by John Gregory
They slept sound through the night and the unbearable midday sun, and left the shelter of the cave as soon as the sun had begun its gradual decline, at which point there was surprisingly little evidence of coyogre activity in the valley. The giant beasts appeared to have been satisfied in scavenging the corpse of the coy that the men had twice killed. Tracks read that the creatures had run off sometime during the night, attracted to greater prospects, no doubt. Hatch pulled out an old compass from his pack and opened its battered exterior, determining west for the group with his hand hoisted in the air.
Strangely, they noticed that they had less and less contact with coyogres as they continued westward. For a time this gave them hope, made them think they would soon reach Civilization. But on and on the landscape stretched, a vast, desolate expanse, remnants of past peoples submerged in an endless dry sea: the crumbling, sand-worn skeletons of buildings of wood or cinderblock, of furniture, of men. The only other thing that seemed to move was the great glowing disc in the sky, facing them in the morning, only to stab them in the back come evening. If not for the sun though, an entire day spent crossing the desert could pass just as easily in a brief second. Aside from thirst and fatigue, monotony plagued them. It did not take long for the days of stabbing monstrous MSCs to become something surprisingly sentimental. The valleys and hills and sandy dunes had disappeared entirely and given way to a rocky wilderness, endlessly flat in all directions. Hatch had no idea he would ever find cacti so comforting, but occasionally one would emerge, the only sign of life encountered in an entire day, and he would want to hug them despite the obvious consequences. He would, however, waste no time knocking down the lean plants and devouring their pulp. Running at the plant, axe swinging, his unnatural laughter mingling with the howls of his companions, the smiles and bleeding fingers… it occurred to him occasionally in these moments that life itself was a thing spaded down to the core.
Then, one day, while Hatch had been thinking about how much he missed the presence of life, any version of it, even the violent man-eating kind, he was suddenly overcome by a strong sense of unease. It was so fast, a brief shadow in the endless horizon of blinding white, that he had trouble believing it happened at all. But Hatch was suddenly staring down at a giant lump of fur that landed in his path. It took him several moments to distinguish the mound of flesh as a coyogre, because its face had, in fact, exploded, and what was left of it was riddled with shot. He turned around to look into the equally shocked face of Mick, his wide eyes locked on the same spot of mangled fur on the ground.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
Both men then turned back to find Dusty standing a little to their left, very much composed. He held out his still-smoking shotgun, then snapped it open and finished reloading it while he walked in front of them.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
“Are you kidding me?” Mick shouted, “What the- How-?”
Hatch and Mitch examined the coy again laying in the camouflage of dark rocky sand. It was a formative male, six or seven feet long, and it had just emerged from a gaping hole in the desert floor. Seeing the den opening, Hatch’s chest lightened some, because he knew that it meant they were returning to only mildly barren terrain, leaving behind the absolute barren of the recent past. But something was still suspicious about the situation. He turned back to Dusty, who was bouncing on his heels.
“Are you guys crazy?” he said, “We gotta keep moving. Let’s go!”
“Dusty,” Hatch coughed, clearing layers of dust from his parched throat, “How did you do that?”
“How? What do you mean how? I wasted his ass! That’s how.”
“But—I didn’t even see him. Mick…?”
Mick shook his head, and then returned his stare to the coyogre’s shot-ridden body.
“You didn’t see that thing? He was standing there for like five minutes!”
It did not take long for Hatch to learn that Dusty had finished his last mealpak earlier, and around midday had begun eating the strange plants they had discovered around the mysterious pool in the cave. His excuse for not saying so sooner was that he did not want the others to be upset with him for having finished off his rations so early. He continued to explain that even though the plant’s texture was strange, he actually found them to be quite delicious. Dusty furthered his endorsement, saying the rock plants were invigorating, as real food always was, relative to mealpaks, though different in this case in some way he could not explain. He claimed his mind was very focused, “like one of those laser-thingies old man Bolo talks about, says his granddad saw.” Judging from the condition of the coy, Hatch was certain something of that nature had to be the truth.
He sat Dusty down and looked him over. His friend seemed fine, save for the fact his eyes appeared darker, and he was unable to sit still. The plant had somehow changed him—for the better.
Before they continued, Mick wasted no time in eating some of his share of cave plant, which they had begun to call rock fruit, saying that he would rotate it into his remaining rations of mealpaks, in order to maintain a similar degree of focus. Dusty went on to claim that he did not even feel a need for food, that the rock fruit kept his stomach full. Hatch was still skeptical.
After a time, though, he had no choice. Mick and Dusty were clearly surpassing him, with their long, effortless strides, and when he called for breaks out of exhaustion, they were eager to press on the moment he sat down. The terrain was improving, but there was still no sign of edible vegetation; no cacti had been seen in miles, and even if another coyogre came along, their meat was notoriously poisonous, if untreated. Hatch sighed, defeated by their circumstances. He muttered a prayer under his breath, before he took some bites out of his rock fruit stores. After several minutes, his heart skipped a few beats and he was on his feet, moving.
“Now we’re talkin!” Dusty cheered, matching his stride.
This was when Hatch’s mind first began to blur. He no longer saw the world as clearly as he had before. The ground appeared to float beneath him in blinding shades of white, red, and brown, eventually darkening to blacks and pearly whites, and then back to piercing brightness again. They never stopped, taking to shoveling food into their mouths as they moved over desert wastes, passing the occasional skeleton of a building long abandoned to the harsh elements. The infrequent chatter among them was a mere faint white noise within a yawning hot expanse of silence. Then, as they reached the summit of a tall dune, it appeared before him, like a sign from God: Welcome to the City of Phoenix.
It felt like the plant itself had played some part in bringing them there; like all they ever had to do to reach this place was take a bite.
The old ones had explained Civilization to the young ones many times, and though what Hatch saw now paled in comparison to their descriptions, the standing collection of architecture still impressed him greatly. There were hundreds of them, rising up out of the ground, varying in size, littered all about the desert like strange rocks bathed in the red hues of the dying sun. Some had caved in, many had been knocked over, and others had clearly been set afire at some point. From the vantage point of the group atop the dune, it was apparent that a good portion of the city was missing. The harsh winds sweeping from the west, carrying dirt and debris even as they watched, made it clear that the city was slowly being buried alive. However, a few dozen of the nearest structures looked intact, and, more importantly, there were signs of habitation: well-kept boards over the windows, a line of twine on which smocks twisted in the desert wind, a hide—likely off a screaming lizard—set out to cure in the sun.
The three men said nothing, looking among themselves more in surprise than accomplishment. Blinking wide and covered in incredible new layers of dirt, they barely seemed to recognize each other, but pressed forward at Hatch’s lead.
They aimed for the nearest cluster of buildings, hot wind whipping in their faces as they half walked, half slid down the shifting sands. As they approached, it became apparent that the hill th
ey were descending had once been a great landslide, one that had swallowed up part of the settlement. Sections of buildings poked out from the earth at odd angles along the slope, with larger pieces emerging the closer they came to level ground. As the three passed the rubble, they couldn’t help but reach their fingers out toward the smooth gray stones and dry cracked woods, the touch a manifestation of awe at the frameworks, the structures, the materials of the collapsed Old World monuments.
“This is real wood,” Dusty said, patting a splintered beam, “I can’t believe they used to have trees this big.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Hatch snapped.
They reached the bottom and were immediately forced to maneuver through layers of collected debris, from fractured slabs of concrete, to broken glass, to twisted piles of metal. At one point they paused in awe at the rusted rear half of an automobile, poking out from the wreckage of a building. It looked as if it had been dropped there.
“That’s a car,” Mick said.
Dusty tilted his head to one side, “No. It’s a plane.”
Mick shook his head, pointing to the axel and making a circle motion, “Look there. That’s where the wheels used to be.”
“Where are they then? And why is it standing on its front? That fell out of the sky.”
“Father Ish spoke of many strange events surrounding the Great Fires,” Hatch offered, “A car could have been thrown into the sky by the weapons of man.”
“A flying car is the same as a plane,” Dusty shrugged, “They both fly.”
Hatch and Mick exchanged glances. Hatch rolled his eyes.
“Let’s keep moving. It’s getting late.”
They soon made it to an area clear of ruins that looked to offer a pathway. It wound through the rubble, connecting the patches of buildings still habitable. Stepping on to the path, Hatch was immediately aware of an older man watching them from within the shade of an odd little cave, made from the surrounding debris, not fifty feet away. They had never seen a person who was not from their shelter. The stranger looked the three of them up and down many times. Hatch waved. He just seemed to snicker back, spitting out a glistening ball of phlegm on the ground between them.
“Look,” Dusty said.
He pointed in the opposite direction, toward one of the first intact structures. It had many signs pinned up, around a large metal door. Most of the signs were printed, like the labels in their shelter. The men could read, but the texts on the old plates were half-scratched away, and meaningless where they still showed through, all or in part:
Speed Limit 35
Yield to Pedestrians
WARNING! BEAR (undecipherable)
But there were two signs on the door that were hand-written. One read, “TRADE…?” in big bold letters, and another smaller sign below it, “Whites ONLY”. Hatch was not certain what the smaller of the signs meant, but he figured that the people in this building would be willing to exchange for water and food, and they would perhaps be able to obtain some knowledge about Civilization. The three men nodded to each other and approached the structure, standing outside in confusion for some time before Hatch thought to try knocking on the door.
“What do you want?” a man’s voice came almost immediately.
“We have come west through the desert,” Hatch’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, “We would like to trade for supplies, and perhaps learn more about Civilization.”
The door opened, revealing a man with wildly bushy gray hair. It shot out from every part of his face, from his head to his chin and seemingly all points in between save for his eyes, nose, and mouth. The old man eyed over the group with callous indifference.
“That kind of knowledge is useless at best, and generally suspect. You say ya came from the east?” he hissed.
Hatch nodded.
“I don’t believe ya,” he said, “Ain’t nobody ever come from the east. Whatcha got?”
“Look,” Mick started, “We’ve been walking since—”
“We have metals and some objects of man-science,” Hatch interrupted, “Although could you perhaps first tell us if we’re going the right way? Do the wastes end further west?”
The man raised an eyebrow, and then snorted slightly, laughing.
“End?” he said, still chuckling, “Boys, the Dead Land is all there is.”
“But...”
“People come this way every month,” he continued, “Usually from the west, occasionally from the south, sometimes even from the bear country up north. They hope Phoenix’ll still be here, but it ain’t, not really. We got bombed and blasted and shook up, same as everywheres else. You understand? It’s all dead. East, West, North, South. Dead. And then folks either turn right back around or lie down and die themselves.”
He paused, then added, “Y’all might want to consider doing the same.”
Hatch felt his heart sink.
“Which one?” asked Mick, his eyes narrowing.
“You boys on somethin’?” the man asked. “Cause I ain’t dealin with no tweakers.”
“Excuse me?” Hatch asked.
The old man was looking carefully at Hatch’s face.
“Nuthin,” he then coughed, “We can trade, but I’ll only deal with him.”
The man pointed at Dusty.
“You other two gotta wait out here.”
Hatch and Mick looked between each other.
“I really don’t think—” Hatch started.
“If it ain’t the white boy, then y’all can just git,” the man said, more firmly.
“Don’t worry, guys,” Dusty said confidently, “I’ll take care of it.”
Hatch and Mick were speechless as Dusty strode past them and into the shop, the metal door clanging shut behind him. Even a hundred feet away, Hatch could hear the strange man snickering from his cave of debris.
Left to his own devices, Hatch sat and wondered how it was that Dusty’s pale complexion had granted him access, while Mick’s and his had not. Hatch speculated that the old ones of Phoenix, if there were such a group, might believe dark complexions a sign someone was sickly, perhaps even spaded. If this were indeed the case, he realized Mick would have great difficulty indeed in Civilization, even though he was clearly not ill in any form. Mick’s skin, after all, was very dark brown, and he had black hair that grew like a bush all along his head and face. Hatch’s own skin was coppery, and his hair dark and straight, though unlike others from Shelter 303 he was somehow unable to grow hair from his face. Dusty’s hair was red, and his skin light and pinkish, and in the peak of day he burned easily.
After a few minutes, their pale friend emerged from the building and asked for some more of their belongings; specifically, anything metal. Hatch asked what they would be traded for, with Mick harshly indicating punishment in the event of failure, but Dusty merely insisted it was all good, and that they had to be quick about it. Hatch parted with any extra metallic weapons and tools he had, save for his flashlight, axe, and the hatchet that was his namesake. Mick did the same, keeping only a select few of his favorite knives. Hatch then made Dusty promise not to trade the shotgun or its precious ammunition before he darted back inside.
Eventually, he returned looking very proud and carrying a large wooden box. The door crashed shut behind him. A series of locks shucked shut.
Hatch and Mick examined the contents of the box with great interest at first. There was a gallon of water and a little food, but the majority of the box contained an array of colored fluids or pills in transparent, labeled bottles. Mick began screaming at the very sight of it, while Dusty kept proudly insisting that the items in the box would save them just as the rock fruit had done. That was when Hatch noticed that the shotgun was no longer anywhere on Dusty’s person, and Dusty had to explain that he had, in fact, traded it. Then Hatch and Mick were both screaming, and Dusty began to doubt the extent of his bartering skills. Hatch could not remember exactly how things descended from there, but he was fairly certain that
Mick started banging on the trader’s door just before a patch of sand exploded near Hatch’s feet.
“The next shot’ll be higher!” they then heard the old man shout from inside his building.
They all froze, and it took the group several seconds to realize that the wiry old man had just fired at the ground with the same shotgun that they had traded him. Having shot at many things, but never been shot at themselves, none of the men were immediately clear on what they should do.
“Git outta here!” the man shouted, and then fired at the ground near them again.
The situation was suddenly much more clear for everyone, and the three men took off running down the path, a harsh cackle directed at them as they passed the rubble cave.