Chapter 4 - The Bridge

The creaking sound of the rusty, tin doors sounded way too loudly in the devastated and abandoned port as Heero pushed them wide open, inviting golden rays of morning light into their hideout. The morning sun blinded him for an instant. Though he knew that the Girard Point Bridge was near, he couldn't see it yet on the background of the burning globe. He narrowed his eyes and carefully took a look around, taking confident but soundless steps further outside, his hand on a gun in the waistband of his jeans. Just in case.

He could hear Duo and Relena following him, their footsteps, in contrary to his, perfectly audible on wet pavement. He turned to face them; Relena immediately raised her hand to cover her eyes from sunlight.

"The bridge is under the guard's surveillance," he informed, "so it's impossible to cross it on top. There's a maintenance corridor under the spans, guarded far less frequently. That's where we'll go through." Having said what he had to say, he turned his back to them anew without waiting for their consent or objections.

"Is it the only way?" Relena's voice, for the first time, sounded insecure to him. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"Relena, c' mon," Duo reassured her, "we don't have much choice."

Heero wasn't listening to them anymore, as he strengthened his senses and walked through the port. The rising sun cast long, rather ominous shadows between the military buildings and the bushes that overgrown the estate for over twenty years. The atmosphere was getting denser. Although nature was claiming the terrain back, they couldn't hear birds; there was no wind. The only sounds were the continuous rustle of the splashing raindrops falling from leaves and the howls of the slow sinking, rust-eaten steely skeletons of military ships. As if all life abandoned this place.

The closer they were to the bridge and the formal zone's external border, the bigger the mess they witnessed; signs of fire, burned cars, bullet marks, abandoned personal belongings, garbage, and the most sinister of all - ubiquitous smell of rotting corpses and blood.

They turned around the corner and walked towards a smaller bridge leading them back on mainland down the Constitution Ave. They could finally see the neat and proud construction of the long, Girard Point Bridge in front of them. That was when Relena abruptly stopped.

"Wait. Do you hear that? It's like a rumbling…"

"It's not," Heero said gloomily, without stopping. "They're flies."

Duo winced in surprise. "Wha? I don't see any..."

A few meters further, the closer they were getting to the smaller bridge, the sound became more resonant; it nearly felt like a rustle in one's mind than in ears. It was omnipresent but still invisible.

And then, the symbol of terror that ruled their world appeared to their eyes in its full sinister glory.

"Holy fuck," Duo muttered.

"God... What happened here?" Heero heard Relena's trembled voice. It sounded a bit muffled as if she was covering her mouth with her hand.

They were welcomed into the kingdom of flies. They saw a macabre view of dozens of bodies hanging on the metallic construction of the bridge. The bridge looked like a densely suspended grotesque Christmas tree. Some of the corpses were almost skeletonized, and some seemed rather fresh; the vast majority of bodies were difficult to assess because of the clouds of fat, black flies flying around the hangers, like the pestilent banks.

Heero felt the deathly odor reaching his nostrils and instinctively rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn't turn to face Relena, but gazed at the bodies, feeling a mixture of compassion and indifference. "The Grand Point Bridge is the only bridge left on Schuylkill River. The last entrance to the Philadelphia quarantine zone from the east side," he paused. "Being in the zone has its drawbacks, but also huge advantages. While you're fleeing the zone, there are dozens of people who risk their lives every day to illegally get into the zone. Only a few of them succeed."

"They were killed…" Relena muttered almost inaudibly after a second, "…because they were seeking refuge?"

Heero sighed mentally at her obvious remark. "Apparently."

"C' mon," Duo suddenly hurried everyone, pressing a piece of cloth to his face. "If we have to pass through this fucking nightmarish place, then make it quick. Fuck, it reeks!"

And so did they hurried through the bridge as quick as they could, trying to get rid of this devilish feeling that the distorted faces of the dead, with a deathly grimace, were watching them.

The Grand Point Bridge was undergoing a massive renovation before the outbreak day; around its pillars, there were still scaffoldings, which didn't look too stable after 20 years. Most of them weren't. But bypassing this bridge many times, Heero already knew this particular span, which made it possible to safely climb up.

When the sun was already high in the sky, the trio reached the scaffolding and began climbing. Heero went first, followed by Relena and Duo at the end. They entered the narrow technical corridor between the metal pipes, Heero understood that something was not ordinary. He stopped abruptly in the aisle.

"What happened, Heero?" he heard Relena's soft, alarmed voice.

He didn't have time to answer or warn them when gunshots filled the air around them in the narrow passage. The worst came; they've been spotted. There was hardly a place to hide from the bullets. The trio darted to escape, the fastest they could, in the only possible direction: towards the river.

"Relena, run!" Duo yelled at the girl, as he shielded them and tried to shoot blindly at their aggressors. "You have to run faster!"

Relena screamed as the bullet flew just around her shoulder. Then the sudden loud rumble of tires from above made Heero realize, that the guards already had equaled them by riding uphill, an asphalt road leading upon the bridge. Their only hope was now that they won't locate them precisely from above and that the barriers and barricades left on the deck along with the abandoned refugees' cars will temporarily block them.

Otherwise, they had no chance of surviving this ambush.

Heero looked back over his shoulder. Relena was still running, and Duo was trying to point his gun every once in a while to blindly shoot behind. They were already above the river.

"Duo, leave it, just-"

But then everything exploded.

The force of the impact knocked Heero off his feet and threw far forward. His body braced abruptly against the large metal pipe as his shoulder struck its bottom, but he somehow managed to protect his head from shattering. Excruciating pain in his shoulder temporarily obscured his image, he was stunned, dark smoke biting him in the eyes.

He wasn't sure if he was getting his hearing back or if the world got quiet for a second. Kept in awake by adrenaline, he got up on unsteady legs and looked around for that braided idiot and the girl. Though the voice of reason at the back of his head kept telling him to leave everything and run away, something stopped him from doing so.

The smoke thinned, and he noticed them. Duo was lying on the ground, Relena was kneeling beside him. When he came closer, his brain couldn't define, at which point did Duo's clothes become so red...

Relena was calling Duo by his name, then she spotted Heero. Her eyes were full of terror, but she didn't seem hurt. She was pressing her hands over the braided man's neck. "Please… Help him!" she begged, tears already forming in her blue eyes.

Heero looked down at the puddle of blood that widened with every second and then at Duo's riddled body. The long-haired man finally opened his eyes and glanced up at Heero. His look told that he knew; there was nothing to save. But these weren't the eyes of a man lamenting over losing his life. His eyes were so intense. And he stared at Heero with such intensity, as if his gaze had the power to break human bones.

"Relena-" Duo spoke, without taking his eyes off Heero. "You have to go with him."

"What? No!" Relena resisted stubbornly. "You'll be fine, we need to run, you have to get up-" She tried to lift him up, but he growled out of pain and slumped again on the floor.

"Listen," he commanded, his voice shaky, bubbling with blood. "You've got to survive. And he will guide you to Houston."

Heero opened his mouth to protest. The smoke was fading, they heard tires above them again, and the shouts of guards coming from behind. They were getting close. But Duo turned his gaze back to him.

"She is the last hope for mankind to ever get back to normal," he gripped Heero's jacket, pulling his face closer to his. His eyes blazed with a living fire, every vein of his body in which blood still flowed desperately trying to force Heero to fulfill his last wish. "Promise me, Heero," Duo muttered, "that you'll get her… to Houston."

Heero frowned at those desperate eyes, hesitating. Duo's face was already turning blue, and the grasp of his hand on Heero's jacket weakened with every fraction of a second. Relena was crying, still trying to squeeze deep wounds on his chest. That moment Heero remembered Duo's words. Those about giving their lives for somebody. He eventually bowed his head a little, hiding his eyes behind the curtain of his brown bangs and nodded. "I understand."

In his final moments, Duo grinned again, this time with a remarkable relief on his face. "Okay, buddy," he whispered, letting go of Heero's jacket. "Now go. I'll take care of these suckers."

Without any other word, Heero got up, taking Duo's rifle and backpack. But Relena didn't move an inch from Duo.

"No! I won't leave you to die!" Tears were falling down her face, but Duo pushed her abruptly away from him.

"You will, babe. Get outta here. Remember... survive."

"No, Duo!" Relena shouted when Heero gripped her arm in a steely grasp and made her get up on feet. She tried to break free, but he was stronger and effortlessly dragged her away from Duo's body. She reached her other hand out. "Let me go! Duo!"

"Fare thee well, Relena," Duo muttered, propping himself up on rubble behind his back, facing the other way, without looking back at her. Relena's screams quickly faded in the distance, or maybe it was him losing his consciousness. Duo gritted his teeth. He couldn't die just yet. He had one more thing to do.

He slid his hand into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a small grenade and a piece of worn, creased paper. He smoothed the paper with trembling, bloody hands gazing at the familiar, loving face in the picture with apparent relief and calm.

Then four ghastly black figures in huge gas masks emerged from the smoke in front of him and circled him.

"So you've finally come," Duo murmured after a moment. "My four riders of the apocalypse."

The silhouettes lifted barrels of four machine guns, aiming at the dying man, about to finish the work started by the explosion.

Duo took his last breath, then pulled the cotter pin.

"Hilde. I missed you so much..."

TBC

So, here begins the story of Heero and Relena's journey. It wasn't an easy thing for me to kill Duo off, as I truly like this character, but… The story has its own rules.

See you in the next part. Let me know in the comments what you think so far. :)