matter altogether.
“Shoulda knowed it,” he mumbled. “How ’bout that swim?”
“I don’t know what the problem is,” began the Old Man. “But I mean you no harm. Just headed to the old town east of here. Just going to look for salvage. That’s all. I won’t steal from you.”
“Right, you won’t. Can’t have people knowing I’m here. You’d tell. They’d come for my stuff. Come for me. I wouldn’t be king anymore.”
“That’s not true. Why don’t I just move on? No harm, friend.”
After a moment’s silence in which the Old Man thought he might just walk into the desert and be free of this nightmare, Mirrored Sunglasses raised the shotgun. It wasn’t dead on straight in his face, but it was close enough.
Two barrels with the right shot and he doesn’t need to see me move. Just squeeze at the sound of me. I’ll be nothing but shredded flesh and bones.
He thought of his own pistol hidden in his satchel. Getting it out? He’d know.
But he’s only got one chance to shoot you. Then he’s got to break the barrel and reload. Then fire again. Takes time.
“Think it’s time for that swim, mister,” said Mirrored Sunglasses in a voice that was both mean and low. “Start walking.”
The pool lay beyond a gate at the far end of the complex. The Old Man began to shuffle and by the time he reached the gate, the double-barreled shotgun hovered a foot behind his kidneys. The rusty gate swung open and landed with a clank.
“Move.”
The Old Man walked to the edge of the pool.
It was drained.
Along its cracked concrete bottom, hundreds of snakes lay sleeping and lethargic in the cool predawn. Occasionally one moved. A corpse lay on the far side near the steps, what would have been the shallow end of a filled pool. Beneath the snakes lay more humps that might be corpses.
As he neared the edge of the deep end, he heard Mirrored Sunglasses suck in air.
Barely thinking, the Old Man twisted and stepped back as he saw Mirrored Sunglasses raise the shotgun into both hands across his chest and rush at him as if pushing a plow.
Recoiling in horror sent the Old Man off the lip of the edge and saved his life. He fell and felt his hands grasping for the edge. A familiar childlike feeling as he found it. Then he swung hard into the concrete wall of the empty pool to hang just a few feet from the snakes.
Above, Mirrored Sunglasses’s feral swear turned to a scream as the expected resistance remained unmet and he sailed outward above a snake-filled concrete pool.
Hanging from the edge the Old Man heard the snapping crunch of a bone-breaking headfirst dive twelve feet below.
The snakes, hissing, snapped on the attacker in the cool dark shadow of the deep end. Rattles raged in unison as the Old Man, head swimming, heaved himself over the side of the pool and onto the deck.
Chapter 11
The morning sun found the Old Man in the office. Locked, he had broken it open with his crowbar.
First he laid out his bedroll and removed the pistol. He checked the rounds within and then went back to the edge of the pool. Mirrored Sunglasses stared skyward, his neck twisting to meet his body. The snakes were already covering him, seeking his fading heat in the predawn chill of the desert.
The double-barreled shotgun lay nearby.
Salvage. But at the bottom with the snakes it is as good as gone unless…
I could burn them.
And damage the gun no doubt.
He returned to his satchel and considered rerolling the bedroll with the pistol inside.
There might be others here. Maybe if I am going farther into the wasteland I need to keep the pistol within reach.
Once the office door was broken, the Old Man found a dirty kitchen at the back of it. It smelled greasy and old and like the snake he had eaten. Though the sink was dirty its faucet gave up a cool stream of clear water.
Well water.
He drank and drank again. He was still thirsty so he continued to drink. His head was clearing from the fogginess. Beside the sink, at eye level as he bent to drink, he noticed an old steak knife. A half-cut pill lay nearby.
He drugged me.
The rising sun turned the tiny office golden. Magazines littered the racks and the front of the office.
Was Mirrored Sunglasses truly blind?
What did it matter?
For the rest of the morning he searched the office, which contained little in the way of salvage. Boxes of coins and paper money. A few tools, but the village had these tools and often in great supply.
He took the cards that unlocked the rooms and went to the first room. A motel room like the one he had slept in. It was too bright to see if another message had been written on the ceiling. The other rooms for the most part were the same, except for the rust-stained bedspreads sometimes shredded and torn. One room seemed to be permanently lived in. The room Mirrored Sunglasses had come out of. He found an old toothbrush too disgusting to be used again. An abundance of clothing, crossing a spectrum of styles. Drawers full of medication from the year of the bombs. Prescriptions for people named Harriet Binchly. Or Kevin Adams. Or Phillip Nuygen. Take once a day with water.
Sitting on the bed for a moment the Old Man considered returning to the office for more water. But then he felt he must finish the rooms first. Make sure the place was clear.
This place is evil.
East is cursed.
Yes, and I too am cursed.
What was its story?
If he knew its story then maybe he might find salvage. If there was salvage to be found.
But the rooms and the office told of a hermit. “Loners” the village called them in the years after the bombs. People who had run so deep into the desert, they didn’t know of villages. Didn’t know others survived. Hermits didn’t last long. Seven years was the longest he’d ever guessed of one making it on his own.
This man had a hotel. Some power. The road nearby.
He thought of the power system. A salvage of that was beyond him. He could return and tell of this place. Then the villagers could come and get the power.
And the water. It might be good to have a place with water if the village ever wanted to come this far.
They would not come this far. “East” was enough to prevent them from ever considering it. So the solar power was no salvage.
Finished resting, he continued to search the rest of the rooms. In the last two he found the story. But he wished he hadn’t.
The first room held the desiccated corpse of a woman. Her long blond hair framed the rictus grin of a skeleton laughing or screaming.
Probably screaming.
The handcuffs at each end of the bedpost said screaming. Arms still connected to bony wrists thin enough to slip through as the victim must have once wished to. One leg lay on the floor. There were no clothes.
Was she the one who tried to warn me?
In the next room at the end of the balcony, the last room of the Dreamtime Motel he found the bags. Bags
