CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ahead we will find places I once knew long ago and have forgotten since. And I can only imagine what time and the bombs have done to them. I can only imagine that my past memories have changed to present nightmares.

Yes, my friend.

The tank trundled down a long, dirty, brown slope. In the distance they could see a strand of Highway 10 cutting the landscape in two.

It too is still there.

His granddaughter, ahead in the separate compartment containing the driver’s couch, steered the tank across the crumbling dirt slope. Often he needed to remind her to slow down.

I feel like we’ve gone off the edge of something. The edge of everything we’ve ever known. Did you feel that way, Santiago, as you pulled at the oars farther and farther out into the gulf, watching the color of the water deepen until it was dark and not blue? Did you too feel like you were going off the edge of something?

And yet I knew it all once and long ago.

Memories of the cities of the West began to come and stand around the Old Man like mourners near an open grave.

You must forget all this melancholy and think only of the facts. You have enough fuel to reach China Lake. If you don’t find fuel there, then crossing Death Valley into Area 51, will be impossible. You must follow this road until you come to an old tactical outpost set up alongside the highway. General Watt told us we would find it there.

“Grandpa, there’s someone on the road ahead.”

The Old Man scanned the horizon.

Far to their right, in the direction they must go, he could see the dark silhouette of a human.

It stood, unmoving in the late heat of the day.

The Old Man continued to watch the unmoving man-shaped shadow far down the cracked road as the tank heaved itself up onto the old highway. His granddaughter maneuvered the tank to point west at his instruction. A mile off, the lone figure remained unmoving beside the road they would follow.

I wish I knew how to work these optics like she has already learned to.

“Can you tell me what he looks like?” he asked her.

He knew she would be using her viewfinder.

“He’s tall,” she said after a moment. “Long dirty hair. Maybe a salvager, but not like anyone from our village. Oh, and he has a hat.”

His mind stayed on the words “Not like anyone from our village.”

The Old Man felt a cold river of fear sweep through him.

“Out there.”

And …

Too many “Done” things.

“Let’s move forward. But don’t stop unless I tell you to, okay?”

“Okay.”

I am afraid of this stranger on the road. Why?

We know why, my friend; it’s just that we’re not always willing to be honest with ourselves when we must. It is better to admit that you are afraid now than to pretend you are not.

The dark man-shadow, before the setting sun, seemed to lean toward them and out into the blistered highway as they approached. As they closed the distance between them the Old Man saw the shadow revealed. Saw him clearly as one might see something dead beside the road and want to look away in that passing instant of speed. His face was gaunt. Sun stretched by time and all the years since the end of the world. All the years on the road.

Worn rawhide boots. Faded dusty pants. A long coat made of license plates stitched together. A thick staff he leaned on heavily, though his frame was spare. Two small skulls dangled from its topmost tip. He wore a faded wide and weak-brimmed hat under which shining hawk-like eyes watched the Old Man. Had watched since they’d first appeared, the Old Man was sure of that.

He’s a killer.

The Old Man could feel the slightest decrease in their acceleration.

“No!” he shouted into his mic. “Keep going!”

The tank lurched forward, and as they hurtled past the Roadside Killer, the vessel of all things unclean, the gaunt man raised one bony arm from the sleeve of his license-plate mail coat and extended a claw-like hand that might have been a plea.

The Old Man knew his granddaughter would be staring, wide-eyed, as they raced past, throwing grit and gravel, drawing up the road behind them.

Do not look back.

The Old Man rose in the hatch, watching the highway ahead.

“Why didn’t we stop, Grandpa? He looked like he needed help.”

Do not look back.

“Grandpa?”

“Because,” said the Old Man after a moment. “Because we must help those inside the bunker.”

It was later, in the early evening, beyond a fallen collection of wind-shattered buildings the map once marked as the town of Quartzite, where they buttoned up the tank for the night. In the dark they’d settled into their bags, feeling the tank sway in the thundering wind that had risen up out of nowhere late that afternoon.

“Why didn’t we help him, Grandpa?”

The Old Man listened to the sand strike the sides of the tank and thought of some acid they’d once drained from a car battery to weaken the lock on a tractor trailer they’d salvaged.

The wind sounds like acid tonight.

“Not everyone needs our help.”

“But some people, the people inside General Watt’s bunker, do?”

“Yes, they do.”

And I wonder if they truly do. How do I know this isn’t some game, a complex game, to draw us all into a trap?

You don’t know, my friend.

“How did you know the man today didn’t really need our help?”

“I just did.”

And how will I teach you to know such things when I am gone?

“So we only help those who really need our help, Grandpa?”

“Yes. Only those whom we can tell really need our help.”

I will have to think of a better way to teach her to know how and when to help, but not tonight. I cannot think of a way tonight.

Soon she was asleep and the Old Man lay awake for a long time listening to the sand dissolving the tank, and when he slept he dreamed of the cities of the West and the stranger beside the road and serial killers and empty diners where there was no food anymore.