Shadows of the Emerald City (35 page)

He tried to run but it was impossible, so he limped stiffly as fast as he could to where the bucket lay. Scarecrow’s head was still inside it. He heard him before he saw him.

“
Brubrubrubrubru!”
” was the noise he made, as though he was trying to make a raspberry noise with his lips.

“
Scarecrow,” Tin Man said, reaching down and picking up the bucket. He instantly regretted doing so, because he wanted to use both his hands to cover his face.

“
bluthel elthel elthel,
” Scarecrow said, his eyes rolling in his head. They moved at different speeds, the left one moving much faster than the right. His head was partially deflated, and there was a nasty looking crease running across one side of his face. He’d lost a lot of straw, and what was left was mixed heavily with desert sand. His head was only half filled.

Tin Man picked Scarecrow up. The straw man responded by yodeling a stream of nonsense syllables. He strained the sand from the bucket through his fingers and was careful to grab every last piece of straw. Then he placed the straw back into the bucket and carefully tipped Scarecrow’s head so much of the sand drained off. He was careful not to lose a single piece of straw. Then he carefully stuffed the small amount of straw from the bucket back into Scarecrow’s head and placed him face up inside the bucket. It was easier now that half of his stuffing was gone.

“
Tin Man,
” Scarecrow said. His eyes were still off-kilter, but they had ceased rolling insanely in their sockets. “
Can’t see good.
”

“
You lost a lot of straw, old friend. But you’re better now. You can speak again.”

“
Not straw
,” Scarecrow said. “
Bran. Pins make it sharp
.”

“
Do you know where we are?” Tin Man said. “It’s just as bad here as it was in Oz.”

Scarecrow looked up into the dull sky. His left eye sank miserably to the side.

“
Not Oz,
” he said after a minute. “
The Heart wants what it wants
.”

“
Kansas,” Tin Man said.

Scarecrow looked at him but said nothing.

“
So we walk, I guess,” Tin Man said.

He carried the bucket on the left side to balance out the limp on his right, and tried his best not to swing it or move it in any way which might cause the Scarecrow discomfort. The straw man seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, or sometimes his face would slacked and his eyes would go dead. When that happened Tin Man would knock the bucket with his knuckles and Scarecrow would come back.

Eventually they left the cornfield altogether. The ground stayed the same texture, like packed dust with the occasional mass of dead weeds. The colour stayed the same. Gray on gray. As far as the eye could see. At some point Tin Man realized his axe was gone. It hardly seemed to matter.

And then there was a small grouping of buildings on the horizon and Tin Man picked out a barn and a livestock pen among them. A single naked line of smoke drifted from the house.

“
I think I see it,” said Tin Man. “There’s a farm ahead.”

“
Nono,
” mumbled Scarecrow. “
We be looking for a guhrl
.”

“
Hush now,” Tin Man said. “Let’s talk later.”

He walked toward the house. The farm appeared deserted from where he was save for that slender line of smoke. The grass and trees were dead on the property. There were pig skeletons in the animal pen. A mummified horse, dry, like an old bug husk on the front lawn.

Tin Man stepped around the horse. There were jagged squares cut into the side of the animal, and one leg was nearly picked clean. He went across the front of the house to the door. It was dark inside. The air was thick with greasy smoke. Then there was a click of machinery and as the Tin Man’s eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw the dangerous end of a rifle pointed at his head.

“
Best move on,” a female voice said. “
I’ll take your head off iffin’ you try anything.
”

The woman was a heaving sack of bones and squalor. Greasy hair clung to the sides of her face in filthy clumps. She was wearing pants and a sweater, with a hood, but the hood was down and her clothes were soiled and ruined.

Tin Man stood still, watching the woman. He wasn’t exactly sure what might happen if she fired the weapon at him. He’d never been shot before. In his rusted state, however, she might take out a piece of his face the size of his fist.

The rifle started to shake. Then the barrel dropped. The woman was crying. She tossed the rifle aside and stood there, staring at the Tin Man and his bucket. Tin Man nodded grimly at her. That same beautiful face, now aged, lined with dirt and ash and starved, tanned with hard years that her eyes merely hinted at.

Joy had moved on from Kansas, too.

“
Hello, Dorothy.”

“
Are we here?
” Scarecrow said.

“
Yeah,” Tin Man said. “We’re here.”

Dorothy embraced the Tin Man and ran her fingers over the jagged scales of rust. She made cooing noises when she touched the holes in his chest, and Tin Man’s heart stirred at the sound. He gently pulled her hands away and handed her the bucket instead. He felt like he had an anvil on his chest and he couldn’t bear the weight of it.

“
Oh my,” Dorothy said, touching Scarecrow’s face. “Oh my dear sweet friend.”

“
Hello Dorothy,
” Scarecrow said, his voice sweet and friendly. “
We’ve been looking all over for you.
”

The straw man smiled up at his old friend, and then his left eye sank to the edge of its socket and he made a soft groaning sound. Tin Man knocked the bucket, and Scarecrow snapped out of it.

“
Hello Dorothy
, he said sweetly. “
We’ve been looking for you.
”

“
How long has he been like this?” Dorothy asked.

“
Since we got here,” Tin Man said. “I lost hold of him in the Duster, and his head filled with sand. He lost half his stuffing. Before that his mind was slipping, but he was still a brilliant man. Now I’m afraid he’s only half what he once was.”

“
Come inside,” Dorothy said. “You never know who might be about.”

Dorothy lead them into the house—A near perfect copy of the one they’d passed through in Munchkin Country. This one was just as ragged and old, beaten nearly to death by the ravages of Dorothy’s world. There were burnt records and magazines mixed with kitchen utensils, rotting furniture and strips of jaundiced wallpaper hanging like string. Dorothy made her way across the filth with practiced ease, Holding the Scarecrow’s bucket close and speaking softly to him. Tin Man stumbled and crashed his way through; his bad leg wasn’t doing him any favours in this cramped space.

In the kitchen there was a hole in the floor partially covered by the kitchen sink, which Dorothy had ripped from the counter. The sink was full of ash and burnt furniture; the low heat caused a reeking blue-gray line of smoke that danced to the ceiling then out through a hole in the roof.

“
It’s my escape hatch,” Dorothy said. “Raiders never look under the fire when they come. I just need time to put it back in place and they don’t even notice our tornado shelter. It doubled as a fallout shelter, but Uncle Henry didn’t understand about radiation and all that science.
He was just a dumb farmer.
”

Her breath hitched when she said that. She gave a guilty look to the Tin Man, then sat down cross legged with Scarecow’s bucket in her lap. She laid the rifle down beside her, within easy reach.

“
I can’t believe you two are really here,” she said, her hand caressing Scarecrow’s face. “I dreamt about you forever. I dreamt about you so long I was beginning to think that’s all you were. Just a dream I made up to get past the sadness.”

“
We didn’t know where else to go,” Tin Man said. He took a spot beside her. His rusted frame shuddered from the strain of sitting, and a dusting of rust flakes took to the air with the impact. Dorothy watched them hang in the air, then reached out to catch them in her hands.

“
I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “Why are you two like this?”

“
It’s not just us,” Tin Man said. “It was
everything
. Oz is gone, Dorothy. Destroyed. it looks exactly like this place, but it snows over there and the snow makes you sick. It’s mixed with ash that’s like an acid and it burns through everything it touches. The colour is all leached out of the world. The only colour left behind is gray.”

“
It’s not a colour,
” Scarecrow said. “
It’s a
toe.
Toe? Tony? No that’s not it. It’s something like a toe. Something with colour.
”

“
Then Oz is no better than here,” Dorothy said, ignoring the Scarecrow’s ramble. “Would but there have been a chance to escape this tomb. I would have gladly gone to Oz and spent the rest of my life there. This world is burnt and dead now. There’s nothing left anywhere.”

“
We thought the same thing,” Tin Man said. “It was Scarecrow’s idea. He thought if we made it to Kansas you might be able to help us.”

“
Me?
” Dorothy choked. “What could I do?”

“
I don’t know,” Tin Man said. He sighed deeply, his breath rattling in his chest. it whistled from the hole in his stomach, bringing a shower of sand with it.

“
Does it hurt?” Dorothy said. She started to reach for it, but Tin Man moved faster and covered the gaping wound with his own hands.

“
I feel nothing anymore,” Tin Man said.

“
Toe-toe,
” Scarecrow said. “
I meant toe-toe? What is that?
”

“
Toto
,” Dorothy said. She looked like she’d been hit in the face with a stick. “He’s dead.”

Then she was crying again.

Later Dorothy made a simple supper from a half can of beans and Tin Man watched her eat in silence. Scarecrow had faded out, and for now the woodsman was content to let him stay quiet. Every time he opened his mouth Dorothy cried, and it made Tin Man’s chest hurt. He’d asked her about straw to fill Scarecrow’s head, but she’d shaken her head sadly. There was no straw to be had. She’d burnt it all months ago.

He sat and listened to her slurp beans, and listened to the wind outside, and thought about the days when he was the lord of the Winkies and his life had a point. Finally Dorothy tossed the can in the fire and wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater.

“
That’s the last of it,” she said, watching the yellow flames lick green and blue out of the can.

“
What happened to Kansas?” Tin Man said.

“
There was a war,” Dorothy said, huddling under a blanket. Her feet were inches from the dirty fire, soaking up all the heat they could. “Russia and America.
World War Three.
Though as I remember it, there wasn’t much of a war. Only a lot of bombs dropping. Hydrogen Bombs. intercontinental missiles. Short-range tactical nukes dropped by fighters and shot from tanks.”

“
I don’t know what any of that means,” Tin Man said. “But it sounds terrible.”

“
You can’t imagine the death toll,” Dorothy said. “All it took was one or two bombs dropped on a city and millions were dead. And it happened over and over again. Not just here and there. Everywhere. London, France, Canada…all gone. We drew a line in the sand, Russia walked over it. So we nailed em. And they nailed us.”

“
But why?” Tin Man said.

“
It doesn’t matter, I guess,” Dorothy said. “Uncle Henry used to say ‘
They got all them bombs and such built up, now they’re just lookin for an excuse to use ‘em
’. I guess he was right. Afterward, there wasn’t much left. Fallout from the bombs came down in rain and ash and killed most of the survivors. Made the water poison, killed all the plants, and made everything pretty much what you see now. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun. It’s just this old gray as far as you can see, forever.”

“
That’s what happened to Oz,” Tin Man said. “The clouds came, and everything got cold and died.”

I guess it was fallout then,” Dorothy said. “
We killed it
.”

“
What is that?” Tin Man said.

“
Fallout is like these little particles of radioactive shit.
Radiation
,” Dorothy said. “You touch it and gives you cancer and messes with your body. If you eat radioactive food and water the shit gets inside you. It’s like cooking you from the inside. Uncle Henry said that. I seen drifters with radiation poisoning before. Their hair falls out. They get sores on their bodies. Ones who got it real bad, they’re begging to die. It looks plain awful.”

Tin Man looked down at the Scarecrow. He’d been quiet for quite a while. His gaze was glassy and cross eyed. His mouth hung open like he was about to speak.

“
Scarecrow,” he said. “
Hey!
” He banged the bucket. When there was no response he shook it. He reached in and pressed on Scarecrow’s face. There was nothing, but a burlap head half filled with straw. Tin Man sighed and put the bucket down. Dorothy was watching him. he shook his head.

“
It’s for the best,” Tin Man said. “He was hardly even there.”