"Your optimism exceeds the probability of success, in my view. But now that you've laid the mother of all guilt trips on me…" Wade clapped him on the back and thanked him, before he could spit out the rest of his words.
The desert burned and glowed on all horizons. As if to emphasize its malignance, the breakdown lane they wandered along contained the buzzard-picked remains of dogs, coyotes, and a desert tortoise. The road sucked up the heat like a stovetop.
They stopped and they all took slugs of water from the diminished plastic bottles and pouches they'd filled from the raft's reservoir. They gave the desperately panting Pequeno a bowl by the roadside. Wade figured it was still about five miles to the town. It was difficult to get everyone moving again, which almost seemed futile. They hadn't even slept yet.
Only two vehicles passed them: a three-wheeled motorcycle that gunned it toward the town as if pursued, and a tiny electric car powered by a rooftop solar panel. It was vintage pre-2020, Wade thought, and a smart choice for the desert sun. As long as it could stay a safe distance from the crazies with their welded, armored Jeeps and weapon-equipped technicals.
Wade waved the car down; to his surprise, it stopped. A man in sunglasses, shirtless with a leather necklace on, rolled down the passenger window. He had shaggy hair and a friendly smile.
"Hi there. Need some water?"
Wade glanced back at the others.
"That, and a ride into town."
The man handed them a half-filled gallon plastic jug, which they accepted gratefully.
"You're very kind," Wade said.
"I heard things are tough around here…the dam. And you have a family."
"Yeah, we made it up the river. Say, do you know what the town over there is. Is it Page?"
"Used to be, but as you can imagine, it's nothing more than a desert outpost now, with a bunch of people squatting there. Trying to make do. People trade and sell; the gangs will raid it once in a while, but they're putting together their own defense force, I hear. I heard a rumor the regime will take it over, as a preliminary to seizing the dam. Rumors are everywhere. Gee, I wish I had more space in the vehicle."
"Maybe you can take me," Jonesy piped up.
"That's actually a good idea," Wade said after thinking about it for a moment. "You go into town and get us a bigger vehicle, then come pick us up."
"It's a deal," Jonesy said. "That alright?"
"Sure," said the driver.
Jonesy got his things together, opened the passenger door, shoved a duffel bag in, and got in beside it. "You can count on me. I won't be long–just hang in there."
"We will…we'll just be making our way towards town."
Wade took a slug of the gallon jug, then he handed it to Carmen, who drank and offered it to the others. Then he stuck his head into the passenger window and held out his hand. The driver shook it and they introduced each other. The driver's name was Sebastian and he'd been traveling alone from Phoenix, where he'd abandoned a ranch house and a small computer business. The city had mostly emptied out, he said, with the remainder of Phoenix going the way of Vegas–a lawless urban wasteland.
"What would I find south of here?" Wade said. This was the vast territory he still had to cover to reach Sierra Vista, past Flagstaff of the old Arizona, then Phoenix, east of Nevada and southern California.
"That's Navajo country–none but the most experienced desert dwellers know how to survive it now. Long empty roads; desert and grasslands and buttes. There are some tall mountains down there; the San Francisco Peaks. Haven't lost all their snow but almost. Their flanks and forests are near burnt.
"The fires are bad, but in the desert they run out of fuel. I was lucky to make it; I just kept my foot on the pedal and only stopped to heed the call to Mother Nature. Once I left Phoenix, it was eerie–I only saw a few people; lots of abandoned pickup trucks and rigs. I saw some human remains, sadly–people who died in the desert. It's all just a question of water. And sometimes, running into the wrong people. You gotta be prepared. I'm just going to keep heading north; hope to make Canada."
Then he regarded the whole crew standing by the side of the road, with a mixture of pity and disbelief.
"What are you going to use for transportation south? You can't hitchhike. You can't walk it. That's out of the question. Not too many cars or trucks around here for the having. Or fuel…as I said, I wish I had more room. But then again, you said you were going south."
"I have to–my daughter's down there."
Sebastian shook his head sympathetically. "There are alternatives–I'm going to write an address down for you." He had a notebook next to the front seat, and he ripped a page out of it, then wrote something down and handed it back to Wade, who stepped back from the car.
"You guys better get going."
"Yeah, well, we'll try to send back a bigger vehicle," Jonesy said. Sebastian put his little car into gear, pulled back into the empty road, and left the Santiagos, Wade, and the dog standing by the side. Pequeno barked after the car, then went back to strenuous panting. Wade looked both ways and saw no refuges where they'd find shade, just spacious expanses of desert, abandoned barbed-wire fencing, sandy land mixed with yellowed grasses, and the ever-present cactus. Buttes appeared in the distance, like islands floating in the sky.
Above the land was a baking, seamless blue, with thin clouds like a white slash from a paint brush.
Wade was aware that their journey was ad hoc, badly thought out. Kara, he thought. Kara's the reason he's plowing forward and meeting each obstacle as it comes.
They walked for a little bit until they reached a rusted "Gas Food Lodging" sign. It smacked rhythmically off its metal sign post in the wind, like a bell tolling. Then they stopped and made a meagre encampment. Pepe had just reached a point where he had to be carried.
He wondered what kind of lodging they had in the town; probably nothing more than squatter's camps. He put his pack down and sat on it. He looked at the piece of paper Sebastian had given him. "Tucker's Desert Travel, Means & Supplies. Just off Main Street in the Page Historic Township." Historic, huh, he thought. The whole country was history. Its democratic and constitutional republic. Freedom, safety, and family were virtually consigned to history's dustbin. The only things you were free to do now were pillage, assault and burn. Then he cut off the negative thought flow, for fear it would engulf him and his mission.
They'd try out this Desert Travel place. They had no choice or alternatives; this wasn't a country for walking. He had some gold coins left–nothing much else to barter.
Just when he was convinced that the weakest among them would expire under the sun, a large vehicle approached from a distance. It grew larger through the filmy heat shimmer. It was was an old restored school bus, and it was slowing down for them.
CHAPTER 32
Wade could hear the engine knocking; it coughed black diesel dust into the air. The bus rolled slowly past them, then made a U-turn and pulled to their side of the road. Wade stood up. Thank you Jonesy, he thought. …And Sebastian. A woman was at the wheel, gray-haired, a wrinkled smile, and a sturdy arm leaning on the lowered driver's window.
"Whatcha doin' there by the side of the road, havin' a picnic? I'm just pulling your leg. Go on, hop in." She cranked open the levered door, just like a school bus driver.
"Next stop is town. You folks look like you could use a rest, and a meal."
"And showers…"
"That too. My name's Edna Grant. What's his name? The fella back in town? Jonesy? I swear I've seen him before. Never forget a face. Wonder if he did any roughnecking in North Dakota?"
"I don't know. Is that what you did? Roughnecking?"
"Are you crazy? I did bartending, and a little mistressing for an escort trade we had going, when times were good. Don't things change, eh? Jonesy…Maybe it was Oregon, fighting fires. I know I've seen him somewhere. I was part of the last stand out there in the northwest. We lost that one, but then again, you probably knew that. The fires
are winning. Sometimes I think I've seen everything…Yeah, I'm old, but I'm wise. Faces just have a way of sticking in my mind. Don't think I've seen your's."
"I'm Michael Wade."
Javi stepped forward as Carmen climbed onto the bus with Pepe in her arms. "I'm Javi Santiago. We are grateful for this ride. We've come a long way. I don't know what we would have done. Bless you."
"Oh, no worries my friend."
Pequeno leapt up the steps behind them and then immediately into an empty seat, as though he'd been down this path before.
The exhaustion hit Wade hard when he slipped into a seat in the front of the bus. It's as if he'd been holding it off for a better time. Edna mentioned that there was an encampment, reasonably safe, outside of town near an old Red Cross tent. Javi and Wade said that they could stay there for now, then Wade tipped over on his seat and conked out on the window, using his hat crushed up as a pillow.
He woke up to squealing brakes. He had a stiff neck, and his knees and hip ached from the awkward position his legs were jammed into. He wondered how long his body was going to hold out, with endless miles still left. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, and he thought about how Lee would sense his tension in the old days. She'd offer a neck and back rub just at the time when he needed it most. Of course, that was minor-league tension, compared with what he'd gone through in the lawless lands west of the Mississippi.
He looked out the window. The scene resembled a daguerrotype from the early 1900s. The bus made its way through a busy intersection of horse- and oxen-drawn carts, walkers, and people riding rickety two-wheeled bikes.
Many of the homes, laid out in suburban tracks in the old cookie-cutter fashion, were burnt down. But efforts had cropped up to rebuild with wood and roofing scrap, even cardboard–new crude dwellings thrown together seemingly with hammer, nails, and duct tape. It was a shanty town.
The road was lined with objects for sale or barter; appliances, TVs, tires, ovens; sofas, bed frames and mattresses, stacks of books, magazines, vinyl records, computers; all the stuff you'd see from a home dredged of its belongings after a flood. It wasn't all useless in the fuel-deprived land: there were a few stands with what looked like bread and cloth bags of rice or flour. Native American pottery and tools, presumably from the local Navajo community.
He didn't see a single place that sold or distributed water; the most precious commodity in the region. Not a brook or a lake existed anymore, except beneath the San Francisco Peaks far to the south. Everything had evaporated, and it only rained hard once every month or so.
He watched the enervated people move slowly through the junk under a blazing sun. He got up and moved to the seat just behind Edna.
"How far are we to the camp?"
"Oh just another 10 minutes."
"Where do you get fuel for this bus?" She glanced back at him for a moment as if deciding whether he could be trusted.
"Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes."
"There's leftover fuel tanks by the dam. We have jerry cans, and we sneak in there at night and replenish our stores. Not sure the Redboyz even know it's there; that's why it's so important not to say anything. Keep that under your hat–I'm serious. Those mongrels would be down on us in a jiffy, in numbers, if they knew we had a lot of gas."
"Mum's the word. Is it diesel you're getting?"
"Yeah. And propane."
"You have propane too?"
"Sure. We found a stack of still usable propane tanks. The hospital has an old Kohler generator. We've been able to run machines off it, like stoves, heaters, computers, and some medical equipment."
"You don't say…" He looked behind him and he saw Pepe collapsed in Carmen's lap, where she stroked his forehead. Javi was asleep beneath the brim of his hat. Good, they need the rest before we get going again. That is, if they want to go; these people here in the old Page seemed to have restarted something.
He rifled around in his backpack and found his old cellphone and adapter. Its battery had been dead for weeks–when he'd seen that last message from Kara. But now maybe he had a chance to charge it up. But there wouldn't be any cell phone service in this frontier settlement.
"You said you had computers running; do you have any Internet?"
"No," she scoffed.
"What about cell phone service?"
"People have been picking up G.P.S. signals lately. The little location thingies blinking on their phone screens. Some of the guys and gals with an engineering background think the regime is trying to put the system back together again. Or it's the invaders."
"Invaders?"
"News from the West Coast is that the Chinese, North Koreans, or both have landed. They've started taking over installations. Abandoned by the regime. They need the electronics running for their own armies."
Wade had heard the rumors before–but never from the regime's propaganda. They couldn't admit that they were losing the country, but power loves a vacuum, and it was just a matter of time for other countries to get involved. They wanted the USA's vast resources, the oil, minerals, and crop land. And the burgeoning American population for cheap, war-slave labor. They weren't going to find much but charcoal and roving bands of crazies and fleeing civilians, though.
He would try the cell phone anyways, just for the infinitesimal chance there was another message from Kara. The phone he held was a relic, given the new conditions in the stricken land. It reminded him of the pointless things that he used to do with it, like play with apps. It seemed pathetic now, an effete behavior trait from a brief, lost past.
Within minutes they pulled down a bumpy red-dirt road and ended up at a kind of baked plateau, covered with not only the white hospital tent, but hundreds, maybe greater than a thousand, other tents and encampments. It looked like an overflowing refugee camp from news footage of the Middle East and Africa; now the USA was undergoing the same kind of pain.
At least it was a place where they could sleep that night.
Carmen wanted a nurse inside the hospital tent to look at Pepe. He felt feverish, and was sluggish and reluctant to wake up. Once Edna parked the bus, they took him inside the Red Cross tent.
They piled their belongings outside the bus. Then Wade followed Carmen, Javi, Pepe, and Edna inside.
"Do you have any shelter, a tent?" Edna asked him.
"No. As far as I know, we're only going to stay the night." He wanted to contact that desert-provisions outfit asap, to stay on the move in a southern direction.
"You can stay in the bus tonight."
"Much obliged."
They found the Santiagos checking in with a woman at a fold-out desk. The hospital was packed, stifling, and busy with overworked staff. He could hear the generator motor running outside. Good thing, as it powered several electric fans whirring along the sides of the enclosure. Still, the humid, fetid air hardly moved. It seemed all the beds were taken, with many of the patients clinging to life. The space carried a stink of infection and death.
The shock must have manifested in his expression, because one of the ladies at the table looked up and said, "Yeah, this is quite the crazy busy place these days. Triage only. We can only take patients with serious conditions."
"What happened, here in town?" It looked like the front lines of a war.
"We've had a cholera outbreak lately, from drinking stagnant water; bad injuries from the last gang attack. Killer bee stings, snake bites, scorpion stings, Lyme disease; you name it. People come out of the desert in bad shape, if they come out at all, and they end up here."
"How's the medicine supply?" Then he thought of his own antibiotics bottle, from the Bible.
"Running out." She looked at Carmen and smiled wearily.
"My son, he has a fever and…"
"That's okay. A doctor will have a look at him–just have a seat over there and we'll find you."
Wade found himself standing uselessly in the middle of the hospital floor. He felt like a wreck with a bad neck and back ache.
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"Is it possible to have a shower? We've come a long way," he said, running his hands over his heavy stubble, then greasy hair, which he felt had thinned in front.
"There's an outdoor shower behind a partition. Most of the time it has water."
"Thanks." He felt a little guilty for asking for a shower. He wrestled out of his backpack, then dipped into it for the Bible. He took the little antibiotics pill bottle, walked over, and handed it to Carmen, who was still waiting for a nurse. Then he came back to the table.
"Is there anything I can do? Need a hand with anything?"
She thought for a moment. More sickly, sweating people had wandered in and stood in line.
"Yes. Put some gloves on and take those trash bags outside and throw them in the dumpster. They're medical waste. Thank you." She handed him a pair of rubber gloves.
When he went outside it must have been 110 F. The sun lay in the empty sky like a molten pearl.
CHAPTER 33
He disrobed behind a wooden partition. The shower stall was open to the air on top. It felt good just to take the grimy, smelly clothes and shoes off, then pile them outside in the sun. He did have a change of clothes, one of a total of three in the backpack. If you could call another pair of grimy pants, "a change."
A small cracked mirror hung at head level, next to a rusty shower nozzle. He didn't recognize himself: the matted, reddish brown beard that crawled up to his cheekbones, the bloodshot eyes. Lee would have been aghast at his appearance, the bruised and withered aspect. He wondered how anyone could warm to him, as they otherwise had out on the road.
He pulled a cord to release the water. He had to hand it to this community, just to have the means to construct a shower at all. A cardboard sign said, "One minute max." Wonderfully, he found a bar of soap. He pulled the cord and splashed water on himself. He rubbed the wet bar over his torso and legs. He used it to lather up his beard, which he attacked in front of the mirror with an old disposable razor.
He wanted to feel civilized again; he watched some of the squalor and terror of the last several weeks flow into the drain with the filthy, soapy water. He chopped and scraped at the beard pitiably, but the soap and lukewarm water had the intended effect. The sun alone was all that was needed to make the water warm.
Journey By Fire, Part 2: Escape From Tonto Basin Page 2