CHAPTER NINETEEN

Piles of volcanic rock rise to the height of small mountains as the tank crests the barren desert plateau. Below them, the entire world seems to slope downward to some unseen terminus that must surely await them.

Now we must fall to the bottom of the earth. This thin highway will pass through the military base once called China Lake and then we must follow that until we come to a small road the map has marked the 190.

And then … Death Valley.

The Boy liked to ride atop the tank, holding on to the main gun, watching the far horizon.

The wind catches his hair, pulling it, tossing it.

The gray-and-white feather with the broken spine flutters in the breeze.

The Old Man watched the Boy from the hatch as they bumped along the descent into the lowest parts of the desert.

That morning, as they’d loaded the tank, the Old Man had stopped the Boy, who seemed familiar with what must be done when breaking camp. Moving on.

He has probably done this every morning of his life.

“We’re going far to the east.”

He waited for the Boy to ask him why. When he didn’t, the Old Man continued.

“I can’t leave you here, there is too little to survive on and to salvage. But later today we should come to an old military base.”

The Boy waited.

Whether this pleased or displeased the Boy, the Old Man could not tell.

“We can leave you there, if you like?”

The Boy nodded and returned to helping load their things back onto the tank.

The Boy tapped the spare fuel drums and all of them heard an empty gong that came from within each.

“Where will we get fuel today, Poppa?” his granddaughter asked.

“Ahead of us there’s supposed to be an underground storage tank near a long runway. When we get there, I’m told we’ll be able to load the tank up with rocket ship fuel.”

Will we, my friend?

General Watt, Natalie, said so. Shuttle fuel. Left over from the last shuttle flights. Stored in case there might ever be a need for it again. Stored with fuel stabilizers in an underground, airtight storage tank where they had hidden the fuel once those shuttles had landed after circling the earth.

“Though shuttle fuel is not listed as a reliable fuel source for the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank,” General Watt, Natalie, had told him last night, “reviewing its specifications and requirements, I fail to see why this fuel source will not suffice.”

“If it is all we have, then it will have to do,” said the Old Man during their deep-of-the-night conversation, when he could not sleep.

“Yes,” agreed Natalie. “It may increase the engine temperature though, and that should be a concern worth noting.”

“Runs a little hot, eh?” said the Old Man, laughing for no reason he could think of at the time.

Maybe I was relieved there would at least be something to use for fuel. If not, it would be a very long walk back home or even just to the bunker.

“Yes,” Natalie had said.

Now, turning along a wide curve underneath dusty gray granite rock, the high desert town of China Lake lies buried beneath wild growth turned brown and yellow. Hints of collapsed buildings occasionally peek out from beneath the rampant tangle of wild desert shrub and thorn.

The base is on the far side of the town.

“Continue down this freeway,” he told his granddaughter. “We should be able to see the control tower from the road. If we reach the remains of an overpass, we’ve gone too far.”

“Okay, Poppa!”

The people came stumbling out of the tangle of undergrowth, some lumbering, some crawling, others dragging themselves free of the riot of briers, thorns, and wild cactus.

The Boy saw them first and pointed. The Old Man followed the gaze and finger.

They were misshapen.

Withered limbs.

Missing limbs.

They wore rags.

They held up their bony and scratched arms. If they had them.

Their mouths were open.

Some held up tiny, milky-eyed blind children, as if offering, as if pleading, as if begging.

The shape of their ribs was revealed through sagging skin above potbellies distended by starvation.

Tears ran down their cheeks.

The Old Man recoiled in horror.

The desert freaks fell away behind the slow progress of the tank, which easily outpaced their shambling and weakened lurch toward the machine.

The Old Man watched them fall to the ground in defeat.

They’re starving.

There wasn’t a weapon, a stick, or a rock among them.

Just hands, pleading. Claws begging.

The Old Man looked at the Boy.

“They’re starving,” he shouted above the engine’s scream.

And after a moment the Boy nodded in agreement.

The Old Man watched one of the crazed and starving desert people, a thin and bony gaunt man, the frontrunner of them all, kneeling, pounding the dry ground in frustration with a tiny claw-hand as puffs of dry dust erupted in his face. A woman with a child knelt down beside the Gaunt Man. Comforting him. Comforting her broken man who’d tried his best to catch their tank that he might beg for help as the starving child wailed from her back.

They’re just people.

They’re just people, and they’re starving to death.

“Stop the tank.”

“What, Poppa?”

“Stop the tank. They’re starving. We have food. We can give them some. What we have, we can give to them.”

The people stood as the tank stopped.

Amazed.

The Old Man waved to them.

Come.

The Boy and his granddaughter began to bring their boxes of food out onto the turret.

The Desert People came forward. Fear and hope in large watery eyes. Disbelief as bony bodies stumbled and finally leaned into each other for support and comfort. A woman jabbered, shrieking hysterically. The oldest, spindly legged and skeletal, simply cried, heaving out great sobs that racked their concave chests. The rest, dirty and tired, opened their mouths, stunned into silence, saying nothing, unable to believe what was happening.

After a moment, the Boy began to speak to them in their jabber-patois.

He speaks their language.

The Old Man tore open an Army-gray package of spaghetti and meatballs. He handed it to the Gaunt Man whose wife struggled to help him hold up his too-bony and too-thin arms to receive the gift.

The starving man opened his mostly toothless mouth and the Old Man could see the drool of extreme hunger within.

‘He’ll devour the whole packet in one bite,’ thought the Old Man.

The Gaunt Man reached two thin fingers into the gray packet, his huge dark eyes like ever-widening pools of water, and scooped out the meal within.

His mouth wide.

He turned to the woman beside him and fed her.

Her eyes closed and she chewed slowly.

The child on her back whimpered.

Even with her eyes closed the pure joy was evident as she chewed slowly, swallowing thickly.

‘They’re still human,’ thought the Old Man. ‘They still care for each other as best they can.’

The Desert People surged around the tank, dozens of them, holding out their arms weakly for as long as they could, waiting while the Old Man and his granddaughter held out the opened packets of food to them. Soon the Boy was helping too as the people of the high desert ate and wept, jabbering what the Boy told the Old Man was their way of saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The Desert People followed the tank as it slowly moved to the old airfield. When the tank stopped, the Desert People stopped.

The Old Man searched along the sides of the runway for the cover to the underground fuel storage. The cover that Natalie, General Watt, had told him he must find.

Storage Tank B.

When he found it, he waved for his granddaughter to bring the tank to him and soon they were drawing fuel from the deep, untouched reservoir that had opened with a pungent suck of long denied oxygen.

“They’ve had a hard year,” said the Boy as the Old Man watched the fuel hose thump and shake, greedily drinking up the long untouched fuel.

“You speak their language.”

“They speak a language that is like one I heard in another place.”

“What happened to them?”

The Boy turned to look at the Desert People.

“They tell me they have lived here since before the bombs. They’ve been sick since. Their crops failed this year and because of their … condition … from the poison inside the bombs, they cannot hunt the goats and deer up in the rocks. The animals are too fast for them to get close to with their slings.”

The Old Man turned from the hose, knowing he would see the Desert People watching him.

He watched the women gather about his granddaughter, making soft cooing noises, stroking her hair.

I have to take care of her also.

Yes.

But you know many tricks, my friend, and you are resourceful.

Yes, you would say that to me.

I did.

The Old Man climbed onto the tank and disappeared inside the turret.

When he came back out he carried the hunting rifle, the cleaning kit, and the two boxes of shells.

I am glad to be rid of this gun. I didn’t like having it with us.

The Old Man beckoned the Gaunt Man, who seemed the healthiest among them.

He wobbled forward.

The Old Man loaded a bullet into the rifle, shot the bolt forward, shouldered the rifle, and aimed it at a small satellite dish attached to a building on the other side of the field.

He fired.

The small satellite dish bent and then, a moment later, fell onto the decaying pavement.

The shot echoed off the gray mountain rock all around them.

“Tell them to hunt with this.”

The Boy watched the Old Man.

Then the Boy turned and began to speak to the Gaunt Man in their jabber.

“Tell them they will have to keep this gun clean, I’ll show them how,” said the Old Man.

“Tell them to use these bullets sparingly, only hunt what they need to get back on their feet. Get their strength back.”

And …

“Tell them this is all we have.”

It was time to go.

When the Old Man had shown them how to clean and care for their gun, it was time to go.

They brought their children forward to touch the Old Man and the women smelled his granddaughter’s hair and the Boy jabbered their jabber and told them all goodbye.

When it was time to go.

The Old Man looked at the Boy.

“I want you to come with us. I think we will need your help where we are going.”

The Boy watched the Desert People.

The tank.

Heard a voice he did not share with others.

A voice from long ago.

A voice that said, Whatchu gonna do now, Boy?

The Boy nodded and climbed onto the tank, standing in his place alongside the main gun.

The Old Man started the APU and donned his helmet.

He spoke to his granddaughter as the engine spooled up into its whine and then roared to life, sending waves of heat blasting out across the gravel and dust.

“Are you ready?”

“What will we do now, Poppa? They ate all our food.”

The Old Man watched the Desert People.

What I have, I give to you.

Where did that come from, my friend?

I don’t know.

“Let’s head back to the highway,” he told his granddaughter over the intercom. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”