Wasteland Blues (5 page)

The others followed the direction of his pointing finger. Derek saw nothing. But after a moment of staring silently at the night sky, it became obvious that one of the stars was actually moving against the flow of all the others around it, traveling almost imperceptibly eastward.

“Holy shit,” muttered Derek. “What the Hell is that?”

“I don’t see nothin’,” said Teddy. “What ch’you lookin’ at, Der?”

John licked his lips. “There’s another one over there, by the horizon.” He pointed. “They’re angels. Don’t you know nothing?” He turned to Derek. “You can see them sometimes when there’s no clouds, like tonight. Not often, but sometimes you can. Elder Hale showed me once when I was little. Just look at it, gliding across the sky. But they never come down. Not ever—except in New York, maybe.”

“Bullshit,” said Leggy.

Derek and John both looked at him. Teddy had fallen asleep.

“Hate to break it to you, kiddo,” Leggy said. “But those ain’t angels.”

“They are too,” insisted John.

“Are not,” answered Leggy, removing a silver flask from his shirt. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow. Then he offered the whisky to John, who shook his head.

Derek took the flask, swigged from it, and grimaced.

“If they’re not angels then what are they?” challenged John.

“Well,” said Leggy, reaching over and taking back the flask, “They’re called sat lights. They’re left over from Before.”

John and Derek looked at him curiously. “What the Hell’s a sat light?” asked Derek.

“They’re sort of like…tin houses floating around in the sky,” said Leggy.

“Houses? You mean they got people in them?” John was incredulous.

“Some of ’em do. Or did. They say that there might still be people alive in a few of ’em, trapped up there. Watching us, but unable to come back home. I don’t know.” Leggy shook his head.

“How do they stay up there?” John asked. “Why don’t they fall?”

“That’s easy,” said Leggy. “They are falling. It’s just that they’re so high up that it takes a long, long time for ’em to fall all the way down.”

“Ha!” said John. “Falling tin houses in space? You’re the one talking B.S.”

Leggy took a long swallow from the flask and passed it back to Derek. “Some people say that there’s men trapped up on the Moon, too.” The Moon was a thin sliver tonight that grinned sardonically at them from the horizon.

Derek nodded. “That’s what my Dad said. Men on the Moon.” He took another long swallow of the whisky mash, feeling it burn his throat.

“They say the sat lights used to let people all over Earth talk to each other,” said Leggy. His eyes followed the bright dot moving slowly across the horizon. “Till the Chinese fired an EMP bomb into space and shut ’em all up, that is.”

John frowned and turned his eyes away from the sky. Derek shrugged at Leggy, took a last pull from the flask, and then laid back in his own bedroll. The drink was churning in his gut. As the coals popped and sparked, the Bedouins took up their music again. Derek and his companions fell asleep with the strange, high-pitched wailing of unimaginable instruments and ghostly voices ringing in their ears.

***

That night, Derek dreamt of angels—cruel creatures filled with light and malice. They swept down from the Heavens on sulphurous feathers to mock him.

“New York!”
laughed the creatures.
“Beyond You!”
and
“Why Bother?”
They swooped all around, diving and biting, laughing and spitting like harpies, spewing curses and hurling smelly white globules of shit.
“It’s suicide!”
they cried.

These were John’s damned angels that Derek dreamt. Merciless monsters full of hatred and biblical rage. Derek suddenly understood—these ushers to the kingdom of Heaven, these guardians of the gates of New York, had long ago gone mad. They were crazy with radiation and sickness, hunger and death.

As they continued to peck and to laugh and berate with their cold, sharp beaks, a calm realization swept over Derek—these monsters had long since fallen from grace. It was not just the Earth that had died, but it was God who had died, leaving his unholy wreck of a world to his orphaned children and his mad angels.

Any
Word
that these angels might have rendered, Derek knew, was nothing more than incoherent madness, despite what John might think. He could see that now—these creatures were incapable of anything more than pure animal violence. Anything else would just be nonsense, word salad, Babel.

Derek awoke with the burning taste of Leggy’s moonshine in the back of his throat.
God damn
, he thought as he rolled off his bedroll, clawed his way across the dark ground away from the camp, and began to vomit. “God damn.”

He retched for what seemed like hours before the constrictions in his gut passed. He crawled back into his sack and fell sickly to sleep.

Goddamn
.

The angels were waiting for him.

Chapter Four

When the group awoke, just before daybreak, Teddy was gone.

“Fuck,” muttered Derek, his eyes half-closed in bleary memory of the nightmares which refused to fade. His head pounded, his temples throbbed. He cracked open one eye and inspected the campsite.

All was quiet, only a harsh wind cut through the desert. The sun’s fiery scalp was jutting over the horizon, casting long shadows and turning the sky a bruised purple.

“Teddy!” called Derek. He figured his brother had wandered off to take a piss.

“Teddy!”

When his brother didn’t answer, a cold fear slid up Derek’s spine. The caravan ahead was gone. Their cookfires had been buried and the Bedouins were nowhere in sight.

“Sonofabitch.” Derek cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered, “Teddy! Teddy, where you at? Get your ass back here, pronto. Teddy!” The sound of his own voice rang in his ears, making his splitting headache worse. “Teddy!”

His brother couldn’t have gone far. Hell, Derek could hardly believe that he had taken even a step away from the camp of his own volition. It just wasn’t like him. Teddy didn’t do anything without express orders from his brother.

“Maybe he’s taking a pee,” Leggy offered, massaging his stumps as he sat up in his bedroll.

“Teddy don’t breathe unless I tell him,” Derek answered. “And he sure as Hell don’t wander off.”

“He’s gotta be around here somewhere,” John said.

The land was flat for miles all around, except to the east where the Black Hills jutted like sore teeth over the horizon.

“Maybe he—”

“Maybe those fucking scavengers took him is what’s maybe!” Derek spat. “Fucking Bedouins! Thieves is what they are, nothing but thieves. Most of them’s mutants, anyhow. Fucking Bedouins!” he hollered eastward at the top of his lungs.

“Well,” said Leggy, looking around, “If that’s the case, we can easily catch up to them. We’re traveling light, they’re not. We’re in a hurry, and as far as we know, they’re not.”

“And they can’t have that much of a head start,” added John, rubbing his chin.

Derek looked around again. Suppose Teddy had decided to head back to San Muyamo? He squinted his eyes and looked to the west, but could find no sign of the colossal youth.

Leggy seemed to read his thoughts. “You think he got homesick?”

Derek shook his head. “I’m his home. It’s the Bedouins or nothing.”

Suddenly Derek spun and kicked the dew catcher, spraying droplets of moisture into the air. “Fuck!” he cried.

Leggy frowned but said nothing. He scanned the camp. “Look,” he said. “Teddy’s boot marks. They lead up to the road.”

Derek quickly began to climb the side of the shallow gully where they’d camped. As he climbed Leggy and John hurriedly packed.

Derek went to the road and peered east. Far off in the distance he could just make out the dust of the caravan’s trail. It was miles away.

“They must’ve started off hours ago,” he yelled to the others.

“Then let’s go catch ’em,” yelled Leggy.

“That’s what I aim to do,” said Derek. He took off down the road, leaving Leggy and John behind.

***

Hours later, Leggy and John saw the caravan far in the distance. Their march had been tedious and tiring. They had been running what they believed to be a losing race—Leggy with the enormous supply pack balanced precariously on his lap and John heaving and pushing, fighting for every inch, behind the weighted-down wheelchair.

At times, John had thought about simply ditching the pack and turning back to San Muyamo, but these thoughts had gone unspoken. They had not turned back. And thus, even in his absence, Derek’s authority pulled them forward, like a dangerous magnet.

And now they could actually see the caravan. The faint outline of Bedouin wagons stood against the horizon and shimmered in the heat haze. John stopped pushing and Leggy lowered the pack to the ground.

“What do you suppose they’re doing?” John asked. “It looks like they’ve stopped.”

“It sure does,” said Leggy, chewing at his lip.

“Maybe one of them’s sick? Maybe they’ve found a spring and are filling their skins?” John offered.

“Maybe Teddy decided he wanted to turn around.” Leggy smirked.

“Maybe Derek caught up with them.”

“A lot of maybes,” Leggy said, “But all’s we know is that we won’t know until we know. Now get back there and start pushin’, boy!” Leggy hefted the pack back up onto his lap.

John wiped the sweat from his forehead, took a long swallow from his canteen, and began once again to force the chair forward, lurching over the cracked and broken road.

Thirty minutes later they saw the birds. The caravan had not moved in the entire time that John had watched it. He grew more and more wary as they drew closer. Finally, when they were well within earshot they stopped and listened. Nothing.

Leggy pointed. “Those are vultures.”

John squinted his eyes against the rapidly darkening sky. He could barely discern the circling forms of the scavenger birds. “What does that mean?” he asked, “Do you think…?”

Leggy shook his head and motioned for John to continue pushing. “We’ll know soon enough,” he said.

Chapter Five

John and Leggy rolled into the Bedouin camp just before dusk. Sitting across from one another around a fire were the unmistakable forms of Derek and Teddy. All about them lay the ruins of the Bedouin’s caravan—two of the wagons had been overturned, their goods flung across the desert floor. Scraps of cloth and canvas flapped in the ragged breeze. The ground was red with blood. Just outside the ring of firelight, John watched scavenger birds alight on a prone shape, their cruel beaks hooking and tearing into dead flesh.

Leggy gaped, and as John rolled him closer they could see, in the fire’s unearthly glow, that the giant’s hands and shirt were soaked and black.

Derek smiled that evil, innocent smile that had so scared John when they were young. “What kept you ladies?”

“What the Hell happened here?” demanded Leggy.

***

Derek scratched his chin. He’d been pondering how to answer that question ever since John and the old man hove into view over the horizon. A part of him wanted to take credit for the destruction that lay all about them. He could see from John’s horrified expression that John just might believe it, too, and that would be good. But Leggy was a clever old poke. He’d spotted Teddy’s tracks this morning, and sure as shit he’d be able to read the signs around the ruin of the Beduoin caravan once the shock wore off. So Derek told the truth.

“Bugs,” he said. “The caravan ran into a sand-hive.”

Leggy’s face went pale.

“We gotta get out of here,” John said, his voice shaking. “We gotta get out of here before they come back to get us.”

“Cool it,” said Derek. “You forget what you know about bugs? They’ve gorged. They’ll be sleepin’ it off for a week.”

John turned away from his companions and puked onto the blood-caked ground.

Derek grinned. He turned to the old man. “How’s your guts?” he asked.

Leggy’s hands trembled on the hard wheels of his chair, but he kept his voice steady. “What happened? And why didn’t they get you?”

“Pull up a seat,” invited Derek. He sat on the hard carapace of a dead bug. Its head had been smashed in. “These gypsies were hauling a bit of coffee, so I had Teddy brew up a pot.”

Leggy shuddered at the sight of the creature, but wheeled himself forward.

“I caught up to these sons of bitches just before noon,” Derek said. “They were still a few hundred yards ahead of me, but I could see Teddy. He was tied to one of their pack mules—
behind
the donkey. Not even riding. Those cunts made him walk the whole way.”

“But how did they get him?” asked Leggy.

Derek turned to his brother.

“Da music.” Teddy frowned. “I wanted to hear more music. I got up in the night to sit by their fires. They played for me and gived me a drink. It make me so sleepy-sleepy.”

“So how’d you get him back?” asked John.

“That’s what I was tryin’ to figure out,” said Derek. “I could see him, but there was no way I could sneak up on the caravan, and no way Teddy and me could fight off the whole caravan. I thought maybe I could bargain for him with some of the gear we picked up in Sanger. But seein’ Teddy roped up behind that donkey, it occurred to me that they would just take my gear and tie me up too. I was still figurin’ what to do when all Hell broke loose.”

Derek paused, remembering the bug attack. “The creatures, each nearly as big as a man, had boiled out of the sand like a plague, hissing and whistling,” he said. “There couldn’t have been more than a dozen of them, but it seemed like the sky went black. They tore through the first wagon, shredding and slashing with their pincers, their chitinous armor rattling. Men and mules  screamed in terror before they were gutted. Bedouins leapt from the other wagons, some armed with clubs and spears, some trying to flee into the desert. One man had a rifle, but even the boom of gunfire couldn’t drown out the cries of terror and pain.

“Teddy’s donkey bolted. He ran off the road and into the desert, dragging Teddy right behind. I screamed his name but he couldn’t hear me, so I ran after him. By the time I caught up to them, Teddy and the donkey were having a tug-o-war. I cut his ropes, and we went back to see what had happened.

“The fight was over. The bugs were…” Derek’s voice hitched a bit, “…were draggin’ bodies—people and mules—back down into their nests. Then one of ’em spotted us.”

Derek remembered how fast it had moved, scuttling like a sand-colored nightmare across the brown desert, hissing with greed, bony legs clinking, mandibles alive and dripping blood.

“Teddy snatched up one of the Bedouin’s clubs and beat its brains in,” said Derek. “This fucker right here,” he said, tapping the carapace on which he sat. He himself had picked up a spear, ramming it into the soft shell of the bug’s underbelly, screaming in triumph over the creature’s agony. But it was Teddy who’d made the kill.

“Them other bugs looked us over,” said Derek, a hideous grin on his face. “Guess they decided they got enough. Huh, Ted?”

Teddy nodded gravely. He’d been proud to stand on the edge of ruin with his brother, to have bashed the monster, to chase the other insects back into their ugly holes.

“They slunk off with a few more corpses,” said Derek, “and that was that. We’ve just been going through what’s left of their goods and waitin’ on you slow-pokes.”

The group was silent for a while. Leggy spiked his coffee with a healthy measure from his silver flask. His hands trembled in the firelight. “Good thing the Bedouins…good thing they were ahead of us. Otherwise we might’ve…” He couldn’t finish.

John turned to Derek. “Where’s the nest?”

“About fifty yards that way,” said Derek, pointing north of the road.

They sat in silence for a time, watching sparks from the fire rise into the night air.

“This is bad,” said Leggy. “The road used to be kept clear of bugs, at least between Sanger and Moses Springs. We’re gonna have to be careful.”

John cleared his throat. “I guess…I guess we gotta destroy the nest, right?”

“
What?
” said Derek.

“It’s the law,” said John. “All bugs and nests are to be destroyed on sight.”

“Fuck the law,” said Leggy. “There’s no Elders here.”

John turned to Leggy. “Just because no one can see you doesn’t make it okay to break the law.”

Leggy rolled his eyes.

Derek said “We don’t know how big that nest is. I saw a dozen bugs, at least. But there could be fifty more down in there. A hundred. You wanna go poking around and find out?”

John frowned.

“If it makes you feel better,” said Leggy, “we’ll report it when we get to Moses Springs.”

“Report it to who?” asked John.

Leggy started to speak, but stopped. He looked back and forth between the boys. “Used to be, you could report these things,” he said. “These days, I’m not so sure. But still—there’ll be somebody there we can tell.”

“But we’re days away,” said John. “What if…what if there are other travelers? They’ll walk right into—”

“That’s their fucking problem,” said Derek.

“But—” started John

“No.” said Derek. “There’s only four of us, and one doesn’t even have legs. How the Hell are we supposed do anything about this?”

A tense hush fell over the group.

***

Leggy spat into the fire. He’d be damned if his legs, or lack thereof, were going to be the deciding factor in this. And he didn’t like the fact that Derek seemed to have the final word on everything.

“Of course,” said Leggy, “now that I think about it, old Teddy there is probably worth three men himself, ain’t you fella?”

The big man grinned and wrung his hands together. “
Oh yeah. I kill lotsa bugs, Der.
You see.”

Derek looked up at Leggy. “What are you saying?”

“I take it you’ve searched the wagons,” said Leggy.

“Course,” said Derek.

“Bedouins usually carry a bit o’ fuel with ’em.”

Derek’s face grew flush in the firelight. “Yeah....”

“We could burn those fuckers out.” He let his suggestion hang in the air for a moment, and then gave the group an appraising look. “Nah. On second thought, we better just let it lie. Course, if you can’t handle a few half-domesticated bugs, you’re gonna love the Wasteland.”

Derek stood up. “Those things could have a twenty-mile warren. You try and burn ’em out and we might find ourselves up to our assholes in creepy-crawlies.”

Leggy didn’t think so. A large colony wouldn’t leave prey, no matter how good a fight it put up. And the one Teddy had squashed was still a juvenile. This was a new nest, still small in number.

“Is there gas, Derek?” asked John.

“Guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?” said Leggy. He wheeled away from the fire to root through the supplies that Teddy had arranged into piles.

“We gonna burn bugs?” asked Teddy.

Derek, his face pinched, said nothing.

“Looky here,” said Leggy, hoisting a pair of bright red jerrycans. They gurgled when he shook them.

John looked at Derek. “Well?”

Derek’s eyes slid from John to Leggy and back.

“Go ahead then,” he said, his voice quiet but laced with menace. “Obey your stupid law. Have your little bonfire. And if those bugs get you? Well, I guess I’ll see you in Hell.”

“Then it’s settled,” said Leggy. “We’ll pay that nest a little visit come sunrise.”

He replaced the jerrycans and then rummaged through another pile. “You find anything to eat?”

“That reminds me,” said Derek. He stood and walked over to the only wagon that remained standing. A donkey was hitched nearby, flanks still trembling in fear. The wagon, like all Bedouin wagons, was covered, tent-like, in a dusky gray cloth, serving both as transportation and shelter for the traders.

Leggy looked at John, who shrugged. They moved behind Derek. Derek undid the snaps that held the gray cloth closed at one end and threw the flaps aside.

Inside the wagon tent were two bound figures, laying prone on a homespun rug. Their faces were swaddled in burnooses, but Leggy judged them to be an adult and a child by their size.

“Are they alive?” asked John.

“Yup,” said Derek. He climbed into the wagon and unwound the burnoose from the adult. Dark hair cascaded from the white cloth. It was a woman. She regarded the strangers carefully with coal-black eyes.

***

John stared in disbelief. He’d never seen a Beduoin uncovered. Everyone said that’s because they were muties, permanently disfigured from chemical fallout, radiation sickness and inbreeding. But the woman’s face was well-formed, her caramel skin free of scabs and scars.

Derek unwound the burnoose on the smaller figure to reveal the face of a boy, no more than eight years of age, also free of blemish.

“She says her name is Raina,” said Derek. “And that’s her son, Tariq. They were the only ones the bugs didn’t get—thanks to Teddy and me.”

“Why are they tied up?” asked Leggy.

“Because they kidnapped my brother, that’s why! And because they owe us,” hissed Derek. “If Teddy and me hadn’t smashed that bug and chased off the rest, these two would be underground right now with the rest of ’em. I tied them up to make sure they didn’t slip away while I was waitin’ for you two to show up.”

“
That was unnecessary,” said Raina. Her voice was husky, and cracked with thirst, but otherwise strong and clear. “We know our debt to you and we would honor it.”

“Sure,” said Derek. “I’ll trust kidnappers and slave traders to keep their word.”

Raina shrugged. “The man-child came to us.”

Derek struck her across the face. Tariq shouted in his own language and struggled against the ropes to get to his feet. Derek put a boot on the boy’s chest and forced him back to the floor.

“He’s feeble,” snarled Derek. “You lured him with your music. You tied him up and dragged him like a goat. You’d have sold him in the market at Moses Springs.”

Raina looked up at him impassively. It was true.

“I should cut your throats right now and leave you for the vultures. Or the bugs.” Derek’s right hand hovered over the hilt of his knife. “Leave your bodies and take your wagon myself. Sell it and everything in it at Moses Springs.”

“You could,” said Raina, “but if you rolled into Moses Springs in a Bedouin wagon without us, or came upon another caravan, my people would kill you. If you leave us alive, Tariq and I will transport you to Moses Springs and pay you what you’ve earned.”

“Or I could burn your wagon down with you in it,” said Derek.

“You could,” agreed Raina, “but that would be foolish. Are you a fool?”

“I’d be a fool to trust you,” said Derek.

“No,” said Raina. “Understand that my people are opportunists. Yes, we took the man-child to sell. It’s business, eh? But once we give our word, we keep it. We must, because who would trade with us if it were otherwise?”

Derek glared at the woman for a moment, then he spun on his companions.

“Leggy, you’re a man of the world. Is she a lying whore?”

“Who can say?” said Leggy. “But I’ll tell you this—I’ve never known a Bedouin to welsh on a deal. And another thing, on foot it’s a ten-day journey to Moses Springs. By wagon, it’s three. After Moses Springs come the mountains. There won’t be any more wagons. I say ride while we can.”

“Me too,” said John.

“Yeah Der-Der!” said Teddy excitedly. “Wanna ride in the tent! My feetsies hurts.”

Derek glared at his companions. “Fine,” he said quietly. He turned to the bound traders. “But if I catch you tryin’ to fuck with us, I’ll kill you.” He stalked out of the wagon and into the darkness, leaving Leggy and John to deal with the Bedouins. John undid the ropes and Leggy fetched them some water.

***

That night, after Raina cooked a strange-tasting stew over the fire, the crew threw themselves willingly into their bed rolls. All except Derek. He watched the sleeping figures of Raina and Tariq and scratched at the ground with his knife until a harsh red light touched the eastern rim of the horizon. Then he got up and poked at Leggy’s side with his boot.

“C’mon, old man. Get up. Let’s kill them bugs and get the Hell out of here.”