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.