The Wasteland Saga

A blacksmith worked near a hot fire putting edges to their weapons. The Boy found a saw and set to work cutting down the long barrel of the breech loader.

I won’t trust you anymore, he said to his withered hand. You failed me when I needed you most and I won’t trust you anymore.

A chieftain howled and the savages fell silent. The babble that passed from the chief’s swollen and split lips erupted up from a barrel belly and massive chest, sending the warriors to their boats.

The Boy found himself paddling a canoe loaded with other paddling warriors as they crossed the bay. The flotilla kept a tight formation as it passed the pile of the once-city of San Francisco. Ahead, the lights of Sausalito were thin and few. To the east of the Chinese outpost—at its very gates, in fact—MacRaven’s armies gathered around campfires that rose along the hills of the little bay.

You don’t need to do this, Boy. They’ll take your revenge for you. They’ll pay them back, if that means anything to you.

‘How could they take… her life?’ he thought between paddle strokes. The other men grunted and sweated. The Boy could smell the liquor oozing out of their skin.

I don’t know, Boy. Maybe I thought I did. But now I don’t know anymore. I know that there’s good in the world. Good as long as it still exists in people like you. But if you do this… if you get to that place you’ll need to go to do this… then maybe all the good that’s left will have gone out of the world.

You don’t exist, Sergeant.

I did, Boy. I did.

I have to know why. Why did they do this to her?

You’ll never know.

You don’t know that.

I do, Boy. I do. ’Cause there won’t be a reason that ever makes enough sense to you.

The oars and paddles, even the hands that strike at the bay, were stopped. The flotilla laid drifting in the water near a small island just off the coast of Sausalito.

It was cold and quiet. The long night wound toward morning, and even though there was no light to betray the coming dawn, the Boy knew it was close, and so did the Psychos. Arms were flexed, spears laid across knees. The Boy felt his tomahawk at his side. The cut-down rifle was now a long pistol in his belt.

“Ancha!” roared a voice in the dark. The flotilla surged forward as oars and hands struck the water. Every Psycho was pulling hard for the few lights rising above the seawall of Sausalito.

On land, beyond the eastern gate, on the far side of the little city, torches from the camps of MacRaven’s Army surged toward the walls. It was still too dark for targeted gunfire as the torches gathered beneath the defenses.

The Boy’s canoe pulled forward, cutting through the still water and low-lying fog. The men about him said nothing. They wanted their surprise to be total. Ahead, the low-lying seawall shielded their advance from any view along the street that led to the gate.

The gate where I first saw Jin. The first time Jin saw me.

And.

Where we began.

The canoe slammed into the rocks and the savages were wading through the water, spears upraised. Someone whooped and they were over the walls.

And what happened next was not the Boy.

A Chinese guard running for the gate fell to the tomahawk as it slammed into his back.

Broken glass.

Screams.

A whistle.

The Chinese gathered about the gate to the inner city. The guards were waiting for orders. They raised their rifles as a pack of screaming Psychos raced into the streets. The guards opened fire. A few Psychos went down but the bloodthirsty tribesmen were on them, hacking and screaming above pleas for mercy.

The Boy wiped the blood from his axe and slipped up through the winding alleyways of the inner city.

He found gardens colored like dull jade in the steaming morning light. Mansions rose up into the fog. Birds sang above the far din of battle on the other side of the gate, on the far side of the wall.

He heard the distant high note of the Space Crossbow. MacRaven’s Space Crossbow.

He smelled smoke and heard crashing wood, once delicate, splintering into shards.

He heard the gunfire beyond the walls.

The cannon roared in distant cracks.

He saw the shaven-headed man break from a stand of collapsing defenders as Psychos leapt the hasty barricade, spearing and cutting.

Shaven-head raced farther up the street and disappeared into the drifting blue gun smoke of the falling defenders. The Boy loped after him knowing the man would lead him to the rest; to all the killers, the slayers of Jin. And finally to their tall leader who smiled at him as the roof burned and Jin was dragged away and into the darkness.

Shaven-head raced up and into the quiet neighborhood of stately mansions that rise along the hill above the little city. Servants and the occasional woman peer out into the streets, their questions evident. He darted into a heady garden, crossed a delicate and ornate bridge made of teak. He pulled urgently at a paper door that led into a house, his voice shouting at someone within.

When the man, sweating, turns to cast a worried eye back at the falling defenders, he sees the Boy running hard up through the garden that surrounds the house.

Shaven-head pulls the screen aside and enters, disappearing.

The Boy takes the curving wooden stairs that lead through the garden and hacks the paper screen door to pieces. Inside he smells jasmine and his mind roars red with anger. Anger at Shao Fan, anger that he has carried her scent from the place of her hanging to here.

As if it were his to keep.

As if she were his.

A gunshot cracked sharply across the interior of the house.

In the central court within the house he found Shao Fan, whose pupils are wide above the barrel of a smoking rifle. He seemed not to recognize the Boy.

Shaven-head was dead, flung away like a forgotten rag doll, his arms covering his face.

Shao Fan retreated, running to a far door and throwing himself beyond it.

The Boy pulled his pistol, the cut-down rifle, from his belt and advanced through the courtyard.

The Boy heard his own feet, hard thumps on the soft wood of the walkway that led to the door. In the instant before he heard the gunfire that came from the far side of the door, he heard the metallic sound of a rifle breech being snapped back into place. The Boy threw himself sideways as the paper door erupted in splinters and acrid smoke.

The Boy charged through the screen, breaking what was left of it open with the tomahawk.

Shao Fan, eyes wild and wide, broke the breech of his rifle and slipped another long bullet into the barrel. The assassin snapped the breech back into place. In the space of the moment in which the assassin nodded to himself, assured that the rifle was ready to fire, and before he raised it to fire, the dull silver tomahawk appeared buried in his chest. He stared at the axe in stunned and wide-eyed silence, stared as if in the moment before, it had not been there, and in the moment after, it had always been there.

He continued to try and raise the rifle but his arms would not respond. He felt life leaving him all at once.

He was afraid. He realized how underappreciated this moment before dying was.

‘If there were just more time,’ thought Shao Fan, raising his head, looking into the eyes of the savage boy charging across his bedroom.

Pistol raised.

Mouth roaring.