To Cross a Wasteland

by Phillip D Granath

  “Universal donor baby, my blood is premium around here," Pauli said without looking up from her magazine.

  In Coal’s condition, the words meant nothing to him. He followed the tube again from Pauli’s right wrist back up to the blood-filled glass jars and again back down to his own wrist. A thought occurred to Coal, but then it was gone, and he lay back down content to stare at the ceiling and ponder all of this new information. He didn’t get very long though as soon a disembodied head entered his vision and hovered just above him.

  “Hey Coal, how are you feeling?” Kyle disembodied head asked.

  Coal looked up at the Scavenger and took a long slow blink but didn’t reply.

  “Coal, how much do you remember?” Kyle continued.

  Coal didn’t respond, but his expression shifted from one of confusion to deep thought.

  “You’ve been out for two days. Murphy’s Rangers hit your place. There's a lot of rumors going around. Some folks are saying you murdered your wives and then attacked your own people," Kyle paused, ready to judge Coal’s response, but Indian's expression was unreadable.

  “Seems one of the only things anyone is sure of is that somebody opened the gates to your ranch from the inside. Some say it was to beg the Rangers for help in stopping you, others are saying it was an inside job, and that someone betrayed you," Kyle paused again, Coal’s only response was a tightening around the jawline.

  “Murphy’s men are looking for you, he is offering a lot of chits to anyone that turns you in. I found you, you were almost dead, but I brought you here to the clinic. Anna thinks you’re out of the woods…” Coal cut him off by reaching up and weakly touching Kyle’s hand.

  “Yes, Coal?” Kyle asked leaning forward.

  Coal painfully sat forward and asked. “Did you give me gay blood?”

  “UUUHHHHHH….," was Kyle’s response as he glanced over at Pauli.

  “What did that motherfucker just say?” Pauli demanded tossing aside her magazine. Coal didn’t respond but looked over at her warily as if seeing her for the first time.

  “Come on Pauli, he’s not himself, he’s just real groggy right now, he almost died," Kyle pleaded as Pauli stood and ripped the tubing from her arm.

  “Bullshit, I can see when I’m not wanted. This motherfucker is just lucky I’m too much of a lady to kick his fucking ass right now," Pauli shouted and with that stormed from the room.

  “Coal, you need to watch what you say around Pauli, she’s pretty sensitive, and of course there is the fact that she helped save your life," Kyle said the last word slowly emphasizing the point.

  “With her gay blood?” Coal asked obviously still confused.

  “She’s not gay, she’s just a she…she just has the body of a man," Kyle tried to explain awkwardly. Feeling like he was having the birds and the bees’ conversation with a grown man.

  “You put her in the body of a man? That’s some fucked up shit, just evil. What kinds of messed up experiments are you doing to people in this clinic Kyle?” Coal said revolted.

  “What? What are you talking about? We didn’t put her in anyone else’s body that’s impossible and crazy…” Kyle tried to explain, but Coal cut him off with a last desperate gasp.

  “Kyle, Kyle, I like my body, please don’t…," and in mid-sentence Coal passed back out.

  Kyle stood looking down at Coal, concerned and confused. When Anna spoke from behind him.

  “You aren’t in here getting my patients all worked up are you?” she asked. Kyle turned to look at his wife. His wife, just the idea made him smile.

  Anna stood with her hands on her hips, she smiled back at him. “You leave him alone and don’t you dare try and distract me with those dimples,” she chided and walked back out. From behind Kyle Coal began to snore.

  “You said it, brother," Kyle said still smiling.

  Coal awoke later that night and then again the next morning, but as his strength grew, so did his restlessness. His head no longer sloshed around like a half-empty bucket if he moved it. The rest of him was quickly on the mend also. His stomach no longer burned when he drank down the watery soup that Anna brought for him twice a day. A week ago he wouldn’t even have dared refer to it as food, but he was now just beginning to realize just how drastically his station in life had changed. The stitches on his leg and side were healing as well, the constant overwhelming need to itch them told him that.

  He lay in bed staring at the garage ceiling, debating if the benefits of scratching at the scaby stitches, outweighed the risk of infection when he heard footsteps approach. A wave of uneasiness flooded him, these were the sounds of booted feet, not the soft steps of Anna or one of her nurses. He quickly glanced around looking for a weapon and finally snatched up the Glamorous Magazine and rolled it up tight into a club. His breathing grew quick, he wasn’t used to ever being this exposed, this vulnerable.

  The boots stopped just short of the curtain and Kyle leaned his head around the corner to peek in. The Scavenger saw that he was awake and smiled.

  “Coal, oh good, I’m glad I caught you while you were in," Kyle said with a grin.

  “Fuck you," Coal responded and tossed the magazine to the floor.

  Kyle stepped up beside Coal’s bed and grabbing a wooden crate from against the wall sat down. From his jacket pocket, the Scavenger produced a much-folded road map and laid it out on Coal’s lap. Coal looked up at Kyle.

  “I take it you need something?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I need a way out of here. I think you may be the only one that can help me with that," Kyle replied.

  Coal looked down at the map again. The lines, the numbers, the colors, none of it meant much to him, never had. He could make out a few of the words that named old roads, mountain ranges and long dried up river beds. But most of the names had quit having any meaning more than a decade ago. How anyone could look at a piece of paper and see the land around them, he could never understand.

  Coal looked back up at Kyle and rubbing his eyes said. “I don’t think I can help you, Kyle.”

  “What? Why not?” the Scavenger demanded, an edge of panic creeping into his voice.

  “Whoa, settle down. It’s not that I don’t want to help, I just, I just don’t do maps. Never have," Coal tried to explain.

  “You don’t do…maps?” Kyle asked slowly.

  “Afraid not. My uncle tried to teach me more than a few times. Finally, he gave up. Always said I must have one of those… dyslexias? At least when it came to maps," Coal said handing Kyle back the map.

  Kyle stood quickly, knocking over the crate in the process and began a quick back and forth pace between the beds. He rubbed his hands through his hair and across his face as he walked. And then stopped just as quickly.

  “Fine then, okay, okay," he repeated shoving the map back into Coal’s lap.

  “Well I do, do maps," Kyle began.

  “Ha, doo-doo maps, about as much use as I get out of them. Use them as ass wipe," Coal chuckled. Kyle looked at him blankly for a moment and just shook his head.

  “Well, I guess that means you are feeling better if you can make poop jokes. So, how about this? You describe to me what you can tell me what the terrain is like out there and I’ll find it on the map. Sound good?” Kyle asked, producing the nub of a grease pencil from his pocket.

  Coal nodded in reply and leaned back in the bed closing his eyes, he asked, “So where do you want to start?”

  “How about south? From what I’ve seen there are a few rolling hills, and then it's open flat country. Would be easy travel for the most part.”

  “That’s true. But that flat open country you speak of is all desert and yeah it looks like the desert around here for a way. Then you hit the real desert, land that makes this place look like a fucking paradise. You cross a couple hundred miles of that and to reward you for your troubles, is Old Mexico.”

  “What’s wrong with Mexico?” Kyle asked.

  “Nothing that I know of, but I’m guessing most
of your people don’t speak Spanish and probably look a little too pale in the face to blend in. I’m just saying I wouldn’t count on a warm welcome," Coal explained.

  “Why do you say that? Did they attack you?” Kyle asked looking up from his map.

  “Me? No. I’ve never been to Mexico. Furthest South I’ve been is just two days ride, saw what that country looked like and turned right around," Coal replied.

  “Ok, this is good, this is the kind of thing we need to know," Kyle said as he made a few marks on the map south of town.

  “What about West? How far have you been West?” Kyle asked.

  “About a day and a half, give or take."

  “Have you been as far as Phoenix?” Kyle asked.

  “Got close enough to see the high rises or what’s left of them anyhow," Coal replied.

  “What was it like?”

  “Worse than here," Coal replied simply.

  “How could you know if you didn’t get any closer than that?” Kyle pushed.

  Coal opened his eyes and looked at Kyle, he paused as if considering and then spoke. “A lot of the bounties I took, especially early on would run West. The road between here and Phoenix is crisscrossed by rocky ridges and outcropping. It gives you hundreds, maybe thousands of places to wait, hide and then ambush unsuspecting passersby or even suspecting bounty hunters. I tracked one group, it was four men and a woman on the run. The usual, killers and thieves, not a group out for a Sunday picnic I tell you. I caught up with them, like I said, just in sight of Phoenix. But somebody had found them first. I found the heads of the four men just tossed into a ditch at the side of the road. Nearby was a telephone pole, looked like someone had strung up a length of steel cable over it and used it to hang something heavy. The ground all around it was sprinkled with blood like it had rained down from the sky. But dead in the center of all that blood was a nice clean circle of ground.”

  “What was it, some kind of warning? Some kinda ritual killing or something?” Kyle asked the map momentarily forgotten.

  Coal shook his head slowly. “No, if had been meant as a warning, they would have left…something, or at least placed the heads where they would have been easily seen. These were tossed away like trash, without a second thought. No, Kyle, I rustled enough cattle in my youth to recognize when an animal has been butchered, even a human. After we hoisted a cow up, we used to put down a plastic tub to catch most of the blood and entrails, made cleanup easier. Of course, we always threw them away when we were done. Seems folks are not as picky as to what they eat these days.”

  Kyle had his face covered in his hands and was slowly shaking his head.

  “I don’t know if it was a good thing or maybe a bad, but I never did find any trace of the woman," Coal added.

  “What did the city council say when you told them?” Kyle asked looking up at Coal again.

  “Not much. They were more than happy to believe that it had been some random group of crazed blood raiders or some bullshit like that. But I’ll tell you one thing, all that talk about sending scouting parties out to other towns, out to Phoenix in particular, that shit ended pretty quickly after that. They realized things may be a whole lot worse in other places. No need to invite trouble in I guess.”

  “You think it was something else? Other than raiders?” Kyle pushed.

  “Don’t know nothing for sure. Just that most of the raiders I have run across, they are mean, vicious and yeah maybe even cannibalistic bastards. This was too well organized, well-practiced, it was just too clean. That and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. This place was home to what? Ten thousand people when it all went to shit, and here we are barely holding on to humanity by our fucking fingernails. What do you think a city like Phoenix looks like, with a couple million starving people? Better? Or Worse?”

  Kyle held up a hand, conceding the point. He paused for a moment and then asked. “And East?”

  “Only thing East of here is the Nation. You think a city full of potential boogeymen is a concern, that’s a countryside full of real live ones. The Indians may not eat you alive, but you may wish they had if they catch you trespassing. The stories of them skinning folks alive and staking them out for the ants aren’t just idle talk, and those are intended as warnings for you palefaces," Coal said flatly.

  “They didn’t attack me when I was with you," Kyle pointed out.

  “That’s true, but I ain’t going to be with you this time, and you’re going to have what? A dozen people on foot? No way you’re crossing Indian land without them noticing," Coal replied looking down at the map again.

  Kyle glanced up at Coal. The half-breed still saw this as Kyle’s plan, he wasn’t on board yet, not sold, Kyle would have to change that. But one problem at a time, first to figure out the route and then worry about the guide.

  “What does that leave us?” Kyle asked.

  “Well unless your map there has got another direction I’m not familiar with its North," Coal replied smugly.

  “And?” Kyle pushed.

  “I’ve been 3 days north of here, that’s it.”

  “How far is that exactly?” Kyle asked.

  “I’m not sure, my horse doesn’t have an odometer, and I was tracking game at the time, crisscrossing a lot of ground. The terrain didn’t change much, scrub desert, hills, mesa and some canyon land, same as around here and no water that I ever did see," Coal emphasized.

  “Looks like it may be our best option," Kyle said staring at the map, deep in thought.

  “Best option doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good option," Coal pointed out.

  “We’ll for argument's sake, let’s just say we weren’t on foot. Let’s say that we had a wagon? What would you make of our chances then?” Kyle asked, his eyes still on the map.

  “What the fuck good would a wagon do you? You going to pull it…," Coal stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes went far away for a moment and then refocused.

  “Son-of-a-bitch," Coal said emphasizing each word and Kyle looked up from the map at him.

  “I can’t remember much after getting stabbed… a few times...the only thing I thought I could remember was the clatter of hooves. But that didn’t make no sense because the Rangers got all my ponies. Didn’t they Kyle?” Coal asked watching Kyle’s eyes closely.

  “Like I said when I found you were naked in the street and unconscious. What I didn’t bother to mention, is that you were slumped over the back of a big gray mare," Kyle said with a grin.

  “Didn’t bother to mention?” Coal exclaimed.

  “The last time we spoke you were talking crazy, begging me not to steal your body Coal. I think worrying about a horse…and a mule was kind of low on your list of priorities," Kyle said defensively.

  “Muley made it too?” Coal shouted in surprise.

  “Yeah," Kyle nodded.

  Coal looked down at the map with new eyes. “So you’ve got yourself a direction, this fucking map, a wagon, and now you’ve got my horse and my mule. That’s your plan then, taking what’s mine and running? Or are you going to be civil and say that it should just about cover my medical expenses?” Coal prodded his words dripping venom.

  “It’s not like that Coal…” Kyle began.

  “The hell it ain’t," Coal replied flatly, and Kyle went silent now looking intently at his own feet.

  “The fucked-up part is I don’t even blame you. I know you, Kyle, we’re more alike than either of us wants to admit. We’re survivors, and survivors don’t let opportunities like this just slip by. I’m just surprised, I didn’t see this coming from you. I never thought that you would…," Kyle stood abruptly and stormed from the room.

  “Hey, where the fuck are you going? I’m not done making you feel like a piece of shit yet! Comeback...asshole!” he shouted after him.

  A few moments later Kyle stomped back into the room.

  “Oh good, like I was saying, asshole…” Coal began and then stopped when he saw that Kyle was carrying a rifle, his rifle, and his kn
ife belt.

  Both men regarded each other for a moment, Coal wondering if he had finally pushed a little too far. He even recognized the look on Kyle’s face. The same look the Scavenger had worn the night of the ambush. The look of a man trying to decide whether or not he should kill. They both knew he could, he had killed that night and Coal, better than most, knew it got easier each time.

  Kyle finally spoke. “Like I said, it ain’t like that Coal.”

  The Scavenger took a few steps forward and handed Coal the rifle and then the belt. The Indian took a moment to run a hand across the dark wood, the blue metal, and the seven precious cartridges as if greeting old friends. He looked up at Kyle, grinning from ear to ear and nodded.

  “They’re yours. They would have been right next to your bed when you woke up, but Anna has this thing against guns in her clinic. The horse, the mule, they are yours also," Kyle said.

  Coal only nodded in reply.

  “But you’re not completely wrong, you’ve run up a pretty god damned big bill for your medical expenses, and I bet you can even guess what it’s going to cost you," Kyle said his grin returning.

  “Fuck you!” Coal replied lying back in the bed and shaking his head.

  “You’ll be our guide on this merry little trip. You provide your animals to haul the wagon, you lead us across that fucking wasteland, you help protect my people along the way and then we’re square," Kyle explained.

  “Lead your people fucking where? You have a direction, not a destination," Coal argued.

  “Someplace…better, someplace with a future. Then Coal, then we’ll call it even, and you can go your own way," Kyle replied.

  “And what if I say no?” Coal asked.

  “That’s fine Coal, in fact just forget about the bill, call it a gift. A hell of a big gift," Kyle said slowly.