“Can you play?” I asked, wincing in sympathy.
“Probably.” He yanked a weed out of a plot. “I can garden.”
Jenna got away unscathed. No one, not even Timson, was sure where she slept. I’d thought it was a weird quirk, but I realised that she knew what she was doing.
We worked together in the garden that day, the three of us and Hambone. No one else showed up. Some of the early berries were ripe, so we ate them. “Hey,” I said, pointing at a plane. “You still plan on making that long-distance call? New Zealand?”
Jenna wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Once we’ve got this crop in. I don’t know that we’d be let back in if we left.”
I conceded the point.
That night, Timson played as best as he could, and I confined myself to the occasional sour blat on the horn. The crowd was subdued, and grew more so when Lyman and his boys showed up.
Steve called the set over early, then went and chatted with Lyman. Pretty soon they were whooping it up. Timson and I shared disgusted looks. “Fuck this,” he said, and stalked away.
Jenna and me and Hambone went and sat in the gardens, where Hambone played a soft racket with my pole.
“I don’t think we’ll play again,” I said.
“Come on,” she said, dismissively. “This’ll blow over. You guys are good, you should play.”
“Who gives a damn if we’re good or not? It’s just a band.”
She stared at Hambone for a while. “You ever wonder why I stayed here?” she said, finally.
“Tired, I guess. Same as me.”
“I’d been looking for a place to grow a garden for a long time. A place where they were starting over, not just doing the same old stuff. And one day, I’m wandering along, and I heard you guys. I thought I’d found civilization. Before I could figure out exactly where the sound was coming from, I spotted some of Lyman’s boys and hid. I hid out until I heard the music the next day, and then I snuck in. And I said, ‘Girl, here’s a place where they still have something besides eating and killing and screwing.’ So I settled. I let you use my precious seeds. I think if you guys give up playing, this place will dry up and fly away in a couple of years.”
“Unless we get rescued by Kiwis first,” I said, playfully. I grinned, and my lip started bleeding again. “Ow,” I said.
She laughed, and I laughed.
Steve avoided the band for a week. We didn’t play, even after my lip had healed. Everyone was tense, ready to blow.
Then the gardens got trashed again. This time, they did it in broad daylight, while Timson and Jenna and I glared at them. It wasn’t just Lyman and his pals, either: almost everyone came out, including a number of former gardeners. And Steve.
Timson walked away. Even Lyman’s boys had the sense not to taunt him. Jenna and I stared as our beds were murdered again. They did a thorough job, sowing the soil with gravel and crap like nails and glass. Some of the former gardeners avoided our gaze, but other than that, there was no remorse. I shook.
Jenna led me away, with Hambone in tow. They weren’t too scared to taunt us, and someone hit me with a dirt clod.
Jenna took me to a little cave whose entrance was hidden by an overhang from an I-beam. Jenna cleared some debris from the doorway, then led me inside.
It was claustrophobic and dark inside, and a bedroll was spread out on the floor beside a giant internal-frame pack.
The three of us sat in silence. Jenna’s shoulders shook. Tentatively, I reached out for her and she hugged tight to me. Hambone clapped the buckles of her pack’s straps together.
I held her there for a long time. Eventually, she tried to pull away, but I held on, and she relaxed into me. It had been a long time since I’d held a woman like that, and I found myself clutching her tighter. A warm, fluttery feeling filled my belly. I tried to kiss her.
She shoved me away abruptly. “Fuck off!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“Jesus, put it back in your pants!”
“What’s your problem?” I said. “My problem is I thought you were my friend. All of a sudden, you start grabassing. Get out, you goddamned letch!” She shoved at me. I scrambled out and slogged home.
I stayed in bed until noon, wallowing in self-pity. Then I cracked a bottle of vodka out of my larder and killed it. It had been a while since my last bender, but it all came back just fine. Before I knew it, I was huffing from a rag soaked in solvent, reeling and dazed. I stayed stoned until I fell asleep, then got up and felt so rotten that I started over again.
I knew I was sulking, but I didn’t see any reason to stop. The band was gone, the gardens were gone, Jenna was gone.
I realized that I’d spent the decade since the War waiting for someone to rebuild civilization, and that it wasn’t going to happen. It was just going to get worse, every single year. Even if we planted a million gardens, the best I could hope for was to die of old age in a cave, surrounded by my illiterate offspring.
It was enough to make me want to join the militia.
Eventually, I staggered out into the blinding light. I went to work on a hill, and that’s where Timson found me.
He was flustered and angry, showing more emotion than he usually did. “Have you seen her?” he said.
“Who?” I said, blearily.
“Jenna. You haven’t seen her?”
“No,” I said, guiltily, “not since Lyman—”
“Shit!” he said, and spun on his heel, taking off.
His urgency penetrated my fog and I chased after him. “You think something’s up?” I said.
He nodded grimly. “Lyman’s been too smug lately, like the cat that ate the cream. I think he’s got her.”
“Where would he keep her?” I said. There wasn’t much standing that you could keep a person locked up inside of.
“Those assholes have an ‘armory’ where they keep all their goddamn weapons. He’s said as much to me, when he was bragging. I want to find it.”
“Hang on a sec,” I said. “Have you checked her place?”
“You know where it is?” he asked, surprised.
“Come on,” I said, feeling perversely proud that he didn’t.
She wasn’t at her place, but there were signs of a struggle. Her pack was shredded, her seeds ground into the concrete floor.
Timson took one look and tore off. I followed his long strides as best as I could. I knew where he was headed: Steve’s.
Steve lived in part of a half-buried underground shopping mall. Timson pummeled down the stairs with me close behind.
Steve and Lucy were twined on a pile of foam rubber. Timson hauled him up by the arm and slammed his head against a wall.
“Where’s the armory?” he roared.
Steve held his head. “Fuck you,” he sneered.
Timson slammed his head again. Lucy rushed him from behind and I tripped her.
“Where is it?” Timson said. “Don’t make me any angrier.”
Steve dangled, nude, from Timson’s meaty paws. Terror and anger warred on his features. Terror won. He spilled his guts. “They’ll kill you,” he said. “They’ve been fighting off wanderers all week. They’re in a bad mood.”
Timson snorted and dropped him.
Lyman was expecting us. He blocked the entrance to the armory, a bomb shelter with a heavy, counterweighted steel door. I’d seen a few doors like it in my travels, but I’d never managed to get one open.
Timson got ready to rush him, then checked himself. Lyman had his gun hanging lazily off one hand.
“Afternoon, boys,” he said, grinning.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Timson said.
Lyman held up his gun with an expression of mock surprise. “Probably not,” he said. “Not unless you give me a reason to. I’m here to protect.”
“Well, I’m about to give you a reason to. I’m going in there to get Jenna. I’ll kill you if you try to stop me.”
Lyman stuck his gun back into his waistband. “You�
�re too late,” he said.
I saw red and started forward, but he held a hand up.
“She got away. We only wanted to scare her off and get rid of her seeds, but she went nuts. It’s a good thing she got away, or I would’ve forgotten my manners.”
Timson growled.
Lyman took a step backwards. “Look, if you don’t believe me, go on in and take a look around, be my guest.”
Jenna wasn’t inside, but they weren’t kidding when they called it an arsenal. I hadn’t seen that many weapons since the War. It made me faintly sick.
Then I spotted something that froze me in my tracks. Beneath one of the long tables, a dented silver canister with ugly biohazard decals. You saw fragments of them sometimes, exploded in the midst of plague-wracked corpses. A plague bomb.
Lyman strutted around like a proud papa. “Lots of these were here when I found the place, but we’ve picked up a few here and there along the way. Nobody’s chasing us out of here.” He followed my horrified gaze.
“You like it?” he said. “That’s just in case someone does manage to run us off—it won’t do them any good! Our Final Solution.” He patted the bomb with a proprietary air.
All of a sudden, it got to me. I started laughing. “Nobody’s chasing you out!” I gasped. “This is your rubble, and nobody’s chasing you out!” Timson started laughing, too. Lyman and his boys reddened. We left.
We found Jenna with Hambone, in his cave. She had the remains of her pack with her, and was shoveling Hambone’s things into it.
She startled when we came in, but once she’d seen us, she went back to packing. “Getting outta Dodge,” she said, in answer to our unspoken question.
“Are you all right?” I asked, feeling guilty and awful.
“They killed my seeds,” she said, in a hopeless voice. I started to reach for her, then stopped and stared at the floor.
She finished packing and grabbed Hambone. “You coming?”
Timson shouldered her pack, answering for both of us.
I’d settled seven years before. I thought I’d stayed in good shape, but I’d forgotten how punishing life on the road could be.
Jenna set a brutal pace. She wouldn’t talk to me any more than necessary. We ate sparingly, from what she scrounged on the way. She knew a lot about what was edible and what wasn’t, skills I’d never picked up, but my belly still growled.
“Where are we going?” I said, after a week. My feet had toughened, but my legs felt like they’d been beaten by truncheons.
Instead of answering, she pointed up at a plane overhead. Of course, I thought, time to make a long-distance call.
A week later, I said, “Have you thought this thing through? I mean, the station may be automated, but it’ll have defenses. Locks, at least. How do you plan on getting in?”
Timson, who’d been silent the whole morning, said, “I’m curious, too. I’ve been thinking: this Australia thing is kind of far-fetched, isn’t it? If they wanted to rescue us, they would’ve done it a long time ago, don’t you think?”
“Screw Australia,” she said impatiently. “Any station capable of maintaining those jets is bound to have lots of things we can use. I want a fence for my garden.”
“But how are we going to get in?” I said.
“Hambone,” she said, with a smug smile.
Hambone grinned affably. “Guh?” I said.
“He’s a pilot. High ranking one, too.”
“Not to repeat myself,” I said, “but, guh?”
She spun Hambone around and pulled his shaggy hair away from the collar of his grimy tee-shirt. “Look.” I did. She dug at the knot of scar tissue at the base of his skull. Horrified, I watched as the scar flapped back, revealing a row of plugs, ringed with cracked and blackened skin.
“Brainstem interface. I noticed it the first time I saw you guys. You never noticed?”
“I noticed the scar, sure—”
“Scar?” she said. She flapped it around. “It’s a dustcover! Hambone’s wired! We’ll just point his retinas at the scanner and voilà, instant entry. Damn, you didn’t think I was going to try and hop the fence, did you?”
Timson grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually…”
We reached the station the next day. The familiar roar of the jets was joined by the ear-shattering sound of them landing and taking off, like clockwork.
The airfield was fenced in by a lethal wall, ten meters tall and ringed with aged corpses. A lot of slow learners had found out the hard way about the station’s defenses.
We wandered the perimeter for several kilometers before we came to a gate. It had a retinal scanner, like I sometimes found when I unearthed the remains of a bank machine. Hambone grew more and more agitated as we neared it.
“Go on,” Jenna whispered. “Come on, you can do it.”
His nervous drumming became more and more pronounced, until he was waving his arms, flailing wildly.
Jenna caught his hands and held them tightly. “That’s all right,” she cooed. “It’s all right, come on.”
Centimeter by slow centimeter, Jenna coaxed Hambone to the scanner. Finally, he put his eyes against the battered holes. Red light played over his features, and the gates sighed open.
We were all still standing around and grinning like idiots before we noticed that Hambone was running across the airfield.
He was already halfway to a jet. We caught up with him as he was vaulting the extruded ladder. An armored cart that had been attached to the fuselage reeled in its umbilicus and rolled away.
Hambone was already seated in the pilot’s chair, punching at the buttons. A cable snaked from the back of his seat into the plugs on his neck. I had time to think, That’s weird, and then the plane lurched forward. The cockpit had seats for a copilot and a bombardier, and we all crammed in like sardines, Jenna on my lap, and we crushed together when the plane jolted.
“Holy shit!” Jenna shouted.
Hambone drummed his fingers against an instrument panel while he pulled back on a joystick. “Strap in!” Timson shouted.
I did, pulling crash webbing across us.
“Hambone, what the hell are you doing?” Jenna shouted.
He grinned affably, and the plane lifted off.
Hambone flew the plane confidently, with small, precise movements. Jenna, Timson and I stared at each other helplessly. The jet had taken off at a screaming climb that flattened us back against our seats—I noted with curious detachment that Hambone’s seat had a recessed niche so that the cables depending from his skull weren’t compressed.
In an instant, we were above the clouds, with only tiny patches of scorched earth visible.
The silence inside the cockpit rang inside my ears. For the first time in seven years, I couldn’t hear jets crashing overhead.
“Hey, Hambone?” I said, cautiously.
Jenna shushed me. “Don’t distract him,” she whispered.
It was good advice. Timson stared at the instrument panels.
“I think,” he whispered, “that we’re headed out to sea.”
Jenna and I groaned. Hambone reached out with one hand and unlatched a compartment that spilled out freeze-dried rations.
“At least we won’t starve to death,” Timson whispered.
“Why are we whispering?” I said.
“So Hambone doesn’t get panicked,” Jenna said.
“He never gets panicked,” I said in a normal tone. Hambone unwrapped a bar of fruit leather and munched thoughtfully at it, while his fingers danced over the controls.
“He never flies planes, either,” she hissed.
“We’re over the ocean now. Pacific, I think,” Timson said. He’d done something with the seat that caused it to slide back into a crawlspace, and we were still cramped, but at least we weren’t in each other’s laps. I looked out the window. Yup, ocean.
I started shivering.
“We’re going to die,” I said.
“Probably,” Jenna said. She giggled.
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I punched her playfully and my panic receded.
Timson started playing with one of the panels.
“What are you doing?” I said, alarmed.
“Trying to figure out where we’re going. Don’t worry, this is the copilot’s seat. I don’t think I can screw up the navigation from here unless he turns it over to me.” Ragged and filthy, he looked like a caveman next to the sleek controls.
“You don’t think?” I said.
He waved impatiently at me, poked some more. “OK,” he said. “Hambone’s taking us to Australia.”
I always knew that Hambone had heard the things we’d said. Still, it was easy to forget. We took turns trying to convince him to head back. After a few hours, we gave up. Timson said that we’d crossed the halfway mark, anyway. We were closer to Australia than home.
Then there was nothing to do but eat and wait.
Eventually, some of the instruments lit and I thought, This is it, we’re dead. Curiously, I wasn’t scared. I’d been scared so long, and now I was bored, almost glad that it was ending.
“Bogeys,” Timson said, staring out the window.
I looked up. Two sleek new fighters were paralleling us. Inside their cockpits, I could see pilots in what looked like space suits. I waved to one. He tapped his headset.
Jenna said, “They’re trying to radio us.”
Timson picked up a lightweight headset from a niche above his seat. He screwed it into his ear and held up a finger.
“Hello?” he said. We held our breath.
“Yes, that’s us,” he said.
“What?” I said. He shushed me.
“All right,” he said.
“What?” I shouted, startling Hambone. Jenna clapped a hand over my mouth.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know how. Do you know which button I push? I see. All right, I think this is it. I’m going to push it. Is that all right? OK, thanks. Bye.”
I peeled Jenna’s hand off my mouth. “What?” I demanded.
“That’s the Panoceanic Air Force. They’re landing us at Sydney. We’ll be quarantined when we get there, but I think it’s just a formality.”
The lights in the cockpit dimmed and the cable zipped out of Hambone’s neck. Absently, he reached back and smoothed the dustcover over the plugs. “They’re landing us,” Timson said.
Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse Page 17