The Fall of Man

Part III chapter 8

Chapter 8

By dusk, Eve stands before the Wall.

Crossing the pockmarked terrain between the river and the city had seemed to take an eternity. Once she set out from the broken remains of the weir, her protesting leg muscles slowly began to thaw. Trudging through the overgrown fields, every broken branch, every thorn and every thistle proceeded to attack the soles of her feet and her unprotected calves with razor-sharp vindictiveness. To protect herself against the worst of the barbs, she bound her feet in makeshift shoes fashioned from her cotton vest. Its fabric now hangs in soiled tatters about her ankles. Several miles back, the thin plastic handle finally snapped from the water-bottle. It now sloshes half-full under her arm. During the day, she draped her sodden clothes across her shoulders as she walked, so that they might dry in the hazy warmth of the indistinct sun. With night setting in, they now provide her with some much-needed protection against the plummeting temperature.

The Wall towers over her like the decayed and daunting remains of an old, abandoned fortress. Along its top, razor wire loops and coils effortlessly over the pitted and uneven surface. In places, corroded masonry tumbles down into crumbling ravines. Elsewhere it is shored up with giant props like the flying buttresses of some ruined cathedral. Patches of metal and timber have been nailed, bolted and welded in place where the failing structure has given way. The varied, undulating skyline casts a long dark shadow that looms over Eve with a brooding presence.

Bent skeletons of steel cower at the foot of the Wall. In-between the rusted spider-legs of structure, bracken and gorse gather on a floor that is rich with broken glass and shards of plastic. A wilderness has grown up to the Wall, and is laying siege to the city. Creepers are entwined in the razor wire and between corrugated panels. They have wound through the eye-lets where bolts used to project, behind the peeling skin of frayed boards, and bored their way between brick and stone where mortar has fallen. Exposed reinforcement bars provide purchase for the greenery where concrete has spalled. Inexorably and unstoppably, nature is assaulting the city.

Beneath Eve’s bandaged feet, the ground is liberally strewn with debris; plastic packaging and rusted tin cans encrust the uneven terrain. Only the occasional hummock of grass or a wind-blasted shrub dares to broach the synthetic surface. Eve picks her way over the littered landscape, navigating clockwise around the wide band of shadow surrounding the Wall. If her father’s stories about the four gates are true, she calculates, it shouldn’t be too long before she finds a way in.

A mile or so later the rough scrub and grasses have disappeared completely beneath the deeply piled evidence of past human inhabitation. Dirt encrusted bottles, torn plastic bags, fragments of polystyrene and cellophane wrapping are gathered knee-deep in drifts. Within another mile, the debris is piled to Eve’s waist and she is forced to scramble on her hands and feet over the unpredictable surface. Disfigured dolls, soiled clothing, broken appliances; anything that has resisted the cycles of decay inflicted by the passing seasons… All manner of once-commonplace possessions and their associated packaging appear to have been thrown by some great force, scattered far and wide across the Earth.

Clambering across one such dune of discarded junk, Eve’s eyes are drawn to a flash of pink. A perfectly preserved plastic strapped sandal sits proudly at the top of the mound. In the space of a few minutes’ floundering, she has rounded up a good selection of footwear in varying states of deterioration. There are no matching pairs to be found, so she settles for a battered white golfing shoe on the left foot and a comfortable running shoe on the right. Both are a good fit, although the silver streaks adorning the running shoe are a little flashier than she would have liked.

Buoyed by her discovery and light on her swollen feet, Eve presses on around the perimeter of the Wall. The strange, undulating landscape builds in a series of choppy peaks and troughs before finally rising up towards a plateau high above her. She is forced to climb on all fours to scale the last few yards. Stubbornly, she scrabbles on through the sea of waste, periodically sinking to her armpits or sliding backwards in an avalanche of detritus. Eventually, however, she pulls herself wearily over the brow of the bund, and is greeted by the elevated platform of a road.

The road itself is remarkably free of rubbish. Its surface is worn and its edges frayed; in many places a rough bed made up of thumb-sized pebbles lies exposed where the top course has been eroded away. It runs like an old, raised scar across the broken land up to the battered city perimeter, where it terminates in a vast opening. Wearily, Eve hobbles into the looming shadow of the Wall.

Where the road collides with the Wall, the gently curved brickwork swells generously to either side, forming a pair of squat circular towers. Between these two masonry guardians sits a giant doorway big enough to engulf their small terraced house that sits quietly empty, many miles to the north. Above the gaping opening, rough soldier courses of rust-red brick continue the massive structure for a further three stories, before deteriorating in a broken line along the summit. Two battered steel gates hang clumsily within the portal. One rests in a closed position, where it appears to have been fixed in place. The other sags drunkenly between the first gate and the adjoining Wall.

Eve approaches the partially obscured entrance cautiously. A thin, triangular shard of sunlight about the size of a child is framed by the small gap between the two gates, and pools on the ground at her feet. Squatting, she peers into the light but through the glare she can distinguish very little of the space beyond. Lying with her back against the rough ground, she pulls herself beneath the serrated scissor-edges of the inclined gates, through the gap and into the city.