tapped his leg, motioning for the Boy to put on his helmet. When this was done the Old Man switched on the intercom.
“What do you think of him?” asked the Old Man, referring to the Stranger. “About his information? Did you ever pass through the areas he warned us about?”
“We did not.”
Who does he mean when he says “we”?
The soldier.
“Maybe he was just crazy?” said the Old Man.
The Boy said nothing for so long the Old Man wondered if maybe there wouldn’t be a comment. But then the Boy spoke.
“I do not think he is touched in the head. Sergeant Presley would say… well, it does not matter, but, no, I don’t think he is crazy. There was truth in his riddles.”
“So what do you think he meant by all those riddles?” asked the Old Man.
Flagstaff fell behind them, and ahead, the long straight road cut through the high rolling plains.
It feels like we’re still heading upward.
Still heading to the top of the world.
In the far west, fading blue light still shone distantly. Ahead the land lay covered in soft mist and darkness.
“There are people who act crazy,” started the Boy out of the silent hum of the intercom. “I think it’s some kind of defense. A way of keeping them safe on the road. Most villages treat such people with respect. They give them food and send them on their way. They’re superstitious about such people.”
“Are there many villages out there?”
The Old Man looked into the distant east and saw only the rising night.
“Some,” said the Boy.
For a long time the Old Man kept the tank on the road. But when the road became impassable, they would deviate around broken chunks of highway and scattered concrete pylons and even the wild-haired rebar jutting from the remains of bridges.
Far out into the plains, miles off-road, they would see the skeletal remains of recreational vehicles rocking in a wind that blasted across the rolling landscape, causing the grass to bend in great waves like the tides of an ocean.
The Old Man switched on the night-vision optics and saw no one among the lonely outposts of wreckage.
People must have come here in the days of the bombs, forming up into small settlements. They would’ve driven here in those RVs and made alliances once they’d arrived.
Or murdered each other for what few supplies could be had.
How long did they last?
Not long. How could they? They only had what they’d brought. There are no places to salvage up here. No major towns or industry. What could they have found where there was little or nothing?
Later, the road disintegrated into little more than swallowed chunks of concrete through which tufts of yellow grass sprang upward. The tank moved slower along the broken highway, the Old Man not wanting to chance the fragile right tread.
You must go all the way, tread. You cannot give up tonight or even when we get there. After this is all done, we still have to get back home.
The last part sounded like an empty promise to the Old Man.
He began to think of the other dark possibilities that existed besides returning home.
But he cut himself off and would not think of such things.
Tonight I must concentrate. I cannot think of what will go wrong tomorrow or even the day after. Those things are for another day.
In the darkness there seemed to be no one out there. All the rumors of Apache might just simply be rumors. All the talk of Apache nothing more than the talk of ghosts. Boogeymen to frighten misbehaving children.
He drove on and watched the road, seeing nothing but scattered pockets of rusting and beaten destruction from long ago.
He saw the bridge far ahead as the road began a series of descents and rises through rolling hills. It should have been a bridge like any other overpass crossing. But it wasn’t.
The bridge still stretched across the two hills that had been both its on-ramps and off-ramps for east and west traffic. But beneath the overpass, where the highway ran, lay a collection of vehicles tilted upright, their hoods pointed into the sky as if they had been suddenly forced upward.
Tacked across the front of each rusting hood was a human skeleton with a dog’s head.
The Old Man switched on the high beam of the tank as they approached.
It’s a message.
“They don’t want us to come this way?” said the Boy over the intercom.
Or anyone for that matter.
“Is your hatch closed?” he asked his granddaughter.
“Yes, Poppa.”
“Lock it now.”
The Old Man maneuvered the tank up the overpass to the road that crossed atop the bridge. Against the bright moon, he could clearly see the pennants made of rags and oily crow feathers flapping madly in the windy darkness.
We are in their land now.
If we tell them what we’re going to do, maybe they will let us pass.
And if they don’t, my friend?
The Old Man started down the on-ramp on the far side and re-entered the old highway.
A few miles farther along, and the highway descended into a series of curves that entered a long and narrow ravine, which soon widened into a valley that cut through low, flat-topped mesas.
A small gas station town lay alongside the road and the Old Man could see greasy firelight behind some of the windows.
For a while the road paralleled a river. Weeping willows hung gloomily along the banks in the night. Later, in the deep of the valley, the road disappeared under a wash of sand where the river must have once overflowed.
Probably in the days after the long winter.
Yes.
The Old Man drove the tank down onto the sand bed, letting the high beam stay on, watching for places where the tank might get stuck. Ahead he could see the single remaining pylon of a bridge that must have once crossed over the wide river that ran through the canyon.
As they entered the dry riverbed, they dropped suddenly and the Old Man banged his head sharply on the side of the hatch.
His first thought was that the ground had suddenly given way underneath them.
Soft sand.
But he could see crumpled tin and splintered wood in the optics and a wall of sandy dirt beyond.
We’ve fallen into a trap!
“Are you all right?” he asked his granddaughter over the intercom as he reached up and shut the turret hatch.
“What happened, Poppa?”
“I think we fell in a hole.”
The Boy, bathed in the red of the interior emergency lights, gripped his chair.
Rain began to fall against the sides of the tank.
Not rain.
Arrows.
