The Boy watched her until she was gone and wondered if indeed there were bombs, the big ones, nuclear, still lying within the plane. Waiting.
RAIN FELL IN the afternoon, and that night the villagers, under clear skies, spitted a deer and gathered to watch it roast in the cold night.
A young man whose name was Jason led him to a hut made of rocks and pine. It belonged to the chief—to the man who died at the Boy’s feet.
After three days of listening to the Rock Star’s People, the Boy could at least communicate with them in small matters. But the communication was slow and halting.
Jason said that for killing the chief, the hut and all that was in it were Bear Killer’s.
There was little more than a fire pit and a dirt floor.
Horse was fed apples by the children of the village and, as was his custom, patiently endured.
Later, the venison roasted, and the village watched both him and the meat and the darkness beyond their flames. There were far more women and children than men, and even the Boy knew the meaning of such countings.
When the venison was ready, they cut a thick slice from underneath the spine and offered it, dripping and steaming, to the Boy.
When the meal ended, the Rock Star was there among them. She had been watching him for a long time. She entered the circle, standing near the fire, wrapping skins and clothing from Before about her. She was faded and worn in dress, hair, and skin. But her eyes were full of thought and planning, of command and fire.
She told a story.
The Boy followed the tale as best he could and when he seemed lost altogether, she stopped to translate it for him back into English.
“I’m from Before, Bear Killer. I spoke the proper English like I was taught in a school and all that.”
The story she told involved a group of young people pursued through the forest by a madman with a chain saw full of evil spirits. One by one, the madman catches the younglings as they flee into what they believe is an abandoned house—the house where the madman lives with other madmen. In the end there is only one youngling left. A girl, strong and beautiful, desired by all the now dead younglings. Through magic and cunning she defeats the madmen, except for the one who’d found the younglings initially. The brave girl shoots bolts of power from her hands and the Mad Man of all Mad Men, as she calls him, falls backward over a balcony in the house from the Before.
“And when she run over to the railing to see his dead body lying in the tall grass, he is gone,” the Rock Star translated to the Boy. Then, casting a weather eye into the darkness beyond their fire, the Rock Star whispered, “That madman still walks these mountains, still desires me, still takes younglings when it comes into his mind.”
The Rock Star’s People clutched their wide-eyed young. The men drew closer to the fire, to their wives, eyeing the night and the mountains that surrounded their lake.
“But he won’t come here, children.”
She paused, eyes resting on the assembly. She turned toward the mountains as if seeing his lumbering form wandering the silent halls of the forest dark even then.
“He won’t come here, children. For I am that girl who was.”
She turned and stalked off into the night.
The relief among the villagers was tangible.
In groups they returned to their huts, and for a long time the Boy stared into the fire, watching its coals.
Chapter 21
“Walk with me.”
The command was simple, direct. The Boy saw her silhouette in the door to his hut by the half-light of early morning.
Outside, the Boy was wrapped in his bearskin and the sky was little more than cold iron. The village was quiet, as small wavelets drove against the sandy shore, slapping at the side of the old bomber.
When they were at the far end of the beach, nearing a series of slate gray rocks that fell into the waters of the lake, the Rock Star turned to him.
“I don’t know you. I suspect, though, you’re a man without a tribe.” She let the sentence hang.
The Boy remained silent.
“But you were passing to the west when the hunters found you,” continued the Rock Star.
She paused to consider that for a moment.
“I imagine you want to continue west. But you can’t. Ain’t nothing there but Chinese now. You keep up that old highway and you’ll come to a big Chinese settlement in the foothills the other side of the pass.”
She picked up stones, flat and slate blue from the beach.
“Bad for you if you were thinking that was good. Chinese been trying to clear out the tribes. They took on one or two in the last few years and won pretty easily. They got the Hillmen working for them. But the Hillmen weren’t never no real tribe. And the tribes the Chinese wiped out were little more’n scavengers anyway.”
She seemed to want to throw a stone into the water, but the act of skipping it seemed something she knew was beyond her ability and strength.
“Now they—the Chinese, that is—have gone and stirred up a nest of hornets.”
The Rock Star looked at the Boy directly, staring hard up into his face, searching for something.
“That man you killed in fair challenge was my war leader. He was an idiot, but as they say, he was my idiot. In the next day, we got to start out despite this last winter storm that’s workin’ itself up to be something. The tribes, far down the range, almost even to the old Three Ninety-five, are gathering. A big war leader is readyin’ hisself to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen.”
She took a deep breath.
“The headman called for me and mine to come. Wants my power.”
She turned back to the lake. Whitecaps were forming beyond the bay.
“I’ve danced with the dark one in the dead of night. My power has watched over this People since the Before. My power will slaughter the Chinamen. My power has stood against zombies and vampires and all the serial killers of the Before. I was a powerful rock star in them days.”
She dropped the stones back onto the beach.
“So if you’re a spy, you know our plans. No good it’ll do you, though. So you’ll ride with us and know my hunters carry the poison. My poison is powerful. But my poison is not for you, see. My poison is for your horse. Ah, I see Bear Killer. I know’d the horse is a friend to you. So, you don’t step to my call to fetch and be my war leader, it’s the horse that gets it.”
She sighed heavily in the wind.
“That’s the way it be. Now take my arm and walk me back to the village, Bear Killer. And of a morning here shortly, we’ll ride to the hidden valley and rave with the tribes at the great lodge. And when the tribes go to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen, you’ll be my war leader and then you’ll see my power. I’m keeper of them bombs, never forget that. I’ll send the world back into darkness as I done the first time.”
She held out her arm.
After a moment, the Boy took it.
The wind came up and his ears burned. But not from the cold.
