Then the councilman turned to give Juan and an Allen one more look before walking away. They watched him go, he walked like a man with a purpose, trudging through the mud past the gathering crowd. That was the first time Juan realized that the townspeople were beginning to gather; clearly, news of the dumped water had spread. Jasper and his men were busy trying to keep the crowd in order, but as Juan watched them, he could see that fear was clearly written across every face. Wadsworth stepped closer to Juan and lowering her voice asked, “Are we still able to run the pump today?”
Juan nodded in reply.
“Still think it will fail today?”
Juan hesitated for a moment and then shrugged.
“Well, if it does, then the water left in that tower is the only hope we have left until Miles gets back. Forget about Johnson and that Sergeant, you’re quick thinking saved lives today Juan, I’m sure of it.”
Wadsworth turned to look back at the crowd of people again and then added, “Either way when the pump fails things may turn ugly here, so I want you to make your way over to the Black Jacket’s clubhouse. At our instruction Chief Rincone has been preparing for this, he’s turned the place into a virtual fortress. We have some supplies stored there, including water and by tonight all of the council members and our families will be moved over there, the Doctor included.”
Juan looked up at Wadsworth in disbelief, his mouth dropping open in surprise.
“We didn’t tell anyone, not even Miles. This was the council’s contingency plan in case he failed.”
Juan’s eyes narrowed, he couldn’t help but feel like the council’s plan somehow expected Miles to fail. He wrote a quick note and tearing off the page handed it to Wadsworth.
Did Anna Know?
Wadsworth read the note and then gave a Juan a small sad smile.
“No, she didn’t. In fact, Jackson went over to the clinic today to tell her and oversee the move. Why do you think I came down here?”
“What the fuck Jackson?” Anna shouted.
The councilman took another step back and held up his hands, “I don’t know how many times I can explain it. Tower or no tower, the people are going to freak out when the pump fails, and odds are it’s not going to be pretty. So we are moving the council, the clinic and you over to Rincone’s for safe keeping.”
“But that’s exactly why the council and the clinic need to stay! Don’t you see that? People will be scared, but if we try and keep some sense of normalcy, if we explain that Kyle and Coal and Miles are on their way back right now with the parts. Then maybe we can keep some semblance of order. Maybe we can keep people from hurting one another.”
But Jackson was already shaking his head, “The decision has been made. The council can’t risk the future of the town if you’re wrong.”
“The future of the town is the people, don’t you get that?” Anna shouted.
Jackson shook his head and then looking past Anna said aloud, “Alright people let’s keep this moving, we want everything that isn’t nailed down moved outside and loaded in the wagon.”
Behind them, Anna’s new staff of attendants and nurses was quickly breaking down the clinic before her eyes. Already two of the exam areas were being folded up and carried out, while another pair of nurses were busy emptying everything from the medicine cabinets into a cardboard box. The scene clicked everything into place for Anna, after all of these years the council suddenly decides she could use more help, not only to see patients but also to pack the place up when the time came to move.
“Don’t any of you see what’s happening?” Anna shouted in frustration.
For a moment the pace of the packing slowed, and while a few of the nurses turned to look in her direction, most looked away.
“If things get bad, if the town riots, then this is exactly where people will need us the most. Out here and ready to help, like we always have. Who is going to help those people if we are hiding out behind Rincone’s walls?”
For a moment Anna thought that perhaps she had reached them, at least a few of them. One woman took a series of quick breathes as if trying to keep from sobbing. Anna knew that at one point all of them had made the decisions to practice medicine to help people, but that was years ago and in an entirely different world. Then Jackson put a hand on her shoulder, “Anna, your head is not in the right place on this one. You need to stop thinking about yourself…,” he began.
“Myself? You’re the one who is being selfish here Jackson, you and your fucking city council!” She shouted, cutting him off.
“That’s not what I mean. I mean you have someone more important that you need to be thinking about,” he said, pointing to her swollen midsection.
Jackson’s words stung her more than she would have expected. She stood for a moment and stared at the man as her eyes filled with tears. Without another word, she walked from the clinic and through the curtain into her and Kyle’s room. She stood there trying to catch her breath, hating the fact that Jackson was right and that his words were very similar to something she had accused Kyle of in this very room. Finally, she sat down on the edge of the bed quietly crying and then pulling the sheets up around her she breathed in deeply, smelling and missing her husband.
“Oh Kyle, wherever you are, please hurry,” she whispered.
“Kyle, Kyle wake up.”
The scavengers eyes popped open, he was still in the driver’s seat of the buggy and still underneath the length of canvas. Turning, he found Coal resting in the passenger seat with Miles wedged between them. The old man was gently shaking Kyle’s arm.
“There you are, you were starting to worry me,” he said.
“Where are we?” Kyle muttered in reply.
“Don’t you remember? We went over the edge.”
Suddenly Kyle did remember, he jerked upright and immediately regretted it as his brain seemed to slosh forward and slam against the inside of his skull. For a moment he reeled and would have collapsed back into his seat if Miles didn’t grab him just then. The scavenger turned to look more closely at his friend. In the span of a night Miles’ face seemed to have grown more angles, his cheekbones were more pronounced, his skin appeared to have shrunk and tightened around his skull. He seemed smaller than the man he had shared coffee with just yesterday morning. As if reading his mind Miles tried to give the scavenger a reassuring smile, but the smile looked more like a grimace through the old man’s dried and cracked lips. Neither man said a word, but Kyle knew that if they didn’t find water soon, his friend was not likely to last through the day.
“Steady now son, you took a hell of a knock to the head. It looks like whoever designed this thing didn’t bother with airbags.”
Kyle began to nod in reply, he knew that Miles was trying to distract him from his own thoughts. So Kyle just nodded back slowly and replied, “I’m okay. Is Coal unconscious also?”
“Unconscious? No, not exactly,” Miles replied weakly.
In the passenger’s seat, Coal let out a light snore before rolling over and putting his back to the two of them. Kyle swore under his breath and muttered, “Just my luck, I get the head injury, but Coal doesn’t even lose a night’s sleep.”
As the words left his mouth a sudden realization struck Kyle, he could no longer hear the wind blowing and even under the canvas it was much lighter than before. With a flurry the scavenger swept the cover off of them and for a moment he was blinded by the glare of the morning’s sun. Coal jerked awake in his seat as well pulling his knife on reflex and shouting a curse.
“Easy now,” Miles whispered.
They buggy lay at the bottom of a wide canyon. It was about 300 ft. across with walls towering over them nearly 100 feet high. While the edges of the canyon were strewn with boulders and broken bits of rock, the floor of the canyon was unusually flat and featureless. It took a moment for Kyle to realize it was covered in a layer of fine sand, presumably blown in by the storm. Looking back over his shoulder the scavenger could see the ledge 40 ft. above t
hem where they had been caught in the avalanche of sand and carried over.
“Damn, that was a piece of luck,” Miles said.
“Yeah, a bad piece,” Coal replied.
“Miles is right if we hadn’t have kicked off the slide we would have landed on a bed of rocks instead of sand,” Kyle pointed out.
The scavenger turned to look at the old man, but Miles was shaking. “That may have been it, at least partially, but even sand is not that forgiving.”
“I think the old man is right Tonto, something just ain’t right about this.”
The bounty-hunter stepped out of the buggy, and it wasn’t until Kyle watched him make his way out onto the drifting sand did Kyle realize just how deep the sand was around them. The rover’s thick plastic tires were buried completely with only oddly symmetrical mounds of sand providing any clue that they were still attached. The waterfall of sand that they had ridden the night before had nearly buried them it seemed. Kyle stepped out of the buggy also and began to slowly walk around the rover looking for any signs of damage and trying to figure out just how in the hell they were going to get the vehicle out. Standing in front of the rover Coal took a look down the canyon one way and then the other, before walking out towards the center of the canyon.
Coal’s first few steps had him up to his ankles in the sand, but with each step, the feel of the ground beneath him began to change. He slowed his pace now, taking each step carefully and feeling a bit confused. The canyon floor seemed sturdy enough, and the layer of windblown sand in front of him looked to be undisturbed, but each step he took felt odd as if the ground itself was pushing back against him. Finally, the half-breed had enough and dropping down to knees began to brush away the loose sand.
“Hey, Kyle!”
The scavenger had begun digging out the tires and looked up, “What is it?”
“I know where we are!”
“What?”
“Come over here and have a look.”
Kyle trotted over to where his friend kneeled, and Coal held up a hand for him to see. In the bounty-hunters palm was a thick gray glob of damp clay. As Kyle watched Coal gave it a squeeze and a single drop of water ran between his fingers and vanished into the canyon floor.
“Welcome to the mighty Colorado River, or at least what’s left of it,” Coal announced.
Kyle eyes went from the hand full of clay and then to the rest of the canyon. He could see it then, looking at the canyon’s unusually flat and featureless floor. It looked like a frozen river, and in a way, that’s exactly what it was. Except this river wasn’t trapped in ice, it was trapped in clay and mud and then covered by the windblown sand. The scavenger’s eyes went from the canyon to the rover where he could just see Miles under the shade of the canvas.
“Coal, do you think we can we squeeze enough water out to get Miles something to drink?”
“We can, but it’s not going to be easy, especially without any tools to dig with. We may burn up as much water as we squeeze out, maybe more.”
“We have to try, we…,” Kyle began but then trailed off.
His eyes had fallen on something on the opposite side of the canyon, where the river bed was still shaded from the sun. He squinted and could make out a circular shape buried in the sand perhaps two feet across.
“What’s that? Do you see that?”
Coal stood, and the two men cautiously moved closer until both stood over the circled shaped mound in the sand.
“Whatever it is, it ain't the only one,” Coal pointed out.
Kyle looked up and saw that the bounty-hunter was right. From where they stood he could see at least a dozen similar shapes spread out along the canyon floor and buried by sand.
“What do you think they are?” Kyle asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
The two men dropped to their knees and began uncovering the circle with their bare hands. Almost immediately they uncovered a thick black tread pattern.
“Yeah, it’s a fucking tire!” Coal announced.
“But look at this.”
A layer of clear plastic was secured over the tire’s opening, tied in place with an old bungee cord. Kyle brushed away the sand, “Why would somebody cover dozens of tires like this?”
“Easy way to find out,” Coal replied, his knife already in hand.
The bounty-hunter cut the bungee cord, and the two men pulled off the plastic covering. Underneath lay a perfect circle of dried mud and sitting at the circle’s center was a white coffee mug. Kyle hesitated for just a moment before picking up the mug. He lifted it out and then to his surprise he nearly dropped it, the mug was about a quarter full of dirty brown water.
“Holy shit, its fucking water!” Kyle shouted.
Coal’s mouth dropped open in surprise and then a moment later it turned upward into a wide smile. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said and laughed, “I know what this is, this is a solar still.”
“It’s not booze Coal, its water.”
“I know it’s not booze, that’s just what they’re fucking called! Back on the Res, my people used these sometimes when water was short. They don’t produce a lot of, but if you have enough of them, it adds up. Usually, you dig a hole and put in a cup or bowl of some kind and then cover it with plastic, you know, making it airtight. If you do it right, it collects condensation overnight on the inside of the plastic and then drips down into the cup. I’ve never seen anybody use a tire before, that’s really fucking smart.”
“So you’re telling me somebody put all these out here to evaporate water out of mud?” Kyle asked.
“Around here, we call it Mud Farming,” called a voice.
Both men froze and then slowly turned, looking for the voice’s owner. About ten feet above them on a narrow ledge stood a man, he was dressed in blue overalls, a white long sleeved shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat. He looked as if he was a man from another time, a pilgrim or a Quaker maybe. Kyle could only see one of the man’s eyes, it was pale blue, and it squinted at him along the sights of an ancient looking shotgun.
“And we shoot those that try and steal from our crop.”
Next to him, Kyle sensed Coal tense. The bounty-hunter still had his hunting knife in hand, and though Kyle had never seen his friend try and throw the heavy blade, he knew that must be exactly what Coal was thinking. It would be suicide, even Kyle could see that. The strange farmer had the high ground, and if he let go with both barrels, at this range, Kyle thought he might even be able to kill them both with a single blast. But what scared Kyle more than anything was the look in the man’s eyes. It wasn’t a look of anger or bloodlust or even fear, it was a look of resolve and regret. Seeing it, the scavenger could tell that the man had been forced to kill before and though he didn’t enjoy it, if need be, he would kill again. That look, more than anything, convinced Kyle that violence wasn’t going to solve the situation, at least not to their liking. Slowly Kyle reached a hand out and placed it on Coal’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry friend, we didn’t mean to steal from no one. We got lost in the sand storm last night. We lost all of our water, and my friend over there is hurt pretty bad, probably dying,” Kyle explained.
The farmer’s eyes narrowed for a moment in obvious suspicion, and then he risked a glance over Kyle’s shoulder back towards the rover. Immediately the man’s eyes went wide, and a moment later he lowered the shotgun, looking back and forth between Kyle and the rover. Kyle watched in disbelief as the man standing before them, who just a moment ago was about to kill them, suddenly turned pale.
“I…I…I’m sorry, I didn’t… didn’t realize,” the farmer stammered.
Coal and Kyle exchanged a look, both men equally confused, but Coal spoke first. “Well, I guess that’s pretty fucking obvious.”
The farmer looked down at the shotgun in his hand, his face an odd mix of embarrassment and fear. He turned around and quickly leaned the weapon against the canyon wall.
“I’m sorry…really sorry. I have water here,
plenty of water for you and your friends. I’m a proud citizen of the Protectorate. I’ll be right down.”
The farmer stepped back from the ledge and out of view. Coal and Kyle looked at each other again, and the scavenger asked, “Is this some kind of trick, an ambush maybe?”
Coal shrugged, “If it is then he’s doing it all wrong.”
“Did he say…Protectorate?”
“Yeah, whatever the fuck that is. If he’s dumb enough to actually come down here unarmed, I can kill him real easy.”
“Whoa, whoa, let’s just play along and see where this goes.”
“Okay Tonto, you’re the expert on crazy white people.”
A moment later the farmer rounded a corner of the canyon, he was breathing hard and moving at almost a run. In his hands, he was carrying a glass jug wrapped in strands of rope, an obviously handmade carrier. The farmer stopped just short of the men and uncorking the jug offered it to them. Coal shot Kyle a glance and then reached out and accepted the jug. He took a quick sniff from the open neck and then tilting it back took a drink. He then handed it to Kyle with a nod. After a moment’s hesitation Kyle took a drink of his own, the water tasted warm and had the faint aftertaste of tar, but at the moment it seemed like the greatest thing that ever touched his lips.
“Thank you,” Kyle said.
“Of course, anything for the Protectorate,” the farmer replied in earnest.
“Right,” Coal said.
Kyle turned and carried the jug of precious water back to the buggy and Miles, with the farmer and Coal following in his wake. Kyle found the old man in the shade of the canvas, seemingly asleep again. Miles looked terrible, and for a moment Kyle feared he was too late.
“Miles, Miles wake up! We found water.”
The old man stirred a bit, moving his head as if trying to see where the voice was coming from. Kyle knelt down and slowly raised the jug to the old man’s lips. Miles drank, just a sip at first but then followed with a much deeper drink. Almost immediately the old man began to cough and spit up much of what he had just tried to swallow.
The Road North Page 28
