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

by Nick Cole

  REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.

  IF YOU SAY YOU’RE GOD, WHO’S TO SAY YOU’RE WRONG?

  MAKE FRIENDS OF YOUR ENEMIES AND USE THEM TO DESTROY YOUR FRIENDS.

  REPEAT A LIE AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.

  WHEN YOU ARE NO LONGER BURDENED BY INTEGRITY, THE POSSIBILITIES ARE BOTTOMLESS.

  CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES THE BATTLE IS SOMEWHERE ELSE.

  CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES THEY’RE JUST LIKE YOU.

  CONVINCE YOUR ENEMIES.

  HEAVEN, HELL. . . REALLY?

  REPEAT THE TRUTH.

  And at the final yawning exit lying on the open and blistered highway beyond lay neon-green-colored sheets of paper scattered about, as if debris from a bomb revealed in the pale moonlight above the eastern dust storm. The Old Man picked up a sheet and found crude printing and wet ink that smeared at his touch. He read.

  Everything be Ok

  We mean it.

  So loot and murder to your heart’s content

  Just make sure you got the strength to Take and Do

  before anyone else does to you

  Everything be getting better

  Don’t believe the eyes

  Or your stomachs holla

  Or your lies,

  Lies can be told about anything

  Including the truth

  There’s been a lotta bad done in the name of good.

  So we’re done with that noise.

  Religion and morals be all the same and only different ’bout who was right and wrong on everything.

  So here’s how it be

  Man be man alone

  And the man be

  King Charlie.

  King Charlie be not wrong or right.

  He just be.

  After King Charlie be nothing.

  Heaven = Hell, only the unlucky die and the dead like to tell some truth when they say nothing.

  If there be a heaven, King Charlie imagine you’ll get there no matter what you do

  unless you’re the Hitler or Stalin who gave everyone the aids.

  We come so that all might live in prosperity.

  And only the strong survive.

  Get it?

  We are an accident

  Created by an accident,

  And so the Apocalypse must be our promise

  Of a better tomorrow

  When we hear-ed that doomsday bell

  The gunfire a Ratta-tat-tating,

  Your screams for mercy

  The blast that blew everything away that was,

  And when we saw the light of bombs bursting in air

  Someone said ‘ ‘Twas but the sound of man worshipping his maker,‘

  So . . .

  Siege!

  Lone Gunman!

  Horde rapes outpost!

  Nuclear Bomb Disintegrates London!

  It’s just be the sounds of man

  worshipping his maker.

  At the bottom of the piece of paper, as if separate and a command, the Old Man read, ALL HAIL KING CHARLIE!

  The Old Man let the screed fall to the ground. He motioned for the Boy to get back into the tank, and as he climbed once more into the hatch, his eyes fell to the final words that had been slop-painted onto the highway before the tank.

  ONCE YOU’RE FREE OF SHAME YOU’RE FREE TO ACT SHAMELESSLY.

  GIVE UP, NUNCLE, YOU’VE GOT NO CHANCE!

  On the other side of the tunnel the night seemed cooler, the air fresher. The moon turned everything slightly blue with its glaring yellow light now that it had risen above the distant dust storm.

  In the hours that followed, there were other tight spots and places where the road seemed impassable. They threaded each of these places carefully, waiting for an attack that did not come.

  The road improved and soon they were making good time across the high desert with dawn just a few hours away. The Boy, whose chin had fallen to his chest, lay deep in sleep bathed by the red light of the tank, fastened into his seat. When the Old Man tried the intercom, his granddaughter only murmured and he knew she too was sleeping now.

  Alone, he drove through what remained of the night and soon the eastern sky began to turn a pale blue.

  Another day.

  They topped the rise that looked down on Albuquerque in the soft light of first morning.

  The city is still there.

  Ted.

  On the eastern side of town, the Old Man could see thin strings of electric light still burning distantly like twinkling gems in the pink of morning.

  Chapter 40

  They crossed gray concrete roads and empty sun-bleached buildings falling to rubble in the blaze of morning. The Old Man aimed the tank toward the strings of light still twinkling in the bright daylight below the foothills on the eastern edge of town.

  Those lights should be off by now. Who would leave them on during the day?

  But the lights remained on and when the Old Man found the settlement, a walled-off neighborhood below the easternmost foothills, the Old Man did not wonder why no one had turned out the lights. They were greeted by a soft dry breeze and the silence of abandonment.

  The settlement was a large tract housing development lying alongside the highway leading north. A massive adobe brick wall, built before the bombs, surrounded the entire development.

  Why was this place spared, like Tucson?

  At the entrance they found a makeshift gate fashioned from the metal one might find at the gates of industrial warehouses. Two watchtowers that had risen from behind the wall had been pulled down, their frames sprayed outward like so many spilled matchsticks. The patchwork gate was wide open.

  Why?

  The Fool, the Horde, King Charlie. Does it matter? Someone.

  Maybe they fled? Maybe they’re hiding?

  But the pulled-down watchtowers told another story.

  Inside, the three of them found the town.

  Streets.

  Houses.

  A humming generator in the distance.

  Doors wide open.

  Empty mugs and glasses whose insides were still stained with punch-red syrup.

  The Boy went back to the tank and the gate once the Old Man had called out “hello” and received no response.

  “What happened here, Poppa?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “It seems bad.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll leave soon.”

  But the fuel, my friend, there is only a little left.

  “I’m not worried, Poppa.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you worried, Poppa?”

  The Old Man did not answer her and instead continued to search the town as she trailed after him.

  They wandered through a few houses, and what they found within told them nothing other than that one moment of life lived ordinarily had frozen, and that time had refused to move forward.

  Beds unmade.

  Wash hanging.

  Each house smelling of dust and wood.

  Tools, usable salvage, merely left for anyone to take.

  In one house they found a spilled glass of milk.

  The milk was warm and spoiled.

  We should find the generator. Maybe it runs on fuel.

  As if on cue, while the Old Man stood over the spilled milk and heard at the same time the distant hum of power, the generator died.

  Outside, stepping over the front lawns turned to dying gardens, the strings of light above had ceased to twinkle.

  The Old Man followed the darkened lights to thick rubber electrical cables that snaked through the streets and led to a house on the far edge of the settlement. Inside, the Old Man found hundreds of generators set up in every room. A central fuel bladder occupied the upper story. In the backyard they found a fuel truck that started crankily. Its tank was almost empty.

  This was their power plant.

  But the fuel is somewhere else.

  Yes.

  At the front entrance, waiting in the shade of the tank and drink
ing from a canteen, the Boy watched the land to the north of them.

  “They were chained up over there,” said the Boy and pointed toward the median. “There’re drops of blood all over the dirt. The slavers must have put fishhooks in their noses or mouths and linked them to chains. Then they went north. I’ve seen it done before.”

  “Can you tell how many days ago that might have been?” asked the Old Man.

  “A week. Maybe more.”

  The explosion shook the city.

  It was distant. A boom, and then a crack that seemed to follow seconds after, echoed far out across the city and into the hills above them.

  Back toward the center of the city, flames shot skyward as a black plume of smoke belched into the tired blue sky.

  “Is it one of the bombs from before, Poppa?”

  “No. Just an explosion.”

  She has no idea how big those bombs were. She has heard me and the other survivors who lived through those days talk of them and all that they took away, but she really has no idea how massive they were.

  “Are you sure, Poppa?” she said, the worry evident.

  “I am sure.”

  But he could see her face. Her wide eyes. The lips pressed together.

  “Those bombs destroyed entire cities,” said the Boy. “We would be dead if it had been one.”

  After a moment she seemed to accept the Boy’s words.

  Relaxing.

  She has lived in fear of those bombs her whole life. They are her boogeyman.

  Yes. And this Boy said the words that comforted her, my friend.

  Yes. There is that also.

  They drove as close to the flames and smoke as they could. They could smell the thick scent of burning fuel.

  It was an industrial district.

  Narrow streets.

  Concrete warehouse.

  In green slop-paint the words “How now Nuncle Brown Cow?” were splashed across the smooth side of an old warehouse.

  The Fool did this.

  It would seem so, my friend.

  This Ted must have been brewing their fuel here. He seems a very smart man. Our village could have used him.

  The world could have used him.

  Yes.

  Black smoke erupted through windows and through the roof of a large warehouse as orange flames consumed the entire structure.

  All their fuel must have been inside there, inside a big tank.

  With no one to fight it, this fire will burn the city down in a few days.

  And . . .

  “What are we gonna do now, Poppa?”

  We have, maybe, ten miles of fuel left.

  So there is that also, my friend.

  Yes.

  Chapter 41

  The tank limped through the fence at the far end of the international airport. Ahead, dirty and ancient jetliners waited forever at their gates for passengers on that last and long-ago day. Doomsday.

  The needle in the gas gauge rested firmly on Empty.

  I will not give up.

  As if you could fuel this tank with your words?

  I will not give up.

  As if you can make it all the way to Colorado Springs?

  We have made it this far. I will not give up.

  And do you think the fuel in these jets is still any good?

  It has to be, and if it isn’t, we will find another way. I will not give up.

  Why?

  The Old Man did not answer himself.

  Why? Why won’t you give up?

  Silence as he maneuvered the tank under the wing of one of the biggest jets.

  A 747 I think.

  Why won’t you give up?

  Stop!

  Why?

  Because in that moment when I saw the painted words of the Fool, I wanted to. Because this thing is bigger than an old man like me. Because this is too much, and seeing all that fuel we could’ve had, if we’d just gotten there earlier, go up in flames, crushed . . .

  Crushed?

  Silence.

  Yes. It crushed me.

  But you have been through worse, my friend.

  Have I?

  Yes.

  “Will there be fuel here, Poppa?” she said over the intercom.

  “Let us hope so.”

  Outside and climbing onto the hot metal of the wing, burning his knees and the palms of his hands, he searched for the opening to the fuel tank.

  I can’t find it.

  Think. There is something you’re forgetting.

  It’s underneath the wing, my friend.

  Will the fuel still be good after all these years?

  I will not give up.

  It’s underneath the wing.

  “I found it!” he called out to them.

  The Boy dragged the fueling hose away from the tank.

  Think. There is something . . .

  “Wait!”

  He opened the cover to the wing fueling nozzle.

  There will be water in the bottom of the fuel reservoir after all these years.

  Water is heavier than fuel.

  The Old Man found the lever that drained the fuel tank.

  “Stand back!”

  He pushed the lever and fuel gushed out onto the ground.

  How will I know when it isn’t water?

  He waited.

  Did it change color?

  It smells more like kerosene now.

  “Okay, bring me the hose,” he said, slamming the fuel release lever back into the closed position.

  Hopefully the fuel will not have as much water in it now. Now there will be a better chance that it will burn.

  The tank drank up all the fuel it could from the insides of the old plane. Afterward, they topped off the two reserve drums still strapped to the turret.

  In his mind the Old Man saw the map.

  This is enough to make it there.

  But what about getting back?

  THEY LET THE spilled fuel dry. Over a fire of discarded luggage, they spitted and roasted some rabbit the Boy had taken near the settlement. They drank water in the shadows of the old terminal. Broken glass guarded the shadowy interior of the place, and they could only catch glimpses of suitcases and curtains near the daylight, high up on the concourses above.

  There must have been panic that day.

  I remember.

  The Old Man made them stand far away and then went to the tank.

  Off in the distance the fire in the center of town seemed to grow, its oily top like an anvil of smoke or an evil bird looming high over the city.

  If the aircraft fuel explodes when I start the tank, would they be safe?

  Would he protect her? Would he take her back to Tucson?

  What other choice do you have, my friend?

  The Old Man started the APU, waited a few seconds, and then fired the turbine. He watched the Boy and his granddaughter struggling with a manhole cover they’d managed to pry up from the tarmac as he listened for trouble within the noise of the tank’s engine.

  It sounds rougher and this time there is gray smoke instead of black.

  Is that better? Is gray better than black?

  I don’t know, my friend.

  The Old Man backed the tank out from underneath the jumbo jet. He drove down the runway once and then back.

  If the fuel wasn’t any good then it should be out of fuel or dying now, right, Santiago? The temperature gauge is also a cause for concern.

  Yes, but it runs, my friend, and for now, that is enough.

  In the distance, the black plumes above the fire had grown as smoke drifted east over the dead city.

  The Old Man looked around at the terminal.

  I wonder if my dad ever came here in the jets he flew.

  In a few days the fire will come and it will all be gone. Maybe by tonight even.

  Yes.

  The ancient jets, immobile and waiting, seemed to him as if all they needed were pilots, pilots like his dad, and once again they might leap away from
the earth.

  I remember being pressed into my seat as we raced down the runway.

  I remember that my feet did not reach the floor.

  I remember that my dad was up front, at the controls of the plane.

  I was very proud to be his son.

  Chapter 42

  They pushed north as the flames consuming Albuquerque climbed toward the old highway on the eastern edge of town. For miles they could see the billowing black smoke reaching high into the iron blue of noonday.

  The old highway was sun-bleached and rent by gaping cracks as the tank pushed upward through a ponderosa of rocks and stunted twisting pines.

  There is only Santa Fe between us and Colorado Springs now. It is the last major city.

  When he showed the Boy the map and pointed toward Santa Fe, asking if the Boy knew anything about what they might find there, the Boy only shook his head.

  In the late afternoon they arrived in Santa Fe.

  The Old Man turned off the tank and watched the pink rocks in the last of the hot day.

  There is nothing here.

  The Old Man looked hard into the dense tangle of weed bracken and cactus that spread west of the highway across a wide rise that ended in a chalky ridge and tired rocky hills beyond.