The Wasteland Saga

You’ve got to find better shelter, Boy! If this lodge was here from before the war then chances are there are others like it.

The Boy had seen many buildings from Before built in clusters; the towns they had passed through and the cities he had wanted to visit. Clusters.

In the afternoon he walked upriver with his tomahawk and knife. His withered left side felt stiff, but he concentrated on its movements, controlling it, willing his leg to step over fallen logs instead of dragging as it would’ve liked to if he’d ridden Horse for days at a time.

He heard a loud twig snap underneath his feet.

Too loud, Boy! No go.

Everything Sergeant Presley had taught him had been graded. When the time had come for the Boy to perform a task, the standard for pass or fail was always “good to go” or “no go.” He’d hated when Sergeant Presley wrenched his mouth to the side and said, No go.

Upstream the river began to curve to the north, winding through a series of rapids. Off to the left he could see the steep, conical mountain Escondido had warned him of, where at the top a bear made its den.

It was winter now. Bears should be asleep.

There were no other lodges, or if there had been, what remained of them could not be found.

It was hard to imagine the world as a place where people could either live in cities or in the forest. What was so special about cities?

You always wanted to go there, Boy.

I did. I wanted to know what was in them.

And…

What would I have been like if I had lived in one?

Standing at the bend in the river, feeling his withered leg and arm stiffen in the late-afternoon cold as the sun fell behind tall peaks to the west, he thought of people he once knew and could not remember.

They had always lived in the cold plains. His first memory was of running. Of a woman screaming. Of seeing the sky, blue and cold in one moment, and the ground, yellow stubble, race by in the next.

Sergeant Presley had rarely mentioned “your people.”

Not like in tents, not like your people.

All gone over to animals, not like your people.

They don’t ride horses, like your people do.

THAT NIGHT THE temperature dropped and the snow came down in hard clumps without end. He lay next to Horse, who moved little and whose breathing was shallow. At one point, the Boy was so cold he thought he should surely die.

When he awoke in the morning everything was covered in snow.

THE BEST TIME to do something about a thing is to do it now, Boy!

We won’t last out here another night.

When Horse opened his eyes they fluttered.

You won’t make it out here like this, will you, Horse?

He laid his hand on Horse’s belly, feeling the heat both comforting and sickening at once.

He knew what he had to do. He had known it in the freezing night when the snow had stopped falling and the wind rushed through the pines, seeming to make things even colder than when the snow had fallen. Even the sound of the icy water falling along the rapids seemed to make the world colder.

The Boy had known in the night what he must do.

He’d waited for Sergeant Presley to tell him not to do it.

“You would say,” he thought aloud, pretending to be Sergeant Presley’s voice. “You would say it was fool’s business. That’s what you would say.”

He waited, listening to the rush of the water in the river.

He looked upriver, his eyes falling on the small, steep, conical mountain.

You would say that.

Ain’t nothin’ but a thang, Boy. Mind over matter. You don’t mind, it don’t matter.

You would say that also.

You got to kill that bear, Boy. No two ways about it.

Chapter 15

That morning he collected three long poles of fresh wood that wouldn’t snap. Working with his knife he sharpened the ends into stakes, hardening them in the fire until the tips were black.

By noon he’d fed Horse, who ate little of the fire-dried grass the Boy had placed before him. He sat by the fire putting a fresh edge on the steel tomahawk Sergeant Presley had given him. Its bright finish was a thing made in the past, never to be seen again. Often, when they had encountered strangers, he’d seen their eyes fall to it, wanting it for their own.

Laying aside the sharpened tomahawk, he gave the knife an edge. They’d made these knives at the Cotter family forge. Sergeant Presley’s knife lay wrapped within a bundle the Boy had carried away from the grave on the side of the road surrounded by the wild corn that had seemed to grow everywhere, a bundle the Boy had no desire to open.

You might need it for this one, Boy.

But the Boy couldn’t see what an extra knife might do for him. He knew if his plan was a “no go” and he found himself down to his own knife, there wouldn’t be much hope left in an extra knife.

That’s right, Boy; work smarter, not harder. Knife work is hard work.

Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.

The last thing the Boy would need for his plan would be what was left of the precious parachute cord. There was less than thirty feet of it now. As a child, the Boy had always been fascinated by the large coil, amazed at it, as he always was of the things from Before. There had been so much of the parachute cord, it had once seemed endless, always coiled about Sergeant Presley’s shoulder to hip as they walked. One time Sergeant Presley had even made a knotted section of it for him to play with, muttering, Merry Christmas, as he’d handed it to the Boy on that long-ago winter day. Years passed, and traps and snares and other bits that could no longer be salvaged had reduced the large coil to less than thirty feet.

The Boy withdrew the last of it from his pack.

I don’t want to use even this, but if I have to I will.

He thought of the bear.

He’d seen bears killed. The Cotter family hunted them for sport and meat. He’d followed one hunting party and watched them run down a small, fast black bear that was more interested in getting away than fighting. In the end, it had played dead until they’d put a bolt under its left shoulder blade.

They had seen big bears in the Rockies. Most of them had kept their distance, or charged, only to veer off. Horse was good for scaring things away. Once Horse went up on his hind legs, most animals knew he wasn’t interested in running.

He looked at Horse.

Are you dying too? Like Sergeant Presley?

He patted the big brown belly; Horse stirred only slightly.

“I’m going to clear out a place for us to hole up in through the rest of winter.” Then, “I’ll be back.”

He went down to the river and speared another of the broken-wine-bottle trout. Gutting and filleting the trout, he laid its body out on planks of charred wood over the embers of the fire.

After eating the fish he collected his gear, shouldering the three heavy poles and placing the thin coil of rope over his head to hang down from his neck.