the open path. They passed the debris of an extinct nation, hollow Exxon stations, Subway sandwich shops, Dollar General, Cracker Barrel, check-cashing places, pawnshops, banks and a Laundromat with a yellow Hummer crashed through the front window. On the back of the Hummer was a bumper sticker that said I BRAKE FOR GARAGE SALES.
They passed through another residential neighborhood and crossed into a park on the other side: swings, slides, trees, benches. The grass was long and brown.
“Break for lunch here,” Ted told them. “I need to scout around, get my bearings.”
Ted left them in the park.
“Benches over by that odd-looking tree.” Mortimer pointed. “We can take a load off.”
They walked toward it and realized it wasn’t a tree at all but something fabricated of metal and wires, meant to look like a small weeping willow. When they were standing right in front of it, Mortimer saw that the trunk of the tree had been fashioned from several car bumpers welded and bent. The limbs were car antennas. Headphones and iPods and electrical charge cords hung from the limbs, draped nearly to the ground.
Sheila knelt, ran her hand over a wooden plaque, letters burned neatly into the surface:
NEW WORLD WILLOW
– ANONYMOUS
Mortimer looked at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Let’s eat.”
They sat on the benches. Lunch was meager. Jerky and stale bread, what some of them happened to have in pockets. Most of the food had gone over the side in the mad rush to lighten the blimp.
Mortimer munched jerky without enthusiasm, considered the willow again. Somebody had decided to do that, had decided to stop in the shadow of a dangerous city, had paused in the necessary ongoing routine of gathering sustenance and finding shelter, had simply put it all aside to make this thing. To make art.
Mortimer couldn’t decide if that was dedication or stupidity. Maybe the harder you fought to live, the more obligated you felt to live for something.
He looked at the dangling wires, headphones, MP3 players, computer gadgets. Many were corroded, covered in bird poop. The new world willow had been here awhile. Maybe years. Maybe the artist was dead now. The willow might have been the last thing he ever did.
“I used to have an iPod,” Bill said around a tough chunk of jerky. “I used to love to download songs from the Internet. Man, I loved Christina Aguilera. And Moby. I wish they still had music.”
“They do still have music,” Sheila said.
“I mean like on CDs and digital and all that,” Bill said. “You go into Joey’s and the band plays and that’s fine and everything, but it’s not like going through ten thousand songs on Napster and picking and choosing whatever you want.”
“Electricity’s coming back,” Mortimer said. “People are going to start using things again, microwave ovens and CD players. Maybe even the Internet.”
“It’s not the same,” Bill said. “Not like being connected with everything while it’s happening. You can scavenge old CDs and a player and make it work, but it’s always going to be leftovers. It’ll never be now.”
“We’ll make a new now,” Jake said. “It’ll be tough, but we’ll fight and hang on and make things new again. Here comes Ted.”
Ted had found the path. He led them until nightfall, and they camped within spitting distance of the ruined Atlanta skyline.
XLV
Mortimer tossed another stick on the fire. “It’s decision time.”
The others looked up from their places around the camp, eyes wide and curious. They hadn’t realized an announcement was coming.
“This is up to me now,” Mortimer said. “We’re about to get neck-deep in Red Stripe territory. I have a personal stake in this. As you know, I’m looking for my wife. I need to see her. Anyway, it’s enough to say that in addition to putting the brakes on this Czar asshole, I have my own motivations, which are nobody else’s problem but mine.”
Sheila frowned, broke eye contact.
“You can shove your hero speech up your ass,” Bill said. “If you think I’m the kind to cut out on a partner, then I guess you don’t know me very well at all.”
Mortimer smiled. Damn, he’s a good pal. I’m going to miss him when I get my dumb ass killed. “I appreciate that, Bill. More than you know. But it’s a one-man job, and there’s just no sense in risking everyone.”
“You’re stupid.” The venom in Sheila’s voice startled them. “We live in a time when the most valuable thing a person can have is somebody to look out for you and that you can look out for,” she said. “And you treat that like it’s not anything.
