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They went ten more steps toward the tank.
“Grandpa, are we going to leave tonight, or in the morning, or when?”
“I’m not leaving tonight,” says the Old Man. “I’m too tired.”
“That’s why you need me, Grandpa.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
I need you more than you’ll possibly ever know, not because I can barely do it with the hoist and winch, but because you are the most important person in the world to me.
“That’s why,” he said simply and turned to check the heavy straps they’d used to secure the fuel drums to the side of the turret.
The tank is loaded by nightfall. She takes the keys and stuffs them in the pocket of her cargo pants.
I’ll get another hundred miles out of these drums at best. Taking her would be the most selfish thing you could do.
It would seem so, my friend.
“If you go without me, I’ll follow you, Grandpa.”
If I keep her with me, then maybe the nightmare will be powerless to harm me.
Do you think so?
Yes. And I hope so too.
“All right.”
“All right what, Grandpa?”
“We’ll leave in the morning.”
And maybe in the night I will just leave without her.
“Why not now, Grandpa? You drove most of the route we’d cover tonight in the dark last time.”
I’m tired.
Do you think you will actually sleep tonight?
No.
Then maybe it’s better to be done with the waiting. You know what you must do. Now do it, my friend.
I feel like I haven’t thought everything through.
Did you the last time? Did you have any idea what you were getting into the last time? And yet you survived.
Barely. And now I’m even considering taking her with me. Do you want the truth?
Yes, my friend. Always.
Besides not wanting the nightmare to torment me … If I admit to myself a truth I do not want to hear, then yes I am taking her with me because I feel too weak for this. Not as strong as I was Before. The others should do this, but they won’t.
Those people are trapped.
The Old Man sighed.
“Climb aboard then,” he said to her.
Her face, tiny, elfin, perfect, exploded in a brief moment of joy and was quickly replaced by determination as he helped her up onto the turret.
After all, we’ll be inside this thing. What can possibly hurt us?
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Grandpa.”
Only the young are excited about going anywhere.
Maybe it is because they are too willing to believe in what they will find where they are going, my friend. That something good might happen at any moment. Expecting it simply must.
“You must do everything I say, no matter what. Promise me you will do that.”
“I will, Grandpa.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. And you have to promise me you’ll never leave and go salvaging again without me, Grandpa.”
“I promise.”
Someday I will die and you will remember that I promised. Please forgive me when I must break that promise. I won’t want to, but death will make me. I hope you’ll understand then.
Inside the turret they strapped on their thick green helmets and plugged communications cords into their stations, the Old Man in the commander’s seat, his granddaughter in the loader’s station below him. He turned on the auxiliary power unit, the APU. He could hear their breathing over the soft dull hum of the communications net.
“I’m glad you’re with me this time,” he said and squeezed her shoulder tightly.
“Me too, Grandpa.”
Her eyes shone darkly in the red light of the interior as she stared about at all the equipment. He started the main turbine and the tank roared to life in the dark garage.
“Here we go.”
Chapter Ten (#ulink_c56e18e0-3673-52e4-a426-caabf28cfb2e)
In the night, the headlight of the tank flooded the streets with bright light. Only one woman, out late and coming home with a pushcart of salvage, saw them as they turned onto the overpass and headed north into the midnight desert. He expected someone, anyone, all of them maybe, to come rushing out and stop him. To save him from himself and his foolishness. But they passed only the woman with the pushcart and no one came out to stop them.
Are you really going to do this?
The Old Man looked down at his granddaughter. She was smiling as the tank bounced over the crumbling remains of the interstate.
It seems I already have.
The night covered them all the way past Picacho Peak, where the Old Man could no longer smell the rotting bodies of the Horde above the exhaust and heat of the tank.
But they are out there in the dirt and the scrub all the same.
“When can I see where we’re going?” asked his granddaughter over the intercom.
“It’s too dark and there is nothing to see right now.”
“Here,” he said. “Move to this seat below my knees and do not touch anything. It’s where the gunner sat.”
She unplugged her helmet cord, and after squeezing by the feet of the Old Man, she found herself looking out onto the desert floor through the targeting optics.
The Old Man drove on toward the fire-blackened remains of Gila Bend and felt they should stop, but he knew the road and knew their village was just another few hours beyond the charred dust of the place.
We can stay in our village one more night. At least it will be familiar.
When they arrived at the village, the Old Man shut down the tank and stood in the hatch looking at the collection of shacks in the darkness. He turned off the tank’s headlight and waited to hear the sounds of the desert.
This is madness. In the morning I will wake up and take us back home. Maybe no one will have missed us.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“How will we get there?”
“Aren’t you tired?”
They were rolling out their sleeping bags onto the floor of the tank.
“Not really.”
“I suppose we will drive this tank as far as it will go. After that, we will walk.”
“The lady said we needed to hurry.”
“First we must find fuel at the old fort outside Yuma. The Proving Ground it was called.”
It was quiet in the dark tank now as they settled into their bags. The Old Man left the hatch open, and through it he could see the stars above. He thought of closing the hatch but leaving it open seemed to him like a small act of bravery. As though he were preparing himself for other times when he might need more courage. As though giving into fear now would welcome an uninvited guest.
And it is still our village. There was no one here but us for all the years that we lived here and I doubt anyone’s come along since.
“That’s where you got the hot radio.”
The Old Man thought of the desert and the wasteland and the radio that had sent him off on his own. For many nights as he recovered from the sickness, those days in the wasteland had seemed a dream or a story that had happened to someone who was not him.
I was free though.
And you were scared, my friend.
I was that too.
“We’re never to go salvaging in the Proving Ground. It’s too close to Yuma. Everyone knows what happened to Yuma, Grandpa.”
The Old Man was drifting now, thinking of his days on the road and the heat of it beneath his huaraches.
“Was there really a bomb, Grandpa?”
“Yes.”
“And you saw it go off?”
“I did.”
“Then how can we go to Yuma for fuel?”
Almost asleep now, in fact probably just, the Old Man called as if from down a well, “The fort is far out in the desert, north of the city. I always told them it would be okay to salvage there. But its name was also Yuma and so they would not go.”
Soon they both slept.
At first light, familiar birds they’d heard all their lives began to sing in the cool before the heat of the day. The Old Man, lying in the tank, looked up through the open hatch and watched the last stars disappear as morning dark turned into a soft blue above them. He slid silently from the tank while his granddaughter slept.
He walked the streets of the deserted village, his home for forty years, as morning washed everything in clear gold.
We should go back today. This was foolish to start with and it is even more foolish to go on. I was still sick and I got carried away. To go all the way with no promise of fuel is …
He came to his shack. He opened his door. Only the bed and the table remained. Everything was covered in dust.
What is expected of us is too much for just an old man and his granddaughter.
When he returned to the tank, his granddaughter was opening a package of food and kicking her feet on the side of the tank as she chewed, which was a thing she did often when she ate.
I cannot remember when I had so much energy to spare that I could kick my feet as I chewed and smile and think of the day as nothing but a waiting adventure or something to be explored.
“Maybe we should go back,” he said standing in front of her.
She continued to chew.
“If we do, then we should call the lady and tell her we’re not coming, Grandpa.”
The Old Man paced the length of the tank looking for something he had no idea of.
“Would you be mad if we returned?”
“No, Grandpa. I understand. But you should call her. Tell her we’re not coming.”
