The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River. Nick Cole

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 TWENTY EIGHT

      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.

      Is that recent?

      Are they getting closer?

      He revved the tank and sent it down the road once more. Soon the hum of the engines lulled him to thinking, and at times almost sleep. The day was cold. He could feel the rain in the air. Knew the heat of the sun hadn’t driven away the cold of night completely. Winter was coming.

      In the distance he could see Picacho Peak as the road began a long gentle curve to the west.

      I am finally heading west.

      He thought about the end of curses. What needed to be done once he returned to the village? How to organize them and get them back to the Fort?

      The village is over.

      How so?

      When I return with this tank. Everything changes. My life in the village will be something that happened long ago. A dream. Just like my life before the bombs. A dream also.

      It was noon when he spotted them coming down from the northern mountains across the plain like a vast dark herd. They were crossing the highway in groups, running for Picacho Peak just on the other side. He stopped the tank. The roar of the engines was still loud and he could hear nothing above it. He could feel the north wind on his face. He could feel the cold of the arctic and the high mountain passes it had come down through to reach the Sonoran Desert.

      The Horde lay scattered in bands across the horizon. Now they formed into two groups.

      So they still exist.

      One group resolved itself into men and boys painted and various in weapons and dress. Savages of the new wasteland. The other group drew itself toward Picacho Peak, running like a startled herd of buffalo.

      There is the main gun and then the machine gun.

      If СКАЧАТЬ