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Bridge O' Doom
by Ken Rand
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Science Fiction

Copyright ©2004 by Ken Rand

First published in Fundamentally Challenged, 2004

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

The Union Pacific built the bridge in 1896 on its line from the Coyote Ridge coal mines up north to the mainline at Three Pines fifteen miles south. The bridge spanned Three Pines River where the footing was the most solid. A Pratt simple-span through-truss bridge, reinforced with a wooden-beam central pier. A hundred and twenty-two feet long, fourteen feet wide, fifty-two feet high from the pier footing to the span top. A hundred and three tons of steel girder.

It had no official name. UP just gave it a number that nobody remembered, but people called it the Strausser Bridge because it was on Strausser land. When the mines played out in 1910, UP sold the line to Hans Strausser, cheap.

He got the bridge intact, all deeded legal and proper.

Hans sold the rails during The Great War and used the ties for corral and fence. He kept the bridge up because it was a shortcut to his summer grazing land by the old mines.

It was a pretty bridge. Ansel Adams photographed the lower valley from the bridge in the spring of 1942 on his way back from shooting at Yellowstone. His photograph of the bridge from the west bank looking back toward the house, barn, and corrals became world famous.

* * * *

Dale Strausser sat at the kitchen table finishing a cup of coffee just at sunup, getting ready for morning chores. Griddle-iron heat poured through the open door and window.

Miguel, Dale's hired hand, came running across the yard yelling, raising a dusty rooster tail. The wiry old Mexican stood in the open kitchen door, panting, dancing from foot to foot like he had to pee, and jabbering in Spanish.

“Slow down,” Dale said. He stood and strode to the door, coffee mug in hand.

Miguel took a breath. “Something on the bridge, Dale. You got to see."

“We got a bear or what?” Rocky barked out by the bridge.

Miguel's answer came in high-speed Spanish again, and Dale caught enough, including “diablo” and “brujeria,” to know he'd better try to look serious. Miguel was a good hand.

Dale took a last swig of black brew, tossed the dregs and mug in the sink, and walked out into the yard, Miguel hovering, skinny arm pointing over Dale's broad shoulder at the thing on the bridge.

“See?” Miguel's voice cracked. He smelled like onion.

On the bridge stood a huge, square, black wall. Dale judged it measured fourteen feet wide and as tall. He knew the bridge's dimensions, and the—thing—fit from side beam to side beam as if wedged in place under the queen post two-thirds of the way across.

If you take a boat across to the other bank and wade back this way a tad and look up, it disappears. That's because you see it edge-on and it has no thickness. No thickness. The scientists said that's impossible.

You can't see it at all from the west side. It has only one dimension—what you see from where you are now. No edges, no side view, no backside. Impossible.

And the color. Solid black. It reflects no light. None. The scientists said it emits no radiation. Some thought it was a black hole.

Dale took a breath and approached the thing, alone. Miguel wouldn't set foot on the bridge, nor Rocky. Dale stood in front of it, ten feet away. His hair stood on end, beard to crown. I've gotten used to it since, and I don't have much hair left anyway, but back then, it was the most eerie thing I'd ever seen.

He picked up a rock and tossed it at the thing. The rock disappeared. It made no sound.

Dale grunted. He'd expected the rock would bounce off, or ripple like water or make a whoosh, gurgle, or sucking sound. Special effects. Something. Anything.

Nothing happened.

Miguel and Rocky had gone quiet. No wind rustled the rushes at the foot of the bridge or stirred the cottonwoods flanking the barn. No cows bawled in the field to the north like they did that time of day. Even the chickens were quiet.

Dale got an idea.

“Miguel, you got any string with you?"

He turned when Miguel didn't answer. He'd gone. Rocky sat shivering.

Dale cursed, and fetched some bailing twine from the barn and tied it around a three-foot length of two-by-four and went back to the bridge. Five feet away, he threw the board through it—not at it—even then, I thought “through,” not “at.” He held the string. Didn't hear a sound. He waited a few seconds and pulled on the string.

The string was cut where it had touched the wall. Till Dale pulled it back, it hung as if still attached to the board, but when he jerked on the string, it was like the wall cut the string and all Dale got was what he held, cut at the wall—by the wall. The board was gone.

Dale took out his jackknife and slid it blade first into the wall. It felt like slicing air. He shoved the blade in to the hilt and pulled it back out. Just hilt. No blade.

“Huh.” He pondered touching it but decided against.

He went back inside to think over another cup of coffee. Miguel had already made a new pot. They sat at the kitchen table, shoulders hunched, silent.

After finishing his cup, Dale rose and called Sheriff Dekker in Three Pines. Dekker said he'd come out, by and by.

Dale's stoic demeanor cowed Miguel who settled down enough to go out and do some chores. While he did, Dale rigged a fence at the near end of the bridge with some loose chicken wire and hung a couple red rags.

Sheriff Dekker came out two hours later, took notes, took some pictures, tossed rocks through it, scratched his head, said he'd call the University at Laramie, and left.

Too soon, all hell broke lose. Media and scientists arrived as Dale washed lunch dishes. The first day got hectic. The next day got more so. The day after, worse.

Scientists tried all kinds of things. They brought all these fancy electronic gadgets out here, measuring, probing, testing, doing scientist stuff. They'd send something in, nothing came back. No radio signals, no TV signals, nothing.

It rained one day and it didn't even get wet.

Dale couldn't take a leak in private what with all the TV people around. He ended up on CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox. Larry King. Leno came out to do a show.

They began calling it “The Bridge."

Dale couldn't get much work done. Neighbors came and helped as best they could for a while.

Dale's son Patrick came home from college before the first week. “I saw on TV, dad,” he said. “I figured you needed a hand."

“Immigration busted Miguel,” Dale said. He made a poor show of scolding Patrick for dropping classes to come home—waste of a good mind and all that.

“What I'm learning in law school,” Patrick said, “it'll be useful, especially if the government steps in."

Which they did, the next day.

Dekker posted a deputy that first day to make sure the TV people and scientists stayed on the road, closed the gates and so on, but Dale soon got overwhelmed, what with helicopters and all. Dekker sent more deputies but it wasn't enough. He welcomed the feds.

I sure as hell didn't. Pardon the language, but the feds were a goddam pain in the ass.

“National security,” the boys with their aftershave and their mirror glasses and business suits said, eyeing Dale like he was a terrorist and stupid to boot. They set up a perimeter around the bridge and around the ranch. Soldiers, all over the place, chased off the media and a few scientists. Nobody in without permission. Patrick almost had to prove his citizenship to get back from the courthouse in Three Pines.

On the eighth day, three days after Patrick got home, the first person crossed. An accident.

It happened at sunup. Dale had planned to cut hay on his south pasture but he didn't even get as far as the barn to fire up the tractor. A big Army truck blocked the barn door.

He stalked across the yard to the bridge where a Marine colonel stood, looking busy and important.

“Are you the chief honcho in charge of screwing up my day?” Dale said, madder than a calf at branding. “I don't got any rights anymore, not even property rights, huh?"

Sorry. Didn't mean to get riled, but it still boils my beans after all these years the way the feds just took over.

The colonel just mumbled, wouldn't even make eye contact, about “national security” and such bullshit. I held my ground. I stood nose to nose with this asswipe and told him he'd hear from my congressman and I'd sue the goddam Pentagon.

And so on. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, or was, but this had gone on far enough. He wouldn't move the damn truck.

As Dale yelled at the officer, he glanced out on to the bridge—the Bridge—and saw a scientist, an engineer named Don Reynolds from Ames, Iowa, Dale later found out, trip over a box and fall backwards into—through—the Bridge.

Disappeared. Didn't make a sound.

All hell broke loose. Panic. The media heard about it—they weren't far off—and it became hot news.

The next day, public pressure forced Washington to let the media back in. The road soon got jammed all the way back to Three Pines with reporters, government types, and curiosity seekers. Dale's fence got torn to hell and poachers killed a dozen head, some just left to rot in the field.

Patrick's legal skills finally paid off. He got a court order forcing the intruders out. Dale didn't understand it, didn't try to, but it got the job done, even if it took a month. Cleared them off, every soldier, scientist, TV reporter, engineer, and shiny-shoed son-of-a-bitch killing Dale's stock, trampling his garden, tearing down fence, destroying road, and making life hell.

They all hovered beyond the property line, watching through binoculars and telescopes, satellite dishes aimed at the sky, rigs parked up and down the road by the thousands.

It took longer to stop the helicopters from buzzing.

Two months later, as the first snow kissed Coyote Ridge to the north, Patrick's college buddy Richard came.

Richard had a theory about the Bridge, why it was there.

Dale had read theories in the paper. He'd had the phone taken out the fourth day after it started ringing with people wanting interviews and saying it was the devil's work and Dale had to destroy it because it was the end of the world and so on, blah, blah, blah. Dale read theories in the paper before he stopped getting it, and watched on TV. Lots of theories.

Nobody was at ease with an alien thing nobody understood.

Except Richard. He knew.

“'Brigadoon',” Richard said at the breakfast table the day after he arrived, around a mouthful of egg.

“What?” Dale said. “Bridge O’ Doom?"

“No, Mr. Strausser.” The boy swallowed and wiped his lips. “'Brigadoon'. It's a play about a magical place on the other side of a, well, a bridge, like what you have."

“A play?"

“Right, dad,” Patrick said. “Richard thinks what's on the other side is a paradise, like in the play."

Dale didn't see many plays in Three Pines, but he did read. “You mean like Shangri La?"

“Exactly.” Richard related his theory. “Whatever you want is on the other side. Heaven or hell. It depends on what you believe is there, waiting for you. If you believe you're going to heaven and you believe heaven looks like, say, downtown New York, you'll find yourself in Times Square when you cross. If you believe hell is waiting, maybe you should bring marshmallows to toast."

He said he wanted to cross because paradise awaited him, this “Brigadoon."

“You're not going to this Bridge O’ Doom place, not on my property, you're not."

“'Brigadoon',” Patrick explained again, but Dale knew the difference. I was just being stubborn, is all. I admit it. I was afraid, back then. I can't explain. I just was is all.

They argued a long time but never settled anything. It didn't stop Dale from liking the boy.

Dale woke up the next morning and found Patrick on the back porch, looking out at the Bridge, the note from Richard in a fist, shoulders shaking in the cold, a tear in one eye he tried to hide.

Nobody in the yard. Everybody gone, even the military police that wanted to guard the Bridge so nobody accidentally crossed. They'd put up a wire fence. Nobody guarded against the likelihood somebody would deliberately cross.

Like Richard did.

I lost his note years back but I recall it said he knew whatever was across the Bridge O’ Doom—he used the term, I think, not to mock me but to help me make light of it—was better than this side. Had to be. He typed up twenty single-spaced pages why he believed so.

Patrick gave a copy of the note to the media.

A couple days later, it started. A trickle at first. An old couple after breakfast, a woman with a baby a few minutes later, a teenage couple “eloping,” then a Catholic priest. They came by ones and twos all that day, parking their vehicles at the gate and walking in.

Then, a flood. They came, like lemmings, down the road, across the field to the north, and up the valley from the south. Abandoned cars piled up for miles around.

The military tried to turn people away. Dale and Patrick heard explosions and gunshots over the horizon, and shouting, but that stopped after a few hours.

We were overwhelmed.

Still, most came quiet, orderly, with good manners, like Richard and Patrick. They didn't run or scream or act crazy. They didn't drool. Some sang. “Off to See the Wizard” was popular. Some crossed naked, tossing clothes into the river as they went.

And they came and came and came, day and night, week after week, month after month, year after year, they came. Enough thought to bring food to share or Patrick and Dale would have starved to death the first month.

Patrick crossed a year later.

I don't think I want to talk about why he did. He just did is all. Leave it at that.

The flood died down five years ago, turned to a trickle again. It got so I'd see a few hundred people a day, then a few dozen, then just a handful a month.

Nobody has crossed for the past—hell, I forget.

“Why?” the stranger asked, voice raspy.

“Why?” The question startled Dale. “Well, I guess because most of them—"

“Why do you stay?” The stranger pointed at the Bridge O’ Doom. “Everybody else—"

“Ah.” Dale nodded. “The other question."

The scarecrow-thin man, of indeterminate age, scruffy-bearded and road-dirty, eyes glazed with weariness, stood before Dale and looked past him at the Bridge, or past it, to whatever lay beyond.

Dale had been telling the story, as he had to thousands who'd come before. The man had shuffled up the road, stood looking out, and asked “Is this it?” and Dale had told him.

“I've been gatekeeper for twenty-two years and more,” Dale had started, “and you'd be surprised how many people ask me how it got its name. Let me tell you..."

Now, the man wanted to know “why."

“The other question.” Dale eased his creaky bones onto a stool under the shade of a ratty Army issue tarp at the foot of the Bridge. The day had been relentless hot, no breeze.

Dale resumed stitching, repairing a holey shirt, what he'd been doing before the man arrived.

“Could offer you a bite to eat.” Dale nodded at a sack of dried apples by his foot.

No answer. In the still air, Dale heard the man breathe, in and out, a blacksmith bellows. Eyes fixed on the Bridge. Or beyond.

No knapsack. No baggage. Sweat dripped down a hatchet-thin nose, collected in his beard.

“I tell them the story and they nod, their eyes on the Bridge, or past it, not looking at me, maybe not even listening. Like you."

No answer.

“It doesn't matter. After a while, sometimes even before I finish, they take a deep breath and head out.

“I think they ask as a way to delay while they psyche themselves up. Like somebody on the high dive, nervous, asks their buddies ‘How deep is the water?’ or ‘How high up am I, do you reckon?’ Helps steel their nerves. You go off the high dive the first time—once. After that, it's not the first time no more.

“It's not so pretty now, not like when Ansel Adams took that picture in ‘42. All these dead cars and old rusted crap. I try to clean up, but, well."

“Why?"

“I have a garden—"

The man turned and fixed glazed eyes on Dale. “Why?"

“Ah.” Dale lay his stitching aside and returned the man's gaze. “Why I haven't crossed yet? What's an old fart like me doing here and what'll I do if I need a dentist or run out of toilet paper? Okay."

Dale sighed. “For a while, till Patrick crossed, I expected it to do something, you know? Maybe belch or spit out a pile of bones. Don't know what I expected, but something—some change that would explain what it was for.

“For a while, I thought maybe I didn't cross because I wanted to see the change. I was here when it came, I was the first to put anything through it, I saw the first crossing, I was here when Richard crossed. I've seen everybody who crossed since, except when I slept or went to the bathroom.

“So, why not be here to see when it coughs, spits out a bone pile, burps, or disappears, or whatever?

“A few years ago, I got to wondering how many people had crossed. Millions, maybe, but not all six billion on the planet.” Dale shrugged. “Or maybe not. I wonder if other Bridges opened up so the entire human race could cross."

The stranger opened his mouth as if to speak, but Dale raised a hand. “I don't know,” he said, “and I don't intend to find out.

“I just don't care.

“That's why I don't cross. I don't care what's out there. Not a bit. I'm happy right here.

“See, I grew up in Wyoming, population 470-thousand last time I saw a census, north of Three Pines, population two thousand. My nearest neighbor lived two miles away. My father and his father and his father lived here.

“People used to ask me what I saw to like out here. No excitement, nothing to do. No people. I get no smog, no noise, no hurry, no crime. No people.

“I like it because it's quiet. Even if it wasn't quiet, like during the exodus, I'd still like it here.

“It's home, you see? Home. Whatever's on the other side, I don't care. It isn't home."

The stranger cocked his head as if thinking. Or maybe, Dale thought, listening to some call Dale couldn't hear.

“Now.” Dale stood. “You tell me."

The man shook his head, as if awakening from a nap. “What? Tell you—"

“Why. Why you want to go. What's over there that you—"

The man turned, as so many had before. He turned toward the Bridge O’ Doom, as if Dale wasn't there, had never been, and he began walking.

end