Dhalgren Read Online Free

Some were missing their heads. Smashed by a mace, a mallet, a fist? He dragged his fingers across them, listened to them click, then stepped from the glass-flecked, rubber mat, over the sill to the pavement.
    Metal steps led up to the pedestrian walkway. But since there was no traffic, he sauntered across two empty lanes—a metal grid sunk in the blacktop gleamed where tires had polished it—to amble the broken white line, sandaled foot one side, bare foot the other. Girders wheeled by him, left and right. Beyond, the burning city squatted on weak, inverted images of its fires.
    He gazed across the wale of night water, all wind-runneled, and sniffed for burning. A gust parted the hair at the back of his neck; smoke was moving off the river.
    "Hey, you!"
    He looked up at the surprising flashlight. "Huh…?" At the walkway rail, another and another punctured the dark.
    "You going into Bellona?"
    "That's right." Squinting, he tried to smile. One, and another, the lights moved a few steps, stopped. He said: "You're… leaving?"
    "Yeah. You know it's restricted in there."
    He nodded. "But I haven't seen any soldiers or police or anything. I just hitch-hiked down."
    "How were the rides?"
    "All I saw was two trucks for the last twenty miles. The second one gave me a lift."
    "What about the traffic going out?"
    He shrugged. "But I guess girls shouldn't have too hard a time, though. I mean, if a car passes, you'll probably get a ride. Where you heading?"
    "Two of us want to get to New York. Judy wants to go to San Francisco."
    "I just want to get some place," a whiny voice came down. "I've got a fever! I should be in bed. I was in bed for the last three days."
    He said: "You've got a ways to go, either direction."
    "Nothing's happened to San Francisco—?"
    "—or New York?"
    "No." He tried to see behind the lights. "The papers don't even talk about what's happening here, any more."
    "But, Jesus! What about the television? Or the radio—"
    "Stupid, none of it works out here. So how are they gonna know?"
    "But— Oh, wow…!"
    He said: "The nearer you get, it's just less and less people. And the ones you meet are… funnier. What's it like inside?"
    One laughed.
    Another said: "It's pretty rough."
    The one who'd spoken first said: "But like you say, girls have an easier time."
    They laughed.
    He did too. "Is there anything you can tell me? I mean that might be helpful? Since I'm going in?"
    "Yeah. Some men came by, shot up the house we were living in, tore up the place, then burned us out."
    "She was making this sculpture," the whiny voice explained; "this big sculpture. Of a lion. Out of junk metal and stuff. It was beautiful… ! But she had to leave it."
    "Wow," he said. "Is it like that?"
    One short, hard laugh: "Yeah. We got it real easy."
    "Tell him about Calkins? Or the scorpions?"
    "He'll learn about them." Another laugh. "What can you say?"
    "You want a weapon to take in with you?"
    That made him afraid again. "Do I need one?"
    But they were talking among themselves:
    "You're gonna give him that?"
    "Yeah, why not? I don't want it with me any more."
    "Well, okay. It's yours."
    Metal sounded on chain, while one asked: "Where you from?" The flashlights turned away, ghosting the group. One in profile near the rail was momentarily lighted enough to see she was very young, very black, and very pregnant.
    "Up from the south."
    "You don't sound like you're from the south," one said who did.
    "I'm not from the south. But I was just in Mexico."
    "Oh, hey!" That was the pregnant one. "Where were you? I know Mexico."
    The exchange of half a dozen towns ended in disappointed silence.
    "Here's your weapon."
    Flashlights followed the flicker in the air, the clatter on the gridded blacktop.
    With the beams on the ground (and not in his eyes), he could make out half a dozen women on the catwalk.

    "What—" A car motor thrummed at the end of the bridge; but there were no headlights when he glanced. The sound died on some turnoff—"is