The Wasteland Saga

by Nick Cole

  Madness.

  “Poppa?” she said, worried.

  “Just stay down and hang on. Everything will be all right.”

  “Are you sure, Poppa?”

  He nodded and tried to say something, but felt his dry throat constrict with dust.

  I am in over my head, my friend. What do we do?

  Sometimes you can do nothing other than hold the line and hope the fish will tire, my friend. That your strength will outlast his will to live.

  The Old Man pivoted the tank and left the highway, descending down a ditch and into the tall grass of the plain.

  What if he falls off?

  He won’t, my friend.

  The tank picked up speed as the ground leveled out, and the Boy hooked his arm with the manhole cover shield around the barrel and leaned back against the turret.

  From midway up the conical hill, white puffs of smoke erupted almost in unison.

  What is that?

  You know the answer, my friend; you’re just not ready to accept it, but now you must.

  I can almost see the cannon rounds moving through the air, between us and them, like the rumor of a shadow.

  The ground between the tank and the hill sprang upward in a series of dirt fountains. Earth showered the charging tank, and a moment later they passed through the rising smoke of the impacts.

  They have artillery.

  Ahead, the slavers were breaking off into two groups. The whip wielders drove their prisoners forward, their whips arching high across the sky like dark strands of a girl’s hair dancing in the wind. Others on horseback turned to face the oncoming tank, drawing their weapons.

  The Boy pushed himself away from the turret, his legs bending, as if he were riding the tank, his manhole cover shield rising to protect his chest and body. His powerful right arm began to draw the weight bar with the bowling ball at the tip in huge slow circles about his head.

  The horsemen thundered straight on toward the tank.

  The Old Man could see the sweat running down their grim, ash-covered faces. He could see broken teeth jutting up through their red gums as they began to shout and whoop.

  Their horses frothed, eyes wide with terror.

  The Boy leaned outward and far to the right, still swinging the great mace in a wide circle.

  Spears jutted forward from some of the horsemen, while machetes danced wildly about the heads of others.

  ‘This is madness,’ thought the Old Man again.

  A moment later, they met.

  Six riders.

  One went down beneath the tank.

  Forget that sound. The sound that man and horse make when that happens. Never think of that sound again in all your life, my friend.

  Yes, I won’t ever if I can help it.

  And in the next moment, the Old Man forgot as the Boy lowered his powerful arm and swept the club past the Old Man’s head and straight into the chest of the nearest oncoming rider.

  In one moment, the man changed direction from charging atop a terrified horse, to flying backward and alone, almost keeping pace with the tank for the merest second before he disappeared beneath the tread.

  The Boy pivoted and watched the riders wheel their horses about.

  They’ll catch us if I don’t go faster.

  But the tread?

  The Boy nodded toward the main body of prisoners, telling the Old Man to continue forward.

  The ground all around and behind them exploded again as the Old Man looked up to see smoke drifting away from the mouths of the cannons that rested midway up the hill behind a low bric-a-brac wall.

  Ahead, the slavers were throwing down their weapons and outrunning Ted’s people who also continued to run forward in terror.

  Turning back to the Old Man as if to tell him something, the Boy suddenly raised his shield. A spear shattered against it, emitting a small metallic note.

  The Boy climbed back to the Old Man and uttered a breathless, “Keep moving forward!”

  The Old Man turned to see the riders closing up the distance on the tank’s sides. The Boy whirled his club quicker than the Old Man thought possible and brought it down onto the head of one of the nearest horsemen who crumpled instantly.

  Ted’s people were huddled together now, bloody, screaming, crying, protecting each other. The Old Man swerved wide to completely avoid them.

  Halfway up the conical hill, ashen-faced warriors waving spears and machetes surged out from behind the bric-a-brac wall.

  Once more, the Old Man saw the cannons belch forth with their sudden puffs of white smoke.

  Duck!

  A moment later he felt a jarring impact slam into the side of the tank.

  His granddaughter screamed.

  “Poppa!”

  The Old Man’s ears were ringing.

  “It’s okay!” he yelled down into the dark. “Are you all right?”

  Please don’t let this be a worse nightmare. Please don’t let this be the nightmare too terrible to imagine. The one in which she is hurt.

  Can you let go?

  Stop! I cannot because too much depends on me and I am not enough.

  A shot had fallen amid the prisoners. Bloodied bodies were being dragged back within their huddle in the midst of the battlefield.

  “I’m okay, Poppa.” But he could hear her fear.

  We’ve got to protect those people.

  But how?

  And…

  Where is the Boy?

  I can’t see him!

  The Old Man gunned the tank and pivoted hard, throwing up giant clods of dirt and torn grass.

  Be careful of the tread!

  There is too much to worry about.

  The Old Man drove the tank between the prisoners and the cannon on the hill.

  Leaning down, he beckoned Ted’s people toward the side of the tank.

  “Get close to the sides, you’ll be safer here!” he yelled above the roar of the engine.

  Where is the Boy?

  “Poppa, what’s going on up there?”

  A battle is nothing but confusion, my friend.

  Maybe this is how the world was destroyed. Confusion took charge in the absence of leadership.

  Yes.

  But the fear-struck people would not move from their huddle.

  “Stay here!” he called down to his granddaughter.

  “No, Poppa!”

  Don’t say it, please. Because even if you do, I still need to do this.

  The Old Man dropped to the ground.

  My legs feel weak and far away.

  That is just fear, my friend.

  He stumbled forward to the wild-eyed prisoners. Waving with his hands, he urged them to take cover alongside the tank.

  Out in the tall grass he could see the Boy battling three horsemen. He swept his club into the legs of one horse, and a second later raised it high above his head to strike down its fallen rider. The other two horsemen wheeled about trying to bring their spear points to bear.

  Again the Old Man heard the distant boom of cannon.

  “Please!” he beckoned the terrified people.

  All at once they ran forward screaming and crying, like a stampede of frightened animals. Or a hurt child wailing, racing for the comfort of its mother’s arms.

  The Old Man could see their bloody backs and torn clothing, their haunted tearstained faces.

  “Thank you,” someone sobbed. A woman holding a small child. “Thank you.”

  There was a series of deep thuds as the earth shook about them and seconds later it was raining dirt.

  The Old Man turned to see the Boy who danced away from the last standing horseman, limping away from a striking axe that glanced off his manhole cover shield. The Boy retaliated, dragging his mace from the ground and slamming it into the man’s ribs, crushing them.

  Again the Old Man could hear the cannons bellow their dull whump.

  Someone screamed, “Oh no, please not again!”

  Thuds. Sudden and terrible. Near
and close.

  Dirt falling from the sky.

  How can I save them all?

  How can I get us out of this place?

  This is too much for just me.

  The Boy was running toward them now.

  How are we going to get these people out of here?

  The Boy loped past the tank, disappearing around the gun barrel, his broken feather flying out from his hair as though it had followed him everywhere he’d ever gone. Would go. Even if it was to his death.

  What is he doing? Where is he going?

  “Wait here!” the Old Man shouted at those huddled about him. Then he climbed up onto the tread, keeping the low flat turret between him and the cannons on the hill. When he peered over its edge he saw the Boy running now, no longer limping, he was running, running forward to meet the ashen-faced warriors who were coming down the hill for them.

  There must be a hundred of them, at least.

  The Old Man watched the warriors surge out from the gates and leap through the tall grass, waving their machetes, screaming as they came on.

  The Boy raced to meet them.

  His mace circling above his head.

  He’s going to give you the time you need to get out of here, my friend. So I suggest you go now.

  “Get up on the tank,” he called down to those huddled at its sides. He had to say it again and a moment later they were all climbing up onto the tank, pushing children down inside the hatch. Everything in chaos.

  Children screamed.

  Men swore.

  A woman begged for someone to leave her behind.

  The Old Man watched helplessly as the Boy ran forward to meet the oncoming mass of ashen warriors.

  He is braver than anyone I have ever known.

  And…

  He will be killed for sure.

  What can I do for him, my friend Santiago? What can I do to help this Boy?

  Nothing, my friend. Nothing.

  To the south, the Old Man saw dark figures coming up out of the earth.

  More horsemen, dark riders to encircle us.

  Moments later the dark riders were charging forward.

  They have been down in a riverbed that must run through this plain, and now they are coming to attack us from behind.

  The Old Man climbed into the driver’s seat at the front of the tank.

  The cannon fired once more.

  But this time the rounds fell amid the charging horsemen. The dark riders.

  Wait!

  The dark horsemen thundered past the tank.

  The Old Man could see the Boy. He’d crashed into the line of ashen-faced men, swinging his mace in wide arcs as they fell back from him.

  Encircling him.

  Pressing down on him.

  Wait!

  One of the dark horsemen who’d been thrown from his mount by the falling artillery rounds remounted and dashed past the tank, whooping like a Plains Indian, long black hair streaming behind, almost touching the flying tail of the chestnut mare. And in that hair a long gray feather, following in the wind.

  Like the Boy.

  Green eyes turned and smiled for the briefest of moments at the Old Man, and then the dark rider was gone, riding forward into battle. Riding forward to fight by the side of the outnumbered Boy.

  WHEN THE BATTLE was over the Old Man watched as the outnumbered dark horsemen climbed the heights, vaulting the low bric-a-brac wall, falling on the artillerymen, cutting and stabbing.

  The bodies of the ashen-faced warriors lay in the tall grass and at the foot of the hill and up along its dusty slopes.

  The Old Man and his granddaughter left the tank. Looking among the bodies. Looking for the Boy. And they found him.

  He was drinking water from a water skin held up to his mouth by a large, bloody horseman. The Boy’s massive arm was shaking. The bowling ball mace and the manhole cover shield lay in the dust. The crushed bodies of slavers scattered in a wide arc about him.

  The Boy, standing, spoke haltingly in a strange language to the bloody horseman between gasping pulls at the water skin. The Old Man could make out only a few of the many words.

  “What’s he doing, Poppa?”

  The large horseman suddenly embraced the Boy. A feather, long and gray, just like those of the other horsemen, like the broken feather in the Boy’s hair, lay on his shoulder, resting against a bloody scratch.

  “I think…” said the Old Man. “I think he has found his people.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Chapter 45

  The Old Man moved the tank closer to the hill, near the falling walls of a village that had once occupied the slopes nearest the highway. A place once called Wagon Wheel Mountain if a faded sign was to be believed. Ted’s people huddled in small groups, eating shared rations given out by the horsemen and drinking water from leather-skinned bags. The Old Man walked forward to where the Boy stood amid the warriors.

  The Boy’s muscles still trembled and twitched as he too held a water skin to his mouth.

  “Who are these people?” asked the Old Man.

  The Boy lowered the bag and opened his mouth to speak.

  “The real question should be,” said a tired voice from behind them, “who is he?”

  The Old Man turned at the sound of the voice.

  A crippled man and old like me.

  “That is the million-dollar question, if a million dollars were still worth anything beyond kindling.”

  The Crippled Man was small and thin. His hair, what remained of it, was wispy, his eyes milky, his legs bent and twisted as he sat in the dust between two giant horsemen who’d carried him into the impromptu camp after the battle.

  “What do you mean?” asked the Old Man.

  The Crippled Man crawled forward and when he reached the feet of the Boy, he beckoned for him to bend down. The Crippled Man ran his fingers just above the feather that hung in the Boy’s hair.

  He muttered to himself.

  He waved the Boy back up and crawled back between his bearers.

  He looked straight into the eyes of the Boy.

  “I made that feather seventeen years ago. Maybe more, maybe less. But I made it.”

  The Boy undid the leather thong and brought the feather down, holding it under his green eyes.

  “I made it bent like that with some glue I’d manufactured. Epoxy we called it once. Made it from the wreckage of my plane.”

  Silence. Some of the horsemen muttered in their pidgin.

  The Old Man heard, “Como,” and “Fudgeweisen.”

  The Boy stared at the broken feather.

  Silence.

  “Why?” asked the Boy softly.

  “Because,” replied the Crippled Man. “It was who you were. Who you are.”

  “Broken Feather?” asked the Boy.

  The Crippled Man looked up, considered the sky, seemed to mumble to himself in some agreement, then looked back and said, “Yeah, that could be one way of saying it.”

  The Old Man saw the Boy tighten his jaw.

  He saw the Boy nod to himself.

  He never really knew where he’d come from. Where his starting place was in all this.

  No, he never knew, my friend, where his course began on the map he’s carried for all these years. It has bothered him all his days and he has been looking for his beginning in all the places he has ever been. And he never found it, until now. The meaning of it. What the feather meant to him and the people who had first given it.

  “You were born that way,” said the Crippled Man. “Because of the radiation. Many were in those days. Not so many now. But in those days there were many birth defects. From the moment you came out, we could see that you would be weak on that side.”

  “And you threw me away,” said the Boy through clenched teeth in the silence that followed. “You gave me away.”

  Everyone watched the two.

  The Crippled Man and the Boy.

  “No. I have no idea what happened to you,” said the Crip
pled Man. “You were very little when your mother and father, and a few of the other warrior families, tried to make it into the Tetons. There wasn’t enough here and we were fighting with other groups of survivors constantly. Those times brought out the worst in people. So your father, if he was who I remember him to be, was part of an expedition that went up into the Tetons. We never heard from them again. Years later when we sent scouts to look for them, there was no trace.”

  The Boy remembered cold plains.

  His first memory was of running. Of a woman screaming. Of seeing the sky, blue and cold in one moment, and the ground, yellow stubble, race by in the next.

  “And now you have returned to us,” said the Crippled Man. “A brave warrior who inspired us to victory where we saw none. You charged out against our enemy with your weapon all alone.”

  “I was… it wasn’t what you thought.”

  The Crippled Man considered the Boy and his words.

  “No. It never is.”

  “Why did you come to our rescue?” said the Old Man.

  “We’ve been shadowing you since before Santa Fe. Those are our lands. We thought you were working with these people. There was nothing we could have done against you. We fought a battle against them at Pecos Creek when they initially entered our lands a couple of years back. That was a hard day and our losses were bitter. Still are. But when a report came to me that one of you was wearing our badge, the feather, well, then I hoped.”

  “Hoped for what?” asked the Old Man.

  “Hoped you might not be with them.” He pointed toward the bodies lain out on the slopes of the hill. “Hoped we were finally getting a break.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll be honest,” continued the Crippled Man. “I wasn’t convinced he was of our tribe. I didn’t remember a warrior like him. But I hoped all the same. Or maybe I was just stunned to see one of our old tanks still working. I figured if you two just wiped each other out, then that would be best for us. There aren’t too many of us Mohicans left these days.”

  “Mohicans?”

  “Yes. It’s my little joke from long ago that’s sorta stuck as a name for us. In the days after the bombs, the people who rescued me, the people I would lead, we called ourselves that. It was our bad little joke in a very bad time. And there were days when we felt as though we were indeed the last.”

  I know those days.