by Nick Cole
Tears ran down their cheeks.
The Old Man recoiled in horror.
The desert freaks fell away behind the slow progress of the tank, which easily outpaced their shambling and weakened lurch toward the machine.
The Old Man watched them fall to the ground in defeat.
They’re starving.
There wasn’t a weapon, a stick, or a rock among them.
Just hands, pleading. Claws begging.
The Old Man looked at the Boy.
“They’re starving,” he shouted above the engine’s scream.
And after a moment the Boy nodded in agreement.
The Old Man watched one of the crazed and starving desert people, a thin and bony gaunt man, the frontrunner of them all, kneeling, pounding the dry ground in frustration with a tiny claw-hand as puffs of dry dust erupted in his face. A woman with a child knelt down beside the Gaunt Man. Comforting him. Comforting her broken man who’d tried his best to catch their tank that he might beg for help as the starving child wailed from her back.
They’re just people.
They’re just people, and they’re starving to death.
“Stop the tank.”
“What, Poppa?”
“Stop the tank. They’re starving. We have food. We can give them some. What we have, we can give to them.”
The people stood as the tank stopped.
Amazed.
The Old Man waved to them.
Come.
The Boy and his granddaughter began to bring their boxes of food out onto the turret.
The Desert People came forward. Fear and hope in large watery eyes. Disbelief as bony bodies stumbled and finally leaned into each other for support and comfort. A woman jabbered, shrieking hysterically. The oldest, spindly legged and skeletal, simply cried, heaving out great sobs that racked their concave chests. The rest, dirty and tired, opened their mouths, stunned into silence, saying nothing, unable to believe what was happening.
After a moment, the Boy began to speak to them in their jabber-patois.
He speaks their language.
The Old Man tore open an Army-gray package of spaghetti and meatballs. He handed it to the Gaunt Man whose wife struggled to help him hold up his too-bony and too-thin arms to receive the gift.
The starving man opened his mostly toothless mouth and the Old Man could see the drool of extreme hunger within.
‘He’ll devour the whole packet in one bite,’ thought the Old Man.
The Gaunt Man reached two thin fingers into the gray packet, his huge dark eyes like ever-widening pools of water, and scooped out the meal within.
His mouth wide.
He turned to the woman beside him and fed her.
Her eyes closed and she chewed slowly.
The child on her back whimpered.
Even with her eyes closed the pure joy was evident as she chewed slowly, swallowing thickly.
‘They’re still human,’ thought the Old Man. ‘They still care for each other as best they can.’
The Desert People surged around the tank, dozens of them, holding out their arms weakly for as long as they could, waiting while the Old Man and his granddaughter held out the opened packets of food to them. Soon the Boy was helping too as the people of the high desert ate and wept, jabbering what the Boy told the Old Man was their way of saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
THE DESERT PEOPLE followed the tank as it slowly moved to the old airfield. When the tank stopped, the Desert People stopped.
The Old Man searched along the sides of the runway for the cover to the underground fuel storage. The cover that Natalie, General Watt, had told him he must find.
Storage Tank B.
When he found it, he waved for his granddaughter to bring the tank to him and soon they were drawing fuel from the deep, untouched reservoir that had opened with a pungent suck of long denied oxygen.
“They’ve had a hard year,” said the Boy as the Old Man watched the fuel hose thump and shake, greedily drinking up the long untouched fuel.
“You speak their language.”
“They speak a language that is like one I heard in another place.”
“What happened to them?”
The Boy turned to look at the Desert People.
“They tell me they have lived here since before the bombs. They’ve been sick since. Their crops failed this year and because of their… condition… from the poison inside the bombs, they cannot hunt the goats and deer up in the rocks. The animals are too fast for them to get close to with their slings.”
The Old Man turned from the hose, knowing he would see the Desert People watching him.
He watched the women gather about his granddaughter, making soft cooing noises, stroking her hair.
I have to take care of her also.
Yes.
But you know many tricks, my friend, and you are resourceful.
Yes, you would say that to me.
I did.
The Old Man climbed onto the tank and disappeared inside the turret.
When he came back out he carried the hunting rifle, the cleaning kit, and the two boxes of shells.
I am glad to be rid of this gun. I didn’t like having it with us.
The Old Man beckoned the Gaunt Man, who seemed the healthiest among them.
He wobbled forward.
The Old Man loaded a bullet into the rifle, shot the bolt forward, shouldered the rifle, and aimed it at a small satellite dish attached to a building on the other side of the field.
He fired.
The small satellite dish bent and then, a moment later, fell onto the decaying pavement.
The shot echoed off the gray mountain rock all around them.
“Tell them to hunt with this.”
The Boy watched the Old Man.
Then the Boy turned and began to speak to the Gaunt Man in their jabber.
“Tell them they will have to keep this gun clean, I’ll show them how,” said the Old Man.
“Tell them to use these bullets sparingly, only hunt what they need to get back on their feet. Get their strength back.”
And…
“Tell them this is all we have.”
IT WAS TIME to go.
When the Old Man had shown them how to clean and care for their gun, it was time to go.
They brought their children forward to touch the Old Man and the women smelled his granddaughter’s hair and the Boy jabbered their jabber and told them all goodbye.
When it was time to go.
The Old Man looked at the Boy.
“I want you to come with us. I think we will need your help where we are going.”
The Boy watched the Desert People.
The tank.
Heard a voice he did not share with others.
A voice from long ago.
A voice that said, Whatchu gonna do now, Boy?
The Boy nodded and climbed onto the tank, standing in his place alongside the main gun.
The Old Man started the APU and donned his helmet.
He spoke to his granddaughter as the engine spooled up into its whine and then roared to life, sending waves of heat blasting out across the gravel and dust.
“Are you ready?”
“What will we do now, Poppa? They ate all our food.”
The Old Man watched the Desert People.
What I have, I give to you.
Where did that come from, my friend?
I don’t know.
“Let’s head back to the highway,” he told his granddaughter over the intercom. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
Chapter 20
The Old Man looked at the temperature gauge again.
Already, the engine is too hot.
And still, it rises. Also, today the heat is merciless and I’m sure that will not help matters.
The tank cut through carved gashes within the burning, stony hills as they descended into wide iron-gray wastes.
All this must hav
e once been under an ocean.
Long beaches of prehistoric sand fade for miles, falling away from rocky outcrops that were once islands. These islands of once-magma hover above the gray dust of the road and in time, even these fade into the red rock hills where stands of soft green feathery trees shelter among cracks in the earth.
Like the oasis the bee led me to.
Would I find water there in those stands of willowy green trees on this hottest of days?
Foxes for food.
Shade for rest.
Even a moment to think about what we’re doing as this infernal day turns into a bread oven and the tank’s engine heat rises like an overworked furnace.
How long can the engine run at this temperature?
“Natalie? General Watt?” The Old Man releases the push-to-talk button and waits for her reply.
“Natalie here.”
“This spaceship fuel is making the engine run hotter than maybe it should.”
Ahead the road opens out onto a steep grade that surely leads to the bottom of the desert, or so the Old Man thinks.
If the bottom is just ahead, then this has not been so bad.
“You can try,” replies Natalie through the static, “to shut the tank down until dark. Then continue on to the final descent. I am watching you in real time on a satellite I’ve managed to change to a higher, slower orbit.”
The final descent?
I thought this was the final descent. What will this other fall-to-the-bottom places of the desert seem like?
“I HAVE BAD news,” says Natalie, her warm voice suddenly clear, as though right in his ear.
“Go ahead.”
“The road that leads to the bottom of Death Valley might not prove serviceable. Once you pass a scenic overlook the road becomes impassable. You’ll need to find a way down by going off-road to continue on to the bottom of the grade.”
“Is that going to be a problem for you?” asks Natalie. General Watt.
“No. We’ll be fine.”
The Old Man wipes away the thin sweat that collects around his neck.
The road they must take, the one that leaves the 395, is mostly buried under drifting white sand. At the lonesome intersection they watch it carve away into the east, into red ridges and dark gullies.
According to the map, this must be our turn toward the valley. Toward the east.
“Poppa, I can see the road as it rises above the sand. That way.” She leans out of the driver’s hatch in front of him, pointing toward the red rock that cuts the horizon.
The Boy atop his perch near the main gun scans the bright sands, and the Old Man watches him nod.
“Try to follow it as best you can,” the Old Man tells his granddaughter.
Soon the sun is falling toward the west, and with every moment the color of the red rock deepens into rust and blood.
The engine temperature is high, but it isn’t in the red, not yet.
How hot will it be tomorrow, deep down in the oven at the bottom of Death Valley, off-road, crossing the baking rocks and hardpan?
The Old Man waits and does not hear an answer.
If we were in the boat together, Santiago, what would we do? Make a hat from the wet gunnysacks. How would we stay cool enough to get this tank across the bottom of the driest sea in the world, my friend?
The Old Man hears nothing and thinks only of the sound the waves might make as they slap against the side of their tiny boat. The sound he and his friend would listen to as they searched the silences in between for an answer.
THEY WIND THROUGH the last of the low hills and in brief snatches they glimpse the basin far below.
It is so far below, I cannot imagine there could be a deeper part to this desert. It is like a giant hole in the earth. A hole we must fall into.
And…
It will be even hotter down there when the sun rises tomorrow.
At blue twilight they heave into a wide parking lot erupting in blacktop blisters.
Once the Old Man turns the engine off and shuts down the APU, he expects he will feel some relief from the relentless heat that has marked this day, but he doesn’t.
The early evening is like a warm cup of water left out in the sun.
He watches the engine temperature gauge grudgingly withdraw.
As though it does not want to, my friend.
I hope I haven’t ruined anything within the tank’s engine.
But would that be so bad?
He hears his granddaughter calling him. Telling him to come and look before it’s too late.
But still he watches the temperature gauge barely move toward its own bottom.
When he looks out the hatch of the turret he can see the Boy standing next to his granddaughter as she climbs up on the warped railing that guards the parking lot from the edge of the drop. She points at something far below.
The Boy is close to her and the Old Man knows, though he does not know why, that the Boy will not let her fall.
IN THE DARK they camp far from the tank, lying against the warm sidewalk that encircles the parking lot. Stars beyond count begin their slow night dance above them. The moon, a fat crescent low above the hills, seems near and detailed as it shimmers above the ridges and rocks turned night-gray.
My biggest concern is the heat of the engine.
We’ll need to cross the desert as fast as we can tomorrow.
But if we go too fast, the engine will become even hotter.
And then there is food.
If it is anything like the worst parts of the wasteland, what food there is down there will be hard to find.
It is good we are all so warm and exhausted. They didn’t mention anything about eating tonight.
They also handed out the food, my friend, and they already know there is no food tonight. That is why they remain silent.
Are they asleep?
“Are you awake?” asks the Old Man in the night.
“Yes, Poppa. It’s too hot to sleep.”
After a moment the Boy whispers a tired, “I am awake,” as though he has been and does not want to be.
“We have a problem.”
“What is it, Poppa?”
The Boy says nothing.
“The fuel we pumped from beneath the runway is making the engine of the tank too warm. I don’t remember much about engines but I do remember that if they are too hot for too long they might melt.”
No one said anything.
“Tomorrow we will reach the valley floor. It will be even hotter down there.”
After a moment his granddaughter asked, “So what do we do, Poppa?”
“I don’t know,” confessed the Old Man.
It seemed like the admission of ignorance, the surrender to helplessness. His statement lured him into a brief moment where he may have been asleep or falling toward it.
“Then we must go now,” said the Boy quietly.
The Old Man sat up.
Natalie said the road we must take to the bottom is gone now. Off-road, in the darkness, feeling our way down the side of a cliff, that would be madness.
“It’s a good moon to see by tonight,” said the Boy as if reading the Old Man’s thoughts. “Good for traveling. In an hour or so it will be very cold. The desert is like that.”
Chapter 21
The tank is running.
The night is colder, and ever so slightly, the needle is a little lower than it was in the heat of the day.
The Old Man circles the running tank, then climbs onto the turret and into the hatch.
Inside, his granddaughter is buckled into the gunner’s seat.
He shows the Boy how to use the seat belt in the loader’s station.
“I can drive, Poppa, or at least be in the driver’s seat up front.”
The Old Man, sweating slightly and feeling weak, as if nauseated, climbs up into the hatch.
“I think it’s better if we’re all strapped in here, together. It might get pretty rough.”
The
Old Man takes hold of the control sticks Sergeant Major Preston had built to maneuver the tank from the commander’s seat.
The Old Man looks down inside the tank and sees the Boy bathed in red light.
He is looking forward at nothing.
Nothing that exists anymore.
How do you know, my friend?
I just do.
The Old Man puts his hand on the switch that will activate the tank’s high-beam light.
A moment later, everything in front of the tank is bathed in a wide arc of white light, throwing long shadows of deep darkness away from the blistered pavement and scattered rock.
For a few hundred yards they are able to follow the winding road, but almost immediately the road lies buried beneath a collapsed wall of red volcanic rock. The Old Man taps the throttle and listens to the two wide treads grind and crunch the porous rock as the tank climbs up onto the pile. On the other side, the final descent begins as the road rounds a curve, falling away out of sight.
So far, so good.
The Old Man smiles and adjusts his grip on the twin sticks, which are already slick with sweat.
On the other side of the curve, a fallen bridge sends only a strip of a railing across the gap.
The Old Man nudges the tank forward and looks into the empty space.
It’s not deep, but it’s steep. If we go down in there, we might get stuck.
To the right is a small plateau of crumbling rock that is little more than a wide ledge and a drop that disappears off into the night. To the left, a rock wall.
The Old Man maneuvers the tank out onto the wide ledge.
There is more than enough room.
Once the tank is back on the narrow two-lane road, the descent steepens and then halts.
The rock wall has shifted over the road. There is no ledge to turn onto and bypass the wall.
The Old Man waits, straining to see something in the arc of light that he has not yet seen.
He checks the temperature gauge.
Warmer.
But not as warm.
If we sit, if we wait, it will get warmer.
But I need time to think.
Right now you must be very rich to afford such a luxury, my friend.
The Old Man pulls back on both sticks and the tank shifts gears and begins to back up the road. When it’s wide enough, which is just barely, he pivots the tank, mashing one stick forward and pulling back on the other, then he races back up to the ledge.
