The Zona

by Nathan L. Yocum

  Smith watched Lead stare at the basin and assumed he had a taste for things worldly. His mind calculated odds and profits.

  “If you stand with any spare notes, Preacher, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement for you to pay bounty on contraband.” Smith opened a cupboard and pulled down a cardboard box. He beckoned for Lead to look into it. The box held bottles of spirits and ancient picture books, once called magazines, laid open to pages of fornication and scantily clad women. Lead’s stomach tightened at the sight of all the banished goods and sin.

  “Radioman, I suggest you turn over your contraband to the Havasu Parish or in the very least burn such items under the sun and in the presence of your Lord. To keep these is a sin and an abomination.” Lead said, keeping his voice cold and unexcited.

  Smith’s demeanor changed instantly. He realized his miscalculation regarding the worldliness of Lead.

  “I apologize sir…er…Preacher. If I have offended you with the sight of this…” Smith stammered. “After your work here has run its course, I will be sure to submit all to the Havasu Parish or burn it to ash.” Smith forced his face to show no surprise or frustration; he smiled again, flashing those tilted, stained teeth.

  “It’s alright and unnecessary, Radioman, I’ll dispose of them.” Lead said. He placed a hand on the box and the other to his chest, over the Van Cleef, a gesture serving as a reminder.

  Smith’s face kept its neutrality.

  “Of course, Preacher, I would be honored if thou would dispose of this contraband on my behalf,” he said.

  The two stared at each other in silence. Lead tightened his grip on his Van Cleef; Smith shoved the box towards him and turned away. Smith kept the fake smile on his face and continued as though nothing had transpired between the two.

  “Here is the information on thy hunted Mark.” Smith said with increased formality. He took chunk of cardboard from his pocket and set it on the counter.

  Lead slowly translated the markings. The interpreting of symbols and letters had not been a strength in his training and any reading he did was performed in slow deliberation.

  The mark was in Yucca, domiciled in a hermitage alone amongst the sand and beasts. Here was a man whose life had brought him to a shack in the middle of blighted earth, without reason committed to paper. Here was a fugee. Lead traced his finger over the map. Here was a man found wrong with the Lord and Church and thus needed to be punished or smote.

  “What did he do?” Lead asked.

  Smith leered at Lead’s lapse in etiquette.

  “Tis not for you to know or inquire, Preacher, a mark’s offense is between himself and the good Lord.”

  Lead looked at Smith’s smug and hateful face. The reek of Smith’s dirty skin permeated everything. Lead felt smothered by it. A hatred swelled within Lead for this petty officer of the Church, this sinful feudal lord of Kingman, with his fools’ technology and backsliding.

  Lead’s hand shot out with trained speed. His fingers twisted into Smith’s beard. Smith let out a surprised yelp and jerked his head. Lead spun the Radioman into a head lock, and planted a boot firmly behind Smith’s knee. They both collapsed to the ground, with Lead’s arms wrapped tightly around Smith’s head and neck.

  “Don’t toy with me filth! For what offense must I apprehend?” Lead hissed into ear.

  Smith struggled against the hold. Lead noticed a tattoo of a drop of water at the corner of Smith’s mouth disappear into a dimple as he swallowed.

  “Tis not for me or you, Preacher, but tis for the Lord, and the mark, and the parish to know, ask not of me which I know not.” Smith gasped. The drop of water again disappeared into a dimple.

  Lead shoved the Radioman away and rolled to his feet. He felt soiled from the physical contact.

  Smith scuttled like a wounded beast into a shadowed corner of the room.

  “Tisn’t proper for a Preacher to question Parish,” Smith whispered from the darkness.

  Lead took a pouch of silver notes from his belt and tossed it next to the radio. He took the box of contraband.

  “If I hear you have defamed me to the parish, I will smite thee with no hesitation or remorse,” Lead said and left.

  That evening Lead hunkered next to a tumbleweed fire in the sand between Kingman and Yucca regions. The heat of day was erased and forgotten by night’s chill and all the desert’s creatures for which day does not exist.

  Lead contemplated the night, set to the tune of crickets who were legion and insatiable. He took the magazines from the box and poured the bottles of spirits onto the earth. The liquid fell through the sand as though it were without corporal presence, absorbed without stain. The spirits joined the earth, where they had once started, where all life and matter had once started at God’s behest. Lead looked over pages of naked women, of men and women engaged in intercourse. His face was warmed by the fire and feelings he did not trust within himself, guilt and excitement built at the sight of blatant sin. More than the fornication, he was fascinated by the physical locations of the lovers. Some did their act on lustrous red vehicles, versions of which Lead had only seen twisted in the dust. Others fornicated in rooms with large beds, which made Lead think of home and mother and the comfort of a childhood that lived on in flashes and dreams. Some pictures showed daylight with a blue sky. Lead often thought of a blue sky. His sky was various shades of yellow and orange, with a sunset shift to purple and pink fire.

  Lead looked at the wrist of a naked tattooed man adorned with a beautiful jeweled watch. He had seen such luxury on the wrists of Bishops, but only from a distance. It was brilliant as though crafted from the stars and bits of what falls from heavens during the darkest nights. Lead touched the page, wishing that the watch would become real and fall out and be his.

  He spent the long evening staring at the watch before flinging it and the rest of the sinful books into the fire. He slept with dreams of himself riding a white steed in front a crowd of adoring followers, a beautiful, jeweled timepiece on his wrist.

  Lead stood at the wrought-iron door feeling his breath enter and leave his lungs. He had left his mule tied to an overturned car a half hour away to ensure a quiet approach. Lead closed his eyes and felt the rough texture of the door under his fingertips. The shack was constructed from scrap boards and planks of plywood, tin, and iron. An old mare stood saddled and tied to a stake. A wooden shingle propped against the shack named it CIBOLA in uneven tar letters.

  Lead pressed his palm against the door. Heat radiated from the iron. He pushed lightly, silently. It did not budge. Lead pulled his hand back and opened his eyes. He watched the sweat of his fingers evaporate from the door’s surface. Lead took two steps and kicked out.

  The door flung off its hinges and landed in a cascade of dust. An older man sat on a leather coach inside, turning the page of a book. The man contemplated the busted door with apparent disinterest then returned to his book.

  “About time you showed up, Preacher,” the man said. “I was thinking they had forgotten me.”

  The man dropped his book to the dusty floor and placed his hands, palms-down, on the polished wooden table in front of him. He lifted his face to examine Lead with rheumy blue eyes.

  “I’m glad the waiting’s done just the same,” he said.

  Lead raised his silver cross. “I am here under the authority of our Lord and Savior to speak with Terence Wood. Are you him?”

  “I am him.” the man replied.

  Lead strode to the coffee table and set down a rope and blanket.

  “Choose,” he said.

  The man’s eyes lingered on the rope and blanket. He looked back to Lead.

  “That’s a funny proposition, Preacher.”

  Lead stood, his right hand slipped under his shirt.

  “If I choose the rope, you bind me and take me to the parish. I’ll then go to Purgatory, and God willing, I’ll be converted through influence, coercion, and perseverance into a Goodman.”

  The old man spat in the dirt be
fore continuing.

  “On the other, if I pick up the blanket, you put bullets in me. The bullets achieve their goal of punching holes in my flesh, which in turn makes it impossible for me to conduct the everyday business of living and I’m found to be a Goodman posthumously, so to speak.” He spat again. “I guess you could say I’m a winner either way.”

  “I’m not here to discuss your matter, tis between you and the Lord. I shall render no appeals.” Lead said. It was impossible to keep the trembling from his voice.

  “Nor would I expect you to hear my appeals. I’m just putting voice to thought.” The old man said, palms still firmly pressed to his wooden table. “It’s funny to me that the Church says I can only be good through submission or death.”

  “I said choose, old man. Take one!” The anxiety fires flared in Lead’s chest.

  “You ever read any Aristotle, Preacher?”

  Lead remained silent.

  “I suppose that’s probably not taught to the younger parishioners. Aristotle was a heathen. Anyway, he said a good man is a man who understands and pursues happiness, which is subjective, meaning up to the man. He goes on to say that the best life belongs to a man who can live a life of virtue, but get this, virtue is also subjective, not objective which is up to everyone but the man. Do you like that? He claimed good and virtue are up to us!”

  Lead pulled the Van Cleef from his shirt.

  “Oh good.” said the old man, “You’ve invited influence.”

  Lead cocked the hammer; the snap of it was amplified in the confined cabin.

  “You’re going have to choose old man, no delay.” Lead pointed the gun at Terence’s face.

  “As I was saying, Aristotle said a good man is a happy man, and a happy man is one who realizes acting under subjective goodness is a reward unto itself. Do you know what makes you happy, Preacher?”

  “Serving God makes me happy.” Lead said. His hands shook.

  “Obviously,” Terence said with a wry grin. “When man loses his knowledge, he starts over again. We call this a Dark Age.”

  Terence reached into the front pocket of his shirt. Lead took a step forward, pistol muzzle inches from Terence’s face. Terence withdrew a Preacher’s cross from his pocket. He held the tip against Lead’s firearm.

  “You’re a Preacher!” Lead said.

  “I didn’t mean anyone harm, but I cannot do the Church’s work anymore. They’re not good.” Terence pushed the muzzle down with his cross, Lead let the gun drop. The Van Cleef swung to his chest. Terence set the cross down on the table and stood up.

  “I don’t know anymore if there is an afterlife, but I know there is this life, despite all, I wish you well. I forgive the threat.” Terence turned and walked out of Cibola.

  Lead stood frozen in place. His body shook uncontrollably. Sweat ran down his face and arms. He looked at Terence’s cross; the edges were rounded with time and use. Lead grabbed his pistol and fired twice into the couch, frightening critters living within and beneath. Lead’s anxious paralysis broke, he ran out of Cibola.

  Terence’s short trail was marked with dust. He’d mounted his nag and beat a hasty retreat across the hardpan. Concealment was impossible in the open Mohave and Terence and his mount rode freely towards a sun both radiant and deadly. Lead fired his Van Cleef into the air. Terence did not pause or look back to the young Preacher. He rode on.

  Lead let go of the Van Cleef and bit his trigger finger hard. Blood ran over his teeth. He yelled into the sky. His yell was primal, without words or form but true to the yell of all creatures consumed with frustration and indecision and the knowledge of what he set out to do had to be done, consequences be damned.

  Radioman Smith smoothed out a burlap blanket on the ridge overlooking Yucca Valley. His binoculars focused and flashed. The mark rode west, the Preacher stood as witness to his retreat. The Radioman’s mind wondered and speculated. He filled in the blanks and formed a story. There was always words and news to transmit. The Church’s appetite for bad news was both profitable and insatiable.

  Smith got up and rolled his binoculars into his blanket. He packed them into the saddlebags of his Lead’s mule, which he’d stolen as equity for yesterday’s loss.

  “That boy will pay for what he took, by desert or by Church,” he said, and spat into the sand.

  III. Topock, Crystal, and an account of savage peoples

  An ancient street sign proclaimed TOPOCK. Lead looked to the depths of a dry riverbed. A rail bridge of the Broken Times stretched halfway across before crumbling to rust. It hung in the air, connected to oblivion. Under the rail bridge hung a child’s swing, impossibly high for the dry riverbed, put there for the amusement of children long gone and over water that would never return.

  Lead opened the old man’s canteen and drank the last of his water. He remembered the river. He remembered how this place had once been cleared by a brush fire. His mind saw young men and women swinging into the river, playing. There was once a young boy in pink shorts and a younger girl with a sore on the corner of her mouth, holding each other, staring into the water. He wished the water was still there. He wished the children were still there and that he was again one of them.

  Lead had spent the day walking to this riverbed with the promise of fresh water. He dared not go to Kingman. He had not done his job, to report failure was a sin. If the Church declared him a sinner, he would be purged.

  Lead spent the evening before in Terence’s shack. He’d found the overturned car and hoof tracks leading to Kingman. His mule and provisions were gone. No supplies in the desert meant death, Lead held no optimism in that regard. Yucca contained nothing but abandoned fugee trailers, empty save scorpions and Gila monsters and dust. Terence’s shack was outfitted with a bit of jerky, a shallow ditch well that leaked brackish water, an old canteen and a stack of books. Lead slept on Terence’s couch, shut in against the nighttime. The night contained lizards and snakes with violent dispositions and poisonous bites. Man without fire or the sanctity of the Church’s blessing had no business out at night. Demons and poulters also preferred the night. Better to walk in the sun.

  Lead looked back to the riverbed. A motorboat half lodged in the hardpan pointed to the sky like a finger accusing the heavens of not providing. Nothing existed in Topock that didn’t belong to the past.

  Lead looked west to the setting sun. Over the far horizon hung thick clouds and tornado funnels illuminated with cobalt lightening flashes. Days away but fierce and lush lay the Abandoned Earth, the place taken by the Lord and the Storms.

  Lead looked south. Hell continued on. Havasu Parish lay in that direction. Lead scanned the vast desert up to rocky hills. Heat waves rose off of rock and sand creating false lakes and shimmering ethereal towers of bent light.

  Lead climbed to the edge of the broken rail bridge and took shelter from the impending night.

  Dawn came with new light and new heat. A layer of dust coated Lead’s mouth. He followed the riverbed south, the sun beat merciless on his straw sombrero. The sand roasted his feet through the cracks in his boots which breathed stink in the otherwise scentless scrubland. Lead looked to the ground and focused on walking straight. He knew a man in the scrub without water tended to drift right and form a circuitous route. Lead was determined not to be that fool.

  The omnipresent sun ate his strength through the early morning. The sweat on his hands and arms evaporated as soon as it beaded out. Lead smiled and whispered a prayer of salvation under his breath. This was penance. This was castigation for not apprehending the old man. He’d gone against God’s will and the Church’s will and had been set against by the Holy. It made him afraid but also relieved that he was within God’s vision and judgment. He might survive and be made clean again. He smiled.

  The first time Lead fell was unexpected. He was deep in the mind, contemplating God and walking straight and he simply tumbled into the sand. One foot caught the other and he plunged. He held his face from the grit and breathed peppered air
.

  Lead pulled himself up. His steps took on an uneven sway. He drifted from left to right, spinning to avoid clumps of dead brush.

  Lead fell again when the sun reached mid-sky. He dropped to his knees in a patch of tumbleweed. Lead rolled out of the brush and regained his legs. He picked thorns out of his left hand. The scar left by Century’s dinner knife was numb, would always be numb.

  Lead promptly fell again shortly thereafter. His body had reached a place where the solidity of muscle ebbed and flowed and he could no longer trust functions taken for granted. He rolled to his stomach and looked at the sand. It was an ocean of quartz and pink gypsum flakes built into wave-like dunes by wind, then shifted by wind and shifted again into infinity. It got his mind wondering again about time and God. Lead pushed himself back to his feet and strode forward.

  After the fourth collapse, Lead contemplated staying down. He looked to the sun and counted to one-hundred. He whispered a prayer to the Lord and found tenuous strength; enough to get up, enough to move forward.

  Over the next dune a thin line of smoke crept and showed through the heat waves. Lead shaded his eyes and stumbled forward towards the smoke. He smiled again. God had spoken and revealed salvation. He wasn’t going to die.

  Lead continued his jagged trek through the desert, past rock and dead brush. Over the dune he spotted tents set around a large cooking fire. The blurred images of people shuffled from tent to tent, a group in brilliant white robes walked towards him.

  Lead held out his Preacher’s cross.

  “Attention,” he croaked, his dry throat stung with the effort. “I demand sustenance and sanctuary. In the name of our Lord and Savior and on behalf of the Church I demand sustenance and sanctuary.”

  Lead shook his cross at the approaching villagers. They were pale despite the intense sun. Each wore a robe cut from white linen, kept immaculate despite living outdoors. The faces of their young showed the inbred traits of kinship, they all bore the same sharp nose, cleft chin, and asymmetric eyes. An ancient woman stood with them, dressed in the same linen but with a rattlesnake skin tied around her forehead. She opened a black, toothless maw and barked into the desert wind, like an animal. The villagers surrounded Lead.