The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River

by Nick Cole

  When he could still speak, that was what Staff Sergeant Presley had said.

  And . . .

  You take everything with you.

  Which seemed something more than just a lesson.

  Chapter 2

  The road and the map gave the number 80. For a time he knew where he was by the map’s lines and tracings. He alone would have to know where he was going from now on.

  I followed him from the day he took me. Now I will need to lead, even if it is just myself and Horse.

  Horse grazed by the side of the broken and cracked highway.

  The short days were cold and it was best to let Horse eat when they could find dry grass. The Boy considered the snowcapped mountains rising in the distant west.

  Sergeant Presley would’ve had a plan for those mountains.

  You should be thinking about the snow, not about me, Boy.

  The voice of Sergeant Presley in his head was strong, not as it had been in the last months of his life when it was little more than a rasp and in the end, nothing at all.

  You’re just remembering me as I was, Boy.

  I am.

  You can’t think of me as someone who can get you outta trouble. I’m dead. I’m gone. You’ll have to take care of yourself now, Boy. I did all I could, taught you everything I knew about survival. Now you got to complete the mission. You got to survive. I told you there’d be mountains. Not like the ones you knew back east. These are real mountains. They’re gonna test you. Let me go now and keep moving, Boy.

  The sun fell behind the mountains, creating a small flash as it disappeared beyond the snowcapped peaks. Horse moved forward in his impatient way. The Boy massaged his bad leg. This was the time when it began to hurt, at the end of the day as the heat faded and the cold night began.

  Sometimes it’s better to ride through the night, Boy. Horse’ll keep you warm. Better than shiverin’ and not sleepin’. But stick to the roads if you do go on.

  The Boy rode through the night, listening to Horse clop lazily along, the only sound for many hours. He watched his breath turn to vapor in the dark.

  I should make a fire.

  The Boy continued on, listening to Sergeant Presley’s voice and the stories he would tell of his life before the Boy.

  Ah got caught up in things I shouldn’t have. You do that and time gets away from you. It shoulda taken me two years to get across the States. Instead it’s taken me almost twenty-five or twenty-eight years. I’ve lost count at times. How old are you, Boy? You was eight when you come with me. But that was after I’d finished my business in Montana. That took me more than twenty to do. Maybe even thirty. Nah, couldn’t have been that much.

  We fought over San Francisco maybe ten years. After the Chinese kicked us out of the city and dug in, that’s when the general sent us east to see if there was anyone left in D.C. My squad didn’t make it two weeks. Then it was just me. Until I met you, and that was up in Wyoming.

  I spent three years fighting in a refugee camp up near Billings. That’s where I lost my guns. After that it was all the way up to Canada as a slave. Couldn’t believe it. A slave. I knew that camp was doomed from the start. I should’ve topped off on supplies and food and kept moving. Cost me all told seven years. And what I was thinking going back to get my guns after, I couldn’t tell you to this day. I knew there was no ammo. I didn’t have any ammo. But having a gun . . . People don’t know, see? Don’t know if it’s loaded. I musta walked a thousand miles round-trip to find out someone had dug up my guns. Stupid. Don’t ever do anything stupid, Boy.

  Later, the Boy limped alongside Horse thinking of “Reno” and “Slave Camp” and “Billings” and “Influenza” and “Plague” and especially “Gone,” which was written next to many of the places that had once been cities. All the words that were written on Sergeant Presley’s map. And the names too.

  In the night, the Boy and Horse entered a long valley. The old highway descended and he watched by moonlight its silver line trace the bottom of the valley and then rise again toward the mountains in the west. Below, in the center of the valley, he could see the remains of a town.

  Picked over. Everything’s been picked over. You know it. I know it. It is known, Boy. Still you’ll want to have your look. You always did.

  For a long time the Boy sat atop the rise until Horse began to fidget. Horse was getting crankier. Older. The Boy thought of Sergeant Presley. He patted Horse, rubbing his thick neck, then urged him forward not thinking about the slight pressure he’d put in his right leg to send the message that they should move on.

  Chapter 3

  The boy kept Horse to the side of the road, and in doing so he passed from bright moonlight into the shadows of long-limbed trees that grew alongside the road. He watched the dark countryside, waiting for a light to come on, smelling the wind for burning wood. Food. A figure moving in the dark.

  At one point he put his right knee into Horse’s warm ribs, halting him. He rose up, feeling the ache across his left side. He’d smelled something. But it was gone now on a passing night breeze.

  Be careful, Boy.

  Sergeant Presley had avoided towns, people, and tribes whenever possible.

  These days no good ever comes of such places, Boy. Society’s mostly gone now. We might as well be the last of humanity. At least, east of Frisco.

  On the outskirts of a town, he came upon a farmhouse long collapsed in on itself.

  I can come back here for wood in the morning.

  Down the road he found another two-story farmhouse with a wide porch.

  These are the best, Boy. You can hear if someone’s crossing the porch. You can be ready for ’em.

  The Boy dismounted and led Horse across the overgrown field between the road and the old house.

  He stopped.

  He heard the soft and hollow hoot, hoot of an owl.

  He watched the wide night sky to see if the bird would cross. But he saw nothing.

  He dropped Horse’s lead and took his crossbow from its place on the saddle. He pulled a bolt from the quiver in his bag and loaded the crossbow.

  He looked at Horse.

  Horse would move when he moved. Stop when he stopped.

  The Boy’s left side was stiff. It didn’t want to move and he had to drag it to the porch making more sound than he’d wished to. He opened the claw his withered left hand had become and rested the stock of the crossbow there.

  He waited.

  Again the owl. He heard the leathery flap of wings.

  Your body will do what you tell it to, regardless of that broken wing you got, Boy.

  The Boy took a breath and then silently climbed the rotting steps, willing himself to lightness. He crossed the porch in three quick steps, feeling sudden energy rush into his body as he drew his tomahawk off his belt.

  Crossbow in the weak left hand, waiting, tomahawk held high in his strong right hand, the Boy listened.

  Nothing.

  He pushed gently, then firmly when the rotten door would not give. Inside there was nothing: some trash, a stone fireplace, bones. Stairs leading up into darkness.

  When he was sure there was no one else in the old farmhouse he went back and led Horse inside. Working with the tomahawk he began to pull slats from the wall, and then gently laid them in the blackened stone fireplace. He made a fire, the first thing Sergeant Presley had taught him to do, and then closed the front door.

  Don’t get comfortable yet. If they come, they’ll come soon.

  He could not tell if this was himself or Sergeant Presley.

  The Boy stood with his back to the fire, waiting.

  When he heard their call in the night, his blood froze.

  It was a short, high-pitched ululating like the sound of bubbling water. First he heard one, nearby. Then answers from far off.

  You gotta choose, Boy. Git out or git ready.

  The Boy climbed back onto Horse, who protested, and hooked the crossbow back into its place. He pulled the tomahawk out and
bent low, whispering in Horse’s ear, the ceiling just above his head.

  “It’ll be fine. We can’t stay. Good Horse.”

  Horse flicked his tail.

  ‘I don’t know if he agrees,’ thought the Boy, ‘but it doesn’t matter, does it?’

  The face that appeared in the window was chalk white, its eyes rimmed in black grease.

  That’s camouflage, Boy. Lets him move around in the night. These are night people. Some of the worst kind.

  The eyes in the window went wide, and then the face disappeared. He heard two quick ululations.

  More coming, Boy!

  The Boy kicked and aimed Horse toward the front door. Its shattered rottenness filled the Boy’s lungs as he clung to Horse’s side and they drove through the opening. He saw the shadow of a man thrown back against a wooden railing that gave way with a disinterested crack.

  Other figures in dark clothes and with chalk-white faces crossed with black greased stripes ran through the high grass between the road and the farmhouse. The Boy kicked Horse toward an orchard of ragged bare-limbed trees that looked like broken bones in the moonlight.

  Once in the orchard, he turned down a lane and charged back toward the road. Horse’s breathing came labored and hard.

  “You were settling in for the night and now we must work,” he whispered into Horse’s twitching ears.

  Ahead, one of the ash-white, black-striped figures leaped into the middle of the lane. The figure planted his feet, then raised a spear-carrying arm back over his shoulder.

  The Boy tapped twice on the heaving flank with his toe and Horse careened to the right, disagreeing with a snort as he always did.

  ‘You wanted to run him down,’ thought the Boy.

  They made the road leaping a broken fence. He stopped and listened. The Boy could hear the ululations behind them. He heard whistling sounds also.

  Down the road quickly, get outta Dodge now, Boy!

  He took the road farther into town, passing the crumbling remains of warehouses and barns long collapsed. Stone concrete slabs where some structure had burned down long ago rose up like gray rock in the light of the moon. Sergeant Presley had always spoken simply at such places.

  Gas Station.

  School.

  Market.

  Mall.

  The Boy didn’t know the meaning or purposes of such places and possessed only vague notions of form and function when he recognized their remains.

  In the center of town he saw more figures and brought Horse up short, hooves digging for purchase on the fractured road. The Ashy Whites formed a circle and within were the others. The Ashy Whites were standing. The others sat, huddled in groups.

  “Help us!” someone cried out and one of the Ashy Whites clubbed at the sitting figure.

  Behind him, the Boy could hear the ululations growing closer. Horse stamped his hooves, ready to run.

  “Rumble light!” roared a large voice and the Boy was suddenly covered in daylight—white light like the “flashlight” they’d once found in the ruins of an old car factory. It had worked, but only for a day or so. Sergeant Presley had said light was once so common you didn’t even think about it. Now . . .

  No time for memories, Boy!

  Horse reared up and the Boy had to get hold of the mane to get him down and under control. Once Horse was down and settled, the Boy stared about into the blackness, seeing nothing, not even the moonlight. Just the bright shining light coming from where the Ashy Whites had been.

  An Ashy White, large and fat, his face jowly, his lower lip swollen, his eyes bloodshot, stepped into the light from the darkness off to one side. He was carrying a gun.

  What type of gun is this, Boy?

  When they’d found empty guns Sergeant Presley would make him learn their type, even though, as he always said, They were no good to anyone now. How could they be? After all these years there ain’t no ammunition left, Boy. We burned it all up fightin’ the Chinese.

  Shotgun, sawed off.

  The Ashy White man walked forward pointing the shotgun at Horse.

  What will it do? he heard Sergeant Presley ask.

  Sprays gravel, short range.

  The Ashy White continued to walk forward with all the authority of instant death possessed.

  There can’t be any ammunition left. Not after all these years, Boy.

  He kicked Horse in the flanks and charged the man. Pinned ears indicated Horse was only all too willing. Sometimes the Boy wondered if Horse hated everyone, even him.

  In one motion the Boy drew his tomahawk.

  The man raised the weapon.

  Don’t let it go unless you mean to, might not get it back, Boy. He always heard Sergeant Presley and his words, every time he drew the tomahawk.

  He’d killed before.

  He’d kill again.

  He was seventeen years old.

  The world as Sergeant Presley had known it had been over for twenty-three years when the Boy whose own name even he had forgotten had been born on the windswept plains of what the map had once called Wyoming.

  You strike with a tomahawk. Never sweep. It’ll get stuck that way, Boy. Timing has to be perfect.

  Jowls raised the shotgun, aiming it right into the Boy.

  There can’t be any ammunition left, Boy. The world used it all up killing itself.

  And the Boy struck. Once. Down. Splitting the skull. He rode off, out of the bright light and into the darkness.

  Chapter 4

  He could hear the Ashy Whites throughout the night, far off, calling to one another. At dawn there were no birds and the calls ceased.

  Boy, Sergeant Presley had said that time they’d spent a night and a day finding their way across the Mississippi. Things ain’t the same anymore.

  They were crawling through and along a makeshift dam of river barges and debris that had collected in the mud-thickened torrents of the swollen river.

  You probably don’t know what that means, d’ya? The mosquitoes were thick and they had to use all their hands and feet to hold on to anything they could as the debris-dam shifted and groaned in the treacherous currents. It felt like they were being eaten alive.

  If I’d fallen into the water that day what could he have done to save me?

  But you didn’t, Boy.

  I was afraid.

  I knew you was. So I kept telling you about how things were different now. About how sane, rational people had gone stark raving mad after the bombs. About how the strong oppressed the weak and turned them into slaves. About how the sick and evil were finally free to live out all of their cannibalistic craziness. And how sometimes, just sometimes, there might be someone, or a group of someones who kept to the good. But you couldn’t count on that anymore. And that was why we were crossing that rickety pile of junk in the river rather than trying for the bridge downstream. You smelled what those people who lived on the bridge were cookin’ same as I did. You knew what they were cooking, or who they were cooking. We didn’t need none of that. The world’s gone mostly crazy now. So much so, that all the good that’s left is so little you can’t hardly count on it when you need it. Better to mistrust everyone and live another day.

  Like these Ashy Whites out in the night looking for me.

  Seems like it, Boy.

  Many times he and Sergeant Presley had avoided such people. Horse knew when to keep quiet. Evasion was a simple matter of leaving claimed territory, crossing and re-crossing trails and streams, always moving away from the center. The town was the center. Now, at dawn, he was on the far side of the valley and he could make out little of the town beyond its crisscross roads being swallowed by the general abandonment of such places.

  You almost got caught, Boy.

  But I didn’t.

  We’ll see.

  He waited in the shadows at the side of a building whose roof had long ago surrendered inward, leaving only the walls to remain in defeat. The warm sunshine on the cracked and broken pavement of the road heading west b
eckoned to him, promising to drive off the stiffness that clamped itself around his left side every night.

  They’ll assume you’re gone by now, Boy.

  The Boy waited.

  When he hadn’t heard the ululations for some time, he walked Horse forward into the sunshine.

  Later that morning he rode back to the town, disregarding the warnings Sergeant Presley had given him of such places.

  Whoever the Ashy Whites were, they had gone.

  And the others too, huddled within the circle of the Ashy Whites—that voice in the night, a woman he thought, calling for help.

  Who were the others?

  The answer lay in the concrete remains of a sign he spelled S-C-H-O-O-L.

  School.

  This had been their home. The fire that consumed it hadn’t been more than three days ago. But the Boy knew the look of a settlement. A fort, as Sergeant Presley would have called it. The bloated corpses of headless men lay rotting in the wan morning light.

  This is where those who had huddled within the circle of the Ashy Whites had lived all the years since the end of the things that were.

  Before.

  He found the blind man at the back of the school, near the playground and the swing sets.

  Remember when I pushed you on a swing that time, Boy? When we found that playground outside Wichita. We played and shot a deer with my crossbow. We barbecued the meat. It could have been the Fourth of July. Do you remember that, Boy?

  I do, he had told Sergeant Presley in those last weeks of suffering.

  It could have been the Fourth of July.

  The blind man lay in the sandbox of the playground, his breath ragged, as drool ran down onto the dirty sand, mixing with the blood from the place where his eyes had once been.

  The Boy thought it might be a trap.

  He’d seen such tricks before, and even with Sergeant Presley they’d nearly fallen into them once or twice. After those times and in the years that followed, they’d avoided everyone when they could afford to.