Presley would have called it. The bloated corpses of headless men lay rotting in the wan morning light.
This is where those who had huddled within the circle of the Ashy Whites had lived all the years since the end of the things that were.
Before.
He found the blind man at the back of the school, near the playground and the swing sets.
Remember when I pushed you on a swing that time, Boy? When we found that playground outside Wichita. We played and shot a deer with my crossbow. We barbecued the meat. It could have been the Fourth of July. Do you remember that, Boy?
I do, he had told Sergeant Presley in those last weeks of suffering.
It could have been the Fourth of July.
The blind man lay in the sandbox of the playground, his breath ragged, as drool ran down onto the dirty sand, mixing with the blood from the place where his eyes had once been.
The Boy thought it might be a trap.
He’d seen such tricks before, and even with Sergeant Presley they’d nearly fallen into them once or twice. After those times and in the years that followed, they’d avoided everyone when they could afford to.
He got down from Horse.
“There’s no more to give!” cried the blind man. “You’ve taken everything. Now take my life, you rotten cowards!”
The Boy walked back to Horse and got his water bag.
Not much left.
He knelt down next to the blind man and raised his head putting the spout near his lips. The blind man drank greedily.
After: “You’re not with them, are you?”
The Boy walked back to Horse.
“Kill me.”
He mounted Horse.
“Kill me. Don’t leave me like this. How …” The blind man began to sob. “How will I eat?”
The Boy atop Horse regarded the blind man for a moment.
How will any of us eat?
He rode off across the overgrown field and back through a broken-down wire fence.
That’s everything you need to know, Boy. Good. Tells you everything you need to know. Supremacists. Coming down out of their bunkers in the North. Don’t know these guys, but they’re worth avoiding. Probably here slavin’.
Probably.
Go west. Get into the Sierras before winter. The mountains will be a good place to go to ground for winter. It’s hard to live in the mountains but there’ll be less people up there. You plan, you prepare, and you’ll do just fine. Come spring, you cross the mountains and head for Oakland. Find the Army. Tell them.
In the days that followed, the Boy rode Horse hard across the broken and barren dirt of what the map called Nevada. On the big road, Freeway, which he kept off to his right, he passed horrendous wrecks rusting since long before he’d been born. He passed broken trucks and overturned cars, things he’d once wanted to explore as a boy. Sergeant Presley would often let him when they’d had the time for such games—the game of explaining what the Boy found inside the twisted metal, and what the lost treasures had once meant. Before.
Hairbrush.
Phone.
Eyeglasses.
There was little that remained after the years of scavenging by other passing travelers.
The winding, wide Freeway curved and climbed higher underneath dark peaks. Roads that left Freeway often disappeared into wild desert. Sometimes as he rested Horse he would wonder what he might find at the conclusion of such lonely roads.
At one intersection the rusting framework of a sign crossed the departing road. From the framework three skeletons dangled in the wind of the high desert, rotted and picked at by vultures.
Probably a warning, Boy. Whoever’s up that road doesn’t want company.
It was a cold day. Above he could see the snowcapped peaks turning blue in the shadow of the falling sun. Later that night as he rode down a long grade devoid of wrecks, snow began to fall and he was glad to be beyond the road-sign skeletons.
He made camp in the carport of a fallen house on the side of a rocky hill that overlooked the winding highway. He stacked rubble in the openings to hold in the warmth of his fire.
Chapter Five
SHE AND HER sisters came out that night, south out of the desert wastes ranging up toward the road. Winter was coming on fast, and they needed to make their kills soon and return south to their home near the big canyon. They had hunted the area lean of mule deer and for the last week had been reduced to eating jackrabbits. Far too little and lean for a pride of lions.
Did she think about what the world had become? Did she wonder how she had come to be hunting the lonely country of northern Nevada? Did she know anything of casinos and entertainments and that her ancestors had once roamed, groomed and well fed, behind glass enclosures while tourists snapped their pictures?
No.
She only thought of the male and their young and her sisters.
Tonight the wind was cold and dry. There was little moonlight for the hunt. If they could only come across a pack of wild dogs. It would be enough to start them south again. Once they were south, they would have food in the canyons. And if they had to, they could always search the old city. There was always someone there, a lone man digging amongst the ruins. There was always someone hiding within the open arches and shredded carpets, the overturned machines and the shining coins spilled out as though carelessly thrown down in anger.
She topped the small line of hills and saw the dark band of the highway heading west. They had always regarded this road as the extent of their northern wanderings. Now they had to turn south.
Her sisters growled. She watched the road, looking for a moving silhouette in the darkness. One sister came to rub her head with her own.
Let’s return. He is waiting.
And for a moment she smelled … a horse.
They had taken wild horse before.
When she was young.
Running down the panicked mustangs.
There had been more than enough.
She scented the wind coming out of the east and turned her triangular head to watch the curve of the road as it gently bent south along the ridgeline.
There was a horse along the road.
Chapter Six
IN THE LATE afternoon of the next day the Boy rode alongside the highway listening for any small sound within the quiet that blanketed the desolation of the high desert.
There is nothing in this land. It’s been hunted clean.
The Boy, used to little, felt the ache in his belly beginning to rumble. It had been two days since the last of a crow he’d roasted over a thin fire of brush and scrub wood.
So what’s that tell you, Boy?
Death in some form. Either predators who will see me as prey, or poison from the war.
That’s right, he heard Sergeant Presley say in the way he’d always pronounced the words “That” and “is,” making them one and removing the final “t.”
A place called Reno is in front of me. Maybe another day’s ride.
All cities are dead. The war saw to that, Boy.
Some cities. Remember the one called Memphis. It wasn’t poisoned.
Might as well have