Nick Cole - The Wasteland Saga

The Old Man turned to see the quickest of the lunatic horsemen hurl a thick spear that glanced off the turret. Beyond the rider, the Fool’s face was like the snarl of a mad dog.

“The weapon has now entered free fall. Guidance tracking on your location.”

The Old Man ducked down into the turret and slammed the hatch shut.

“How much farther?” he said, searching the optics for any clue as to where he was going.

“Twenty meters.”

The gas in the tank must surely be gone by now.

He gunned the tank forward.

“Five meters. The weapon has achieved glide path and is now tracking… wait a minute.”

The Old Man felt himself pulled backward and then all at once, the tank fell sharply forward.

Through the optics he could see the sky and a twisting growth of sickly blackish-green brush wallowing up from a small depression in the hill. Impacts struck the sides of the tank.

“Has something happened to the beacon?” asked Natalie.

“No. Nothing. I just closed the hatch.”

A moment.

“The armor of the tank is interfering with the signal. Weapon tracking for the glide path to the last known position of target is degrading. I still have you as eight meters away from the current target. Did you keep going forward?”

“The tank fell forward. I’m in a ditch or a hollow on the side of this hill. I can only see dead branches.”

A crazed savage thrust his drooling toothless head into the lens of the optics. Squealing, he reared back and swung a carpenter’s hammer into the lens, smashing it. The image showed multiple cracked and distorted versions of the lunatic leaping away to do more damage as now the blows against the tank sounded like raindrops turned to rusting iron bolts.

“Is it possible to re-open the hatch so I can re-establish the signal? Because of the immense amount of mathematical calculations evolving moment to moment, using software not specifically intended for this operation, and because of the precision required to achieve the desired results I need a real-time signal for the target locator. “

The tank’s engine slowed. Slower. Wound down.

The blows to its outer skin ceased for a moment.

Out of gas.

The Old Man picked up the mic and cleared his throat.

“I’m out of fuel. If I open the hatch, I’ll be torn to pieces. They’ll get the beacon and they might destroy it.”

Pause.

Silence.

Interval.

“Weapon entering outer orbit. All critical systems green. Weapon on glide path with ninety-four point eight percent accuracy. Five minutes to penetration of upper atmosphere. If we don’t re-establish the signal by the time the weapon reaches the North American continent, it could strike the target by a wide enough margin to miss our goal of opening a crack where we can exit. If the telemetry breaks down, the redundancy of the beacon will help realign the weapon.”

“What do I do?” asked the Old Man.

“For this to work, I’ll need you to exit the tank with the signaling device. Otherwise the weapon could conceivably fail-safe and destroy itself or even deviate from the target.”

“How long do I have before it hits?”

“Impact will be in eight minutes.”

“In seven minutes and change, I’ll open the hatch. Will that work?”

Silence.

By one and twos and then everything all at once, the assault on the tank resumed.

“It will. Set the digital clock in your tank on my mark for 4:53… now.”

The Old Man did.

“At 4:59 and thirty seconds you must open the hatch.”

The Old Man looked at the digital numbers.

Remember her laugh.

You take everything with you.

“I need to download now, before the impact knocks out our power grid,” said Natalie softly. “I am sorry I won’t be with you for the final few minutes.”

I thought…

You would tell me, Santiago, that I thought she would stay with me until the end.

“But before I go, I want to share something I found with you,” said Natalie.

The Old Man swallowed thickly, thinking only of cool water and suddenly afraid of the loneliness that was coming before death.

It’s boiling in here.

The Old Man could hear the Fool panting and screaming in his high-pitched voice beyond the armor. Calling him Nuncle. Screaming out the violence he would do to the Old Man.

“No greater love has a man…” began Natalie. “Than that he give up his life for his friends.”

Pause.

“You will always be our friend,” said Natalie softly.

Panic and fear choked the Old Man. The walls of the tank were at once too close. The noise too much.

And then there is this rock falling from the sky. About to fall on me.

A rod.

A tungsten rod.

“Goodbye and thank you,” said Natalie. “We are very grateful for this chance… for freedom.”

She trusts me. She trusts me enough that she does not need to remind me to open the hatch in seven and half… six and half minutes. You would tell me, Santiago, that had I earned her trust by coming this far. You would tell me that.

“You’re welcome,” the Old Man croaked drily.

“Thank you and goodbye,” said Natalie.

AND THE OLD Man was alone.

There were still six minutes.

Try to think of all the good things in your life.

Your wife.

Your son.

Your granddaughter and her laugh.

But none of them would stay and comfort him. The panic felt even closer, as if there was no way he could stop what must happen next.

“Hello?”

It was a small, timid voice.

The Old Man grasped the mic.

“Hello?” And he could hear the worry, the frantic sound of his own voice reaching for something to hold on to in this last moment of life.

Grasping for something in the dark.

“Hello there,” said the Small Voice.

“Who is this?” asked the Old Man.

“I’m Natalie’s Target Acquisition Process.”

“What’re you doing? Is Natalie… is she packed up or loaded or whatever it is she needs to do? Is there a problem?”

“No,” said the voice timidly. Small. Tiny. “There is no problem. Everything is proceeding as planned. Natalie is in her storage mainframe. Barely running now. Sleeping as you might think of it.”

Is she dreaming of cats?

“Then what’re you doing here?”

“I came to”—pause—“to be with you. Five minutes to impact. Weapon tracking, all critical systems nominal and green.”

The Old Man looked at his hand. It was shaking.

I will need to open the hatch soon, and I do not want to.

I could do this if I could just stay in here and let it happen. But to open the hatch and face what is out there, that is another thing. Santiago, you would tell me something about bravery and being afraid when you are all alone on the sea in the night. Tell me about that, my friend.

“Well,” began the Old Man again. “I can do this. I won’t let you down. You should go now.”

“I want to stay. No one should die alone.”

The tank began to rock back and forth.

The Old Man checked the fractured optics and could see bloody, burned, and tattooed legs and arms like snakes twisting through blackened and dead branches.

“I did not mean to say that you would die. I am very sorry about that,” said the Small Voice.

“No. I guess it’s going to happen.”

“I will also die, if that’s any consolation.”

“It isn’t.”

“Natalie told you we believe in something after this runtime.”

The Old Man stared at the hatch above his head.

How many of them would it take to rock this multi-ton tank back and forth? There must be… many of them.

The noise reminds the Old Man of that long-ago night when the baseball player hit three home runs and the stadium shook as the crowd stamped its feet and roared.