by Nick Cole
Sitting on the bed for a moment the Old Man considered returning to the office for more water. But then he felt he must finish the rooms first. Make sure the place was clear.
This place is evil.
East is cursed.
Yes, and I too am cursed.
What was its story?
If he knew its story then maybe he might find salvage. If there was salvage to be found.
But the rooms and the office told of a hermit. “Loners” the village called them in the years after the bombs. People who had run so deep into the desert, they didn’t know of villages. Didn’t know others survived. Hermits didn’t last long. Seven years was the longest he’d ever guessed of one making it on his own.
This man had a hotel. Some power. The road nearby.
He thought of the power system. A salvage of that was beyond him. He could return and tell of this place. Then the villagers could come and get the power.
And the water. It might be good to have a place with water if the village ever wanted to come this far.
They would not come this far. “East” was enough to prevent them from ever considering it. So the solar power was no salvage.
Finished resting, he continued to search the rest of the rooms. In the last two he found the story. But he wished he hadn’t.
The first room held the desiccated corpse of a woman. Her long blond hair framed the rictus grin of a skeleton laughing or screaming.
Probably screaming.
The handcuffs at each end of the bedpost said screaming. Arms still connected to bony wrists thin enough to slip through as the victim must have once wished to. One leg lay on the floor. There were no clothes.
Was she the one who tried to warn me?
In the next room at the end of the balcony, the last room of the Dreamtime Motel he found the bags. Bags upon bags full of the last remaining possessions of lost wanderers. Wanderers who had come in from the wind and fire of the bombs. The long winter that followed. The years of sun afterward. Empty rotting bags from uncountable travelers.
HE BURNED IT. He stood watching in the charred remains of the gas station across the road that had once been something more than twisted and blackened metal. Even the ash that must have once covered the station, covered the entire world, had long since gone.
He leaned against a blackened cement pylon. He took pains to avoid the black blooming flower of metal that the pumps had become on that long-ago day when they had gushed forth jets of fuel on fire and burning hot.
Now the motel burned in the late afternoon heat. The Old Man started the fire in the room he had slept in. Started it with some paint thinner and a few other solvents. It consumed the bedspread, and by the time the Old Man had backed away from the motel door, the drapes were aflame and belching black smoke. Forty years of sun and the parched wood and lathe were more than ready to burn.
By the time he crossed the road to watch it all burn to the ground the fire was already visible behind fluttering curtains in the second-story windows.
Chapter 12
He ate some of the fox he’d dried, drank a little cold water, and counted the extra bottles and canteens he’d salvaged from the motel, now tied in a loose bandolier. Before setting the fire he’d filled them all with the cold water from the faucet in the office.
That faucet had almost been enough reason not to burn it all down. He could have put a sign on the road or painted the word “WATER” in big red letters across the sides of the motel. A modern oasis for travelers.
But there had been too much evil. Too much wrong had happened within the gold curtained rooms. Too many lives ended in a drugged stupor as Mirrored Sunglasses brained or bashed or shot, by the look of some beds, those who had wandered out of the destruction and found the Dreamtime Motel.
The Old Man guessed the shotgun, buried under the rattlesnakes, was empty. Emptied long ago into the back of another victim. He found a box of shotgun shells. It was empty. Along with the shot-shredded rust-stained bedspreads, the empty box told the story of the shotgun beneath a pile of snakes.
The handcuffs themselves could have been salvage. But when the Old Man went to inspect them, he found no key.
Maybe that’s why they were locked? The key had been lost by a blind man.
Would he have let her go if he could have found the key? How long had she lived on that bed?
The grooves and scratches in the frame were numerous. Too numerous for just one victim.
That could have been enough to burn it down. But there was more. In the dying light of the embers he ate the dried strips of fox.
The woman justified burning it all down.
But the water from the faucet was another thing. An oasis was not easily come by.
An early evening desert wind picked up embers, scattering sparks across the road. The fire was finished. Only gray smoke from a few hot spots came up through the charred remains. Where the motel had once been seemed lost and altogether a lie.
It was the marks that made you burn it.
Sí. The marks.
In the room of bags, on the wood paneling near the door and just above the lightswitch, had been the marks. Little sticks grooved into the wood. Four uprights and finally a horizontal slash. Five. Sets of five. Too many sets. Other stray marks along the border, half the size of the sets of five, told him of the children.
Children had been special to Mirrored Sunglasses.
So it had to burn?
Sí.
Yes.
It had to burn.
One day we might not be, and the people who come next don’t need to take this with them. My granddaughter.
Tired, he rose to his feet. The moon was large and it would be a cool night for walking. He drank a little more water and adjusted his satchel. He tucked the gun that had lain on the ground next to him into his waistband. He tightened the electrical cord he used for a belt. The gun fit nicely.
From now on I must keep the gun ready.
But I hope I do not need it.
He set off down the blacktop leading away from the Dreamtime Motel.
THE GROUND ON the side of the road was smoother than the blacktop that eventually proved itself unsafe in the night as tears and eruptions lay shadowed beneath his feet. Occasionally he would stumble, and finally he kept to the side of the road.
If I twist my leg then I will wish I had not burned that place down.
Don’t say such a thing.
So he moved to the shoulder and continued following the white dirt along the moonlit road. North.
North is not as bad as east.
Once the moon was overhead, he stopped for water and a bite of fox meat though he didn’t feel hungry. The only road sign he passed had been one of the large ones that spanned the entire road. It had fallen facedown and what was written upon it was beyond the strength of his arms to know.
He continued on, and when the moon was waning far to the west, he saw that the road began a long curve toward the east. A mountain ridge to the north blocked further progress. To the east, the remains of four large overpasses that had once connected the highways lay in ruins. Only the pillars and sections of the road like the capitals of columns remained.
I could find shelter there for the day. Maybe some vehicles. Maybe salvage. It will be dawn in a few hours.
He picked up his satchel and slung it once more across his chest.
If it is occupied it might be best to come upon it before dawn. If I smell cook fires then I will know.
The moon went down and soon it was dark.
I was spoiled walking by the light of the moon.
He picked his way along the broken concrete of the highway thinking of nothing more than where his next footstep should be.
Arriving just as the eastern sky began to show the first hints of blue, he crouched in a debris-cluttered culvert. He heard nothing, even as the sun began to cast a steady soft orange light across the desert behind him. His nose smelled nothing on the wind, and once the sun was
two hands above the horizon, he left the culvert and continued into the wreckage of the overpasses.
He chose the fallen road sections that had collapsed onto the highway beneath.
If there is anyone here, maybe they are lazy. Then at least I will be above them. They might not even see me.
The fallen sections were made of clean white concrete, grooved as if combed by a brush. He took off his huaraches and continued along the road as it climbed quickly. A break in the road caused him to stop, and he lowered himself onto the section that had fallen on the other side of the break. He climbed this section and another one like it, and soon he was beneath one of the large pillars where part of the highway remained above him.
How long would that last?
He marveled at what man had once built. What he had once driven over. What was once so common seemed a thing of lost giants.
At the end of the broken road he could see the intersection of the four roads. The ground beneath was barren. An old Winnebago lay on its side off in the weeds. He watched for a moment, wondering if it might be someone’s home. But the weeds around it and growing out the back window told the story of salvage.
There is no one here.
He climbed back down the broken sections and thought better of the Winnebago.
If it has been here for so long then it has already been salvaged.
On the other side of the ruins, two roads led away. One headed northeast, the other southeast.
What about the Winnebago? Fleeing the bombs, many such RVs had often been loaded beyond safety with such things as might be salvaged.
If that is the case then I would have seen some lying on the ground nearby. It has been searched.
He continued looking north, wondering if that is the east he should pick.
Something, a knife, a tool perhaps, could be lying in the weeds or the dirt.
Unlikely. I would need to go into the wreck and a Winnebago out here by itself would be a place for rattlesnakes or even the brown spider.
Then you expect salvage to be laying in the middle of the road for you to happen along and pick up. Neatly untouched these forty years. A bottle of aspirin or medical tools for the village. Maybe even an entire set of encyclopedias. The village is right. You are cursed. It is your laziness that is the curse. You are the curse of yourself.
Be quiet.
To the north must be Phoenix.
Low hills of red dirt climbed toward Phoenix.
Phoenix was destroyed. I know that. In L.A., just before I left, that had been part of the decision. The bombs were falling each day on a new city. First New York and then Washington, D.C., then Pittsburgh, then Chicago… was that right? Or had Chicago been first?
I chose Tucson. Tucson was too small to be hit. The terrorists were choosing bigger cities.
And your parents lived there. On a golf course.
Yuma was smaller than Tucson. Later, on the day the President landed, the Old Man had seen the cloud over Yuma in his rearview mirror as he picked his way through the beginning of the Great Wreck. He had seen it about 2:00 in the afternoon. 2:06 he remembered by the digital clock of his car’s instrument panel. The cloud rising from the valley behind him. Ninety miles away. The United States of America had lost its last president.
His car had stopped. The EMP had finished it. In the days that followed, walking the highway, moving away from Yuma, he headed east. Survivors told him they’d seen the cloud over Tucson. L.A. was gone also. They had gone for two that day. That last known day. After that, there was no news. No radio. If the bombs continued to fall, who knew? Had we retaliated against the Middle East like we’d threatened? Was there still a world beyond the United States? A Europe? Africa?
I will never see those lions at sunset. Playing on the beach. Unless I dream them. And my dreams are past stories that cannot be finished.
He thought of the little girl.
I will never know.
I know Phoenix is gone. It went after Miami. I know that Phoenix is gone. That I know.
Those are problems solved long ago. Salvage is your business and if you cannot search the wreck of the Winnebago, then what salvage will you find?
Be quiet.
He turned south along the highway once more.
There will be nothing toward Phoenix. In the days of the bombs, everyone took to the road. Everything they could grab. Headed away, much like myself back then, from the bombs. Phoenix was destroyed. Everyone had known that, so no one went there to escape.
But you heard Tucson was hit also.
“Sí,” he whispered softly in the late morning air.
But I saw Phoenix destroyed on the TV.
Chapter 13
It was later he realized he had not stopped to rest in the shadows of the ruined overpasses. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Dreamtime Motel. He was afraid of the dreams he might have.
How much longer until the monsoons?
He stopped to drink in the thin shade provided by a small bridge.
An orange sun hung low off to the west. Afternoon dust storms rolled across the broken red horizon. He wondered how far west, if he started from this bridge, he would need to walk to find the village.
If the monsoons came soon, there might be trouble with the flash floods.
The torrents of ash would be dangerous.
Where does the ash come from after all these years?
Does it matter?
Maybe it’s the answer to what’s left of the world. So much ash, so little world.
There is still the village.
Too tired to go much farther, he camped under the bridge, and just before nightfall made a small fire of mesquite.
In the blue twilight, he thought it might be nice to have a guitar. That being alone wouldn’t be so bad if he had a guitar. With a guitar he might just continue to wander and never return to the village.
But what about your granddaughter?
The village must think I am dead.
I hope no one came looking for me. They might have gotten hurt.
That is the love of not wanting someone to come and look for you when you have gone.
He tried the phrase out against the wall under the bridge. Letting his shadow speak the words in the light of the fire.
It felt like a phrase one says and doesn’t mean. But the words were true.
Maybe it’s not enough for something to just be true?
Truth is enough.
THE ALPHA PICKED up the Old Man’s scent near the wreck of the Winnebago below the mountains. He hunted here at the end of most nights, and the scent had come only faintly to him. He’d pulled down five men in his life. Alone, when the pack had scattered, he pulled them down.
He had been the leader of the wolf pack for seven rains now. He felt tired most nights. The thrill he experienced in pulling down the wild mule deer to the north didn’t cause him to go rigid with electricity at the thought of their meat as it once did. When he had first killed, he had eaten most of the kill before letting his mate at the remains. Lately he made the kill, took his favorite part near the spine at the top of the back, then wandered away to chew with the good side of his teeth.
The smell he tasted in the dawn air was not mule deer. Nor was it the coyote or other prey of the valley. This was man. He remembered the man they caught the spring before. He’d smelled terror in the dark forest moments before the pack crashed through the wall of trees and into the meadow. He’d been halfway across the high meadow, running, when the pack of thirty wolves, his wolves, spotted the man.
In a moment they were on him. The Alpha had fought hard to keep the two killers from the best parts of the man. He wondered how much longer he would be able to keep them at bay. Soon enough they would come for him. As he had, they would.
When the pack passed through the meadow at the end of spring, the shattered bits of white bone were still there.
He had enjoyed the taste of man.
At the two
roads the large wolf padded back and forth scenting the air. Even the wolf knew what was north. He had seen the ruins of Phoenix with his own eyes. He knew it was lifeless, and what remained there long was soon poisoned. The deer they killed there always had that taste of death. Often the pack would leave after a few torn strips had been tested. In those times the kill had been enough.
Satisfied the man had gone south, the wolf turned, heading back toward the mountain above the ruined overpasses. He picked his way up through the broken rocks in the early morning light.
How long could he keep his two killers at bay?
At the top of the pass, not far from the den, he turned to look at the valley floor. Where would the man be? Turning toward the den where the pack lay sleeping, exhausted from the night, the wolf trotted into the darkness.
Chapter 14
At dawn the Old Man was up. The cool morning air wouldn’t last long. He hadn’t had coffee in years. Hadn’t missed it in years. But now in the cold air beneath the broken road, he wished for it.
He stretched slowly and began to pack his things while taking cautious sips of water.
Where are you going?
South. I am going south today.
Really more east than south.
Just for this morning, let us say it is south.
He had a momentary memory of fog. Fog outside the windows of the house he’d grown up in. The first foggy days of school in autumn. Arguing with someone.
It is because you are arguing with yourself. That is why you remember fog.
For the next few hours he stayed to the side of the great bent and warped highway. The road headed south, mostly. Looking ahead, it seemed the road must eventually turn to the east.
If I can find salvage before it goes east, then I’ll head straight west. At some point I will find the Old Highway and from there I will find my way home.
Crossing another fallen bridge, he stopped in the late morning shade of the broken sections. Rebar sprang from the chunks like wild strands of hair. When he resumed his climb out of the tall ditch of red earth, he was sweating.