by Cole, Nick
“Worst part’s just ahead,” muttered Escondido.
Escondido cocked back the hammer on his long rife.
This is what I mean, Boy. Told you not to get caught up in things and here you are, caught up.
I could answer you, he thought to Sergeant Presley. But you would tell me I was crazy. You would tell me that you are dead and the problems of this life no longer concern you. Wouldn’t you?
“I waited an hour and he never come out,” whispered Escondido.
The laughing started.
One voice cackled, clear and very near at once.
Moments later two others responded, as if only politely and at a mediocre jest.
Then another burst out, hysterically almost.
Finally the rest were laughing uncontrollably.
Sniggering.
Guffawing.
Giggling.
Snickering.
Hooting.
Wailing.
Sobbing.
Moaning.
Crying.
Laughter careened across the broken casino walls.
Laughter was everywhere.
“Keep straight on!” yelled Escondido over the echoing din.
For a moment there were almost-shadows within the recessed gloom of the buildings high above. Not quite, but almost.
Leading Horse, the Boy pulled his tomahawk from his belt.
“They won’t come out. Never do. But you don’t want to go in after ’em all the same,” warned Escondido.
They crossed the shadow of the broken bridge and a sink crashed to the dusty pavement behind them.
Horses reared and snarled fearfully.
The Boy held him around the neck, whispering softly.
“I know. I know. I know,” he said over and over.
Once they were almost out from underneath the broken walkway, Escondido muttered, “I think that’s what all the silliness is about. Tryin’ to get us to come in and take a look.”
A scabbed face, pale and haunted, appeared for a moment behind dusty shards of broken glass three stories up. Whether it was a man or a woman, who could say.
They passed on and the laughter seemed to fade in quiet increments. Finally there is a single painful scream.
In the hours that passed between the ruins of Reno and the river, Horse began to favor his unhurt legs, limping with the left hind leg. The Boy knew a powerful infection had already set in.
“He can’t go much farther,” said the Boy.
“He’ll have to. Another few hours to the foot of the mountains and then the river. I won’t sleep down here tonight.”
They rode on, passing through lonely crumbling hills in the weak last light of day. When the sun finally fell behind the lowest of the Sierra Nevada, the land turned to purple and the smell of sage hung heavy in the shadows.
“Another hour and we’ll be alongside the river. Once we’re to it my hunting lodge won’t be much farther on. I won’t waste a bullet on your horse. Load ’em myself and there’s precious few left now. Understand?”
The Boy said nothing as darkness settled across the lonely spaces that surrounded them. They heard the river long before they saw it, babbling in the moonlight. Its wide curves followed an old broken highway off to one side. Long, flat swathes of calm river erupted, burbling, over stones, and beyond that, small waterfalls marked their climb up alongside the river’s fall.
Horse was badly limping when Escondido stopped. They were on a wide turn below a small pass. The river, off to their left, was little more than soft noise. Escondido seemed to rise for a moment off his horse’s back, smelling the wind. The Boy tasted the night air also and found charred wood.
When they came to the river crossing that led to Escondido’s lodge, the Boy could see the charred remains of wood and stone from across the rock-filled river.
On the other side Escondido said nothing and climbed down from his nag. He walked into the midst of the burnt timber and ash. “Still warm.” He laughed. “Thought they’d burn me out, they did.”
The Boy got down off Horse and began to inspect the wound again. When he touched it, Horse danced away from him. He removed his pack and led Horse down to the river. The water was cold, startlingly cold as he washed Horse’s wound. At first Horse wouldn’t stand for it, but as the cool water numbed the heat in the wound, the big horse tolerated the cleansing.
By the time the Boy led Horse back up to the clearing where once the lodge watched the creek and the highway beyond, Escondido had built a fire.
“I’m gonna tell you something you don’t want to hear,” said Escondido above the clatter of a pot he set on the fire. “I’m lit out at first light. I’m done with this side of the mountains. It ain’t safe and it’s gittin’ a lot more dangerous. Time was it was just me between here and the Hillmen. Now all them southern tribes is comin’ north, just itchin’ fer a fight with the Chinese. This is my last hunt. Tomorrow I ride for Auburn. After that, who knows? There’s a widow for me somewheres, I guess.”
They watched the fire. Escondido cut branches from a sapling and roasted strips of lion meat.
“This part’s the part you ain’t gonna like. So here it is. That horse needs to rest and even if he does that, ain’t no guarantee he’s gonna make it. In two days or sooner we’ll have snow and if his infection is gonna come, it’ll kill him before we make it within the gates o’ the outpost.”
They were silent, each watching the meat and fire, the wood turning to ash, the orange coals beneath.
Escondido rose to turn the strips of lion and settled back down onto an old blanket.
“I come here twenty seasons musta been. Every summer I’d cross them mountains above us and come down here to hunt. First few days I got the place in order, then I had a whole operation to set up. Shoulda seen it. Hides tannin’, big porch I like to set on of an evenin’.”
“There was no trade in hides with the Hillmen ’fore the Chinese set up the outpost there in Auburn. Hillmen coulda cared less about lion hides. The whole bunch of ’em was different in every way. Lived out in the woods and only came together once a year when they’d get up a hunt or needed to fight one of the other tribes. I finally figured out why they called themselves the Hillmen when me and Danitra set up camp near the old school the year before it burned down. One night I was havin’ a look for anything useful and I saw that their old football team was called the Hillmen. Now they live alone out in the deep woods mostly, but they still think of themselves as some old football team from before the bombs. It was how they told the difference between them and strangers. Crazy, huh? But not really—makes more sense than some of the other tribes.”
The fire popped and the aroma of roasting meat caught the night’s breeze as sparks rose into the dark sky.
“Not much fat in lion,” noted Escondido.
Then . . .
“I’ll miss this place for the rest of my days.”
The mule honked at some ground squirrel. Escondido watched the forest for a long moment, his coal-black eyes wide in the dancing light of the fire.
“So, if you could ride with me, I don’t think you’d make it. Or more to the point, I don’t think yer horse’d make it. So I’m leavin’ you. Sorry. That’s the way it has to be.”
When the Boy failed to protest, his face calm, almost asleep in the firelight, Escondido said, “I’ll show you a few things in the morning, maybe even some bushes that’ll help with the healing. If you get to work on a shelter, you’ll be ready if them tribes come back lookin’ for me. Most likely they’ll take to you more than they ever did me. They’re tribal like you. Don’t like city people like me. Hate the Chinese, they do. Hate ’em. But you, you’ll be fine I suspect.”
They ate the lion and fell asleep near the fire. The night came on cold and the Boy dreamed of faces in windows. His last thought before he closed his eyes beneath the broken crystal of night was of faces. He remembered faces, though he did not remember who they belonged to. What was Sergeant Presley’s
face like? He wondered and for a moment he could not remember its shape. But when he thought of the Sergeant’s rare smile, the face came back to him. And he was asleep.
Chapter 12
Snow fell and had been falling since they first woke. Now it was coming down steadily. High above, white clouds had replaced the startling blue of morning. Escondido, on the far side of the river and rounding the curve of the old highway that wound its way up across the pass, did not turn to see the Boy one last time, and then he was gone.
The wind rushed through the pines and made the only sound of the place where once Escondido’s hunting lodge stood.
You got to prioritize, Boy!
And he did. The Boy knew he had to get moving. There were three things to do.
Make a shelter.
Gather healing herbs for Horse.
Find food.
But for a long moment he stood there. It was so quiet in between the thundering gusts of wind that shook all the pines at once that he could hear snowflakes landing on the ground all around him. Or so he thought.
Escondido left him with a simple knowledge of the area’s herbs and inhabitants. The lions wouldn’t come up this far and they didn’t like the cold anyway. There were some wolves. But wolves were wolves. There was a way to handle them. Then there was the bear: a mother brown bear, one of the worst kind. Two seasons ago, Escondido related, she had two cubs. This year he didn’t see the cubs. But the bear lived in a cave upriver at the top of a small conical hill. A small mountain even.
“You’d be wise to steer clear of her altogether. The brown are the worst. Man-eaters.”
Horse was on his side now. His large dark eyes were weak and milky. Often he would raise his head to make sure the Boy was near. But even that act seemed too much for him.
So what do you do first, Boy? Make a plan. Get moving. Get to work. Do something. Make a decision. If you don’t, circumstances will decide for you. The enemy loves to tell you what to do.
It was the voice of Sergeant Presley, heard over a thousand camps at morning, in the frosty nights of Michigan when they’d barely survived. Down South, crossing the big river, he’d heard the Sergeant plan and tell him to do the same.
It’s all you got now, Boy!
The Boy gathered herbs. He found most of them not far from the river. Most of them were dying as winter came on.
Will that affect their potency?
Don’t matter, Boy. It’s all you got right now.
He spent the rest of the morning mashing the herbs and slowly adding water until all became paste. He boiled the paste for a while, per Escondido’s instructions. He applied the hot paste after having taken Horse to the river to clean the wound once more in the icy water, in which Horse’s legs gave out for a moment and he stumbled, casting a look at the Boy as if they were both embarrassed to the point of death. After, when the paste was hot and went on Horse’s wounded flank, after Horse lay down, his eyes resigned to the smoking fire, the Boy murmured, “I didn’t see that. Let’s just forget about that.” The Boy covered him with his only blanket.
Afternoon, thin and cold, settled across the little river. There was no warmth left in the big stones and a breeze could be seen in the pines atop the surrounding mountains.
The Boy began to hack at the burnt lumber of Escondido’s lodge, salvaging any usable beams for shelter. There weren’t many. Near the river, he found fallen trees and in dragging them, he was soon exhausted.
If I had Horse right now this would be easier.
When night fell, what he had was little more than a two-sided lean-to. The open side faced the mountain wall that rose above their camp. Moving Horse within the lean-to, the Boy built a fire. Later he gathered loose wood from the forest floor and brown grass for Horse.
It was night now and he didn’t mind the dark or the forest. He had known such places his whole life.
Chapter 13
In the night, keeping the fire high, face burning hot, body and back cold, the Boy sat staring into the shifting flames. Occasionally he simply watched Horse. He tried to make a plan for the coming morning beyond this endless freezing night.
Fishing in the river.
Food.
Traps.
How to improve the shelter.
The snow was coming down thick and silent. It hissed as it fell into the fire.
Even with the fire, it was cold. But Horse slept and that was good. Or at least the Boy hoped it was good.
On nights like this, when it was too cold, Sergeant Presley would talk, telling him things, teaching him. Sometimes they would break camp and simply walk to keep warm. The Boy remembered walking in the freezing rain outside Detroit.
Later he remembered the heavy warmth of late summer when they finally reached the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Sergeant Presley’s Mission, he’d called it.
They’d come upon the old Capitol the day before, broken buildings overgrown by blankets of green. Cracked highways had fallen into swampy water thick with flies and insects.
I got to go in there, Boy, and there ain’t no use you comin’ in with me, said Sergeant Presley on that long-ago day.
It was hot and sticky in the late afternoon. Summer. It had been raining for much of the week.
Let’s make camp and then I’ll go in and look for what I got to find—what I know won’t be there. But I’ll go in all the same.
They’d been living well that year. They’d fought for Marshall and his men the spring before. A range war in Pennsylvania. When the war was over, they’d been granted permission to move on into Maryland. When they’d gone from the warlord Marshall and his expanded kingdom, they’d had good clothes and supplies. They’d found nothing but wild people after that—abandoned farms and shadows in the thick forest and overgrown towns. The small villages and loose power that men like Marshall had held over the interior lands between the ravaged cities would not be found along the devastated ruin of the eastern coast.
One morning, in the center of a town that had burned to the ground long before the Boy had been born, standing in the overgrown weed-choked outline of an intersection, Sergeant Presley said, If there is anyone here, I’ll find them in the Capitol—or in the President’s bunker below the White House. They were both looking at an old fire hydrant that had been knocked out into the road. The road was covered in hardened dirt that had once been muddy sludge.
Who am I kidding? Sergeant Presley had suddenly erupted into the silence of the place. There ain’t anybody left. There wasn’t since it all went sideways and there hasn’t been since. I know that. I’ve known it all along!
His shouted words fell into the thick forest turning to swamp. An unseen bird called out weirdly, as if in response.
But orders are orders, he’d said softly, his sudden rage gone. And someone had to come and find out. Once I know, we’ll head back to the Army in Oakland. We got to cross the whole country. You up for that, Boy?
Sergeant Presley had smiled at him then.
The Boy remembered, nodding to himself.
Still, it’d be nice if someone was there. That’d be something, Sergeant Presley had said.
But there hadn’t been.
Now, beside the fire in the mountains as the first big snow of winter came on, almost to the other side of the country, the Boy knew there hadn’t been anyone in the old Capitol or at the President’s bunker beneath the White House.
Sergeant Presley was gone all that next day.
In the morning the Sergeant had put on some special gear they’d found in a place called Fort. They’d spent two weeks looking through the place, scouring warehouses that had long since been looted, searching through ash and rubble. Finally, in a desk drawer they’d found the gear Sergeant Presley had been looking for.
Some clerk probably got told to bring in his MOPP gear in case things went that way in those days. So he brings it in and his section sergeant checks it and then sends him off to do paperwork. And now I’m gonna wear it and hope the cha
rcoal and other protectants are gonna hold out long enough to get me to the White House without getting radiation poisoning.
When he’d left, wearing the dull green cloth and rubber shoes, fitting the gas mask and hood over his head, Sergeant Presley had looked like a monster.
He was gone all that day.
Sitting by the fire, the Boy couldn’t remember what he’d done after that. Probably exploring with Horse.
In the swarming-insect early evening, outside the Capitol in the swamp camp, it was misty. The gloomy ruins of the Capitol faded in the soft light of dusk. It looked like a dream. The Boy remembered that in the last moments of light, the Capitol, whatever it had once been, looked like a dream castle—like something that might have once had meaning for him. Like things that seem so important in a dream, but when you awake, those things seem of little value and you can’t imagine why they’d held such a place in the dream.
That was what the Capitol had looked like to the Boy in those last moments of daylight.
In the early evening of that long lost waiting-day, Sergeant Presley had finally come up the hill to their camp above the swamp. Threading his way through the tall grass, Sergeant Presley took off the bug-eyed gas mask. He dropped or threw the mask off into the sea of silent yellow grass. He tore off the suit, coughing. Crystal droplets of sweat stood out in his short curly hair.
The Boy gave him water from their bag, then some of the cakes they always made back then.
Still hot in there. Sergeant Presley coughed.
The Boy said nothing.
“Hot” meant forbidden. If sometimes they saw a city on the horizon, like the one by the big lake, its tall towers skeletal and bent, Sergeant Presley would simply say still hot. And sometimes he would add, When you’re an old man, if you live long enough, you can go in there. But I never will.
Sergeant Presley drank more water and coughed.
I woulda brought you somethin’, but it’s too hot in there. I swear I came right up on a bomb crater. Must’ve been low yield. But hell if it didn’t go up twenty degrees. I look around and everything is black ash. Even the marble on one of them old government buildings, the House I think it was called, had turned black.