by Jon Cronshaw
“Where did you find this?” Abel asks, smiling. He picks up the ball, wrinkling his nose at the coating of dirt and dog slobber. With an underarm throw, he tosses the ball along the asphalt, watching as it bounces unpredictably. Pip chases it, catches it, and returns. She drops the ball at his feet. He throws it again, this time harder. Again, she chases it, catches it, and brings it back.
“You’re a good girl,” he says, patting her side. He turns and shimmies down the embankment to a clearing. Dead pines loom above, their branches brittle and bony, their bark a deathly-grey. Pip watches him from above.
An old pickup truck lies half-sunk into the ground. Next to that stands the rusted husk of a car, barely recognisable as a vehicle. On the far side of the clearing, farthest from the highway, a van with dented sides rests beneath the trees. A patch of brown rust stretches along its side, and a curved crack creeps along its windscreen.
A circle of stones, a charred log coated in dust, and a few empty tins stand silent in the centre of the clearing. Abel looks around and crouches to inspect the fire. Half-a-dozen green shoots stretch from the ground within the circle of stones, one of them twisting around the charred log. He nods to himself and strides over to the van. Reaching the passenger door, he tries the handle and finds the door locked. He walks to the driver’s side, pulls the handle, shakes it, and then stumbles back when it creaks open on its rusted hinges. The cabin smells rotten and musty, and there’s the hint of something dead. Taking hold of the steering wheel, he pulls himself up onto the bench seat and looks around, his backpack forcing him to lean forward. He fingers a folded newspaper resting on the dashboard, bleached by the sun and brittle to the touch. He picks it up and squints at the faded print, nothing more than watery grey impressions crumbling to dust between his fingers. He drops the newspaper outside and reaches over to open the glovebox. Inside, he finds a book. He takes it out and examines the cover, bent into waves by damp. “Road atlas,” he mutters. Using only the tips of his thumb and forefinger, he lifts the pages with care, following the coloured line and mouthing the words under his breath. He strokes his beard, looks around the cabin, and slips the book into his backpack.
Dropping down from the cabin, he walks around to the rear of the van and considers the pair of doors. The dead branches rattle around him. A dusty pine cone cracks under his feet. He tries the handle to no avail. “Damn it,” he whispers. He looks up at the doors, picks up the newspaper, and walks back to the highway.
When he reaches the road, he finds the wizard scraping dust from the side of the cart with his sleeve. He looks over his shoulder towards Abel. “Anything?” he asks.
“I need you to work your magic on some locked doors. There’s a van down there, but I can’t get in.”
“What you got?” the wizard asks, gesturing to the newspaper.
“I was hoping I could make out some of the words. If not, we’ve got some kindling.”
The wizard cocks his head. “You think there’s something in there?”
Abel gives a slight nod and a half-smile. “Only one way to find out.”
The wizard takes the reins and leads the mule in a half-circle to face the cart back west. “Let’s find a place to hide this,” he says, patting the cart.
Abel looks around for Pip and whistles. She comes to him, chewing on the rubber ball, rotating it in her mouth as drool cascades from between her back teeth and hangs elastic. She stops and shakes, her ears flapping wildly. A thick glob of white drool strings across her face. Abel laughs.
“Come here, girl,” he says. Reaching behind him, he pulls a cloth from the side-pocket of his backpack and uses it to wipe her face.
“That’s disgusting,” the wizard says.
“She’s just having fun.” Abel turns his attention to Pip, crouches to one knee, and rubs her behind the ears. “You’re just having fun, aren’t you, girl?”
She lets out sharp exhalations with her nose, her tail wagging. She drops the ball at Abel’s feet and hops back a few steps, her long pink tongue flapping out of the side of her mouth. He picks up the slimy ball with the cloth and wipes it clean. He gets to his feet and hurls the ball west along the highway. A smile spreads across his face as Pip sprints to fetch it.
He walks alongside the wizard until they reach a cluster of apple trees.
“This will do,” the wizard says, leading the mule from the road, the cart’s wheels making a dull thud when they drop down onto the bare soil. He opens a rear door to the cart and crawls inside before emerging a few seconds later with the steel rod.
Abel leads the way to the van and gives a helpless shrug when confronted with the locked rear doors. The wizard thrusts the rod's spiked end into the gap between the doors, a few inches above the handle. They manipulate the rod back and forth, pushing with all their weight and strength until something snaps and the doors swing open.
When the dust clears, they find the van empty. Abel jumps inside and looks around, his back hunched against the low ceiling. He hops down and scratches his beard. “Oh well,” he says. “Worth a try.”
The wizard frowns and gestures towards the campfire. “We should get out of here.”
Abel follows his gaze and pats the wizard on the shoulder. “See those green shoots?”
“So?”
“So, it means that’s an old campfire. If that fire was recent, there wouldn’t be any shoots.”
The wizard nods, his body relaxing. “You get anything from that?” he asks, pointing to the pickup truck.
“Nope. Let’s take a look.”
They walk across the clearing and approach the truck. Abel opens the passenger door, pulling against the stiffness. Curled flecks of red paint crumble to the ground in flakes, revealing the brown smears of rust and rot beneath. He scrunches his nose at the stench of decaying upholstery and sun-blistered vinyl.
He bangs his head on the roof with a start at the sound of the wizard’s whoop. “Damn it,” he says, removing his cap and rubbing his crown.
The wizard grins, waving a plastic petrol can, a faded pinkish-red with a black screw-top. “You won’t believe this,” he says, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“What is it?” asks Abel, still rubbing the back of his head.
“There is still some diesel in here,” he says, his eyes bright.
“So?”
“We can make some magic.”
7. Moby Dick
Abel shudders against the cold as purple clouds unwind around the setting sun. As requested, he places a saucepan on the bare ground between the cart and the fire.
The wizard breaks the packing foam into tiny pieces, letting them fall into the saucepan.
Abel looks up, squinting. “Are you sure this will work?”
The wizard nods and hands him a sturdy length of smooth pine, three-feet-long, with a rich yellow lustre.
“Don’t touch anything with your skin,” the wizard says. “And you might want to keep your dog from sniffing around.”
Abel looks over to Pip and frowns. Pip rests on her belly a few feet away from the fire, nibbling at clumps of fur above her front paws.
With concern etched across his brow, he looks down at the packing foam. The wizard unscrews the cap to the petrol can, filling the air with its volatile odour, and pours a few drops into the pan.
“It’s not going to hurt you,” says the wizard. “Stir it. The packing foam will soak up the fuel.”
Abel takes a few small steps forward, covering his nose with his left forearm as he dips the length of pine into the gooey mixture and stirs. He glances at the wizard for reassurance. “This okay?”
“Yeah. Just keep stirring.” The wizard pours more fuel into the mixture and adds a few more chunks of packing foam.
Abel coughs and turns his face away while continuing to stir. “What is this stuff?” he asks. “It smells disgusting.”
A dark smile curls across the wizard’s lips, his eyes twinkling. “Ever heard of napalm?”
Abel inclines
his head slightly. “Nope.”
Abel leans against the wizard’s cart, reading under his breath as he balances his copy of Moby Dick on his legs, his right forefinger following the words. He strokes Pip absently with his left hand, rubbing the back of her neck as she rests her head in his lap.
“What you reading for?” the wizard asks.
Abel looks up with a start. “It’s from before. It’s called Moby Dick.”
“That’s not what I asked. Why you reading?”
A frown passes over Abel’s face. He folds the top corner of the right-hand page, closes the book, and makes a show of considering the question. After several seconds, he gives a shrug. “To learn stuff,” he says. “Wisdom.”
“Yeah? What you learn?”
“I don’t know. Lots of stuff, I suppose.”
“What’s that one?”
Abel looks down at the faded paperback, its pages browned and cover faded. He examines the picture of the whale, its whiteness greyed and mottled.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
Pip jumps to her feet and shakes. She bows, stretches, and yawns, her mouth gaping open and tongue curling.
“What’s so important about that book?”
Abel shakes his head and lets out a deep sigh. “It’s a story, is all.”
The wizard smirks. “You think we need stories? How are stories going to help us out here?” He makes a sweeping gesture with outstretched arms.
“That’s exactly why we need stories,” Abel says, watching Pip wander into a gap between two bushes. “When I read, I’m in another world, another place. You can learn lessons from before. It makes you think about things, makes you see things in different ways.”
“I don’t get it,” the wizard says.
The moon shines bright and brilliant in the clear sky. Abel crouches next to the wizard, using a thorn bush for cover as he watches the campervan through the binoculars. “Two of them are sleeping by a campfire,” he whispers. “The woman’s just wandering around.” He hands the binoculars to the wizard.
“I can take out those two if you kill the woman,” the wizard says, looking through the lenses.
Abel frowns and clenches his jaw. “I’m not killing anyone.”
The wizard drops his binoculars and turns to him with a sneer. “You need to get real, man.”
“No,” Abel says, firmly.
The wizard shakes his head and lifts the binoculars back up to his eyes. “So what’s the plan?”
“We wait until she wanders away. I’m sure she’ll need to go to the toilet at some point. There’s two of them — they’re asleep and we can catch them unaware. I’ve got my pistol, and I’ll let you work your magic.”
The pair huddle next to each other in the dark, watching the woman for more than an hour before she leaves her post and strides across the asphalt towards the trees. “This is it,” says Abel, pushing himself to his feet on stiff, creaking knees.
“Give it a minute,” says the wizard, tugging at Abel’s sleeve.
With his breath held, Abel focuses on the van, its roof glowing silver against the pale moon, its nearside rippling with the reflected orange from the flames. Taking the binoculars, he sweeps the area. The men lie curled next to their campfire, their jackets rolled up to form makeshift pillows. There is no sign of the woman.
“Let’s go,” he says, taking out his pistol and picking up the wizard’s steel rod.
They cross the highway and creep along the edge of the asphalt, ducking as they run. Abel looks behind him to see the wizard holding the saucepan outstretched. “Do you need me to slow down?” he asks.
“You go straight for the van. I’ll deal with the men.”
Abel jogs past the campfire and opens the campervan door. He turns his face away from the stench of urine, vomit, faeces, and infection. One of the kids wakes up in a daze, her eye sockets rimmed with purple — a plez addict. “Come on,” he whispers, tucking his pistol under his left arm and holding out a hand.
Behind him, he catches a bright flash in the corner of his eye and turns in time to see a lump of burning napalm landing on one of the men’s faces. For a split second, all the sound from the world seems to disappear. Then the man lets out a pained, agonised scream.
“What are you doing?” Abel asks the wizard, his eyes widening.
“You got your code. I got mine. Get the kids and get out of here.”
Abel sticks his head inside the van. “Wake up,” he cries.
The girl falls back into a stupor and the other kids remain still, their collars chained to a central pole. Abel picks up a length of steel pipe, no longer than his forefinger, and frowns at the scorched end. A half-eaten chunk of charred meat lies abandoned in one of the kid’s laps. “Come on,” he pleads. But they don’t move.
He tugs his beard, his heart racing. “Come on,” he says again. But his words fall useless.
Stepping backwards, he sees the wizard standing over the two men, a wicked grin plastered across his face as the end of the napalm stick burns incandescent against the night. One of the men lies curled in a tight ball, his hands clawing at his burnt face while the other man stares up at the wizard, cursing.
Abel turns with a start as the woman emerges from the woods, aiming at them with her rifle. His eyes dart to the wizard, to the woman, to the van, to the men, and back to the woman. He raises his pistol and aims it at the woman. “Drop your rifle,” he says.
The woman lets out a cold laugh.
“Drop your rifle. If you make one more move, the wizard will destroy you with a fireball, like he did your friend here.”
“What you done?” the woman asks, still aiming her rifle. “What you done to him?”
The wizard clears his throat. “You can tell the Family that the Great Alfonso, the Wizard of the Wasteland, cast his spell of magical fire.”
Abel looks past the wizard as one of the men crawls to his rifle. “No,” he calls. The wizard turns, his eyes widening at the sight of the rifle pointed at the side of his head.
The wizard lets out a wild laugh. “A stalemate. You have two choices. You can let us walk away or we can fight. My magic is very powerful, and I wouldn’t like your chances.”
“Or you could surrender and release the kids,” says Abel.
The woman laughs. “You know what the Family will do to us if we let them go?” Her eyes narrow as she exchanges glances with the man. She shakes her head and lowers her rifle. “Go,” she says. “Come near us again and we’ll kill you.”
“Put your weapons on the ground,” says Abel, walking over to the van.
“What are you doing?” the wizard asks, stepping over to him. “We need to go.”
He feels the yank of his sleeve as the wizard drags him away. “What about the kids?”
“We need to go,” the wizard repeats, backing away along the highway, his body trembling.
“You nearly killed that guy,” Abel says, bristling. He leans back against the wizard’s cart as he stares into the darkness. He makes out the shape of the wizard fumbling in his robes.
“I wish I had.” The wizard takes out a matchbox and gives it a shake.
“You don’t mean that.” Abel says.
“We should have killed them when we had the chance.” The wizard strikes a match. He leans forward and holds it against strips of newspaper stuffed into the pile of sticks. “They’re going to be looking for us now, hunting us.” He meets Abel’s gaze with a scowl. “It was a stupid idea.”
Abel glares at the wizard, his fists clenched.
“What?” the wizard snaps.
“I just know we could have saved them. We were so close.”
The wizard lets out a sharp sniff and crouches before the gathering flames, rubbing his hands, his back to Abel. “They were beyond saving,” he says. “You saw them.”
“They were just messed-up on plez.” He stares down at his grimy palms.
“They were too screwed-up, man. I could have died.”
Abel picks at the skin along his left thumb, scraping down its side with the nail of his forefinger until he feels the sting of torn flesh. He sighs, gets up, and sits next to the wizard by the fire. “I worry about you,” he says. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?”
The wizard flashes him a glare, reflections of the orange flames dancing in his eyes. “I do what I need to survive.”
“Do you not care about those kids?”
“Of course, I care,” the wizard says, his voice little more than a whisper. “But what can we do? We tried.”
Abel takes a stick and tosses it onto the fire. He listens to the crackling and hissing twigs. “We can try again.” he says. “If we give up now, those kids will have no life.”
“And we’ll have no life if the Family come after us, or if things go bad again.”
“We should at least try. We didn’t really have a plan going in.”
“That’s for sure.” The wizard shakes his head. “It’s over, man. They’re going to be expecting us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re out looking for us now.”
Abel flips up his jacket collar and leans towards the warmth. Pip lies on the ground next to him. She turns and flops her head onto his thigh, her big eyes looking up at him. He strokes behind her ears. “I’m not so sure,” he says after a long moment.
“Huh?” says the wizard.
“I don’t think the Family are going to come after us. They seemed too concerned about what would happen to them if they didn’t have those kids.”
“Maybe,” the wizard says, prodding the fire with a stick. “Trouble is, they’ll be looking out for us now.”
8. The Machine
Ruined buildings loom around them, their walls twisting and cracking against the fractured earth. Dust-coated telegraph cables lie limp along the rough ground. Vines and weeds force their way through potholes and torn asphalt, their red and purple flowers pungent with a sickly-sweet odour. Pip bolts past, chasing a rat into the shadows of a damaged building, its remaining wall bent and contorted, like a man hunched over in pain. She emerges a few moments later, the rat twitching in her grasp.