Wasteland Blues (4 page)

***

Derek found his companions sitting at a small table at The Atomic Cantina
,
a dim and smoky old watering hole
that boasted a corn-mash still and Friday night cock fights. Leggy nursed a small glass of something clear and potent from the still. Teddy was on his second steaming mug of goat milk and a plate of eggs and beans. John, who toyed nervously with the crucifix around his neck, had nothing.

Derek tossed the bundle of scrip onto the table.

“Christ Jesus,” choked Leggy. He snatched up the bundle and stuffed it under his shirt. “You want to get our throats slit? Don’t ever go flashing a wad like that out in the open.”

“Make a list of what we need,” said Derek. His cheeks turned red, but he refused to acknowledge that the old man had embarrassed him. “We’ll stock up for the journey. Whatever’s left over we’ll split up and spend. That scrip’s only good in Sanger.”

“You make your own damn list of what we need,” said Leggy, and then winked at John. “I got business to attend.” He kept some of the scrip and carefully passed the rest to John under the table. “I’ll meet you back here in two hours.” With a shove he wheeled himself back away from the table and turned toward the batwing doors.

“I’ve gotten friendly with some of the ladies at the brothel on the other side of this dungheap of a town.” He winked at Derek.

***

The old man didn’t look back. He hoped that Derek would not resort to violence in such a public place, that he would let him go and trust that he’d come back. There was a semblance of law in Sanger, and like as not, Derek must know that kidnapping was a criminal offense. Leggy pushed his way closer to the door, the metal wheels of his chair grinding over the stone floor, his heart pounding in his chest.

It wasn’t until he had reached the doors that Derek finally called after him. “If it’s just a lay you’re after, then we should be seein’ you again in about half a minute.”

Laughter resounded throughout the bar.

As Leggy passed through the doors, Derek offered a final warning. “Don’t make me send Teddy out to find you.”

Out in the bright midday sun, Leggy breathed a sigh of relief. He looked back and forth, up and down the street. All about him were tents and stands, buyers and sellers, peddlers and traders of almost every commodity the apocalypse had left to offer. A skinner carefully led his donkey, laden with panniers of goat cheese and jerky, toward a circle of trading caravans in the town’s main square.

Leggy had no intention of visiting a whorehouse. He just wanted a few minutes to himself before the journey began in earnest. He wheeled himself into the market.

Nearby, an old woman stood behind an even older card table, hocking her meager vegetables—desiccated things that had struggled their way up through the sandy, irradiated soil only now to lay plucked and withering in the harsh desert sun. “Getch’yer taters!” she hollered, “Getch’yer greens! I got onions!”

It was good to be away from San Muyamo. Things had been getting bad there. They’d long since run out of diesel, and none of the traders that rolled through the village would accept anything from The Heap in trade for fuel. Without diesel, there was no need for the generator—and without the generator there was no need for old Leggy.

As he wheeled deeper into the maze of market stalls, he admitted to himself that he secretly welcomed his recent kidnapping. He’d become smaller during his convalescence in San Muyamo, sour and timid, too timid to do himself what the Elders would eventually do some day—roll his chair ten miles out of town and let the sun and the heat and the bugs finish the job they’d started when they took his legs at the knees.

Leggy turned to the west, the direction from which they’d come. People in desert gear milled about, all with hurried business of their own. Turbans and gas masks abounded. Bedouins. Travelers. Leggy smiled. And now he was one of them again.

Leggy looked east, past a stand of scrawny apricot trees, their meager fruit hanging like tumors from old bones, and could just make out the rise of the Black Hills. There were said to be uranium mines sunk throughout those hills, and other dangers too evil to be spoken aloud—or at least that’s what men said when they really didn’t know what lurked in a place. Still, those hills marked the true beginning of the wild territories, the unknown land, the great stretch of chemical wastes that, in these parts, was known as the precursor to the Wasteland.

Leggy reached into a secret pocket concealed in the seat of his wheelchair and removed a folded sheaf of papers. It was an old map, worn and creased. He unfolded it. Though San Muyamo wasn’t marked on the map, he knew what it was near. The old man touched a tiny dot marked Fresno. Then he traced a finger from west to east across the long expanse of a country once known as the United States of America. From here to New York was a long road, longer than Derek and his friends could imagine. It would be a Hell of a trip. Leggy knew this journey would kill him—him and his three companions. They’d never see New York City. But that didn’t matter. Better to die moving forward than to sit and wait for death to come to him.

***

John left Derek and Teddy in The Atomic Cantina and strolled out to the market. Sanger was the farthest he’d ever gone from San Muyamo and that only twice in his short life of seventeen years. Beyond Sanger was the great unknown, and eventually the Wasteland which only the mad ever tried to cross. He’d just heard rumor of two from San Muyamo who had been foolish enough to enter it, and none who had returned. And now he was trying, too. He was scared, but he drew comfort from his lessons—hadn’t the Lord sent manna to the Hebrews in their wanderings? Hadn’t Moses drawn water from stone? Hadn’t He provided for his prophet Joseph when Joseph was in need?

Weren’t the Angels calling to them from New York?

Of course, John also knew that the Lord helped those who helped themselves, so he would spend his scrip wisely, not waste it like Leggy on whores and who knew what else.

John filled his rucksack with dried apricots, goat jerky, and coffee. He outfitted himself with new boots, sturdy and tough, and a stout walking stick. He bought a second water skin, and filled it to the brim from a water-seller, tasting it first—it was oily and smelled of sulfur, but it was clean.

“No radiation,” promised the seller.

When stocked to his satisfaction, John found a small chapel of the Prophet, its adobe walls smooth and white. He went inside. Shivering in the dank darkness he spent the last of his money to light a candle, then knelt on the hard wooden railing and bowed his head. Above him loomed a rough-hewn statue of the Blessed Mother, her arms open, blue eyes that pierced the heart, one bare foot crushing the head of a poisonous green serpent.

As John made his way back to the canteen, he found Derek and Teddy in the market. Derek was cinching a large pack to his brother’s back. Teddy would be their mule. The pack bulged with supplies: dried foods, water skins, salt tablets, flint and tinder, signal mirror, and a few cook pots that clanked and rattled in time with Teddy’s enormous stride.

“You all set?” asked Derek as John joined the brothers.

“I’m ready,” said John, patting his own pack.

“Where’s that wheelchair fuck?” asked Derek. “Figure he’s still dipping his wick?”

“Can’t we just leave him?” asked John, knowing the answer but asking anyway. “It doesn’t sit right to be searching for angels with a fornicator. A legless one, at that.”

“He knows the way,” said Derek.

At that moment Leggy hove into view, though it took a moment for the boys to recognize him. He’d outfitted himself with a wide-brimmed gaucho hat and a broad wool serape that draped like a dress, hiding the stumps of his legs. The serape was woven in a mosaic of faded yellows, reds, and browns.

As Leggy moved toward them he seemed almost to float. He rolled to a stop. “Howdy boys. How you like the new duds?”

***

“You look like a fool,” said Derek.

“Maybe so,” said Leggy, “but it’ll keep the sun off in the day and the chill out at night. This was the best purchase I coulda made.”

He didn’t tell them about the pair of throwing knives he’d also bought. They were tucked into the folds of his chair, secret-like, and with the flick of a wrist he could take a man in the throat at fifteen paces. At least, he could ten years ago. But even if he’d lost a bit of quickness or aim, he felt better knowing the steel was at hand.

Leggy eyed Teddy’s new pack. “Hunker down here, boy, and let me see how you’ve outfitted us.”

Teddy squatted by the chair while Leggy rifled through the pack. “Yup. Okay, that’s good. Uh huh, good, good. All right then, boys,” he said, tying it up again. “You did good. I think we’ve got about everything we need.”

“So what now?” asked John.

“Now we go,” said Derek. He turned to Leggy. “Well old man, which way?”

“Sanger is at what you’d call an axis,” said Leggy. “Two roads run through here, one heading north-south, the other east-west. If you still want to aim for New York, then it’s east-west.”

Derek nodded. They made their way to the gate that would take them east, Teddy once again pushing Leggy’s chair. As they exited the town, they found themselves behind four wagons of Bedouin traders that had formed up into a caravan and were taking the same road. Their faces were entirely hidden beneath turbans and gasmasks. Their long silks and robes lent them a ghostly air.

“How far until we get to the Wasteland?” asked John, who seemed worried they might come upon it at any moment.

“Oh, at least a week and several days, yet,” said Leggy. “There’s a few settlements and towns ’tween here and the edge. That’s where them Bedouins are headed.”

“Oh,” said John with a mixture of relief and disappointment.

The road out of Sanger, though rough, was wide and clear, having been traveled so often by the pack mules and heavy carts of Bedouins, who made their living trading from settlement to settlement.

As they traveled behind the caravan, Teddy giggled to see two young boys leap out of the covered carriage ahead to scoop up the steaming dung that the donkeys left as they walked.

“Lookie, Derek,” Teddy said. “They playin’ with doo doo. They gonna get a smack for that.”

“Don’t think so, big fella,” said Leggy. “Like as not, they’d get a smack for not collecting those donkey flops.”

“Why’s that?” asked John.

“You dry out those flops and they make good fuel. Come in handy when there’s not a lot of brush for firewood. That’s your first lesson in surviving the crossing—you don’t waste a thing.” He turned in his chair and lifted the brim of his wide hat to fix a grin on Derek.

“You think I was kiddin’ about bottling your own piss?” Leggy asked.

Teddy scrunched up his face. “We gonna drink pee?”

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” said Leggy.

“Amen,” said John.

***

That night they camped in a shallow gully just off the road. In the distance ahead, they could see the wagons and cookfires of the caravan. The sounds of flute and tambourines drifted back to them, and voices lifted in a strangely somber wailing.

Derek found the Bedouin music irritating, but Leggy seemed to appreciate it, and Teddy looked damn near hypnotized. His jaw hung slack and his eyes were soft and empty. He didn’t snap out of it until John sidled into camp a little later, a brace of small sand-dogs on a stick.

“Got ’em,” said John, with a wide grin. He was the best among them with sling and stone and he knew it.

Leggy quickly skinned and cleaned the animals and soon had their carcasses roasting on a spit. They ate in silence, the strange music swirling all around them. Then the stars came out—a vast canopy magnified and distorted by the invisible layer of radiation in the atmosphere. They let the campfire die to its coals.

Before they drifted off to sleep, Leggy produced a section of plastic tarp. The boys watched as he stuck two sticks into the hard ground and attached the tarp to it as if he were constructing a lean-to. But it was far too small to cover any of them, even Leggy with his truncated frame. Then he weighted down the other end with a pair of rocks. When he finished, he wiped his hands and looked satisfactorily over his work.

“What’s that?” asked Teddy. “A dolly house?”

“Dew catcher,” said Leggy. “The change in temperature between night and day creates what we in the old days used to call “percipeetashun.” This here tarp will gather up a good bit of moisture. You set the tarp at an angle so that it runs downward and gathers up here by the rocks.”

“But we got our water bottles, and there’s a stream not a hundred yards from here,” said Derek.

“Sure,” said Leggy, “but we’re gonna need this eventually. Might as well get in the habit. Dew catchers have kept me from dyin’ of thirst more than a few times. Tomorrow mornin’ we drink what’s in the dew catcher and save what’s in the skins.”

John swallowed hard. He didn’t think the tiny dew catcher could collect more than one good mouthful of water. Suddenly the reality of what he’d done—running off into the night and desert—was coming home to him. He felt panic rise in his belly. With an effort and a silent prayer he shoved the panic down. He lay back in his bedroll and looked up at the stars. The night was nearly cloudless, a rare occasion. Heat lightning and static radiation bursts lit the horizon, but the air was still.

***

Leggy pointed out the constellations, naming them one by one for Teddy, who was enthralled by the game and was excitedly pointing out new constellations of his own. “There’s the Ducky const’lashun.” He thrust a meaty finger up toward the sky. “An’ dat one dere’s the Snail cons’lashun. An’ dat one looks like a snake!”

Leggy laughed. “That one’s called Orion.” He patted the grinning giant on the shoulder. Teddy leaned back, using the large equipment pack as a pillow. They didn’t have a blanket large enough to cover him, nor a bedroll wide enough to fit beneath him, but that mattered not. Teddy was used to hard beds, and he rarely grew cold beneath all his muscle and fat.

“Orion,” he repeated. “O-rye-un.”

Derek paid little attention to them, and, not having use for constellations, he contented himself with poking a stick at the dying embers of their small fire. John laid back on his bedroll and squinted his eyes to scan the skies. All at once he sat bolt upright. “Oh my gosh!”

“What is it?” asked Derek. “You got a scag in your sleeping bag?”

John pointed excitedly up at the sky. “They’re out,” he whispered breathlessly, “Look. Up there!”