The Savage Boy

by Nick Cole

That . . .

  The “who” of his revenge was easier to think about than the “why.” The “why” was too painful. Much too painful.

  He saw the face of the leader who came to take her. He was the “who” of his revenge. The object of his revenge.

  And in fact . . .

  He saw Sausalito. Their little walled city. Their wall.

  All of them behind that wall, they were the “who” . . .

  Of his revenge.

  This is how everything went wrong, Boy. Don’t you see? Revenge. Hatred. Fire. Boy, there is no good end to this.

  Revenge.

  He left the fire burning near her grave.

  HE RODE UP through the sea grass to the old western road. The One.

  He could see her fire burning in the fog.

  Let it burn forever.

  In the east the sky was light and the fog was turning white.

  This ain’t a way to go, Boy. Forget this and live. Live. That’s all you got to do in this world now. Keep on livin’ until humanity gets a chance to start again. You do this and you’ll set it back. Hell, you might even break it altogether. The world can’t take much more.

  Revenge.

  He turned and the fire near her grave was gone, swallowed. Lost to the fog.

  Who am I now?

  Revenge.

  53

  IT WAS NIGHT when he moved down among them and their camps at the southern end of the bay.

  The Psychos and their bare chests. Their war paint and muddy hair. Blood and mohawks.

  The Boy had watched them from the low hills all day, their boats and rafts taking shape, wood and oil drums dragged in from the ruins.

  They would attack tonight.

  He had watched them for three days. The mood—their mood was grim, and in the last hours before night the fires started and the dances began.

  They’re working themselves up to attack, Sergeant.

  Don’t do this thing, Boy.

  I have to.

  No. You don’t. You want to, but you don’t have to, Boy. There’s a difference.

  He patted Horse.

  There’s enough grass and water from this stream. If I’m not back tomorrow you’ll pull that stake up and go. Take yourself off somewhere high into the mountains. Find wild mustangs.

  In the dark he walks down among them.

  He was painted in blood. His own.

  The long hair that once hung straight down over his left eye, the weak side, was gone, shaved. Only the wild strip of the Mohawk, stiff with mud rose from his scalp. Among the tangled hair, a broken feather.

  They drank and rioted in their twirling, bumping dance. There were drums all along the shore.

  Hot liquid gushed from a skin and burned his throat. The stuff was raw and as he coughed, he couldn’t catch his breath. When he did he screamed at the world because he was still alive. The wild-eyed Psychos, leering and toothless, gaped happily at the Boy’s reaction.

  The men feasted on torn game, greasy and dripping on spits. Women laughed wickedly as they drank and worked the mohawks of their men into spikes hardened by mud and shining with the fat of slaughtered animals roasting nearby. Their babble was little more than cackles and grunts. Occasionally the Boy detected a stray once-word. A “gunna” or a “sump’in’ killah.”

  Amidst the pressing throng, wild with delirium, he asked, “Where are you now, Jin?”

  I feel more alone than all those winter nights in the bear cave or cold days on the road.

  Or when the lions chased me.

  Where are you now?

  At midnight the moon was gone and the wind was warm.

  A blacksmith worked near a hot fire putting edges to their weapons. The Boy found a saw and set to work cutting down the long barrel of the breech loader.

  I won’t trust you anymore, he said to his withered hand. You failed me when I need you most and I won’t trust you anymore.

  A chieftain howled and the savages fell silent. The babble that passed from the chief’s swollen and split lips erupted up from a barrel belly and massive chest, sending the warriors to their boats.

  The Boy found himself paddling a canoe loaded with other paddling warriors as they crossed the bay. The flotilla kept a tight formation as it passed the pile of the once-city of San Francisco. Ahead, the lights of Sausalito were thin and few. To the east of the Chinese outpost—at its very gates, in fact—MacRaven’s armies gathered around campfires that rose along the hills of the little bay.

  You don’t need to do this, Boy. They’ll take your revenge for you. They’ll pay them back, if that means anything to you.

  How could they take . . . her life? He thought between paddle strokes. The other men grunted and sweated. The Boy could smell the liquor oozing out of their skin.

  I don’t know, Boy. Maybe I thought I did. But now I don’t know anymore. I know that there’s good in the world. Good as long as it still exists in people like you. But if you do this . . . if you get to that place you’ll need to go to do this . . . then maybe all the good that’s left will have gone out of the world.

  You don’t exist, Sergeant.

  I did, Boy. I did.

  I have to know why. Why did they do this to her?

  You’ll never know.

  You don’t know that.

  I do, Boy. I do. ’Cause there won’t be a reason that ever makes enough sense to you.

  The oars and paddles, even the hands that strike at the bay, were stopped. The flotilla lay drifting in the water near a small island just off the coast of Sausalito.

  It was cold and quiet. The long night wound toward morning, and even though there was no light to betray the coming dawn, the Boy knew it was close, and so did the Psychos. Arms were flexed, spears laid across knees. The Boy felt his tomahawk at his side. The cut-down rifle was now a long pistol in his belt.

  “Ancha!” roared a voice in the dark. The flotilla surged forward as oars and hands struck the water. Every Psycho was pulling hard for the few lights rising above the seawall of Sausalito.

  On land, beyond the eastern gate, on the far side of the little city, torches from the camps of MacRaven’s Army surged toward the walls. It was still too dark for targeted gunfire as the torches gathered beneath the defenses.

  The Boy’s canoe pulled forward, cutting through the still water and low-lying fog. The men about him said nothing. They wanted their surprise to be total. Ahead, the low-lying seawall shielded their advance from any view along the street that led to the gate.

  The gate where I first saw Jin. The first time Jin saw me.

  And.

  Where we began.

  The canoe slammed into the rocks and the savages were wading through the water, spears upraised. Someone whooped and they were over the walls.

  And what happened next was not the Boy.

  A Chinese guard running for the gate fell to the tomahawk as it slammed into his back.

  Broken glass.

  Screams.

  A whistle.

  The Chinese gathered about the gate to the inner city. The guards were waiting for orders. They raised their rifles as a pack of screaming Psychos raced into the streets. The guards opened fire. A few Psychos went down but the bloodthirsty tribesmen were on them, hacking and screaming above pleas for mercy.

  The Boy wiped the blood from his axe and slipped up through the winding alleyways of the inner city.

  He found gardens colored like dull jade in the steaming morning light. Mansions rose up into the fog. Birds sang above the far din of battle on the other side of the gate, on the far side of the wall.

  He heard the distant high note of the space crossbow. MacRaven’s space crossbow.

  He smelled smoke and heard crashing wood, once delicate, splintering into shards.

  He heard the gunfire beyond the walls.

  The cannon roared in distant cracks.

  He saw the shaven-headed man break from a stand of collapsing defenders as Psychos leap the hasty barricade, spearing an
d cutting.

  Shaven-head raced farther up the street, and disappeared into the drifting blue gun smoke of the falling defenders. The Boy loped after him knowing the man will lead him to the rest; to all the killers, the slayers of Jin. And finally to their tall leader who smiled at him as the roof burned and Jin was dragged away and into the darkness.

  Shaven-head raced up and into the quiet neighborhood of stately mansions that rise along the hill above the little city. Servants and the occasional woman peer out into the streets, their questions evident. He darted into a heady garden, crossed a delicate and ornate bridge made of teak. He pulled urgently at a paper door that led into a house, his voice shouting at someone within.

  When the man, sweating, turns to cast a worried eye back at the falling defenders, he sees the Boy running hard up through the garden that surrounds the house.

  Shaven-head pulls the screen aside and enters, disappearing.

  The Boy takes the curving wooden stairs that lead through the garden and hacks the paper screen door to pieces. Inside he smells jasmine and his mind roars red with anger. Anger at Shao Fan, anger that he has carried her scent from the place of her hanging to here.

  As if it were his to keep.

  As if she were his.

  A gunshot cracked sharply across the interior of the house.

  In the central court within the house he found Shao Fan, whose pupils are wide above the barrel of a smoking rifle. He seemed not to recognize the Boy.

  Shaven-head was dead, flung away like a forgotten rag doll, his arms covering his face.

  Shao Fan retreated, running to a far door and throwing himself beyond it.

  The Boy pulled his pistol, the cut-down rifle, from his belt and advanced through the courtyard.

  The Boy heard his own feet, hard thumps on the soft wood of the walkway that led to the door. In the instant before he heard the gunfire that came from the far side of the door, he heard the metallic sound of a rifle breech being snapped back into place. The Boy threw himself sideways as the paper door erupted in splinters and acrid smoke.

  The Boy charged through the screen, breaking what’s left of it open with the tomahawk.

  Shao Fan, eyes wild and wide, broke the breech of his rifle and slipped another long bullet into the barrel. The assassin snapped the breech back into place. In the space of the moment in which the assassin nodded to himself, assured that the rifle was ready to fire, and before he raised it to fire, the dull silver tomahawk appeared buried in his chest. He stared at the axe in stunned and wide-eyed silence, stared as if in the moment before, it had not been there, and in the moment after, it had always been there.

  He continued to try and raise the rifle but his arms would not respond. He felt life leaving him all at once.

  He was afraid. He realized how underappreciated this moment before dying was.

  If there were just more time, thought Shao Fan, raising his head, looking into the eyes of the savage boy charging across his bedroom.

  Pistol raised.

  Mouth roaring.

  There were tears in the eyes of this savage that Shao Fan now recognizes, as his vision surrendered to a closing black circle.

  Be careful who you love.

  And then the pistol erupted in the hands of the savage and Shao Fan was no more.

  THE BOY PASSED through the rape of the last Chinese outpost. It was the same as Auburn and even worse, he thought, as if seeing it all from far away.

  He passed the dead guards at the gate, stepping over them. Beyond them, another guard was moving and bleeding, crawling toward the water. Numbly the Boy passed on.

  He found a small canoe and set out across the bay.

  Alone, the work of paddling the canoe was hard.

  His left side was weak. But he did not care about it anymore.

  You’ll do your work. Same as the other side.

  The day was hot and he reached the far side, the southern end of the bay, by noon.

  The air smelled of sage and dust.

  Behind him, black columns of smoke rose in the north. He could barely see the colony. It was as if it never existed.

  He climbed the low hills and found Horse.

  They rode south along the old 101.

  He was tired and his eyes felt too heavy, but he pushed on until twilight.

  At dusk he built a fire near a long, flat bridge over a dry riverbed. He sat staring into the fire.

  In time he heard the rider coming up along his trail.

  The Boy took up his pack and loaded it onto Horse.

  He scanned the murky darkness and saw only the dim outline of another figure.

  The big bay horse clattered along the road and the rider drew up just beyond the reach of the firelight. The form was familiar. But the darkness hid everything. It was the hat, the Stetson hat, that gave away the rider, and then the voice, dry and friendly.

  “Thought you might be asleep by now,” said Dunn. “Figured you’d be all wore out after goin’ ashore with them savages last night. All that blood and mayhem and fire makes a man tired, don’t it?”

  The Boy stood near Horse. The tomahawk was in his hand. The pistol, loaded, waited in the saddle on Horse.

  Horse complained.

  Easy, boy.

  “Been following you since Auburn. Thought I’d catch up to you inside the Chinese base. But surprise, surprise, I found yer horse all staked out and waiting. Figured you’d slipped in amongst the crazies. But I knew you’d be back for yer horse.”

  The Boy said nothing.

  “So I waited with my new pistols. Just like MacRaven’s.”

  The Boy waited to hear the hammer of Dunn’s guns being thumbed back.

  Maybe he rode up with them ready to go.

  Sergeant . . . ?

  “Raleigh was a good man. Didn’t deserve what you did to him.”

  Man’s come a long way to talk, Boy. Figures he’s earned hisself a speech. He won’t do nothin’ till he’s got it all out.

  “Him and I was partners long before you ever come outta . . .”

  So whatever you got to do, Boy. Do it now!

  “More’n partners in fact, he was . . .”

  In the moment the Boy threw the tomahawk, he meant it. He threw it not just at Dunn, but at a world that was cruel and made of stone.

  Don’t let it go unless you mean to, Boy.

  The aim was true but it caught Dunn’s horse in the throat as Dunn jerked at the reins to protect himself.

  The horse screamed.

  Dunn fired.

  Two thundering roars erupted from Dunn’s pistols.

  Two wet slaps.

  The Boy felt the spray of Horse’s blood across his face as he turned and reached for the saddle, a moment later spinning away from Horse, the pistol extended toward Dunn, who rode his mount into the earth, stepping off in one smooth motion, dropping his pistols for the wicked knife he kept on his belt.

  The Boy fired and Dunn fell dead, back over his fallen horse.

  Flung back.

  Put down.

  Dead.

  The Boy turned back to Horse, who looked up at him from the road once more.

  That Horse look of contempt.

  Resignation.

  Forgiveness.

  Horse laid his long head down against the cracked and broken highway as his eyes closed finally, firmly, as if to say, I’m done with the world.

  Epilogue

  WHERE DO YOU go now, Boy?

  The road turned south and the days were long and hot. A narrow valley wound its way along the coastal mountains and would continue on all the way to Los Angeles. Or what was left of it now.

  But in the days that followed, the Boy turned from the 101, limping, and climbed the smooth grassy hills to the east, soft gentle hills, rising and falling in waves of green grass.

  He dragged his body over the hills, his left side aching, withered, refusing to go farther.

  He continued on.

  On the other side of the hills, he
found a wide valley that stretched away in a brown haze to the south.

  Who am I now?

  He stood in the gusting wind atop the hills.

  He continued down into the hot valley.

  Ancient roads, ruptured and disintegrating, overrun by erupting wild growth, crossed from east to west. All else was dry and brown, hard dirt and sun-rotten dead wood.

  Fires had crossed the valley and there remained little of what once was.

  Rusty water towers, fallen and gouged.

  Wild tangles of barbed wire.

  Fallen walls of blackened stone.

  He crossed the old Interstate 5 and continued down into the heat of the valley.

  The trees here would not grow. They were stunted and sickly and even the ground seemed either unnaturally dark or washed out and spent altogether. Thorns, of which there are many, grew in wicked profusions of ochre, sickly green or pus yellow.

  In a village of adobe walls he found misshapen men and women. All of them were blind and dragging themselves along through the dirt. They ate from sickly stands of a dark green kale that gave off a foul aroma when they stewed it inside an old oil drum filled with brackish water.

  They knew he was there and they searched for him, but their keening and sniffing in the dusty heat after his scent repulses him and he goes on into the silences beyond their village.

  Stands of palm trees clustered in sinister groups as if talking about him and though their shade would be welcome, and maybe even their fruit, he went wide to avoid their dark and fetid clusterings.

  In the night he slept in an old grain silo and thought that he should hear birds in its rafters or the bony trees outside.

  He could not remember when he last heard the song of a bird.

  He drank water from a standing pond because he could no longer stand the ragged dry trench that was his throat. He saw the footprints of the blind villagers in the hard-packed soil.

  They too had drunk here.

  Blind would not be so bad.

  In the still water he saw a monster.

  A monster with red-rimmed eyes that reflected no light, no life. A face and chest covered in blood and dried mud. Horse’s blood. Muddy, knotted hair and a broken feather. Lips cracked and bleeding.

  A monster.

  He wandered south, following the twisting ribbon of the once-highway through a silent land of rust and scrub. He caught small things and felt little desire and even less satisfaction in the thin, greasy meals that resulted.