Wasteland Blues

by Scott Christian Carr

  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!”

  The others followed the direction of his pointing finger. Derek saw nothing. But after a moment of staring silently at the night sky, it became obvious that one of the stars was actually moving against the flow of all the others around it, traveling almost imperceptibly eastward.

  “Holy shit,” muttered Derek. “What the Hell is that?”

  “I don’t see nothin’,” said Teddy. “What ch’you lookin’ at, Der?”

  John licked his lips. “There’s another one over there, by the horizon.” He pointed. “They’re angels. Don’t you know nothing?” He turned to Derek. “You can see them sometimes when there’s no clouds, like tonight. Not often, but sometimes you can. Elder Hale showed me once when I was little. Just look at it, gliding across the sky. But they never come down. Not ever—except in New York, maybe.”

  “Bullshit,” said Leggy.

  Derek and John both looked at him. Teddy had fallen asleep.

  “Hate to break it to you, kiddo,” Leggy said. “But those ain’t angels.”

  “They are too,” insisted John.

  “Are not,” answered Leggy, removing a silver flask from his shirt. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. Then he offered the whisky to John, who shook his head.

  Derek took the flask, swigged from it, and grimaced.

  “If they’re not angels then what are they?” challenged John.

  “Well,” said Leggy, reaching over and taking back the flask, “They’re called sat lights. They’re left over from Before.”

  John and Derek looked at him curiously. “What the Hell’s a sat light?” asked Derek.

  “They’re sort of like…tin houses floating around in the sky,” said Leggy.

  “Houses? You mean they got people in them?” John was incredulous.

  “Some of ’em do. Or did. They say that there might still be people alive in a few of ’em, trapped up there. Watching us, but unable to come back home. I don’t know.” Leggy shook his head.

  “How do they stay up there?” John asked. “Why don’t they fall?”

  “That’s easy,” said Leggy. “They are falling. It’s just that they’re so high up that it takes a long, long time for ’em to fall all the way down.”

  “Ha!” said John. “Falling tin houses in space? You’re the one talking B.S.”

  Leggy took a long swallow from the flask and passed it back to Derek. “Some people say that there’s men trapped up on the Moon, too.” The Moon was a thin sliver tonight that grinned sardonically at them from the horizon.

  Derek nodded. “That’s what my Dad said. Men on the Moon.” He took another long swallow of the whisky mash, feeling it burn his throat.

  “They say the sat lights used to let people all over Earth talk to each other,” said Leggy. His eyes followed the bright dot moving slowly across the horizon. “Till the Chinese fired an EMP bomb into space and shut ’em all up, that is.”

  John frowned and turned his eyes away from the sky. Derek shrugged at Leggy, took a last pull from the flask, and then laid back in his own bedroll. The drink was churning in his gut. As the coals popped and sparked, the Bedouins took up their music again. Derek and his companions fell asleep with the strange, high-pitched wailing of unimaginable instruments and ghostly voices ringing in their ears.

  ***

  That night, Derek dreamt of angels—cruel creatures filled with light and malice. They swept down from the Heavens on sulphurous feathers to mock him.

  “New York!” laughed the creatures. “Beyond You!” and “Why Bother?” They swooped all around, diving and biting, laughing and spitting like harpies, spewing curses and hurling smelly white globules of shit. “It’s suicide!” they cried.

  These were John’s damned angels that Derek dreamt. Merciless monsters full of hatred and biblical rage. Derek suddenly understood—these ushers to the kingdom of Heaven, these guardians of the gates of New York, had long ago gone mad. They were crazy with radiation and sickness, hunger and death.

  As they continued to peck and to laugh and berate with their cold, sharp beaks, a calm realization swept over Derek—these monsters had long since fallen from grace. It was not just the Earth that had died, but it was God who had died, leaving his unholy wreck of a world to his orphaned children and his mad angels.

  Any Word that these angels might have rendered, Derek knew, was nothing more than incoherent madness, despite what John might think. He could see that now—these creatures were incapable of anything more than pure animal violence. Anything else would just be nonsense, word salad, Babel.

  Derek awoke with the burning taste of Leggy’s moonshine in the back of his throat. God damn, he
thought as he rolled off his bedroll, clawed his way across the dark ground away from the camp, and began to vomit. “God damn.”

  He retched for what seemed like hours before the constrictions in his gut passed. He crawled back into his sack and fell sickly to sleep.

  Goddamn.

  The angels were waiting for him.

  Chapter Four

  When the group awoke, just before daybreak, Teddy was gone.

  “Fuck,” muttered Derek, his eyes half-closed in bleary memory of the nightmares which refused to fade. His head pounded, his temples throbbed. He cracked open one eye and inspected the campsite.

  All was quiet, only a harsh wind cut through the desert. The sun’s fiery scalp was jutting over the horizon, casting long shadows and turning the sky a bruised purple.

  “Teddy!” called Derek. He figured his brother had wandered off to take a piss.

  “Teddy!”

  When his brother didn’t answer, a cold fear slid up Derek’s spine. The caravan ahead was gone. Their cookfires had been buried and the Bedouins were nowhere in sight.

  “Sonofabitch.” Derek cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered, “Teddy! Teddy, where you at? Get your ass back here, pronto. Teddy!” The sound of his own voice rang in his ears, making his splitting headache worse. “Teddy!”

  His brother couldn’t have gone far. Hell, Derek could hardly believe that he had taken even a step away from the camp of his own volition. It just wasn’t like him. Teddy didn’t do anything without express orders from his brother.

  “Maybe he’s taking a pee,” Leggy offered, massaging his stumps as he sat up in his bedroll.