King of the Wasteland: Follow-up to Knight of the Wasteland

by Jon Cronshaw

  Sis takes up a rifle, sweeping her gaze along the fence. “Two people watching gate.” She stops abruptly, the rifle barrel dipping as she glances up at Abel, her bottom lip quivering.

  “What is it?”

  “Cross.” She turns away, covering her face.

  “Let me see.” Abel takes the rifle from Sis and looks through the sight, following the fence until he meets the towering crucifix. He follows the wooden beam from the bottom, and stops when he sees Jacob hanging limp from the cross beam, nails driven into his wrists and ankles. “Geez.” Abel turns to Sal. “Jacob’s gone.”

  Sal shakes her head and grabs the rifle out of his hands. “How do you do this?”

  “Look through the eye bit,” Abel mutters, gesturing.

  Sal points the rifle towards the cross and lingers over it for several seconds. “How could they do this?” She hands the rifle back to Sis.

  Sis gasps. “He just moved. He still alive.”

  Sal snatches the rifle from her, fumbling as she raises the sight to her eye, staring through the lens. “We can't get him, can we? It's too dangerous, isn't it?”

  “I think we can see what they do,” Abel says. “We can't get him. I’m so sorry.”

  Sal nods. “Right,” she says, taking in a sharp breath.

  “We should go.” Abel looks up at the sky. “I think we’ve got about an hour of sunlight left. We can push through and get back to the Grid, but it will mean travelling at night. We can look for somewhere to camp. What do you—” He starts as a loud crack comes from the rifle.

  Sal turns to him slowly, her finger trembling over the trigger. “He is with God now,” she says.

  21. The Fight

  Abel walks at David’s side as a cold wind whistles through the branches of dead pines. They push west, making their way uphill towards the grey sun. Sal walks briskly ahead, her chin raised. Behind them, Sis stands in frozen sentry, scanning the highway with her rifle.

  “You think she’s okay?” David asks, running a hand along the central barrier, allowing the layer of brownish-grey dust to gather in a pile.

  After a long pause, Abel shakes his head. “I don’t know, kid.”

  “You can’t leave it like this. She shot Jacob.”

  “It’s not that simple, kid.” Abel picks up the pace, his hands curling into fists. He looks back when David stops. “What?”

  “I’m worried about her.” He prises a length of vine away from the central barrier, testing its springiness. “You should be too.”

  Jaw tensing, Abel looks back over his shoulder towards Sal. “I am worried, kid.”

  “Then go speak to her.”

  “Now?”

  David nods.

  Abel sighs and jogs forward, his foot catching on a discarded hubcap. After fifty metres, he catches up to Sal.

  She ignores him.

  “Sal?”

  She keeps walking.

  Abel runs in front of her. “Sal, please.”

  Coming to a halt, Sal looks at Abel as if noticing him for the first time. “Abel?” she manages, her voice a dry whisper.

  “You okay?”

  She rolls her shoulder back when he goes to place a hand on her arm. “Don’t.”

  “Talk to me, Sal. What happened back there?”

  Sal dips her head. Swallowing, she looks up at Abel, the whites of her eyes red from tears. “I...” She shudders and pushes her head against Abel’s chest.

  He places an arm around her and lets her sob, forcing a smile as David and Sis watch from a distance.

  “It’s okay,” Abel whispers. “You can get through this.”

  “They killed Jacob,” she says, lifting her head. “They crucified him.”

  “Right.” Abel bites his bottom lip, looking away.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she says, stepping back.

  “You did what you had to, I guess.”

  Sal shakes her head. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry.” Abel removes his cap and brushes a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to think.” He meets Sal’s gaze, pulse thundering in his skull.

  She lets out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know either. I just knew in that moment...” Her words turn into a sharp exhalation.

  Abel reaches into his pack and takes out his water bottle. “Here,” he says. “Have a drink.”

  Sal wipes her eyes and forces a half-smile. She unscrews the bottle’s top and sniffs inside before taking a sip. “Thank you.”

  Placing his cap back on his head, Abel takes the bottle and brings it up to his lips. “I’m here for you.” He takes a drink and looks over towards David and Sis. “Let’s keep moving. Wouldn’t want one of those raiders to catch up with us.”

  “No one come,” says Sis.

  “Good. We just need to keep focused on getting Sal back to the Grid.”

  “What’s Sal going to do now Jacob’s dead?” David asks.

  “Damn it, kid. Just give her—”

  “It’s fine, honestly,” Sal says. “Your friend’s right. Jacob built up a lot of trust with the people at the Grid. I don’t think they’re going to tolerate us for too long without him there.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe it’s real.”

  Abel sighs. “It is real, Sal. You need to focus. You’ve got a community of people who trust you and look up to you. I won’t tell anyone what happened back there, but you’re supposed to be a leader. You need to lead your people.”

  “Like in Exodus,” Sal says.

  Abel gives her a confused look.

  “It’s God stuff,” she says, smiling. “It’s all happened before.”

  “Right.” Abel nods then tilts his head. “Is that a good thing?”

  Sal shrugs and starts to walk. “I’ll have to make it a good thing.”

  “DAMN IT,” ABEL SAYS, coming to an abrupt halt at the Grid, the ancient cars spread out before him.

  Sal turns to him. “What is it?”

  “It looks like we’ve got a fight.”

  “A fight?”

  “Come on.” Abel marches forward, weaving through the cars and trucks, skipping over a bent exhaust pipe, coated in rust and lying across the path.

  Raised voices echo around them as a group of men and women pull two men apart as they beat each other in the dirt.

  “What in God’s name is going on?” Sal asks, placing a hand on her hip.

  Half the people stop and look at her, their eyes drifting towards Sis who stands with a drawn rifle. The two men on the ground stagger to their feet and brush themselves down, clumps of dirt cascading from their clothes, their faces bruised and bloody. The food shed lies on its side, door torn off, empty food tins spilling across the ground.

  “Well?” Sal asks, glowering.

  “They're hoarding,” a woman says. “They’re keeping the food to themselves.”

  “There’s not enough to go round,” a man snaps, wiping blood from his mouth. He shoots the woman a glare with his bright green eyes. “We were here first. You had your place.”

  Sal raises her hands in a placating gesture. “Will some of you please right that,” she says, pointing to the food hut. “I understand things are difficult. But we really need to work together.”

  “Where's Jacob?” a woman asks, her face lined with deep-set wrinkles, her eyes and hair the colour of dead pines.

  Sal shakes her head, her gaze dropping. “I—”

  “They killed him,” Abel says with a flat voice as the faces turn to him. “They crucified him, hung him from that cross like a piece of meat.” He gestures over his shoulder. “There was nothing we could have done.”

  “Did you speak to them?” the woman asks. “When can we go back?”

  Abel shakes his head. “It’s not going to happen. We turned around when we saw Jacob. They're not people we can reason with.”

  “We can't live like this,” the woman says, a pleading tone edging her voice. “We’re going to sta
rve.”

  “That’s if we haven’t killed each other first,” the green-eyed man says.

  “I can see things are getting a bit tense around here.” Abel looks around and swallows. “Jacob is gone. You will need to look to Sal. She led Trinity. And she—”

  “She led Trinity here,” the man growls. “And we’re going to suffer, because of her.” He points a grubby finger towards Sal.

  Sal steps forward. “I led my people here because I didn't want them to die. We will get Trinity back.”

  “How are we going to do that?” the woman asks.

  “There are more of us,” Sal says, raising her voice. “We can take Trinity back. We just need to be organised.”

  Abel shakes his head. “Sal, they’ve got weapons — rifles, shotguns, pistols.”

  “Big fence too,” Sis says. “Make it hard.”

  Sal moves over to a nearby car and scrambles onto its front, climbing up onto its sagging roof. She looks around at the faces gazing up at her. “It is clear that we cannot stay at the Grid. And it seems to me we have two choices. We can go our separate ways and try to find a new life, scraping for survival on the wastes.” She takes in a breath through her nose and raises her chin, sweeping her gaze. “Or we can stay together and take back what is ours.”

  An explosion of cheers comes from the residents.

  “Can't we start somewhere new?” the grey-haired woman asks, when the noise subsides.

  Abel shakes his head and moves over to the car. He scrambles onto the roof, standing next to Sal. “I can assure you, that won’t work. There’s a few hundred of you here. Without somewhere organised, a community already established that can sustain itself... you’re always going to be on the move. You’re going to suck the resources out of everywhere you visit—”

  “That's for sure,” the man with the green eyes says, swelling closing his right eye.

  “You need to work together,” Abel continues. “Jacob was doing some good work here. I remember what this place was like. I used to sleep in a car over there.” He points towards the Grid’s north end. “This place was hell. But Jacob helped change it. Jacob was also part of Trinity. If you help Sal’s people get Trinity back, you’ll get the Grid back.”

  “Or we could just kick you all out now,” the man says.

  Abel shrugs. “As is your right. But it’s hard out here. Once they get Trinity back, you’ll have somewhere much closer to trade with than the caravans.”

  “And what about us? You’re just going to up and leave us?”

  “We’ll make sure things are better here than when we first arrived. How does that sound?” Abel offers the man a smile.

  The man sneers. “We’ll see when Alf gets back. He’ll know what to do.”

  “That’s fine.” He turns to Sal. “What do you say?”

  Sal rubs the back of her hair and looks around the faces. “I think we can do that.”

  22. The Wizard

  Abel pokes at the fire with a stick as Sis and David sit at his side. “It’s been a pretty crazy few days, huh?”

  “Yeah,” David says. “I feel really bad for Jacob.”

  Sis gets up and leans down to grab her rifles.

  “You okay?” Abel asks, glancing up.

  “Don’t want to talk about dying. Going to find car to sleep in.”

  “Wait,” David says, jumping to his feet. “We don’t have to.” He turns to Abel. “Tell her a story. You’re good at stories. Tell her about the wizard.”

  Sis hesitates and then sits back down. “Not had story for long time.”

  Abel nods. “I’m sure I can think of a story.”

  “Becca used to put me in story.”

  “You want to be in a story?”

  Sis nods.

  Abel shrugs and places the stick down at his feet, rubbing his beard. “Once upon a time there was a girl called Sis who lived with her mummy and—” He stops himself, frowning, and clears his throat. “I'll start again. Once upon a time there was a girl called Sis and one day she made friends with a dog.”

  “Dogs bad,” Sis says.

  “No, no. This was a nice dog. She was friendly. She was called Pip.”

  Sis smiles.

  “Sis and Pip were best friends, and they travelled the roads together. One day, there was this wizard who cast magic spells and made everyone happy.”

  “What’s he called?”

  “The wizard?”

  Sis nods.

  “He was the Great Alfonso, and he had a mule that used to pull a cart around when he travelled between places. One day, Sis and Pip joined the wizard's magic show, and the wizard taught Sis how to do magic. She learnt how to make fire and how to make food. She could build houses from the ground that grew up into the sky like vines. But one day, a bad wizard came and tried to take Pip away from Sis. He was a terrible wizard with sharp teeth and glowing eyes. He was also a giant.”

  Sis dips her head behind a forearm. “I don't like this story.”

  “But Sis used her magic and made a big wall and stopped the bad wizard from taking Pip away. The bad wizard got bored and went away. And they lived happily ever after. The end.”

  “Is wizard still real?”

  “Which one?”

  Sis looks around. “The bad one.”

  “It’s just a story, Sis. Don’t sweat it.”

  Sis smiles and rolls over onto her side, stretching her feet towards the flames as the last flickers of lavender sunlight vanish over the Grid.

  ABEL LOOKS OUTSIDE, seeing movement through the car’s window. He opens the door, sliding outside, and closes it behind him. “Hey,” he says.

  Sal nods at him, her face creased with concern. “We need to figure out what to do next,” she says, almost out of breath. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure.” Abel follows Sal across the Grid, walking between cars as twinkling stars emerge above. A blinding fire burns iridescent in a steel drum as a dozen or so men and women huddle around its warmth. “Have you eaten? I’m famished.”

  “I shared a tin of beans with one of the parishioners earlier. They're running out of supplies.”

  “Then we need to figure out what to do.”

  The men and women look up at Abel. “If anyone has any ideas of how to get Trinity back, speak up.”

  No one responds.

  He looks around and frowns. “Where’s David? And Sis?”

  “I'll go get them,” Sal says. “I think I saw them over there.”

  A man with hunched shoulders sidles up to Abel and turns to him, a dark curl twisting his lips. “You’re going to get more of us killed if we go back there,” he says with a gravelly voice.

  “Probably,” Abel agrees. “The way I see it, you can die out here, starving to death on the wastes, or you can try to get your home back. How about, instead of trying to think about why this is a bad idea, you start thinking about how we’re going to make this work? Try thinking about ways you can get Trinity back.”

  The curl drops from the man's lips as he nods his head. “That fence protected us for years. And now it's going to protect them.”

  “They got in. We can do the same.” Abel looks up when he sees Sal approaching.

  “I've got them,” Sal calls, marching over with David and Sis at her heels.

  Abel claps his hands together and rubs his beard, his gaze sweeping across the men and women’s faces, their eyes glowing and flickering against the flames. “We need ideas. These raiders are armed, more so than before.”

  “How more so?” the man asks.

  Abel shares an awkward glance with Sal. “They gained access to the weapons cache behind Trinity.”

  The man snorts. “There’s no weapons cache—”

  Sal places a hand on the man's shoulder. “There was,” she says in a low voice. “It was always there. But we never used it.” She turns to the other people.

  “Wait,” the man snaps. “You’re saying we had weapons, and we didn’t even use them?”

  “Th
at’s right,” Sal says, raising her chin.

  “We could still be there.”

  “The decision was made to keep weapons out of our community.”

  “And if they were there, we’d have been able to defend ourselves.” The man tosses his hands into the air.

  “We felt it was best to keep them as a precaution—”

  “Fat lot of good that did.”

  Sal lets out a sigh and folds her arms. “Listen,” she says. “We were worried about accidents. We were worried that having guns inside our walls could only end in trouble. Someone could have got hurt, or killed. What if someone had decided they wanted to take control of our community?”

  “Like they did, you mean?” The man waves his hands and storms off.

  “Wait,” Sal calls. “Please.”

  Abel shakes his head, watching as the man disappears into the night, muttering. “Leave it, Sal. Let him go.”

  Sal shuffles in her robe and lifts her chin. “We need to look forward. What is done is done. If mistakes were made, mistakes were made. We need to focus on King Omar and his people. These are the people who took our homes, who killed our friends. They have sentenced us to death and starvation if we do not act. It's going to be challenging, but, God willing, we will win this war. God is on our side.”

  “Your friend doesn't look so convinced,” a woman says.

  Abel shrugs. “It's never about God for me. You believe what you need to.”

  Everyone turns as a low rumble comes from the other end of the Grid. People emerge from the cars while others gravitate towards the noise. “What's going on?” Sal asks.

  A man running past turns to her. “Alf’s back from the caravans.”

  Abel raises an eyebrow and follows the stream of people headlong towards a group of men unloading a trailer.

  Hundreds of food cans stand sealed on wooden pallets. A dark-skinned man wearing a blue polythene poncho slides his hunting knife along the clear plastic stretched over the tins and hands them out to the people. Abel joins the queue, his eyes wandering past the returning men.

  Reaching the line’s front, Abel starts when he meets the dark-skinned man’s eyes.

  The man tilts his head. “Abel?” A broad smile spreads across his face, the explosion of grey-streaked hair stretching high above his head.