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“I’ll need to explain that later. I only have a limited time to communicate with you before the satellite I’m currently hijacking disappears over the Pacific horizon. Find the container and get it open. I’ll explain what you’ll need to do once you’ve obtained the supplies.”
Why do I have the feeling bad news has made an appointment?
Because you are cautious, my friend. And right now is the time to be cautious. So if you are cautious, you are doing well.
If we were on the boat I dreamed of last night, Santiago, seeing the flying fish jump, watching our lines, waiting for the big fish that was like a monster to come up from the deep to fight him together, you would say such things to me when my confidence was low.
Confidence can work both ways, my friend.
Yes, there is that.
That is not important now. Right now you need to find this box, my friend. Later you can decide how you feel about the bad news that you fear might be inside.
There is a story here also. A story of salvage.
The Old Man searches the gloom of the warehouse and sees very little. He smells wood smoke and decay from long ago.
Dead animals. Dried blood. Huddled bodies. Decay.
“Go to the tank, please, and bring me back the flashlight,” he whispers to his granddaughter.
When she returns, he scans the interior of the warehouse with the beam. Its light is weak and barely penetrates the dark. All batteries are old now in these many years after the bombs.
They walk forward into the gloom. She has brought a flashlight for herself also and he watches her beam move with energy, like her, never staying in any one place for too long, also like her. His beam is slow and searching. He finds the remains of the campfire in the center of the warehouse before she does. It was a large fire.
Around it are storage racks and iron beams, arranged as though many might sit and watch the fire through long winter nights that must have seemed unending and as though the entire world was frozen forever.
I know those nights.
I know those fire-watching nights.
I am always hungry when I think back on them and the howling wind that was constant.
You were very hungry then.
The whole world must have been hungry.
But there is no box here.
They search the building, even shining their lights into the high recesses of the fractured roof.
There is nothing.
In the next building, the centermost of the three, they find the remains of the same style bonfire, and she, his granddaughter, on the farthest wall, at the back of the massive warehouse, finds the drawings.
Taken in parts they are merely a collection of scribblings.
Stick figure people. A Man-Wolf. Slant-Eyed Invaders waving guns. Mushroom clouds. Stick figure people who wear the wide-brimmed hat. Like that Roadside Killer. Stick figure people with spikes that come from the tops of their misshapen heads. Many dead Spike Heads. The bonfire. The Hat People stare into it.
“Who are they, Grandpa?”
Her voice startles him in the gloom beyond the cone of light he stares into, trying to know the meanings of these scribblings.
“I don’t know.”
He follows the drawings from left to right and finds no mention of the container.
He finds they are a people. A people who wore hats like the one the Roadside Killer wore. A people surrounded by decay who waited through the long winter after the bombs and stared into fire.
A people like his village. The same and different.
Mushroom clouds.
The Man-Wolf leads them all away.
Leads them toward the Slant-Eyed Invaders who wave guns and trample over other stick figures beneath their stick feet.
“I don’t know,” he says again, his voice swallowed within the quiet.
And he realizes he is all alone.
“Where are you?” he calls out.
From high above he hears her voice.
“I found a ladder, Grandpa.” She is straining to pull herself up. “If it leads to the roof, I can look around and see where the box is.”
He shines his light about and can see nothing of her.
His mind thinks only of rusted metal and snapping bolts that pull away from crumbling walls with a dusty smuph.
And falling.
A moment later he hears metal banging on metal and knows it to be the sound of a crowbar smashing against a door. The sound is a familiar cadence to him and reminds him for a moment of the comforts one finds in what one does. The music of salvage.
He shines his light high into the rafters and finds her against the ceiling.
She is so small.
She is so high up.
I regret all of this.
Her crowbar gives that final smash he knows so well, when the wielder knows what must give way will give way with the next strike, and a frame of light shoots down within the darkness, illuminating the Old Man.
“I’m through, Grandpa!”
No one will ever stop you will they?
“I’m going up, Grandpa.”
Please be safe!
A few minutes later, the longest minutes of the Old Man’s life, he can hear her voice shouting down into the darkness in which he stands.
“I see it, Grandpa! It’s on the roof of another building. It’s very big.”
Later, after her descent, in which he can think of nothing but her falling and knowing he will try to catch her and knowing further that both his arms will be broken and that it doesn’t matter as long as he saves her so he must catch her, they climb again onto the roof of the other building.
The yawning blue sky burns above their heads as they crawl out onto the wide hot roof.
The roof is bigger than a football field.
Along a far edge, the container, its parachute little more than scrappy silk rags, sinks into the roof.
The Old Man approaches cautiously, feeling the thinness of the roof beneath his feet. He waves for her to stand back and let him go on alone.
When she obeys, he proceeds, one cautious foot after the other, ready to fling himself backward onto the burning floor of the roof.
At the container he finds the heavy lock.
He knows this kind of lock. He has broken it many times and if one knows how to use a crowbar, the design of the container and the position of the lock will do most of the work.
The Old Man knows.
Forgetting the precarious and illusory roof, thinking only of salvage, blinded by salvage, he breaks the lock.
The doors swing open on a rusty bass note groan.
The Old Man smells the thick scent of cardboard.
Inside, stacked to the ceiling of the container are thin boxes, one lying atop another, long and flat.
He takes hold of the topmost and drags it away from the container onto the roof and back a bit where he feels it will be safer to stand.
Bending over the box he reads, seeing his granddaughter’s little girl shadow lengthen next to his, as the day turns past noon. He reads the words the military once printed on these long flat boxes.
“Radiation Shielding Kit, M-1 Abrams MK-3, 1 ea.”
Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_07c27140-e730-5249-8938-7363b5e8c34b)
“By the time communication with the outside world had completely failed,” explained General Watt after they’d re-established contact, “fourteen military-grade nuclear weapons had already been used within Colorado alone. I determined that it would be beneficial to you and your team to obtain a shielding kit in order to protect you, once you enter Colorado.”
The Old Man watched the radio, thinking.
He held the mic in his trembling fingers, his weathered thumb as far away as possible from the transmit button.
“We have no idea …” General Watt paused, her voice tired. “I have no idea how bad things are above. But I wanted you to have some protection. Just in case. That’s the reason I directed you to obtain the Radiation Shielding Kit.”
“And was that also the reason you didn’t tell us what we were going to find until we found it?”
You know the reason, my friend. You are angry at someone because they lied to you in order to save their life.
I am angry because …
Because of that, my friend. Because of that, and nothing more.
“Is there anything else you’re not telling us, General?” asked the Old Man.
“No,” replied General Watt. “There is nothing. I know very little beyond our limited access to a failing satellite network. In truth …”
Pause.
Static.
The Old Man saw the satellite in his mind, aging, drifting steadily out over the Pacific horizon once more.
“The truth, General.”
“Call me Natalie.”
“The truth, Natalie,” said the Old Man softening his tone.
“The truth is, I don’t even know if this plan will work. It is merely our last chance. I didn’t want to tell you about the Radiation Shielding Kit because I estimated that you might not want to become involved if you knew there was a possibility of being exposed to high levels of radiation. Though I have no contact with those on the surface, I hypothesize that a fear of radiation poisoning has evolved into a healthy respect, if not outright avoidance policy, among postwar communities.”
Sometimes she sounds so detached. As if the world is little more than mathematical chances and equations that must be solved so that an answer can be found.
And hoped for, my friend. After so many years of living underground, what else might she have except some numbers that give her hope?
And if I know she is lying to me, why are we continuing down this road?
Because you don’t know if she is lying to you.
“All right, General,” said the Old Man. “I’m sorry. Thank you for trying to protect us.”
I should turn back now. We …
“Natalie.”
“Natalie,” agreed the Old Man.
Natalie.
“The shielding kit will protect you through most of southern Colorado. All you have to do is get close to the collapsed backdoor entrance and then aim the Laser Target Designator at the back of the mountain. We’ll do the rest.”
The rest.
Do I want to know what the rest is? Not today. There has been too much already for just today.
