upon bags full of the last remaining possessions of lost wanderers. Wanderers who had come in from the wind and fire of the bombs. The long winter that followed. The years of sun afterward. Empty rotting bags from uncountable travelers.
HE BURNED IT. He stood watching in the charred remains of the gas station across the road that had once been something more than twisted and blackened metal. Even the ash that must have once covered the station, covered the entire world, had long since gone.
He leaned against a blackened cement pylon. He took pains to avoid the black blooming flower of metal that the pumps had become on that long-ago day when they had gushed forth jets of fuel on fire and burning hot.
Now the motel burned in the late afternoon heat. The Old Man started the fire in the room he had slept in. Started it with some paint thinner and a few other solvents. It consumed the bedspread, and by the time the Old Man had backed away from the motel door, the drapes were aflame and belching black smoke. Forty years of sun and the parched wood and lathe were more than ready to burn.
By the time he crossed the road to watch it all burn to the ground the fire was already visible behind fluttering curtains in the second-story windows.
Chapter 12
He ate some of the fox he’d dried, drank a little cold water, and counted the extra bottles and canteens he’d salvaged from the motel, now tied in a loose bandolier. Before setting the fire he’d filled them all with the cold water from the faucet in the office.
That faucet had almost been enough reason not to burn it all down. He could have put a sign on the road or painted the word “WATER” in big red letters across the sides of the motel. A modern oasis for travelers.
But there had been too much evil. Too much wrong had happened within the gold curtained rooms. Too many lives ended in a drugged stupor as Mirrored Sunglasses brained or bashed or shot, by the look of some beds, those who had wandered out of the destruction and found the Dreamtime Motel.
The Old Man guessed the shotgun, buried under the rattlesnakes, was empty. Emptied long ago into the back of another victim. He found a box of shotgun shells. It was empty. Along with the shot-shredded rust-stained bedspreads, the empty box told the story of the shotgun beneath a pile of snakes.
The handcuffs themselves could have been salvage. But when the Old Man went to inspect them, he found no key.
Maybe that’s why they were locked? The key had been lost by a blind man.
Would he have let her go if he could have found the key? How long had she lived on that bed?
The grooves and scratches in the frame were numerous. Too numerous for just one victim.
That could have been enough to burn it down. But there was more. In the dying light of the embers he ate the dried strips of fox.
The woman justified burning it all down.
But the water from the faucet was another thing. An oasis was not easily come by.
An early evening desert wind picked up embers, scattering sparks across the road. The fire was finished. Only gray smoke from a few hot spots came up through the charred remains. Where the motel had once been seemed lost and altogether a lie.
It was the marks that made you burn it.
Si. The marks.
In the room of bags, on the wood paneling near the door and just above the lightswitch, had been the marks. Little sticks grooved into the wood. Four uprights and finally a horizontal slash. Five. Sets of five. Too many sets. Other stray marks along the border, half the size of the sets of five, told him of the children.
Children had been special to Mirrored Sunglasses.
So it had to burn?
Si.
Yes.
It had to burn.
One day we might not be, and the people who come next don’t need to take this with them. My granddaughter.
Tired, he rose to his feet. The moon was large and it would be a cool night for walking. He drank a little more water and adjusted his satchel. He tucked the gun that had lain on the ground next to him into his waistband. He tightened the electrical cord he used for a belt. The gun fit nicely.
From now on I must keep the gun ready.
But I hope I do not need it.
He set off down the blacktop leading away from the Dreamtime Motel.
THE GROUND ON the side of the road was smoother than the blacktop that eventually proved itself unsafe in the night as tears and eruptions lay shadowed beneath his feet. Occasionally he would stumble, and finally he kept to the side of the road.
If I twist my leg then I will wish I had not burned that place down.
Don’t say such a thing.
So he moved to the shoulder and continued following the white dirt along the moonlit road. North.
North is not as bad as east.
Once the moon was overhead, he stopped for water and a bite of fox meat though he didn’t feel hungry. The only road sign he passed had been one of the large ones that spanned the entire road. It had fallen facedown and what was written upon it was beyond the strength of his arms to know.
He continued on, and when the moon was waning far to the west, he saw that the road began a long curve toward the east. A mountain ridge to the north blocked further progress. To the east, the remains of four large overpasses that had once connected the highways lay in ruins. Only the pillars and sections of the road like the capitals of columns remained.
I could find shelter there for the day. Maybe some vehicles. Maybe salvage. It will be dawn in a few hours.
He picked up his satchel and slung it once more across his chest.
If it is occupied it might be best to come upon it before dawn. If I smell cook fires then I will know.
The moon went down and soon it was dark.
I was spoiled walking by the light of the moon.
He picked his way along the broken concrete of the highway thinking of nothing more than where his next footstep should be.
Arriving just as the eastern sky began to show the first hints of blue, he crouched in a debris-cluttered culvert. He heard nothing, even as the sun began to cast a steady soft orange light across the desert behind him. His nose smelled nothing on the wind, and once the sun was two hands above the horizon, he left the culvert and continued into the wreckage of the overpasses.
He chose the fallen road sections that had collapsed onto the highway beneath.
If there is anyone here, maybe they are lazy. Then at least I will be above them. They might not even see me.
The fallen sections were made of clean white concrete, grooved as if combed by a brush. He took off his huaraches and continued along the road as it climbed quickly. A break in the road caused him to stop, and he lowered himself onto the section that had fallen on the other side of the break. He climbed this section and another one like it, and soon he was beneath one of the large pillars where part of the highway remained above him.
How long would that last?
He marveled at what man had once built. What he had once driven over. What was once so common seemed a thing of lost giants.
At the end of the broken road he could see the intersection of the four roads. The ground beneath was
