Nick Cole - The Wasteland Saga

Awake and moving stiffly, he tried to tell himself he wasn’t worse.

I won’t ask much of you today. Just get me back to my village. Then you can die.

Why are you so concerned about death now? Is it because you have everything to lose?

The eastern night ended in thin blue streaks. He rolled up the sleeping bag, stopped by the infirmary, and grabbed a bottle of aspirin. In the kitchen, he took bottles of water and cans of tuna and chili. He found a can opener, almost forgetting to, laughing at himself as if he had forgotten.

In the garage, he raised the door by electronic control in a guard shack and went to the tank. Soon he had the first engine on the tank started. It sounded like a jet engine. Then he started the second engine and felt for a brief moment that controlling the tank would be beyond him. He checked the instruments and found that the tank was full of fuel. He went down into the brightly lit cupola of the tank and stowed his gear on a seat near the rear, then returned to the seat in the cupola. He took hold of a joystick and swiveled the main gun, sensing a momentary sickness as the entire cupola swung to the right. Then he pointed it back to the front of the tank and placed his hands on two levers below the joystick.

The right controls the right tread, the left the left tread.

Pushing forward on both would move the tank forward. Or so Sergeant Major Preston had assured him. He pushed forward on both cautiously and nothing happened. He tried again. He thought back to the instructional video.

The gas pedal.

Below him, near the new boots he’d found in a different supply room, was the pedal. He stepped on it and heard the tank’s engines spool up to a high-pitched whine. He pressed forward on the two sticks while gassing the pedal as the tank eased through the garage doors. Outside he dismounted and closed the doors, then climbed aboard once more.

He gassed the pedal and pulled back on the left stick and went forward with the right as the tank swerved to the left. He looked back at the Fort. Then he eased the tank out onto the road leading to the highway. His throat felt sore. Maybe he was sick. But he wouldn’t think about it. The tank took all his concentration.

At first the going was slow, as he wound through the side streets that led onto the main freeway. Once atop the eight-lane, the going got better.

For a while he rode the blacktop. The evacuation had left the city empty forty years ago. The Old Man knew where the people had fled during that long-ago exodus from a wrecked civilization. Many lay trapped between the cities in great wrecks of their own. A few had become his fellow villagers.

The highway ran smooth and eventually became a two-lane and a median with two lanes on the other side. Other than the occasional downed bridge that he maneuvered around or through, there was little that stood in the way of the tank. Soon he had the tank up to forty-five miles an hour.

He passed a semi overturned on its belly and stopped. It was covered in red handprints.

Is that recent?

Are they getting closer?

He revved the tank and sent it down the road once more. Soon the hum of the engines lulled him to thinking, and at times almost sleep. The day was cold. He could feel the rain in the air. Knew the heat of the sun hadn’t driven away the cold of night completely. Winter was coming.

In the distance he could see Picacho Peak as the road began a long gentle curve to the west.

I am finally heading west.

He thought about the end of curses. What needed to be done once he returned to the village? How to organize them and get them back to the Fort?

The village is over.

How so?

When I return with this tank. Everything changes. My life in the village will be something that happened long ago. A dream. Just like my life before the bombs. A dream also.

It was noon when he spotted them coming down from the northern mountains across the plain like a vast dark herd. They were crossing the highway in groups, running for Picacho Peak just on the other side. He stopped the tank. The roar of the engines was still loud and he could hear nothing above it. He could feel the north wind on his face. He could feel the cold of the arctic and the high mountain passes it had come down through to reach the Sonoran Desert.

The Horde lay scattered in bands across the horizon. Now they formed into two groups.

So they still exist.

One group resolved itself into men and boys painted and various in weapons and dress. Savages of the new wasteland. The other group drew itself toward Picacho Peak, running like a startled herd of buffalo.

There is the main gun and then the machine gun.

If not today, when?

I don’t think I’ve ever killed a man.

Mirrored Sunglasses? The savage boy?

They killed themselves.

I don’t think it will be just a couple today.

The wild men came on in a ragged line, running with mouths open.

What you do today determines the future of the village. Civilization even.

I don’t know if I’m the man to make that choice.

There’s no other. Act now or die. Do this today or forget tomorrow!

The Old Man tapped the accelerator and listened to the engines spool up to a high-pitched whine.

Maybe this will give them something to stop for.

The ragged mobbed surged over the soft sand, closing the distance.

Do something now, Old Man!

They were twenty yards off when he gave the tank full power and pushed forward on the control sticks. The tank jumped forward with a roar, and the Old Man closed his eyes as he crashed into their line. They were hundreds turning into thousands and the air was suddenly thick with missiles of rock and broken pipe. He tucked into the hatch and kept forward on the sticks. He heard their wild screams above the thunder of the engines.

When the rain of debris ceased, he popped out of the hatch and checked the tank’s progress as it veered across the median. He overcorrected and the tank gave a sharp right turn. Before he could get it straightened out he’d gone out over the northbound lanes and into the desert off the road.

He surveyed the mob. There were thousands surging all around the tank. Thin gaunt men the color of dust chased his wake, waving and yelling. Potbellied, sun-browned women and feral children snarled as they ran from him. Stones began to fall, but they were too far off. The main mass of the mob seemed to be collecting around the base of the peak but the warriors were gathering again for another charge.

He moved the tank back onto the road and started toward the abandoned gas station. The desert scrub was thick on the far side of the road and at times, wild-eyed men and screaming women ran gibbering before the tank, darting off into the bushes like frightened animals.

He traversed the gun and toggled the gun sight onto the building where he’d found their laws. Behind him, their main force pounded down the road after him, their eyes wild with anger and fear. He depressed the red button atop the joystick and sent a round into the building.

At once, two things happened. The tank rocked back in a cloud of powdery dust, and the wall of the building exploded in a spray of cement. Beyond the building a moment later, the round exploded in dirt and sand, having passed straight through the decrepit wall without exploding.

The Old Man traversed the gun, hearing nothing but dull silence and feeling, more than hearing, the servos that swiveled the cupola. He landed the main gun on the advancing wall of savages.

“This must mean something to you!” he screamed and barely heard himself.

He felt a sharp blow on his shoulder as a club smashed down hard upon it. He turned to see a crazed naked man with cracked skin and open sores, his watermelon head drooling crazily amid a mouth full of misshapen teeth. The savage raised a club to strike once again. His attacker had climbed from the back of the tank onto the cupola. Three others were struggling up the same way, each as lunatic as the first.