CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

The Boy had passed by the overgrown ruins of places almost familiar many times before. There had always been in him that desire to understand such places, to investigate them. But in this moment of shouting men behind him, and soon the inevitable dogs, he knew there was no time for the usual consideration of things past.

Green grass sprouted through the split asphalt of a wide avenue, the remains of an old road led up through the ruins that the Boy suspected was the other half of the Auburn that existed before the bombs. At the top of the rise, looking back toward the smoky pillars climbing over the outpost, the Boy saw the remnants of the Hard Men coming for him. Other men, ferocious lunatics, followed behind Raleigh’s riders with bellowing hounds at the ends of thick straps of leather.

Escape and evade, Boy, we done it a million times. If they’re bringing dogs, then distance is what you need. Out of sight, those dogs will start to slow down when they start searchin’ for your trail. Then you can confuse ’em.

The Boy patted Horse and knew that an outright race would put him beyond the dogs. But the Hard Men on their horses would spot his trail and the following would be easier.

He turned and started through the overgrown brush and tangle of a collapsed bridge that once crossed the road.

I’ll keep moving west, Sergeant.

He rode Horse hard for a time, working his way down a wooded ridge and following a twisting maze of dense brush and warped trees along falling ridges and a steep slope that will eventually lead into the river delta around Sacramento.

By noon he had lost the Hard Men, but his progress had been slow. Way off, back up on the ridge, he heard dogs baying, moaning as if in pain.

If they catch me, will those dogs stop their noise, satisfied at what will happen next?

Sometimes I wonder if there is any good left in this world.

He thought of the bodies and carnage of Auburn.

At sunset, he pulled out the map from its hidden place in the bearskin. Sacramento was far ahead to the west.

Behind him, he could smell woody smoke in the fading light and he wondered if it was from Auburn or the campfires of his pursuers.

It was good to be alone again.

Is that the way of my life, Sergeant? My way through this world? Alone?

But there was no answer.

Why should there be an answer, Sergeant? When you were alive we never talked about those things. We talked of food and survival, and sometimes I just listened to your stories about the way things were Before. And sometimes also, why they had to end.

You take everything with you, Boy.

Yes.

He looked at what forty years of wild, unchecked growth had made of the terrain. It was a wall through which nothing could pass undetected.

The Old Highway is maybe a mile off to my right. I’ll have a better chance evading them there.

They could be searching the road for you, Boy.

If I put as much distance tonight between myself and the hounds, by morning I’ll have a better chance.

He remembered Sergeant Presley’s hatred of “chance.”

If all you got is a chance, Boy, you ain’t got jack!

It’s all I have now, Sergeant.

He rode the highway at a trot. The night was cool and mist rose from the lowlands on both sides of the highway. Cars and trucks, forever frozen in rusty dereliction, littered the road and made him wonder, as they always did, of the stories behind and within them.

You’ll never know, Boy. I could make up a story for you like I used to. You could tell yourself a lie. But what good would it do, even if you could know how things ended for those people?

Sometimes the Boy heard himself asking, What has happened here? Sometimes the cars were jammed together, as though frozen in a single moment of waiting. Sometimes they were overturned. Sometimes they were parked by the side of the road, every door open, every window broken. What was within was gone, even down to the seats. All that was left was rusting metal and an untold story he would never hear.

He looked at the cars scattered along the highway.

It is beyond me to ever know why such things have been left the way they are.

And yet I want to know.

He rode on, long after the sliver of a moon had completed its descent. It was dark and damp and cold. In the misty gloom he saw standing water in the surrounding fields and broken buildings.

The water looked like a rug.

Before long, he had ridden in close to the skeletal towers of the old state capitol in Sacramento. He heard frogs everywhere and even the highway was submerged. He came to a bridge that had long since fallen into the muck of the dark river below and he could go no farther.

It is too dark to find a way around, Sergeant.

He looked behind him and saw nothing in the misty night.

The frogs will warn me if anyone comes along.

Sorry—he pats Horse—we can’t have fire tonight.

He draped his blanket over his friend and rolled up in his bearskin at the side of the bridge, far out along it, almost to the edge of the broken span over the swamp below.

In the milky light of morning he surveyed the bridge. There was no way to the other side. The city, twisted, bent, and broken, lay all about him, submerged in the cold water of the wide river.

The course of the river must have changed in the years since the bombs.

Or because of the bombs.

He led Horse down an off-ramp and they waded through the watery streets of a long-gone city. Windows, regularly spaced, gaped and screamed in silent horror as they passed.

My whole life I’ve wanted to explore such places. But there is nothing here now.

Is this why Sergeant Presley said no? Because there is nothing left of the things that were once here?

At noon the murk had mostly burned off and they—Horse and the Boy—had crossed over to the far side of the river on an old rail bridge that still stood. The Eighty continued west on the other side of a field.

The Boy looked back at the dead city.

I could wander you for years and what could you give me back?

Could you show me who I might have been?

And why is that so important to me?

He tries for a moment to imagine what it must have looked like—looked like with people in it. People from Before.

That night, beyond the city, after a day filled with long silences punctuated by the last lonely birds of winter, he camped next to a wall whose purpose he didn’t understand. Why it lay next to the old highway or who built it and for what he did not know.

He ate three small rabbits that he took with the rifle in the afternoon and set wild corn in front of Horse.

The world is filled with wild corn and you want nothing more, Horse. Life must be pretty good for you.

He thought of the five rounds he’d fired to take the three rabbits.

Two had been wasted.

Yes. But if I am to use the rifle I must practice with it. I must be sure of it when I need it.

He reached into his bag and took out the charcoal. He shaved it with his knife and looked at the wall.

He drew a great bridge in long, sketchy strokes that ran the length of the wall. Then he drew the skyline of the hoary city sinking into the swampy river. Below, near the gritty pavement of the old highway, he filled in the moonlit water, reflecting the shadows of the city back up at itself.

The night was bitterly cold and even the fingers of his good hand ached like those on his bad side. Later he returned to the fire and warmed himself, looking at the mural.

Was that it?

It seemed as though there should be something more.

He thought of drawing Horse. Or himself. Or even MacRaven.

But nothing seemed right.

Lying on his side drifting toward sleep, facing the hot fire, the cold at his neck, he saw the city come to life.

And he lived there.

And there was a day …

The best day ever.

He awoke to the orange light of the coals in the deep of night and saw the shadowy city rendered on the wall. He could not remember what was so good about the dream of the day in that city before the bombs. Only that it was the best, and worth having, and that he had been cheated, as though a valuable piece of salvage had been stolen from beneath him while he slept.

‘It seems as though there should be something more to the picture on the wall,’ he thought again, remembering the dream.

And as he fell back to sleep he heard, I bet the people who lived in that city thought so too, Boy. I bet they did.