Love, Death, Robots, and Zombies

by Tom O'Donnell

  Chapter 9.

  I can’t even piece together a proper expletive. Am I still dreaming? The man sits stolidly on the log as if nothing is out of the ordinary. He’s rolling a cigarette between his fingers.

  His face is a thing of the desert: brown and leathery, wrinkled like an old jacket, black eyes glittering with hidden vitality. A layer of dust covers his face, except where a pair of goggles have kept it away. The goggles hang loose around his neck, half-hidden by a stout white beard. Equally white hair peaks out beneath a dusty, wide-brimmed hat. A beaten brown duster and black gloves protect his skin.

  The pistol on the man’s hip is made of white plasteel; some kind of plasma-hybrid weapon, secured in an old-fashioned holster. The rifle on his back is as long and slender as a sword. A four-wheeled ATV sits some distance behind him. Now I know I’m dreaming. There’s a small two-wheeled extension attached to the rear, and strapped into a harness on the platform is, obscenely, a large pink sow. The animal must weigh two hundred pounds. What’s more, the sow is wearing goggles.

  I’m so baffled by the man’s presence–how didn’t I hear the ATV?–let alone the pig, that after the instinctive grab for the crossbow, all I can do is stare. Sensing some change, Echo comes gasping awake, blinking in shock.

  “Believe I’ll have my rope back,” the man says, still fiddling with the cigarette. His voice is encased in gravel. Rope–does he mean the one I took from the house? Is this who chained the roamer then?

  “In the pack,” I say.

  He nods but makes no move toward it. His fingers pause as he looks up and considers us.

  “You’m ain’t much more than whelps,” he observes.

  His focus goes back to the cigarette, which he seals expertly and holds without lighting. I stare at him, at a loss.

  “Seen two wolves ride this way few days back. You’m their prey?” he asks, a little smile edging into the corners of his mouth.

  Two wolves–Cabal and his companion? I nod.

  “Ch’all do?” he asks.

  I’ve got questions of my own, mostly about the likelihood of him killing us, but he has the advantage, so I answer straight.

  “They wanted me for their army,” I say.

  He looks pointedly at Echo.

  “Me too,” she says.

  He looks at her longer, eyes twinkling. He seems to know there’s more to the story, but he just nods.

  “You’m didn’t fancy joining, huh? How’d ‘jer get them bug-holes?” he asks, waving vaguely at our wounds.

  “They left a pulse mine on the road,” I say.

  The man frowns. He turns and looks back at the sow, shaking his head in disgust. The sow grunts loudly. The man spits, as if to expunge the poor taste of such an underhanded tactic. Echo and I glance at each other.

  “This a wolves’ world. Gotta be a lion t’ survive,” he says. He catches Echo’s glance at the pig and adds, “Oh, Old Jude a lion too. Her looks is deceiving.”

  Then he takes out an electric sparker. Not just any sparker…

  “I made that,” I say.

  He holds up the sparker, his face a question.

  “You got it from Toyota, right?” I ask.

  His leathery face breaks into a smile.

  “No kiddin’,” he says.

  “Toyota’s a friend of mine,” I say.

  “Fox and a lion, that one.”

  He considers us in silence a moment longer, then says:

  “Folk call me Wade. Course ain’t many folk out here.”

  We introduce ourselves, despite the whole “killing us” issue. Where’s my crossbow? The guy must have Conan-like stealth to have taken it while I slept. After the introductions, he lights up and inhales. A sweet, pungent smell fills the air. Once the paper is burning evenly, he extends it toward Echo.

  “Oh, uh–no thanks …” she says vaguely, thrown by the gesture.

  “Didn’t roll this for me, sweetheart,” Wade says, still holding it toward her.

  She gives him a confused look.

  “Ain’t toby. ‘S medicine. For your leg.”

  Echo and I look at each other. Her leg is covered by the blanket–how can he know about the wound? She reaches slowly for the cylinder, holding it uncertainly.

  “Saw y’all on the road yesterday. Don’t like no fuss, so I wait ‘til morning. Had plenty of chance for violence, were that the way of it. ‘S medicine my Maude used to make–for the pain. Gonna numb you, make you funny. You smoke a little now, save more f’r later. You too if you feel the need, boy. You’m be getting’ your weapons back when I go. Now I better take a look at that leg.”

  Echo continues staring at him, dumbfounded, gray tendrils curling into the air between them as he crouches beside her. She draws back instinctively but he pays her no mind, pulling the blanket aside. He takes hold of her left ankle and turns it this way and that. He presses on the swollen flesh of her calf. He lifts the now-dirty makeshift bandage covering the effects of the shrapnel. He has no regard for her agony, yet his examination is not rude or sadistic, just impartial. Finally he grunts, replaces the blanket and looks back at the pig. It gives a definitive sound, almost like a bark. Wade nods in understanding before turning back to us.

  “Old Jude figured you’m be needin’ our help. She right too. That sow’s wiser ‘n most men–even some women. She aim to come after y’all. Knew there were a purpose to it. So it goes.”

  He retrieves the rope and compass from my supplies. Then he walks back to the ATV, pulls up his goggles and starts the vehicle. The electric whine of the engine is almost non-existent. He’s done something to muffle the sound. The vehicle is armed too. A long swivel-barrel is mounted on the underside of each handlebar, and there’s a curved shield protecting the driver. Foundry’s army would kill for vehicles like this.

  “Y’all wait here, gather? I need some things afore we go,” Wade says.

  Old Jude snorts and shakes her head.

  “What? Go where?” I ask, utterly confounded.

  “Where else? You’m be needin’ the Doctor.”

  Gaping is the most intelligent response I can muster as he drives away. Echo looks at me, shrugs, and takes a long drag of Wade’s remedy.

  “Echo, don’t,” I warn her.

  “What’s he going to do, poison me? He’s right, he could’ve killed us already.”

  “Yeah, well maybe he’s … preparing…”

  “To what, eat us?”

  “For all you know! We don’t know anything about that guy.”

  “We know he trades with your friend Toyota.”

  “Toyota would trade with the Priests of Set.”

  “Who?”

  “Nevermind.”

  I’m unnerved by the encounter. What does “Wade” have to gain by keeping us alive? He could be planning to sell us as slaves. But then why wouldn’t he tie us up at gunpoint and bring us along? Why leave us our weapons? Baffling. Or perhaps he plans to turn us into roamers, like that poor soul chained in the closet. That must be it. Some kind of crazed zombie-lover, I warrant. You can’t trust anyone this deep in the wastes. More accurately, you can’t trust anyone. Anywhere. Period.

  But what do we do now?

  “What he said. Wait for him to come back,” Echo says when I put the question to her.

  My stomach is tied in knots. I don’t like this at all. What if it’s a trick? I pace nervously. I pack our things and make sure we’re ready to leave in a hurry. I plan out what to do if one thing or another goes wrong. Meanwhile, Echo goes into a world of her own. She smiles and gazes in wonder, as if seeing everything for the first time.

  “Everything is floating,” she says, and pushes her hand slowly toward me, directing invisible flows of energy.

  “Great. How’s your leg?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Your leg.”

  She at her leg and shakes her head, apparently disconcerted by my
failure to grasp what’s important.

  “Tristan, everything is floating,” she says again, and she sounds both amazed and frustrated–amazed by some personal revelation, frustrated by her inability to convey its significance.

  “Crom,” I mutter.

  When Wade returns on the ATV, Echo is sleeping peacefully. There are butterflies in my stomach. My thoughts tumble over each other and confuse my heart into pounding too hard. I break out in a sweat. The sow is still in the harness, but now there’s an additional wagon-like attachment in tow. Bulky burlap bags are bundled into it, tied down tight. I have no idea what to expect.

  “You’m have to leave the barrow,” Wade says, nodding at the wheelbarrow.

  “Echo needs it. She can’t walk,” I say.

  “She won’t need to.”

  He pats the seat behind him. There’s enough room for both of us to pile on.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I told yer. She need the Doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Ain’t what doctor. The Doctor. In Scargo.”

  I’ve never heard of Scargo, and a doctor right now sounds too good to be true–but that’s only part of what’s bothering me. I address the crux of the matter.

  “Why would you help us?” I ask.

  Wade blows out a long breath and tongues his cheek in thought. He gives me a searching look. His black eyes glitter with contemplation.

  “When wolves is thick as flies, even lions need a pride,” he says. “Asides, weren’t really my idea.”

  I frown at him.

  “Whose idea was it then?” I ask.

  He looks at me in surprise, as if I’ve missed something obvious.

  “Old Jude’s!” he says.

  Maybe I’m crazy, but I help Echo onto the ATV. The medicine must be wearing off, because she winces when I move her. I strap on my pack and press in close behind her. I’m half-off the back edge of the seat, so it’s a little uncomfortable, but it’ll have to do. Then we’re off, heading north.

  “How far is Scargo?” I ask.

  “Ten day on foot. Course, we ain’t on foot. We be there tomorrow or the next, all goes well.”

  “Is it close to the z-line?” I ask.

  “Scargo is the z-line. East end. Was a big city in the World Before.”

  I don’t like the sound of that, but Echo needs a doctor if one is available. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up, and there’s something inherently genuine about Wade’s manner. If it’s a lie, he’s a hell of an actor.

  Big Road is largely disintegrated here, but the general path remains, a little less overgrown with shrubs than the land to either side. The ATV does about ten miles an hour. Wade tells me it can go a lot faster, but it’s dragging an inordinate amount of weight. At one point we see another roamer in the distance … like the one chained in that closet. I confront Wade about it.

  “Oh, that? I was keeping him for Toyota,” Wade says about the zombie.

  “Toyota? What would he want with a roamer?”

  “Same he want with anything else–he’m a trader. That roamer have odd habits. I figured the Doctor’d want to see him, so I take him captive for Toyota to deliver, store him in that house. Course, now Toyota won’t have to deliver him.”

  “What do you mean? You got rid of it?”

  “Rid of … ? No! We’re going to see the Doctor right now, ain’t we? I figured why wait.”

  Slowly, the implications sink in. I look back past Old Jude, at the platform in tow, at one of the bulky bags there. I look at Wade. At the bag again. He couldn’t mean…

  “You brought a roamer with us?”

  Echo jerks upright, irritated because I’m shouting in her ear. Wade glances back, baffled by my outrage.

  “Not for you. For the Doctor,” he clarifies.

  I’m speechless. There is a goddamn zombie stuffed into a burlap bag somewhere behind me. Why on earth would “the Doctor” want one? I look back every few minutes, searching for movement, for a tear in the bag, though Wade assures me the thing is secured. Every time I turn, Old Jude gives me this look like: mind your business, eyes front. There’s an unmistakable intelligence in the pig’s eyes. Yeah, I’ve probably lost my mind. I’ll be like that old hermit in the desert soon, screaming and running when people wave–oh well.

  The sun is low and red when Wade halts near the top of a long, sloping hill. He dismounts, stretches his legs, and goes forward a little, motioning for me to follow. Old Jude is snorting, eager to be loose, but Wade leaves her in the harness. He stops beside a shrub-tree, peering ahead. Big Road dips and runs into the distance, cutting straight through a cliff. The cut isn’t natural. What a marvel, the engineering of our ancestors–they shaped the world at will. Boulders have collapsed into the cut, but not as many as one might assume. Strangely, the shrubs, trees and other plant-life taper out until becoming noticeably absent toward the cliff.

  “You’m ever come back this way, you remember this place, and don’t go no closer,” Wade says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Roaches. They keep a lookout near that cliff, watchin’ f’r travelers. They clear the pass so as people can get through. Then they trap ‘em inside.”

  He reads my expression.

  “You’m don’t know about Roaches?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “They cannibal-men. Come across New Sea. You take that pass, they eat you.”

  I look at the pass again. If we’d kept north on our own…

  “Crom. No kidding? How do we get past?” I ask.

  Wade turns and waves me back to the ATV. Echo is smoking more of her “medicine.” She smiles at us, glassy-eyed. Better than moaning in pain all the time. When Wade starts the ATV, he motors east, toward New Sea. Something else occurs to me.

  “Why were there no plants back there?” I ask.

  “You notice, eh? Dead zone. Ain’t nothing grow for ten miles,” Wade says over his shoulder.

  How do the Roaches live?

  Seriously, they can’t eat only people–but I leave the question for another time.

  At New Sea, we backtrack south for a few miles until Wade locates a hidden cave in the side of a bluff by the ocean. He parks the ATV and unloads Old Jude, who grazes merrily. There’s an ominous shift of hidden limbs in the burlap bag as I dismount. Echo presses a finger into my cheek with a look of utmost concentration, startling me.

  “So solid,” she says, “but not real.”

  Wade conceals the vehicle with shrubs and other plants and leads us into the cave. Wood is already piled inside. He organizes a fire on the edge of the cave and lights the kindling.

  “Oughta do it,” he says, nodding.

  “Did you put this wood here?” I ask.

  “Not me.”

  Echo sits and stares hypnotically into the flames. I sit beside her, looking out at New Sea. Wade reveals a haunch of meat wrapped in leather and spits it for a late-day meal. Amazingly, it’s been salted and seasoned. Wade tells me of a monastery out west where the monks trade salt, bread and other goods. He’s well-travelled. I ask him if he’s ever heard of Haven.

  “Mmm, heard the name a time or two. Can’t say I know much about them towns north of the z-line. That where y’all headin’?” he asks.

  “That’s the plan,” I say, not adding that I’d just as soon turn west, avoiding the z-line altogether. I finish my meal. The meat is delicious. Afterwards, however, there’s a taste in my mouth that has nothing to do with the salt. It’s hard to believe Wade is providing these things for free. I’m worried the cost will be something hidden and terrible … but what if he is just helping us? How can we repay such a debt?

  “What did you mean, ‘it was Old Jude’s idea?’” I ask him.

  “Mmm-hmm. She insist we come,” Wade says.

  “But … she’s a pig.”

  “Didn’t I tell you she wiser ‘n
most men? Old too, for a sow. Must be nigh twenty years she’m spent with me and Maude. Old Jude always knew Maude’s mind. Wouldn’t eat for days when she passed. Then one morning she come all excited, snorting and makin’ a fuss, and she lead me out t’r the desert, to a patch of Maude’s favorite flowers. ‘S like she was trying to tell me something. I think that sow not entirely of this world. Got one foot here, one foot there, so to speak. She still know Maude’s mind, even though Maude’s moved on. So I reckon it’s best to let her have her way when she get like that. She sensed you coming. She knew you’m be needing our help. She make a fuss again. And I figure … Maude’d want it that way. To help y’all, I mean.”

  This is a veritable speech by Wade’s standards. There’s an emotional sheen in his eyes, and he lapses into a long silence.

  The fire in the cave is positioned to be well-hidden from anyone outside, but this is close to Roach country, so we post a watch. I take the first shift. The sky outside is host to a staggering stellar panorama. When Wade takes over, I lie next to Echo. Her arms find me. She seems to be asleep, but she murmurs my name and kisses me on the cheek once, an act that so astonishes me it keeps me awake a while longer.

  In the morning, there’s a boat outside.

  It’s a rectangular, simple, single-mast sail anchored in the shallows of New Sea. An older black man stands on the shore, talking amicably to Wade. My first thought is to look for weapons, because he’s probably a slave-trader. Yet that doesn’t appear to be the case. When Wade sees me, he waves me down. I kick Echo awake ruder than intended. She makes a disgruntled noise as I descend from the cave. Old Jude roots happily through the dirt nearby.

  “Tristan, this here’s Franklin, the Ferryman,” Wade says as I come closer.

  “Pleased to meet you, young Tristan,” the Ferryman intones.

  If this man has ill intent, he’s thoroughly deceiving. His eyes are alight with such congeniality that it’s hard to look at him with anything but kindness. Furthermore, he has a rich voice and speaks with a fluency that’s almost beguiling.

  “Franklin be takin’ us the rest of the way,” Wade tells me.

  I’m waiting for them to start negotiating over the necessary trades, but it doesn’t happen. Perhaps Wade has already made some arrangement. Echo appears at the edge of the cave above.

  “And this must be your shining Isolde,” Franklin says.

  “Our what?” I ask, alarmed.

  “Forgive me. Isolde is an Irish princess from an old story. One might say it is a story from the world before the World Before.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Soon we’re aboard the ferry, along with our packs and belongings. Wade has even managed to wheel the ATV up the gangway. The burlap bag shifts disturbingly in the process. Soon Franklin hauls up the anchor and shoves us off with a long wooden pole. He does things to the sail I don’t understand, and somehow we’re heading out to sea. As we get further from shore, several small islands appear. The Ferryman lives on one; that’s how he spotted our fire. He leaves the wood in the cave so travelers can signal him.

  We go further from land than I’ve ever been, but never quite far enough for the shore to disappear. The Roaches don’t sail, Franklin tells us, but there are pirates in deeper waters. The wind feels different on the sea. Cleaner. Old Jude is the least appreciative, lying low in one corner of the boat.

  “She’m a creature of the earth. Don’t much like the water,” Wade comments.

  Franklin sings unabashedly as he works. He stops to comment on things or mention some small story. I learn from him that Wade is far deadlier than he lets on. Apparently the Roaches even have a name for him–“the Desert Scorpion.” Wade pretends not to hear Franklin’s stories.

  The Ferryman knows all kinds of useless facts as well. He must have a library of his own somewhere. His politeness and fluency are unflagging. He even keeps books aboard the boat, sealed in a water-proof chest. When the boat doesn’t need him, he reads aloud for entertainment–old stories, from centuries ago. Poems too. I’ve heard zero poems in my life. The ones Franklin reads are like songs sung in a single tone; they have a melody all their own, and you want it to go on and on, filling you when you didn’t know you were empty, enlarging you when you didn’t know you were small, until the words press like a finger upon your soul and stir what’s hidden there.

  One poem in particular affects us.

  “Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe,” Franklin announces, and my head snaps up. Echo, who has been staring out to sea, turns slowly, as though something monstrous has been uttered. I’d forgotten her name came from a poem. The Ferryman doesn’t notice our reaction.

  “It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know,

  By the name of Annabel Lee;

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  “I was a child and she was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  But we loved with a love that was more than love–

  I and my Annabel Lee–

  With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven

  Coveted her and me.”

  Echo is transfixed, whether in horror or something else, I can’t tell. She’s taken more of Wade’s medicine too, likely warping her perceptions.

  “And this was the reason that, long ago,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

  My beautiful Annabel Lee;

  So that her highborn kinsmen came

  And bore her away from me,

  To shut her up in a sepulchre

  In this kingdom by the sea.

  “The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

  Went envying her and me–

  Yes!–that was the reason (as all men know,

  In this kingdom by the sea)

  That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

  Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”

  Echo’s eyes, if possible grow even wider. Her mouth is open. She blinks rapidly. Tears arise, yet stay there unshed.

  “But our love it was stronger by far than the love

  Of those who were older than we–

  Of many far wiser than we–

  And neither the angels in Heaven above,

  Nor the demons down under the sea

  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  “For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

  And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

  Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride,

  In her sepulchre there by the sea–

  In her tomb by the sounding sea.”

  Echo stares at Franklin, frozen. Slowly, she looks back out to sea, revealing nothing. I want to say something. Instead, I quietly ask Franklin for the book. I read the poem over and over again, silently, until I’ve committed it to memory. It’s like the answer to a forgotten riddle.

  The winds are favorable. We cover almost the whole trip to Scargo in less than twenty four hours. We play cards in addition to Franklin’s reading–Echo joins in too, until the cycle of medicine and pain wears her out–and even though I’ve only just met these people and my fears of betrayal and disaster loom unmolested, for that one day I feel more like part of a family than in all the days since Farmington. There’s magic in a thing like that, a carefree simplicity that’s wonderful and refreshing.

  At night, the world is silent save for the gentle lapping of the sea against our hull. Before sleep, I probe Franklin for information on Haven.

  “Haven. Yeah, heard the name. Enclave to the north. Heard they had power
there. Heard it was nice. Had some folk going there a few years back. I’m afraid I can’t help you much though. Most travelers I meet only go one way. They don’t often return to share their tales, especially once they cross the z-line.”

  By noon the next day, we reach Scargo.

  The shore is blanketed by fog, and the first substantial shape that appears is what Franklin calls “the Blue Tower.” It congeals out of the fog like an enormous gray-blue phantom, impossibly tall, a katana-like monolith impaling the sky. It must be seventy–no, a hundred stories. It’s the tallest thing I’ve ever seen. Nothing stands higher than a handful of levels in any of the other ruins I’ve been through. Franklin tells me it was built only a decade before the Fall, with newer materials strong enough to withstand all that followed–not only the quakes, riots and bombs but the slow, gnawing bite of time.

  As we approach, the rest of the broken city emerges. It’s an absolutely massive ruin. Scargo was a city of almost unimaginable size. The buildings toppled in such numbers that some actually died standing; their rusting bones lean together in drunken embraces, hulking metal corpses that collapsed with nowhere left to fall, still slanting hundreds of feet into the air.

  Some movement along the shore becomes visible. The ground itself is shifting. I get out my spyglass for a better look … and the blood drains from my face. Blanketing the broken streets, climbing aimlessly among the twisted girders and fallen monuments, are thousands upon thousands of walking undead.