by Nick Cole
What the Boy lacked in power and strength in his left side was made up for in the powerful right arm that had done all the heavy work of his hard life. Like a machine from Before, the tricep and bicep drove the axe down through skin and bone and skin again within the moment that the eye shifts its gaze.
The leader planted his feet, intending to reverse the knife with just an adjustment of grip and then swing wickedly to disembowel his opponent. He’d do it again as he’d done many times before.
But his hand was gone.
His mouth, once pulling for air like a great bellows, now hung open and slack. The leader dropped to his knees, his other hand moving to the spouting bloody stump.
For a brief moment, he stared at his hand as though this was something the leader had just imagined and not something that had really happened. His eyes, his world, gray at the edges of his vision, remained on the severed hand.
At then he was gone from this world as the tomahawk slammed into his skull with a dull crunch.
There was a clarity that came to the Boy in the moment after combat, a knowledge the Boy had that all his days would be as such: days of bone, blood, and struggle. The blue sky and winters would come and go, but all his days would be of such struggles.
Finally, in the last moment of such thinking, he wondered, what did cities ever know that he never would? Their mysteries would be beyond him. Without Sergeant Presley he would become like one of these savage men the Sergeant had warned him of. And one day, like the body of the man in the dirt and rock at his feet, such would be his end.
20
IN THE BLUE water of the high mountain lake lay the rusting hulk of the bat-winged bomber from Before.
Bee Two, Boy.
The early education of the Boy by Sergeant Presley had included the identification of war machines and weapons past.
Stealth tech, Boy.
The bomber lay halfway in the crystal blue of the lake and partway onto the sandy beach of the small mountain village.
The village of the Rock Star’s People, they called themselves in their weird mix of languages.
The Rock Star’s People.
They’re little better than savages, Boy. Stone age. Look at ’em with their bows and skins. Speakin’ a little Mex, occasional English, and a whole lotta gibberish. Livin’ out here in the sticks ’cause they’re probably still afraid of the cities. At least they’re smart enough for that. But other than huntin’ and gatherin’ and these huts, it makes you wonder what they’ve been up to for the last forty years. But I’ll betchu’ they got enemies, Boy. Betchu’ that for sure.
Never get involved, Boy, because some stories have been going on long before you showed up. You don’t know their beginnings, and you might not like their endings.
Yes, you would say that also, Sergeant. And yet, here I am. There was little choice for me in the matter.
With the death of the hunters’ leader, the moments that followed the fight had seemed uncertain. The odds, thought the Boy as the leader lay dying, were slim that he would have time to get back on Horse and ride away from the circling hunters. As the moments passed, the Boy could hear pebbles trickling down the ledge behind him, knowing the bow hunters were surrounding him.
The Boy lowered his head, letting his peripheral vision do the work.
The enemy will come at you from where you can’t see him. So look there, Boy!
But in the next moment the hunters lay down their weapons.
The conversation that followed was stilted, but from what the Boy gleaned over the course of the next three days’ march, the hunters were inviting him to their village.
“Oso Cazadore,” they repeated reverently, and even approached to touch the skin of the bear.
Oso Cazadore.
Now, high in the mountains, at the edge of the water, the Boy stared at the final resting place of the Bee Two Bomber.
In the three days he‘d traveled with the hunters they’d kept to themselves, disappearing in ones and twos to run ahead of the main group, returning late in the night. They’d ascended a high, winding course up through steep pine forests, across white granite ledges, through snowfields ringed by the teeth of the mountains.
In that time the Boy learned they were the Rock Star’s People and little beyond that.
In that time he heard the voice of Sergeant Presley’s many warnings; teachings he was taught and which he’d intended to fully obey.
Except for one.
I will go into the cities.
I will find out what is in them.
A woven door of thatched pine branches swung upward from the bulbous top of the ancient bomber resting on the lakeshore.
And here you are, Boy, gettin’ involved. I got involved once and ended up a slave for two years.
The Rock Star was what the Boy expected her to be. From the stories he’d heard. Stories not told by Sergeant Presley, but in the campfires of the Cotter family and even the Possum Hunters.
Old.
Gray hair like strands of moss.
A rolling gait as she crossed the fuselage and descended the pillars of stones that had been laid at the bomber’s nose.
The small, deep-set eyes burned as she approached him. When she smiled, the teeth, what few there were, were crooked, with ancient metal bands.
“Come down from that animal,” she commanded.
She spoke the same English as Sergeant Presley.
If I get down from Horse, the whole village will attack me. And yet, what choice do I have? What choice have I had all along, Sergeant?
Here you are, Boy.
Here I am.
The Boy dismounted.
She approached and reached out to touch the bearskin the Boy kept wrapped about himself.
He had found a place for Sergeant Presley’s knife.
Inside, behind the skin, waiting in his withered hand.
His good hand hung near the tomahawk. The carefreeness of its disposition was merely an illusion. In a moment it could cut a wide arc about him. In a moment he’d cut free of the rush and be up on Horse and away from this place.
So you think, Boy. If only it were so easy to get un-involved from things. If only, Boy.
“Bear Killer.” She stepped back, cocking her head to one side and up at him. “That’s what the children call you. Is it true? You kill a bear?”
After a moment he nodded.
“You’re big and tall. Taller than most. But weak on that side.” She pointed toward his left. “I can tell. I know things. I keep the bombs.” She jerked her thumb back toward the water and the lurking bomber.
“Bear Killer.” She snorted.
If it comes, thought the Boy, it comes now. His hand drifts toward the haft of the tomahawk.
“Welcome to our village, Bear Killer. You’ve rid us of an idiot for a chief. I thank you for that.” She turned back to the village and babbled in their patois. Then she left, rolling side to side until she reached the pillars, the pine-branch hatch, and disappeared once more inside the half-submerged bomber.
The Boy watched her until she was gone and wondered if indeed there were bombs, the big ones, nuclear, still lying within the plane. Waiting.
Impossible, Boy. We used ’em all up killing the world.
RAIN FELL IN the afternoon, and that night the villagers, under clear skies, spitted a deer and gathered to watch it roast in the cold night.
A young man whose name was Ja-son led him to a hut made of rocks and pine. It belonged to the chief—to the man who died at the Boy’s feet.
After three days of listening to the Rock Star’s People, the Boy could at least communicate with them in small matters. But the communication was slow and halting.
Ja-son said that for killing the Chief, the hut and all that was in it are Bear Killer’s.
There was little more than a fire pit and a dirt floor.
Horse was fed apples by the children of the village and, as was his custom, patiently endured.
Later, the veni
son roasted, and the village watched both him and the meat and the darkness beyond their flames. There were far more women and children than men, and even the Boy knew the meaning of such countings.
When the venison was ready, they cut a thick slice from underneath the spine and offered it, dripping and steaming, to the Boy.
When the meal ended, the Rock Star was there among them. She had been watching him for a long time. She entered the circle, standing near the fire, wrapping skins and clothing from Before about her. She was faded and worn in dress, hair, and skin. But her eyes were full of thought and planning, of command and fire.
She told a story.
The Boy followed the tale as best he could and when he seemed lost altogether, she stopped to translate it for him back into English.
“I’m from Before, Bear Killer. I spoke the proper English like I was taught in a school and all that.”
The story she told involved a group of young people pursued through the forest by a madman with a chainsaw full of evil spirits. One by one, the madman catches the younglings as they flee into what they believe is an abandoned house—the house where the madman lives with other madmen. In the end there is only one youngling left. A girl, strong and beautiful, desired by all the now dead younglings. Through magic and cunning she defeats the madmen, except for the one who’d found the younglings initially. The brave girl shoots bolts of power from her hands and the Mad Man of all Mad Men, as she calls him, falls backward over a balcony in the house from the Before.
“And when she run over to the railing to see his dead body lying in the tall grass, he is gone,” the Rock Star translated to the Boy. Then, casting a weather eye into the darkness beyond their fire, the Rock Star whispered, “That madman still walks these mountains, still desires me, still takes younglings when it comes into his mind.”
The Rock Star’s People clutched their wide-eyed young. The men drew closer to the fire, to their wives, eyeing the night and the mountains that surrounded their lake.
“But he won’t come here, children.”
She paused, eyes resting on the assembly. She turned toward the mountains as if seeing his lumbering form wandering the silent halls of the forest dark even then.
“He won’t come here, children. For I am that girl who was.”
She turned and stalked off into the night.
The relief among the villagers was tangible.
In groups they returned to their huts, and for a long time the Boy stared into the fire, watching its coals.
21
“WALK WITH ME.”
The command was simple, direct. the Boy saw her silhouette in the door to his hut by the half-light of early morning.
Outside, the Boy is wrapped in his bearskin and the sky is little more than cold iron. The village was quiet, as small wavelets drove against the sandy shore, slapping at the side of the old bomber.
When they were at the far end of the beach, nearing a series of slate gray rocks that fell into the waters of the lake, the Rock Star turned to him.
“I don’t know you. I suspect, though, you’re a man without a tribe.” She let the sentence hang.
The Boy remained silent.
Good. Let people assume things, Boy.
“But you were passing to the west when the hunters found you,” continues the Rock Star.
She paused to consider that for a moment.
“I imagine you want to continue west. But you can’t. Ain’t nothing there but Chinese now. You keep up that old highway and you’ll come to a big Chinese settlement in the foothills the other side of the pass.”
She picked up stones, flat and slate blue from the beach.
“Bad for you if you were thinking that was good. Chinese been trying to clear out the tribes. They took on one or two in the last few years and won pretty easily. They got the Hillmen working for them. But the Hillmen weren’t never no real tribe. And the tribes the Chinese wiped out were little more’n scavengers anyway.”
She seemed to want to throw a stone into the water, but the act of skipping it seemed something she knew was beyond her ability and strength.
“Now they—the Chinese, that is—have gone and stirred up a nest of hornets.”
The Rock Star looked at the Boy directly, staring hard up into his face, searching for something.
“That man you killed in fair challenge was my war leader. He was an idiot, but as they say, he was my idiot. In the next day, we got to start out despite this last winter storm that’s workin’ itself up to be something. The tribes, far down the range, almost even to the old Three ninety-five, are gathering. A big war leader is readyin’ hisself to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen.”
She took a deep breath.
“The headman called for me and mine to come. Wants my power.”
She turned back to the lake. Whitecaps were forming beyond the bay.
“I’ve danced with the dark one in the dead of night. My power has watched over this people since the Before. My power will slaughter the Chinamen. My power has stood against zombies and vampires and all the serial killers of Before. I was a powerful rock star in them days.”
She dropped the stones back onto the beach.
“So if you’re a spy, you know our plans. No good it’ll do you, though. So you’ll ride with us and know my hunters carry the poison. My poison is powerful. But my poison is not for you, see. My poison is for your horse. Ah, I see Bear Killer. I know’d the horse is a friend to you. So, you don’t step to my call to fetch and be my war leader, it’s the horse that gets it.”
She sighed heavily in the wind.
“That’s the way it be. Now take my arm and walk me back to the village, Bear Killer. And of a morning here shortly, we’ll ride to the hidden valley and rave with the tribes at the great lodge. And when the tribes go to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen, you’ll be my war leader and then you’ll see my power. I’m keeper of them bombs, never forget that. I’ll send the world back into darkness as I done the first time.”
She held out her arm.
After a moment, the Boy took it.
The wind came up and his ears burned. But not from the cold.
That’s right, Boy. I said involved.
22
THAT NIGHT THE Rock Star told the story of a great ship she had once sailed on that crossed the unseen ocean to a country far away. She told of fine dresses she wore and an evil prince who wanted to marry her. Instead, she chose a young poor boy, fair and bold, for her lover. But the evil prince murdered the poor boy.
The wind and the night closed about their small circle of fire next to the lake in the mountains, as the first hints of rain began to slap against the water and the sand. The Rock Star rose above the circle, seeming imperious. Seeming grand. Seeming once the young woman of the story.
“And I called an ice mountain out of the sea to come and attack the ship and slay the evil princeling. When my monster’d finished, that great ship slid beneath the waves with a titanic crash, like ice breaking off the high glaciers. Only I alone escaped in a boat, and every one of them fancies, all of ’em, drowned beneath the icy waters of that ocean, ’cept for me, and me alone.”
IN THE MORNING when the Boy awoke, the hunters were packing, making a somber noise within the quiet village of the high mountain lake.
Ja-son pushed aside the blanket at the entrance to the old chief’s hut.
“We vamnato,” Ja-son mumbled fearfully in his pidgin language to the Boy, telling him it was time to leave.
The Boy gathered his things into his pack and went out to Horse.
Whispering and patting the animal, he promised to take care of them both.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered to Horse.
Horse regarded him, then snorted slightly and turned away to watch some new thing that might be more interesting.
Soon the hunters, carrying the Rock Star on a pallet, were waving good-bye to the tight-jawed women and crying children.
Following, the Boy rode Horse,
his bearskin flapping in the strong wind that came off the lake.
Spring’s a comin’, Boy. Look sharp.
THE COMPANY OF hunters, with their skins and spears and bones of small animals knocking together in the wind whipping past their carried totems, skirted the lake along an old winding highway heading south. Soon they climbed up through a trail that led alongside high waterfalls, and when they crested the pass, they saw a long line of mountains falling away to the south.
Finding old crumbling roads when they could and keeping mostly south, the company trekked along the face of the high mountains, sometimes weaving down into the foothills, never daring to approach the valley floor.
The day was long gone to late winter cold when they stopped in a stand of pines alongside a mountain highway. The withered side of the Boy was stiff and aching. He got down from Horse and walked away from their forming camp. When the Boy looked behind him, he could see at least one of the hunters trailing, as if gathering firewood.
I’ll be patient. When the time comes, and it will, I’ll make a run, Sergeant.
There was no response from the voice of Sergeant Presley.
And yet there is something exciting about all of this, Sergeant. If these people are against the Chinese, then wouldn’t that be good intel for I Corps and the Army?
The Boy didn’t dare bring out the map secreted inside the pouch he’d made within the bear cloak. From his memory of it, he knew they were skirting south through the mountains. On the western side of their progress lay the long valley and many of the great cities of the past along the coast beyond. San Francisco, Los Angeles, and far San Diego, all in the state of California.
I should complete the mission. Find I Corps like you said, Sergeant.
