He came to the building at the end of the street. It was made of cinder blocks. He turned the corner and came upon more buildings made of the same material.
The fire had destroyed everything inside. But the shade was nice.
These walls are still good. A roof and I could live here.
Broken bottles and glass littered the ground.
This must have been a liquor store. The bottles exploded in the fire.
Once he guessed it was a liquor store he found the debris where the counter must have been. A melted plastic register at the bottom of it. He saw a few coins encased within the hardened plastic.
Whoever the writer is, he must have supplies. Maybe the village could trade with him. Or maybe he is lonely and might like to come live with us.
He walked down the row of burned-out concrete buildings.
This was some sort of market he said at one, a small one. Maybe that one was a clothing store. Farther on he found a barbershop. He could tell because the big iron chairs had survived the fire. He combed the store and found a pair of blackened scissors. He tucked them in his blanket and moved on. The last building was large. It was on the corner of the block.
This was an old movie theater. Built before I was a child. This must have been the center of town back in the old days. Not a megaplex like near the end. This was a theater with only one screen.
He walked in and found the auditorium. The seats had all burned and the screen was gone. All that remained of the projectionist booth were the two square windows through which the projector had shown. The floor had collapsed onto the concession stand.
For a long while the Old Man stood in the quiet, listening to the ticks the debris made as the heat of the day began to fade.
I think I will rest here today and tonight. It’s probably best to find the highway in the morning and head west back to the village. There isn’t any salvage between here and there.
He set up his camp and gathered wood. He spent the rest of the day resting in the shade. He went to bed early and awoke after midnight. The night air was cool and he smelled rain coming.
In the morning I will find where the two highways meet and head back along the Eight to the village.
LATE IN THE morning he found the Y where the two ruined highways merged into one heading south to Tucson. He also found the remains of six bodies stretched out on charred wooden boards, each in the shape of an X. Their skin leathery and mummified by the desert heat. Their socket-less eyes and openmouthed rictus made the Old Man step back.
Had they been alive when they’d been left here?
All the bodies faced south and east toward Tucson.
On the ground, thousands of rust-colored handprints were stamped into the old pavement of the highway.
Beyond the bodies, melted into the road in the same blackened writing from the tunnel, was the word SAFETY. A large arrow pointed down along the center of the highway toward Tucson.
Chapter 20
The stretch between the Y and Tucson was a long road. It was interrupted by only one landmark he could remember. Of all the names of the past he’d forgotten, he remembered the name Picacho Peak. It was a tall, rocky outcrop that rose straight up out of the desert floor. A lone mountain in an expanse of flatland alongside the highway. It lay between the Old Man and Tucson.
The Old Man stood at the Y considering the messages and their conflict.
The bodies are old, maybe a few years. The carving in the road, who knew.
But the bodies are newer than the carving.
He started down the on-ramp leading to Tucson.
“Safety” means salvage.
Unless whoever left the bodies went there also.
I must go and see. I know already, this will give me no peace unless I have an answer to it.
Yes, but you could go back to the village. Do you need the answer bad enough to lose your life?
He didn’t answer himself and instead walked for a long time that morning and into the afternoon. He passed road signs that had not blown down but had been scoured clean by violent sandstorms. The remains of a gas station were his home for the night. It had been looted, and when he checked the tanks they were bone dry. This caused him to wonder.
Gasoline has other uses than just to run cars.
At twilight he ate a packet of spaghetti and meatballs from the third MRE. He ate pound cake for dessert.
You are making a pig of yourself. You won’t be used to having less.
In the night, after the fire died, he heard something in the bushes outside the station. He lay still and after a few moments it was gone.
In the morning he ate a light breakfast and drank some instant cocoa from the MRE. The morning air smelled like rain, though there were only a few clouds to the south.
The blue desert sky was wide and the land a flat brown. He could see for thirty to fifty miles at a time. On the far horizon, dark mountain ranges cut jagged borders against the sky. He knew it was time for the monsoons and that when they came it would be very dangerous on the desert floor. A flash flood could come upon him from out of nowhere.
I should stay out of gullies and ravines. Also, don’t sleep in dry riverbeds.
At noon he caught two more rattlesnakes on the road and carried them along for another few hours. He would roast them over the fire at dusk.
By now he could see Picacho Peak in the distance. Between lay the burned remains of another small gas station city off to the left-hand side of the highway and a wild pecan orchard on the right.
Chapter 21
Himbradda led his small band down through the Sonoran Desert plains, skirting its eastern edge. They were many days ahead of the main body of the People. The People were returning to Picacho Peak to start their ceremonies again. The Professor had ordered the People to return to their most sacred place. Picacho Peak. So Himbradda had been sent ahead. To see if the Dragon still lived there.
Himbradda was very afraid, had always been afraid. The woman that delivered him into the world didn’t even know she was pregnant until he appeared nine months after she had been raped one morning, as the People grazed on wild beans and desert peyote. She lay under the hot morning sun, being raped in the rough yellow grass as she had been many times before and many times after.
When Himbradda arrived she carried him with her. Because of his withered left arm, he was accepted as part of the People and followed in the wake of their wanderings. He was fed on wild beans, pecans, uncooked coyote, and sometimes the warriors’ peyote. He even tasted the meat of other children, perfect unblemished children. Children not of the People. Once those children reached the bottom of the drop below Picacho Peak, then all of the People could take what could be grabbed and torn away.
Himbradda had been raped and he had raped. He had been hit and he had hit. He had been beaten and he had beaten. If he had known how to count, the number twenty would have represented the number of children he had begotten, the number thirty-two for the amount of people he had killed, and the number fifteen for how old he was.
Regardless of his withered left arm and crooked teeth, he was almost beautiful. He had a strong build and
