The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River

Where is the pack?

The killers appeared out of the smoke. One had been burned, its fur singed. The big Alpha had thought so. He’d heard him yelp in pain during the chase.

The killers padded forward. Their eyes taking in the scene. The big Alpha turned, leading their gaze toward the old hangar.

You should go in there and get him out. He can’t have much left in him. We’ve run him to his hole.

But when he turned back, the killers were looking at him and he knew what would happen next. He had a memory of a distant day, high in the mountains. A memory of youth.

The two killers fell on him.

The Old Man found a locked gate at the back of the hangar. His crowbar quickly snapped the lock and he moved on, shutting the gate behind him. He picked up another crowbar from a nearby bench containing an array of tools and wedged it into the clasps of the gate so the wolves couldn’t force it open.

He lit a match and found himself in a toolshed at the back of a maintenance hangar. Outside, the wind began to howl as the fire-heated air rushed against the metal side of the building. It was getting hot.

The Old Man went quickly through the tools; most were old and brittle. Jars and cans that once contained fluids contained nothing more than powder and dust. When he smelled smoke, he looked back through the gate and saw debris piles near the entrance to the hanger igniting. Smoke and ash trails followed by dancing sparks were blowing into the hangar.

The Old Man went back into the darkness, lit another match, and made his way through shelves that had fallen like dominoes. They crumbled to dust as he climbed atop them. In the end, he wallowed waist high through rotten timber.

A perfect place for the brown spider.

This place is on fire. Would you rather burn or die of poison?

He remembered the death of Big Pedro.

At the back wall he found a door marked “Men” and smashed it inward with his crowbar, splintering the rotten wood. Inside he found a toilet, a urinal, and finally an industrial shower with a large grate beneath.

This might lead somewhere.

He pried out the grate, and the bolts gave away with a dusty smuph in the darkness. Below he could see an old sewer. He took his shirt from off his face and wrapped it around a piece of the broken door. He counted his matches as he lit the torch. He had three left.

The floor of the sewer below ran off toward the front of the hangar. The route he’d come from. It also continued in the opposite direction.

Maybe the sewer had once been disgusting. The two-year nuclear winter that followed the bombs had sent rushing torrents of black ash flushing through every hole and channel in the thaw that finally happened. Followed by forty years of abandonment, the sewer was relatively clean and dry.

Once inside, it was dark and quiet and only the guttering of the torch made any sound.

Above, the flames had gotten into the roof of the structure. Metal rivets twisted and popped.

I had better find a way out. This torch won’t last long.

He began to walk toward what he hoped was south, going slowly, checking the floor and the ceiling. He didn’t want to fall into any holes or cracks. The tunnel ran straight for a hundred yards then turned sharply to the right. After ten feet he came to a large grate that opened on a dark emptiness. He coughed and heard an echo. He put the torch down and worked at the rusty bolts of the grate and just as it gave way, falling outward into the blackness, his torch went out.

Blind, the Old Man waited as the grate clanged onto a floor not far down.

There could be light. A crack in the ceiling or some such.

After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could make out details. Soft orange light filtered down from a high circle in the ceiling. The air smelled of concrete. He edged his feet forward, checking for a drop beyond the grate. There was one. Below the circle of light, in the middle of the darkness, he could see a patch of dusty pavement.

He lit one of his matches and inspected the floor. Behind him, a loud rending of metal was followed by a crash. A hot gust of wind rushed down at his back seconds later, and the match went out.

Now I have two matches.

How much of the floor did you see?

Not enough. I can’t remember.

The Old Man got down on his hands and knees and edged toward the drop. He looked hard into the darkness below. Moving his hands about, he looked for something to toss onto the floor below, but the floods had swept the tunnel clear. He took a water bottle and emptied it. The water felt warm and did little to quench his thirst. His back and shoulder muscles spasmed painfully as he lifted his head to drain the bottle.

Maybe you have hurt yourself.

He dropped the empty water bottle into the darkness below and heard it immediately bounce around on the floor.

The ground is not far.

Gently he lowered himself down and found the floor far sooner than he expected. He swept the ground, feeling for the water bottle but it was gone. Cautiously he walked toward the circle of light below the opening in the ceiling high above.

Looking up he could tell it was a manhole. High above. On a street maybe. He could see nothing beyond its thin light.

How do I get up there?

There are still the wolves to consider.

The Old Man turned in a circle.

The room is big. A cave almost. Somewhere there must be a ladder to the manhole.

Moving cautiously, he used his hands to find the far wall. Once he found it he moved along the sides of the wall until he came to a rung mounted there. He pulled on it and the rung tore loose from the wall with a rotten metallic puff of dust and concrete. He found the next one higher up and again the rung came out in bits of concrete.

I cannot trust the others.

Someone’s poor workmanship has made this place your grave.

There is another way out.

He continued along the wall. He came to one corner, then another, and halfway down the wall, the opening he had come through. Another corner and halfway down the next wall he found a new opening. It was darker than the rest of the room and he felt a cool draft of air.

He lit a match and scanned the dark ahead. It was a large tunnel with a channel running down the center of it. Just inside the wall were written large black letters that trailed off into the darkness.

He checked the entrance to the tunnel for signs or a placard that might indicate where the tunnel went and just as the match was about to burn the tips of his fingers, he moved to the other side of the entrance looking for some kind of sign that might indicate the purpose of the tunnel. On the floor a pile of boxes were stacked in a corner. Then the match went out.

Damn.

He stood still in the darkness.

I am down to my last match. What were those boxes? I saw letters. Like the military. A long series of letters and numbers.

It could be debris. Just empty boxes piled in a corner.

But the floods after the thaw would have swept them away.

They swept them here. Here is “away.”

I have to check.

It is your last match. If the boxes contain nothing then you will be stuck. You will have to climb the rungs.

I will light part of the boxes on fire. I can tear off a flap.

He moved next to where he thought he had seen the boxes in the last moments of match light. When at first he didn’t find them he panicked fearing he’d imagined the boxes. Soon his waving hands caught the side of a box.

Cardboard.

Watch out for the brown spider.

He ran his hands over the box. It seemed dusty but whole.

No floods have touched this box.

The four flaps were open and he gently tore one away.

He took out his last match. A nightmare of dropping the match or even breaking it, flashed across his mind. He shut out the evil thought and took hold of the match between his thumb and forefinger.

He struck the match and lit the flap.

There were three boxes on the floor. Military boxes. He had seen their kind before. Such things were often found salvaging.

“MRE” was written on the side and then a long serial number. He tore the other three flaps off the top box and made a small fire. Nearby he found a tumbleweed that had fallen into the sewer and broke it up, adding it to the tiny flames.

It won’t last long.

He went to the top box and looked in. Three brown plastic packages lay on the bottom. He had also seen these before. In the early days. MREs. Survival rations.

The second box contained a five-quart plastic canteen that felt full. It was wrapped in camouflage material and had fasteners.

It must attach to a pistol belt.

A couple of wool blankets lay beneath the canteen but when the Old Man shook them out he found a centipede. He slammed his huarache down on it angrily.

He ripped up the two boxes and added them to the already fading fire. He pulled the third box close to him.

The centipede looked dead.

It is now.

He added it to the fire just to be sure.

He opened the box. Inside he found a military flashlight and many batteries. He also found a small penknife.

He tried the flashlight. It was dead. He unscrewed the bottom of the flashlight and threw the dead batteries off into the darkness and tried two new ones. A cone of yellow light erupted cleanly into the darkness ending in an oval against the wall. He had a flashlight.

The fire guttered to wispy ashes. The Old Man sat in the cool darkness for a moment and then clicked on the light with a dry chuckle.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MAN IS INCAPABLE OF PEACE. Carved into the concrete wall of the old sewer, each blackened letter rose three feet high. Someone had used a blowtorch to etch the message against the wall of the tunnel that led away from the big room.

The Old Man’s light played across the words as he considered their meaning.

He’d eaten an entire MRE. It had been two days since the snake on the road. The water in the canteen tasted stale and he poured it out, filling it again with the water from his bottles.

He ran his fingers over the letters. The blowtorch had left melted waves when it traveled over the surface of the wall.

He had a steady hand.

How do you know it’s a “he”?

It feels like a “he.”

Someone did this after the bombs. Not long ago. Maybe five years. Ten at the most.

How do you know?

The boxes.

He is right. Was right. Man is incapable of peace. What’s left of the world confirms that.

So he came down here. Spent all the time that you and the village have been surviving, barely, and carved these words no one will ever see?

These words will be here long after I have gone. Long after my granddaughter’s granddaughters. The hieroglyphs in the pyramids were thousands of years old.

So why? Why do this?

To tell the story. Maybe a warning.

To who?

Whoever comes next.

So who’s to say he’s right?

He is, I guess. I don’t know that I will be around to argue.

Do you agree?

The Old Man considered the world above. The frozen ground after the bombs. The ones who died of radiation sickness. The hunger. What it looked like when the United States ended in his rearview mirror that day at the beginning of his present life.

He rolled up the MREs and the bullet-less pistol along with the empty bottles in his blanket. He added the other two green wool blankets after inspecting them thoroughly for more centipedes. He shined his new flashlight down the tunnel, enjoying its power and clarity. There were more words written farther along.

I wonder what else he had to say.

The Old Man continued down the tunnel and when he came to the next message he read: THERE CAN NEVER BE TWO ANSWERS TO THE SAME QUESTION.

Further on he read: WE DIDN’T BELIEVE THOSE WHO HAD SWORN TO KILL US.

WE TRIED TO FIRE GOD.

POWER IS NEVER SATISFIED.

BEWARE OF ANYONE WHO WANTS TO MAKE DECISIONS FOR YOU.

PEOPLE WILL TELL LIES TO GET WHAT THEY WANT.

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION LEADS TO DEATH.

CITIES BURN DOWN.

FREE WILL WAS THE GREATEST GIFT EVER OFFERED. GOD IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT WE DID WITH IT. WE ARE.

EVERY PLACE IS THE SAME.

EVERYTHING YOU DO WILL BE FORGOTTEN.

CHILDREN ARE THE ONLY THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND.

CHILDREN ARE SMARTER THAN YOU THINK.

HATE FIRE AND OTHER THINGS THAT HURT YOU.

HATE IS NOT WRONG WHEN WHAT YOU HATE IS WRONG.

HISTORY HAS LIED TO US.

THE GOOD GUYS DIDN’T WIN.

DON’T LET SOMEONE SPEND MONEY WHO NEVER EARNED IT.

DON’T LET ANYONE BUT A SOLDIER TELL YOU HOW TO FIGHT A WAR.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO GO TO WAR, KILL EVERYONE.

ROCK STARS, ACTORS, AND POLITICIANS DON’T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING.

TEACHERS, ARCHITECTS, AND MOTHERS KNOW A LOT MORE THAN YOU THINK.

THE YOUNG DISCOVERING THE WORLD FEEL LIKE CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. THEY IGNORE THE INDIANS WHO HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

PEER PRESSURE IS WHEN YOU DECIDE TO LOB A FEW WARHEADS AT THIS WEEK’S NAZI BECAUSE CNN TOLD YOU TO.

IT ONLY TAKES A BULLET TO SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE NAPOLEON, HITLER, POL POT, STALIN, SADDAM HUSSEIN.

PEOPLE DON’T HATE EACH OTHER. THEY HATE EACH OTHER’S IDEAS.

BEWARE OF THE SELF-LOATHING GOVERNMENT.

And finally: VISIT THE LIBRARY AT FORT TUCSON.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

On the other side of the manhole at the end of the hall of messages, the Old Man found a moonlit night. The air smelled of desert and sage. The cool wind that blew through the place had a faint tinge of char, though the fire that had happened here happened long ago.

Blackened wooden frames rose up on all four sides of the intersection. Desert sand had blown across the streets. He walked to a mailbox and sat down with his back against it. He hadn’t slept since the night under the bridge.

How many days ago?

Who cares.

What about the wolves?

The tunnel went for several miles. If they survived the fire I doubt they’ll come this far looking for me. Anyway I am too tired to care.

He unrolled his blankets on the sidewalk and placed his items on them. He started a small fire from charwood he found inside the ruins of a building. For a moment, standing there, he wondered what the use of the building had once been.

What was the story of this place? If I knew, there might be salvage and then I could head home.

But the fire had made it unrecognizable and whatever had once gone on there was lost.

He opened an second MRE and ate Chicken à la King. He put hot sauce on it. He’d found a little bottle of Tabasco inside a packet that contained plasticware and a book of matches. He drank some more water and added wood to the fire. He rolled up in his own blanket and one of the wool ones.

I wonder about Fort Tucson.

What …

He didn’t move the whole night. When he awoke, his side was numb and stiff. His shoulders ached with hot fire and his wrists throbbed. His chest felt heavy, and when he sat up, a morning cough turned into a prolonged hacking in which his vision narrowed to a tiny pinpoint. Each convulsion caused the needles in his shoulders to scream with anger.

The fire had gone out long ago.

It’s good the wolves didn’t find me. I might not have woken up for the feast.

For a moment he was afraid he might be sick.

Have I gone too far? Exhausted myself?

But he sat up and then got to his feet. He drank water and walked up and down the sidewalk. He considered plundering the mailbox but he was too tired and sore.

He banged on its side. It sounded hollow.

He rolled up his things slowly and mixed a packet of cocoa in a water bottle with some water from the canteen. He ate a cookie.

I feel better.

It was silent in the stubbly remains of the burnt town.

This must be the place I was thinking of.

It burned to the ground. Long ago. Mirrored Sunglasses was right.

How could he be right if he was blind?

Maybe he wasn’t blind.

The Old Man began heading south down the street. At the next intersection, a half-burnt sign that had fallen down among the charred support beams of a building looked familiar.

I know those letters.

But those are just the middle or last ones.

For a long moment he tried to remember what business they were associated with, but in the end he couldn’t.

Coffee, maybe.

How long has it been since you had coffee?

Years. I remember the night I married my wife. Someone gave us a can. Something salvaged from an RV deep inside the Great Wreck. I can’t remember who.

Floyd? Big Pedro?

I can’t remember. But the next morning after the ceremony, I woke up early. She was still asleep. I made coffee and woke her up. I remember lying on our bed in the shack, late morning because I didn’t go out that day to salvage, the village said I couldn’t. I remember thinking: So this is life? This isn’t bad. Sitting with a woman who loves me. Having coffee.

I think I got over the world ending that morning.

You should tell your granddaughter about that memory.

Yes. I should.

The Old Man looked again at the sign amid the burned ruins. Once it had sat atop the building. When the fire collapsed the roof it had come crashing down.

It was a newer business. Toward the end of civilization. A chain. This town was old, so I must be on the outskirts of it. They built these new ones on the outskirts. Maybe there’ll be some salvage farther on.

He walked deeper into the ruins. He passed old cars sitting on rusty rims that had burned in the fire. There were no skeletons in them. In one he found a pair of dice that had melted to a dashboard.

When Phoenix and Tucson went, people must have run away, fearing the radiation.

At noon after wandering down a long street of burnt wood and sand, he came to an open square. He sat down and ate some peanut butter from the MRE. It was dry.

There’s nothing here.

In his mind he tried to picture the town. The highway that ran back to the village would be on the south side of it. It was here that the two major highways once met and continued on south.

I’ve come a long way and I haven’t found anything. I am still cursed.

By now the village must think you’re dead.

He wondered if that were true.

What is the story of these places? I used to be so good at finding their stories. I could find a shed or trailer or a wreck and know where the salvage was hidden. I was good at it then. What happened to me? I should have gone through that mailbox.

You’re not cursed, you’re lazy.

What about the writing in the tunnel?

Maybe it was done before the bombs.

The boxes?

Maybe they don’t go together.

Here is what I think. Ready? Someone lived here. Lives here maybe even now. Or nearby. They wrote the words down in the tunnel as a warning to whomever comes next.

Whomever?

Not us. We are finished. We are just the survivors. But someday a society will happen. He left them a message. Telling them where we went wrong.

As he saw it?

Yes.

So what?

Down one of the streets he spied a building more intact than the rest. It had walls. He stood up and adjusted his bandolier of blankets and moved off toward the building, the sound of his huaraches the only noise in the desert air.

So what? I will tell you. Whatever he made those carvings with was a piece of equipment the village could use. It was some sort of industrial blowtorch. The village could make things with a tool like that.

Those use gas.

He must have lots of it. He’s out wasting it writing on walls. He must have loads of it. The boxes of supplies he left behind? That’s not a man who is worried about tomorrow’s rice.

He came to the building at the end of the street. It was made of cinder blocks. He turned the corner and came upon more buildings made of the same material.

The fire had destroyed everything inside. But the shade was nice.

These walls are still good. A roof and I could live here.

Broken bottles and glass littered the ground.

This must have been a liquor store. The bottles exploded in the fire.

Once he guessed it was a liquor store he found the debris where the counter must have been. A melted plastic register at the bottom of it. He saw a few coins encased within the hardened plastic.

Whoever the writer is, he must have supplies. Maybe the village could trade with him. Or maybe he is lonely and might like to come live with us.

He walked down the row of burned-out concrete buildings.

This was some sort of market he said at one, a small one. Maybe that one was a clothing store. Farther on he found a barbershop. He could tell because the big iron chairs had survived the fire. He combed the store and found a pair of blackened scissors. He tucked them in his blanket and moved on. The last building was large. It was on the corner of the block.

This was an old movie theater. Built before I was a child. This must have been the center of town back in the old days. Not a megaplex like near the end. This was a theater with only one screen.

He walked in and found the auditorium. The seats had all burned and the screen was gone. All that remained of the projectionist booth were the two square windows through which the projector had shown. The floor had collapsed onto the concession stand.

For a long while the Old Man stood in the quiet, listening to the ticks the debris made as the heat of the day began to fade.

I think I will rest here today and tonight. It’s probably best to find the highway in the morning and head west back to the village. There isn’t any salvage between here and there.

He set up his camp and gathered wood. He spent the rest of the day resting in the shade. He went to bed early and awoke after midnight. The night air was cool and he smelled rain coming.

In the morning I will find where the two highways meet and head back along the Eight to the village.

Late in the morning he found the Y where the two ruined highways merged into one heading south to Tucson. He also found the remains of six bodies stretched out on charred wooden boards, each in the shape of an X. Their skin leathery and mummified by the desert heat. Their socket-less eyes and openmouthed rictus made the Old Man step back.

Had they been alive when they’d been left here?

All the bodies faced south and east toward Tucson.

On the ground, thousands of rust-colored handprints were stamped into the old pavement of the highway.

Beyond the bodies, melted into the road in the same blackened writing from the tunnel, was the word SAFETY. A large arrow pointed down along the center of the highway toward Tucson.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The stretch between the Y and Tucson was a long road. It was interrupted by only one landmark he could remember. Of all the names of the past he’d forgotten, he remembered the name Picacho Peak. It was a tall, rocky outcrop that rose straight up out of the desert floor. A lone mountain in an expanse of flatland alongside the highway. It lay between the Old Man and Tucson.

The Old Man stood at the Y considering the messages and their conflict.

The bodies are old, maybe a few years. The carving in the road, who knew.

But the bodies are newer than the carving.

He started down the on-ramp leading to Tucson.

“Safety” means salvage.

Unless whoever left the bodies went there also.