“Something better than fishing,” he said and rolled the bicycle out from a cluster of bushes. A broad smile broke through the uncertainty on Benja’s face.
“Is it dry enough then?” he asked.
“I think so. Not everywhere but enough that we can get through,” Illya said.
With the distance they could get on the bicycle, there was a good chance of finding food in new territory. They decided to go as far as the broad path would take them, even past the furthest ruin they had explored, if the path was clear. As long as they turned back before the sun was at half up, they would be back before dark, and it seemed like the best chance of fresh hunting would be as far from the village as possible.
On an open, flat surface, riding the bicycle was as close to flying as a man could ever get. It was pure joy to feel the wind rushing through your hair. Their speed was nearly unhindered as they went down the broad path, and they hardly felt the vibration on the metal wheel rims rolling along the hard earth.
It was a little bit eerie how flat and straight the path was, with only gradual curves. If there was a hill, the way cut straight through it more often than not. At one place, there was a rounded tunnel lined with perfect square-edged stones that went all the way through a mountain.
Taking turns riding on the handlebars and pushing the pedals, they zipped along, dodging occasional roots and broken ground with ease.
“It’s that curve,” Benja said. He pointed to the bend in the road just ahead. “We passed this place just before we got to that ruin with the jars. It’s the farthest we have been.” They stopped to drink from a little stream and switch places on the bike. Benja looked at the curve with barely suppressed glee. He glanced at Illya, who returned his grin.
Illya hopped on the bike to pedal, and Benja got up on the handlebars. They bumped and jostled back onto the path. When they rounded the curve, the last ruin, or what they had always called that, came into view, and they flew right past it.
After a short while, they came to another ruin. It had been subjected to a far greater degree of destruction than the ruins closer to the village. There was hardly anything left. Illya slowed his pedaling.
The exertion of pedaling wore on him and he felt his muscles shaking, but he pressed on, driven past his hunger and fatigue by curiosity.
Then there was another ruin then another. The ruins started to appear closer and closer together. After a long while, they came around a bend and then to the top of a hill. The forest opened up before them, and they looked out over something astounding.
The word for what it was came to him unbidden. It was a city.
For as far as they could see, buildings sprawled, both flattening out the land and pushing it up into tall, jagged mesas. It was a far cry from the underground cave dwellings with blinking, stupid inhabitants that he had imagined as a little. It was like an enormous village, but he thought a hundred of his villages could fit into this place, or even more.
The city looked big enough that to cross it could have taken an entire day. They would barely be able to start exploring. But the possibilities of what they could find, given enough time, seemed truly limitless. A jolt shot through his chest. There could be food, tools, anything at all, maybe even another bicycle.
They switched places on the bike and rolled down the hill. They did not stop at the first house. By silent agreement they went on, wanting to see as much of the city as possible. They passed many houses then strange buildings that grew taller and taller as they went further in. It was like a maze of metal, with path after path leading away from the one they had ridden in on.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Benja asked from the handlebars.
“What?”
“This whole place. I bet you could find anything you wanted in this, and I think we are the only people here,” he said.
Illya considered it. “It’s been abandoned for a hundred years, maybe more.”
“Yeah, that’s just it. Why? It would be a great place for people live. As long as you weren’t so far in that you couldn’t get out to forage. Everything you could ever want would be right here. You could probably have a bunch of bikes and who knows what else.”
“I guess,” Illya said.
“So why aren’t there any people here?”
Illya shivered, looking around. The buildings flying past them had suddenly taken on a sinister, looming presence, despite the sunshine on their walls.
“Maybe there are,” he said after a minute, panting a little from the exertion of pedaling up a hill. “We haven’t looked through it all to make sure, right?”
Benja shook his head. “If there were people here, they would have lookouts, like our Patrollers. There isn’t much that goes on near our village that we don’t know about right away.”
“They could know we are here, but they just haven’t come out yet,” Illya said, starting to feel more nervous by the minute.
“Or there could be something that keeps people from living here,” Benja said seriously.
Illya swallowed. “Like what?”
Benja did not answer immediately. He shifted his weight on the handlebars and glanced back over his shoulder at Illya.
“Something like the Calamity,” he said.
Illya stared at him and for a moment forgot to look where he was pedaling. The front wheel hit a raised edge on the side of the road. Benja flew off his seat, and Illya followed, tumbling over the handlebars and crashing into Benja where he had come to rest on the ground.
“Ouch,” Benja groaned. “Your elbow’s in my eye.” Illya disentangled himself from his cousin and stood up gingerly, brushing himself off.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Benja shook himself and cracked his neck to the right then the left. “Yeah.” He stood. “You didn’t have to overreact like that, you know. It’s just weird is all.” Illya took stock of himself. Besides scrapes on his elbows, he seemed to be okay. He shrugged experimentally and thought he would probably feel the effects of the fall tomorrow.
“You’re right. There’s something not right about it,” Illya said and hesitated, not wanting to sound cowardly. The buildings looked taller than ever, looming, seeming to draw closer together at their tops, as if they could close over them.
“The Calamity couldn’t still be around, though, right? No one has had it in forever,” he said, sounding much surer about it than he felt.
“It’s probably nothing. Maybe anyone who has come through here already had a place to live,” Benja said. Illya squinted against the afternoon sun, looking down the long row. It was truly massive. Even with lookouts to challenge their presence, there could be people here who they simply hadn’t reached yet. The idea of running into people made him just as nervous as wondering why there were none.
“Maybe we should go back,” he said.
Benja grunted and chewed on the corner of his lip. “Would have been good to find some parts for this heap,” he said and kicked affectionately at the bike, which still lay on the ground.
They got back on the bike and turned around. As they left the tall buildings behind and reached the outskirts, the uneasy feelings began to fade.
By the time the houses had started to spread out again, their worries seemed much more like the product of overactive imagination than reality. Not wanting to leave without looking a little bit, they stopped at a house at the bottom of the hill.
The house was at least the size of the stone house in their village but was made from wood. It had no roof, and the door hung lopsided. The entrance had a drift of dirt across it.
They walked through a small hallway into a larger room. Illya thought he could feel the echoes of the lives that once happened there. There were some pictures on the bowed walls and more that had fallen to the floor, leaving squares of darker color where they must have once hung. The floor was thick with old leaves. It almost looked like part of the forest, except for the broken glass and picture frames underneath the foliage.