The Zona (17 page)

“The nukes,” Lead said.

“Yes, the nukes,” Reverend Greek said.

“I shook my staff at the helicopter and yelled to God and the sky was suddenly illuminated.  The chopper was washed in a light so white and pure that it was literally the last thing I ever saw, or rather, it’s the only thing I see anymore.

The helicopter crashed against the side of the Vesper, it screeched and twisted and dropped out of the sky.  A scorched air blew against my face and everything rumbled and vibrated.  I dug my staff into the ground and leaned against the winds.

Another explosion took me off my feet.  I spun directionless in the air; the skin on my face and arms tightened and blistered. I was flung into a stairwell and struck my head.  

I awoke to silence, nothing.  There were no noises from my flock, or from helicopters or guns or bombs or trucks or anything but wind.  The wind whistled in the stairwell and through broken panes of glass and across the desert, ignorant of what was and what became.

I picked myself up.  My eyes saw nothing but pure white light.  The skin from my hands and face felt torn off.  I imagined pink sun burnt flesh.  I was sore to the touch of air. To my surprise, the staff was still in my hands.  I used it to guide myself down the stairs, over human bodies and rubble.  As I said, the hotel was silent, everything was silent.  I found my way to the pantry and locked myself in.  I ate canned food.  I drank from our water barrels.  I sat and thought, and sometimes I slept.  Nobody came for me.  I stayed in the pantry for a long time, eating, drinking, and thinking for days and days and days.   Eventually I grew tired of sitting and listening for ghosts. Apparently, the destruction was complete.  I packed food and water, and I walked away.  

I traced roads with my staff.  I traveled south, guided by the heat of the morning sun.  I walked for days.  I walked in the sun and through the night.  Eventually I came upon the town of Needles.  Quiet men took me in.  I didn’t speak so they assumed I was mute as well as blind.  They couldn’t tell if I was viral given my eyes and scars, so they restocked my supplies and sent me on my way.  I followed the roads and the sun and eventually came here.  I give leadership to lepers and virals. Once a week I give a sermon.  That’s it.  That’s my story.  So you tell me, in Vegas, were you soldiers or were you people?”

Terence spoke.

“We were soldiers.  I would ask for your forgiveness, but it is not required.  Just know that our acts were the acts of men lost and hungry, and no more a dangerous thing exists than men who are lost and hungry.”

Lead sat silently.  His mind listened to memories of helicopters firing upon his truck and friends.

“Forgive me,” he said.

The Reverend was thoughtful and somber.

“I don’t bear a grudge against either of you.  Any payment for sin is between you and the Lord.  I’m sorry to bring old memories better forgotten.  Let’s trade goods.  If you’ll be traveling in the night you can sleep in this church.”

“Offer the man your gun, Lead,” Terence said.

Lead pulled the pistol from his pocket and reluctantly placed it on the table in front of the Reverend.

“We offer this for water and food, we don’t have anything else,” Terence said.

Reverend Greek traced the gun with his fingertips.  He felt its grip and pocked barrel.

“Oh my,” the Reverend said.  “You must be a couple of hard cases.”  His hand brushed what was left of rawhide grip.  “At least one of you is a Preacher, was a Preacher, or killed a Preacher.”

“We,” Lead began but was swiftly cut off.

“Don’t tell me,” Reverend said.  “I don’t want to know.  I’ll take the gun.  I can give you supplies for a couple of days, which is all we have to spare so there’ll be no haggling.”

Reverend Greek hefted the gun and rolled the cylinder between his hands.

“We don’t have any bullets to give,” Terence said.

“I didn’t ask for any,” Reverend Greek replied.

The Reverend stood and pointed the gun up to the church ceiling with a straight arm.  He pulled the trigger and listened to the dry click.

“Like I said, you can bunk here; your supplies will be rounded up and left at the door before sunset.”  Reverend Greek licked his lips.  “You’re going to New Pueblo, right?”

“Yeah, what do you know about it?”  Terence asked.

“They turn away any of my people who wander too far south.  They want nothing to do with the virals.  I don’t know where they are exactly, just that they appear in the wind and turn us away. They don’t offer barter, don’t socialize, most of my colony thinks they’re magic folk; spirits or such,” Reverend Greek said.

“Does the Church know about New Pueblo?”  Terence asked.

“If they do it’s not by our doing.  Like I said, most Church guards don’t want to get close to virals.  Anyway, it’d hardly be kind of us to give away the knowledge of a people so secretive,” Reverend Greek said.

“Where do they turn your people away?”  Terence asked.

“They show up down the Highway Nineteen.  Follow it south.  The signs are there, the cars are still lined up and it’s easy enough to follow.”

Reverend Greek put the gun in his pants pocket.

“I’ll leave you to your rest.”

Reverend Greek exited the church in his slow deliberate manner.

IX. The southern walk near what was once Mexico

Terence woke in time to catch the setting sun.  He stretched and witnessed rays cut through the church which holes which were once windows.  Lead already lay awake on a nearby pew.

“Time to go?”  Lead asked.

“Yeah,” Terence replied.

“Do you think New Pueblo will welcome us?”  Lead asked.

“I don’t know.”  Terence replied.

“I assumed you’d been there,” Lead said.

“I never said I had.  I heard about it from a man I found near Phoenix some years back.  He said he was scavenging farm equipment and got himself waylaid by road agents, probably Purgatory guards.  I was on an unrelated hunt for a mark and just happened upon him in the desert.

I tried to save him, but he was too far gone with infection and dehydration.  The road agents strung him up to a Joshua tree. Its thorns riddled his back.  I cut him down, pulled him off the thorns and gave him water.  He was too weak to stand.  We both knew he was gone for this world.  I stayed with him until he died and buried him at the foot of the tree.  Before he passed, he spoke of New Pueblo, how they lived the old ways.  How only the good are tolerated there, whatever that means.  They live outside the shadow of the Church, hidden in the hills and brush. He told me they were south of Tucson, in the fields near Nogales on the border of what used to be Mexico.

I never went.  I was occupied with the Church’s business, or by then the undoing of the Church’s business.  I was afraid it was a vision, a dying man’s dream.  Sometimes I spoke of it to my Dead, my escapees from the Church.  A few went searching I’m sure, but I never heard from them.  You understand; I have no place to go.  The Church will not stop its hunt for me.  Utah, California, Colorado, these places are no better than the Zona.  I have nowhere to go, so it doesn’t matter what New Pueblo is like.  I’ll make a home of whatever I find or die in the effort.”

“What happens if their people don’t accept us?”  Lead asked.

“I guess we keep walking.  Come what may we don’t have a many choices,” Terence replied.

Terence and Lead strode out the church into dusk.  The lepers and virals prepared their early evening fires.  They gathered innumerable scrap remains of homes to burn as though slowly cremating their city over the course years and years.

The ex-Preachers found a plastic bag with bottles of water, dried meat, and pomegranates resting against the ornate doors.

The residents of Tucson observed Terence and Lead from their shacks and tents with eyes hidden in shadows.  No one acknowledge the ex-Preachers out in the open as they walked through town.  Word had gone around that these were dangerous men, possibly men of the Church.  They were observed from afar and fitfully ignored in close proximity.  The ex-Preachers noticed the difference in civility and understood the cause.

“Come on, lets use what light we can,” Terence said.

He handed the grocery sack to Lead.  The ex-Preachers left the camp of the virals and continued on their path.

“The Nineteen,” Terence proclaimed with arms raised.

By dim moonlight the ex-Preachers came upon the line of cars and hangdog signs of the Highway Nineteen.  They strode silently through rows of broken relics and artifacts.  They moved at a slow, deliberate pace to avoid the sharp edges of crushed automobiles and hooked vines. The night lived in a chorus of locusts and crickets.

“What are you going to do in New Pueblo?”  Terence asked.

“I hadn’t thought it through.  What are you going to do?”  Lead asked.

“I wouldn’t mind teaching school again.  I was a terrific history teacher in my better years.  If New Pueblo is advanced maybe they have a school, or would like me to build one,” Terence said.

“That sounds nice,” Lead said.  “For me, it seems like I’ve been holding a gun for too long, either as a guard or preacher.  I don’t want to hold a gun anymore.  I don’t want to take life.  I don’t want to threaten men.  I’d like to try farming,” Lead said.

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore,” Terence said.

“What’s that?”  Lead asked.

“It’s from the Book of Isaiah; it’s a passage about warriors who become farmers, killers who become providers of life by destroying their tools of war and forging tools of prosperity.  The passage fits; I think you’ll do well.”

Terence stopped and rummaged through his knapsack.

“Here’s something to get you started.”

He pulled a wood handled kitchen knife from his bag.

“It’s yours anyway.  I pulled it from your shoulder in Havasu.  I assume a jimson eater put it there.”

Lead raised the blade to the silver moon light.  The wound in his shoulder still ached whenever he raised his arm above his neck.

“Thanks,” Lead said.

He slipped the knife into the pocket of his jacket.

“Thanks for saving my life.  Thanks for helping me get away from the Church.  Even if we don’t get to New Pueblo, I feel better now.  I feel like I’ve done the right thing.”

“It’s nice to hear.”  Terence said.  “I didn’t do it for you, I’m paying a debt I owe the world, but gratitude is nice all the same.  A lot people out there are like us, they just want to live.  Good people will outlast the rule of the Church.  No rule of law lasts for long, and there is nothing that can wholly destroy the good and evil that lives in man.  It’s ours to own for the duration of time and whatever exists beyond.”

The ex-Preachers hiked through the evening and made camp at sunrise.  They slept in the flat bed of a semi truck with Terence’s reflective tarp as a tent cover.  They rose again at sunset and ate what remained of their pomegranates in silence.    

“We should make it to the outskirts of Nogales before early morning if we walk through the dawn.”  Terence said after they finished their meal.

They continued on Highway Nineteen, accompanied by the taps of their boots and the thirsty chirps of locusts and crickets.  They progressed slowly and methodically through hills of rubble. The rubble eventually gave way to somewhat intact blacktop road.

“If no one contacts us we’ll make camp in the ruins of Nogales,” Terence said.

The morning sun revealed dense thickets of trees on both sides of the Highway Nineteen.  The highway slimmed from eight to four lanes.  Wind blew through the trees, filling the air with twirling purple flowers and seeds gliding on wings.  Lead and Terence stopped and stood in flowers like rain.  Lead plucked a spinning seed air out of the air.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

The delicate wings crumpled in his fingers.

“Jacaranda trees; they grow all over these parts.  The seeds float to their homes on fairies wings,” Terence said.

“Is that true?”  Lead asked.

Terence looked at Lead incredulously.

“Not all of it.”

The ex-Preachers continued down the road through the shower of seeds and flowers.