The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

They fall into a reverent silence as the train slows and the tower looms above them and the Wall grows more enormous by the second. Early evening light illuminates the gray, pockmarked stone. She had grown up with the stories of the Emperor who commanded its building, over a thousand years ago, and of the men whose remains lay mingled with its stones. And of course the tales of Song Tianfeng, the Builder, who had engineered the second building of the Wall when the Wastelands began to encroach on the Chinese Empire; the moving of the original foundations one hundred miles to the north, the astonishing task of transporting thousands of stones from the quarries of the north, the reinforcing of the stone with iron, the journey across the great plains, to bring the news to the Russian Empire and to teach them how to build a wall of their own. Marya thinks of all the men who gave their lives to build the walls. If not for their sacrifice, would the blight have spread to Beijing and to Moscow and far beyond? Would there be horrors prowling the countryside, slinking into the cities by night? They slow to a complete halt directly underneath the tower, a huge arch of stone rising above them. And further above still will be guards stationed on the watchtower—ten looking toward China, and ten toward the Wastelands. She knows they wear iron helmets over their masks, hammered into the faces of dragons and lions, to say to anything that approaches—We too have predators here.