CHAPTER TWENTY

In the blue water of the high mountain lake lay the rusting hulk of the bat-winged bomber from Before.

Bee Two, Boy.

The early education of the Boy by Sergeant Presley had included the identification of war machines and weapons past.

Stealth tech, Boy.

The bomber lay halfway in the crystal blue of the lake and partway onto the sandy beach of the small mountain village.

The village of the Rock Star’s People, they called themselves in their weird mix of languages.

The Rock Star’s People.

They’re little better than savages, Boy. Stone age. Look at ’em with their bows and skins. Speakin’ a little Mex, occasional English, and a whole lotta gibberish. Livin’ out here in the sticks ’cause they’re probably still afraid of the cities. At least they’re smart enough for that. But other than huntin’ and gatherin’ and these huts, it makes you wonder what they’ve been up to for the last forty years. But I’ll betchu’ they got enemies, Boy. Betchu’ that for sure.

Never get involved, Boy, because some stories have been going on long before you showed up. You don’t know their beginnings, and you might not like their endings.

Yes, you would say that also, Sergeant. And yet, here I am. There was little choice for me in the matter.

With the death of the hunters’ leader, the moments that followed the fight had seemed uncertain. The odds, thought the Boy as the leader lay dying, were slim that he would have time to get back on Horse and ride away from the circling hunters. As the moments passed, the Boy could hear pebbles trickling down the ledge behind him, knowing the bow hunters were surrounding him.

The Boy lowered his head, letting his peripheral vision do the work.

The enemy will come at you from where you can’t see him. So look there, Boy!

But in the next moment the hunters lay down their weapons.

The conversation that followed was stilted, but from what the Boy gleaned over the course of the next three days’ march, the hunters were inviting him to their village.

“Oso Cazadore,” they repeated reverently and even approached to touch the skin of the bear.

Oso Cazadore.

Now, high in the mountains, at the edge of the water, the Boy stared at the final resting place of the Bee Two Bomber.

In the three days he’d traveled with the hunters they’d kept to themselves, disappearing in ones and twos to run ahead of the main group, returning late in the night. They’d ascended a high, winding course up through steep pine forests, across white granite ledges, through snowfields ringed by the teeth of the mountains.

In that time the Boy learned they were the Rock Star’s People and little beyond that.

In that time he heard the voice of Sergeant Presley’s many warnings, teachings he was taught and which he’d intended to fully obey.

Except for one.

I will go into the cities.

I will find out what is in them.

A woven door of thatched pine branches swung upward from the bulbous top of the ancient bomber resting on the lakeshore.

And here you are, Boy, gettin’ involved. I got involved once and ended up a slave for two years.

The Rock Star was what the Boy expected her to be. From the stories he’d heard. Stories not told by Sergeant Presley, but in the campfires of the Cotter family and even the Possum Hunters.

Old.

Gray hair like strands of moss.

A rolling gait as she crossed the fuselage and descended the pillars of stones that had been laid at the bomber’s nose.

The small, deep-set eyes burned as she approached him. When she smiled, the teeth, what few there were, were crooked, with ancient metal bands.

“Come down from that animal,” she commanded.

She spoke the same English as Sergeant Presley.

If I get down from Horse, the whole village will attack me. And yet, what choice do I have? What choice have I had all along, Sergeant?

Here you are, Boy.

Here I am.

The Boy dismounted.

She approached and reached out to touch the bearskin the Boy kept wrapped about himself.

He had found a place for Sergeant Presley’s knife.

Inside, behind the skin, waiting in his withered hand.

His good hand hung near the tomahawk. The carefreeness of its disposition was merely an illusion. In a moment it could cut a wide arc about him. In a moment he’d cut free of the rush and be up on Horse and away from this place.

So you think, Boy. If only it were so easy to get un-involved from things. If only, Boy.

“Bear Killer.” She stepped back, cocking her head to one side and up at him. “That’s what the children call you. Is it true? You kill a bear?”

After a moment he nodded.

“You’re big and tall. Taller than most. But weak on that side.” She pointed toward his left. “I can tell. I know things. I keep the bombs.” She jerked her thumb back toward the water and the lurking bomber.

“Bear Killer.” She snorted.

‘If it comes,’ thought the Boy, ‘it comes now.’ His hand drifts toward the haft of the tomahawk.

“Welcome to our village, Bear Killer. You’ve rid us of an idiot for a chief. I thank you for that.” She turned back to the village and babbled in their patois. Then she left, rolling side to side until she reached the pillars, the pine-branch hatch, and disappeared once more inside the half-submerged bomber.

The Boy watched her until she was gone and wondered if indeed there were bombs, the big ones, nuclear, still lying within the plane. Waiting.

Impossible, Boy. We used ’em all up killing the world.

Rain fell in the afternoon, and that night the villagers, under clear skies, spitted a deer and gathered to watch it roast in the cold night.

A young man whose name was Jason led him to a hut made of rocks and pine. It belonged to the chief—to the man who died at the Boy’s feet.

After three days of listening to the Rock Star’s People, the Boy could at least communicate with them in small matters. But the communication was slow and halting.

Jason said that for killing the chief, the hut and all that was in it were Bear Killer’s.

There was little more than a fire pit and a dirt floor.

Horse was fed apples by the children of the village and, as was his custom, patiently endured.

Later, the venison roasted, and the village watched both him and the meat and the darkness beyond their flames. There were far more women and children than men, and even the Boy knew the meaning of such countings.

When the venison was ready, they cut a thick slice from underneath the spine and offered it, dripping and steaming, to the Boy.

When the meal ended, the Rock Star was there among them. She had been watching him for a long time. She entered the circle, standing near the fire, wrapping skins and clothing from Before about her. She was faded and worn in dress, hair, and skin. But her eyes were full of thought and planning, of command and fire.

She told a story.

The Boy followed the tale as best he could and when he seemed lost altogether, she stopped to translate it for him back into English.

“I’m from Before, Bear Killer. I spoke the proper English like I was taught in a school and all that.”

The story she told involved a group of young people pursued through the forest by a madman with a chain saw full of evil spirits. One by one, the madman catches the younglings as they flee into what they believe is an abandoned house—the house where the madman lives with other madmen. In the end there is only one youngling left. A girl, strong and beautiful, desired by all the now dead younglings. Through magic and cunning she defeats the madmen, except for the one who’d found the younglings initially. The brave girl shoots bolts of power from her hands and the Mad Man of all Mad Men, as she calls him, falls backward over a balcony in the house from the Before.

“And when she run over to the railing to see his dead body lying in the tall grass, he is gone,” the Rock Star translated to the Boy. Then, casting a weather eye into the darkness beyond their fire, the Rock Star whispered, “That madman still walks these mountains, still desires me, still takes younglings when it comes into his mind.”

The Rock Star’s People clutched their wide-eyed young. The men drew closer to the fire, to their wives, eyeing the night and the mountains that surrounded their lake.

“But he won’t come here, children.”

She paused, eyes resting on the assembly. She turned toward the mountains as if seeing his lumbering form wandering the silent halls of the forest dark even then.

“He won’t come here, children. For I am that girl who was.”

She turned and stalked off into the night.

The relief among the villagers was tangible.

In groups they returned to their huts, and for a long time the Boy stared into the fire, watching its coals.