I will have to think of a better way to teach her to know how and when to help, but not tonight. I cannot think of a way tonight.
Soon she was asleep and the Old Man lay awake for a long time listening to the sand dissolving the tank, and when he slept he dreamed of the cities of the West and the stranger beside the road and serial killers and empty diners where there was no food anymore.
Chapter 14
“You’re just two thousand meters away from the last known location of the tactical command post.” General Watt’s transmission was breaking up within intermittent bouts of white noise. “I have not been able to get a satellite with a working camera over the location. There are only a few operating satellites remaining, otherwise I might have been able to give you better data regarding the container’s location.”
They were passing through a wide sprawl of ancient warehouses that rose up like giant monoliths from the desert floor surrounding Barstow.
“What will this container look like?” asked the Old Man, hoping General Watt’s transmission would be understood.
“Green…” Static. “Size of a box…”
The Old Man asked the General to repeat the description, but the electronic snowstorm he listened within contained no reply. The satellite she had been bouncing the transmission off had finally disappeared far over the western horizon. The General had told them she wouldn’t be able to reach them again for another twelve hours.
The Old Man watched the silent place of massive box-like buildings. From this distance they seemed little more than dirty tombstones, but as his granddaughter maneuvered the tank up the road, he could see the telltale signs of time and wind. Metal strips had been ripped away in sections, as if peeled from the superstructure of the buildings. A place like this would have been an obvious choice for salvagers. But this is California. Everyone fled California when all the big cities had been hit. L.A. before I’d even left. San Diego a day later. But there was no sign of the box General Watt said they must find.
And what is in this box?
The Old Man shut down the tank.
They were exactly where General Watt had said they would find the tactical command post. And somewhere nearby would be the container, but there was nothing. No command post.
Dusty, wide alleyways led between the ancient warehouses.
If it was a small box, what would’ve prevented someone from merely carrying it away?
Then it must be a big box, my friend.
“Maybe it’s in one these buildings, Grandpa.”
They left the tank, feeling the increasing heat of the day rise from the ancient pavement of the loading docks.
Inside they found darkness through which dusty shafts of orange light shot from torn places in the superstructure. The Old Man clutched his crowbar tightly, stepping ahead of his granddaughter. There is a story here. A story of salvage. If you tell the story, you’ll find the salvage. He waited, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. You know part of the story. The General told you that part.
The days of the bombs had begun. Los Angeles was gone. But the Chinese, which was news to me because that must have happened after Yuma, were invading the western United States. The military, the Third Armored Division, or so General Watt said, staged its forces here in the deserts of Southern California. Supplies were air- dropped in as well as tanks and soldiers. They would counterattack the Chinese on American soil.
Imagine that.
At least they were supposed to have. But what happened in those days of bombs and EMPs and the rumors that spread like a supervirus is not clearly known and all the General can tell me is what was known. What was known before the jury-rigged, EMP-savaged communications networks that were able to route traffic through the bunker at Cheyenne Mountain collapsed. What was known before everything went dark.
And after?
The success of the counter-attack?
The tanks and soldiers?
The Chinese?
During those first days as we walked east, away from the Great Wreck, I had thought the world had ended. But in truth we knew so little of the story because who really knew everything that was going on and how could they tell us as we carried our possessions in our hands along the highway. The world had gone on ending long after we thought it was dead.
Nothing is known clearly now, and it is no longer important on this hot day forty years later.
The important matter for today is to find a container that was air-dropped and went wide of the landing zone as soldiers and tanks readied themselves to meet the enemy. The container’s GPS locator broadcast for years. But even that fading signal ended a long time ago.
“What’s inside?” the Old Man had asked General Watt.
“I’ll need to explain that later. I only have a limited time to communicate with you before the satellite I’m currently hijacking disappears over the Pacific horizon. Find the container and get it open. I’ll explain what you’ll need to do once you’ve obtained the supplies.”
Why do I have the feeling bad news has made an appointment?
Because you are cautious, my friend. And right now is the time to be cautious. So if you are cautious, you are doing well.
If we were on the boat I dreamed of last night, Santiago, seeing the flying fish jump, watching our lines, waiting for the big fish that was like a monster to come up from the deep to fight him together, you would say such things to me when my confidence was low.
Confidence can work both ways, my friend.
Yes, there is that.
That is not important now. Right now you need to find this box, my friend. Later you can decide how you feel about the bad news that you fear might be inside.
There is a story here also. A story of salvage.
The Old Man searches the gloom of the warehouse and sees very little. He smells wood smoke and decay from long ago.
Dead animals. Dried blood. Huddled bodies. Decay.
“Go to the tank, please, and bring me back the flashlight,” he whispers to his granddaughter.
When she returns, he scans the interior of the warehouse with the beam. Its light is weak and barely penetrates the dark. All batteries are old now in these many years after the bombs.
They walk forward into the gloom. She has brought a flashlight for herself also and he watches her beam move with energy, like her, never staying in any one place for too long, also like her. His beam is slow and searching. He finds the remains of the campfire in the center of the warehouse before she does. It was a large fire.
Around it are storage racks and iron beams, arranged as though many might sit and watch the fire through long winter nights that must have seemed unending and as though the entire world was frozen forever.
I know those nights.
I know those fire-watching nights.
I am always hungry when I think back on them and the howling wind that was constant.
You were very hungry then.
The whole world must have been hungry.
But there is no box here.
They search the building, even shining their lights into the high recesses of the fractured roof.
There is nothing.
