Journey By Fire, Part 2: Escape From Tonto Basin

by Bruce W. Perry

  The smoke rose from the San Francisco Peaks to the west, like a volcano.

  He saw a man trotting along the desert, about a quarter mile away. It was the first person he'd seen since the horsemen a few days ago. The guy looked like a long-distance runner. The man stopped; Wade waved at him. It was a gut feeling; he doubted this was a predator. Maybe he was out of his mind running through this desert. But Wade needed information.

  The man didn't wave back but he walked toward Wade, slowly.

  Wade got his crossbow out. The man had his hands behind his back. "Hey," he called out. "Can you help me, man?"

  "Maybe." He had long black hair, ruddy skin, and wore shorts and sneakers without socks. He turned around and showed Wade his hands, which were bound together with a zip tie.

  CHAPTER 40

  "Who did that to yah?"

  "Weren't family or friends. Regime people did."

  "Then you escaped?"

  "You might say that."

  "How long you been runnin'?"

  "Don't know. Twenty miles?"

  "Wow, then you probably need some water."

  Wade still sat on the camel, then he slapped its flank and Moe grunted and squatted down. He swung his leg over the hump and dismounted. He took a gallon of water off Larry, opened it, and held it over the man's open mouth and cracked lips. The water poured in and the man gulped greedily, desperately, and some of it poured down his cheeks.

  "Thanks," he said, breathlessly. "Can you take this off me?"

  "Why'd they put it on you?"

  "Because I didn't want to be their slave. I come from the Navajo territory up north–they came in with helicopters and trucks at night…took a bunch of us. They're using the Navajos, Apache, and Comanche as fire troops on the front lines. It's suicide duty. The fires have to do their thing, burn out, then maybe people can live by the mountains again. I hear they're working 16 hour days; the regime will kill you, shoot you on the line, if you don't work all day or night. They might kill you anyways when they're done with you. Saves on food."

  While he was talking, Wade got out his knife, unsheathed it. "Turn around."

  The man turned around and held up his wrists to expose them. Wade sawed away at it with the knife, until it finally snapped loose. He gave him some more water.

  "My name's Michael Wade."

  "Johnny Ironcloud." They shook hands. Ironcloud gripped and ungripped his hand, as if to make sure it was still working.

  "What are you doing way out here? With them camels?"

  "Trying to get to Phoenix."

  "Ah."

  "Hey, do you know where I can find water around here?"

  "There's a river, about 10 miles, that way…" he pointed south.

  "Do you think you can show me?"

  "Yes."

  "You probably want some food, right?"

  "I'm starving. I haven't eaten since yesterday, and I've been running for miles."

  "I've got crackers, a little jerky, beans…" Wade went over to Larry and unpacked some of the food and brought it over. They unwrapped the crackers and jerky, started eating. Wade gazed around the empty desert.

  "You know there's a camel carcass back there. Fresh one."

  "Really?"

  "You could help me butcher it. Real meat."

  "How far is it?"

  "Not two miles, that way."

  "How long has it been dead?"

  "About 40 minutes."

  "We don't have long."

  Wade paused before his resting camel. "Ever ridden one?"

  "I'll walk."

  Ironcloud did seem indefatigable. When they backtracked and reached the carcass, it was covered in flies. When the two got close they all buzzed away. Wade took out his knife and unsheathed it.

  "Let me try," Ironcloud said. He handed it to him. Ironcloud knelt beside the huge carcass in the sand. He got in close to the underbelly, with the beast lying on its side, then he turned to Wade. "Knife needs to be sharper and longer. But I'll do what I can." He began working furiously on a section where the hide and the coat wasn't as thick. A black bloody stain grew in the dirt around the camel. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth. The other three camels, fidgeting at a short distance, ignored it.

  Ironcloud eventually reached into the camel's insides with both hands, as though it was giving birth. Wade laid out on the ground a cloth bag he'd been using to store rice, which had all been eaten.

  Ironcloud emerged with a large dripping liver, which he severed away from the entrails. He smiled and lifted it up, as if to say, "You first?" Then he took a big bite right off, and tore away a piece of raw liver, chewing vigorously. He did it as naturally as Wade would take a bite of a large watermelon. With his mouth full Ironcloud said, "Good. Have some. It'll keep you strong."

  Wade knew Ironcloud wasn't barbaric; he was knowledgable, about how to survive out here. If you're fortunate enough to have a fresh animal carcass you should eat the mineral and vitamin-loaded organs.

  "What's it taste like?"

  Ironcloud shrugged. "Not as good as Buffalo liver, but pretty good."

  Wade was still desperate for food and he was lucky to find Ironcloud, who was also fortunate to come across Wade. The typical U.S. suburbanite, who'd recently had their comfort zone detonated, wouldn't have the least idea how to live in the desert.

  "Give it to me." He took a tentative bite, holding the wet liver in two hands. It was still quite warm, and that bothered him. Ironcloud laughed.

  "Arizona delicacy, huh?"

  "The camel special," Wade said, around the chewing. He took a sidelong glance at the other three camels. He handed it back and his companion took another big bite, then Wade said,

  "Tastes like uncooked meat marinated in piss…" Then he couldn't help but laugh with the Indian. He had to admit to himself, it was filling. He was getting iron, protein, minerals…it felt good to laugh. He went to get some water.

  "It would have been rancid in 30 minutes," Ironcloud called out after him. "We were lucky." He was up to his elbow in the camel again, with the knife, trying to extract the heart.

  "You sure that 30 minutes hadn't already expired?" Wade said. Ironcloud had one knee on the carcass and hacked away inside it, bloody now to his tricep. Then he emerged with the heart, handling it again with both hands. It was sheathed in veiny fat and dripping dark red. The heart was the size of a heavyweight fighter's clenched boxing glove.

  Ironcloud ate the liver a little bit more, then he went into the nearby shrubs and came back with some leaves. He wrapped the heart and liver with the leaves, then placed them into the cloth bag. He tossed the bag over his shoulder.

  "We'll cook more over the fire tonight. I'm finished with this camel. It's too hard work to butcher it with this knife. Let's leave it to the jackals and the vultures."

  They spent the rest of the day crossing the desert to nearby what used to be Winslow, Arizona. Ironcloud knew where to find the river. The waterway still ran well with fast-flowing, clean water. The camels stood on the banks and drank copiously, absorbing dozens of gallons at once. They hadn't drunk water in six days. There were tire tracks all over the place, but so far, no people.

  Wade swam in the cool water, and refilled his own water bottles. They made camp for the night.

  CHAPTER 41

  He still had about 180 miles or 300 kilometers to go, which he thought he could make in nine days or less. They cooked the camel heart over another fire. They skewered it with some sharpened sticks and roasted it good and well-done. Wade ate several large pieces until his belly was full and it made him tired, so he'd sleep deeply. It tasted infinitely better than the liver, somewhat like beef. They saved the uneaten roasted chambers and returned them to the bag.

  Ironcloud cooked the liver too, so they had meat for several days. They just had to keep it away from the flies.

  Wade fell over onto his back, on top of his camping pad, and stared at the stars…as long as he didn't lose the camels or something happened to them…he di
dn't think he had too many bullets for more rutting male camels or worse, a marauding gang. Ironcloud was, understandably, worried about being recaptured by the regime forces. He was going to join Wade and planned to aim for a reservation close to the Mexico border.

  When they awoke the next morning they saw a mule-driven wagon parked across the river. The river must draw many people who are trying to cross this desert, Wade thought. They waved at some people, which from a short distance looked like two families. They waved back. Then he and Ironcloud gathered their bedding and food, loaded up the camels, and headed southwest.

  Ironcloud's initial walking pace slowed them down, so Wade finally cajoled him into riding atop Larry's hump. Larry carried hardly any provisions, but still bawled and complained bitterly when Ironcloud threw a blanket over the hump. Then gripping the reins, he awkwardly climbed aboard.

  "I need a horse!" he yelled out. He was red-faced and angry; Wade laughed when he fell off once, but they were able to cover almost 14 miles when they finally stopped in the middle of the day.

  They followed old Arizona highway 87, which headed into a recently burned forest of the high plateau. Columns of grey smoke rose on the horizon. They steered away from the highway, and its cracked and uneven surface, since they figured the regime would be using it. The camels' feet worked better on desert soil than deteriorating concrete, but they could still follow the southwesterly direction of the highway, while staying hidden at a short distance.

  Outside of Winslow and well off the highway, they crossed some train tracks. The tracks led east-west. It was getting tough going, as the desert was pockmarked with ditches and arroyos; the land was hilly and cloaked with rocks and cactus. In places, it was thickly forested with saguaro cactus. Wade liked the saguaro standing against the red sandstone cliffs and monuments, when the sun went down. One time they saw two wild camels ambling off in the distance, but the animals never came closer.

  They emerged into the fringes of a large, mostly burnt pine forest. The route was beginning to climb; he worried about their slowing pace. They stopped and began to unpack. They were going to eat, rest, then get going in a few hours. They'd travel as far as they could at night. They decided to stick to the road, because the topography was becoming too difficult, and it led to where Wade wanted to go.

  About a half mile away they saw a train coming. A single engine trailed by wooden railcars. Wade walked to the top of a nearby hill to get a better look. Some of the cars said Southern Pacific along the side in faded, flaking paint. But others flew a small version of the flag the regime used at the moment, a rather trite and uninspiring black-and-red design. The trains had small windows, and he saw people's faces crowded around. He couldn't believe how many wood railcars trundled past; it reminded him of when he was little and the freight trains took forever to go by.

  He thought he saw grim, distressed faces from a distance; once in a while an arm dangled out, as though to touch the fresh air. Halfway through, an open-air car went by containing troops in black uniforms. Wade ducked behind a rock. There must have been a hundred, two hundred cars in the train, and it just continued on past. He looked at Ironcloud and said, "They contain people. They're transporting people in boxcars."

  "I know. It's a forced migration. A forced deportation. They round up the Latinos, the Apaches, Navajos, and Comanche people. Other 'undesirables,' they call 'em. They ship them to the fire. They clear out the old peoples."

  "What do you mean 'clear out'?"

  "Southern Arizona was full of old folks; millions. There was no room for them anymore; no food, water. They're expendable; they're old, taking up space and resources. So they get rid of them."

  "Where did you hear this?"

  "Friend of mine had been down to Phoenix–said all the old retirement towns in southern Arizona were ghost towns. All the old people were gone. They either got out on their own, or they got rounded up and put on these trains. Which is what happened to most of them, because they were too old to move long distances. They put 'em in camps in the desert. He said that he saw about a thousand old people behind the wire, but I didn't believe him. That seemed too far-fetched for me, and I've seen a lot."

  The last train finally rolled past. Wade had a vision he tried to dispel from his mind, of Kara packed in one of these cattle-cars. That's all they were, cattle-cars, containing besieged human cargo. It was an obscenity. The regime had finally gone mad, panicked–they couldn't manage the millions of people driven out of their homes by the fires, so they resorted to vile, brute-force methods. But the regime didn't have Kara, as far as he knew. It was the Redboyz he was looking for. Maybe that made it easier; that the regime didn't have her.

  The sun was going down when they went back to their camp and the camels. They made a fire, cooked and ate some leftover organ meat. He saw curtains of rain in the distance, flashes of lightening. They'd have to find cover by some cliffs, or make a roof out of their tarps.

  Except for the train, they didn't see anybody go by on the highway as the darkness enveloped everything.

  CHAPTER 42

  They traveled by night through the forest, with its bed of ash and charred tree trunks. It wasn't camel country anymore, and this concerned him. He was barely halfway through the trip now. They traversed a high plateau more than a mile above sea level. The landscape was composed of mountains, canyons, and burned wooded hollows; the aftermath of a very recent fire.

  The air was permeated with a pine-scented fog. The vapor would rise into the air when they stepped on the ash, like some mushrooms do. He and Ironcloud walked with buffs pulled over their faces. At least the camels had eyes and nostrils that could withstand sand storms.

  It was difficult to navigate, if not impossible, so they veered over to and stuck to the road–Arizona highway 87. There were ruins about; roadside franchises and small towns reduced to piles of black rubble. They still had plenty of food and water so they didn't try to scavenge.

  The only birds were ravens. He heard their squawks and saw their black forms against a purple sky. It was morning again. At some point they'd sleep. They wandered through the ruins and the blackened landscape silently. He heard a dog barking, but couldn't see it back in the flattened rubble of the neighborhoods. Then they found themselves in quiet tumbled-down woodland. The road ahead sunk down into a gray wasteland. They had no choice but to follow it.

  The heat mingled with the dust by mid-morning. They were forced to stop. It was almost like nuclear winter, with a grey mist blocking the sun, which, seemingly out of spite, doubled up on its pouring down of heat upon them. There were mountains around that topped out at seven thousand feet or higher.

  Ironcloud had a head band on and he'd taken his shirt off. Wade thought, with his long black hair tied back and wiry, taut muscles that looked sun-burned, he looked more Indian, like from old photos in libraries. Or paintings. Ironcloud swung off Larry's hump and declared, disagreeably, "If I had a rope, I'd get a horse. Even a wild mustang. Anything but this…camel," he said with disdain. "This is horse country. Or used to be."

  "You come from the Navajo territory, up north?"

  "Originally, Fort Apache rez, just east of here. They still have wild horses; tall mountains with snow. I'm Comanche, not Navajo," he talked, while he fetched something from the bags. "I had a single mom. My real dad killed someone in a fight–he claimed it was self defense. They put him in prison. My mom met a Navajo boyfriend and we moved to a rez up north when I was a teenager. I was in the Army–ended up in Kuwait, Iraq, and Syria. I was code talkin'!" Then he burst forth with a paragraph of native language that Wade didn't understand.

  "Really?"

  "No, I'm just kidding man. They wanted me to be a rifleman. That's what they needed."

  So he can handle a rifle, Wade thought. That might come in handy.

  "This place, it reminds me of there. Syria. Bombed out cities, streets full of refugees. Gray, everything gray, caked with dust, depressing, baking under the sun. It would get into your nose,
eyes, under your fingernails. You couldn't see." He looked around. "Yeah, it was like this. The Middle East. Polluted, by hate. I was glad when I got out. Came back to Arizona and worked in the almond orchards and on a farm breaking horses. The places closed down due to the fires, then the regime took over."

  Wade chewed slowly, then drank some water. It just felt good to talk, to hear voices other than the noise of ravens and buzzards; the wind blowing through brittle trees and ruins.

  "Got a girl?"

  "You bet; her name is Marina." He took a photo out of his pants pocket. It was bent on all the corners and somewhat stained. He handed it to Wade. "She's third from the left."

  The photo showed a group of young, fashionable Native American women standing in front of what looked like a Tex-Mex style nightclub. Halters and tight jeans and makeup; long combed out black hair.

  "She's beautiful. Think you'll marry?"

  "Oh yeah, I want to. Soon as I get a chance. She's waiting for me. I'll get her and bring her back to the good country, down by the river and the mountains–grass and horse country, untouched, as far as the eye can see. We'll plant an orchard, keep some horses. I'll bring her there."

  "That's precious." Wade kept the image in his mind; it was restful.

  "You married?" Ironcloud asked.

  "Yeah, her name's Lee. I've got a son Shane. They're waiting for me in Canada. You know about Kara." Thinking of her brought him back from the lofty perch of his imagination, to the scoured gray earth they tread upon. The violent and uncertain legacy of the future prospects. The camels raised their heads and looked around at the sky and ground. They'll need water again, he thought.

  "It's good to have someone waiting for you," Ironcloud said, looking down and fooling with a stick.

  "Aren't women great?" Wade said. "I didn't know how to relate to girls when I was younger, high school or college. One would come on to me, I wouldn't know how to act. I'd fumble around, then I'd think later, 'You idiot. Just talk to her.' I still don't know how to relate to women. I'm emotionally distant. That's why I'm so lucky with Lee. She seems to understand everything; I don't really have to try with her. It's just dumb luck, that I found her and she stayed with me."