The The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River (47 page)

He switched off the lights and activated the night vision.

Everything was still gray and floating dust.

No good, my friend.

He switched the headlight back on and returned to normal optics.

They’ve brought the ceiling down upon us. They must have explosives.

He searched for Kyle and Trash within the swirling dust and settling debris.

Trash stumbled forward, bleeding and waving at them to push on.

Where is Kyle?

There is no time, Old Man! Move forward or you and your granddaughter and the Boy will be trapped in here too.

The Old Man gassed the engine and swiveled the gun sight forward in time to avoid Grayson’s crawling body. Large arrows jutted out of his back and chest and arm. He rose stiffly, firing his rifle wildly with one hand into a darkened arch to their left. A moment later, another massive iron spike shot from the darkness and went straight through his chest.

The Old Man could hear his granddaughter screaming.

Ahead of the tank, dust clouds, thick and ashy, swirled through a jumble of broken debris. Where the path through the casino lay the Old Man could not see.

There is no clear way forward!

Trash appeared and waved wildly, passionately, for him to follow her now.

She is all alone out there.

And . . .

She is very brave.

And . . .

They all were.

Everywhere, the Old Man could see moving shadows and sudden figures leaping as Trash walked forward, firing at unseen foes. When they neared the far end of the arcade, a massive dirty marble fountain rose up. Above it, bodies dangled from a dome of smashed glass and skeletal ironwork directly over the darkly stained marble sculptures within the dry fountain.

Trash went wide to the left, her gun hammering bullets into walls and doors where unseen oppressors lurked in the darkness. Suddenly her gunfire stopped and she slung the rifle back onto her shoulder, drawing out a large knife with her other hand. A man with tiny rat teeth rose up from within the fountain behind her and pulled her down onto the marble floor. Coin-mailed men rushed from the darkness and dragged her across the dusty litter, back toward the blackness behind a broken-down double door. They were already greedily clutching at her armor, ripping away her mask, revealing her horrified and angry face.

She’s gone now.

There’s nothing I can do to save her.

The Old Man had to release his sweating hands from the controls for fear of breaking them.

Think!

There is nothing I can do to help her.

You can’t save her. But you can help her, my friend.

The Old Man swiveled the main gun toward the broken-down doors, pointing the barrel into the darkness beyond where they had dragged her. He reached over to the fire control switch.

The Boy slid past him, opening the emergency hatch in the deck plate.

How did he know that was there?

The Boy looked at the Old Man.

“Just get back to the street,” he said, his voice hoarse and dry. “I’ll find her. Then I’ll find you.”

And he was gone, closing the hatch behind him.

The Old Man waited, unsure of how long it would take the Boy to crawl out from between the treads. A moment later he appeared, steel tomahawk out, limping toward the broken-down door and the darkness beyond.

Go now!

The Old Man gunned the engine and circled the fountain. On the other side he found a large arch, once grand and opulent, now fading in neglect and damage, leading to another long hallway. Along its length, torches revealed a hall of horrors as beheaded mannequins held their arms upward. The long hall narrowed to an opening impossible for the tank to clear and the Old Man pressed the engine to full power, closed his eyes, and smashed the tank straight into it.

On the other side he slammed on the brakes and the tank skidded across marble, careening into a lone desk that must have once greeted arriving guests. The Old Man swiveled the turret and found a wide entrance leading back out onto the street. He pivoted the tank and throttled the engine to full as it tore through the last remnants of broken glass and bent steel, surging out onto the wide steps and a driveway that led off toward the main road. The tank bumped its way down the steps, crushed an ancient taxi, and charged up the driveway and out onto casino row.

All around him, radiation-rotted towers and palaces rose up in only the color of burnt ash. Dry white grass and burnt earth lay beneath a constant snowfall of settling radioactive debris. In the middle of the street lay an airliner in two distinct parts, its center section long gone, the tail rising up at an odd angle in the background, the cockpit smiling sickly at some bad joke played forty years ago. Its sweptback wings akimbo, as though in some confession of final helplessness.

The dust storm had stopped.

The moon was out.

Fading flakes of ash drifted like snow on a winter’s night.

Everything that was not burnt black or tired gray remained bone white.

The Old Man checked the “outside” dosimeter. It was pegged to the red line. The “inside” counter was high, but still within the green.

It works.

Our little blanket works.

The Old Man maneuvered the tank onto the main road.

A path of frozen destruction lay carved from when the airliner had come down onto the street moments after takeoff and left a clear path through the forty years since. The Old Man settled the tank into the ditch of scarred asphalt and followed it east through the last of the collapsing palaces.

A
T DAWN, IN
the shadows among the pink light of first morning, the Old Man watched the ancient city refuse to illuminate in color. He had the tank backed up against a wall in a vacant lot beyond the casinos, watching the leaning towers and fallen arcades, waiting for the Boy.

There isn’t much fuel left.

I’ll give him until noon and then we must leave.

His granddaughter was asleep.

He’d had to explain a lot of what had happened. What she had seen. What she should’ve never seen.

And there was much he could not explain.

So he told her about ice cream.

She’d never had ice cream.

“One day we’ll find an ice cream maker, one with a hand crank. All we need is some milk, maybe we can get some from our goats, and then we only need to find some salt. Then we can have ice cream. You will love it.”

Sugar. You will need sugar, my friend.

There is the sugar from the date palms. We could use that.

“I know I will, Poppa. I just know I’ll love it.”

“There are even flavors.” And the Old Man began to name as many as he could remember.

Soon she was asleep.

I hope she dreams only of ice cream.

Ice cream dreams.

You were wrong to bring her with you, my friend.

I know that now.

In time, he saw the Boy limping across an abandoned lot of glittering broken glass, crossing a gray and dusty road, and cutting through a fallen mesh fence. Heading for the tank.

He was alone.

Chapter 29

As the morning sun began to bake the quiet destruction between the empty spaces and cracked parking lots of Vegas, the Old Man climbed down from the tank and handed the last of a half-filled canteen to the Boy.

The Boy began to drink, holding the canteen with his powerful right hand. The Old Man looked at the dried blood covering the Boy’s arms, still staining the tomahawk.

There is no need to ask him what happened in there.

He left the Boy to drink water alone in the silence of the place.

Inside the tank, he started the APU and radioed General Watt. Natalie.

“We’re on the other side of Las Vegas now.”

“Good.” Her voice was warm and clear. Like she’d just had a cup of morning coffee. Like there might be a cup waiting for him, wherever she was.

As if such good things exist anymore.

As if there are such moments left in this world.

“It’s a good thing you got us to that Radiation Shielding Kit,” he said. Then he told her what he could of the night. He told her about the three. How they’d made a way when there seemed none. And how each had died in doing so. He could not tell the one without the other. When he told General Watt of the bomb crater they’d come upon, she asked about the shielding kit. “We needed it to cross through a bomb crater.”

“You’ve used it already?”

There wasn’t exactly alarm in her voice. Not exactly. But something.

Concern?

“Yes.” Then, “Is that going to be a problem?” asked the Old Man, hearing the sudden worry in his own voice. “Should we . . . is there something else ahead . . .”

Pause.

“It won’t be a problem,” said Natalie, her voice gentle and calm. “We’ll find a way to keep you safe. If you had to use it to survive, then it had to be used.”

“I hope we didn’t . . . I hope that was all right,” stammered the Old Man. “I hope . . .”

“It’s all right.”

Her voice is like the voice of someone who knows that eventually everything is going to be just fine, no matter how bad it looks right now. No matter what you’ve done to mess things up.

You need that, my friend, so take it because it is being given away for free and also because you are too poor to disagree.

Yes.

“There is nothing to worry about at this present time,” said General Watt. Natalie. “It’ll be all right. We will find a way to get you here.”

But the Old Man knew that it wasn’t all right. That some change had taken place in the wind and weather, the current and tide, and finally as it must, the last port at journey’s end.

And.

There is always a price to pay for such things.

Yes.

Always.

And someone will have to pay for it.

Someone will.

In the hatch, beneath the sun, the Old Man felt cold.

T
HE ROAD UP
and out of southern Las Vegas climbed through tired rocks and vast crumbling urban sprawls of falling houses and collapsed roadways. A barely readable sign indicated the way to Lake Mead.

In time Las Vegas disappeared behind them, fading into the heat of a day that chased them with its memories of the night. The road led alongside the outlines of buildings once standing and now long gone. The land opened up onto a massive downslope of red earth and gray rock. At the bottom lay the glittering blue of a wide lake stretching out and away from them.

The road began a series of twists through rock formations that seemed foreign and somehow of another world. Another world the Old Man dimly remembered from the covers of science fiction books about strange and alien planets. A crumbling tower rose up from the red rocks alongside the lake and the road. Its tenure seemed thin and merely a matter of time.

The road that led to the Dam cut across the face of this reddish-brown rock above a steep drop into canyons below. Beyond all this, the Dam climbed skyward and their eyes saw what man had once made.

“We made this, Poppa?”

“Yes,” was all the Old Man could say, his voice unexpectedly choking with pride.

I did not think it would affect me this way.

And . . .

I had no idea.

The Boy lay sleeping. The Old Man stopped the tank and shook him.

He should see this too.

He should know we weren’t all bad.

They climbed out from their hatches, his granddaughter in her new flight jacket, the Boy still covered in blood. The Old Man shielded his eyes against the blaze of noon with his wrinkled and calloused hand. The massive Dam stretched high above them.

Yes.

We built this.

And . . .

We were not all bad.

T
HE PEOPLE WHO
came out from the Dam wore the same shreds of armor and carried the same rifles as Kyle, Grayson, and Trash.

A large man walked out in front of them. There was a smile on his face. He wore faded denim and an old Stetson hat, sun-bleached and torn.

“You can’t be with King Charlie if you’ve gotten out of your tank,” he bellowed, his voice bombastic, echoing off the canyon walls and the Dam.

“We aren’t,” said the Old Man, sounding thin and dry, his voice a small croak.

When did my voice start to sound like that of an old person?

The people behind the Big Man began to clap. Someone whooped with excitement. They patted each other. There was even weeping.

These people are in need of good news.

Yes, my friend, and they seem to think you are it.

The people of the Dam approached the tank, surrounding it at once. Feeling it. Touching it. Marveling.

These are Kyle’s people. Grayson’s.

And Trash’s too.

We took her in
.

That’s what Kyle had said.

We took her in
.

There were questions all at once and each one different.

Who are you?

Where’d you get the tank?

How’d you make it through?

Where are you going?

Do you need fuel?

Have you seen . . . ?

The Old Man grew confused in his rush to answer each question. Starting an answer and then being pulled away by another. Until he saw the Big Man staring at him. Still smiling. Waiting. And even though there was a smile, a big smile, there was also worry. Worry in the eyes. There was a question about the three and the Old Man could tell it was waiting for him and that the Big Man would never ask it. He would never ask it because maybe in the long days since its first being asked, he had answered it for himself. In his mind Kyle, Grayson, and Trash and all the others who had been trapped beyond Vegas had perished long ago. They must’ve.

But there are nights. Nights when one wonders what might still be possible despite all evidence to the contrary. Nights when you rise alone for just a drink of water, and in the silence you sigh and think of unanswered questions.

You think of loved ones and where they might be.

And even . . .

If, they might be.

And when there are no answers in the night, you sigh and think . . .

What am I going to do now?

“Do you know Kyle?” asked the Old Man.

The Big Man nodded, his eyes changing to hope and belief and then disbelief all at once. Speaking as he nods. Speaking words as if he cannot believe these words he has said so many times in the night might actually be real words.

“He’s alive? My son is . . .” the Big Man’s voice faltered, unwilling to form that last word again.

Alive.

His son. All this time he has imagined him dead and hated himself for it.

“He . . .” tries the Old Man and stops.

Tell them, my friend.

I’m afraid to. How?

Just tell them. In time it will be a mercy to them, though they will not know it today.

No.

No, today will be for grief. Which is also, sometimes, a mercy.

Other names are quickly shouted out. Names that are not Kyle or Grayson.

There were others before it was only just the three of them.

An older couple. She is already clinging to a man turning white with shock, holding on to her as much as she is holding on to him.

Holding on to each other.

The Old Man sees his own son.

And wonders . . .

What is he doing right now?

And . . .

How do I tell them?

The truth, my friend. The truth. In the end it is what we must have. There is nothing else.

All eyes watched him.

He shook his head slowly.

“They made a way for us,” said the Old Man. “Where there wasn’t one.”

The Old Man wanted to lower his eyes. He wanted to look away as they stared at him for meaning, for answers, for some shred of long denied truth.

But it would be wrong to look away. Cowardly.

And then someone asked, as if it wasn’t already known to all. Someone asked, “Did they make it?”

T
HE
O
LD
M
AN
remembered weeping and feeling he had no right to. The three were theirs, not his.

But he wept for them all the same and they did not stop him.

Grayson’s mother cried out her son’s name.

The Old Man saw her husband pulling her into him, holding on to her. He was like a man being swept away by a river.