600 Miles: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure

by G. P. Grewal

  That night I must have been really tired because I couldn't help but feel stranger than I usually did, like there was something clinging to me I couldn't shake. I don't know what it was, just a dark feeling that wouldn't go away, like the Devil, if he were real, were sitting on my head. I tried to act like I wasn't feeling it, but the more I tried the more it pulled me down, like a man who don't know how to swim splashing around instead of just being calm, if you understand me, only the splashing were all inside my brain and no one knew I needed a hand.

  I heard someone laughing from over my shoulder and it was Roy. First time I think I'd heard him done that. He was sitting near Ramiro and I heard them talking back and forth near the fire. Gitty was sleeping on her side and I stared at her from where I was sitting. She looked so peaceful and I was feeling such strong emotion for her that she must have felt it in her sleep because she finally turned over and opened her eyes.

  "What are you doing?" she said. "Come to bed."

  "Nothing. I'm just sitting."

  She heard the laughing and looked over to where the others were. She smiled, settling back down. "I can't believe I'm hearing Roy laughing," she said. "I don't think he's ever done that."

  "Yeah, such a serious man and all."

  "Is something wrong?"

  I shook my head, looking away. "Nah, ain't nothing to talk about at least."

  "Are you still worried about me?"

  "I worry about a lot of things, even if you ain't heard me talk about it."

  "Come lie down and tell me."

  "I ain't ready to lie down just yet. Maybe I should leave you to sleep and go sit next to Roy. I ain't mean to disturb you."

  "No, don't go. Just come down here where it's nice and warm."

  I hemmed a bit, but Gitty kept insisting and I finally broke. I got down and took off my pistol, laying on my back with my hands under my head and looking up at the stars. Gitty put her arm around me, laying her head on my chest, her hair tickling my nose, the murmur of Roy and Ramiro's conversation still reaching my ears.

  "I love you," Gitty said.

  "I love you too, Gitty."

  Soon, I thought she might be sleeping again.

  "You know I'll keep you safe, don't you?"

  She stirred when I said it, lifting her head off my chest.

  "Of course I know it. Why are you talking like that?"

  "Nothing. Just saying is all."

  She kept looking at me. I fidgeted a bit, looking away.

  "Elgin?"

  "What?"

  "What are you thinking? Something's been bothering you all day. I can tell."

  Weren't no getting away from it. She kept staring, waiting.

  "You ain't going to tell me?"

  "Go to sleep now. I'm tired is all."

  She didn't believe me but she didn't press it no more, laying her head back down until her breathing was nice and steady and I knew she had fallen asleep. Nearby, Roy and Ramiro kept talking, the quiet murmur of it going on a long time.

  Chapter 16

  The rain started without warning. There was rumbling from far off and the patter of raindrops hitting the leaves and then it started pouring down. We jumped up, covering our things the best we could, Gitty just standing there looking up.

  "I ain't seen rain in so long," she said. "It's wonderful!"

  "Yeah, I guess it's time we had some for sure."

  I walked out from under the tree, holding my arms out and lifting my face to the sky as it started coming down even more. It felt good, cool and fresh. I took off my shirt, throwing it over near Gitty, getting soaked in no time at all.

  "Ah, ain't life good?" I said.

  She thought it a little funny and she laughed. I walked out into the field, that cool shower pouring down on me. "Come on, Gitty!" I called. "Don't be afraid!"

  She was standing there being stubborn, her arms crossed as she smiled and shook her head.

  "Hurry up!" I shouted.

  Suddenly, she squealed, running toward me. She got so happy she wanted to do just like I did, and in another instant was unzipping her vest. She threw it aside before I could even open my mouth, all that eye-popping womanhood bouncing around.

  "Gitty!" I shouted.

  She didn't realize how angry I said it, laughing as she ran until suddenly she saw the look on my face.

  "Gitty! God damn it, woman!"

  Her smile melted. She stared at me as she stopped, all the happiness and laughter gone, her eyes welling up with tears like she were a little girl. I looked and saw Roy and Ramiro looking over, Ramiro wearing a big smile, though when I saw them, Roy, at least, looked away.

  "Hell are you doing? Cover yourself! You think ain't no one seeing you?"

  I didn't even need to say it though, because she was already covering herself like she were ashamed, like she'd only realized after my yelling the wrong she'd done. Holding in her tears, she ran, grabbing up the hunting vest she'd thrown off. I was going to call for her but held it in, knowing there weren't no fixing what I or she had done, that there weren't no starting over all happy and playful under the tree again. When I went back a few minutes later she didn't even look at me, her face all hurt and angry as she made like she was busy tending to the fire, even though there weren't nothing left of it but ash.

  We waited out the rain but it kept coming down, keeping ourselves as dry as we could. Finally it let up and we got back on the road that was leading us up, Roy and Ramiro being the only ones who talked. When we finally reached the top, me and Gitty a lot more winded than the others, we could see the valley beneath us, a long stretch of trees and rooftops that went for miles before hitting the hills to the north, empty streets crisscrossing it the whole way. It was bigger than I expected, that valley, and I knew that somewhere down there must be more people, maybe some just like us, though knowing what they'd be like it were probably better that they was far away.

  I tried getting Gitty to warm up to me but she was still too hurt. Myself, I'd forgiven her, knowing it was innocent what she'd done, that on account of how happy she'd been she'd exposed her woman parts without thinking.

  "Sure is a nice view," I said to her. "Look at that, all them houses. I never realized we was walking through such a big place."

  "Yeah, sure does look different from up here," she said.

  I could see it in her face that she knew I was sorry and that she was sorry too. "Careful there. That ground's real slippery," I told her. I held out my hand as she came up the muddy bank, though I didn't let go after helping her. I gently pulled her in, giving her a smile, not knowing whether she were going to accept it. She blushed a little, too shy to look me in the eye.

  "You're real special to me. You know that? Hell, I ain't mean to yell at you like I did."

  "I know," she said.

  "You still love me then?"

  At first I was scared she weren't going to say it, but then she did, showing me her pretty smile.

  "You know I do."

  It was good words to hear. I kissed her and we hurried to catch up with Roy with her finally the same Gitty she had been before.

  There was plenty of shelter to be found along that woodsy road that led us toward the coast. Or at least that's where we thought it was taking us. Weren't none of us too sure, though we'd all seen enough maps in our time to know that Lost Angeles were right near the water. Then again, maybe the ocean had since dried up, what with things as bad as they'd been for so long. I didn't think it were possible though, and I sure as hell didn't want to ask about it and look stupid.

  There weren't as many houses or buildings around like there was in the valley, but there were more than enough that we came along every so often to keep out of the rain, all of them completely ransacked.

  "God damn it," I said. "Ain't nothing to loot in this whole goddamn city."

  "Come on," said Gitty. "No need to be taking His name in vain so much."

  "Huh? What are you talking about? I ain't taking no one's name anywhere. I'm just
saying, for all them goddamn stories I heard ain't nothing here except a whole lot of people trying to kill us, and I think I've had just about enough of that."

  "Stripped to the bone decades ago," said Roy. "But then, what did you expect?"

  "What? Roy, you never said nothing about it being like that. Didn't you expect them stories to be true too, about coming here and getting rich off the easy pickings?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "But you told me a man could do real good for himself here."

  "You're confusing it. That's what you said. I told you this was a city of the dead and that's pretty much what we've found here: death, the rotten husk of a rotten city that the gods, in their wisdom, finally thought to tear down."

  "The gods?"

  "Gods, God, fate, men, whatever. It's all the same."

  "What's all the same? What are you talking about, Roy?"

  He just chuckled and that was the end of it, turning away to do something else. Maybe I were just too dumb to understand it, or maybe he was just trying to make a fool out of me in front of Gitty. Seemed to me he'd been looking at her lately, and maybe, if I was honest with myself, she'd been looking at him too. I tried to turn off the thoughts but I couldn't. But why was I thinking so badly? Roy ain't never treat me unfairly and ain't never said one bad thing, and I'd be a liar if I said I didn't look up to him just like everyone else did, like that Mexican who was following him, believing him to be some great warrior or pistolero or whatever. Or like Gitty. Ain't no way she couldn't be looking at him the same way. Or maybe I was just getting crazy in the head again. Seemed like it had been happening a lot lately, maybe since being in Lost Angeles.

  The rain let up but it was too late in the day to continue on. We sat around drying off near a fire and staring out the big hole in the wall. Everything was green and soggy and the dripping of the rainwater from the ceiling came steady as it formed a little puddle on the floor. Everyone was quiet. Roy had run out of his little cigars and had taken to chewing on the toothpicks he had whittled while he no doubt thought about them strange things that he sometimes talked about, stuff about God and people deserving to die or what have you.

  I told everyone I was going to go walking a little just to see what was around, telling Gitty to stay put because I wouldn't be long when she got up to go with me. I just needed to be alone for a bit, it felt, because them crazy thoughts had been with me all day again, no matter how much I tried to let them go.

  The road was wet and I walked down it with my boots squeaking on account of how soaked they were too, looking around to see if there were anything interesting. The side of the road was sometimes where you'd find the best things, like old wrecks hidden in the trees or skellies that no one had ever found. I never did find anything worth going down into the bushes for though, the thickets so high anyway that I wouldn't have known if something was hidden there without looking up close, and it was just too wet and muddy to even bother.

  It was on may way back that I spotted something curious. There was a rope dangling from a branch not too far into the woods alongside the road, though spotting it had been sheer luck given how dark it was in there. I stopped to look, wondering if it were really something else, like maybe a vine or broken branch or something. Sure enough, it was what I first took it for, and after giving it a second thought I scrambled down the muddy bank, slipping and falling on my rear end half way down.

  It was darker though not as wet down there, my boots crunching on the dead leaves as I made my way toward the tree. As I got closer, I could see something under it, what looked at first to be a dirty old pile of clothes. Then I saw the bones: first the leg bone sticking out of the pants, then the hand, then the skull.

  I looked up, standing over the remains, the rope that hung there just low enough so that I could touch it with my fingertips while standing on my toes. There was a noose on the end, the rope itself tied to a thick branch that was out of reach. I knelt down, sifting through the crusty clothes with a stick, throwing a glance at the skull that was staring at me from a few feet away.

  "How'ya doing," I said.

  He just grinned. He couldn't help it, poor bastard. Poking through his clothes, I didn't find much of anything but bones until I felt something stiff in the front pocket, and I ain't meaning it like it sounds. I mean there were something he'd been carrying in there, and as I stuck my fingers in I felt something and pulled it out.

  Carefully I opened it, that old wallet, the leather stiff and slow to give. Despite the years though, having been preserved in the skeleton's pocket for so long it was still in pretty good condition. I looked inside. The things I saw in there were a bit faded, though not too bad: little pieces of paper and some plastic cards, one of which I pulled out. It was hard to read at first, everything worn off but the hint of a face and the letters 'C' and 'FORNIA' on top.

  "C-forn-i-a," I said. "C-fornia. Fornia. CAL-I-FORNIA!"

  It was an exciting little discovery, like I were one of them learned history men figuring it all out. I put the card back in, searching the other little pockets to see what I could find. There were some little pieces of paper with the ink so faded I couldn't read them, then two dimes and a tarnished penny, a small key to who knows what, a little red card that said "Ralph's Club", whatever that was meaning, and another that had the name "Franklin Hower" and the letters "AAA".

  I looked at the last one more closely. "A, A, A," I read aloud. "American Auto-mobile... American Auto-mobile Assoc—Assoc-i-a-tion. Automobile Assoc-iation. A,A,A."

  That one made me smile too. Was the most thrilling thing for me, discovering lost things of old America, especially them discoveries that no one had found before, I mean like the wallet I had just found on the dead body—I mean the dead skellie, seeing as there weren't no body anymore.

  And what was this?

  "Free large side with pur-chase of any family meal. Hmm. Popeye's Lou—Lou-is-i-ana chicken."

  There was a picture on it too: a big plate of fried chicken, which I ain't ever eat but damn did it look good, and a bowl of what looked like white grits. Made my mouth water, and my hungry belly rumble a bit harder too.

  What else? Well, looking in the big part of the wallet that I opened up, I didn't see no paper money, though there was a piece of paper offering fifty cents off a loaf of whole wheat bread, another for a discount on some oatmeal cookies, and behind that a bunch of little strips of white paper that I carefully plucked out.

  I held those little pieces of paper up one by one, trying to read the tiny writing in the dim light. Why someone would have used such tiny pieces of paper to write messages on I didn't know, but there were quite a few of them. I read them aloud one by one, having to strain my eyes to make out some of the writing.

  HAPPINESS IS AROUND THE NEXT CORNER, WEALTH DOWN THE STREET

  That was the first one, the words "CHINA PALACE" in even teenier writing on the bottom.

  Then,

  YOU ARE A TRUE ROMANTIC

  And then,

  YOUR PATH IS ARDUOUS BUT WILL BE AMPLY REWARDING

  That one I didn't understand, "path" and "rewarding" being all I could get out of it.

  And the rest:

  IT IS BETTER TO HAVE A HEN TOMORROW THAN AN EGG TODAY

  OVER-INDULGENCE HINDERS BODY AND MIND

  AVENUES OF GOOD FORTUNE ARE AHEAD OF YOU

  FAME IS IN YOUR FUTURE

  YOU WILL SOON HAVE YOUR MOMENT OF GLORY

  Just who was telling him all this? And were all these messages coming from the China Palace? A couple of them said so, but the rest didn't. And just where was this place? As I looked at them again, the last couple of messages in particular struck me as pretty important. So maybe this had been some important fella back then, someone powerful and famous living there in Lost Angeles where some of the most powerful and famous people in the world were said to have lived. Well, before everything went bad at least and he got himself hanged, or maybe even did it himself, either seeming like it would be a pretty
interesting story to know.

  I put all the little messages back in the wallet and was making to leave when I stopped. I weren't no history finder like them educated men, and so maybe it just wasn't right taking something so personal, even if the fella was long dead. I mean, it were the stuff he owned and died with and his name was even on some of it and them messages seemed pretty private. And so as much as I wanted to take that wallet I knelt back down and carefully tucked it back into his pocket so as not to disturb his rest, that skull still watching, thanking me maybe, two black sockets just staring, though maybe he just wanted me to go away.

  I left the woods and started back down the road, leaving those old bones to rest in peace once more.

  Chapter 17

  The rain cleared up and we headed on. Everything was green and fresh and there were still lots of deer big and small and all sorts of little critters to shoot at. We passed the place where I had found the rope and the bones and the dead man's wallet and I could still see the rope as we went by, though I didn't point it out in case anyone was curious, because it just wouldn't have been proper to disturb that man's rest a second time.

  It weren't far after that when the road was suddenly swallowed up whole, nothing but thickets and fallen trees ahead. The going was slow and tiresome. We carefully picked our way through, not even being able to see where our feet was through the tall grass. Roy led us, the rest of us following single file.

  No more following, I thought. Elgin, be a goddamn man. Look at you, always trailing him like a little puppy. Pick up them feet you asshole and GO.

  I put in double effort, first catching up with Ramiro and then Roy, then, with a bit more steam, passed him by. He glanced over at me, surprised. I heard Gitty call to me from behind like she needed help, baby-footing that mud as she were.

  "Come on, Gitty!" I called back.

  Now you lead, Elgin. Keep picking up them feet and lead them all out of here.