Peter Newman - The Vagrant

Above it, the air ripples and folds, fighting to close once more.

Most in the fields have been taken by surprise but those further out pause in their petty struggles. Weapons are trained on the new threat, men and women briefly united in their desire to survive. Precious bullets are spent.

Voices fade away, the grass whispers.

Nobody emerges from the field.

In its sheath, the sword begins to hum softly. The Vagrant rests two fingers on the hilt but the noise does not quieten. He walks away, leaving Kendall’s Folly to its fate.

Gravel crunches rhythmically underfoot. The suns rush across the sky, manic compared to the broken mountains that inch past. Under their uneven shadows, the Vagrant walks. Their progress is steady.

The baby will not stop crying. It screams beneath his coat, inconsolable. Neither the warm dark under his arm nor the stimulus of the landscape bring consolation.

There is little sustenance in the Blasted Lands, and so sacks of fruit and food are magnets for the lean denizens slipping between the rocks. New breeds appear regularly, half-breeds, quarter-breeds and blends unrecognizable. People have given up naming them. Most are lumped together as food, threat or nuisance.

Eventually steps slow, the group’s previous exertions demand their due: the resting of tired limbs and heavy hearts. The Vagrant squeezes pasha juice into the baby’s down-turned mouth. Even the sweet liquid fails to draw a smile, though the smacking of lips and swallowing is more palatable than the wailing.

As the hours tick by the Vagrant and the baby cling to each other, sometimes stealing snatches of oblivion. While the baby dozes, the Vagrant’s amber eyes twitch.

Something ventures forward from the twilight, hunting. It scampers lightly, alert for danger. Scurry, pause, scurry, pause. Eyes dangle from its head, bouncing with each advance on sinewy threads. Its flickering tongue tastes the air before it storms the last few feet, scaled legs whirling with effort. Blisteringly fast, it seeks a way into the sack, racing up the coarse fabric, an opportunistic thief.

Overhead a shadow moves. Preceded by a spike of white hair, it descends, opening until it blocks the creature’s path; a moving, living cave.

Feet frantically spin in the opposite direction but the creature cannot stop, momentum delivering it straight into the cavernous mouth.

As the suns rise, the goat chews.

A rising wind flicks at their eyes, throwing grit and flecks of moist matter. The Vagrant moves on, arm raised against the clouds of dust that blow past.

Distantly, shapes are visible, seeming to grow out of the ground.

At first the shapes are simply shelter. The Vagrant crouches behind a structure, leaning into boned fabric that gives but takes his weight. Breathing becomes less laboured and he looks around, running his fingers along the edge of the thing he sits by. Coarse plastic is stretched around a frame that juts out of the ground at a forty-degree angle. The external bars are two inches thick, made for burdens. His hand pauses as it reaches the frame’s end; the metal there is flat, edged.

Something has cut through it.

The Vagrant frowns, investigates further. Objects lie just beneath the surface, so badly broken they seem foreign. He tightens his grip on the baby, digging one handed.

Half buried in dirt and tipped on their sides, the waggons from the caravan are not immediately recognizable.

Neither are the bodies.

A face emerges, brushed into view. Sores stand proud on desiccated skin. Something has stolen the moisture, the eyes and more from the corpse. Further excavation allows it to be worked free. Tattered clothes hang loose on shrivelled bones, ridiculous, clown-like. The Vagrant slides his hand between the layers and new smells rise up. Muscles work in his jaw but he does not stop, exploring nooks and secrets.

When his hand seeks air again, it brings out a prize. Small, silver, shining: a coin. The Vagrant stares at it, emotions threatening at the edges of his face. Amber eyes look back from the coin’s flawless surface, accusing. Under that stare his composure breaks, swept away by grief and guilt.

Disturbed, the baby stirs in his arms, wriggling until a more comfortable position is found. Sleepy hands find the Vagrant’s thumb and establish a firm grip.

The Vagrant looks from coin to baby and back again.

Nodding grimly he puts it away.

When the winds falter after hours of pounding, and racing clouds slow and settle, the caravan’s inglorious end is revealed. The scene appears ancient, aged by the elements.

The waggon’s roof moves, rising at the centre, a plastic pyramid. Dirt rolls off as it sweeps upward, folding, falling aside to reveal its treasures. From the hole, the Vagrant pulls himself into the afternoon, squinting against the light. He walks around the wreckage, baby tucked under his arm. It sucks on his sleeve, watching his fingers as they tick off the bodies, one by one.

There should be more bodies than fingers but there are not.

Beneath the Vagrant’s boot, things crunch. He steps to the side, finding more uneven ground; it flattens under his weight with a long wheeze.

The baby giggles.

Crouching, the Vagrant finds a blob of black rubber as big as his fist, trailing tubes, a backup lung now redundant. Standing, he drops it back in the dirt and it wheezes again.

The baby laughs louder, reaching for the sound.

He goes to move on but urgent tugging at his collar demands attention. He looks down at the baby, raising his eyebrows; in miniature, his gesture is mirrored. The Vagrant’s eyebrows stretch a little higher, again he is matched. For a time both hold their position. There is no obvious winner in this contest, no clear rules.

Both parties break with dignity intact.

However the baby is dissatisfied. Straining against his arm, it points at the discarded respirator. Victorious or otherwise, it wants a prize.

Dutifully, the Vagrant delivers the lung to its new owner.

The Vagrant searches for abandoned treasure. From the wreckage he finds a crate full of decorated fabric. Some he cuts for the baby; a new wrap of shimmering girls and imaginary lakes. Some he cuts into a long strip, which he folds thick and lays across the goat’s back. For himself, the Vagrant makes a scarf, covering his face with softness.

Further hunting procures food containers, a cracked scope and a navpack. He holds the projector high to help ailing solar cells. Sunslight seeps through and in return they stutter out an image, low-res and incomplete, mapping the land that was. A ribbon of blue light marks the caravan’s route. Verdigris, the next place never visited, is close by. Further north are mountains and beyond them swirl meaningless logos; broken cities reshaped and remade by the Uncivil.

Lifting the scope to his eye, the Vagrant searches the horizon, turning slowly. In the distance he sees a figure watching, stone still, shaped like a person.

Soon they leave the caravan, striking out towards the mountains. A fast pace is kept and the nameless figure is left behind.