is it operating instructions?” she said.

I read and shook my head. “No. It’s a prayer. Bless our works father, save your children with this great project.’

She stared up at it incredulously. “Is the steel people god their dad?”

I snorted. “No. maybe. I’m not sure. I just remember there was mandatory praying. I think we were just desperate,” I said.

“That’s why rivertalkers are so important. The river’s right there, not invisible,” she said. “Tell me. Did the father ever actually give you protection?”

I looked out over the river. There were no steel people ruins here. The dam bursting had washed everything and everyone away, sending a cascade of water rushing down until it slammed into Dallas. I’d seen old footage of it rolling through the streets, sweeping families away and smashing them up in the cars like ice cubes in a shaker, pulverizing the canned veggies into a nice smoothie.

At Boston, I’d experience the same thing. Except I’d been in the water for that one, and watched everyone I knew smashed by the wreckage while I somehow survived.

“I think he tried, but we were too far gone. Look at that desert. We created that.”

“What was here before the desert?”

“Farmland. Millions of square miles of farms feeding the entire continent.”

“According to the last rivertalker I prayed with, there was a great famine years ago. Do you remember that?”

“I was born after the famine, but I learned about it in school” I said. I looked up, and saw that the second ledge was far more of an overhang thatn the first, meaning we’d be climbing almost upside-down. The ladder dangled over the edge, offering safety. “We’ve got a rough climb ahead anyways. Look at that.”

She did, and leaned back and back. I giggled and reached out an arm so her head rested on it. “No problem,” she said, then let herself fall back into my grasp.

I caught her, dipped her down, and kissed her.

“That’s how steel people kiss pretty girls,” I said.

“It’s lovely,” she said. “Can you keep that?”

“Of course I can,” I said and laughed. She stood, and I did with her. My heels hit the edge.

“Do it again when we get to the top, she said. With that, she scaled the wall with a leap and began powering upwards heedless of the gravel she sent cascading down and over the edge.

I followed her up. She took the ledges easily, slowing as the cliff curved to be completely vertical, then curved back so her hair was dangling into open air. I followed steadily. My fingers dug.

“Hey, slow down,” I said.

She stopped and craned her neck back to see me. She grinned and waited as I hauled myself up after her. I got almost level with her, and then she started up.

“I’ll get the ladder. If it doesn’t drop me it should be fine for you,” she said.

“No, just get to the ledge, please,” I said and followed.

She instead scooted over to the ledge and reached out an arm. The ladder creaked as she seized it, then swung herself over. Her legs wrapped around the edge and pulled herself up. Her shadow dangled past me.

“It feels stable,” she said. “Look, it leads straight to the top. We can get there now.”

“Fine,” I said, and clambered after her. Gravel fell past me.

Then a metallic shriek rang out and a dull grey bolt dropped past me. I saw her shadow and the ladder swing across the dam’s surface, as a scream left her lips and winged out over the endless desert. Only I heard it.

And I clambered fast as I could.

Then a sharp clank, just as my fingers grabbed the ledge. “Help!”

I lunged for her, just as the ladder fell free. My hand got something firm and organic and I dug my fingernails in.

Her entire weight slammed into me. My arm screamed in pain as loud as she did, then my other arm as my entire weight landed on it. Her hair fluttered out in the void as her arms and legs flailed in blind panic.

She hung there, below me, out in the void, the two of us frozen there with just my ten fingers holding us together.

“Grab the wall,” I gasped. “Maybell, the wall.”

She scrabbled for it. Her fingers brushed the dirt.

I groaned, and threw all my weight into my left arm. My muscles locked up, then shifted as I swung her ever so slightly in.

“I got it!” she said. “I’ve got both hands, let me go!”

I released her and my fingers came back bloody. Then I got the ledge. They slipped the first time, but I got purchase the second and hauled myself up over the ledge. It was just big enough to get my bottom down.

Maybelle clambered after and slammed herself down beside me. She threw her arms around me and our gasping breath whistled in the air.

“I’m sorry I’m so stupid of senses,” she said.

“I told…” I stopped the answer. I was too empty as the adrenaline drained away. Too glad she was alive as tears stung my eyes. I buried my face in her hair and kissed her.

We remained their, limbs shaking together as we clung to the edge. I didn’t have the strength to move and I doubted she would either.

“My neck is bleeding,” she said.

“Show me, please,” I said.

She turned her back to me and the mud on her shoulders had turned rust colored. I hadn’t even seen where I’d grabbed her, I’d been panicking so hard.

I pulled the med kit from my bag and started rubbing nanite paste into it. I spat to activate the puddy, and let the nanites get to work. “You know. The steel people created healing miracles like this, but they couldn’t build a dam,” I said.

“They couldn’t maintain a dam. Like how we have to eat and water trees every day. They couldn’t keep it fed until it broke,” she said.

I paused to think on it, and the crumbling buildings I grew up amongst. “Yeah, true,” I said. I finished and wrapped the pack back into my bag.

“I realized something as I was falling. I wanted to scream your name, but you don’t have a name right now. First, we need to choose you a river name with the rivertalker, then we bind our souls.”

“Do I need to make it special?” I said.

“No.” She pivoted around, and her eyes lit up with laughter even as she slumped against me. “My ma chose Maybelle because it was pretty like the last flowers she saw, the year before I was born,” she said.

“I’ll think of one,” I said. The sun was directly above us now, and approaching the edge of the dam. “We need to climb. Have you stopped shaking?”

“No. You?”

“No,” I said and held out my trembling hand.

“I don’t want to climb in shadow,” she said.

“Me either.” I pulled my knees up, then stood carefully, leaning on the hot wall. The ladder now ended just above my head. It was bolted onto the wall from here on up at least.

“I’ll lead,” she said. She leapt up the wall, and found a long, diagonal crack. She got her hands and feet inside it and essentially shimmied up. I followed her, scraping skin from my toes to jam them inside.

When we reached the ladder, she scampered right over it and kept going. When the crack ended, she found new handholds. I followed her to the end of the crack and reached for the handhold.

It was too small for my fingers. I tried testing my weight and it slipped out. “Maybelle, I can’t follow you,” I said.

She looked down. Then looked around. “I can’t see anything else here. Can you?”

I twisted as far as I could. There were only the little pockmarks she, with her slender fingers and small feet could easily slip into. I retreated and grabbed the ladder. The rungs immediately groaned. I jammed my free hand in and yanked hard as I could. The bolts rattled but held fast, with no slipping. I clambered on and winced at the hot metal. I followed, moving fast enough to keep my hands from burning.

In this way I scaled up to the top, and finally pulled myself over.

“Hey,” I said.

Maybelle was standing on the other edge like a statue, jaw slack. I immediately went to her side and looked out over the edge.

It was pale green. Slender, young trees rose around the river. Grass stretched beyond them, all the way to the raised banks of the reservoir. I shielded my eyes and scanned to the horizon. There was no end to the green.

“We found it,” Maybelle said.

I put a hand on her shoulder. She planted her hand on top.

A metal hut stood on the end of the dam itself. Beyond that the earthen banks of the old lake spread wide. They were brown and green with tufts of grass holding the dirt in. “I think if we walk around the dam we can just go down the embankment instead of climbing down the other side,” I said. I untied my sandals and pulled them on.

She looked that way and nodded. “Let’s go. I want to experience green again.”

We passed the hut and were surprised to find the walls painted over in fresh red and blue. Maybelle flitted along the walls, tugging me after as she studied it. A river flowed in endless curves, woven like a braid. People and animals alike spawned from it in red figures of two legs and four. “We’re here,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“This is work by river people!” she said. Her shout echoed back at her.

I looked down to the fertile reservoir bed. Then back to the desert we’d just walked through. “It’s a painting. They could be long gone.”

“No, this painting says they’re living here.”

“I know it does,” I said softly as I broke her heart. “Maybe they’re still here, but I doubt it.”

“No, we’re not steel people. We don’t die out. We’re still alive,” she said and grabbed my shoulders. Her eyes were wild and cheeks flushed bright red. I took a step back as this side of her burst free and shook me by the shoulders.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anyone left. I think we’re the last two people in existence. It’s just the earth taking revenge on us for how we ruined her with pumping poison into her and taking all her water out.”

“No, she’s taken revenge on the steel people. Not us. We are the survivors who live in the clean river,” Maybelle said.

I shook my head. “We all had church in the old world. It was mandatory to go. I think our leaders thought we had no choice but to pray to god.”

“What’s a church?” Maybelle said.

“It’s a big fancy building where steel people go to tell their god.”

“Well that’s not us,” she said.

“Okay,” I gave up. “It’s not your river people.”

“Ours,” she said and her fingernails dug into my shoulder.

“Ours,” I said. “They’re our river people. Let’s go.”

I let myself be dragged along after her. Her knuckles turned white as she held her spear in a balled fist.

I wasn’t sure if I should be apologetic or not. I let the silence absorb our emotions and cool us off. Indeed, the only sound besides our footsteps was the distant flowing in the river. Maybe there should be birds. There weren’t many birds left.

We skittered down the slope from patch of grass to patch of grass. The ground we landed on at the bottom on was dry, but firm. It didn’t crumble into dust and coat our feet when we walked over it.

We made a beeline straight for the trees. Maybelle then hopped up on her toes and delicately picked her way around them.

I saw her squeeze between two branches and shook my head. But I humored her. These trees were all young and thin, with branches reaching to me like a pleading child’s. I saw a few had been blown over and lay in heaps of roots and dirt. We ducked around them and continued on.

Until we slipped through and the river opened its blue arms to greet us. We splashed right in up to our waists and let the current caress us and promise us that no matter what vengeance the earth took, there’d always be forgiveness hidden, waiting for those who learned from their crimes.

Maybelle dropped into a crouch, the water up to her neck. She began whispering. I dropped down beside her. The water was warm once it got over my shoulders. A little dart of a fish swam between us.

“You’re praying?” I said.

“Yeah.” She stopped and looked at me.

“Can I join?” I said.

She nodded and closed her eyes. “River, we come to thank you, not take from you.”

“We come to thank you, not take from you,” I said.

“We thank you for providing us everything we need to survive,” she said.

“We thank you for providing us everything we need to survive,” I said.

“We thank you for giving us mercy amidst the vengeance wrought on our ancestors.”

“We thank you for giving us mercy amidst the vengeance wrought on our ancestors,” I said. I dunked my head under and let the current dribble by me. I saw an entire swarm of little darts of fish race past. Reeds reached up from the bottom.

I popped up and sucked in a breath.

“We’re not done yet, silly,” she said. She was grinning wearily at me. “Keep us safe, and if danger claims us, carry our souls far away to safety.”

“Keep us safe, and if danger claims us, carry our souls far away to safety,” I said.

She grabbed my shoulders and we dunked together. Her eyes shined as the water reflected the light. I stared into them and grinned wide. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed. I held her tight by her shoulders and kissed her until my teeth dug into her lips. Her fingernails pricked at my back as she held on close. Her eyes stared right into mine as we grinned against each other. As my lungs began to burn, I held her tighter. Her fingernails pricked on my back in answer.

Until red spots appeared on our vision. We stood straight up in an explosion of water, and gasped for breath together.

“Let’s stop for the day,” she said.

I nodded. I trudged back towards the shore, then sat back down and laid back. My head rested on the shoreline with the water lapping around my ears. “I’m cooling off.”

She laid down beside me, and our hands dug into the riverbank together, letting mud slide over our fingers.

Sleep never came as the lapping water was just enough nudging to keep me awake. However, I fell into an empty, relaxing bliss. No worries, no more walking, and the adrenaline of the great climb behind us. I closed my eyes, and let the minutes roll by, with only my heartbeat to pass the time.

“Hey,” Maybelle suddenly said and squeezed my hand. “Something’s in the water.”

I opened my eyes to find the sky violet, and then rimmed orange. She was already sitting up and pointing.

I stood in a splash and followed her finger up the river. A dark shaped drifted down the middle, awash in evening gloom. I squinted.

“I think that’s a boat,” I said. I saw nothing moving atop it. I strode into the water up to my waist, then dove in after.

The river wasn’t too wide, and I only needed a few quick strokes to glide out there. It was a fiberglass-hulled canoe, heavily scuffed but still shining. I grabbed the prow. She swam past me and took the stern, and we hauled it back to shore.

A blanket was stretched inside, and a bundle of what looked like bags at the back. This was all fresh and clean. Someone had just lost their boat downriver. We dragged it up on shore, then studied the two bags inside. One was clearly a steel people backpack scavenged from somewhere. The other was made from some kind of animal hide. I couldn’t tell what, but it had been stitched into a proper messenger bag with bright red cords.

“This is something we made,” Maybelle said, and snatched it up. “Don’t open it, it belongs to someone.”

I nodded and grabbed up the backpack. “What about this one?”

“Maybe that one too. Only if we’re desperate, okay?” she said. Then she pivoted and looked up river. I couldn’t clearly see the shoreline anymore. I could only tell the river by the void and the reflection of the moonlight, flanked by high shadows of trees on the banks. “They’re somewhere that way.”

“I was wrong,” I said. She didn’t seem to care, as she stared off into the distance. “I also don’t know how to paddle a boat.”

“I’ll show you,” she said. “It’ll be much quicker than walking. We’ll start tomorrow.”

I nodded at her. We dragged the boat a bit further up the banks and wedged it between two trees. Then we laid ourselves down. No fire lest we burn the trees. We wrapped the ponchos around ourselves as blankets, then wrapped ourselves in each other’s arms. Sleep didn’t come. I could only fear who was waiting, now that we knew there could be an end to our journey.

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Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed.