by Nick Cole
“Will you stay, or are you determined to go on to the south?”
The Boy rose.
“You will find nothing worth having there!” the shepherd’s voice rose in pitched urgency.
“You will find the worst of this world and the worst that the world that died had done to itself.”
The Boy began to stumble toward the road.
“If you go west you will find life. Some. But in the south there is nothing but horror. Trust me, stranger!”
As an afterthought the shepherd said. “East. Don’t go east into the desert. That is death for sure.”
The Boy considered the high sun. Orienting himself.
He turned toward the east.
The shepherd looked at the Boy, eyes wide with amazement and then horror.
A high hill, speckled by a few gnarled oaks, rose up to the east.
The Boy began walking toward the hill.
The shepherd murmured, “No.”
The tall grass brushed against the legs of the Boy and he could hear the shepherd hobbling behind him, breathing heavily in the still air.
“Stranger, don’t go that way. I told you it was death.”
They neared the base of the steep hill as the shepherd pursued the Boy.
“There lies a desert, and it will consume you. A wasteland. You will be no more. Saint Maggie said, ‘We must do our best. We must live despite life. God will do the rest.’ Stranger, you will find no love that way. Turn west and live.”
The Boy fell to his knees and began to climb the hill.
The shepherd fell to his knees.
“I will pray for you, stranger. I will pray for you.”
The shepherd was still praying, hours later, when the Boy reached the top of the steep hill and saw the line of hills beyond, descending into the vast bowl of the desert.
WHAT DO YOU find when there is nothing left, Boy?
The days were brutal and there was no water. The land fell into a furnace of burning hard-packed dirt and suffocating dunes.
You left me, Sergeant.
I had to, Boy. The world didn’t need me anymore.
I needed you.
And someone, Boy, someday will need you also.
She’s dead.
He fell to his knees and wept.
The flat desert stretched away in all directions.
Never give up, Boy. I told you. The world needs us.
You take everything with you.
It’s too much, too much to carry, you and the broken places and the evil of the world . . . and what . . . and Jin.
He stumbled.
Then he crawled.
How many days?
But to think of them was to think of the pain of all his days.
And still he crawled through the days, deeper and deeper into the burning wastes.
There can’t be anymore left of me. Tonight or tomorrow, and that would be the end of the whole mess that is the world, that is me.
In the night, the stars were cold and clear.
He watched them and thought of Jin.
I am done. There is nothing left in me with which to grieve.
He felt empty.
He felt hollow.
In the morning, the sun rose from a thin strip of light.
This is my last day.
You take everything with you.
He reached for the tomahawk.
It felt comforting. As though he had been loyal and faithful to it. As though it stood as a monument, a testament even, to all his loss and failure.
You take everything with you.
His left side would not move.
Curse you then, you never helped me in life and now you won’t go with me to my death. What good have you ever been?
Then . . .
I’ll drag you.
He watched the empty wasteland ahead and knew that he would die today somewhere within it.
Five days without water. That’s the most a man, a person, can go.
He dragged himself forward.
Sergeant Presley.
Horse.
The bearskin.
The pistol that was once a rifle.
Where did you lose that?
I cannot remember. Somewhere in the poisoned valley.
The Chinese colony at Auburn.
Escondido.
The Chinese at Sausalito.
Jin.
It was a lie.
What?
He had trouble remembering. He was crawling through chalky sand. He had been for some time.
It’s so hot now, but at least I’m not sweating.
I don’t think that is good.
It depends on what you want to accomplish.
What was a lie?
That you take everything with you. That was a lie.
Oh.
Where are they now?
Sergeant. Horse. Jin.
How can you take everything with you when it is all gone?
I was lied to.
In the end, I don’t even know who I am, where I came from. Who were my mother and father? What did it mean to be an American?
Sergeant Presley called me Boy.
The Chinese called me savage.
The savages called me Bear Killer.
All of it seemed to be something that never happened or happened to someone else, long ago.
Who am I?
Jin called you . . .
“Don’t!” he croak-screamed into the dry expanse. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Hours later, crawling on his knees and pulling with his hand, dragging the side that would not work, he stopped.
He gasped, “Not much farther now.”
You got to decide who you are, Boy. Not the world. Don’t let people ever tell you who you are. Some people tell nothing but lies. So why ask ’em any-
ways?
Yes. I remember when you said that.
I’m saying it now.
His hand felt the hard, burning surface of a road.
You’re dead.
I’m sorry about that, Boy. I never meant to leave you.
Tell me who I am.
I’m dead, Boy. Said so yourself.
Who am I?
Silence.
In the distance he heard a high-pitched whine and then a loud rumble beneath it.
He was alone in the middle of a desert plain, cracked and broken.
He laid his head down onto the hard dirt and felt it burn the side of his face as he closed his eyes.
My ears are buzzing. This must be death. It has been following me for some time. My whole life even. And now death is finally coming for me. What took you so long?
Who are you, Boy?
I don’t know. I never did.
The roar and whine consumed everything. It grew and grew, filling up the expanse of the desert and the sky. Everything was now shadow and heat.
Did you expect to find her in death?
He heard footsteps.
I was hoping to. But I think I will find only death. Who am I to think I might find Jin again? The world is made of stone. Who am I that it should be any different for me?
Death bent down and touched the Boy’s cheek.
Who am I? he mumbled to Death.
You should know who I am before you take me.
Or are you just a taker? A taker who doesn’t ask.
The Boy opened his eyes.
Death was an Old Man, thin and wiry, gray stubble. His eyes sharp and clear and blue.
“Who is he, Poppa?” A young girl’s voice from nearby.
“I don’t know. But he needs our help. He’s been out here for too long. He’s close to death.”
“I’ll get some water, Poppa,” said the girl, and the Boy heard the slap of shoes against the hot road.
The Boy began to cry.
Shaking, he convulsed.
Crying, he wheezed, begging the world not to be made of stone, begging the world to give back what it had taken from him.
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sp; “Who am I?” sobbed the Boy.
“I think he’s asking, who is he, Poppa!” said the girl as though it were all a game of guessing and she had just won.
The Old Man held the shaking, sobbing Boy and poured water onto cracked and sunburned lips in the shadow of the rumbling tank.
“He doesn’t know who he is, Poppa. Who is he?”
“He’s just a boy,” said the Old Man to his granddaughter, his voice trembling with worry and doubt.
“Who am I now?” sobbed the Boy.
The Old Man held the Boy close, willing life, precious life, back into the thin body.
“You’re just a boy, that’s all. Just a boy,” soothed the Old Man, almost in tears.
The Old Man held the Boy tightly.
“You’re just a boy,” he repeated.
“Just a boy.”
PART III
The Road Is a River
Chapter 1
Can you let go?
The Old Man is sick. The Old Man is dying.
His fever is high in him and the days pass long and hot, as though having no end to them. The villagers come one by one, and it seems to all of them that what’s left of the Old Man will not be enough. Though there are no goodbyes, there are words and looks that mean just as much.
Yet she will not let him go.
“No, Grandpa,” she says to him through the long days and even longer nights. “I need you.”
Can you let go?
He has told the villagers as much as he can of Tucson through the ragged flaming trench that is his throat. The security of the Federal Building. The untouched mountain of salvage. The tank. The villagers are going there.
That could be enough. They have Tucson now.
He lies back and feels that swollen, fiery ache within every muscle.
Just rest.
Most of them, most of the villagers have gone on to Tucson and all that he has promised them of a better life waiting there. A new life, in fact.
Can you let go?
The Old Man is sick.
The Old Man is dying.
My wife.
He thinks of her olive skin.
Will I be with her again?
Soon.
He is glad he thought of her when the wolves were beneath him and his hands were burning as he’d crossed over the abyss. He is glad he still loved her when he needed to remember something other than the burning pain in his fingers.
“No, Grandpa. I need you.”
The Old Man thinks, in the darkest of moments when it seems as if he is crossing from this life to the next, that there are things worse than wolves snapping their jaws beneath you as you pull yourself across an abyss while thinking of your wife.
And he can hear the worst.
What is the worst?
His eyes are closed.
His granddaughter, Emily—she is his best friend, he remembers—is crying.
“No, Grandpa. I need you.”
And he is going. Almost gone. Fading.
He hears her sobs. Weeping. Weeping for him.
His failure to live just a little longer.
She needs him just a little longer. “Forever,” she tells him.
The worst is when you imagine the grief of your loved ones after you have gone.
‘When you are sick in the night,’ he thinks, ‘you imagine the worst. To hear my granddaughter in grief for me . . . that is the worst I can imagine.’
Can you let go?
‘Not yet,’ he thinks. ‘For her I will stay just a little longer, and maybe I can die later when it won’t matter so much. She still needs me now.’
That is the love of staying when you know you must go.
And the Old Man lives.
Chapter 2
What follows are moments.
Individual moments, each one like a picture. A photograph before there was digital. Just before the end. Before the bombs. Snapshots of the hot days that follow.
The Old Man lies in his bed. When his voice returns, he is surprised. He didn’t even know it was missing, he’d been so many days gone to the wasteland. He tells them of Tucson.
He tells them of the tank.
The wolves.
The Horde.
Sergeant Major Preston.
When he is finished, he is so tired that his words merge into a dream of nonsense. When he awakes, he sees stars through the openings in the roof of his shed. He hears the voices of the villagers outside. He feels his granddaughter’s tiny hand holding his old hand, and as he drifts back to sleep he hopes that he will not have that terrible nightmare again. The one in which he is falling and he can hear her.
No, Grandpa. I need you.
Snapshot.
It is morning. The cold wind blows across his face as they carry him out from his shed.
Am I dead?
But he can see his granddaughter. She is holding his rucksack, the one from the tower in Tucson, stuffed with the treasures that were once lost and now found.
They are taking me out to bury me.
“The book is for you,” he hears himself mumble across cracked lips. His granddaughter turns to him and smiles.
I love her smile. It is the best smile ever. There is no good thing like it.
Maybe her laugh too.
“I have it with your other things, Grandpa. Right here.” She pats his rucksack proudly.
All the villagers above turn and smile down at him hopefully.
The sky beyond them is gray. It is still monsoon season.
“We’re taking you to Tucson now, Dad,” says his son who has now bent down to adjust the blankets high about the Old Man’s thin neck. “Hang in there, Dad. You’re the last. We’re leaving the village for good.”
Sadness overwhelms the Old Man and then he thinks of his granddaughter and her smile as weapons against the darkness. Against a dragon that is too much for any mere man. He thinks of her perfect, lovely, best ever smile as sleep, fatigue, and a tiredness from so many days in the wasteland overwhelm him.
Her smile will keep the nightmare away.
Snapshot.
The red desert, east of Tucson.
We must be near the Y where I found the staked-out bodies. The warning the Horde had left. Please . . .
Snapshot.
He feels her hand.
It is a darkness beyond anything he has ever known.
Like the night I walked after the moon had gone down. The night after the motel.
It is quiet. Thick and heavy. Familiar.
He wakes with a start.
He is back in the office. The office where he found the last words of Sergeant Major Preston. He is lying in his sleeping bag.
I never made it back. I’ve been so sick I’ve stayed here too long.
In the hall outside he hears voices. A bright knife of light cuts the carpet on the floor.
“Dad?” says his son.
“It’s me,” replies the Old Man.
“Are you okay?”
Am I?
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry?”
If I am, it means I am well and that I’ll live.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get you something to eat. Be back in a few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
And he falls once more into the pit that almost took him and he does not have time to think of her, his granddaughter, or her smile. And so the nightmare comes and he has nothing with which to defend himself.
The snapshots fall together too quickly and soon become a movie.
He sees the blue Arizona sky, wide and seemingly forever, play out across the high windows. For a long time he watches the bright white clouds come and grow across its cornflower blue depths.
He hears an explosion. Dull, far away. It rattles the windows of the building. When he stands up and moves to the window, he sees a far-off column of black smoke rising out over the silent city. For a long time he stands watching the smoky, dark column. He feels unconnected and
shaky. Occasionally he sees his fellow villagers moving down a street or exiting from a building. It is too far away to tell who each one is. But they are dressed differently than he has ever known them to dress. Almost new clothing, found here in this treasure trove, not the worn-out and handmade things of their years in the desert.
Time has resumed its normal pace. The sickness and fever fade. But not the nightmare. The nightmare remains, waiting for him.
What will become of us now?
Down the street, he sees a man pushing a grand piano out onto the sidewalk.
Chapter 3
Sam Roberts leans his blistered head against the hot steering wheel. Every ounce of him feels sunburned and sickened. He’d torn off the rearview mirror of the dune buggy three days ago. He couldn’t stand seeing what was happening to him.
The dune buggy rests in the thin shade provided by an ancient building, part of some lost desert gas station. Now that he’s running on electric, the gas within the buggy’s small tank is useless, dead weight now that he has escaped. He’d only needed it for speed in the brief run through the gauntlet of crazies lying in wait outside the blasted main entrance of the bunker.
The sun hammers the dry and quiet landscape of hard brown dirt, blistered-faded road, and sun-bleached stone. The yawning blue of the sky reaches away toward the curvature of the earth. There is no wind, no movement, no sound.
Sam Roberts has spent the morning allowing the solar cells to recharge while patching the large rear tire. His sweat pours through the radiation burns on his skin. He feels it on his head where there was once hair. His eyes are closed. Even with the visor down, it is too bright at noon.
‘But I can’t drive in the dark,’ he thinks.
He was born underground.
He has lived his entire life, other than the last three days, underground.
He is dying of severe radiation poisoning.
He is twenty-three years old.
He is a captain in the United States Air Force.
He moves his bleeding fingers to the ignition. The act of grasping the key and simply turning it feels as though it will kill him.
“I was dead the moment I left,” he says to the dry air and the southern nothingness he must find his way through. “I was dead the moment someone turned on that radio station.”
He laughs to himself and begins to cough and that leads to the rusty blood he spits into his glove.