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

by Nick Cole

A man worked at a forge, beating metal.

  A shopkeeper with a patchwork lion skin in his front window nodded. Women crossed the street and entered the shop, talking loudly.

  As they descended into the center of town from the highway, the soft glow of lights behind shop windows and houses came to life, blooming in the cool of the early spring evening.

  A gang of children dashed down a side street, screaming in the twilight as they laughed and ran.

  The Boy smelled spicy food.

  But the hunger that had always been with him was dulled by what he saw.

  The Chinese lived side by side with the people of other races. There were whites, browns, blacks, and Chinese.

  The town murmured with life.

  Like a city once must have.

  The Boy thought of MacRaven’s lunatic army of savage tribes moving through the thick forest east of the outpost.

  He thought of MacRaven in armor.

  He thought of the skeletons that were once cities.

  He thought of Sergeant Presley’s word. “Involved.”

  He waited for Sergeant Presley to tell him what to do now.

  But he sensed the voice, like himself, had been silenced by the unfolding of life within the pine walls of this outpost.

  Civilization.

  Like Before.

  Am I involved now?

  And then . . .

  Who am I?

  Chapter 29

  “They say they’ll pay the bounty in the morning, which is fine for our purposes,” said Raleigh as he chucked and clicked the wagon team to follow the Chinese guide up to the paddock.

  They were being directed to the “Old School,” which was a wide field where they could camp for the night.

  “MacRaven will start the attack at dawn. The Chinese will be real busy right about then, so we can get these bodies strung up in peace. After that, maybe we can join the fight.”

  Raleigh looked at the Boy for a long moment; then, as if answering some unspoken question, he sighed.

  “All right, I’ll tell you the plan. Once they breach the walls with MacRaven’s Space Crossbow, you’ll need to link up with the chief and lead him up here so the tribes can find the bodies all strung up like they got executed by the Chinese. Dunn’ll come up with our horses and gear. Then we can join the cleanup and start looting.”

  Real careful now, Boy. You done all the work to gain his trust. Now, don’t overplay it.

  The Boy waited.

  “I don’t get it,” said the Boy.

  “Why do we have to string these bodies up? Seems like the point’s made if the tribes find ’em slaughtered already. They’ll think the Chinese did it anyways.”

  Raleigh sighed. There was a moment of things weighed. Scales balancing.

  “To the tribes one and all, dyin’ in battle is one thing. But strung up for crimes is another. They’ll be so angry and ready for all the Chinese blood they can spill, they won’t even realize they’re leaderless and under Mac’s total control. “

  As an afterthought, as Raleigh turned to back the wagon, he added, “Brilliant, when you think about it.”

  “My guess is,” continued Raleigh. “The Chinese will make their last stand down at that old courthouse. That’s probably where the work will take place. I bet that’s where the Chinese keep the guns and women, and that’s where we’ll want to get to, quick-like, once this tricky corpse business is done. First to fight, first to find, eh?”

  Raleigh seemed happy, as if a fine breakfast had been announced for the morning and it would be something to look forward to throughout the long night.

  They set to making a fire and then feeding the horses from the plentiful hay pile left on the Old School field.

  In the early dark, they watched the fire as Raleigh heated strips of dried venison.

  “I like it warmed even if it has been dried,” he mumbled.

  The meat was tough.

  They ate in silence.

  They’ll slaughter these people, Boy. You know it and I know it.

  You said, Don’t get involved, Sergeant.

  I know.

  These are Chinese.

  I know, Boy. And they’re people too. Remember those salvagers outside Oklahoma City? Savages just like MacRaven’s army murdered those people. Are you gonna let that happen here, again, to people like your friend Escondido?

  “Whatcha thinking so hard about?” asked Raleigh from the other side of the fire. Evening shadows made his sad brown eyes even gloomier as they stared out from his long face above the drooping mustache.

  I know, Sergeant.

  “Meat’s tough,” said the Boy.

  “Good for the teeth,” mumbled Raleigh through a mouthful. “Unless you got bad teeth. You got bad teeth?”

  The Boy nodded.

  You know what you’ve got to do, Boy.

  I know, Sergeant.

  “Can I see your knife?” asked the Boy.

  Raleigh stood and pulled it from his belt. He handed it pommel first to the Boy and sat back down.

  Raleigh was biting into the venison once more when a thought occurred to him.

  In that moment of chewing, thinking about warfare and food and rifles, Raleigh understood he’d made a mistake. But he was tired and it had been a very long life. He had, he knew, no one to blame but himself. He had always known this.

  The Boy was standing.

  The Boy’s arm was back.

  What the Boy lacked on one side, withered and bony, he had on the other—a powerful machine, just like MacRaven’s Space Crossbow thought Raleigh. I have no one to blame but myself.

  His teeth close on their final chew.

  The Boy hurls the knife straight into Raleigh’s chest.

  All the air was driven from Raleigh at once as he fell backward from the impact. The darkness was already consuming him and the Boy. Raleigh thought, as he felt that one powerful hand about his throat, the Boy was like an animal.

  THE BOY WAS up from the body. Raleigh, eyes bulging, stared sightlessly up into the stars and the night beyond.

  By dawn they’ll be all over these walls, Boy. Whatchu gonna do now?

  He’d heard that question from Sergeant Presley before, many times in fact. Whatchu gonna do now?

  I can find Escondido, Sergeant.

  Then what?

  Tell him what I know.

  Then what?

  I . . . it’s up to them after that.

  That’s right, Boy. Do all you can do. Then let it go.

  The Boy walked back toward the ancient courthouse down in the center of the outpost. Warm yellow light shone within the windows he passed.

  Ahead he saw a Chinese guard at the intersection of two curving streets.

  “Escondido?” he asked.

  The guard mumbled in Chinese and shone a lantern into the Boy’s face.

  “Escondido?”

  The guard’s slurred Chinese seemed angry, and for a moment the Boy realized how much of his plan hinged on simply being understood. But after a pause the guard began to walk, lighting the way for the Boy and insisting he follow along. A moment later they turned down a side street and up a lane, almost reaching the outer pine-log wall.

  The guard climbed the steps to an old shack and banged loudly on a thin door.

  The racket and voice within belonged to Escondido.

  When the old hunter opened the door, he hit the guard with a stream of Chinese, then, seeing the Boy he stopped. His tone was softer as he sent the guard off into the night.

  The guard retreated down the steps and was down the winding lane, back toward the center of the outpost, his lantern bobbing in the darkness.

  “Never thought I’d see you alive. What happened to your horse?”

  “No time. There’s an army of tribes out to the east. They’re going to attack at dawn.”

  Escondido reacted quickly.

  He only asked questions that mattered. Strength. Numbers. Proof.

  He didn’t waste time on disbel
ief.

  ‘I guess,’ thought the Boy as he followed after the old hunter, ‘when you’ve lived through the end of the world once, you’re willing to believe it can happen again.’

  Shortly, they were standing on the steps of the old courthouse, their faces shining in the soft glow coming from within the old building. Chinese soldiers were speaking with Escondido. Every so often messengers left and returned. More and more of the soldiers were mustering in the old parking lot beneath the courthouse. As for the conversation, the Boy understood little of it.

  Escondido turned away as the Chinese conferred among themselves.

  “They believe you, all right. That patrol is well overdue. They seen your friend’s body and they’ve put two and two together. The question for them now is, what’re they gonna do? Yang, the garrison commander, wants to send the civilians and the Hillmen out tonight. He’s only got forty soldiers, but he thinks he can hold the courthouse.”

  And how much is this, Boy? asked Sergeant Presley long ago.

  Five.

  And this? He holds up all ten fingers.

  Ten.

  And if each one of these fingers represents the total of all my fingers?

  One hundred.

  Good, Boy. Next you’ll make me take off my moccasins. But we’ll save that for another time.

  There were far more tribesmen than one hundred. Far more than forty.

  “If they go, do you want to go with ’em?” asked Escondido.

  The Boy shook his head.

  “I’m half tempted to run myself.” Then, “The Hillmen are sending messengers out to their villages. That might even things up a bit. All right, you’ll fight with me. I’ll be on the eastern wall. You can reload my rifles. You know how to do that?”

  The Boy shook his head.

  “Well, we got all night to learn.”

  Chapter 30

  “Feels like spring,” whispered Escondido in the cool darkness as the two of them sat beneath the ramparts along the wall. It was morning, just before sunrise.

  Below the wall, in the fields and forest beyond, all was a soft gray.

  The Boy smelled a breeze thick with the scent of the field. And on it, he knew, he could taste the waiting tribes out there in the darkness.

  “Be a long summer,” muttered Escondido, his old eyes squinting at the far horizon. “But what do I know.”

  The Boy checked Raleigh’s knife. It was stuck into the soft wood of the parapet.

  Escondido had taught him how to break the rifle, pull out the expended cartridge, load another of the massive bullets into the breech, exchange rifles with Escondido. Repeat. They had more than a hundred cartridges. But not many more.

  Escondido wiped angrily at his nose.

  “I can smell ’em comin’ up the ravine. If we fall back, or you see the Chinese start to leave, head down to the courthouse in the center of town. They’ll make their stand there. That’s if I’m kilt, understand?”

  The sun washed the field in gold, and out of the low-lying mist, arrows like birds began to race up toward the parapets. Loud knocks indicated the arrows ramming themselves into the wooden walls just on the other side of their heads. Someone screamed farther down along the wall. There was a sudden rush of the slurring Chinese, spoken in anger and maybe fear.

  Escondido popped his head over the wall, keeping his rifle erect.

  He shouted a string of Chinese directed at the others along the wall.

  Then he sat down with his back to the parapet. “They’re using them arrows to keep our heads down. There’s thousands of ’em crossing the fields with ladders and poles now.” He took three short breaths, then, “Here we go!” Escondido popped his head over the wall, this time sighting down the rifle, and a second later the world erupted in thunder and blue smoke.

  As the echoing crack of the rifle faded across the forest, the tribes began to whoop and scream below, breaking the morning quiet.

  Escondido backed down behind the wall, handed the spent rifle to the Boy, and grabbed the other from the Boy’s frozen fingers.

  The Boy had been told all his life about the legendary capacity of a gun to strike back at an enemy. But he had never seen one fired. He was never told of its blue stinging smoke and sudden thunder.

  Three breaths as Escondido raised the rifle back over the wall. He targeted some unseen running, screaming tribesmen. A brief click as he pulled the trigger, and again the explosion.

  They exchanged rifles. Unloaded and smoking, hot to the touch—for the other rifle, now loaded and waiting to be fired again.

  Repeat.

  “There’s thousands of ’em,” stated Escondido again.

  Three breaths.

  The explosion.

  Repeat.

  “They’re coming up the walls, it’ll be knife work shortly.”

  The explosion.

  Repeat.

  “Duck!”

  The sudden whistle of flocks of arrows flinging themselves from far away to close at hand, then the thick-sounding chocks as the cloud of missiles slammed down into the walls and old buildings within the outpost.

  The Boy grabbed Raleigh’s knife when he heard the ladders fall into place on the other side of the pine logs. He put it in his mouth before he took the expended rifle and started the unloading trick he’d been taught.

  Explosion.

  “Be a long hot summer,” muttered Escondido.

  Repeat.

  The Boy finished reloading and waited to exchange rifles.

  When nothing happened he looked up.

  Escondido was slumped over the wall, almost falling facedown. The Boy pulled him back behind the parapet.

  A bolt had gone straight up through his jaw and into his brain. His eyes were shut tight in death.

  The Boy heard feet scrabbling for purchase on the other side.

  All along the wall, lunatic tribesmen jabbered, screamed, and spurted blood as they hacked away at the mostly dying Chinese.

  The Boy, still holding the rifle, grabbed the sack of cartridges and tumbled off the platform, checking his landing with a roll.

  He raced down a lane, his limping lope carrying him away from the bubbling surge of madmen now atop the wall and spilling over into the outpost. Chinese and Hillmen raced pell-mell for the old courthouse. Snipers from its highest windows below the old dome were shooting down into the streets.

  The Boy was making good speed while watching the courthouse. He saw one of the snipers draw a bead on him and fire at the place where he should have been. Instead he crashed through the front door of a shack. Inside he found linens and pots and pans. There was even food in glass jars.

  ‘Go to ground,’ he thought, and wondered if this was the voice of Sergeant Presley. There was too much going on for him to tell.

  Get behind the first wave of attackers, Boy. They’ll go for the courthouse.

  He remembered Raleigh telling him to meet MacRaven at the front gate so that he could lead the tribes to the planned horror of their murdered leaders.

  Outside, Mohawked tribesmen were streaming down the streets with axes and blood-curdling screams. Bullets, fired from the courthouse, smacked and ricocheted into the cracked and broken streets.

  When the first wave passed by the store, the Boy darted across the street and into an alley. He followed the alley and a few others as he worked his way back to the gate that sat astride old Highway Eighty.

  He smelled smoke and burning wood.

  Women were screaming.

  Ahead, above the rooftops, where the gate should be, he saw an explosion of gray smoke and splintering wood.

  The gunfire from the courthouse was increasing.

  Breaking glass both close and far away.

  Screams.

  Whatchu gonna do now, Boy?

  I’ve got to get Horse.

  At the gate, the ashen-faced warriors were leaping over the collapsed remains of the entrance to hack with their machetes at the stunned Chinese riflemen mustering in the median
of the old highway.

  Through the smoke, MacRaven and a collection of warriors from the tribes of the Sierra Nevada were picking their way through the rubble. MacRaven turned, waving his machete, and behind him a vanguard of ashen-faced warriors pushed a wagon forward through the shattered remains of the gate. Atop the wagon rested a large gleaming metal crossbow.

  The Boy crossed the open sward of grass to the on-ramp, waving at MacRaven.

  MacRaven led the tribesmen toward the Boy as he pointed for the giant crossbow to be set up on the median of the highway.

  “Have you found them?” roared MacRaven, his performance of concerned commander utterly believable.

  The Boy nodded, unsure what to do next. He looked to the gate, hoping Horse would come through at any moment as more and more ashen-faced warriors poured through the breach.

  MacRaven led the Boy away from the others as if to receive the planned bad news of their leaders’ demise.

  “Speak to me like you’re telling me something horrible,” he whispered once they were some distance from the others.

  The Boy couldn’t think of what to say.

  “Just move your mouth.”

  He opened and closed his mouth as MacRaven nodded. Then, “Where did Raleigh put the bodies?”

  The Boy pointed toward the Old School.

  “On the field, up there.”

  “All right, in just a moment you’re going to lead us up there. But first I want to watch my Space Crossbow take out their courthouse.”

  MacRaven turned back to the crossbow crew and raised his arm, then brought it down toward the dome of the courthouse.

  A singing twang sent a six-foot iron shaft speeding from the gleaming crossbow into the cupola of the courthouse. Brick and debris shot out the other side of the building as rubble crashed down onto the lower levels and finally the steps leading to the parking lot.

  “Great, huh?” said MacRaven, turning to the Boy. “It’s from Before. It was designed to go up into space and shoot down asteroids so smart men could bring soil samples back to earth. I found it inside an old research plant down east of L.A. Place called JPL, whatever that means. Doesn’t sound like a word, but maybe it was in another language I ain’t learned yet. From what I could tell, they were gonna send it up into space before the war. Good thing they didn’t, huh?”