Wasteland Blues (8 page)

Chapter Ten

The troop rolled on toward Mo
ses Springs. As night fell, John sat at the front of the wagon. The motorcycles had lights on them, white in front and red in back, and he’d spent hours watching the desert flit past in the wash of their glare. The motorcycle men had completely captivated his imagination, and he was determined to take in as much of them as he could. He admired their casual boldness, the surety with which they moved, and the easy confidence that seemed to course through them, even as they sat upright on their machines, as still as statues but moving faster than jackrabbits. To think that Leggy—Nicodemus—had once been one of them, a captain no less. The old coot had risen considerably in John’s estimation.

Ever since John was a boy he’d known Leggy only as a foulmouthed drunk, mocked by children and spurned by adults. In John’s mind, it was hard to imagine that that wasn’t all Leggy had ever been. But now these bits and pieces of his past emerged like old bones in the sand, and the shape they made spoke of hidden capabilities and marvelous experience.

John would not have believed a word of Leggy’s talk about being a scout, about traipsing the Wasteland not once, but several times, if the legless alcoholic told his stories back in San Muyamo. Yet here was proof, in metal and leather and human flesh, not twenty yards ahead. The big man, Silas, had called Leggy a teacher, a leader. And John wasn’t about to call Silas a liar, even without the guns and the strength he so flagrantly possessed. Something in Silas’s grim countenance spoke that this was a man who told it like it was. Whatever his sins might be, deception wasn’t one of them.

John could tell Derek didn’t like the Paladins. The appearance of the motorcycle men had added some steel to Leggy, and that meant Derek’s authority would no longer go unchallenged. Derek glared at the driving men rolling ever forward into the desert night. John wondered if Derek was plotting something, a way to strike down the Paladins. Teddy could probably take one of them, but not two, and not when they had guns. Even Teddy couldn’t survive a shotgun blast.

John offered a silent prayer that the Paladins would let them on their way soon, before Derek’s anger stirred up something more than resentment.

***

At full dark, John noticed campfires in the distance. He motioned to Derek, who stuck his head out of the tent.

“Shit,” he said. He disappeared, and reappeared a moment later, Raina firmly in tow, Derek’s hand on the scruff of her neck.

“Them your people?” asked Derek, pointing her toward the campfires.

“Yes,” said Raina. “Our settlement is just outside the town.”

Derek pursed his lips. “Hey, old man,” he shouted back inside the tent. “If there’s trouble, which side are your boys gonna be on?”

Leggy inched himself forward and surveyed the scene. Then he grinned. “If you’re thinkin’ an ambush, I expect they’ll be on my side.”

Derek scowled.

“Your side?” asked John.

“Don’t worry, son,” said Leggy, patting John’s shoulder. “Just stay close to me. But I wouldn’t worry too much. I ’spect the Bedouins will have some questions, but I’m sure this pretty lady here is as good as her word, yes?”

“Of course,” said Raina. “I’ve already pledged your safe passage.”

“Still though,” said Leggy, eyeing the distant fires, “it won’t hurt to have Silas and Corrin around. Not one bit.” He winked at Derek.

***

They hit the outskirts of the Bedouin camp at speed. Tented wagons were drawn up in circles around bright cookfires. Shadowy faces peered out of the night at the strange scene—Paladins carting a battered Bedouin wagon home.

Tariq poked his head from the tent and began to shout happily in his own language. Soon young boys were chasing the wagon, shouting in return. Then the motorcycles began to slow.

“Get on that brake, quick,” ordered Leggy as the wagon caught up to the slowing motorcycles. “Shit! Pay attention!”

Derek slid into the wagon seat next to John, clutched a wooden lever and eased it forward. The caravan rolled to a halt.

The glare of the motorcycles’ headlights starkly illuminated a crowd of robed figures. Some of the group bore spears, others short clubs. John thought he might’ve caught a glimpse of an old rifle among the robes of one of the men, the rusty barrel pointed at the ground…for now.

Then one Bedouin, the oldest of the group—a frail, wrinkled man with weathered eyes, wispy hair and sunbaked skin—stepped forward. He raised a hand. Silas regarded the dry, cracked skin of his palm and returned the gesture.

“What is this riddle?” asked the Bedouin elder, studying the spectacle of the wagon. “That one of our wagons should return to us in such a fashion? I see by the markings that this is the train of the family Caliph.” The old man turned to regard Raina and her son. “Where is your husband? Or your father or brothers?”

“Killed,” said Raina, stepping down from wagon, Tariq in tow. She did not meet the elder’s eyes. “There was a nest before Storum’s Basin. Bugs killed all my kinsmen.”

A murmur of horror trilled through the crowd.

“How is it that you have lived?” asked the elder.

“These men,” she said, gesturing to the group in the caravan. “They chased off the bugs before they found me and my son. And they burned the nest.”

Figures crept from the shadows toward them. Derek eased the knife from his sheath.

“Steady,” whispered Leggy. “They ain’t done nothin’ yet.”

“Might be too late when they do,” said Derek, but he left his knife undrawn.

Raina now stood before the men who had blocked the road. She spoke to them quickly, in her own tongue.

John held his breath. He squeezed his thighs together, afraid he might wet himself. He could see that the night was full of robed figures, lurking in the shadows all around them. Surrounding them. They could swarm the wagon in seconds, Paladins or no, and spirit them all away into the inky darkness of their camp. Their fate rested with Raina now.

John wished Derek hadn’t been so cruel to her since that day they discovered the ruins of the caravan. Elder Hale had told terrible stories about what the Godless Bedouins did to those who trespassed against them. John didn’t want to wake in the Heavenly Kingdom to find that his pecker had been cut off and stuffed in his mouth—surely the Lord could understand that and see fit to be merciful. John crossed his legs tighter, clenched his teeth, and waited.

***

The discussion lasted two, maybe three minutes. Several men spoke to Raina, questioning her closely. The Paladins sat, unmoving, their machines idling, headlights burning a path in the darkness toward the gate to the town. The steady rumble of the bikes’ engines cut into the babble of the Bedouins.

Then three men approached the wagon, Raina following. They stopped several feet away and looked closely at the travelers. Derek’s body was rigid. If they moved he would spring, taking as many as he could with his knife before they brought him down, screaming all the while for Teddy to kill as many as he could.

The three men did move, but slowly. They bent, first one knee, and then a second, then bowed until their foreheads touched the dust. They put their faces in the dirt three times, then stood. The leader spoke.

“This woman says you have been rewarded with goods from the caravan. But what you have done cannot be measured in goods. Her debt to you is too great for any one person to pay. Therefore, the whole people must pay.”

He reached into his robe and tore four strips of cloth from an intricately woven undergarment. “This is the token of the house of Caliph. If you show it to any of our people, on this side of the mountain or the other, they will come to your aid. So say I, Amit, of the house of Caliph.”

He tied a strip around each of their wrists, and then embraced them one by one. The figures who had been surrounding them had melted back into the darkness. Only Amit, Raina, and Tariq stood before them.

“Peace,” said Raina, bowing to them.

“Bye Teddy,” said Tariq. And then they too stepped into the darkness, and were gone.

The Paladins killed their engines, dismounted, and walked the bikes over to the travelers.

“Now what?” asked Derek.

John sidled away to relieve himself into the darkness at the side of the road.

“Let’s get our gear out of the wagon and get into town,” said Leggy.

“How far is it?” asked Derek.

“Not far,” said Silas. “Maybe a mile. We’ll ride ahead and tell the gatekeepers you’re coming.”

The motorcycles roared to life and flew on before them. The travelers hitched their gear on their backs. Teddy took up his old station behind Leggy’s chair. They pushed forward.

“Shit,” said Derek after they’d gone a few hundred yards. “All that trouble and what do we get out of it? A smelly rag from some gypsy’s underwear. I was expecting serious loot.”

“No, Der Der. This is a good present,” said Teddy. “We got a family again.”

Chapter Eleven

Moses Springs sat nestled among the foothills at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The outskirts of the town supported stingy groves of apricot trees, date palms, and a few ranches that herded handfuls of bony cattle.

Like Sanger, Moses Springs was a gated town and a center of trade and commerce for a surrounding web of homesteads and small villages. At night it buttoned itself up tight against the perils of the desert.

The Paladins were waiting for them at the gates, which were constructed from thick wooden posts on creaking metal hinges. A quartet of guards eyed the travelers curiously. Their party didn’t seem like much, certainly not enough to warrant the attention of the Paladins, but there it was.

The travelers passed through the gates, which swung quietly shut behind them. The Paladins led them a short way to a two-story wooden building, their headquarters and barracks. Derek noticed a man patrolling the roof of the Paladins’ home. Moonlight glinted off a rifle barrel.

“Home sweet home,” said Silas. “We can give you supper and a few cots, if that’ll suit.”

“Sure will.” Leggy smiled. “We been sleepin’ out for quite a bit. Won’t mind a roof over my head for a night.”

They came into a large common room warmed by a wood stove. A rough-hewn table stood in the middle of the floor. The good smell of cooking meat came from a room on their left. On the right was a cloakroom.

“Stow your gear in there,” said Silas, “then go ’round back and have a wash. I’ll see what Champer has on the pot.”

They tucked their bags into large cubbies and found a door leading outside to a hand pump. Teddy worked the pump while the others soaked their heads and washed the road grime from their hands and faces. The water smelled slightly of sulphur and was metallic-tasting, but it flushed the road dust from their mouths and faces. They came back to the common room dripping a bit but feeling refreshed.

“You recognize this place?” asked Derek, his eyes shifting right and left, getting the layout of the rooms.

“Nah,” said Leggy. “Back when I was with the Paladins, we operated out of an old barn in the hills. Looks like these fellows are doin’ a bit better.”

At that moment a large, red-faced man tramped into the common room from what must have been the kitchen. His hair was pulled back in a greasy kerchief and he was decked out in sweat-stained, homespun wool. One meaty arm strangled a wide-mouthed cook pot, the other balanced a tray of bowls, spoons, and a fresh-baked loaf of sourdough.

“If you fuckers weren’t friends of Silas I’d give you a kick in the ass,” he said. “I just washed every goddamn dish and plate in this place. Supper’s at six o’clock, not half past midnight. But Silas says I gotta feed ya. Well sit down, goddamnit.”

The group approached the table sheepishly. The red-faced man slopped thick stew into the bowls with great sweeps of his arm, nearly knocking John in the face with his elbow as he did so. Silas and Corrin joined them at the table.

“Eat up, but don’t blame me if you get nightmares or gotta use the shithouse at two a.m.,” said the man. He dropped the cook pot on the table and disappeared again.

The group fell to eating without much talk. The stew was a concoction of meat, potatoes, beans, and stringy carrots in a thick gravy. They ate to the bottom of the first bowl and sopped up the juices with the bread, then ladled in more stew. The fat man appeared with another tray, this one sporting mugs full of drink.

Leggy sipped his. His eyes widened. “Sweet Jesus, I’ll be damned if that’s a beer.”

“Sure is,” said Silas. “Champer got his own works out back and kegs in the root cellar. You work miracles with a little hops and barley, don’t you, Champ?”

“And I could work a hundred more if you bug humpers just kept to the shittin’ schedule and let a man get some goddamn work done.”

Silas grinned. “Champer doesn’t need firewood to cook. He curses so hot he can sizzle a horse-steak just by talkin’ to it.”

“Bah,” muttered Champer, disappearing into the kitchen again.

***

When they finished eating, Silas motioned to the fireplace at the far end of the hall. “You can bunk down there, if you don’t mind. All the rooms upstairs are filled. We got two spare cots, so you’ll have to draw straws to see who gets the floor.”

Leggy and Teddy won the draw. Silas and Corrin went off to bring in the cots. John stacked the dirty bowls and empty mugs onto the tray and carried them into the kitchen, which was large and spotless. Champer was in the corner, stacking firewood for his stove.

“Can we help you clean up?” asked John sheepishly.

“Help? How’s a rabbit turd like you gonna help? Just get the fuck out of my kitchen. Breakfast’s at six a.m. Beans, bacon, and biscuits. If you sleep through it, you can ask your momma for a bag of farts. Now piss off.”

John fled.

They bedded down next to the fireplace, which was fading to embers. Teddy, far too large for the cot offered him, surrendered it to Derek. Corrin had disappeared, but Silas sat with them a bit.

“Nicodemus says you’re going over the mountains and into the Wasteland. Can’t say I’m thrilled with the idea, but it’s your necks,” said Silas. “We, that is the Paladins, don’t operate on the other side of the mountains. The trails are too rough on the bikes, and we got enough to do running the roads around here. The Bedouins carry on some trade, but they don’t send caravans up that way too often. You’re gonna be on your own.”

“I prefer it that way,” said Derek.

“What’s it like in the mountains?” asked John.

Silas shrugged. “There’s a few settlements up there, a ranch or two, but they don’t take to strangers. Plenty of bandits, some hermits and loners. And wildlife, bears and mountain cats. Sometimes they come down to Moses Springs to hunt. A mountain cat killed three cattle and an old herdsman two weeks ago. I saw its paw tracks myself.” He held his hands apart to show the size of the creature’s print. “One swipe would take your face off.”

Silas cracked his knuckles and frowned at his old running-mate. “You’re heading into rough terrain, Nicodemus. I ain’t sure about that chair of yours. You might want to think about trading in your wheels for a good pack donkey. That’s what the Bedouins use to haul goods over to the other side. You can trade for one at the bazaar in town.”

Leggy scratched his chin. “I don’t know if I’m too keen on riding a donkey.”

“Well then, how about a proposal?” asked Silas, leaning forward. “Don’t cross the mountains. Stay here and join up with us.”

“Join up?” asked Leggy. “You mean be a Paladin again?”

“That’s right,” said Silas.

Leggy looked down at his wheelchair. “I can’t see how that’s gonna happen.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” said Silas. “We could fix up a sidecar to one of the bikes. Think about it, Nick. Back on the road, running with the Paladins, fighting bugs and bandits. It’d be beautiful.”

“Silas, I’m just a broken down old man. What help could I possibly be to you?”

“You were my best teacher,” said Silas, “and that’s no lie. You still got a lot of knowledge to pass on. I’m sure of it. You could train a whole new generation of Paladins.”

Leggy stared into the fire. His days of running with the Paladins had been some of the best of his life. Could he recapture them? Just maybe he could. It’d be nice to be respected again, to be a man that other men looked up to.

Then he looked over at his traveling companions. He could see the worry in John’s eyes, and the coldness in Derek’s. Would those boys go on without him? Probably. And they’d end up dead in the Wasteland, too. But was that his concern? Derek had forced him on this crazy march at knifepoint. Kidnapped him. He didn’t owe these boys a thing.

Or did he?

“I think,” said Leggy quietly, “I better sleep on it.”

“Fair enough,” said Silas. He rose, shook Leggy’s hand, and asked the others if there was anything else they needed.

No one spoke.

Silas bid them goodnight, blew out the oil lamps that lit the room, and tromped upstairs to his own quarters.

***

Derek lay on the hard cot, staring into the darkness of the rafters above. Though the bunkhouse was quiet, he couldn’t sleep. His mind was clenched like a fist. That asshole Silas wanted to steal one of his band away, and he tried to do it right out in the open.

And so what if Leggy did choose to stay with his old companions? He was an ornery cuss, and harder to boss around than John or Teddy. After their encounter with the Paladins, he’d be harder still. If Leggy left, Derek wouldn’t have to put up with the old man’s back-talk. So why not let him stay? Good riddance!

But Leggy had proven his value. He had a cache of unexpected resources, not the least of which was his knowledge of the Wasteland. Without Leggy, Derek knew their chances of survival beyond the mountains would be slim. And then there were the army cities that Leggy had talked about. The ones with the weapons. Derek had no idea where such places might be hidden, but Leggy could lead them right there.

Derek hated to admit to himself that he wanted—needed—Leggy to make the journey with them. And he hated even more that Leggy might abandon them. He gripped the shaft of his knife. It would be easy to cut Leggy’s throat right now, so that everybody lost. Derek would prefer that to seeing Leggy choose the Paladins and send the three of them packing. He lay on the cot, nursing his spite, waiting to see which direction his heart pushed him.

***

Leggy didn’t sleep. He pondered Silas’s offer. This should have been an easy decision. Rejoin the Paladins. He would be Nicodemus again, not an old feeb whose name itself was a mockery. The Paladins would be a much better choice than riding into the blasted nightmare beyond the mountains with a sociopath, a brute, and a religious fanatic.

He’d joined up with the Paladins about a year after turning in his guns to one of Rasham’s road bosses in Santa Cruz. His tenure with the recovery crews had been instructive, and it put a bit of silver in his pocket, but he’d been tired of putting his ass on the line only to make Rasham richer. Sure, he could’ve demanded a bigger piece of the pie for himself, and Rasham was sensible enough to give ambitious types an opportunity to pick up more of the take, but it would’ve meant staking his own money, outfitting a caravan, training his own team…Nicodemus wasn’t interested.

He’d spent the next year wandering the coast, north as far as Corvallis where the acid storms had given everything a glazed and melted appearance, where the buildings were crumbling and the people were, more often than not, burned and scarred.

Then he headed back south.

He stayed awhile in Santa Cruz, bunked out on the boardwalk beneath the rusting skeleton of a roller coaster. It was there he’d shacked up with a lady named Betsy.

I
f scouting for a hauler was a frenetic nightmare of heat and dryness and violence, Santa Cruz was a slow, soupy dream of quiescence. His thirsty pores had lapped up the damp air coming off the briny ocean, and he could feel his skin softening and loosening around his brow and on his cracked palms. He’d wiggled his toes in the sand and raised his hands in salutation to the hot ultraviolet sun.

He and Betsy ate fish and wild dog, and smoked a weed that Betsy had called
shemp
, which grew like kudzu in the hillsides.

But as weeks turned to months, Nicodemus was surprised to find himself uneasy. The damp sea air made him moldy. The
shemp
made him slow. When a trio of itinerant bikers nearly got the jump on him and Betsy one evening, Nicodemus knew it was time to go. He tried to persuade Betsy to come inland with him, but they both knew she wouldn’t. And so he left her, and when he found himself in Moses Springs with no money and no fuel, he’d signed on with the Paladins.

Leggy sighed as he remembered those days. The Paladins were paid by a consortium of trading hubs to keep the roads passable, which meant trying to stay a step ahead of the bugs, muties, bandits that fed off travelers and traders. In short time he’d risen to the rank of captain, leading men on long missions, negotiating deals with new villages, extending the Paladins’ circle of influence. Could he have that again?

He shifted in the cot. Something in his heart held him back from accepting Silas’s offer, and it took many hours before he could unknot it. At first, he’d told himself that he didn’t owe these boys anything. They’d dragged him along at knifepoint, for Chrissakes. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he
did
owe them something.

As the stars outside the windows twinkled in their mad, radioactive dance beyond the polluted atmosphere, Leggy was forced to admit that if they hadn’t dragged him along, he would’ve lived out his last days as the town fool in that dung heap of a village. These boys hadn’t kidnapped him, they’d rescued him. And for that, he owed them more than he could ever repay.

And then there was the journey itself. It was so wild, so improbable, so impossible…yet the idea of it had kindled his heart, set his enthusiasm ablaze. Sure, running with the Paladins would have a stock of adventures. Patrolling the roads wasn’t for the faint of heart. But crossing the continent? Traveling from West to East, as far as a man could go before he ran up against the other ocean? Se
arching for
New York City?
Even the Paladins wouldn’t dare that. Not in their wildest dreams.

He made his decision just as the sky shifted from black to cobalt. He would stick with the kids, and take them as far as he could. At that moment, he heard the soft hiss of a knife slipping from its sheath. He cracked open one eye to see Derek rise from his cot and come toward him.

He’s gonna stab me in the heart,
thought Leggy.
Sunnofabitch!
He tried to get his mouth to work, to tell Derek of his decision, but his throat wouldn’t cooperate. Derek glided on cat feet, the blade picking up the first hints of dawn.

Then there was a crash from the kitchen, and Champer trundled into the room with an armload of firewood.

“Wake up, fuckers. Any of you turds know how to get a fire going?”

Teddy sat bolt upright. “Wake up, fuckers,” he shouted.

Champer brushed past Derek, who still had his knife in his hand, and piled the wood next to the fireplace.

“Kindling’s in the box,” Champer said. “Flint’s on the mantle. Build a good one or I’ll piss in your eggs. Goddamn late sleepers, but you’ll shit yourself if breakfast ain’t on time, is that right?”