I don’t know what I expect. The City
has been a cornerstone in the media for months now. Even before the
skirmishes started, it was a gathering place for derelicts and
punks and all sorts of unsavory types. The hardest soldier didn’t
take leave into the City if he could help it, and few ventured
there after dark. I guess I thought there would be miles of barbed
wire stretched across the beach like a concentration camp, armed
guards at well-placed intervals, rats scurrying from my feet and
buzzards circling overhead.
So when Nuri and I climb up the small
dunes and over the short rail, I’m a little disappointed at the
empty parking lot we find ourselves in—a few old cars here and
there, nothing that will run anymore, and a rickety shopping cart
rattling across the cracked paveme
