by Nick Cole
“She said we would find it in there,” said the Old Man, pointing toward the tower. “In the basement.”
They began to cross the runway.
“What is this place, Poppa?”
I know.
I knew.
It was a myth. Even then.
“A place where they kept and made weapons.”
“Do you think there will be salvage here, Poppa?”
“It seems like a good place for salvage.”
It was a place they made weapons we should have never needed. I can say that. I have seen what happens if you make a weapon. If you hide it somewhere secret and even pretend that you will never use it. Pretend that it doesn’t even exist. Someday, you will use it.
And others must live with the consequences.
Yes.
Chapter 24
The work of the day began in earnest once they’d located the entrance to the tower. It was hard work. Crowbar work. At one point they’d needed to use the tank and a tow chain to remove a section of concrete blocking the entrance.
Later, when the door was revealed and they’d stopped to rest, the Old Man, sweating thickly and drinking warm water, watched his granddaughter wander among the twisted and burnt remains of bat-winged bombers, gray with dust, sinking beneath the white salt and sand that swept in off the dry lake.
The Old Man was thinking of water.
How much is left?
And.
Where will we find more?
He turned to the aircraft scattered across the horizon.
There was a time when I would have wondered at the story of this place and those aircraft. But only because there was salvage here. Not because of the story of what happened on that last, long-lost day.
Not because of that, my friend?
No. There is too much to think of. There is water. There is this device we must find. There is food. Will the Boy be able to catch us a goat?
Goat would be nice with the pepper that remains.
And salt?
I do not think we can eat this salt.
Still, salt would be nice.
Yes.
And the tread that is going bad.
And fuel too. Do not forget fuel. You must think of fuel.
How could I not?
The Old Man took a drink of warm water from his canteen and sighed. A small breeze skittered across the desert and cooled the sweat on his neck and face.
He thought of the meal that the boy in the book would bring Santiago. Rice and bananas.
I always like to imagine that there were bits of fried pork in it.
And don’t forget the coffee with milk and sugar, my friend. That was the best part.
Yes.
This place. Its story. I’ll tell you. They were caught by surprise. No bombs. No nuclear bombs. No, an enemy attacked this place. There were reports of the Chinese offshore in those last weeks, but after the first EMP, the news was thin and, really, I can say this now to myself since there is no one left to contradict me, the news we hung on then was of little value. I remember though the rumors of Chinese airstrikes in the morning hours. The names of bridges and oil refineries I must have known at the time going up in the early morning darkness. We saw the smoke at dawn. That was when we began to flee.
It was Los Angeles.
Yes. That was it.
I bet Natalie knows.
One day these bombers we trusted in will sink beneath the salt and the sand and who will know what happened to them? To us. Or who will even be interested?
There is always someone.
But what if there isn’t?
The Old Man watched his granddaughter return from her explorations. She was holding a jacket.
“I found this in a bag behind the seat in one of the planes, Poppa!”
She held it up triumphantly. It was green and shiny on the outside, almost brand-new. And on the inside it was orange.
A flight jacket.
And what if there isn’t anyone left?
The Old Man watched her smile.
He nodded.
There must be.
AT DUSK THE BOY returned, limping across the sands, the dressed goat slung over his shoulders.
When the Old Man saw the shadow of the Boy, he turned from the rubble they’d been clearing in the stairwell that led to the collapsed rooms beneath the tower. The Old Man dropped his crowbar weakly and set to gathering what little wood he could find.
It was full dark and the stars were overhead when the goat finally began to roast. In the hours that followed, the three of them drank lightly from their canteens as their mouths watered and they watched the goat.
Close to midnight, the Old Man cut a slice off the goat and tasted it. He handed it to his granddaughter and she began to chew and hum, which was her way.
“It’s ready, Poppa.”
They fell to the goat with their knives, eating in the firelight, their jaws aching as grease ran down their chins.
We were hungrier than we thought.
Yes.
Chapter 25
The Boy found the black case underneath a desk beneath the collapsed roof of the basement he’d crawled through under the tower.
“I found it!” he shouted back through the dust and the thin light their weak flashlights tried to throw across the rubble.
“Are there words written on the side of the case?” the Old Man called through the dark.
I must remember what Natalie told me to look for. The words she said we would find. What were they?
Pause.
Maybe he doesn’t know how to read. Who could have taught him?
“Project Einstein,” shouted the Boy.
Who taught him how to read?
“That’s it. Bring it out.”
Later, in the last of the daylight beneath the broken tower, they looked at the dusty case. On its side were military codes and numbers. But the words Natalie, General Watt, had told him to look for, the words were there.
Project Einstein.
I should be…
Excited? Happy? Hopeful?
But I’m not. It means we must go on now. It means we must go all the way.
Yes.
“Halt!”
The voice came from behind them. It was strong yet distant, as if muffled.
“Raise your hands above your heads!”
“Poppa,” whispered his granddaughter.
“Do it,” he whispered back. He noticed the Boy struggle to raise his left arm as quickly as the strong right one. Even then the left failed to straighten or fully rise.
Behind them, the Old Man heard boot steps grinding sand against the cracked tarmac of the runway.
If there is just one, we might have a chance.
The Old Man looked to see if the Boy’s tomahawk was on his belt. It was.
“Grayson! Trash! Move in and cover them.”
Movement, steps. Gear jingling and clanking together.
The voice stepped into view, circling wide to stand between the Old Man, his granddaughter, and the Boy and the broken tower.
He carried a gun. A rifle.
An assault rifle, remembered the Old Man.
His face was covered by a black rubber gas mask.
Beneath a long coat lay dusty and cracked black plastic armor.
‘Riot gear,’ thought the Old Man. Just like in the days before the bombs.
On top of his head was the matte-scratched helmet of a soldier.
At his hip, a wicked steel machete forged from some long-ago-salvaged car part lay strapped.
His boots were wrapped in rags.
Within his long coat, lying against the black plastic chest armor, a slender rectangle of dented and polished silver hung.
A harmonica.
The Old Man snatched a glance at the Project Einstein case on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” said the man in the dusty black riot armor as he raised his helmet and removed the rubber gas mask
from his face. The man with the harmonica about his neck.
“And more importantly, where’d you get that tank?”
He was a few days unshaven.
He was young.
He’s just a man.
Like me.
But he’s young.
Like I once was.
So maybe it ends here. Like the dream I have done my best to avoid. It ends with these scavengers murdering me as my granddaughter watches.
It cannot end that way.
“What’re you doing out here?” repeated the Harmonica Man.
If I can get to my crowbar maybe the Boy will use his axe… Maybe.
“Listen,” said the Harmonica Man. “You need to tell me what you’re doing out here at the old base, right now!”
“They’re not with them,” said either Trash or Grayson from behind their masks.
“We don’t know that,” said the Harmonica Man. “And hell, they’ve got a tank.”
There is a moment in between.
A moment when things might go one way or the other.
A moment when those who are prone to caution, hesitate.
And those who are prone to action, act.
“We’re on a rescue mission,” said the Boy.
Silence.
Maybe the guns just dropped a bit.
Maybe the masked gunmen have softened their stance.
Maybe there are other good people.
Maybe, my friend. Just maybe.
“Who?” asked the Harmonica Man.
“I don’t know. He does.” The Boy points to the Old Man.
Everyone turns to him.
The Old Man nods.
“All right,” says the man. “We’ll lower our guns and you’ll tell us all about it. Then, we’ll see what happens next.”
The Old Man lowers his hands.
Should I?
What choice do you have? None that I can see now, my friend.
“There are some people,” begins the Old Man. “They’re trapped inside a bunker to the east. A place once called Colorado Springs. They need this device to get free.”
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you with King Charlie?” asked the Harmonica Man.
“No. We don’t know any King Charlie.”
“How’d you get this tank?”
“I found it.”
The Harmonica Man thought about this, watching all of them.
The Old Man could see his granddaughter. Her mouth formed into a small “o.”
“Where will you go if we let you leave?”
If?
“We will go east and try to help those people.”
Silence.
“Why?”
Why?
Yes. Why, my friend?
“Because they need help.”
Harmonica Man lowered his gun and leaned it against his hip.
“We have food. Do you have any water?”
“Yes,” said the Old Man. “Some.”
“It’ll be night soon. Let’s eat and I’ll tell you why you might want to turn back.”
Chapter 26
Around the fire, sharing the goat and some wheat cakes the strangers have brought out from their patchwork rucksacks, they see the faces behind the black rubber gas masks.
Grayson is a young man. Not much older than the Boy. He is quiet and smiles with dark eyes. The Old Man knows he’s shy and that women find him handsome.
Trash is a girl, a woman really. Maybe in her midtwenties. Her race is mixed. Maybe some Asian. Some black. Blond dirty hair. Her tight jaw and clenched teeth show she is older than the other two, but not by much. She does not speak.
‘She reminds me,’ thinks the Old Man, ‘of a wounded bird, or a good dog that was once mistreated.’
Harmonica Man’s real name is Kyle.
He is ruddy faced and swarthy and the Old Man knows that he is the kind of young man who would fight the whole world if he had a good reason to.
Names from Before.
Names.
“If you keep going east,” said Kyle as he chewed some goat meat, “there is only one island of sanity between here and Flagstaff. That’s the Dam, where we come from. Beyond that, I’ve heard there’s electricity in ABQ but that might just be something the Apache made up, ’cause they’re crazy. I don’t put much in what they say, especially these days.”
They eat around a fire next to the tank in the shadow of the broken tower. Night falls. Only Kyle talks. There is goat, dry wheat cakes, and warm water.
“Then there’s the bad news. Between you and that island of sanity is a small army of crazy. Even worse, something big is going on to the east and we don’t have much information other than what the Apache let slip when they come in to trade. The real truth is, I don’t know what’s going down out east. What we’ve heard is there’s a big, organized group, almost like an army come up outta Texas. They seem to follow some guy who calls himself King Charlie and what he’s all about doesn’t sound good. Slaves. Torture. Voodoo. Bad stuff. It was six months since we’d heard from Flagstaff when our bunch got sent out here, and that was a little over a year ago. But whatever’s going down out that way ain’t so good. The Apache, on a good day, are hard to deal with. But whatever’s going on beyond their lands is makin’ em even crazier than usual. So there’s that. Which still ain’t your biggest problem.”
The Old Man chewed some of the stringier goat meat, letting the newcomers enjoy the tender goat they’d seasoned with the last of their pepper.
“Your biggest problem,” continued Kyle, inspecting the rib he’d been gnawing on to make sure it was indeed devoid of meat and fat. “Your biggest problem is that small army between here and the Dam. You make it to the Dam, you can go forward. But we’ve been stuck out here for a year. They’ve got Vegas all booby-trapped up, never mind the radiation. Hell, we had a tank just like yours. I mean, maybe not the same, but old Art, he kept her running. We had some motorized flatbeds we got together and we’d run ’em up to the old air base at Creech and do some salvage. Well, that little army came in and cut us off a year ago. Now things are weird. We can’t get back to the Dam. They can’t get to this old place, which we think they want to real badly. They can’t attack the Dam ’cause they’d never make it to the front door. But word is, they’ve got a bigger army somwheres out to the east. If that’s actually the case, then that’s a game changer as the old say. In the end, there just ain’t no way through that madhouse for you and your tank.”
There were no more ribs.
Kyle stared into the fire.
“Where is this ‘Island of Sanity’?” asked the Old Man.
Kyle sighed.
“Home. Our home. The Dam east of Vegas.”
“And so if we can make it there… to the Dam, then we might find some fuel if you had vehicles once.”
“Yeah, we gin up a little fuel that’s probably not the best, but it’ll get this hunk o’ metal a little farther down the road for you. Problem is, mister, you’re not makin’ the connection. We can’t get into the Dam. There’s an army between us and it. King Charlie’s got an advance force all dug in like a hornets’ nest.”
The Old Man looked at the tank waiting in the shadowy darkness beyond the firelight.
“Did you hear me, old man, when I said we also had a tank? How d’ya think we lost it? It’s in a ditch out in North Vegas. They knew we had vehicles so they booby-trapped the whole place. You try to go through Vegas, north or south, and you’ll lose your ride. Plain as day, there just ain’t no way through!”
Silence followed and the Old Man listened to the dry sticks within the fire crackle and pop. He watched the night wind carry sparks up and away from them.
“I don’t mean to be hard on you, mister,” said Kyle softly. “But you can’t make it. At least not that way. You’ll need to go off-road way out into the desert. If your ride’s in good shape, that won’t be a problem. Unless you get really stuck and then
yer out in the sticks with their patrols.”
Silence.
Overhead, a comet streaked through the atmosphere and burned up in almost the same second it had appeared.
Life.
And death.
“We need to stick to the roads,” said the Old Man, thinking of the bad right tread.
“Well, you can’t,” whispered Kyle in disgust. Or fatigue. Or both.
The Old Man watched them all.
The girl, Trash, seemed somewhere else.
Grayson looked off into the night.
Kyle stared into the fire.
The Boy appeared to watch the night but the Old Man knew, or felt was more like it, that he was somewhere else, far from this fire and this night.
His granddaughter watched everyone.
And yet we must.
“We can make a way.” It was Grayson.
Grayson stared hard at Kyle who refused to return the look.
“We can make a way,” Grayson repeated. “Straight through, and it’s all on-road.”
Silence.
“Yeah, I figured you was gonna say that,” mumbled Kyle after an interval full of something electric. “I figured that already.”
Grayson looked at the Old Man and began to speak softly.
“We could go straight down the Strip where their lines are thinnest. Right where the bomb went off. The radiation’s not too bad. They say it was just a dirty bomb but I don’t know what that really means. The important thing is the road is mostly clear of booby traps between the old casinos because of the radiation. We can go that way. We can guide you. We can make a way through.”
“We,” said Kyle softly. “We,” he thundered at Grayson and began to laugh. “We.” He snorted finally. “There just ain’t no way of gettin’ through!”
No one spoke and the mad laughter of Kyle died away on the night’s breeze.
“Kyle?” said Grayson.
“Yeah,” mumbled Kyle.
“We.”
“Yeah. I figured that already.”
THE MORNING LIGHT shows an orange desert floor and a day turning into a forever blue. Hanging from the tank, riding in seats, or sitting atop the turret, they all depart the once-secret base.
There are still secrets buried in these sands.
