by Nick Cole
“You’re saying don’t cross this area in the daytime?”
The Stranger nodded.
Then held up one finger.
“In one night! You’re saying cross all this in one night? That’s a long journey, over bad roads!”
The Stranger nodded again.
“Who are these people?” asked the Old Man.
The Stranger looked about, leaned close, and then whispered, “Apache.”
Later, under the bridge, waiting for nightfall, the Old Man walked up the street. Toward the outpost that had been.
How can these Apache stop a tank?
Who knows? But this fellow thinks they’re dangerous enough to try. Or at least try and get you stuck, then wait you out.
Go in one night as quick as you can and it might prevent them from bringing their resources to bear. Surprise them.
But we could get stuck on the road in the night.
At the top of the hill, in the gritty crumbling parking lot of the hotel, the Old Man saw words written on the wall in a sickly green neon slop-paint.
Those words weren’t there yesterday.
Someone has passed through in the night and left a message for me.
Someone on a horse.
“Up is down, left is right. King Charlie brings you Peace through Might.”
The Old Man wondered if this was the Fool thundering through the darkness on a horse too big for his gangling body, even now ahead of them, knowing where they are going, holding the stolen map in his claws.
And below that, as if addressed specifically to the Old Man, written in slop-paint strokes, was the word “Nuncle.”
Chapter 39
At dusk they drove out from underneath the bridge and into the twilight. The dry leaves and fallen pine needles crunched under the dirt-clogged treads of the tank in the warm, early evening.
The Stranger watched them, waving slowly, his sad brown eyes sorry to see them go.
And…
Sorry for all that had happened to the world.
The Old Man looked down into the turret and saw the Boy who’d returned to staring into nothingness. He tapped his leg, motioning for the Boy to put on his helmet. When this was done the Old Man switched on the intercom.
“What do you think of him?” asked the Old Man, referring to the Stranger. “About his information? Did you ever pass through the areas he warned us about?”
“We did not.”
Who does he mean when he says “we”?
The soldier.
“Maybe he was just crazy?” said the Old Man.
The Boy said nothing for so long the Old Man wondered if maybe there wouldn’t be a comment. But then the Boy spoke.
“I do not think he is touched in the head. Sergeant Presley would say… well, it does not matter, but, no, I don’t think he is crazy. There was truth in his riddles.”
“So what do you think he meant by all those riddles?” asked the Old Man.
Flagstaff fell behind them, and ahead, the long straight road cut through the high rolling plains.
It feels like we’re still heading upward.
Still heading to the top of the world.
In the far west, fading blue light still shone distantly. Ahead the land lay covered in soft mist and darkness.
“There are people who act crazy,” started the Boy out of the silent hum of the intercom. “I think it’s some kind of defense. A way of keeping them safe on the road. Most villages treat such people with respect. They give them food and send them on their way. They’re superstitious about such people.”
“Are there many villages out there?”
The Old Man looked into the distant east and saw only the rising night.
“Some,” said the Boy.
For a long time the Old Man kept the tank on the road. But when the road became impassable, they would deviate around broken chunks of highway and scattered concrete pylons and even the wild-haired rebar jutting from the remains of bridges.
Far out into the plains, miles off-road, they would see the skeletal remains of recreational vehicles rocking in a wind that blasted across the rolling landscape, causing the grass to bend in great waves like the tides of an ocean.
The Old Man switched on the night-vision optics and saw no one among the lonely outposts of wreckage.
People must have come here in the days of the bombs, forming up into small settlements. They would’ve driven here in those RVs and made alliances once they’d arrived.
Or murdered each other for what few supplies could be had.
How long did they last?
Not long. How could they? They only had what they’d brought. There are no places to salvage up here. No major towns or industry. What could they have found where there was little or nothing?
Later, the road disintegrated into little more than swallowed chunks of concrete through which tufts of yellow grass sprang upward. The tank moved slower along the broken highway, the Old Man not wanting to chance the fragile right tread.
You must go all the way, tread. You cannot give up tonight or even when we get there. After this is all done, we still have to get back home.
The last part sounded like an empty promise to the Old Man.
He began to think of the other dark possibilities that existed besides returning home.
But he cut himself off and would not think of such things.
Tonight I must concentrate. I cannot think of what will go wrong tomorrow or even the day after. Those things are for another day.
In the darkness there seemed to be no one out there. All the rumors of Apache might just simply be rumors. All the talk of Apache nothing more than the talk of ghosts. Boogeymen to frighten misbehaving children.
He drove on and watched the road, seeing nothing but scattered pockets of rusting and beaten destruction from long ago.
He saw the bridge far ahead as the road began a series of descents and rises through rolling hills. It should have been a bridge like any other overpass crossing. But it wasn’t.
The bridge still stretched across the two hills that had been both its on-ramps and off-ramps for east and west traffic. But beneath the overpass, where the highway ran, lay a collection of vehicles tilted upright, their hoods pointed into the sky as if they had been suddenly forced upward.
Tacked across the front of each rusting hood was a human skeleton with a dog’s head.
The Old Man switched on the high beam of the tank as they approached.
It’s a message.
“They don’t want us to come this way?” said the Boy over the intercom.
Or anyone for that matter.
“Is your hatch closed?” he asked his granddaughter.
“Yes, Poppa.”
“Lock it now.”
The Old Man maneuvered the tank up the overpass to the road that crossed atop the bridge. Against the bright moon, he could clearly see the pennants made of rags and oily crow feathers flapping madly in the windy darkness.
We are in their land now.
If we tell them what we’re going to do, maybe they will let us pass.
And if they don’t, my friend?
The Old Man started down the on-ramp on the far side and re-entered the old highway.
A few miles farther along, and the highway descended into a series of curves that entered a long and narrow ravine, which soon widened into a valley that cut through low, flat-topped mesas.
A small gas station town lay alongside the road and the Old Man could see greasy firelight behind some of the windows.
For a while the road paralleled a river. Weeping willows hung gloomily along the banks in the night. Later, in the deep of the valley, the road disappeared under a wash of sand where the river must have once overflowed.
Probably in the days after the long winter.
Yes.
The Old Man drove the tank down onto the sand bed, letting the high beam stay on, watching for places where the tank might get stuck. Ahead he could see the single r
emaining pylon of a bridge that must have once crossed over the wide river that ran through the canyon.
As they entered the dry riverbed, they dropped suddenly and the Old Man banged his head sharply on the side of the hatch.
His first thought was that the ground had suddenly given way underneath them.
Soft sand.
But he could see crumpled tin and splintered wood in the optics and a wall of sandy dirt beyond.
We’ve fallen into a trap!
“Are you all right?” he asked his granddaughter over the intercom as he reached up and shut the turret hatch.
“What happened, Poppa?”
“I think we fell in a hole.”
The Boy, bathed in the red of the interior emergency lights, gripped his chair.
Rain began to fall against the sides of the tank.
Not rain.
Arrows.
The Old Man dogged the hatch.
Remember, be gentle with the right tread. We can get out of this like I did when I was stuck in the sand at Picacho Peak. But if you break the tread, we really will be stuck.
The Old Man switched on the night vision.
All around them, wild figures like white blobs against green and gray ran forward as torches flared too brightly in the night vision. The Old Man tried the left tread and the tank pulled forward. He could hear the snap of wood and rending metal above the whine of the engine. When the tank was almost at the top of the trap, the Old Man pushed the right tread forward and the tank popped nose upward as he gave it full throttle.
“Hold on!” warned the Old Man.
The tank slammed down hard into the sand and sped off, careening through a crumbling pylon that jutted from the riverbed.
The Old Man scanned the optics.
The figures were running back into the night, their torches burning angrily on the ground.
Did I just see the Fool?
Standing atop a small sandy hill, the gangly figure appeared for a moment, his wild fool’s crown springing in all directions, his claw waving a torch frantically forward at the retreating figures, urging them to turn back and attack the tank.
It’s him!
The Old Man backed away from the viewfinder in shock.
Don’t be afraid of him, my friend.
When the Old Man looked again the Fool was gone. He drove the tank to the other side of the wash and surged up onto the road at full speed.
Now the road entered a tight series of turns that wound through the hills where the Old Man saw an ambush in every bend, or at the tops of the small hills that loomed above them alongside the road. The gibbous moon had turned a sickly red from some distant dust storm. It rose through spindly barren trees above the desert plateau. It shifted wildly across the sky as the Old Man fought to keep track of the twisting road in the night.
It must be after midnight.
The Old Man felt himself sweating heavily, his shoulders tensed like iron bands as he drove the tank forward into the night.
The road twisted into a series of long curves that reversed themselves into still more curves and the red misshapen moon swung even more frantically across the sky.
It’s making me dizzy.
The clutching fingers of a dead orchard rose up all around them as they passed through the rubble of a town. Ahead, great piles of concrete had toppled onto the highway. Above them, the sides of cutoff mountains rose up into the darkness.
Are they forcing me off the road and into the town? Or are they forcing me to take the narrow opening ahead? Where is their trap?
The Fool is forcing you, my friend. It is the Fool who forces you into his trap.
I only thought I saw him. Maybe it was just a mistake or a trick of the light.
This must have once been a state checkpoint. The path looks too narrow for the tank to pass.
But if you get off the highway you could get lost in that abandoned town, and its streets are probably very narrow. A good place for a trap. There is no guarantee that there is a way around this obstacle or that the roads in the town are even any better.
No, there isn’t.
“Are you ready to drive?” said the Old Man over the intercom to his granddaughter.
“I’m on it, Poppa!” she almost shouted.
The Old Man tapped the Boy and motioned for the hatch.
“We’ll guide you through the rubble and make sure the path is wide enough,” he said to his granddaughter. “Don’t run over us, okay?”
“Okay, Poppa, I’ll try not to.”
Yes, please try not to run over me with the tank.
The Old Man took the left and the Boy the right and they walked into the dusty maze of rubble, waving the tank forward slowly. They crossed under a wide overpass and the Old Man spotted, with the moving beam of his flashlight, the words the Fool had left for him to read. They were written all the way to the end of the tunnel.
REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.
POINTING OUT WHAT’S “WRONG” IS THE SICK HABIT OF DELUSIONAL PERVERTS.
RIGHT AND WRONG IS WHERE WE WENT WRONG.
REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.
COMPROMISE MEANS SEEING THINGS OUR WAY.
WHAT OTHERS CALL INSANE, I CALL PERSISTENCE.
REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.
WE WILL MURDER THOSE WHO REJECT PEACE.
WANT WHAT OTHERS HAVE. THE MANY SERVE THE FEW, THE TRICK IS MAKING THEM THINK IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.
IF YOU SAY YOU’RE GOD, WHO’S TO SAY YOU’RE WRONG?
MAKE FRIENDS OF YOUR ENEMIES AND USE THEM TO DESTROY YOUR FRIENDS.
REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.
WHEN YOU ARE NO LONGER BURDENED BY INTEGRITY, THE POSSIBILITIES ARE BOTTOMLESS.
CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES THE BATTLE IS SOMEWHERE ELSE.
CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES THEY’RE JUST LIKE YOU.
CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES.
HEAVEN, HELL… REALLY?
REPEAT THE TRUTH.
And at the final yawning exit lying on the open and blistered highway beyond lay neon-green-colored sheets of paper scattered about, as if debris from a bomb revealed in the pale moonlight above the eastern dust storm. The Old Man picked up a sheet and found crude printing and wet ink that smeared at his touch. He read.
Everything be Ok
We mean it.
So loot and murder to your heart’s content
Just make sure you got the strength to Take and Do
before anyone else does to you
Everything be getting better
Don’t believe the eyes
Or your stomachs holla
Or your lies,
Lies can be told about anything
Including the truth
There’s been a lotta bad done in the name of good.
So we’re done with that noise.
Religion and morals be all the same and only different ’bout who was right and wrong on everything.
So here’s how it be
Man be man alone
And the man be
King Charlie.
King Charlie be not wrong or right.
He just be.
After King Charlie be nothing.
Heaven = Hell, only the unlucky die and the dead like to tell some truth when they say nothing.
If there be a heaven, King Charlie imagine you’ll get there no matter what you do
unless you’re the Hitler or Stalin who gave everyone the aids.
We come so that all might live in prosperity.
And only the strong survive.
Get it?
We are an accident
Created by an accident,
And so the Apocalypse must be our promise
Of a better tomorrow
When we hear-ed that doomsday bell
The gunfire a Ratta-tat-tating,
Your screams for mercy
The blast that blew everything away that was,
And when we saw the light of bombs bursting in air
Someone said ‘ ‘Twas but the sound of man worshipping his maker,‘
So…
Siege!
Lone Gunman!
Horde rapes outpost!
Nuclear Bomb Disintegrates London!
It’s just be the sounds of man
worshipping his maker.
At the bottom of the piece of paper, as if separate and a command, the Old Man read, ALL HAIL KING CHARLIE!
The Old Man let the screed fall to the ground. He motioned for the Boy to get back into the tank, and as he climbed once more into the hatch, his eyes fell to the final words that had been slop-painted onto the highway before the tank.
ONCE YOU’RE FREE OF SHAME YOU’RE FREE TO ACT SHAMELESSLY.
GIVE UP, NUNCLE, YOU’VE GOT NO CHANCE!
On the other side of the tunnel the night seemed cooler, the air fresher. The moon turned everything slightly blue with its glaring yellow light now that it had risen above the distant dust storm.
In the hours that followed, there were other tight spots and places where the road seemed impassable. They threaded each of these places carefully, waiting for an attack that did not come.
The road improved and soon they were making good time across the high desert with dawn just a few hours away. The Boy, whose chin had fallen to his chest, lay deep in sleep bathed by the red light of the tank, fastened into his seat. When the Old Man tried the intercom, his granddaughter only murmured and he knew she too was sleeping now.
Alone, he drove through what remained of the night and soon the eastern sky began to turn a pale blue.
Another day.
They topped the rise that looked down on Albuquerque in the soft light of first morning.
The city is still there.
Ted.
On the eastern side of town, the Old Man could see thin strings of electric light still burning distantly like twinkling gems in the pink of morning.