and removed the rubber gas mask from his face. The man with the harmonica about his neck.
“And more importantly, where’d you get that tank?”
He was a few days unshaven.
He was young.
He’s just a man.
Like me.
But he’s young.
Like I once was.
So maybe it ends here. Like the dream I have done my best to avoid. It ends with these scavengers murdering me as my granddaughter watches.
It cannot end that way.
“What’re you doing out here?” repeated the Harmonica Man.
If I can get to my crowbar maybe the Boy will use his axe… Maybe.
“Listen,” said the Harmonica Man. “You need to tell me what you’re doing out here at the old base, right now!”
“They’re not with them,” said either Trash or Grayson from behind their masks.
“We don’t know that,” said the Harmonica Man. “And hell, they’ve got a tank.”
There is a moment in between.
A moment when things might go one way or the other.
A moment when those who are prone to caution, hesitate.
And those who are prone to action, act.
“We’re on a rescue mission,” said the Boy.
Silence.
Maybe the guns just dropped a bit.
Maybe the masked gunmen have softened their stance.
Maybe there are other good people.
Maybe, my friend. Just maybe.
“Who?” asked the Harmonica Man.
“I don’t know. He does.” The Boy points to the Old Man.
Everyone turns to him.
The Old Man nods.
“All right,” says the man. “We’ll lower our guns and you’ll tell us all about it. Then, we’ll see what happens next.”
The Old Man lowers his hands.
Should I?
What choice do you have? None that I can see now, my friend.
“There are some people,” begins the Old Man. “They’re trapped inside a bunker to the east. A place once called Colorado Springs. They need this device to get free.”
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you with King Charlie?” asked the Harmonica Man.
“No. We don’t know any King Charlie.”
“How’d you get this tank?”
“I found it.”
The Harmonica Man thought about this, watching all of them.
The Old Man could see his granddaughter. Her mouth formed into a small “o.”
“Where will you go if we let you leave?”
If?
“We will go east and try to help those people.”
Silence.
“Why?”
Why?
Yes. Why, my friend?
“Because they need help.”
Harmonica Man lowered his gun and leaned it against his hip.
“We have food. Do you have any water?”
“Yes,” said the Old Man. “Some.”
“It’ll be night soon. Let’s eat and I’ll tell you why you might want to turn back.”
Chapter 26
Around the fire, sharing the goat and some wheat cakes the strangers have brought out from their patchwork rucksacks, they see the faces behind the black rubber gas masks.
Grayson is a young man. Not much older than the Boy. He is quiet and smiles with dark eyes. The Old Man knows he’s shy and that women find him handsome.
Trash is a girl, a woman really. Maybe in her midtwenties. Her race is mixed. Maybe some Asian. Some black. Blond dirty hair. Her tight jaw and clenched teeth show she is older than the other two, but not by much. She does not speak.
‘She reminds me,’ thinks the Old Man, ‘of a wounded bird, or a good dog that was once mistreated.’
Harmonica Man’s real name is Kyle.
He is ruddy faced and swarthy and the Old Man knows that he is the kind of young man who would fight the whole world if he had a good reason to.
Names from Before.
Names.
“If you keep going east,” said Kyle as he chewed some goat meat, “there is only one island of sanity between here and Flagstaff. That’s the Dam, where we come from. Beyond that, I’ve heard there’s electricity in ABQ but that might just be something the Apache made up, ’cause they’re crazy. I don’t put much in what they say, especially these days.”
They eat around a fire next to the tank in the shadow of the broken tower. Night falls. Only Kyle talks. There is goat, dry wheat cakes, and warm water.
“Then there’s the bad news. Between you and that island of sanity is a small army of crazy. Even worse, something big is going on to the east and we don’t have much information other than what the Apache let slip when they come in to trade. The real truth is, I don’t know what’s going down out east. What we’ve heard is there’s a big, organized group, almost like an army come up outta Texas. They seem to follow some guy who calls himself King Charlie and what he’s all about doesn’t sound good. Slaves. Torture. Voodoo. Bad stuff. It was six months since we’d heard from Flagstaff when our bunch got sent out here, and that was a little over a year ago. But whatever’s going down out that way ain’t so good. The Apache, on a good day, are hard to deal with. But whatever’s going on beyond their lands is makin’ em even crazier than usual. So there’s that. Which still ain’t your biggest problem.”
The Old Man chewed some of the stringier goat meat, letting the newcomers enjoy the tender goat they’d seasoned with the last of their pepper.
“Your biggest problem,” continued Kyle, inspecting the rib he’d been gnawing on to make sure it was indeed devoid of meat and fat. “Your biggest problem is that small army between here and the Dam. You make it to the Dam, you can go forward. But we’ve been stuck out here for a year. They’ve got Vegas all booby-trapped up, never mind the radiation. Hell, we had a tank just like yours. I mean, maybe not the same, but old Art, he kept her running. We had some motorized flatbeds we got together and we’d run ’em up to the old air base at Creech and do some salvage. Well, that little army came in and cut us off a year ago. Now things are weird. We can’t get back
