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How will you know which is and is not a classic?
The Old Man stands before the quiet, dusty shelves inhaling their thickness and plenty, then sighing as the burden of choice overwhelms him.
A classic will be something from a time I never lived in. That way I will not be reminded of war and all that is gone because I never knew it. I’ll read about the Roaring Twenties as told by a southerner or the London fog of Dickens or even the Mississippi as it was.
I have not seen a river in forty years.
Nothing with war.
In a corner between other books he finds one that he knows is a classic, knows it from school though he cannot say whether he’d ever read it. But he knows it was a classic.
He takes it back to the office, his room, and lies down on his sleeping bag. He watches the night sky for a moment and listens to the radio playing softly on the other side of the room.
It will play all through the night, even while I am asleep. Like Before.
He opens the first page and begins to read.
Chapter Five (#ulink_a880c413-4aea-5a7e-aa90-83bfacbdd71a)
Sam Roberts had a few more hours to live.
He wanted to know how much radiation he’d absorbed in escaping the front entrance of the bunker, but the dosimeter had stopped working by the time he was clear of the massive door and the freaks in front of it.
Still, he would’ve liked to know how many rads he’d soaked up.
It was just before dawn.
He could see the lights of Tucson far off to the west, lying on the southern side of a gigantic black rock that heaved itself up from the desert floor. The pinpoints of light twinkled softly in the rising pink of first morning like tiny jewels set amid gray pillars of sun-bleached stone.
Earlier, outside Hatch, a small town that had collapsed into the drifting sands and rolling weeds, he’d stopped to scribble a message onto a piece of paper, his hands badly shaking.
‘Wouldn’t that be something,’ he’d thought. ‘To come all this way and I’m too sick to tell them the message.’
As he threw up again he tried to say, “Help me!” But no sound came out. His voice box was gone. Either scorched by the acid his stomach seemed to churn up, and that came out of him constantly, or fried by the radiation of two high-yield Chinese nuclear warheads deposited at the front door of his lifelong home forty years ago. Either way, he would never speak again. So he wrote the note. Then he added, Please stay away from me. I’m contaminated with radiation.
He watched the far city. Morning light opened the desert up to Captain Roberts. There were so many different colors. The golden sand. The pink rock. The blue sky. The red earth.
‘Best day of my life,’ he thought. ‘And I saw it all at least once’ …
He blacked out.
When he came to, it was noon.
His heartbeat pounded throughout his entire body, but it was slow and intermittent. Captain Roberts reached into his chest pocket. He took out the emergency syringe and jammed it into his thigh. His vision cleared as his heart began to race.
‘Last one,’ he thought.
On the horizon, Tucson looked gray amid the shimmering heat waves that rose above the road. Already his vision was starting to blur. ‘These injections aren’t lasting long,’ he thought.
He started the engine. The cells were below half full. He’d forgotten to set them to charge. I don’t know if it’s enough, but it’s all I have.
He took a safety pin out of the medical kit that lay sprawled across the passenger seat. He’d done a bad job of bandaging his own blisters. He pinned the message to his jumpsuit. ‘All I gotta do now,’ he thought, ‘is get close enough for them to find me.’
He gunned the engine and felt the acceleration press what was left of his thin body backward. He did his best to keep the dune buggy on the road with what little time he had left. The road shifted and swerved in the heat and sweat as his dying heart thundered out its last.
It was tough going. But he did his best.
Chapter Six (#ulink_c492e5ce-e8aa-5307-b4b8-5c193182a8b8)
The Old Man walked to the wide window of the office. Below he could see the villagers congregating in the park. Or what had once been a park. Now someone was hard at work down there preparing the ground for crops. That someone worked with a hoe, turning the bleached and hard, forty-year baked mud over into dark soil, waiting and ready for rows and eventually tiny seeds.
The Old Man watched them for a long while. When the discussion seemed to grow in intensity, he closed the book and took the elevator down, passing the silent sentry machine-gun dog, patting it as he always did, and walked through the lobby and out into the heat of the afternoon.
It will be a hot summer this year. It’s good we have these buildings. If it gets too hot I can sit down in the bottom of the garage near the tanks and it will be cool there. I can even read if I bring a light.
When he reached the discussion, he saw his son and the others debating over something one of the younger villagers had found. A man he remembered once being a boy was now waving a piece of paper in the air.
“What’d you do with him?” asked a kid the Old Man thought looked more like his father, who had not survived the first ten years, and less like his mother, who had.
He’s not a kid. He’s a man now. Even though they were all once children. They are men and women now.
Time is cruel that way. It erases us. It erases the children we once were.
“I left him there!” whined Cork Petersen.
That’s his name. We’d called him “Corky” and he would follow Big Pedro and me sometimes. Now his name is Cork.
Time.
“He’s dead anyways,” mumbled Cork.
The Old Man sidled up behind his son.
“Dad,” his son acknowledged without looking at him.
“What’s all this …” began the Old Man, and the words he knew he must use to complete the sentence escaped and ran off into the desert.
His son looked at the Old Man and then turned back to the discussion, which seemed to be about the piece of paper Cork Petersen held on to.
I’m not old. I just couldn’t … I just got lost in the middle of my words. It’s because I am still recovering from the sickness that almost took me. But I am not old.
“Cork Petersen found a dead man in a dune buggy out in the desert,” whispered his son.
The Old Man waited.
“I say we do nothing.” It was Pancho Jimenez. If anyone led the village now, it was Pancho. He had been the strongest and best at salvage in recent years.
I remember him also as a boy.
“But the note says …” grumbled Cork.
“Take care,” interrupted Pancho. “Take care of what the note says.” His voice was enough to silence the discussion as they all turned toward him. Ready to listen.
When Pancho had their attention, their full attention, he began.
“You saw the bodies along the way. You heard the Old Man’s tale of the desert. Those savages called the Horde.”
Everyone turned to look at the Old Man for the briefest moment. Uncomfortably he smiled back at them and saw in some a look of pity.
They’re surprised you’re still alive.
I also am surprised.
“We’ve found paradise.” All eyes were again on Pancho as he continued to speak. “We have found paradise now. We’re planting our gardens, late, but we are planting. We have houses, each family their own. We have an entire city to salvage from. And what happens? A man dies in the desert. Is that any of our concern? No, none at all. We have much to be concerned with and little time in which to accomplish those things we must.”
“But the message is for us,” interrupted Cork.
Pancho, patient, strong, confident in who he was, smiled.
“And that, Cork, is who we must take care of. Us.”
Everyone began to murmur.
The Old Man turned away, looking down the street, searching for his granddaughter.
Maybe I can find her and we can go salvaging in the afternoon. That would be fun if I feel up to it.
“There are worse than those people called the Horde,” proclaimed Pancho above the clamor.
“How do you know that?” someone asked.
“How do you know there isn’t?” replied Pancho.
Quiet.
“We do what that note says and we open a door we may not be able to close.”
Quieter.
“Even now,” continued Pancho, “you are saying to yourselves ‘we have weapons, the tanks, some guns left by the Army.’ Well, you don’t have an endless supply. And do you want to go down that road? Do you want conflict? No, none of you do. You want tomatoes and lemons and homes just like I do. Right now, our greatest weapon is not the Old Man’s tank or our few rifles. Right now our greatest weapon is our invisibility. Whoever sent that man wants to confirm that we are here. They picked up our broadcast, which I advise we turn off immediately, and now they want to know who we are and what we’re doing out here. If we respond to that message, who knows who we’ll be talking to. All I ask is that you consider this. The world isn’t a nice place. It hasn’t been a nice place for a long time. We answer that message and we would be unwise if we did not expect the worst. In fact, we would be stupid.”
“Says they need our help,” said Cork.
“We need help!” shouted Pancho.
More murmuring. A few comments. Cork handed the note to Pancho in defeat. Villagers drifted away. Only a few remained, all in agreement with Pancho. In agreement as he tossed the note into the wind and the paper fluttered down the street.
And then they were all gone and only the Old Man remained, invisible and unconsidered.
He went to pick up the note.
On it was written a message.
To whomever is operating the radio station at Tucson. Please tune your receiver to radio frequency 107.9 on the FM band and send us a message so that we can communicate with you. We are trapped inside a bunker and need help. Beneath that, Please stay away from me. I’m contaminated with radiation.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_e7f97918-0a86-571c-81dc-82a21573f2b0)
That night the Old Man snuck out of his room and made his way to the radio station the villagers had set up inside the Federal Building.
“Are you sure, Grandpa? Are you sure we should try to contact them?”
He raised a finger to his lips.
His granddaughter nodded, excited to be playing the game of not being found and doing things that should not be done in the dead of night while others slept.
When they reached the radio room they found it unlocked. Inside all was dark. The equipment had been turned off. The Old Man closed the door behind them and for a moment the two of them listened to the silence.
The Old Man switched on his flashlight.
“How does it work, Grandpa?”
“Power. Electronics require power. So we must find the switch or the button or the toggle that will turn it on.”
“Toggle,” she pronounced and laughed softly.
The Old Man searched and just when he had given up ever finding out how to turn on the power, his granddaughter’s thin hand darted forward.
“Is this it, Grandpa?”
The Old Man didn’t know if it was.
“Do you want to try it?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Okay then. Try it.”
She hesitated for a moment and then with only the confidence that the young possess in their movements, she flipped the switch. Soft yellow light rose behind the instruments. Green and red buttons illuminated. There was a faint scent of burning ozone.
The Old Man watched power course through the ancient technology.
After the bombs I never thought I would see such things again.
He found the frequency keypad and typed in the numbers from the slip of paper.
“Grandpa?”
The Old Man stopped.
