The Wasteland Saga

No, maybe not, my friend.

“Well,” said the Old Man, lost for a moment. “Life is life. All my nights and days would be with friends or in places that had water and rooms and pizza and video games. I thought I would always see movies. Probably until the day I died. Then the bombs fell.”

The Old Man watched the fire.

“Since that time I have had many nights out in the desert. Out under the stars. Nights I never would’ve imagined when I was young like you and spent every night in the same room I had grown up in.”

There were cars on the walls.

Yes.

And comic books.

Yes, also.

“Poppa?”

Pause.

I am not in that room anymore. Not for a long time and I wonder what became of it.

What do you think happened to it, my friend?

“Poppa!”

“Well, it is good to be here,” said the Old Man, returning. “Under the stars tonight, with you.” He looked at his granddaughter. “What I’m trying to say is that I never thought my life would lead here, and that I would be happy. Do you understand?”

She thought for a long moment.

Then…

“I just want to go everywhere, Poppa.”

After a moment the Old Man nodded, concealing his fear that one day she might actually do that. Concealing his fear of those days and places and the people that must live there now in the “everywhere” of all the places she would go.

The Old Man turned to the Boy who watched the both of them.

He almost becomes invisible.

It’s like he’s barely there.

Like he’s fading away.

“What are all those cities like? What is it like out there in the world?” asked the Old Man, waving his hand across the night sky as if to cover every known place.

As if to wipe away his sudden fear.

Pause.

“All gone,” said the Boy. “There is nothing left. And the world…”

Pause.

The Boy looked into the eyes of the Old Man.

The Old Man saw none of the malice he’d seen in that other boy, that savage boy who’d chased him across the desert with a parking meter for a club.

Instead he saw an emptiness within the Boy’s green eyes where a fire that once burned had gone out. Like an old campfire gone cold long ago. Or a wreck from Before, still lying on the highway waiting for someone to come and cry out with horror.

And grief.

Like this campfire will be after we leave tomorrow and for the years to come. Just tired ashes fading in the sun and disappearing with the wind.

“…the world,” said the Boy. “Is gone.”

Chapter 18

“General Watt? Natalie, are you there?” In the night, the Old Man sits in the tank, feeling the cold metal against his sunburned skin.

The nightmare that awoke him, the one of falling and hearing his granddaughter say No, Grandpa. I need you, has come again. And even though he reminds himself that she calls him Poppa now and that the terror has no power over him, should have no power, that he has changed the rules of the game and changed his name so the devil cannot find him, still he lies awake.

He slips away from the camp to urinate on ancient blackened stones that were once someone’s home, someone’s business, who can know anymore? Then he drinks cold water made pleasant by the night’s cool air.

I will think of tomorrow and the fuel we need to find at China Lake.

And when he cannot think of or envision what they might find there, he leaves his bedroll, knowing he will not return for the night and starts the APU on the tank.

He checks the radio frequency though he knows he has not touched it and can think of no reason why he should have.

“General Watt? Natalie? Come in.”

The Old Man wonders if the white noise he hears as he waits for a response from the General, from Natalie, is always there, waiting even when no one is listening.

How many years are there between these few brief signals since the bombs?

“Yes. I’m here,” says General Watt.

Natalie.

The Old Man finds an unexpected comfort in the woman’s voice. Older, softer, yes. Tired even. But a comfort he did not expect to find.

And yet you must have known it was there, my friend, or why else would you be calling her in the middle of the night?

He watches the barely red coals and the sleeping forms of his unmoving granddaughter on one side of the fire near his empty bedroll, and the Boy, his good arm thrown over his face, his body twisted as if tormented even in sleep.

“We’re not too far from China Lake, General… I mean, Natalie.”

“Good. I have more information for you on where to locate a possible fuel source. I planned on waiting until morning to contact you. I was estimating that you might still be asleep.”

“I can’t sleep tonight.”

“Why, are there problems? Is everything all right?”

“No. I mean… Yes. I mean… we picked up a passenger today. But now we’re proceeding on to China Lake. I’d expected this trip to be much more difficult than it has been so far.”

“Then why can’t you sleep?”

“I guess… because I’m old.”

“How old are you?”

“I was twenty-seven when the bombs fell. How long ago was that?”

“Forty years, six months, eight days, seventeen hours, and seven minutes since the nuclear detonation that occurred on Manhattan Island in New York City.”

The Old Man moved numbers around in his head.

We had lost track of time back in the village.

There had been more important things to do in those days after the bombs than to keep track of meaningless days.

I am old now.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I am one year older than you,” replied Natalie.

Pause.

“Do you remember…?” asked the Old Man.