Davis Aurini - As I Walk These Broken Roads

Raxx glanced at Wentworth, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh-ah, you gents is gonna — I can see it! He’s real tall and strong, thinks he’s the big boss, but you is gonna show him otherways! You Gents is, ain’t ya?”

Wentworth grimaced. “I sure hope so, kid,” he said, “But a lot of that’s gonna depend on how much you can tell us. Is there anything else you know about these guys?”

Tyler nodded his head vigorously, “Oh-ah, Gents, tonight they’s gonna be coming to get their tribute. See, Jenkins made a deal with them to stop all the raiding. Now we is gonna give ’em part of the food.” He shook his head slowly, meeting their gaze. “That don’t seem like such a good idea to me, though. Seems to me that we shouldn’t be trusting the Other One to make a fair deal, it seems.”

“What time are they going to be there?” asked Raxx.

“Just after the sunset. That’s what I heard everyone saying.”

“Hmm,” Wentworth pulled stared out the back window, into the distance, “Say, Tyler; you see that structure up on the hill there, just north of the settlement? Anybody ever go up there?”

Tyler twisted around to look back. “No… I don’t think so. I don’t know what’s up there, never seen nobody head there.”

“Hmm,” thought Raxx. The hill in question overlooked the settlement; its peak was only a couple hundred meters away. “Let me guess — you wanna scout this bunch out, too?”

Wentworth nodded slowly. “You got it. Now listen, Tyler, I got some more questions for you…”

They spent the next twenty minutes interrogating the youth. He’d been witness to the exact sort of events they wanted to know about, but he lacked the education in battle needed to explain them. It had all blurred in his memory, and asking him about the raider’s tactics proved to be even less fruitful than asking what sort of ‘carriages’ they’d used. Their questioning slowed to a trickle, then stopped.

They sent him on his way, with a couple of cigarettes for the road. He vanished into the fields on the right. “Hey, kid!” called out Raxx, as a thought occurred. After a moment Tyler reappeared between the stalks. “We’re gonna do what we can — it’s a good thing you snuck in here. Good on ‘ya for having the guts to talk with us!” Tyler waved at them, and ran off. From the expression on his face, he felt relieved at getting away from the strangers; he’d done what he had to, and now he wanted to go home.

Wentworth glanced at him, and Raxx responded with a shrug. “He kind of reminds me of me at that age.”

Wentworth drummed his fingers for moment, then scowled. “Damnit,” he said, “I forgot to ask him what ‘sodomite’ means.”

The house on the hilltop had been built as a cottage for two. Nestled into the earth, its third story rose up to crown the peak. A long driveway came up from the road, ending in a tiled culvert surrounded by flower beds. To the right was the house’s two-car garage, on the left a stone wall held back the hill’s bow; where stone and brick met, a flight of stairs rose up to the main entrance. The bedroom had faced east to greet the rising sun.

But the exposure had come at a cost; decades of wind and rain had worn on the structure, greying its red bricks and yellowing its timbers. It had faded slowly, showing more wear each year, until the day it collapsed. By the time the two men arrived it slouched along the same curve as its neighbouring slope.

Wentworth dipped his finger into his stew to check the temperature. Satisfied, he picked up the canteen cup and crushed the burning fuel-tab under his boot. He pulled out a spoon and returned his gaze to the Mennite settlement. He was sitting on a stray log, hidden behind some bracken. His helmet and rifle lay by his side. Behind and below was Raxx, working on the truck.

The hill top was steep enough for him to see most of the main street, and the highway stretching beyond it. Between him and the Mennites was a ragged forest which ran down to a swampy valley; the chances of the locals noticing him were slim, and by the time evening arrived he’d be invisible. He hoped to find out what sort of force they’d dealing with, but that information wouldn’t be enough on its own — they’d need to capitalize on it.

“Intelligence,” he’d said, “is a time-sensitive commodity.”

“A what?”

He lowered his binoculars, and continued to scan the western arc. “What we see today might not have any bearing tomorrow. And next week it’ll be even worse.”

“Okay.”

He mulled over the landscape, “Say… how good of a driver are you?”

“What, with my girl there?” Raxx shrugged and scratched his nose. “Pretty good. I take it easy most of the time, but… well, you saw me driving angry back there. I know how to handle these roads.”

“Yeah… okay then, this path here,” it wound down the hill in front of them, passing half a kilometre behind the Mennite settlement. It was barely visible, nothing but two grooves in the tall grasses. “You think you could drive it in the dark? At night, with no lights?”

“Hmm…” he stared at it through his own binos. It ran down towards a secondary road which curved onto the highway. “Why would I want to drive with no lights?”

“Because otherwise you’d be visible.”

“True. Hmm… yeah. Yeah, I think I could handle it. Can’t guarantee how fast, but it looks pretty stable. But how do we get rid of the lights?”

Wentworth raised his eyebrow. “…you could turn them off?”

Raxx shook his head. “Daytime Running Lights.”

“What?”

“They’re a safety feature; used to be mandatory, I think. They turn on whenever the truck’s running; made it easier for the other drivers to see you.”

“Can’t you unplug them or something?”

“No, see, that’s the thing — the safety feature’s part of the electrical system. They burned out on me one time, and it killed the ignition power,” he scratched the stubble growing on his head. “I had to fix the headlights before she would start.”

Wentworth glanced back at the vehicle, glaring at the amber panels. “Safety feature.” For a moment he considered cursing. “I suppose asking the other drivers to pay attention would’ve been too much… Raxx, you think you could wire up a blackout drive?”

Back in his Regiment days, that’s what they’d called it. A master kill-switch for all of the lights that would trick the vehicle into thinking they were still working. More than just that, a kill switch for all the electronics, too, as a double safety feature for explosive environments. As he spoke Raxx grew thoughtful, running his hand over his tool belt. When he finished the Mechanic wandered off without saying a word. Multimeter in hand, he began probing the truck’s electrical veins.

For the rest of the evening he worked. Occasionally Wentworth would hear the vehicle start up, then shut down as Raxx ran tests. For a while the man just sat in the passenger seat thinking. Later he’d disassembled some of the interior moulding, and Wentworth saw him contorted under the dash. This was the first time he’d struggled against the vehicle’s nature.

Twilight was descending and still nothing in the settlement. Hunger pangs had forced Raxx to take a break. He was glaring directionlessly, eating his unheated meal.

Wentworth took a swig from his canteen, staring at the placid town. Raxx must have eaten in a hurry; he could already hear him working on the truck again. He lit up a cigarette and continued watching. The sun’s red light was diffusing through the gathering clouds, turning the sky tan and amber. It was going to be a dark night.

“Fuck!” Steel clanged as Raxx threw a tool at the ground. Wentworth glanced back in time to see it bounce toward the house, lodging in a piece of rotted drywall. Turning back toward the settlement, Wentworth could hear the man muttering, and putting his tools away, then slamming truck’s hood. A few minutes later Raxx hauled himself up the stone wall, and joined Wentworth on the log.