Love, Death, Robots and Zombies

by Oliver Higgs

  “Ch’all do?” he asks.

  I’ve got questions of my own, mostly about the likelihood of him killing us, but he has a clear advantage at the moment, so I answer straight.

  “They wanted me for their army,” I say.

  He looks pointedly at Echo.

  “Me too,” she says weakly.

  He looks at her a moment longer, eyes twinkling. Clearly there’s more to the story, and he knows it, but he just nods.

  “You’m didn’t fancy joining, huh? How’d ‘jer get them bug-holes?” he asks, waving vaguely at our wounds.

  “They left a pulse mine on the road,” I say.

  The man frowns. He turns and looks back at the sow, shaking his head slowly in disgust. The sow grunts loudly. The man spits, as if to expunge the poor taste of such an underhanded tactic. Echo and I glance at each other uncertainly.

  “This a wolves’ world. Gotta be a lion t’ survive,” he says. Then he catches Echo’s eyes moving toward the pig and adds, “Oh, Old Jude a lion too. Her looks is deceiving.”

  Then, to my astonishment, he takes out an electric sparker. Not just any sparker–one of mine.

  “Hey, I made that,” I say.

  He holds up the sparker, his face a question.

  “You got it from Toyota, right?” I ask.

  The leathery face breaks into a smile.

  “No kidding,” he says.

  “Toyota’s a friend of mine,” I say.

  “Fox and a lion, that one.”

  He considers us in silence a moment longer, then says:

  “Folk call me Wade. Course ain’t many folk out here.”

  We introduce ourselves, despite the whole “killing us” issue still an open question. Where’s my crossbow? The guy must have Conan-like stealth to have taken it while I slept.

  After the introductions, he lights up and inhales. A sweet, pungent smell fills the air. That starting puff is all he takes, however. Once the paper is burning evenly, he extends it toward Echo.

  “Oh, uh–no thanks …” she says vaguely, thrown by the gesture.

  “Didn’t roll this for me, sweetheart,” Wade says, still holding it toward her.

  She gives him a confused look.

  “Ain’t toby. ‘S Medicine. For your leg.”

  Echo and I look at each other. Her leg is still covered by the blanket–how can he even know about the wound? She reaches slowly for the cylinder, then just sits there holding it uncertainly.

  “Saw y’all on the road yesterday. Don’t like no fuss, so I wait ‘til morning. Had plenty of chance for violence, were that the way of it. ‘S medicine my Maude used to make–for the pain. Gonna numb you, make you funny. You smoke a little now, save more f’r later. You too if you feel the need, boy. You’m be getting’ your weapons back when I go. Now I better take a look at that leg.”

  Echo continues staring at him, dumbfounded, gray tendrils curling into the air between them as he crouches beside her. She draws back instinctively but he pays her no mind, gently pulling the blanket aside. He takes hold of her left ankle and turns it this way and that. He presses on the swollen flesh around the hole in her calf. He lifts the now-dirty makeshift bandage covering the effects of the shrapnel from the car. He has no regard for any agony this causes her, yet his examination is not rude or sadistic, just impartial.

  Finally Wade grunts, replaces the blanket and looks back at the pig. It gives a definitive sound, almost like a bark, in our direction. He nods in understanding before turning back to us.

  “Old Jude figured you’m be needin’ our help. She right too. That sow’s wiser ‘n most men–even some women. She’s the one aim to come after y’all. Knew there were a purpose to it. So it goes.”

  He retrieves the rope and compass from my supplies. Then he walks back to the ATV, pulls up his goggles and starts the vehicle. I can barely hear the electric whine of the engine. He’s done something to muffle the sound. The vehicle is armed too. A long swivel-barrel is mounted on the underside of each handlebar, and there’s a curvy shield to protect the driver. Foundry’s army would kill for vehicles like this.

  “Y’all wait here, gather? I need some things afore we go,” Wade says.

  Old Jude snorts and shakes her head.

  “What? Go where?” I ask, utterly confounded by the entire exchange.

  “Where else? You’m be needin’ the Doctor.”

  Gaping is the most intelligent response I can muster as he drives away. Echo looks at me, shrugs, and takes a long drag of Wade’s unknown herbal remedy.

  “Echo, don’t,” I warn her.

  “Not like it’s poison. He’s right, he could’ve killed us already.”

  “Yeah, well maybe he’s … preparing …”

  “To what, eat us?”

  “For all you know! We don’t know anything about this guy.”

  “We know he trades with your friend Toyota.”

  “Toyota would trade with the Priests of Set.”

  “Who?”

  “Nevermind.”

  I’m unnerved by the encounter. I can’t figure out what this “Wade” has to gain by keeping us alive. Unless he’s planning to sell us as slaves. But if that’s so, why didn’t he tie us up at gunpoint and bring us along already? Why’d he leave us our weapons? Isn’t he afraid we might attack him when he comes back? Baffling. Or perhaps he plans to turn us into roamers, like that poor soul chained in the closet. That must be it. Some kind of crazed zombie-lover, I warrant. You can’t trust anyone this deep in the wastes. More accurately, you can’t trust anyone, anywhere, period.

  But what do we do now?

  “What he said. Wait for him to come back,” Echo says when I put the question to her.

  My stomach is tied in knots. I don’t like this at all. What if it’s a trick, and we’re wasting the only time we have to run? I pace nervously. I pack our things and make sure we’re ready if we have to leave in a hurry. I look for cover and determine what we’ll do if one thing or another goes wrong. Meanwhile, Echo goes into a world of her own. She smiles and gazes at everything in wonder, as if it’s the first time she’s seeing it.

  “Everything is floating,” she says, and pushes her hand slowly toward me as if to direct invisible flows of energy.

  “Great. How’s your leg?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Your leg.”

  She looks down at her body and shakes her head, apparently disconcerted by my failure to grasp what’s really important here.

  “Tristan, everything is floating,” she says again, and she sounds both amazed and frustrated–amazed by some personal revelation, frustrated by her inability to convey its significance.

  “Crom,” I mutter.

  Wade comes back sometime after noon. Echo is sleeping peacefully. I have butterflies in my stomach. I’ve been dwelling so much on fears and possibilities that the entire day has passed. My thoughts tumble over each other and confuse my heart into pounding too hard. I break out in a sweat. Wade returns on the ATV. The sow is still in the harness, but now there’s an additional wagon-like attachment in tow. Bulky burlap bags are bundled into it, tied down tight. I have no idea what to expect.

  “You’m have to leave the barrow,” Wade says, nodding at the wheelbarrow.

  “Echo needs it. She can’t walk,” I say.

  “She won’t need to.”

  He pats the seat behind him. There’s enough room for both of us to pile in tight there, but I just stare at it in confusion.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I told yer. She need the Doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Ain’t what doctor. The Doctor. In Scargo.”

  I’ve never heard of Scargo, and a doctor right now sounds too good to be true–but that’s only part of what’s bothering me. I address the crux of the matter.

  “Why would you help us?” I ask.

  Wade blows out a long breath and tongues his cheek in thought. He gives me a searching look. His black
eyes glitter with contemplation.

  “When wolves is thick as flies, even lions need a pride,” he says. “Asides, weren’t really my idea.”

  I frown at him.

  “Whose was it then?” I ask.

  He looks at me in surprise, as if I’ve missed something obvious.

  “Old Jude’s!” he says.

  Maybe I’m crazy, but I help Echo onto the ATV. She’s drowsy and somewhat lost. The medicine must be wearing off, because she winces when I move her. I strap on my pack and press in close behind her. I’m half-off the back edge of the seat, so it’s a little uncomfortable, but it’ll have to do. Then we’re off, heading north.

  “How far is Scargo?” I ask.

  “’Bout ten day by foot. On the wheeler though, we be there tomorrow or the next, all goes well.”

  “Isn’t that close to the z-line?” I ask.

  “Scargo is the z-line. East end. Was a big city in the World Before.”

  I can’t say I like the sound of that, but there’s no question Echo needs a doctor if one is available. It’s too good of a possibility to pass up, and there’s something inherently genuine about Wade’s manner. If it’s a lie, he’s a hell of an actor.

  Big Road is largely disintegrated here, but the general path remains, a little less overgrown with shrubs than the land to either side. The ATV only does about ten miles an hour. Wade tells me it can go a lot faster, but it’s dragging an inordinate amount of weight, and the terrain is bad too. At one point we see another roamer in the distance … like the one chained in that closet. I decide to confront Wade about it.

  “Oh, that? I was keeping him for Toyota,” Wade says when I bring it up.

  “Toyota? What would Toyota want with a roamer?”

  “Same he want with anything else–he’m a trader. That roamer have odd habits. I figured the Doctor’d want to see him, so I take him captive for Toyota to deliver, store him in that house. Course, now Toyota won’t have to deliver him.”

  “What do you mean? Did you get rid of it?”

  “Rid of…? No! We’re going to see the Doctor right now, ain’t we? I figured why wait.”

  My face is a mask of puzzlement. Slowly, the implications sink in. I look back past Old Jude, at the platform in tow, at one of the bulky bags there. I look at Wade. At the bag again. He couldn’t mean …

  “You brought a roamer with us?” I ask incredulously. Echo jerks irritably upright because I’m shouting in her ear. Wade glances back, baffled by my outrage.

  “Not for you. For the Doctor,” he clarifies.

  I’m speechless. There is a goddamn zombie stuffed into a burlap bag somewhere behind me. Why on earth would “the Doctor” even want it? I can’t help but look back every few minutes, searching for movement, for a tear in the bag, though Wade assures me the thing is securely bound. Every time I turn, Old Jude gives me this look like: mind your own business, kid. There’s an unmistakable intelligence in the pig’s eyes. Yeah, I’ve probably lost my mind. I’ll be like that old hermit in the desert soon, the one who screamed and ran when I waved.

  We’ve gone maybe fifty miles, with the red sun sinking low, when Wade halts near the top of a long, sloping hill. He dismounts, stretches his legs, and goes forward a little, motioning for me to follow. Old Jude is snorting, eager to be loose, but Wade leaves her in the harness.

  When I reach him, he’s standing beside a shrub-tree, peering ahead. Big Road dips and runs into the distance, then cuts straight through a cliff. The cut isn’t natural. I marvel at the engineering of our ancestors, the way they shaped the world at will. Boulders have since collapsed into the cut, but not as many as one might assume. Strangely, the shrubs, trees and other plant-life taper out until becoming noticeably absent toward the cliff.

  “You’m ever come back this way, you remember this place, and don’t go no closer,” Wade says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Roaches. They keep a lookout near that cliff, watchin’ f’r travelers. They clear the pass so as people can get through, not knowing it’s a trap.”

  He reads my expression.

  “You’m don’t know about Roaches?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “They cannibal-men. Come across New Sea. You take that pass, they eat you.”

  I look at the pass again. If we’d kept north on our own …

  “Crom. No kidding? How do we get past?” I ask.

  Wade turns and waves me back to the ATV. Echo has taken the opportunity to smoke more of her “medicine.” She smiles at us, glassy-eyed. I guess it’s better than moaning in pain all the time. When Wade starts the ATV, he motors east, toward New Sea. Something else occurs to me.

  “Why were there no plants back there?” I ask.

  “Oh, you notice, eh? Dead zone. Ain’t nothing grow for ten miles,” Wade says over his shoulder.

  How do the Roaches live?

  Seriously, they can’t eat only people–but I leave the question for another time.

  At New Sea, we backtrack south for a few miles until Wade locates a hidden cave in the side of a bluff by the ocean. He parks the ATV and unloads Old Jude, who grazes merrily. I watch the big burlap bag as we dismount. There’s an ominous shift of hidden limbs inside. Echo presses a finger into my cheek with a look of utmost concentration, startling me.

  “So solid,” she says, “but not real.”

  Wade conceals the vehicle with some shrubs and other plants and leads us into the cave. There’s wood already piled inside. He organizes a fire on the edge of the cave and lights the kindling.

  “Oughta do it,” he says, nodding.

  “Did you put this wood here?” I ask.

  “Not me.”

  Echo sits and stares hypnotically into the flames. I sit beside her, looking out at New Sea for a while. Wade reveals a haunch of meat wrapped in leather and spits it for a late-day meal. To my amazement, it’s been salted and seasoned. Wade tells me of a monastery to the west where the monks trade salt, bread and other goods. He’s a well-travelled man. I ask him if he’s ever heard of Haven.

  “Mmm, heard the name a time or two. Can’t say I know much about them towns north of the z-line. That where y’all headin’?” he asks.

  “That was the plan,” I say, not adding that I’d just as soon turn west, avoiding the z-line altogether. I finish my meal. The meat is delicious. Afterwards, however, there’s a taste in my mouth that has nothing to do with the salt. I find it hard to believe Wade is providing these things for free, and I’m worried the cost will be something hidden and terrible when it comes…but what if he is just helping us? How can we repay such a thing?

  “What did you mean, ‘it was Old Jude’s idea?’” I ask him at one point.

  “Mmm-hmm. She insist we come,” Wade says.

  “But … she’s a pig.”

  “Didn’t I tell you she wiser ‘n most men? Old too, for a sow. Must be nigh twenty years she’n spent with me and Maude. Old Jude always seem t’know Maude’s mind. Wouldn’t eat for days when she passed. Then one morning she come all excited, snorting and makin’ a fuss, and she lead me out t’r the desert, to a patch of Maude’s favorite flowers. ‘S like she was trying to tell me something. I think that sow not entirely of this world. Got one foot here, one foot out beyond, so to speak. She still know Maude’s mind, even though Maude’s moved on. So I reckon it’s best to let her have her way when she get like that. She sensed you coming. She knew you’m be needing our help. She make a fuss again. And I figure … I figure Maude’d want it that way. Want to help y’all, I mean.”

  This is a veritable speech by Wade’s standards. There’s something in his eyes, an emotional sheen, and he lapses into a long silence afterward.

  Inside our cave, the fire should be hidden to anyone on land, but this is close to Roach country, so we post a watch. I can’t sleep anyway, so I take the first shift. The sky outside is host to a staggering stellar panorama, and I spend a lot of the time staring up. When Wade takes over, I lie next to
Echo. Her arms soon find me. She seems to be sleeping, yet she murmurs my name and kisses me on the cheek before lying still, an act that so astonishes me that I’m kept awake a while longer.

  In the morning, there’s a boat outside.

  It’s a squarish, simple, single-mast sail anchored in the shallows of New Sea. An older black man stands on the shore, talking amicably to Wade. My first paranoid thought is to look for weapons, because he’s probably a slave-trader. Yet this doesn’t appear to be the case. When Wade sees me, he waves me down. I kick Echo awake ruder than intended. She makes a disgruntled noise as I descend from the cave.

  “Tristan, this here’s Franklin, the Ferryman. Franklin–Tristan,” Wade says as I come closer. Old Jude roots happily through the dirt nearby.

  “Pleased to meet you, young Tristan,” the Ferryman intones.

  If this man has ill intent, he’s thoroughly deceiving. His eyes are alight with such congeniality and benign interest that it’s hard to look at him with anything but kindness. Furthermore, he has a rich voice and speaks with a fluency that’s almost beguiling.

  “Franklin be takin’ us the rest of the way,” Wade tells me.

  I’m waiting for them to start negotiating over the necessary trades, but it doesn’t happen. Perhaps Wade has already made some arrangement. Echo appears at the edge of the cave above, leaning against one wall.

  “And this must be your shining Isolde,” Franklin says.

  “Our what?” I ask, alarmed.

  “Forgive me. Isolde is an Irish princess from an old story. One might say it is a story from the world before the World Before.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Soon we’re aboard the ferry, along with our packs and belongings. Wade has even managed to wheel the ATV up the gangway. The burlap bag shifts disturbingly in the process. Before long, Franklin hauls up the anchor and shoves us off with a long wooden pole. He does things to the sail I don’t understand, and somehow we’re heading out to sea. As we get further from shore, several small islands appear in the distance. The Ferryman must live out there somewhere. That’s how he spotted our fire. He must leave the wood in the cave so travelers can signal him.

  We go further from land than I’ve ever been, but never quite far enough for the shore to disappear. The Roaches don’t sail, Franklin tells us, but there are pirates in deeper waters, hailing from some land to the east. The wind feels different on the sea. Cleaner. Old Jude is the least appreciative, lying low in one corner of the boat.