industrial warehouses. Two watchtowers that had risen from behind the wall had been pulled down, their frames sprayed outward like so many spilled matchsticks. The patchwork gate was wide open.
Why?
The Fool, the Horde, King Charlie. Does it matter? Someone.
Maybe they fled? Maybe they’re hiding?
But the pulled-down watchtowers told another story.
Inside, the three of them found the town.
Streets.
Houses.
A humming generator in the distance.
Doors wide open.
Empty mugs and glasses whose insides were still stained with punch-red syrup.
The Boy went back to the tank and the gate once the Old Man had called out “hello” and received no response.
“What happened here, Poppa?”
“Nothing good.”
“It seems bad.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll leave soon.”
But the fuel, my friend, there is only a little left.
“I’m not worried, Poppa.”
“I know.”
“Are you worried, Poppa?”
The Old Man did not answer her and instead continued to search the town as she trailed after him.
They wandered through a few houses, and what they found within told them nothing other than that one moment of life lived ordinarily had frozen, and that time had refused to move forward.
Beds unmade.
Wash hanging.
Each house smelling of dust and wood.
Tools, usable salvage, merely left for anyone to take.
In one house they found a spilled glass of milk.
The milk was warm and spoiled.
We should find the generator. Maybe it runs on fuel.
As if on cue, while the Old Man stood over the spilled milk and heard at the same time the distant hum of power, the generator died.
Outside, stepping over the front lawns turned to dying gardens, the strings of light above had ceased to twinkle.
The Old Man followed the darkened lights to thick rubber electrical cables that snaked through the streets and led to a house on the far edge of the settlement. Inside, the Old Man found hundreds of generators set up in every room. A central fuel bladder occupied the upper story. In the backyard they found a fuel truck that started crankily. Its tank was almost empty.
This was their power plant.
But the fuel is somewhere else.
Yes.
At the front entrance, waiting in the shade of the tank and drinking from a canteen, the Boy watched the land to the north of them.
“They were chained up over there,” said the Boy and pointed toward the median. “There’re drops of blood all over the dirt. The slavers must have put fishhooks in their noses or mouths and linked them to chains. Then they went north. I’ve seen it done before.”
“Can you tell how many days ago that might have been?” asked the Old Man.
“A week. Maybe more.”
The explosion shook the city.
It was distant. A boom, and then a crack that seemed to follow seconds after, echoed far out across the city and into the hills above them.
Back toward the center of the city, flames shot skyward as a black plume of smoke belched into the tired blue sky.
“Is it one of the bombs from before, Poppa?”
“No. Just an explosion.”
She has no idea how big those bombs were. She has heard me and the other survivors who lived through those days talk of them and all that they took away, but she really has no idea how massive they were.
“Are you sure, Poppa?” she said, the worry evident.
“I am sure.”
But he could see her face. Her wide eyes. The lips pressed together.
“Those bombs destroyed entire cities,” said the Boy. “We would be dead if it had been one.”
After a moment she seemed to accept the Boy’s words.
Relaxing.
She has lived in fear of those bombs her whole life. They are her boogeyman.
Yes. And this Boy said the words that comforted her, my friend.
Yes. There is that also.
They drove as close to the flames and smoke as they could. They could smell the thick scent of burning fuel.
It was an industrial district.
Narrow streets.
Concrete warehouse.
In green slop-paint the words “How now Nuncle Brown Cow?” were splashed across the smooth side of an old warehouse.
The Fool did this.
It would seem so, my friend.
This Ted must have been brewing their fuel here. He seems a very smart man. Our village could have used him.
The world could have used him.
Yes.
Black smoke erupted through windows and through the roof of a large warehouse as orange flames consumed the entire structure.
All their fuel must have been inside there, inside a big tank.
With no one to fight it, this fire will burn the city down in a few days.
And…
“What are we gonna do now, Poppa?”
We have, maybe, ten miles of fuel left.
So there is that also, my friend.
Yes.
Chapter 41
The tank limped through the fence at the far end of the international airport. Ahead, dirty and ancient jetliners waited forever at their gates for passengers on that last and long-ago day. Doomsday.
The needle in the gas gauge rested firmly on Empty.
I will not give up.
