The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist's Guide to Utah's Deserts

by Dustin Steinacker

  Who was he with now, and what salvage had he given them? What did he have left?

  “I hope you understand you’re with us because I thought you might be useful.” The woman’s voice, from last night. His breathing must have changed when he woke.

  “You took me with you.” He opened his eyes, and as he reached for the sore spot on his forehead he winced at a pain in his midsection.

  “Quite a goose egg you’ve got there.”

  Thursday leaned back, trying to keep his trunk as still as possible. “I think I fractured a rib.”

  “You’re a damned drunk, is why.”

  “No. Well, yes, but that’s not—”

  Better not to finish the thought. In his experience, people didn’t respond well to “I’m sick.” It brought up questions of contagion.

  From the passenger’s seat Thursday looked about. A child sat next to him on a makeshift chair bolted to the floor between him and the driver, appraising him and apparently finding him lacking. He couldn’t shake the impression of some overgrown doll; mauve dress and braided orange hair he could almost believe was yarn. She looked on the verge of saying something, so he waited for it, but she stayed silent.

  And in the back row...

  Jeez!

  That explained the smell.

  “What are you doing, letting your son live like that?”

  The driver shielded her eyes as she veered toward the sun—the road had yielded itself so suddenly to desert bushes that it looked like the bumpers ending a freight track. “Not my son.”

  “That’s your excuse? He looks—” Thursday squinted at the boy. I’m staring, he thought, and ventured a wave. He received none in return. “He looks—”

  The child looked spent.

  “Pale.”

  The woman pursed her lips, and watched the horizon for some time.

  “I know what it looks like. He’s living in filth, got something off inside him and can’t clean up after himself, so we’re just letting him stew in—in his sweat or urine or worse. But what you’re seeing there, that state he’s in, it’s something I can’t fix. Not without help.”

  Thursday laughed grimly. “I can’t help with that.”

  Her knuckles were white around the wheel. “No. No, you can’t. But I’m pretty much betting my life on the idea that somebody, in this direction, can.”

  “And does that somebody have a name?”

  Her eyes were fierce. “We’ve got sanctuary, where we’re going.”

  Thursday bit his tongue. He’d seen crazier plans than hers work, especially of late, but those were the exceptions that tried the rule. And that rule was, and would remain: you brought with you what you try to escape.

  Whatever opportunity there was to be had in this coast-to-coast wilderness, it had already been taken, by warlords and cruel scavengers and worse. Maybe there was a time when there was room for songsters or people who weaved or built the cloud-raking edifices that still dotted the old cities to travel about seeking their fortune, and even to find it. Probably most didn’t, even then.

  But in this world, he knew, people who had sanctuary kept it to themselves.

  “All right. So the kid’s under the weather. I get that.” He eyed the doll-like girl, who was still silent. “And her?”

  The girl slapped him across the face with a suddenness that shocked him. A fresh wave of sickly pain shot through his forehead and midsection and he groaned.

  “Nothing wrong with me,” the kid said, and then she was as inert as she’d been a moment before.

  I’m on a ship of fools, he thought.

  Thursday closed his eyes and did his best to keep his breathing confined and shallow, which seemed to dull the pain. He could only hope the brat didn’t have a gut punch waiting for him.

  No—more like a car of freaks.

  Come see the amazing disease-boy! Don’t worry, he’s not catching, but he’s not speaking either! And doll-girl, the lier-in-wait! Don’t let that dress and that blank stare deceive you: she’s behind glass for a reason! And the ringleader, the one holding this family of the curious together—

  “So what’s your story?” he asked the driver. “Got to be a good one.” She said nothing. He sighed and watched the world move by through the window. They were back to the road, where the wilderness gave way to two undriveable hills looming up on each side. He watched her watching for ambush.

  He wasn’t sure where he was. He had a vague memory of trading the last of his beer for water and passage the morning before—not a trade he’d relished but one that had finally become a necessity. And that clan, that gang of dirty Bellistons who he was sure would rob him the moment he unearthed the treasure he’d buried... where had they left him?

  They’d called this place “The Desert” or “Wasatch.” How far was this desert from the sea? If he hit ocean he’d have to turn right, he knew that much. The horizon here was all full of mountain and he couldn’t even begin to guess where that put him, but if he was right and this was the morning sun, they were at least moving—

  “Southwest. No.”

  The driver looked his way.

  “We’re going the wrong direction.”

  Her face was almost a sneer, pitying. “I assure you friend, we’re not.”

  “I’ve got to make it to the Northwest.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Fine, take me back then. I’ll take those panels, anything else I can find and pay my way up—”

  She stopped the car. “You’re not thinking, are you? You’re not.” She pointed back the way they’d came. “Those cars, they’ve been there my lifetime twice over. Some of them were probably there when the roads were split. You think you’d have had any luck finding something worthwhile if we hadn’t been there? Maybe a fully-stocked travel kit? A hot meal?”

  He didn’t have an answer, but Thursday didn’t like being told off.

  But he sighed. “You probably saved my life. All three of you, I mean. You didn’t have to, but you did. I’ve outlived a lot of stronger and smarter people than me. I can’t count on having much luck left.” He tried to keep his voice firm. “But if I don’t make it to Seattle, I really am going to die. Understand?”

  “I don’t know where that is. What’s it like?”

  “Never been.”

  She laughed now, sharp and derisive. “I guarantee you, whatever you’re looking for, our people can help you out.”

  A pulse of tingling numbness down all four of his limbs. How could he explain this? How his pipe dream was anything but?

  “What I’ve got,” he said carefully, “it’s not anything anybody can help me out with. The people calling me to them... there’s no sanctuary there, like you think you’ve got. They made me sick in the first place. I’m giving myself to slavery. To be their test subject.”

  “That’s stupid,” the doll-girl said. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because that means I can trust them, when they tell me they can save my life.”

  The driver thought, and she opened her door. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “No, not like that. I want to show you something.”

  She made him stand far, facing away from the car under the doll-girl’s watchful eyes. He heard the sound of the hatch opening and some metallic fiddling, before the driver called him over to her.

  “Okay, look at this. But do. Not. Touch it. Okay?”

  She carefully lowered a little shawl onto the ground, and then making a clear effort to keep her hands away from whatever was inside, untied the edges and unveiled it.

  Thursday lowered himself onto his knees, then at the pain in his rib crossed his legs on the ground for a better look.

  The hell?

  It was a glass ball which must have had a hundred sides or more, each perfectly flat. He blinked, and looked closer. A sort of foam was crawling around the geosphere’s inner wall, slow but purposeful. It seemed to trace the edges of the shapes which made up the perimeter, then fill them in a
nd harden before disappearing and becoming as transparent as the ball itself. Then, elsewhere, once-empty air would go opaque and another bit of foam would begin its migration to some other part of the perimeter.

  “That’s pure xeno,” she said triumphantly. “No way did any human being make that.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Turns sand into water.”

  He blinked. “Really?”

  “No, of course not. Would be nice though, eh?” She gathered up the ball and retied it, before unwrapping another bizarre package, a little black box with a rough texture.

  “Go on,” she whispered in his ear. “Talk to it.”

  “What?”

  “Eywhut?” the box responded. “Eywhut? Hewhat? Yoo en a hasna say sometee?” Then it unleashed a seconds-long string of percussive gibberish that sounded like no language Thursday had ever heard.

  “I call that one the talker. At first it was just the xeno-talk. But I swear: I think it’s learning English. Sometimes it almost makes sense.”

  “Learning English...” Thursday muttered, dazed. “Godsakes.”

  “That’s why we’re going to Tempe,” she said with a grin that didn’t seem quite at home on her face. “Because we’ve got something to give.”

  “What’s that one?” he asked, nodding at a third bundle still sitting in the back of the car, double-wrapped.

  Her face fell. “That one doesn’t do anything.”

  He watched her for a moment—how could he have believed that the owner of those sunchapped lips and arms with so many dry patches was getting regular water?—then reached for the talker. She tensed but he gathered up the shawl’s corners and re-tied it snug, then passed it up to her by the knot.

  “Ok, fair enough. So you’ve got some alien tech.” He tried not to sound too impressed. “But look down this road you’re going. No, metaphorically. Do you have a complete picture of where you’re going and what’s going to happen when you get there? Or are you just counting on things working out?”

  “Should I ask you the same thing?”

  He put his forehead in his hands and left it there, even as the pressure from the lump on his head and the pain from his ribs built to an overwhelming throb.

  He looked up. “Fine. We could hash that one out forever and get nowhere. So I’ll give my side of it a rest if you’ll do the same for yours.”

  “All right.”

  “But I still can’t stay with you... with—dammit, I don’t even know your name—”

  “Emmie.”

  “—I can’t stay with you, Emmie, and with your friends. Maybe you don’t believe that there’s anything for me in Seattle, but at least believe that I believe it. Thanks for giving me a ride and all, but the next caravan we pass that isn’t looking for blood, or the next village or fort, we’ll part ways.”

  “It’s medical, right? What’s got you like that?”

  Thursday nodded.

  “The people we’re going to can help Alva. They know that xeno stuff. Whatever you’ve got, maybe they can help you too.”

  “How do you know who they can and can’t help?” After a moment his eyes widened, and he stood and looked again at the bound bundles sitting under the open hatch of the SUV. “Wait—what does that whole bag of tricks have to do with the kid?”

  “It’s not, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, just what in the hell kind of illness does he have? What’s he carrying?” Thursday took a step toward Emmie, and in one motion that sling was in her hand.

  “Alva isn’t a danger,” she said, and any trace of humor or for that matter humanity was gone in her face. “Not to you or to anybody else.”

  Thursday had the impression, sudden and unmistakable, that this woman had killed.

  “You don’t know him,” she continued. “The real him. We’re going to bring him back. And you can either help us to do it, or go back to dying in the desert.”

  He blinked, followed the horizon with his eyes.

  There’s a kind of intent to this place, he thought. Tiny gashed mesas lined the road, flat and almost artificial where the caprock remained, looking like the victims of some just-missed gargantuan-scale violence. Red crags and crevices in the distance kissed by pinky-finger clouds, like the otherworldly settings of fantastic stories. A land at the end of a ten-thousand-year breath, ready to exhale. The silences that punctuate a piece of music, and only those parts.

  He could almost believe there was treasure to be found here. Some narrative in which he came out the victor. Magic beans.

  “Well, all right,” he said, turned, and starting walking back down the road.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You gave me a choice, didn’t you?” Thursday called back. “Go with you, or die out here. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m choosing between two ways to die in the desert. Might as well be going the one direction that gives me a chance.”

  He heard Emmie huff in frustration behind him, and the sound of movement. Would he hear it at all, or just feel it, the stone against his cranium? If she decided to send it, he had no doubt it would hit its mark, and in his current physical state he didn’t have it in him to run serpentine against a determined surrogate mother with a sling and a working auto.

  “You!” the woman called.

  He braced.

  “You can have the car!”

  Now Thursday turned.

  She was right behind him, holding out the key tied around her neck—a corroded metal jag fixed off-center into a ball of hard rubber.

  “Really,” Emmie said. “When we get to Tempe—day-and-a-half’s driving, maybe—it’s yours. Even if there’s shit-all there for us, even if the people we’re looking for never existed, you take the car and you can go right up to where you’re going. Guarantee it’ll be faster and more direct than anything else you might be planning or hoping.”

  “I’ve never even ridden in one of these before. And you’re going to give me one?”

  She shrugged. “We won’t need it, either way. If what we’re looking for isn’t there, it’s not like we’ve got somewhere else to go.”

  He blinked. “You had that around your neck, while you were driving. You start this with a push, not a key, don’t you?”

  “The doors still lock, genius.”

  “All right. So, what do you want with me?”

  “Extra hand for anything we might need. Somebody to drive us through the night. A second person to watch out for us. I’m not stupid—I know what this is, this isn’t some little jaunt, it’s based on luck and we’ve been lucky so far but a lot can happen in two days.”

  Day-and-a-half’s work for a car. Not bad pay.

  If this is an honest deal, that is.

  “All right.” He eyed the car with newfound trepidation. He could see the effluvium through the rear windshield that he now knew was in some way connected with the little boy in the back seat. But he met Emmie’s eyes. “What do you need?”

  This time when she smiled, it felt real. “Well, for now, can you drive?”

  ~~~

  Emmie often revisits one particular moment, tries to change its conditions, its order and sequence. She makes her act of choice one of desperation, makes the man’s eyes harder, less fearful before he dies. She makes the boy—he looked so much like Alva—more resourceful in her mind, more likely to survive on his own. She even goes back, in some versions, to find him.

  The part of her mind which knows she is lying (and it is not always buried) thinks: the incident itself was brief. Whereas she relives it again and again. It grows and grows. Why should she be a slave to what actually happened?

  She goes back to that tent in her dream, the one she waited outside with her sling and left with the key to this SUV, with food and fuel and artifacts of xeno origin. She goes back to that makeshift tent and instead of finding the boy she finds Alva. He’s bloated and his proportions are wrong. He’s altogether different, magnified in caricature of wh
at she imagines he’s becoming. A sick line of sweat is trickling down his forehead, as if he’s a leaking bag.

  This room can’t contain what he’s about to bring.

  And then she’s seeing through his eyes. No thoughts but that of culmination, of what’s happening reaching its ripeness. A white-hot gash opens in the center of his vision as he lowers his arm to the ground beneath him and bursts forth into something new.

  Emmie fought the urge to throw up when she awoke. Her otherwise-empty stomach contained water she couldn’t afford to lose.

  The man Thursday was driving and for a moment she thought he’d turned and gone back, so different was the terrain.

  “How long was I out?”

  He drew a line in the sky with his index finger. “From sun was there to sun is here.”

  Delcena let out a bark of laughter.

  But Emmie scowled. “Don’t patronize me.”

  He shrugged, stiffly. “Hey, somebody thought it was funny. Two out of three—you’re outvoted.”

  “There are four people in this car.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think the kid’ll be voting anytime soon.” Thursday cursed under his breath and the grin left his face. He drove on for a moment in silence. “Sorry about that.”

  Emmie said nothing.

  “It’s been rough going, even now that I’m getting the hang of driving. Road gets worse and worse, at some points like it must have been when it was torn open back when.”

  Just another gobshite, doesn’t think, sticks his foot in his mouth and tries to drag himself back to good graces with more of the same.

  “From the marks in the dirt it seems like vehicles with treads are getting by okay, but—”

  Emmie perked up. “Wait, people went by?”

  “Well, just these marks in the mud—”