by Nick Cole
“Then I went in with the tank. They call it the Dragon. I interrogated a few of them after the battle. Scattered all the rest and shot the place up. Held it for a few days. They kept trying to re-take it at night. I had four sentry guns set up around the tank. It was not a quiet night. I killed a lot of them and came to two conclusions. One, Picacho is important to them. Two, there are a lot of ’em. So whoever you are, watch out for Picacho Peak. They ain’t nothing more than animals now. If that’s what’s left of humanity, then this was all for nothing. But if I made it, someone else must have made it too.
“I wish I could hear your story. I think I would like it very much. I waited for you, but I think cancer got me. I tried to make this place safe and easy to get into at the same time. I set the auto gun to recognize ‘a hands up’ silhouette profile as ‘safe.’ So if you made it past the gun, you can read.
“I started a project. When I neutralized the temple at Picacho Peak I found laws the Horde had written down. Utter nonsense. I decided to write my own. For the next bunch who want to have a go at civilization. I used a plate welding torch and carved them into the sewers here and others places throughout the area. Kinda like the pyramids, except useful, and sewage systems outlast most civilizations.
“You are civilization now. What more can I say? I’ve left lots of these composition books throughout the buildings and on the equipment to tell you how to use it, or what’s where and such. Cancer got me. You can find my body in bed on the top floor of this building, in an apartment I set up. I promoted myself to Sergeant Major. God Bless America.”
The Old Man leaned back in the chair and wept.
Chapter 27
He felt weak. Later he went to one corner of the room, which had once most likely been an executive office, and rolled out his emergency blanket. He found a bathroom down the hall and heard Muzak playing in the sound system of the building. The tune was familiar but he couldn’t remember it. He ran cool water on his face and drank from the sink. He thought about finding the infirmary. Medicine might help, but the feeling of fatigue was bone deep. He went back to the office and slept.
He awoke in the night. He stood for a moment looking out the large windows. White clouds scudded across a night sky that seemed bigger than any he could remember.
How long have I been gone?
He tried to count the days by their adventures. But they seemed too many.
He went to the restroom again and heard another familiar tune coming from the building’s Muzak system. He couldn’t say its name either. He came back to the office and wrapped himself in his blanket and sat in the chair watching the clouds drift across the sea of night.
IN THE MORNING when he awoke sitting in the chair, he felt hollow and sweaty.
Maybe the worst of the sickness has passed.
When he moved, he felt fragile as though it all might come back upon him.
I need to make it back to the village.
If you start now, it will take a few weeks.
I know that. It is also monsoon season. Very dangerous.
The desert looked calm and cool beyond the city boundaries. Distant mountains of orange rock and brown shadow seemed pleasant from the safety of the building.
I have to make it back before I die. I have to tell them. If this fever turns into something, they will never know.
You have to make it back without dying.
He thought of the tank in the garage.
He searched the building for the rest of the day, finding the libraries of books and discs and computers that still worked. Medical supplies, equipment of every sort; all had been catalogued, ordered, and stored. Waiting. The Old Man wondered at all the years and the person of Sergeant Major Preston.
Finally he went to the top floor suite and found the corpse of the Sergeant Major. The room was orderly, and only the photograph of a woman, young, bangs, glasses, was any clue to the personal life of the man. There was a body bag beside the bed.
The Old Man closed the door and went back to the elevator. In the garage he found vehicles, farming and construction equipment. Each had a composition book. Near the main entrance to the garage he found four tanks. Three were missing parts, obviously cannibalized to keep the fourth in good condition. He climbed up to the cupola and found a note on the hatch instructing him how to enter the tank.
Inside he found a VCR tape and a note that read “Watch First!!!” He returned to the offices of the building, and in one of the video libraries he found a VCR.
These were extinct when I was a kid.
Soon he had it working.
He sat down and watched as Sergeant Major Preston, middle aged, instructed him how to run the tank.
The tank had been fitted with a remote control system, slaved to the tank’s command compartment. This centralized the operation of the tank in the commander’s cupola. Sergeant Major Preston instructed the watcher on how to swivel and sight the main gun. How to fire it and how a reloading system would automatically rack another round. There were only twenty rounds on board. The video then detailed the starting of the engines, firing the fifty-caliber machine gun, and re-loading the tank’s fuel compartment at a fuel depot a few miles away where the Sergeant Major had managed to store fuel. Though, he said, the fuel tanks of any gas station could be siphoned using an auto pump on board the tank.
The Old Man had passed only a few gas stations that hadn’t burned to the ground. He doubted their fuel had survived. The video ended with the Sergeant Major putting the key to the fuel pumps on a wallboard inside the fuel station and showing a drawing of how to get to the station from the Fort. Then he lowered the white placard map and smiled into the camera. The tape ended.
Earlier in the day the Old Man had found the kitchen. He’d made a breakfast of powdered eggs and canned tomatoes from the pantry, one of several in fact. There was coffee and creamer too, though his throat had been too raw for it. Instead he had made some tea from tea bags he’d found on the counter.
Now he returned and opened a can of ham, made more powdered eggs, and put ketchup on them. He sat, chewing slowly.
I need to go, get there and back before someone comes.
No one has come in all this time. Who will come?
He thought about the savage boy lying at the bottom of Gates Pass. He thought about his own parents’ house.
There will be time for that once you come back with the village.
Will the village want to come?
He laughed at himself and chewed more egg.
When he had finished eating, he felt weaker than he should have.
The desert was too much. I won, but it may have beaten me. Maybe I got too close to Phoenix, or the rations or snakes were irradiated.
He thought of cancer.
I could leave now. Drive the tank through the night. Be home before dawn.
In the dark over broken roads and monsoon mud? It will take skill in the daylight. Don’t even think about it at night.
He went back to the office. He rolled out a new army-issue sleeping bag he’d found in an office full of supplies ranging from camping stoves to cots.
He made some tea and added a packet of honey. He wondered if they might grow lemons here some day. He lay back in the sleeping bag with a fresh clean pillow he’d unzipped from a package that bore the name of a very expensive store. He wondered if there might be a gym and showers in the building. But he had not seen either.
It would be nice to have a hot shower before bed.
He fell asleep in the middle of the thought and woke up later, still holding the Styrofoam cup of cold tea. He rolled over and slept until just before dawn.
Awake and moving stiffly, he tried to tell himself he wasn’t worse.
I won’t ask much of you today. Just get me back to my village. Then you can die.
Why are you so concerned about death now? Is it because you have everything to lose?
The eastern night ended in thin blue streaks. He rolled up the sleeping bag, stopp
ed by the infirmary, and grabbed a bottle of aspirin. In the kitchen, he took bottles of water and cans of tuna and chili. He found a can opener, almost forgetting to, laughing at himself as if he had forgotten.
In the garage, he raised the door by electronic control in a guard shack and went to the tank. Soon he had the first engine on the tank started. It sounded like a jet engine. Then he started the second engine and felt for a brief moment that controlling the tank would be beyond him. He checked the instruments and found that the tank was full of fuel. He went down into the brightly lit cupola of the tank and stowed his gear on a seat near the rear, then returned to the seat in the cupola. He took hold of a joystick and swiveled the main gun, sensing a momentary sickness as the entire cupola swung to the right. Then he pointed it back to the front of the tank and placed his hands on two levers below the joystick.
The right controls the right tread, the left the left tread.
Pushing forward on both would move the tank forward. Or so Sergeant Major Preston had assured him. He pushed forward on both cautiously and nothing happened. He tried again. He thought back to the instructional video.
The gas pedal.
Below him, near the new boots he’d found in a different supply room, was the pedal. He stepped on it and heard the tank’s engines spool up to a high-pitched whine. He pressed forward on the two sticks while gassing the pedal as the tank eased through the garage doors. Outside he dismounted and closed the doors, then climbed aboard once more.
He gassed the pedal and pulled back on the left stick and went forward with the right as the tank swerved to the left. He looked back at the Fort. Then he eased the tank out onto the road leading to the highway. His throat felt sore. Maybe he was sick. But he wouldn’t think about it. The tank took all his concentration.
Chapter 28
At first the going was slow, as he wound through the side streets that led onto the main freeway. Once atop the eight-lane, the going got better.
For a while he rode the blacktop. The evacuation had left the city empty forty years ago. The Old Man knew where the people had fled during that long-ago exodus from a wrecked civilization. Many lay trapped between the cities in great wrecks of their own. A few had become his fellow villagers.
The highway ran smooth and eventually became a two-lane and a median with two lanes on the other side. Other than the occasional downed bridge that he maneuvered around or through, there was little that stood in the way of the tank. Soon he had the tank up to forty-five miles an hour.
He passed a semi overturned on its belly and stopped. It was covered in red handprints.
Is that recent?
Are they getting closer?
He revved the tank and sent it down the road once more. Soon the hum of the engines lulled him to thinking, and at times almost sleep. The day was cold. He could feel the rain in the air. Knew the heat of the sun hadn’t driven away the cold of night completely. Winter was coming.
In the distance he could see Picacho Peak as the road began a long gentle curve to the west.
I am finally heading west.
He thought about the end of curses. What needed to be done once he returned to the village? How to organize them and get them back to the Fort?
The village is over.
How so?
When I return with this tank. Everything changes. My life in the village will be something that happened long ago. A dream. Just like my life before the bombs. A dream also.
It was noon when he spotted them coming down from the northern mountains across the plain like a vast dark herd. They were crossing the highway in groups, running for Picacho Peak just on the other side. He stopped the tank. The roar of the engines was still loud and he could hear nothing above it. He could feel the north wind on his face. He could feel the cold of the arctic and the high mountain passes it had come down through to reach the Sonoran Desert.
The Horde lay scattered in bands across the horizon. Now they formed into two groups.
So they still exist.
One group resolved itself into men and boys painted and various in weapons and dress. Savages of the new wasteland. The other group drew itself toward Picacho Peak, running like a startled herd of buffalo.
There is the main gun and then the machine gun.
If not today, when?
I don’t think I’ve ever killed a man.
Mirrored Sunglasses? The savage boy?
They killed themselves.
I don’t think it will be just a couple today.
The wild men came on in a ragged line, running with mouths open.
What you do today determines the future of the village. Civilization even.
I don’t know if I’m the man to make that choice.
There’s no other. Act now or die. Do this today or forget tomorrow!
The Old Man tapped the accelerator and listened to the engines spool up to a high-pitched whine.
Maybe this will give them something to stop for.
The ragged mobbed surged over the soft sand, closing the distance.
Do something now, Old Man!
They were twenty yards off when he gave the tank full power and pushed forward on the control sticks. The tank jumped forward with a roar, and the Old Man closed his eyes as he crashed into their line. They were hundreds turning into thousands and the air was suddenly thick with missiles of rock and broken pipe. He tucked into the hatch and kept forward on the sticks. He heard their wild screams above the thunder of the engines.
When the rain of debris ceased, he popped out of the hatch and checked the tank’s progress as it veered across the median. He overcorrected and the tank gave a sharp right turn. Before he could get it straightened out he’d gone out over the northbound lanes and into the desert off the road.
He surveyed the mob. There were thousands surging all around the tank. Thin gaunt men the color of dust chased his wake, waving and yelling. Potbellied, sun-browned women and feral children snarled as they ran from him. Stones began to fall, but they were too far off. The main mass of the mob seemed to be collecting around the base of the peak but the warriors were gathering again for another charge.
He moved the tank back onto the road and started toward the abandoned gas station. The desert scrub was thick on the far side of the road and at times, wild-eyed men and screaming women ran gibbering before the tank, darting off into the bushes like frightened animals.
He traversed the gun and toggled the gun sight onto the building where he’d found their laws. Behind him, their main force pounded down the road after him, their eyes wild with anger and fear. He depressed the red button atop the joystick and sent a round into the building.
At once, two things happened. The tank rocked back in a cloud of powdery dust, and the wall of the building exploded in a spray of cement. Beyond the building a moment later, the round exploded in dirt and sand, having passed straight through the decrepit wall without exploding.
The Old Man traversed the gun, hearing nothing but dull silence and feeling, more than hearing, the servos that swiveled the cupola. He landed the main gun on the advancing wall of savages.
“This must mean something to you!” he screamed and barely heard himself.
He felt a sharp blow on his shoulder as a club smashed down hard upon it. He turned to see a crazed naked man with cracked skin and open sores, his watermelon head drooling crazily amid a mouth full of misshapen teeth. The savage raised a club to strike once again. His attacker had climbed from the back of the tank onto the cupola. Three others were struggling up the same way, each as lunatic as the first.
The Old Man sank into the turret, grabbing at the hatch with his free hand as he stepped hard on the accelerator. The tank bolted forward across the road and onto broken ground. Sure that they had fallen off, he popped up from the turret once more to scan the terrain ahead. As he turned to look forward he saw that the tank was headed off the lip of a dry riverbed. He took his foot off the pedal hoping to stop in time.
&nbs
p; The tank fell. He had just enough time to swing the hatch shut and throw himself to the floor of the tank.
HE AWOKE TO a cacophony of noise. Everywhere the sound of hammers and pipes could be heard across the interior of the tank. The Old Man was bathed in red light. He stood shakily and locked the hatch, marveling that they hadn’t pulled on it.
He reached into his ruck and got out some water. It was hot, though the sweat felt cold on his back. He wondered if they would try to set the tank on fire. He wondered if the tank would burn.
He found his way awkwardly into the control seat. The tank was in a facedown angle.
At least we are not on our side.
He stepped on the accelerator and the engines whined. He pushed forward on the sticks and felt the tank strain, but refuse to go forward. He reversed the sticks and felt the tank jump backward straining and digging. He took his foot off the pedal.
I might be stuck.
Anew, the ringing sounds of metal on metal began again.
Too much and I will dig a ditch I might not get out of. Then all they have to do is wait me out.
What other choice do you have? You only brought two cans of food and some water. They might damage something and stick you here whether you like it or not.
He pulled the restraint harness across his shoulders and snapped a belt around his waist.
I can’t go forward. But I can go back just a little.