“No. I feel… I feel like we cheated them.”
He waited for her reply.
When she did, she said, “You’re a good man. I’m sure of it. I don’t think you ever intended for the world to destroy itself.”
“I was almost as young as they are now when it happened. But still, after all this time I feel responsible. Guilty somehow.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Thank you, but lately, and for a long time, I’ve felt it was all my fault. For a long time I’ve felt ‘curst.’”
In the dark, a breeze passed and the Old Man watched as the wave it left in the grassy plain swept past him and off into the night.
“If it helps, I can tell you something about yourself,” offered Natalie.
“What?”
“I can tell that right now you are trying to make the world a better place. Why else would you help us if not because of that?”
The Old Man said nothing.
“The people who destroyed the world weren’t trying to make it better. Baseball wasn’t important to them. Nor were children who might one day see a game played under lights. They were more concerned with destroying themselves for power than good things like seeing a baseball game with their grandchildren. And what’s worse, if they were still alive, they would not feel guilty as you do now. Sadly, I imagine they would do it all over again.”
“If that were true, then that is very sad,” said the Old Man.
“Only the good feel guilty. So that means you are good.”
“Thank you.”
Silence.
“Natalie?”
“Yes?”
“I hope this works. I hope we’ll be able to set you and your children free.”
“I hope so too.”
Chapter 44
At dawn the next day, the air was thick and the heat already in the day, as if the two were one thing and could not be separated from each other.
Today we need to find water.
And food.
They traveled north again, following the straight arrow highway into a horizon that blended with the featureless landscape of rolling green grass, sun, and gray haze.
The tank rumbled and shuddered, its sound more metallic, its smoke thicker.
For a while there were fewer bodies.
Then all at once there were clusters, tossed like rag dolls to the side of the road by some petulant and perpetually unsatisfied child.
In the distance they could see a conical hill rising up out of the plain, and the silhouettes of horsemen and men on foot driving others, huddled figures, forward toward the hill under the harsh bright blaze of noon.
We’ve finally caught up with them.
What did you expect you would do?
I didn’t think it would be our problem.
But now it is, my friend.
Yes.
“Poppa?” she said over the intercom.
The Old Man handed his field glasses to the Boy.
After a moment the Boy lowered them and said, “They’re trying to take shelter by that hill. They have a small fort around the bottom that encircles the whole.”
“They’ve known we were behind them, that’s why they’re running,” said the Old Man.
And why they drove these people so hard.
And why we have passed so many bodies alongside the road.
“We can still catch them,” said the Boy. “They’ve got about two miles to go before they reach the hill.”
The Old Man looked again.
“But what will we do? I can’t fire this,” he said patting the long barrel of the gun. “We might hit some of Ted’s people.”
Even Ted perhaps.
Yes.
The Boy, he is on the edge of something.
Yes, my friend.
He’s been here before, at this moment between things. Between attack and retreat.
The Boy seemed to move and remain still at once.
Suddenly the Old Man knew, or rather felt by the sudden electricity in the air, that the Boy had decided what must be done next.
“Get her in there with you,” said the Boy pointing toward the hatch.
He’s decided.
The Boy disappeared down inside the tank.
His granddaughter was already crawling up out of the driver’s hatch and making her way, hand over hand, along the gun barrel up to the turret of the tank.
“What’re we going to do, Poppa?”
“I don’t know,” said the Old Man wiping sudden sweat from his forehead. “But I think he has a plan.”
“To help those people?”
“Yes, I think so.”
The Boy emerged from his hatch, then bent down and drew up the weight bar from inside the tank. Secured to its tip was the blue bowling ball.
He’s certainly made a weapon, my friend.
The Boy set the weapon down against the turret and reached back into the tank once more. His powerful right arm drew up the manhole cover. For a moment the Boy struggled to attach it to his weak left side, forcing his thin, trembling arm through a makeshift strap he’d fashioned for it.
“That’ll be too heavy for…”
‘Your bad side,’ you almost said, my friend.
The Boy, sweating, nodded.
“It will do its work today, just like the rest of me!” he said with a grunt as he pulled the strap tight. The manhole cover seemed to draw his entire left side downward.
The Boy reached down and took up his new weapon as if it were merely a stick.
On that side he is strong. Stronger maybe than anyone I have ever met.
Beneath the gray haze of summer heat and the clicking buzz of the unseen insects in the tall grass, the Boy stood like some bygone warrior and pointed his mace at the running slavers who drew whips high into the air and brought them down with a sonic crack across the backs of the terrified.
“Get me as close to them as you can.”
This is madness.
The Old Man’s trembling hands fell to the controls.
“What will you do then?” he asked the Boy.
“I’ll fight them from the tank as if it were a horse.”
