Nick Cole - The Wasteland Saga

North is not as bad as east.

Once the moon was overhead, he stopped for water and a bite of fox meat though he didn’t feel hungry. The only road sign he passed had been one of the large ones that spanned the entire road. It had fallen facedown and what was written upon it was beyond the strength of his arms to know.

He continued on, and when the moon was waning far to the west, he saw that the road began a long curve toward the east. A mountain ridge to the north blocked further progress. To the east, the remains of four large overpasses that had once connected the highways lay in ruins. Only the pillars and sections of the road like the capitals of columns remained.

I could find shelter there for the day. Maybe some vehicles. Maybe salvage. It will be dawn in a few hours.

He picked up his satchel and slung it once more across his chest.

If it is occupied it might be best to come upon it before dawn. If I smell cook fires then I will know.

The moon went down and soon it was dark.

I was spoiled walking by the light of the moon.

He picked his way along the broken concrete of the highway thinking of nothing more than where his next footstep should be.

Arriving just as the eastern sky began to show the first hints of blue, he crouched in a debris-cluttered culvert. He heard nothing, even as the sun began to cast a steady soft orange light across the desert behind him. His nose smelled nothing on the wind, and once the sun was two hands above the horizon, he left the culvert and continued into the wreckage of the overpasses.

He chose the fallen road sections that had collapsed onto the highway beneath.

If there is anyone here, maybe they are lazy. Then at least I will be above them. They might not even see me.

The fallen sections were made of clean white concrete, grooved as if combed by a brush. He took off his huaraches and continued along the road as it climbed quickly. A break in the road caused him to stop, and he lowered himself onto the section that had fallen on the other side of the break. He climbed this section and another one like it, and soon he was beneath one of the large pillars where part of the highway remained above him.

How long would that last?

He marveled at what man had once built. What he had once driven over. What was once so common seemed a thing of lost giants.

At the end of the broken road he could see the intersection of the four roads. The ground beneath was barren. An old Winnebago lay on its side off in the weeds. He watched for a moment, wondering if it might be someone’s home. But the weeds around it and growing out the back window told the story of salvage.

There is no one here.

He climbed back down the broken sections and thought better of the Winnebago.

If it has been here for so long then it has already been salvaged.

On the other side of the ruins, two roads led away. One headed northeast, the other southeast.

What about the Winnebago? Fleeing the bombs, many such RVs had often been loaded beyond safety with such things as might be salvaged.

If that is the case then I would have seen some lying on the ground nearby. It has been searched.

He continued looking north, wondering if that is the east he should pick.

Something, a knife, a tool perhaps, could be lying in the weeds or the dirt.

Unlikely. I would need to go into the wreck and a Winnebago out here by itself would be a place for rattlesnakes or even the brown spider.

Then you expect salvage to be laying in the middle of the road for you to happen along and pick up. Neatly untouched these forty years. A bottle of aspirin or medical tools for the village. Maybe even an entire set of encyclopedias. The village is right. You are cursed. It is your laziness that is the curse. You are the curse of yourself.

Be quiet.

To the north must be Phoenix.

Low hills of red dirt climbed toward Phoenix.

Phoenix was destroyed. I know that. In L.A., just before I left, that had been part of the decision. The bombs were falling each day on a new city. First New York and then Washington, D.C., then Pittsburgh, then Chicago… was that right? Or had Chicago been first?

I chose Tucson. Tucson was too small to be hit. The terrorists were choosing bigger cities.

And your parents lived there. On a golf course.

Yuma was smaller than Tucson. Later, on the day the President landed, the Old Man had seen the cloud over Yuma in his rearview mirror as he picked his way through the beginning of the Great Wreck. He had seen it about 2:00 in the afternoon. 2:06 he remembered by the digital clock of his car’s instrument panel. The cloud rising from the valley behind him. Ninety miles away. The United States of America had lost its last president.

His car had stopped. The EMP had finished it. In the days that followed, walking the highway, moving away from Yuma, he headed east. Survivors told him they’d seen the cloud over Tucson. L.A. was gone also. They had gone for two that day. That last known day. After that, there was no news. No radio. If the bombs continued to fall, who knew? Had we retaliated against the Middle East like we’d threatened? Was there still a world beyond the United States? A Europe? Africa?

I will never see those lions at sunset. Playing on the beach. Unless I dream them. And my dreams are past stories that cannot be finished.

He thought of the little girl.

I will never know.

I know Phoenix is gone. It went after Miami. I know that Phoenix is gone. That I know.

Those are problems solved long ago. Salvage is your business and if you cannot search the wreck of the Winnebago, then what salvage will you find?

Be quiet.

He turned south along the highway once more.

There will be nothing toward Phoenix. In the days of the bombs, everyone took to the road. Everything they could grab. Headed away, much like myself back then, from the bombs. Phoenix was destroyed. Everyone had known that, so no one went there to escape.

But you heard Tucson was hit also.

“Sí,” he whispered softly in the late morning air.

But I saw Phoenix destroyed on the TV.

It was later he realized he had not stopped to rest in the shadows of the ruined overpasses. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Dreamtime Motel. He was afraid of the dreams he might have.

How much longer until the monsoons?

He stopped to drink in the thin shade provided by a small bridge.

An orange sun hung low off to the west. Afternoon dust storms rolled across the broken red horizon. He wondered how far west, if he started from this bridge, he would need to walk to find the village.

If the monsoons came soon, there might be trouble with the flash floods.

The torrents of ash would be dangerous.

Where does the ash come from after all these years?

Does it matter?

Maybe it’s the answer to what’s left of the world. So much ash, so little world.

There is still the village.

Too tired to go much farther, he camped under the bridge, and just before nightfall made a small fire of mesquite.

In the blue twilight, he thought it might be nice to have a guitar. That being alone wouldn’t be so bad if he had a guitar. With a guitar he might just continue to wander and never return to the village.

But what about your granddaughter?

The village must think I am dead.

I hope no one came looking for me. They might have gotten hurt.

That is the love of not wanting someone to come and look for you when you have gone.

He tried the phrase out against the wall under the bridge. Letting his shadow speak the words in the light of the fire.

It felt like a phrase one says and doesn’t mean. But the words were true.