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He dreamed of lions playing on distant beaches at sunset. His granddaughter was right next to him, watching, both of them silent. Her little hand in his old hand.
She was going out again. In the dark, she gathered all the tools she would need, and when she found the claw hammer her grandfather had let her carry, she placed it in her belt. It was like having him with her. She needed that.
On the way to the cantina for the tea that the old women made while they fried the sweet dough, she felt the cold earth on her toes. This was the best time of day, she thought. This was the time when they would meet and she would go out with him to salvage.
She looked at his shed as she had every morning, its silent, gray, unlived in look a memorial to her grandfather.
It’s a good thing. That way you will remember everything he taught you. You will need it out there.
But as she looked this morning, she saw the wispy smoke in the chimney of his shed and she was angry.
Someone has moved in! It’s too soon …
She charged toward the shed door, intending to wake the village with her rebuke at whoever had taken her grandpa’s shed as his own. But then she was running and hoping. Hoping he had come back.
Like she knew he would.
She found him sweaty and hot atop his cot, mumbling in his sleep. She kissed him but he did not recognize her in his fever. His body felt thin and gaunt.
She hurried back to her parents’ door, telling all in one burst that he had returned. Then to the kitchen to tell the women.
Back at the shed, her father knelt by the side of the cot, crying and talking softly to the Old Man. She would nurse him back to health. She would make him drink soup. They needed to kill one of the chickens. Then when he was well, they would go out again to salvage, and then she too was crying.
Her little brother came running to her as he always did.
“There is something on the road. Something wonderful.” He pulled her through the lanes of the village to the edge of the highway.
Alone and in pairs, the villagers approached the tank atop the hill as the morning sun rose behind it. She didn’t care. Even though it was the greatest salvage ever, it was nothing compared to what she cared about.
EPILOGUE (#ulink_cd6a300b-1727-5330-879e-893f21dcadce)
The Chief Excavator stood atop the scaffolding, the wind blowing at his jacket. He stepped back from the hole he had just made with the cutting tool.
“It’s your turn.”
The Doctor of Antiquities stepped forward. He had campaigned long and hard for this day. Now that it was upon him, he didn’t want to go through with it. From theory to paper, to committees and hearings, it had been one thing. The game of academics. But now those questions would be answered. He would have to find something new to uncover because the riddle of the tank would be solved.
His heart beat rapidly as he moved his light toward the opening, his head close behind. Inside, a wrapped body was the first thing he saw. He knew it was a body. The first residents of the reoccupation of Old Tucson, the foundation of their culture, had prepared their bodies in the same manner. But those bodies had all been found in the graveyards of Starr Pass.
“It’s true,” he mumbled.
“You were right?” asked the Chief Excavator.
The Doctor stuck his head and light back in the hole.
“It’s a body. Probably an early warlord. Maybe the first to conquer the area. There is something on top of the body. A book perhaps.”
A strong wind, a danger at this altitude, gusted past the Doctor’s head and turned the ancient book to fragments, floating and swirling about the inside of the tank.
“Looked like a book, I should say.”
“Any clue how they got the tank to the top of the tower?” asked the Chief Excavator. The Doctor stepped back and pulled a plastic sheet over the opening to prevent further wind damage.
“We’ll never know how they did that.” He took in the panorama of the world’s oldest still-populated city. Towers and buildings raced toward the heights above, the Space Elevator beyond that, its thin diamond line tracing away into the sky above.
“That was never the point of this project. We wanted to know who was in here. It’s our city’s oldest monument and no one knows a thing about it.”
“So who was he?”
“Can we ever know? Probably not. We will make some guesses from what we know about the survivors of that period. But we can never know for sure.”
“So we can just guess a little better, is that it?”
The Doctor put his hand on the tank, feeling its ancientness.
“I can say one thing.”
“What?” asked the reporter who’d come out to the historic district to cover the story.
“Whoever put him here, in a war machine of the period, which was impossible as we know it by their standards after the catastrophe, to hoist a multiton vehicle to the top of this tower, whoever it was, loved him very much. He was very important to them. I can say that.”
INTERMEZZO (#ulink_96b3ed15-0e30-5aa7-b625-1bd4c6b5f977)
For those who loved
The Old Man and the Wasteland,
You will find this novel a bit different.
This time the Apocalypse is personal.
I thank you in advance for this brief indulgence.
God willing, we may yet hear more of the Old Man.
PART TWO (#ulink_896726f4-9bc9-509f-988f-06069e7a04a5)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_377bf720-9926-544b-84bd-de6f931697e6)
You take everything with you.
That is the last lesson. The last of all the lessons. The last words of Staff Sergeant Presley.
You take everything with you, Boy.
The Boy tramped through the last of the crunchy brown stalks of wild corn, his weak left leg dragging as it did, his arms full. He carried weathered wooden slats taken from the old building at the edge of the nameless town. He listened to the single clang of some long unused lanyard, connecting against a flagpole in the fading warmth of the quiet autumn morning.
He knew.
Staff Sergeant Presley was gone now.
The last night had been the longest. The old man that Staff Sergeant Presley had become, bent and shriveled, faded as he gasped for air around the ragged remains of his throat, was gone. His once dark, chocolate brown skin turned gray. The muscles shriveled, the eyes milky. There had been brief moments of fire in those eyes over the final cold days. But at the last of Staff Sergeant Presley there had been no final moment. All of him had gone so quickly. As if stolen. As if taken.
You take everything with you.
The cold wind thundered against the sides of Gas Station all night long as it raced down from mountain passes far to the west. It careened across the dry whispering plain of husk and brush through a ravaged land of wild, dry corn. The wind raced past them in the night, moving east.
A week ago, Gas Station was as far as Staff Sergeant Presley could go, stopping as if they might start again, as they had so many times before. Gas Station was as far as the dying man could go. Would go.
I gotcha to the Eighty, Boy. Now all you got to do is follow it straight on into California. Follow it all the way to the Army in Oakland.
Now, in the morning’s heatless golden light, the Boy came back from hunting, having taken only a rabbit. Staff Sergeant Presley’s sunken chest did not rise. The Boy waited for a moment among the debris and broken glass turned to sandy grit of Gas Station, their final camp. He waited for Sergeant Presley to look at him and nod.
I’m okay.
I’ll be fine.
Get the wood.
But he did not. Staff Sergeant Presley lay unmoving in his blankets.
The Boy went out, crossing the open space where once a building stood. Now, wild corn had grown up through the cracked concrete pad that remained. He crossed the disappearing town to the old wooden shamble at its edge, maybe once a barn. Working with his tomahawk he had the slats off with a sharp crack in the cool, dry air of the high desert. Returning to Gas Station, he knew.
Staff Sergeant Presley was gone now.
The Boy crossed the open lot. Horse looked at him, then turned away. And there was something in that dismissal of Horse that told the Boy everything he needed to know and did not want to.
Staff Sergeant Presley was gone.
He laid the wood down near the crumbling curb and crossed into the tiny office that once watched the county road.
Staff Sergeant Presley’s hand was cold. His chest did not rise. His eyes were closed.
The Boy sat next to the body throughout that long afternoon until the wind came up.
You take everything with you.
And …
The Army is west. Keep going west, Boy. When you find them, show them the map. Tell them who I was. They’ll know what to do. Tell them Staff Sergeant Lyman Julius Presley, Third Battalion, 47th Infantry, Scouts. Tell them I made it all the way—all the way to D.C., never quit. Tell them there’s nothing left. No one.
And …
That’s the North Star.
And …
Don’t let that tomahawk fly unless you’re sure. Might not get it back.
And …
These were all towns. People once lived here. Not like your people. This was a neighborhood. You could have lived here if the world hadn’t ended. Gone to school, played sports. Not like your tents and horses.
And …
There are some who still know what it means to be human—to be a society. There are others … You got to avoid those others. That’s some craziness.
And …
“Boy” is what they called you. It’s the only thing you responded to. So “Boy” it is. This is how we …
Make camp.
Hunt.
Fight.
Ride Horse.
Track.
Spell.
Read.
Bury the dead.
Salute.
For a day the Boy watched the body. Later, he wrapped Staff Sergeant Presley in a blanket; blankets they had traded the Possum Hunters for, back two years ago, when their old blankets were worn thin from winter and the road, when Staff Sergeant Presley had still been young and always would be.
At the edge of the town that once was, in the golden light of morning, the Boy dug the grave. He selected a spot under a sign he could not spell because the words had faded. He dug in the warm, brown earth, pushing aside the yellowed, papery corn husks. The broken and cratered road nearby made a straight line into the west.
When the body was in the grave, covered, the Boy waited. Horse snorted. The wind came rolling across the wasteland of wild corn husks.
What now?
You take everything with you.
Horse.
Tomahawk.
Blankets.
Knife.
Map.
