shadow seemed pleasant from the safety of the building.
I have to make it back before I die. I have to tell them. If this fever turns into something, they will never know.
You have to make it back without dying.
He thought of the tank in the garage.
He searched the building for the rest of the day, finding the libraries of books and discs and computers that still worked. Medical supplies, equipment of every sort; all had been catalogued, ordered, and stored. Waiting. The Old Man wondered at all the years and the person of Sergeant Major Preston.
Finally he went to the top floor suite and found the corpse of the Sergeant Major. The room was orderly, and only the photograph of a woman, young, bangs, glasses, was any clue to the personal life of the man. There was a body bag beside the bed.
The Old Man closed the door and went back to the elevator. In the garage he found vehicles, farming and construction equipment. Each had a composition book. Near the main entrance to the garage he found four tanks. Three were missing parts, obviously cannibalized to keep the fourth in good condition. He climbed up to the cupola and found a note on the hatch instructing him how to enter the tank.
Inside he found a VCR tape and a note that read “Watch First!!!” He returned to the offices of the building, and in one of the video libraries he found a VCR.
These were extinct when I was a kid.
Soon he had it working.
He sat down and watched as Sergeant Major Preston, middle aged, instructed him how to run the tank.
The tank had been fitted with a remote control system, slaved to the tank’s command compartment. This centralized the operation of the tank in the commander’s cupola. Sergeant Major Preston instructed the watcher on how to swivel and sight the main gun. How to fire it and how a reloading system would automatically rack another round. There were only twenty rounds on board. The video then detailed the starting of the engines, firing the fifty-caliber machine gun, and re-loading the tank’s fuel compartment at a fuel depot a few miles away where the Sergeant Major had managed to store fuel. Though, he said, the fuel tanks of any gas station could be siphoned using an auto pump on board the tank.
The Old Man had passed only a few gas stations that hadn’t burned to the ground. He doubted their fuel had survived. The video ended with the Sergeant Major putting the key to the fuel pumps on a wallboard inside the fuel station and showing a drawing of how to get to the station from the Fort. Then he lowered the white placard map and smiled into the camera. The tape ended.
Earlier in the day the Old Man had found the kitchen. He’d made a breakfast of powdered eggs and canned tomatoes from the pantry, one of several in fact. There was coffee and creamer too, though his throat had been too raw for it. Instead he had made some tea from tea bags he’d found on the counter.
Now he returned and opened a can of ham, made more powdered eggs, and put ketchup on them. He sat, chewing slowly.
I need to go, get there and back before someone comes.
No one has come in all this time. Who will come?
He thought about the savage boy lying at the bottom of Gates Pass. He thought about his own parents’ house.
There will be time for that once you come back with the village.
Will the village want to come?
He laughed at himself and chewed more egg.
When he had finished eating, he felt weaker than he should have.
The desert was too much. I won, but it may have beaten me. Maybe I got too close to Phoenix, or the rations or snakes were irradiated.
He thought of cancer.
I could leave now. Drive the tank through the night. Be home before dawn.
In the dark over broken roads and monsoon mud? It will take skill in the daylight. Don’t even think about it at night.
He went back to the office. He rolled out a new army-issue sleeping bag he’d found in an office full of supplies ranging from camping stoves to cots.
He made some tea and added a packet of honey. He wondered if they might grow lemons here some day. He lay back in the sleeping bag with a fresh clean pillow he’d unzipped from a package that bore the name of a very expensive store. He wondered if there might be a gym and showers in the building. But he had not seen either.
It would be nice to have a hot shower before bed.
He fell asleep in the middle of the thought and woke up later, still holding the Styrofoam cup of cold tea. He rolled over and slept until just before dawn.
Awake and moving stiffly, he tried to tell himself he wasn’t worse.
I won’t ask much of you today. Just get me back to my village. Then you can die.
Why are you so concerned about death now? Is it because you have everything to lose?
The eastern night ended in thin blue streaks. He rolled up the sleeping bag, stopped by the infirmary, and grabbed a bottle of aspirin. In the kitchen, he took bottles of water and cans of tuna and chili. He found a can opener, almost forgetting to, laughing at himself as if he had forgotten.
In the garage, he raised the door by electronic control in a guard shack and went to the tank. Soon he had the first engine on the tank started. It sounded like a jet engine. Then he started the second engine and felt for a brief moment that controlling the tank would be beyond him. He checked the instruments and found that the tank was full of fuel. He went down into the brightly lit cupola of the tank and stowed his gear on a seat near the rear, then returned to the seat in the cupola. He took hold of a joystick and swiveled the main gun, sensing a momentary sickness as the entire cupola swung to the right. Then he pointed it back to the front of the tank and placed his hands on two levers below the joystick.
The right controls the right tread, the left the left tread.
Pushing forward on both would move the tank forward. Or so Sergeant Major Preston had assured him. He pushed forward on both cautiously and nothing happened. He tried again. He thought back to the instructional video.
The gas pedal.
Below him, near the new boots he’d found in a different supply room, was the pedal. He stepped on it and heard the tank’s engines spool up to a high-pitched whine. He pressed forward on the two sticks while gassing the pedal as the tank eased through the garage doors. Outside he dismounted and closed the doors, then climbed aboard once more.
He gassed the pedal and pulled back on the left stick and went forward with the right as the tank swerved to the left. He looked back at the Fort. Then he eased the tank out onto the road leading to the highway. His throat felt sore. Maybe he was sick. But he wouldn’t think about it. The tank took all his concentration.
Chapter 28
At first the going was slow, as he wound through the side streets that led onto the main freeway. Once atop the eight-lane, the going got better.
For a while he rode the blacktop. The evacuation had left the city empty forty years ago. The Old Man knew where the people had fled during that long-ago exodus from a wrecked civilization. Many lay trapped between the cities in great wrecks of their own. A few had become his fellow villagers.
The highway ran smooth and eventually became a two-lane and a median with two lanes on the other side. Other than the occasional downed bridge that he maneuvered around or through, there was little that stood in the way of the tank. Soon he had the tank up to forty-five miles an hour.
He passed a semi overturned on its belly and stopped. It was covered in red handprints.
