The Road is a River. Nick Cole
“Not like anyone from our village.”
The Old Man felt a cold river of fear sweep through him.
“Out there.”
And …
Too many “Done” things.
“Let’s move forward. But don’t stop unless I tell you to, okay?”
“Okay.”
I am afraid of this stranger on the road. Why?
We know why, my friend; it’s just that we’re not always willing to be honest with ourselves when we must. It is better to admit that you are afraid now than to pretend you are not.
The dark man-shadow, before the setting sun, seemed to lean toward them and out into the blistered highway as they approached. As they closed the distance between them the Old Man saw the shadow revealed. Saw him clearly as one might see something dead beside the road and want to look away in that passing instant of speed. His face was gaunt. Sun stretched by time and all the years since the end of the world. All the years on the road.
Worn rawhide boots. Faded dusty pants. A long coat made of license plates stitched together. A thick staff he leaned on heavily, though his frame was spare. Two small skulls dangled from its topmost tip. He wore a faded wide and weak-brimmed hat under which shining hawk-like eyes watched the Old Man. Had watched since they’d first appeared, the Old Man was sure of that.
He’s a killer.
The Old Man could feel the slightest decrease in their acceleration.
“No!” he shouted into his mic. “Keep going!”
The tank lurched forward, and as they hurtled past the Roadside Killer, the vessel of all things unclean, the gaunt man raised one bony arm from the sleeve of his license-plate mail coat and extended a claw-like hand that might have been a plea.
The Old Man knew his granddaughter would be staring, wide-eyed, as they raced past, throwing grit and gravel, drawing up the road behind them.
Do not look back.
The Old Man rose in the hatch, watching the highway ahead.
“Why didn’t we stop, Grandpa? He looked like he needed help.”
Do not look back.
“Grandpa?”
“Because,” said the Old Man after a moment. “Because we must help those inside the bunker.”
It was later, in the early evening, beyond a fallen collection of wind-shattered buildings the map once marked as the town of Quartzite, where they buttoned up the tank for the night. In the dark they’d settled into their bags, feeling the tank sway in the thundering wind that had risen up out of nowhere late that afternoon.
“Why didn’t we help him, Grandpa?”
The Old Man listened to the sand strike the sides of the tank and thought of some acid they’d once drained from a car battery to weaken the lock on a tractor trailer they’d salvaged.
The wind sounds like acid tonight.
“Not everyone needs our help.”
“But some people, the people inside General Watt’s bunker, do?”
“Yes, they do.”
And I wonder if they truly do. How do I know this isn’t some game, a complex game, to draw us all into a trap?
You don’t know, my friend.
“How did you know the man today didn’t really need our help?”
“I just did.”
And how will I teach you to know such things when I am gone?
“So we only help those who really need our help, Grandpa?”
“Yes. Only those whom we can tell really need our help.”
I will have to think of a better way to teach her to know how and when to help, but not tonight. I cannot think of a way tonight.
Soon she was asleep and the Old Man lay awake for a long time listening to the sand dissolving the tank, and when he slept he dreamed of the cities of the West and the stranger beside the road and serial killers and empty diners where there was no food anymore.
“You’re just two thousand meters away from the last known location of the tactical command post.” General Watt’s transmission was breaking up within intermittent bouts of white noise. “I have not been able to get a satellite with a working camera over the location. There are only a few operating satellites remaining, otherwise I might have been able to give you better data regarding the container’s location.”
They were passing through a wide sprawl of ancient warehouses that rose up like giant monoliths from the desert floor surrounding Barstow.
“What will this container look like?” asked the Old Man, hoping General Watt’s transmission would be understood.
“Green …” Static. “Size of a box …”
The Old Man asked the General to repeat the description, but the electronic snowstorm he listened within contained no reply. The satellite she had been bouncing the transmission off had finally disappeared far over the western horizon. The General had told them she wouldn’t be able to reach them again for another twelve hours.
The Old Man watched the silent place of massive box-like buildings. From this distance they seemed little more than dirty tombstones, but as his granddaughter maneuvered the tank up the road, he could see the telltale signs of time and wind. Metal strips had been ripped away in sections, as if peeled from the superstructure of the buildings. A place like this would have been an obvious choice for salvagers. But this is California. Everyone fled California when all the big cities had been hit. L.A. before I’d even left. San Diego a day later. But there was no sign of the box General Watt said they must find.
And what is in this box?
The Old Man shut down the tank.
They were exactly where General Watt had said they would find the tactical command post. And somewhere nearby would be the container, but there was nothing. No command post.
Dusty, wide alleyways led between the ancient warehouses.
If it was a small box, what would’ve prevented someone from merely carrying it away?
Then it must be a big box, my friend.
“Maybe it’s in one these buildings, Grandpa.”
They left the tank, feeling the increasing heat of the day rise from the ancient pavement of the loading docks.
Inside they found darkness through which dusty shafts of orange light shot from torn places in the superstructure. The Old Man clutched his crowbar tightly, stepping ahead of his granddaughter. There is a story here. A story of salvage. If you tell the story, you’ll find the salvage. He waited, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. You know part of the story. The General told you that part.
The days of the bombs had begun. Los Angeles was gone. But the Chinese, which was news to me because that must have happened after Yuma, were invading the western United States. The military, the Third Armored Division, or so General Watt said, staged its forces here in the deserts of Southern California. Supplies were air-dropped in as well as tanks and soldiers. They would counterattack the Chinese on American soil.
Imagine that.
At least they were supposed to have. But what happened in those days of bombs and EMPs and the rumors that spread like a supervirus is not clearly known and all the General can tell me is what was known. What was known before the jury-rigged, EMP-savaged communications networks that were able to