The Road is a River. Nick Cole
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Название: The Road is a River
Автор: Nick Cole
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Научная фантастика
isbn: 9780007490905
isbn:
They were crazy to try to grow grass in the desert.
But they did. As long as they had water they must’ve grown these lawns. The world was crazy then.
We were all crazy.
And then he knew where he would find fuel. Or at least he hoped to. Excited, he drifted back to sleep for what remained of the night as though he had found a missing puzzle piece or remembered something good that would happen. Excited that he would not disappoint her. Excited that the best salvage trip ever might go on for at least one more day.
The best ever.
In the morning they found where the military kept its gardening equipment. Ancient rakes, rusty shovels and time frozen hedge trimmers. Dust-choked oily lawnmowers forever resting in dress-right-dress formation waited at the back of a large dark hangar. And off to one side, an immense storage tank of military-grade kerosene.
The Old Man drew off a little of the kerosene in a coffee mug he’d found in an office where clipboards hung neatly on the wall. He took it back outside as his granddaughter followed with questions, unsure of his game.
“Will it make the tank go, Grandpa?”
“If it’s still good, it might.”
The Old Man took a match from his pocket. He had loaded up on matches for this trip, remembering the last three matches inside the sewers beneath the hangar the wolves had chased him into. He struck the match and dropped it into the fuel. It caught and made a heavy chemical smell erupt in gray waves of smoke.
They rode the lumbering tank away, leaving the dry and dusty military post to itself and the years that must consume it. Off to the west, sand dunes rose in the afternoon heat.
Soon the sand dunes will arrive here as they march across the desert. Then they will cover this place and the kerosene that still remains inside that big storage tank.
But I will be gone by then.
Now we must hope there will be other fuel sources along the road. We may not find our river, my friend, but in a way the road is like that.
And what ocean will it lead to?
That night, the Old Man dreamed that he and Santiago were on a wide sea, under a hot sun, watching the flying fish leap from the water. Waiting for the big fish they would catch.
Ahead we will find places I once knew long ago and have forgotten since. And I can only imagine what time and the bombs have done to them. I can only imagine that my past memories have changed to present nightmares.
Yes, my friend.
The tank trundled down a long, dirty, brown slope. In the distance they could see a strand of Highway 10 cutting the landscape in two.
It too is still there.
His granddaughter, ahead in the separate compartment containing the driver’s couch, steered the tank across the crumbling dirt slope. Often he needed to remind her to slow down.
I feel like we’ve gone off the edge of something. The edge of everything we’ve ever known. Did you feel that way, Santiago, as you pulled at the oars farther and farther out into the gulf, watching the color of the water deepen until it was dark and not blue? Did you too feel like you were going off the edge of something?
And yet I knew it all once and long ago.
Memories of the cities of the West began to come and stand around the Old Man like mourners near an open grave.
You must forget all this melancholy and think only of the facts. You have enough fuel to reach China Lake. If you don’t find fuel there, then crossing Death Valley into Area 51, will be impossible. You must follow this road until you come to an old tactical outpost set up alongside the highway. General Watt told us we would find it there.
“Grandpa, there’s someone on the road ahead.”
The Old Man scanned the horizon.
Far to their right, in the direction they must go, he could see the dark silhouette of a human.
It stood, unmoving in the late heat of the day.
The Old Man continued to watch the unmoving man-shaped shadow far down the cracked road as the tank heaved itself up onto the old highway. His granddaughter maneuvered the tank to point west at his instruction. A mile off, the lone figure remained unmoving beside the road they would follow.
I wish I knew how to work these optics like she has already learned to.
“Can you tell me what he looks like?” he asked her.
He knew she would be using her viewfinder.
“He’s tall,” she said after a moment. “Long dirty hair. Maybe a salvager, but not like anyone from our village. Oh, and he has a hat.”
His mind stayed on the words “Not like anyone from our village.”
The Old Man felt a cold river of fear sweep through him.
“Out there.”
And …
Too many “Done” things.
“Let’s move forward. But don’t stop unless I tell you to, okay?”
“Okay.”
I am afraid of this stranger on the road. Why?
We know why, my friend; it’s just that we’re not always willing to be honest with ourselves when we must. It is better to admit that you are afraid now than to pretend you are not.
The dark man-shadow, before the setting sun, seemed to lean toward them and out into the blistered highway as they approached. As they closed the distance between them the Old Man saw the shadow revealed. Saw him clearly as one might see something dead beside the road and want to look away in that passing instant of speed. His face was gaunt. Sun stretched by time and all the years since the end of the world. All the years on the road.
Worn rawhide boots. Faded dusty pants. A long coat made of license plates stitched together. A thick staff he leaned on heavily, though his frame was spare. Two small skulls dangled from its topmost tip. He wore a faded wide and weak-brimmed hat under which shining hawk-like eyes watched the Old Man. Had watched since they’d first appeared, the Old Man was sure of that.
He’s a killer.
The Old Man could feel the slightest decrease in their acceleration.
“No!” he shouted into his mic. “Keep going!”
The tank lurched forward, and as they hurtled past the Roadside Killer, the vessel of all things unclean, the gaunt man raised one bony arm from the sleeve of his license-plate mail coat and extended СКАЧАТЬ