The Old Man and the Wasteland

by Nick Cole

  There is nothing to see now pull harder. Pull harder.

  I can’t go much further.

  You must go to the end.

  Then the end is the furthest I’ll go.

  Pull and stop with the nonsense.

  Okay.

  Pull.

  Pull.

  Pull. Pull. PULL!

  The Old Man’s shoulder bumped against the rough dirt wall of the far embankment. His shoulders felt like glowing iron bands of steel just pulled from the heat of a furnace. The thongs keeping his feet across the cable were frayed and only one remained whole. Below him, the wolves danced back and forth, insane with anger.

  The Old Man pulled himself over the edge of the cliff and lay breathing heavily. The air burned hot and clean in his lungs. Reaching for his knife, he cut the straps at his hands and feet and stood. He thought about drinking some water, but without meaning to he glanced down below and saw that the wolves had disappeared.

  They’re coming.

  The Old Man turned to look at the downed power tower. This tower was more crumpled and bent than the one on the other side of the gorge. What it might provide in refuge wouldn’t last long.

  I am at the limit. There isn’t much more in me.

  He reached into his bandolier and took out the can of pitch. Bending down, he quickly collected some sticks and then piled them near a wall of dry tumbleweeds that had gathered against the side of the ruins of the power tower. He spread the pitch over the dry weeds and took out his matches. Using one match and then another he quickly had a fire going. Smoky heat waves rose into the afternoon heat. For a moment The Old Man broke out into a cold sweat as his vision blurred. He drank quickly from a bottle and threw it aside.

  He reached into his waist belt and pulled out the pistol. Listening for the wolves above the crackle of the growing fire, he snatched up three smoldering sticks and threw them into other stands of weed and brush nearby. He grabbed another torch, and looking to the sides of the cliff for the wolves and not finding them, he dove into the smoking brush.

  The smoke was thick and gray and smelled of desert mesquite. A good earthy smell that always reminded him of cooked meat.

  Wolves, you’re afraid of fire. Remember that.

  He continued to light other stands of brush as he passed down a sandy track leading south. One of the wolves howled.

  That sounded like the big one. You wolves might even get lost and burnt up in the fire. It’s a wall between you and me.

  A wind picked up from the west, and when the Old Man looked back great walls of flame were leaping toward the highway east of his position. The Old Man began to light the bushes to his right as he pushed on to the south.

  Soon I will have two walls. Then how will you find me wolves?

  Now the wind shifted to the east and it came at him in blowing gusts, leaping ahead of the brush he was running into and igniting. The smoke grew thick and tasted of sulfur. The Old Man began to choke and cough. He took off his shirt, tied it about his mouth and moved off, hoping he was going south. The sun above him was obscured by gray smoke and drifting ash. It was too high in the sky for him to find a direction, so he hoped he was going south and not north. Away off he heard the wolves yelling back and forth. They seemed farther off to his right and behind him.

  He came through a wire fence long blown down. He crossed it, stumbling in the thick acrid smoke. His huaraches landed on cracked and broken asphalt. He could see no more than a few feet at times, as ash and sparks mixed with gray smoke and the blown dust and sand of the desert wind.

  Ahead of him, a large wide building with an arched roof and an opening to an inner darkness, groaned in the gusts of the firestorm. It was an old aircraft hanger. The Old Man stumbled forward.

  As he reached the entrance of the aircraft hanger, he heard the wolf behind him. Turning, he raised his pistol, but the fatigued arm felt foreign to him, felt like leaded weights tied and sent to the bottom of an ocean of mud.

  It’s the big one.

  The Alpha came on hard, bounding fast out of the smoke and dust. His muzzle a rictus of hate and anger. His eyes burning with rage. The Old Man emptied the gun and felt a dry click on the sixth cylinder after five little cracks had cleared the barrel.

  The wolf stumbled and then veered off to the left. The Old Man saw that the wolf was bleeding. The look of anger and rage was gone as the big wolf circled, looking down and then back again at The Old Man

  The Old Man backed into the open darkness of the hanger, leaving the wolf to the firestorm.

  Seventeen

  The big Alpha lay down on the cracked and broken tarmac of the old runway outside the hanger. The flames surrounded the downed fences and burned at the decades dry wreckage of the place. The man had gone into the building. If he just rested he might still get him, thought the Alpha.

  Where is the pack?

  The killers appeared out of the smoke. One had been burned, its fur singed. The big Alpha had thought so. He’d heard him yelp in pain during the chase.

  The killers padded forward. Their eyes taking in the scene. The big Alpha turned, leading their gaze toward the old hanger.

  You should go in there and get him out. He can’t have much left in him. We’ve run him to his hole.

  But when he turned back, the killers were looking at him and he knew what would happen next. He had a memory of a distant day, high in the mountains. A memory of youth.

  The two killers fell on him.

  The Old Man found a locked gate at the back of the hanger. His crowbar quickly snapped the lock and he moved on, shutting the gate behind him. He picked up another crowbar from a nearby bench containing an array of tools and wedged it into the clasps of the gate so the wolves couldn’t force it open.

  He lit a match and found himself in a tool shed at the back of a maintenance hangar. Outside, the wind began to howl as the fire heated air rushed against the metal side of the building. It was getting hot.

  The Old Man went quickly through the tools; most were old and brittle. Jars and cans that once contained fluids, contained nothing more than powder and dust. When he smelled smoke, he looked back through the gate and saw debris piles near the entrance to the hanger igniting. Smoke and ash trails followed by dancing sparks were blowing into the hanger.

  The Old Man went back into the darkness, lit another match, and made his way through shelves that had fallen like dominoes. They crumbled to dust as he climbed atop them. In the end, he wallowed waist high through rotten timber.

  A perfect place for the brown spider.

  This place is on fire. Would you rather burn or die of poison?

  He remembered the death of Big Pedro.

  At the back wall he found a door marked ‘Men’ and smashed it inwards with his crowbar, splintering the rotten wood. Inside he found a toilet, a urinal, and finally an industrial shower with a large grate beneath.

  This might lead somewhere.

  He pried out the grate, and the bolts gave away with a dusty ‘Smuph’ in the darkness. Below he could see an old sewer. He took his shirt from off his face and wrapped it around a piece of the broken door. He counted his matches as he lit the torch. He had three left.

  The floor of the sewer below ran off toward the front of the hanger. The route he'd come from. It also continued in the opposite direction.

  Maybe the sewer had once been disgusting. The two year nuclear winter that followed the bombs had sent rushing torrents of black ash flushing through every hole and channel in the thaw that finally happened. Followed by forty years of abandonment, the sewer was relatively clean and dry.

  Once inside, it was dark and quiet and only the guttering of the torch made any sound.

  Above, the flames had gotten into the roof of the structure. Metal rivets twisted and popped.

  I had better find a way out. This torch won’t last long.

  He began to walk toward what he hoped was south, going slowly, checking the floor and the ceiling. He didn’t want to fall int
o any holes or cracks. The tunnel ran straight for a hundred yards then turned sharply to the right. After ten feet he came to a large grate that opened on a dark emptiness. He coughed and heard an echo. He put the torch down and worked at the rusty bolts of the grate and just as it gave way, falling outwards into the blackness, his torch went out.

  Blind, The Old Man waited as the grate clanged onto a floor not far down.

  There could be light. A crack in the ceiling or some such.

  After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could make out details. Soft orange light filtered down from a high circle in the ceiling. The air smelled of concrete. He edged his feet forward, checking for a drop beyond the grate. There was one. Below the circle of light, in the middle of the darkness, he could see a patch of dusty pavement.

  He lit one of his matches and inspected the floor. Behind him, a loud rending of metal was followed by a crash. A hot gust of wind rushed down at his back seconds later, and the match went out.

  Now I have two matches.

  How much of the floor did you see?

  Not enough. I can’t remember.

  The Old Man got down on his hands and knees and edged toward the drop. He looked hard into the darkness below. Moving his hands about, he looked for something to toss onto the floor below, but the floods had swept the tunnel clear. He took a water bottle and emptied it. The water felt warm and did little to quench his thirst. His back and shoulder muscles spasmed painfully as he lifted his head to drain the bottle.

  Maybe you have hurt yourself.

  He dropped the empty water bottle into the darkness below and heard it immediately bounce around on the floor.

  The ground is not far.

  Gently he lowered himself down and found the floor far sooner than he expected. He swept the ground, feeling for the water bottle but it was gone. Cautiously he walked toward the circle of light below the opening in the ceiling high above.

  Looking up he could tell it was a manhole. High above. On a street maybe. He could see nothing beyond its thin light.

  How do I get up there?

  There are still the wolves to consider.

  The Old Man turned in a circle.

  The room is big. A cave almost. Somewhere there must be a ladder to the manhole.

  Moving cautiously, he used his hands to find the far wall. Once he found it he moved along the sides of the wall until he came to a rung mounted there. He pulled on it and the rung tore loose from the wall with a rotten metallic ‘puff’ of dust and concrete. He found the next one higher up and again the rung came out in bits of concrete.

  I cannot trust the others.

  Someone’s poor workmanship has made this place your grave.

  There is another way out.

  He continued along the wall. He came to one corner, then another, and halfway down the wall, the opening he had come through. Another corner and halfway down the next wall he found a new opening. It was darker than the rest of the room and he felt a cool draft of air.

  He lit a match and scanned the dark ahead. It was a large tunnel with a channel running down the center of it. Just inside the wall were written large black letters that trailed off into the darkness.

  He checked the entrance to the tunnel for signs or a placard that might indicate where the tunnel went and just as the match was about to burn the tips of his fingers, he moved to the other side of the entrance looking for some kind of sign that might indicate the purpose of the tunnel. On the floor a pile of boxes were stacked in a corner. Then the match went out.

  Damn.

  He stood still in the darkness.

  I am down to my last match. What were those boxes? I saw letters. Like the military. A long series of letters and numbers.

  It could be debris. Just empty boxes piled in a corner.

  But the floods after the thaw would have swept them away.

  They swept them here. Here is ‘away’.

  I have to check.

  It is your last match. If the boxes contain nothing then you will be stuck. You will have to climb the rungs.

  I will light part of the boxes on fire. I can tear off a flap.

  He moved next to where he thought he had seen the boxes in the last moments of match light. When at first he didn’t find them he panicked fearing he’d imagined the boxes. Soon his waving hands caught the side of a box.

  Cardboard.

  Watch out for the brown spider.

  He ran his hands over the box. It seemed dusty but whole.

  No floods have touched this box.

  The four flaps were open and he gently tore one away.

  He took out his last match. A nightmare of dropping the match or even breaking it, flashed across his mind. He shut out the evil thought and took hold of the match between his thumb and forefinger.

  He struck the match and lit the flap.

  There were three boxes on the floor. Military boxes. He had seen their kind before. Such things were often found salvaging.

  ‘MRE’ was written on the side and then a long serial number. He tore the other three flaps off the top box and made a small fire. Nearby he found a tumbleweed that had fallen into the sewer and broke it up, adding it to the tiny flames.

  It won’t last long.

  He went to the top box and looked in. Three brown plastic packages lay on the bottom. He had also seen these before. In the early days. MRE’s. Survival rations.

  The second box contained a five quart plastic canteen that felt full. It was wrapped in camouflage material and had fasteners.

  It must attach to a pistol belt.

  A couple of wool blankets lay beneath the canteen but when The Old Man shook them out he found a centipede. He slammed his huarache down on it angrily.

  He ripped up the two boxes and added them to the already fading fire. He pulled the third box close to him.

  The centipede looked dead.

  It is now.

  He added it to the fire just to be sure.

  He opened the box. Inside he found a military flashlight and many batteries. He also found a small pen knife.

  He tried the flashlight. It was dead. He unscrewed the bottom of the flashlight and threw the dead batteries off into the darkness and tried two new ones. A cone of yellow light erupted cleanly into the darkness ending in an oval against the wall. He had a flashlight.

  The fire guttered to wispy ashes. The Old Man sat in the cool darkness for a moment and then clicked on the light with a dry chuckle.

  Eighteen

  ‘MAN IS INCAPABLE OF PEACE’. Carved into the concrete wall of the old sewer, each blackened letter rose three feet high. Someone had used a blowtorch to etch the message against the wall of the tunnel that led away from the big room.

  The Old Man’s light played across the words as he considered their meaning.

  He’d eaten an entire MRE. It had been two days since the snake on the road. The water in the canteen tasted stale and he poured it out filling it again with the water from his bottles.

  He ran his fingers over the letters. The blowtorch had left melted waves when it traveled over the surface of the wall.

  He had a steady hand.

  How do you know it’s a ‘he’?

  It feels like a ‘he’.

  Someone did this after the bombs. Not long ago. Maybe five years. Ten at the most.

  How do you know?

  The boxes.

  He is right. Was right. Man is incapable of peace. What’s left of the world confirms that.

  So he came down here. Spent all the time that you and the village have been surviving, barely, and carved these words no one will ever see?

  These words will be here long after I have gone. Long after my granddaughter’s granddaughters. The hieroglyphs in the pyramids were thousands of years old.

  So why? Why do this?

  To tell the story. Maybe a warning.

  To who?

  Whoever comes next.

  So who’s to say he’s right?


  He is, I guess. I don’t know that I will be around to argue.

  Do you agree?

  The Old Man considered the world above. The frozen ground after the bombs. The ones who died of radiation sickness. The hunger. What it looked like when the United States ended in his review mirror that day at the beginning of his present life.

  He rolled up the MRE’s and the bullet-less pistol along with the empty bottles in his blanket. He added the other two green wool blankets after inspecting them thoroughly for more centipedes. He shined his new flashlight down the tunnel, enjoying its power and clarity. There were more words written farther along.

  I wonder what else he had to say.

  The Old Man continued down the tunnel and when he came to the next message he read: THERE CAN NEVER BE TWO ANSWERS TO THE SAME QUESTION.

  Further on he read: WE DIDN’T BELIEVE THOSE WHO HAD SWORN TO KILL US.

  WE TRIED TO FIRE GOD.

  POWER IS NEVER SATISFIED.

  BEWARE OF ANYONE WHO WANTS TO MAKE DESCIONS FOR YOU.

  PEOPLE WILL TELL LIES TO GET WHAT THEY WANT.

  A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION LEADS TO DEATH.

  CITIES BURN DOWN.

  FREEWILL WAS THE GREATEST GIFT EVER OFFERED. GOD IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT WE DID WITH IT. WE ARE.

  EVERY PLACE IS THE SAME.

  EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL BE FORGOTTEN.

  CHILDREN ARE THE ONLY THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND.

  CHILDREN ARE SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.

  HATE FIRE, AND OTHER THINGS THAT HURT YOU.

  HATE IS NOT WRONG WHEN WHAT YOU HATE IS WRONG.

  HISTORY HAS LIED TO US.

  THE GOOD GUYS DIDN’T WIN.

  DON’T LET SOMEONE SPEND MONEY WHO NEVER EARNED IT.

  DON’T LET ANYONE BUT A SOLDIER TELL YOU HOW TO FIGHT A WAR.

  IF YOU ABSOLUTLEY HAVE TO GO TO WAR, KILL EVERYONE.

  ROCKSTARS, ACTORS, AND POLITICIANS DON’T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING.

  TEACHERS, ARCHITECTS, AND MOTHERS KNOW A LOT MORE THAN YOU THINK.

  THE YOUNG DISCOVERING THE WORLD FEEL LIKE CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. THEY IGNORE THE INDIANS WHO HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

  PEER PRESSURE IS WHEN YOU DECIDE TO LOB A FEW WARHEADS AT THIS WEEK’S NAZI BECAUSE CNN TOLD YOU TO.