So we’re done with that noise.
Religion and morals be all the same and only different ’bout who was right and wrong on everything.
So here’s how it be
Man be man alone
And the man be
King Charlie.
King Charlie be not wrong or right.
He just be.
After King Charlie be nothing.
Heaven = Hell, only the unlucky die and the dead like to tell some truth when they say nothing.
If there be a heaven, King Charlie imagine you’ll get there no matter what you do
unless you’re the Hitler or Stalin who gave everyone the aids.
We come so that all might live in prosperity.
And only the strong survive.
Get it?
We are an accident
Created by an accident,
And so the Apocalypse must be our promise
Of a better tomorrow
When we hear-ed that doomsday bell
The gunfire a Ratta-tat-tating,
Your screams for mercy
The blast that blew everything away that was,
And when we saw the light of bombs bursting in air
Someone said ‘ ‘Twas but the sound of man worshipping his maker,‘
So…
Siege!
Lone Gunman!
Horde rapes outpost!
Nuclear Bomb Disintegrates London!
It’s just be the sounds of man
worshipping his maker.
At the bottom of the piece of paper, as if separate and a command, the Old Man read, ALL HAIL KING CHARLIE!
The Old Man let the screed fall to the ground. He motioned for the Boy to get back into the tank, and as he climbed once more into the hatch, his eyes fell to the final words that had been slop-painted onto the highway before the tank.
ONCE YOU’RE FREE OF SHAME YOU’RE FREE TO ACT SHAMELESSLY.
GIVE UP, NUNCLE, YOU’VE GOT NO CHANCE!
On the other side of the tunnel the night seemed cooler, the air fresher. The moon turned everything slightly blue with its glaring yellow light now that it had risen above the distant dust storm.
In the hours that followed, there were other tight spots and places where the road seemed impassable. They threaded each of these places carefully, waiting for an attack that did not come.
The road improved and soon they were making good time across the high desert with dawn just a few hours away. The Boy, whose chin had fallen to his chest, lay deep in sleep bathed by the red light of the tank, fastened into his seat. When the Old Man tried the intercom, his granddaughter only murmured and he knew she too was sleeping now.
Alone, he drove through what remained of the night and soon the eastern sky began to turn a pale blue.
Another day.
They topped the rise that looked down on Albuquerque in the soft light of first morning.
The city is still there.
Ted.
On the eastern side of town, the Old Man could see thin strings of electric light still burning distantly like twinkling gems in the pink of morning.
Chapter 40
They crossed gray concrete roads and empty sun-bleached buildings falling to rubble in the blaze of morning. The Old Man aimed the tank toward the strings of light still twinkling in the bright daylight below the foothills on the eastern edge of town.
Those lights should be off by now. Who would leave them on during the day?
But the lights remained on and when the Old Man found the settlement, a walled-off neighborhood below the easternmost foothills, the Old Man did not wonder why no one had turned out the lights. They were greeted by a soft dry breeze and the silence of abandonment.
The settlement was a large tract housing development lying alongside the highway leading north. A massive adobe brick wall, built before the bombs, surrounded the entire development.
Why was this place spared, like Tucson?
At the entrance they found a makeshift gate fashioned from the metal one might find at the gates of
