made all day. They are growing accustomed to their new reality, the futility of weeping having finally dawned on them. The men lift her off the ground and climb upwards.
After much grunting and heaving, they reach the pinnacle and lower the cages. Beyond the remote landscape the crisp gray line of the ocean collides with a pale blue sky. Most of the children have never seen the ocean before, some of the youngest have never even heard of it, and they regard it wearily.
They descend the hill as they climbed it, switchbacking relentlessly, hairpin turns creaking the wooden bars against the bindings and tipping the exhausted children at severe angles. They are cargo now, dead weight.
Down the hill and through more woods they trudge along. Jack is certain now that this expedition will never end, that he will live in this cage forever and never die, eternally roaming the forest in a tiny prison with the unrelenting glare of a maniac trained on him throughout. The last bit of adrenaline in his spent body fires off at this extreme notion and he scrunches his face tightly, trying desperately to stop existing.
The gradient levels off and he feels sunshine on his skin. He peeks at his surroundings, delirious, and what he sees makes him sit up and grip the bars, taken aback. They are parading down the center of a long straight passageway, overgrown with tall grass and shrubs, mounds of rubble rising up on either side. The piles are tremendous, flat-faced and angular. They do not look like natural rock. Crooked rectangles are cut through the stone and metal, dissolving away and collapsing, their shapes only just recognizable. A surge of realization floods his clouded mind.
This is the old world.
This is what they have spent eerie nights around the campfire fantasizing about. He’s only ever seen glimpses. It floats by like a fever dream.
They cross an intersection and Jack looks down another long, linear grass field, lined with disparate heaps of wreckage that reel off into the distance, a few facades still standing against all hope. He tries to imagine them the way they were, tries to imagine machines swirling in the sky, to see people walking on these avenues in whatever fantastic clothes they might have worn, living their daily lives here, and he can only just barely. It all seems simply impossible.
Trees grow up through some of the ruins, their branches extending from the square openings and becoming part of the very structures themselves. They pass through a monumental shadow, cast down from the tallest building any of them has ever seen, ten rows of paneless windows extending upwards, ending in a jagged mess at the top. Deteriorating concrete held together by rusting steel, fragile as a house of cards, as though the whole edifice might shift in a strong gust of wind and crush their meek procession under an absurd pile of rubble.
Their cages are set down at the next cross street. Again two armed warriors crouch with weapons drawn and creep along the cracked facades, making their way down the neglected avenue. A family of boars root and scurry around the brambles down the next block, digging their snouts into the dense underbrush. A large male disappears through the overgrown doorway of a forgotten building, while the rest mill about and move further down the way. The warriors stay sleek against the broken walls, taking cover when they can find it.
As a half-grown female trundles across the street an arrow flies, silent and straight, penetrating her side just behind the shoulder blade. She lets out a horrid grunt and tries to scamper off around a corner. A second arrow pierces her hide and she slows, zigzagging a drunken weave. The other boars are running hectic, shrieking and grunting, terrified, their squeals an offense to the peaceful afternoon. The huge male stumbles out onto the avenue and surmises the danger. He shuffles hotly, then turns tail and tears off with the other stampeding boars.
Walking slow, nonchalant, the warriors encroach upon the dying hog and slice her open with a dispassionate jerk of the wrist. They drag her carcass back and the caravan proceeds, marching on as the day grows long.
The ruddy haze of dusk sets on them and they repeat their nightly ritual, circling the cages and building a camp. The fire’s orange glow plays a freakish lightshow on the crumbling ruins, their shapes seeming to morph before the children’s eyes. A few of them cower and