The Wasteland Saga

by Nick Cole

  He undid the rope about his waist and changed to a slipknot.

  This is how it works, he told himself.

  Change of plans, he’d heard Sergeant Presley say.

  Change of plans.

  He laid the loop of rope at the base of the second pole.

  When you fall back to this position, you slip the rope around your right wrist, Boy.

  What about the left?

  I can’t trust that side.

  What else am I forgetting?

  Stop, he told his heart.

  Stop.

  He crept into the cave, the tip of the spear dead center on the sleeping mass.

  There was a moment.

  A moment to think and to have thought too much.

  He felt it coming. He’d known it before at other times and knew it was best to stay ahead of such moments.

  He drove the spear hard into the mass.

  An instant later it was wrenched out of his hands as the bear turned over. He heard a dry snap of wood echo off the roof of the cave as he retreated back toward the entrance.

  For a moment, the Boy took his eyes off the bear as he slipped the loop about his wrist and grabbed the spear, making sure to keep the trailing end of the parachute cord away from the end of the pole.

  In that moment he could hear the roar of the bear. It filled the cave, and beneath the roar he could hear her claws clicking against the stone floor as she scrambled up toward him.

  When he looked up, following the blackened tip of the spear, he found the grizzly’s head, squat, flat, almost low beneath the main bulk of her body. She roared again, gnashing a full row of yellowed fangs.

  He jabbed the spear into her face and felt the weapon go wide, glancing off bone.

  He backed up a few steps and planted the butt of the long pole in the ground.

  The grizzly, brown, shaggy, angry, lurched out onto the ledge. It rose up on its hind legs and the Boy saw that it might, if it came forward just a bit, impale itself on the pole if it attacked him directly. He adjusted the pole right underneath the heart of the raging bear.

  The bear made a wide swipe with its paw smashing the pole three quarters of the way to the top.

  In the same instant that the pole was wrenched from the Boy’s grip, and as if the moment had caused an intensity of awareness, he felt the slipknot, its mouth still wide, float from off his wrist.

  Stick to the plan, Boy! You can’t change it now.

  He’d heard that before.

  His back foot, his good leg, planted at the edge of the cliff, the Boy raised the final pole.

  The bear on hind legs wallowed forward.

  The Boy checked to make sure the parachute cord was really gone.

  It was.

  The moment that hung between the Boy and the bear was brief and startlingly clear. To have questioned what must be done next would have been lethal to either.

  The Boy loped forward and rammed the pole straight up and into the chest of the bear.

  ‘There is no other way but this,’ he thought in that moment of running.

  ‘No other way but this.’

  He felt the furry chest of the bear meet his grip on the pole.

  He pushed hard and felt the arms of the bear on his shoulders. He felt a hot breathy roar turn to a whisper above the top of his head.

  His arms were shaking.

  His eyes were closed.

  He was still alive.

  He backed away from the belly of the bear, letting go of the pole as the bear fell off to one side.

  He was covered in a thick, cold sweat.

  There was no other way.

  Chapter 16

  In the moments that followed the death of the bear, routine took over, ways the Boy had known his whole life.

  Bleed the animal.

  Don’t think about how close you came to her claws.

  The knife at his back was out as he stood over the carcass, finding the jugular, his good hand shaking, and then a quick flick and blood was running out onto the granite of the Sierra Nevada.

  Don’t remember her hot breath on top of your head when there was little you could do but go forward with the pole.

  Next he made a cut into the chest. Working from the breastbone up to the jaw, he cut through flesh and muscle. When the cut was made he took out his tomahawk, adjusted his grip once as he raised it above his head and then slammed it down onto the breastbone several times. Soon he was removing the organs. Heart, lungs, esophagus, bladder, intestines, and rectum.

  My hands are shaking, Sergeant.

  It’s just the cold, Boy. Just the cold. Keep on workin’.

  It is cold out and getting colder, which will be good for the meat, but I still have much work to do.

  Walking stiffly, he descended the mountain and returned to camp. He gathered his gear and when that was done, he began to coax Horse to get up one more time.

  Horse seemed stunned that the Boy would even consider such a thing, but before long, whispering and leading, patting and coaxing, the Boy had him up and on his legs.

  “I’ll carry everything, you just follow me. We’re going someplace warm.”

  Late afternoon turned to winter evening as he led Horse up onto the mountain. Halfway up, as they worked side to side across the gray granite ledges, snow began to fall, and by the time they’d reached the top, the Boy was almost dragging Horse. Never once did he curse at the animal, knowing that he was already asking too much of his only friend. And for his part, Horse seemed to suffer through the climb as though death and the hardships that must come with it are inevitable.

  At the top, the Boy dropped Horse’s lead and began to collect what little firewood he could find. Soon there was a small fire inside the cave. He led Horse into the cave, expecting more protest than the snort Horse gave at the scent of the bear.

  The fire cast flickering shadows along the inside of the cave and though there was a small vault, the cave was neither vast nor deep.

  It’ll be easier to keep warm, Boy. That’s good.

  The Boy put his blanket over Horse, who’d begun to tremble. He fed Horse from a sack of wild oats he kept for the times when there was nothing at hand to crop.

  Horse chewed a bit and then seemed to lose interest.

  That’s not good.

  The Boy left the sack open before Horse and returned to the carcass of the bear.

  Snow fell in thick drifts across the ledge as the wind began to whip along the mountainside.

  ‘It has to be done now,’ the Boy thought to himself.

  But I’ll need wood. The fire has to be kept going.

  In the dark he descended the mountain, working quickly among the howling pines to find as much dead wood as possible. Every time he stopped to look for wood in the thin light of the last of the day, he felt his weak side stiffen.

  When he’d collected a large bundle of dead wood, he tied it with leather straps and climbed the mountain once again, almost crawling under the weight, as the scream of the howling winter night bit at his frozen ears.

  I am so tired. I feel all the excitement and fear of the fight with the bear leaving me.

  Nearing the ledge of the cave, he thought, ‘I could go to sleep now.’

  And for a long moment, on all fours, the bundle of wood crushing down upon his back, he stared long and hard at the rock beneath his numb fingers, thinking only of sleep.

  Back in the cave he fed the wood that wasn’t too wet to the fire, watching the smoke escape through some unseen fissure in the roof of the cave. He held his cracked and bleeding fingers next to the flames.

  You’ll need that skin, Boy.

  The Boy knew what that meant.

  He’d known and planned what he must do next without ever thinking it or saying that he would do it. But if he was to have the skin of the bear, then what needed to be done would need to be done soon.

  The bear was too heavy to drag off the ledge, back here into the cave near the fire.

  That’d be
the easy way, Boy. Never take the easy way.

  He held up a handful of oats to Horse. Horse sniffed at them but refused to eat as he turned his long head back to the fire.

  Okay, you rest for now.

  Outside the storm blasted past the ledge. Everything was white and gray and dark beyond, all at once.

  When he found the snow-covered bear, he began the work of removing the skin.

  He completed the cut up onto the bear’s chest. He cut the legs and then began to skin the bear from the paws up. His strength began to fail as he worked the great hide off its back, but when he came to the head, he made the final cut and returned to the cave to warm himself again. He took a handful of the oats, watching Horse’s sleeping eyes flutter, and ate them, chewing them into a paste and swallowing.

  Returning to the wind and the night, he dragged the skin into the cave and laid it out on the floor.

  I can work here for a while and be warm by the fire.

  But he knew if the meat froze on the carcass he would never get it off the bone.

  For a long time after that, he crouched over the bear, cutting strips of meat. When he’d gotten all the usable meat he washed it in the snow and took it back into the cave. He spitted two steaks and laid them on the fire.

  Into the cold once again, he cracked open the bear’s skull for the brains and took those inside, placing them near the skin.

  For the rest of the night he worked with his tomahawk, scraping the skin of flesh and fat and blood. When all of it was removed, he stepped outside, carrying the waste to the edge of the cliff and dropping it over the side.

  The storm had stopped.

  It was startlingly cold out. His breath came in great vaporous clouds that hung for a moment over the chasm and the ice-swollen river below and were gone in the next. The stars were close at hand. Below, the river tumbled as sluggish chunks of ice floated in the moonlight.

  He washed his hands in snow, feeling both a stinging and numbness on his raw flesh.

  He stood watching the night.

  Clouds, white and luminous, moved against the soft blue of the moonlit night. Below, the river and the valley were swaying trees and shining shadows of sparkling granite. ‘I am alive,’ he thought. ‘And this is the most beautiful night of my life.’

  DAWN LIGHT FELL across the ledge outside the cave. The Boy looked up from the skin he’d worked on through the night. The light was golden, turning the stone ledge outside the cave from iron gray to blue.

  He felt tired as he returned to the skin once more, rubbing the brains of the bear into the hide.

  “This is all I can do to cure it,” he said aloud in his tiredness, as if someone had been asking what he was doing. As if Sergeant Presley had been talking to him through the night. But now, in the light of morning it all seemed a dream, a dream of a night in which he worked at the remains of a bear.

  But I have not slept.

  “There is too much to do,” he said aloud.

  You done everything, Boy. Now sleep.

  The Boy lay down next to the fire and slept.

  Chapter 17

  In the days that followed:

  He rubbed ash from the fire into the hide of the bear.

  He smoked meat in dried strips.

  He swept the cave with pine branches.

  He had to lead Horse down the mountain to drink from the river at least once a day. He could think of no method to bring Horse enough water.

  Winter fell across the mountains like a thick blanket of ice.

  The Boy constructed a thatched door to block the entrance to the cave.

  At night he stared at the wall and the moving shadows in the firelight.

  By the time he’d collected firewood, watered Horse, and foraged enough food, the daylight was waning and he felt tired.

  In the night he enjoyed listening to the fire and watching the shadows on the cave wall.

  Winter had come to stay, and it seemed, on frost-laced mornings and nights of driving sleet, that it had always been this way and might continue without end.

  Chapter 18

  One night, as the wind howled through the high pines, he took Sergeant Presley’s bundle out of his pack.

  He stared at it for a long moment, listening to the wind and trying to remember that autumn morning when he’d found it next to the body.

  Take the map and go west, Boy. Find the Army. Tell them who I was. Tell them there’s nothing left.

  In the bundle was a good shirt Sergeant Presley had found and liked to wear in the evening after they had bathed in a stream or creek and made an early camp. That was the only time Sergeant Presley would wear the good shirt he’d found behind the backseat of a pickup truck they’d searched in the woods of North Carolina.

  Red flannel.

  This my red flannel shirt, Boy. Shore is comfortable.

  The shirt would be there.

  The map. Sergeant Presley’s knife. The shirt.

  He undid the leather thong on the bundle and tied it about his wrist.

  The soft cloth bundle opened and out came the shirt, and within were the knife and the map. And there was a leather thong attached to a long gray feather, white at the tip, its spine broken.

  He laid the knife on his whetstone.

  He laid the map on another stone, one he ate on by the fire. He left the broken feather and its thong in the bundle.

  He held the shirt up and smelled Sergeant Presley in a draft coming off the fire.

  He took off his vest and put on the shirt.

  It was comfortable. Soft. The softest thing he’d ever felt. And warm.

  He sat by the fire.

  When he took up the map, he stared at it. He had seen the map many times, but always when it was laid out, Sergeant Presley was making a note or muttering to himself.

  The Boy unfolded it, laying it on the ground. It was large. It was both hard and smooth. In the light it reflected a dull shine.

  He stared at the markings.

  Above Reno he read:

  CHINESE PARATROOPERS. DUG IN. BATTALION STRENGTH.

  Over Salt Lake City, in the state of Utah, he read:

  GONE

  Over Pocatello, in the state of Idaho, he read:

  REFUGEE CAMP FIVE YEARS AFTER. OVERRUN BY SLAVERS.

  Above this, across the whole of the northwestern states, was a red circle with the words “WHITE SUPREMACISTS” written in the center.

  Across Omaha in big letters was the word “PLAGUE,” and then a small red face with X’s for eyes. There were red-faced “X eyes” listed over place names all the way to Louisville, in the state of Kentucky.

  At Washington, D.C., he found an arrow that led into the middle of the ocean. Words were written in Sergeant Presley’s precise hand.

  MADE IT TO D.C. IT’S ALL GONE. BUNKER PROBABLY HIT EARLY IN THE WAR. NO REMNANTS OF GOV’T AT THIS LOCATION. TOOK ME TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE IT HERE.

  On the back of the map the Boy found names.

  CPT DANFORTH, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO

  SFC HAN, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO

  CPL MALICK, KIA RENO

  SPC TWOOMEY, KIA RENO

  PFC UNGER, MIA RENO

  PFC CHO, MIA RENO

  PV2 WILLIAMS, KIA RENO

  And…

  LOLA

  THERE WAS NO mention of Escondido’s “Auburn” on the map. The Boy traced the highway marked 80 as it crossed the mountain range and then fell into Sacramento in the State of California. After that, the road ran straight to Oakland. Written over Oakland, the Boy found I CORPS. Across the bay in San Francisco, circled in red, he saw the word CHINESE.

  He stared at the broken feather and experienced the fleeting sensation of a memory. Which one, he could not tell.

  Chapter 19

  Horse had not died.

  Winter broke and the Boy could hear ice crack in the river below. It was still cold.

  The Boy led Horse to the bottom of the small mountain, down its icy ledges, watchi
ng Horse to make sure he didn’t slip. There was only one close call, near the bottom. In the silence that followed the recovery, Horse seemed angry at his own inability and cantered off into the forest, snorting and thrashing his tail.

  The Boy let him go, knowing Horse needed to forget the incident as much as the animal wanted the Boy to never remember it.

  He was embarrassed, thought the Boy, keeping even the look of such a thought to himself.

  For the rest of the morning they rode the snowy forest carefully. In the early afternoon, they crossed the river and came upon the great curve of the highway that climbed upward toward the pass. For a while the Boy left Horse to himself, letting him crop what little there was to find.

  This is good. We need to be back on this road again. Even if just for a few moments of sunshine. It feels good to have the road under my feet and Horse’s hooves. We have been too long away from the road.

  He wandered back to their old camp.

  Against the cliff wall, the Boy found the drawing of Sergeant Presley near the snow-covered remains of Escondido’s charred lodge.

  That evening back at the cave, as both he and Horse drowsily watched the fire, he took a piece of charcoal and shaved it lightly with his knife.

  He considered the wall of the cave and saw no face or image in the flickering light. And yet he wanted to draw something.

  He thought of the bear and quickly dismissed the thought. There were nights when he awakened in the dark and the bear was chasing him across the forest floor, and no matter how hard he urged his withered leg to move, it would not. Usually he awoke just before the bear caught him, but there were nights when he didn’t, and in those nightmare moments, he could feel the bear’s hot embrace, and the terror seemed a thing that would swallow him whole.

  So he did not need a reminder of the bear.

  He drew the mane first. The mane of the Big Lion. The male. That was what he remembered most in the times when he thought back to the night the lions surrounded him.

  Next he added the eyes, the eyes that had seemed so cool and yet communicative, and then the teeth and the body, and the shadows that were his females. He drew the female who had watched the big male. She had been at his side, still watching him. They were together.