by Nick Cole
‘If it comes,’ thought the Boy, ‘it comes now.’ His hand drifts toward the haft of the tomahawk.
“Welcome to our village, Bear Killer. You’ve rid us of an idiot for a chief. I thank you for that.” She turned back to the village and babbled in their patois. Then she left, rolling side to side until she reached the pillars, the pine-branch hatch, and disappeared once more inside the half-submerged bomber.
The Boy watched her until she was gone and wondered if indeed there were bombs, the big ones, nuclear, still lying within the plane. Waiting.
Impossible, Boy. We used ’em all up killing the world.
RAIN FELL IN the afternoon, and that night the villagers, under clear skies, spitted a deer and gathered to watch it roast in the cold night.
A young man whose name was Jason led him to a hut made of rocks and pine. It belonged to the chief—to the man who died at the Boy’s feet.
After three days of listening to the Rock Star’s People, the Boy could at least communicate with them in small matters. But the communication was slow and halting.
Jason said that for killing the chief, the hut and all that was in it were Bear Killer’s.
There was little more than a fire pit and a dirt floor.
Horse was fed apples by the children of the village and, as was his custom, patiently endured.
Later, the venison roasted, and the village watched both him and the meat and the darkness beyond their flames. There were far more women and children than men, and even the Boy knew the meaning of such countings.
When the venison was ready, they cut a thick slice from underneath the spine and offered it, dripping and steaming, to the Boy.
When the meal ended, the Rock Star was there among them. She had been watching him for a long time. She entered the circle, standing near the fire, wrapping skins and clothing from Before about her. She was faded and worn in dress, hair, and skin. But her eyes were full of thought and planning, of command and fire.
She told a story.
The Boy followed the tale as best he could and when he seemed lost altogether, she stopped to translate it for him back into English.
“I’m from Before, Bear Killer. I spoke the proper English like I was taught in a school and all that.”
The story she told involved a group of young people pursued through the forest by a madman with a chain saw full of evil spirits. One by one, the madman catches the younglings as they flee into what they believe is an abandoned house—the house where the madman lives with other madmen. In the end there is only one youngling left. A girl, strong and beautiful, desired by all the now dead younglings. Through magic and cunning she defeats the madmen, except for the one who’d found the younglings initially. The brave girl shoots bolts of power from her hands and the Mad Man of all Mad Men, as she calls him, falls backward over a balcony in the house from the Before.
“And when she run over to the railing to see his dead body lying in the tall grass, he is gone,” the Rock Star translated to the Boy. Then, casting a weather eye into the darkness beyond their fire, the Rock Star whispered, “That madman still walks these mountains, still desires me, still takes younglings when it comes into his mind.”
The Rock Star’s People clutched their wide-eyed young. The men drew closer to the fire, to their wives, eyeing the night and the mountains that surrounded their lake.
“But he won’t come here, children.”
She paused, eyes resting on the assembly. She turned toward the mountains as if seeing his lumbering form wandering the silent halls of the forest dark even then.
“He won’t come here, children. For I am that girl who was.”
She turned and stalked off into the night.
The relief among the villagers was tangible.
In groups they returned to their huts, and for a long time the Boy stared into the fire, watching its coals.
Chapter 21
“Walk with me.”
The command was simple, direct. The Boy saw her silhouette in the door to his hut by the half-light of early morning.
Outside, the Boy was wrapped in his bearskin and the sky was little more than cold iron. The village was quiet, as small wavelets drove against the sandy shore, slapping at the side of the old bomber.
When they were at the far end of the beach, nearing a series of slate gray rocks that fell into the waters of the lake, the Rock Star turned to him.
“I don’t know you. I suspect, though, you’re a man without a tribe.” She let the sentence hang.
The Boy remained silent.
Good. Let people assume things, Boy.
“But you were passing to the west when the hunters found you,” continued the Rock Star.
She paused to consider that for a moment.
“I imagine you want to continue west. But you can’t. Ain’t nothing there but Chinese now. You keep up that old highway and you’ll come to a big Chinese settlement in the foothills the other side of the pass.”
She picked up stones, flat and slate blue from the beach.
“Bad for you if you were thinking that was good. Chinese been trying to clear out the tribes. They took on one or two in the last few years and won pretty easily. They got the Hillmen working for them. But the Hillmen weren’t never no real tribe. And the tribes the Chinese wiped out were little more’n scavengers anyway.”
She seemed to want to throw a stone into the water, but the act of skipping it seemed something she knew was beyond her ability and strength.
“Now they—the Chinese, that is—have gone and stirred up a nest of hornets.”
The Rock Star looked at the Boy directly, staring hard up into his face, searching for something.
“That man you killed in fair challenge was my war leader. He was an idiot, but as they say, he was my idiot. In the next day, we got to start out despite this last winter storm that’s workin’ itself up to be something. The tribes, far down the range, almost even to the old Three Ninety-five, are gathering. A big war leader is readyin’ hisself to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen.”
She took a deep breath.
“The headman called for me and mine to come. Wants my power.”
She turned back to the lake. Whitecaps were forming beyond the bay.
“I’ve danced with the dark one in the dead of night. My power has watched over this People since the Before. My power will slaughter the Chinamen. My power has stood against zombies and vampires and all the serial killers of the Before. I was a powerful rock star in them days.”
She dropped the stones back onto the beach.
“So if you’re a spy, you know our plans. No good it’ll do you, though. So you’ll ride with us and know my hunters carry the poison. My poison is powerful. But my poison is not for you, see. My poison is for your horse. Ah, I see Bear Killer. I know’d the horse is a friend to you. So, you don’t step to my call to fetch and be my war leader, it’s the horse that gets it.”
She sighed heavily in the wind.
“That’s the way it be. Now take my arm and walk me back to the village, Bear Killer. And of a morning here shortly, we’ll ride to the hidden valley and rave with the tribes at the great lodge. And when the tribes go to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen, you’ll be my war leader and then you’ll see my power. I’m keeper of them bombs, never forget that. I’ll send the world back into darkness as I done the first time.”
She held out her arm.
After a moment, the Boy took it.
The wind came up and his ears burned. But not from the cold.
That’s right, Boy. I said involved.
Chapter 22
That night the Rock Star told the story of a great ship she had once sailed on that crossed the unseen ocean to a country far away. She told of fine dresses she wore and an evil prince who wanted to marry her. Instead, she chose a young poor boy, fair and bold, for her lover. But the evil prince murdered the poor boy.
The wind and the night closed about their small circle of fire next to the lake
in the mountains, as the first hints of rain began to slap against the water and the sand. The Rock Star rose above the circle, seeming imperious. Seeming grand. Seeming once the young woman of the story.
“And I called an ice mountain out of the sea to come and attack the ship and slay the evil princeling. When my monster’d finished, that great ship slid beneath the waves with a titanic crash, like ice breaking off the high glaciers. Only I alone escaped in a boat, and every one of them fancies, all of ’em, drowned beneath the icy waters of that ocean, ’cept for me, and me alone.”
IN THE MORNING when the Boy awoke, the hunters were packing, making a somber noise within the quiet village of the high mountain lake.
Jason pushed aside the blanket at the entrance to the old chief’s hut.
“We vamnato,” Jason mumbled fearfully in his pidgin language to the Boy, telling him it was time to leave.
The Boy gathered his things into his pack and went out to Horse.
Whispering and patting the animal, he promised to take care of them both.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered to Horse.
Horse regarded him, then snorted slightly and turned away to watch some new thing that might be more interesting.
Soon the hunters, carrying the Rock Star on a pallet, were waving goodbye to the tight-jawed women and crying children.
Following, the Boy rode Horse, his bearskin flapping in the strong wind that came off the lake.
Spring’s a comin’, Boy. Look sharp.
THE COMPANY OF hunters, with their skins and spears and bones of small animals knocking together in the wind whipping past their carried totems, skirted the lake along an old winding highway heading south. Soon they climbed up through a trail that led alongside high waterfalls, and when they crested the pass, they saw a long line of mountains falling away to the south.
Finding old crumbling roads when they could and keeping mostly south, the company trekked along the face of the high mountains, sometimes weaving down into the foothills, never daring to approach the valley floor.
The day was long gone to late winter cold when they stopped in a stand of pines alongside a mountain highway. The withered side of the Boy was stiff and aching. He got down from Horse and walked away from their forming camp. When the Boy looked behind him, he could see at least one of the hunters trailing, as if gathering firewood.
I’ll be patient. When the time comes, and it will, I’ll make a run, Sergeant.
There was no response from the voice of Sergeant Presley.
And yet there is something exciting about all of this, Sergeant. If these people are against the Chinese, then wouldn’t that be good intel for I Corps and the Army?
The Boy didn’t dare bring out the map secreted inside the pouch he’d made within the bear cloak. From his memory of it, he knew they were skirting south through the mountains. On the western side of their progress lay the long valley and many of the great cities of the past along the coast beyond. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and far San Diego, all in the State of California.
I should complete the mission. Find I Corps like you said, Sergeant.
Later, in the guttering light of the campfire, the Rock Star told of a night when the dead had walked the earth, coming out of their graves to clutch at her. She had hidden in a great palace of wonders she called the Fashion Hill Place Mall. The zombies, a relentless army of crawling undead, surrounded her and a band of other survivors. Using her great fire-spitting powers, she kept the other survivors safe against the relentless dead. But in the end, the survivors had each died as a result of their own folly.
There was Pete, who tried to make a run for the parking lot, done to death by a horde of zombies he didn’t see.
There was Fawn, who wouldn’t share the sweet treats of the food court, pulled into an ice cave by a corpse who wasn’t all dead.
There was Mark, who tried to have his way with the Rock Star, who was then a wild young girl with red hair. Mark was thrown from the top of the parking structure into a sea of the once human.
“And one day I flew away in a machine from the Before. Right off the roof of the mall. Rescued by myself because they wouldn’t listen to me. Didn’t have to be that way. But it was.”
THE DAYS THAT followed were a long, slow crawl across the face of the mountains beneath the alpine tree line. High above them, snow clung to the tallest peaks, and still at the base of the trees they found piles of the stuff hiding in the permanent shade.
Chapter 23
On the last night, the night before the long climb up into the high valley, the Boy woke. Against the wide dark blue sky of frosty night, the wind swept clouds swiftly across the night. The dark shadow of Horse stirred for a moment.
For the thousandth time the Boy thought now might be the time to leave.
He did not hear the voice of Sergeant Presley.
Maybe I have gone too far down a road I should’ve never traveled. Maybe the voice of Sergeant Presley has finished with me.
Maybe I have gone too far.
The fire was low and the Boy saw the Rock Star, mouth open, staring into the glowing embers.
For a while he lay still, but his weak side was stiff and cold.
How much of the night was left?
He drank cold water from his bag and limped over to the fire to warm his cursed weak side.
All around, the hunters slept. The Boy knew two or three were watching him, watching with the poison on nearby and ready arrows.
The hunters had kept their distance over much of this cold trek across the western face of the Sierras.
Poison.
The Rock Star began to speak.
She did not look at the Boy.
She stared into the flames after he added a log and sparks rose on the night wind.
“I was a girl—little more than—on the day it all went down.”
She swallowed. Her old face was hollow and dry like an empty water skin drained by time.
“I was a survivor though, even before all of the war that come. A survivor in a wasteland of malls and perfect families. My mother worked all the time. Worked so much I never saw her. We communicated by notes left on a little table in our tiny kitchen. One year I left the same note over and over and she never noticed.”
The Boy rubbed his weak calf, working the heat of his good hand into the thin muscle.
“I lived at the mall. I was there when it opened, and there was many a time I was the last out the door at closing. Frank. Frank let me out. Told me to go on home.
“When it all went to hell, we ran. We ran for the mountains. I was in the San Gabriel Foothills when one of them bombs went off south of Los Angeles. We were climbing on our hands and knees. I saw a flash light up everything ahead of me. And then a few seconds later, a hot rush of dry wind.
“We kept on moving, farther and farther up into the mountains.
“All these tribes, all these people of the mountains, I knew ’em all in those first days when we ran from the cities. They was just survivors then, running as fast as they could while the bombs kept falling. I think about that sometimes. I kept looking for my mom in each new group we come across. But it was always someone different to be found. I can see the Mexican woman with the twin boys standing by the body of her husband as we all walked past them on the trail. I can see those boys’ faces in all of them tribes folk down near Sonora. We traded some of our women years back with them when theirs kept making weak babies, worse than what you were born with. I see the bearded guy who got shot for his food in the back of a station wagon that had broke down. I see his face now and again in some of the men and children of the Psychos. He must’ve had kin that run off once we took to his stuff. But we hadn’t eaten in three days. So, it was to be expected. What I’m sayin’—and I’m thinkin’ about it all the more now as we come up to that rave—is, I’ll be seein’ all these people again. Except it’s not them. It’s their children and grands and great-grands. Strangers I passed, sitting among the fires of the
refugee camps waiting for help that never came. Dark, muddy rain comin’ down on us. Eatin’ soup. Radio’s gone. No one knows anything and the things people say don’t mean anything to me. I was young and my world was limited to music and movies, or a boy I thought I loved and would run away with and we’d be together. We’d be a real family.
“All of us survivors thought we might make it in the first few weeks after the bombs. But the big winter that come taught us the error of our ways. What little survived that winter—two years long it was—what survived would be burned away in forest fires, taken by raiders, or plain just wore out.
“I was just a girl. I knew movies. I did whatever it took to survive.”
The dark sky above the orange glow of the fire turned a soft morning blue.
“I’m a rock star. I’m the bomb keeper. I’ve loved the grim reaper.” The Rock Star’s voice was strong but passionless, as if these lines were played for the thousandth time too many and to no one in particular.
“Words of power, Bear Killer, dontchu forget about me. Don’t forget I know them words. I’ve carried them from the Before. Carried them from a television inside my heart. From that fairy palace mall.
“Words of power.”
Chapter 24
In the Hidden Valley, the Boy found the tribes.
He found what happened forty years after all the bombs fell.
He found savagery.
There were big men, cut and scarred, tattooed in ash. There were thin, misshapen men bearing the marks of exposure to the weapons of Before. There were warriors wearing the patchwork armor of ancient road signs beaten to form breastplates. Some wore the skins of wolves, some the skins of other animals and even humans. Here and there were human heads, held aloft, candles burning in their empty eye sockets.
There were the Psychos, who wore the skins of the lions that prowled the eastern desert. Teeth hung in great looping necklaces about their thick, raw, and sunburned necks. They dragged dull-eyed women behind them by heavy chains with little effort.