Drink for the Thirst to Come (3 page)

Boss must have had a good peek and plink over her. Boss had looked but had not bit. Nor had let his kickers bite.
Chris strolled by, didn’t gaze, didn’t sniff. To the far end of the room. He picked and touched at nothing much, fingered stuff he’d no notion what. In the meander he gave kicker Stosh a peek.

Stosh gave a snort.

Snort’s good as a nod
. Chris shopped some, then wandered back. No care, no goal till there he was at the ’cove where the girl was propped, showing color, style, and self.

She was not a bit. Might be one who’d do it for love or fun or if you were someone special, like what Jaycee was studying to be back…
Enough. Fuck them and Jaycee too.

“You,” he said.

She didn’t blink.

“Where the hell’d you come from, you?”

“Why, you are charming!” she said, almost a little bunny song.

Close-to, she wasn’t so young, thirty maybe, hiding age. Like him. Knew how, too. Kept her skills. More amazing, she still had stuff to do it. And now he sniffed, girl had an interesting stink to her. Not bad, not like him, but sweat and something else.

“You’re a newson, ain’t you? Fresh meat?”

“Utterly charming man.”

“You a walk-in? Duster? Where you from?”

“A place you’ve never been.” The back of his neck quivered with the look she gave him, up-and-down. She let it hang. “I found my way. My own way, yes.” She leaned closer. “Do you have,” her breath was clean, “
baths
here?”

Damn near snotted himself. “We do. You don’t.”

Again the look, the smile. “So your excuse might be…?”

“We get baths when we get water. You get water when you’re worth your water. You ain’t worth.”

“‘Worth,’” she smiled the word, “I hear that a lot.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“And I would do that because?”

“Because I say.”

She looked at the rest of the ’teria. She eyed kicker Stosh, others. Then looked again at Chris. “Are you a father?”

“What?”

“Have you ever been a father?” she said.

“I got a working pair, that’s what you mean!”

Again, the look that tingled.

She’s figuring! I tell her she’s coming and she figures!
“Look, I say ‘you,’ you come. I get the kicker over—him you’re eyeing—he’ll decide you, toot sweet. I’m jobbing for the Boss; he’s the Daley here. You come with, be part and pick you up some worth maybe, maybe you get that bath and…”

On “bath” she slipped her butt off the stool and snaked out of the ’cove like a slink, like he’d dipped her from a vendor bin! “Coming?” she said.

They drew grub and drink, pulled cleaned-out breather silks. Chris dug out a pretty good flashlight, bats, and carry bags.

“Use up them bats, Harp, and I use up you!” the admin said, handing out the shit.

Chris nodded. “Give a kid a list and a lock and he grows him kicker’s balls.”

The girl looked at the admin boy and followed Chris.

The sun was as up as it got. Long Season might be ending—
was
ending, Boss’d said—still, clouds were thick and day was barely brighter than old-time Texas winter twilight.

“Where to, boss?” she said.

He about decked her, calling him Boss, then figured her ignorant and let it slip.

“There.” Chris tipped his chin across the miles of pulvered deadland toward the ragged line of crud and masonry, toward the forever
bong-bong
that was Chicago.

They weren’t 100 steps Wetward when she put it out there. “And where were you on The Day, Prince Charming?”

They made another 50, 60 steps into the deadland. “Driving bus,” he said.

“Sorry, what?”

He raised his voice above the wind and pulver hiss. “I was driving my bus. Perrytown to Dolph Station.”

“Oh. Not Chicago. I know Chicago.” She chuckled. “Knew it when.”

“Most who knew Chicago-that-was are pulver,” he said a dozen steps later. He kicked ground. It rattled like old bone.

“Right you are, Mr. Driver. Most. Not all. Bet you didn’t know that. There are a few left. Yep.”

“Okay!”

“And you? You’re from the south? Yes? Somewhere in Dixie?”

He’d known her half an hour, best. Already he cherished the memory of silence.

“Dolph Station. That’s Texas.”

“Huh,” she started…

“Nobody hit D.S. Nobody hit Perrytown. I was between them, anyway.” She drew breath. “The Panhandle! ‘No Man’s Land’ old folks called it.”

“Missed the war?”

“Maybe.” He’d missed it, hadn’t heard the warnings, hadn’t caught the news, never saw a flash. Maybe something. Maybe the earth jumped, maybe he’d caught a flicker in the sky. Maybe he thought a thunderstorm was coming and kept looking for rain. He liked driving in rain. None came. Time they got to Perrytown, Wave One was over. No more Austin, Houston, Dallas, Galveston, no more much of anything. No TV, radio, no electric anything. Everything had gone silent, “Pulse-Dead” folks said. The Day had come and gone. He’d missed it. “Okay. Never even seen pictures.”

“So all this,” she spread her arms, “is just hearsay!”

And she laughed, a real nice laugh, a running brook, close to the heart. She talked too much, said shit made him want to deck her, but her laugh. He hadn’t heard that in a time.

He kicked some pulver into a little whirly-wind that stirred alongside the path. “Yep. One day maybe I’ll wake and find it ain’t so! So, where were you on The Day?”

Slipped out.
Stupid. Stupid. Everyone asks. But everyone doing don’t make a thing not stupid
.

“Right here.” She pointed down. “I’m a Chicagoan and lived to tell.” There was another laugh. “’Course, I never saw it, either.” Just a giggle, this time. What the hell, he’d heard that giggle a million times, bunnies on the bus. Never understood it.

“’Course not,” he said.

“But you? How did you get here? From Gulf…?

“Dolph.”

“Dolph, Texas, then?”

“Dolph Station.”

The day darkened, the air chilled. From the brightest morning in years, the clouds layered one sheet atop another. Little winds rose here and there, whirligigs of pulver climbed between them and the horizon. Not enough to raise a wraith but distance vanished. Rain coming, snudfall maybe.

He picked up the pace. “Walked,” he said.

“Hm.”

He gutted the urge to smack her and picked up the pace again.

He could have told her, would have been something to do, walking. Why bother, why talk? The Walk took a year. Before that they’d waited. Waited for the government. Waited for the Long Season to end. Waited for someone to say. Month on month, night and cold, wind eternal from the north raised whole counties of Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas. The wind rolled them down Dolph Station way. Blowing ice cut like knives, and the dust, forever dust, filled his guts.

When Chris’d been a kid, Grandpa told of dusters down in ’34. Mutt Harp had seen them.

Christian Harp saw them now, living mountains of breathing black where God’s blue sky and far horizons ought to be. He saw twister winds descend, bow down, lay on their sides, become miles-long rollers that sucked earth, sand, houses, lives, into the black rising giant, then drove it down, grinding, pulverizing.

They left no food or power. No cars, trucks, planes or trains. No buses. Gas was done. The wind drifted roadways, runways, railroads under—under forever. Hell, where’s to go anyway? And there was Chris Harp, a roller where nothing rolled, a man without worth.

After a year, maybe more, t

here came a lee. A few were left. Some put wind to their backs, headed south toward the Gulf.
Fuck that.
Chris had seen the Gulf pissed-off! He and the worthless rest, a hundred, maybe more, headed into the wind, Panhandle to the Chicago Waste, east and north a thousand miles, maybe more.

They walked another year of Long Season. Nobody knew
what
but winter had come forever. Along the way there’d been a dozen dusters, dusters that stretched as far as there was of east and west across the night dark plains of No Man’s Land.

The Walkers knew the storm was always with them, knew there only was
one
storm, that monster who lived in the earth and waited for the wind to wake it. They hid from the worst and walked in calms between, but even when the beast lay down, there was no stillness, just a dark moan that rolled, and kept rolling until the beastie rose and filled a walker with Himself. Dust pneumonia, they called it, dust cancer, sometimes. Touched by it, you kept going or you didn’t. Most didn’t. No heroes in the walk. How many reached the Wastes? Of the hundred? Five, six? He didn’t know. He didn’t know them. They were just dust on foot, just them that hadn’t dropped. He was one.

Fuckem all.

“And?” she asked again.

“What? Nothing. Winter came and didn’t end. Grub was gone so we walked. Took a year. Most died.”

“You didn’t.”

“Apparently.”

“I see.” She walked. “After Wave One, you walk out of Texas to Chicago?”

“Pretty much.”

“And on your way you dined upon?”

“Thistle. Butter. Rabbit.”

“Thistle…”

“What you call tumbleweed. Russian thistle! You never…?”

“Butter…”

“Never took roach butter…?

She swallowed a puke.

“Rabbit’s rabbit! You never seen a Jack stamp?”

“Jack?”

“Rabbit!”

“A jackrabbit stamp?”

“Pede. Stampede!”

“Bunnies on the run? A fearsome sight I’d bet.”

What she don’t know
, he thought.

Chris and the girl pointed noses toward the
bong-bongs.
They crossed from Center turf into the deadlands.
Funny,
he thought,
just this morning, I thought to find that bong-bong’s reason…

The air was clear enough so that jagged stump of the Monadnock and a few other buildings marked the Heath and Hollows on a hazy horizon. Señor Temoco, he’d find them, sure.

Thinking
bong-bong
and deadlands, Chris considered the rebar bolt that had fluttered out of the ’Tween place and buried itself up to its sheet-tin fletching in the meat of Lenny the kicker’s leg. The day had been a common one in a quiet time. Then someone shouts, “Incoming!” Head’s-up, Lenny throws the Boss aside. There’s a meaty thunk could be heard forever and Lenny’s scream tops it all and there’s Lenny, his good left leg—his kicking leg—pinned to the standing part of a fallen wall. Lenny’s wails went on until the Boss dusted off and shut him down.
Len had nuts, say that!
The rest followed: a dozen shift-work scrabblers and a handful of newsons hung around, leaning and licking lips at the looking while the bolt’s hacksawed then drawed out of Lenny’s meat. All of them were thinking
who’ll dip what of the kicker’s stuff when he gives it up?

He didn’t give it. The Boss cut and drew the bolt, his own hands, Chris, sitting on Lenny’s legs as Lenny bucked. Ribbed steel pulls out rough. Still, he made it through.

Now there they were, Chris and this girl, walking plain across the land from whence the bolt had come.
Señor Temoco hadn’t fired that bolt. Not he, himself, pretty sure. Someone out here jerking off, was all. ’Tweeners, Niggertown kinks.

“Tell me more about your walkabout?” Chris jolted off his think about rebar bolts, the casual jerking off of ’Tweeners, Señor Temoco, about the box to come and about that plump and fragrant girl critter herself who’d just jolted him!

“Quiet,” he said quietly, “’Tweeners,” he added to be nice. She stayed quiet for three steps.

“’Tween…?”

“Shh.”

Another step.

“Okay. What’s tha—

“Sh!”

“…that gong?” she whispered.

“You’ll tell me,” he whispered back, “being a Chicagoite and all, you tell me what’s been out here bonging, long as I remember.”

She listened for a few steps. “Well…”

“Hsht…” he said.

“…wind, loose metal, maybe… something…

“Sh,” he said.

“‘Sh’ why?” she started.

“Shh the fuck up is why!” He shouted his whispers now. He stopped long enough to give her one good plink, let her know it meant a busted lip, maybe, if she didn’t
Shh
real good. He didn’t like stopping here: deadlands, ’Tweeners,
bong-bongs
, hell! Yeah, he was thinking ’Tweeners scared hissowndamnself! And he wished he had the Boss’s way with plinking looks and steely nerve!

Out came that wet little laugh. She raised her hands in surrender and took the lead, patted his shoulder as she passed.

That shit never happened to the Boss.

Hell, maybe there
ain’t
no ’Tweeners by.

With her ahead the walk went quiet. The ground beneath, they moved inside a gray dome, chill dark above and nothing all ’round. Easy walking, but when Chris figured it noonish, he was ready for a breather.
Old,
he thought, near
old at least.
“Grunts,” he said—too loud—and slipped his pack by a hollow drop. The Girl perched her rump on a heap of brick and stared at the grub from her pack.

“What’s…” she started.

“Sh, don’t,” he said.
Doesn’t recognize butter. Didn’t know thistle, never heard of jack. What the hell’s she been grunting since The Day?
If she didn’t know roach, he wasn’t going to explain roach, not here.
The noise alone
, he thought
.

“Don’t eat it, you don’t want it.”

She dipped a yarrow leaf in the pale yellow paste then touched it with her tongue.

“Ah. Lovely,” she said. “For the conversation portion of the meal you’ll tell me more of your hero’s journey?”

Torqued his jaw. “No, you’ll tell me. Don’t know butter, don’t know thistle. Don’t know much of nothing. Where the hell you been?”

“Why am I alive?”

“You might could start there.”

“That is what it means, yes? ‘Where were you on The Day?’ means ‘How come so-and-so’s dead and you’re not?’” A moment’s quiet. A gear shifted behind her eyes and she slipped the distance between them, sat at his feet. She was warm. He felt her warmth through his leggings and slacks. Her eyes were green.