Cross Country

It was the kind you'd use for long distance travel. Thick wheels set close together on a sturdy frame and a seat perched high, level with the steering frame which went down and curved at the sides like a ram's horns. You gripped the vertical handles and squeezed the brakes, the triggers. On a sharp decline it felt like straddling an arrow. Perfectly aimed and threaded into a gust of wind. A dry schooner with no propulsion but the strength of your legs and the curvature of the road. The long road. Her coach used to call them "Long Winders" as a joke. The kind of person whose discipline was performing a single activity, usually basic, for vast quantities of time. Much longer indeed than what any sane person would think reasonable. Marathon cyclists, runners, swimmers. They'd often have the same sort of sandblasted features to their faces. The winnowed brow and squinted eyelids and sun-soaked, leathery texture to the face. It's how you might tell them apart when they were out of their element. In pedestrian disguises among the sycophants and social predators. Well, that's not fair. Or accurate. They are missed now; they are valued.

She had that spirit in her for as long as she could remember. That rapacious longing for distance traveled. It was track first in high school. Laps around the mile-long loop for hours. Even more in secret during late hours when she didn't want to be home. But the harder she pressed, the longer, she'd crash always head first into her limits. Into what her body simply was not capable of. Sweat and pain and misery. Wails of vomit at the finish line when she came in somewhere among the lower mid tier. Not enough. But then she found the bike. She knew how to ride one, of course. If nothing else, she was taught that. But in adulthood, in the rudderless drift of collegiate life, it was a revelation. The speed and the power. The constant rhythmic unison of the rider and the machine. The wheels, the pedals, the chain. If it was an addiction, at least it was a good one.

It's why she volunteered for this. Though volunteered isn't exactly the right word. More like coerced. Subtly but explicitly encouraged to say yes, under an implication of probable reprimand. But she didn't mind. She clearly was the best suited. It was just a fact. Some could interpret that level of certainty as arrogance, and some certainly had. But she didn't see it that way. It wasn't confined to such parameters. This was her life; the singular love that superseded and informed all other aspects of her existence. Every meal she ate was fuel for the pedal. Every moment of rest a necessary but frustrating reprieve. If she knew of anyone better, anyone more dedicated, she'd have gladly suggested they take the job. But there was no one. There never had been.

The task was simple. Delivery. Take a package from point a to point b. A courier job. She'd done many of them over the years. Many before the fall and many now. It was the easiest work a cyclist could find. That is, work that involved the bike. Making money with the wheels wasn't easy to come by. She went the professional route briefly, but upon finding there endemic abuse of the sport and the bodies of the athletes themselves, she fled. It wasn't long after that anyway. The collapse and the violent beginning of a new era. Where there were no committees or legislatures or aristocracies to dictate how the world ran. Only them, the precious few.

Some people called it the "great cleansing". But out there on the road it didn't look very clean. Just open. Vacant. Quiet. There were caravans of animals that dotted the edge of woodlands and out in the fields. Some wild, some getting there. Occasionally a posse would be found traipsing along the blacktop. She'd usually stop and watch them until they noticed her and scurried off. Many had probably never seen a person before. Deer and rabbits and coyotes--or were those dogs? On one of the first nights out she awoke to their crazed, humanoid cackle looping somewhere in the impenetrable dark. In those moments she'd never been more scared in her life.

They gave her a gun along with the other provisions. A small pistol and nine rounds of ammunition in a velcroed holster on her right thigh. Nine rounds. Didn't know how much use it would be. Not against a stag charging full bore antler-first. Or the black bears she'd heard rumors of. But its mere appearance could be a deterrent for any people she came across, if there were any. There weren't, but she had seen a man in the far distance once. A solitary blip loping on the pasture. Something in her said to stop. The thought had crossed her mind often that any inference of movement she noticed in the broad horizon might be human. But whenever she stopped and looked it never was. Not this time. He wore a long gray coat and a hood that obscured his face and he walked with a staff that had a spade affixed to the top. What looked to be black trash bags were swaddled and tied around his feet and calves up to his knees. His pack seemed deflated. She contemplated getting his attention somehow or riding out to him. But he was miles away and the overpass did not detour in his direction. And what point was there? She observed him through binocular lenses. His amble in a northeastern lean according to her compass. He slipped between a thicket of trees and a corrugated rock face and was gone. She spoke aloud a bon voyage to him before setting off on the path again.

There were stocked panniers on both of the wheels. Two bolted on either side of the front spokes and another larger one that was wedged below the seat atop the back tire with a sleeping bag. Another still was strapped to the handle bars, almost like a basket you'd see on the bikes kids would ride way back when. It even had a light. In addition to all of those she carried a backpack that had a camelback pouch attached to it to go along with the three bottles of water that were sheathed on the frame near the chain and pedals. A lot of H2O to be sure, about as much as she could carry, but even then she kept a constant vigilance about rationing always and refilling them whenever she could. To be safe she boiled the rainwater. There was a small pot and a solar powered stove in one of the bags, she couldn't remember which. It was a hassle and time consuming but she could not afford illness. A first-aid kit was stowed in the backpack but it could only do so much. A debilitating disease was terrible. A bad turn on the pavement and a serious injury was catastrophic. Probably beyond that. There'd be no recovery if a bone in her leg were to fracture. Not enough food to wait around trying to heal. And no one there to help. Absolutely no one. When she thought of this she thought also of the pistol and why there were no other volunteers.

The package was in the backpack as well. The delivery. A metallic cylinder about the length of your forearm and twice as thick. The cap on it was sealed and she was directed emphatically to never open it. To do so, they warned, was to forfeit the task entire. When she asked what it contained they said medical supplies. Drugs, she surmised. Maybe some kind of specimen. Things environmentally sensitive and preserved. Ironic. The substance that could save her she could never use. It wasn't for her. It had a very specific destination. The point marked on the map. Three states across, back when there were states. Jagged lines on the atlas delineating invisible borders that now had not even a symbolic meaning. How absurd to think they once did.

All the gear and provisions made the trek hard. Tiresome, laborious. Every down slope in the road was met with joyous gratitude, each incline with unfiltered vitriol. The long days. Riding from morning til dusk. Weaving through fading traffic lines. Camping on the road, under overpasses. Rolled up like a cocoon beneath an ocean of stars only to emerge and start anew at morning's light. There was no stopping except to sleep or to relieve herself or forage or perform maintenance. She ate MRE's, protein bars, trail mix while riding. There were a few cans of tuna stashed in the backpack and in the pockets of the vest she wore but she had to stop pedaling to eat those. As much food as possible. As much energy. An estimated two weeks worth. That's how long the trip was supposed to last. From their commune to the other. The job had been done before, but not this exact route. Not that she knew of, anyway. That courier was given a motorcycle. They didn't want to waste the gas on her, evidently. She understood. It was a commodity of rare and inimitable import. Not the kind of stuff you can just make anymore.

She wore round sunglasses with reflective surfaces for the wind and a shemagh wrap pulled over her mouth when it was dusty. Knee pads, elbow pads, riding gloves. And a helmet, of course. Worn always. Well, almost always. Sometimes even she had to push her chips a tad. But never under any circumstances would she ride in the rain. It was leading the bike slowly on foot, bracing under her poncho while the panniers got wet. She kept to the map whenever necessary. A pamphlet of extinct titles and symbols, a red line etched between them. The tri-state area. West and north across interstate highways. She stayed away from the large metropolitan passes. They were bulwarked by moats of abandoned vehicles congested for miles and miles. Their dark silhouettes far off like little cardboard backdrops, silent and smoldering.

How many were left? How many were out there? So little humanity to be found anywhere. Only empty husks. Memories. Hill valleys stained with rosacea like gutters. Ransacked shops and derelict church houses. The dinner table set, prepared, and utterly vacant. Even the ghosts were gone. She felt at moments the last person alive. Questioned if the destination existed at all. But there was no way to be sure, ever, so those thoughts were given room to breathe and extinguish themselves. She had the road, she knew. The task given her and the supplies and the bike and the distance accrued. So she was never alone. Not when she was doing the very thing she was born to do.

It was a dozen days before she reached the gates. Before that was a long tunnel that lead from the barren highway directly into the raucous circuitry of the city. The great city, maybe the only left of its kind. Flanked with giant square columns like faceless guardians whose many paneled mirrors showed you small and distorted as you entered. Office towers still mostly emptied, save for the first few floors which had been aerated and converted into cells with all kinds of purposes. Tenement housing, water purification, gardening. She was taken into the heart of downtown; through a maze of traders, travelers, and tenuous citizenry packed in close together. So much noise, so many people. It wasn't long before she was yearning to be alone with the road again. There was city hall perched on garish white steps and indented pillars. Inside she gave them the package. They eyeballed her instead. Inspected her bags and seized the bike. She asked for nothing except to have it back. To their questions she gave little. Just what she'd been told. When they asked why she tried to plead to them, to make them understand that she was of a special breed whose very soul was intertwined with the bike, the road. But even as she spoke she knew. They would never understand. She'd recited this monologue many times past. To parents, lovers, teachers, friends. And so few could ever reconcile her words, her impassioned parlance like an alien tongue, like an offense. An obsession, a futility. How dare you choose this over me? So when they took hold of her, she was not surprised. Perhaps this was their intent all along, those who'd sent her. Roundabout banishment. Just another bureaucracy deigned to exploit and machinate. This world no different than the last.

She dreamt of the blacktop. It's dimpled grit like braille on her fingertips speaking of the men and machines that laid it. The time to which it belonged, how it belonged even still, and its singular purpose most of all. Trajectory. Escape. Made for the wheel as much as she. The wind sheared into every intricacy of her face as she rode. She measured each gesticulation of muscle carefully, her instinctual calculus, and greeted the wide abundance of the earth a friend. The fastest creature alive. She tried to keep the vision in her mind a continuous loop. When she opened her eyes and saw no road, no sun, no movement but the fruitless automation of her legs. Legs pedaling nothing, going nowhere. Sentenced to a subterranean prison block and a turbine powering their homes as they slept. The specificity of it, the cruelty. But she wasn't there, not really. She was back on the pavement, speeding away from everyone and everything. Just her and the bike and the wheels turning again and again and again.