As I Walk These Broken Roads br-1 Read online

  “What about you then? You don’t seem too suspicious.”

  Raxx shrugged. “Like I said, I’m an outsider here too, so I guess I just want to talk with someone else who’s from the outside. If you head downstairs though, I’ll bet that Eddie — he’s the bartender — he’ll start up a conversation with you. He likes hearing any news from other places almost as much as he likes to hear himself talk.”

  Wentworth drained the last drops from his glass. It was warm and bitter. A wave of exhaustion washed over him as the alcohol slid through his veins. “Well, Raxx, I’m glad I met you — especially since you’re a Mechanic — but I’ve got to crash. After that trek I’m about ready to pass out. Say, are there any hotels in town?”

  “Hey man, don’t worry — Landfall here used to be an Inn back before the war. Nowadays it’s mostly just the Ale House, but Eddie and his mom still keep rooms for the traders that come through. They’ll make you breakfast and dinner, too.”

  “That’s good to hear; I’ve been carrying that duffle over there for long enough. I hate to take off on you, but I’m burned — I’m gonna head downstairs, and get things sorted out, then rack. What time should I come by tomorrow? And where is it?”

  “I set up in an old service station nobody was using. It’s just down Main Street a ways. It’s got one of those red and blue signs out front on a post. Just come by whenever you’re up, I’ve got other stuff I can work on if you need to sleep in. If I’m not there just ask around — I shouldn’t be too far.”

  “Alright. Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He shook Raxx’s hand, then left, taking the glass and pitcher with him.

  Raxx drank the rest of his beer slowly, listening to the music below and watching the stars come out through the window. It was a quiet night and nobody came up to play pool. He wondered a bit about the stranger, thinking about the man’s motorcycle and what he could do to fix it, but mostly he thought about Connie. He hoped she would be feeling better by next week. The locals were big on their annual ‘Corn Festival,’ scheduled for the Saturday after next. She was looking forward to the dance.

  Chapter 2

  The night’s rest was refreshing. He couldn’t ignore the welt on his leg, but he was feeling energized as he hobbled down to Raxx’s workshop.

  Breakfast had been included like the Mechanic had said; there’d been a full meal of eggs, hash browns, stewed tomatoes, coffee, and Eddie’s conversation. The bartender had talked straight through the meal, offering anecdotes about the weather, local rumours, the Landfall family’s brewing methods, and a story about a two-headed calf born earlier that year. Wentworth had eaten in silence, offering the occasional nod or grunt to keep him going, but otherwise staying quiet. The coffee was strong and black, and its heat made him sweat as it brought him into the world.

  A fresh breeze was blowing as he walked down Main Street. Within the city limits was the occasional tree. South of the town he saw smoke rising from what he presumed to be a coal flue. The winds came from the east and took the smoke with them.

  The cement was cracked and the buildings were makeshift, but the locals kept things clean. He even saw an old lady in a knitted shawl sweeping the street in front of her home, and he passed an empty lot where all the local vehicles had been collected, cleared from the roads. The sun had reached the slow part of its ascent, and the stalls were being set up in the marketplace, empty booths filling with produce and crafts. As he walked by he noticed that people showed him the same sort of polite indifference that the bar patrons had shown the night before. They’d nod at him as he passed, but they refrained from staring and gossiping until he was further down the road. He almost felt invisible — almost.

  Raxx’s workshop was easy enough to find. The sign he’d mentioned rose ten meters in the air and was easily the tallest structure in town. Though sun bleached, covered with grime, and missing a corner, its red-and-blue logo was still readable, more vivid than the town’s population sign.

  The building itself was just a couple of small service bays connected to a mid-sized bunker. It was set back from the road, with four rusted fuel-pumps in place along the two concrete islands out front. The walls were greyish-white, with discolourations where advertisements posters had peeled off, and empty racks out front. The large windows were boarded up with wood and sheet metal, and an eve’s system ran down to a rain barrel next to the door. Raxx sat there waiting for him, smoking a cigar and drinking coffee out of a chipped mug. He waved when he saw Wentworth.

  “Morning,” said Wentworth once he was in talking distance.

  “Yes it is,” replied Raxx, “How’d they treat you over at the Landfall’s?”

  “It was good.”

  “Glad to hear it. Nice piece of hardware, by the way.”

  Wentworth tugged on the sling of his rifle and shrugged, “Yeah, well, speak softly and carry a big stick, right?”

  “Hey, I’m not saying anything different. I don’t go out to the country without my shotgun. Glad to see you came prepared,” he stubbed out his cigar, “You said your transmission chain snapped. You know its grade?”

  “It’s diameter you mean? Yeah,” Wentworth pulled a notebook out of his pocket and read off the number he’d written down the day before.

  “I think I have that. If not I should be able to relink the old one; I’ll tell you what — how does this sound? I’ll look it all over for fifty Litres, then I’ll give you an estimate — but if I can’t fix it at all, then everything’s free. You need new valves… four-hundred, ‘cause I’ll have to make them myself. Sound fair?”

  “Yeah, sounds good. So what’s the plan then, are we bringing your tools with us? If we are it’s a bit of a walk, we’d need a cart and a donkey, I guess. Is that included?”

  “Huh? I was planning to bring the bike back up here. Oh, I didn’t tell you last night, did I?”

  “Tell me what?”

  Instead of answering Raxx just grinned and stood up. He walked over to the far garage door, bending over to slide it open. The bay was filled with an assortment of engine parts, tools, and other mechanical devices, but what caught Wentworth’s eye was the pickup sitting in the front.

  “Meet my girl,” said Raxx.

  It was a mid-sized truck, built with an aquiline style. A prominent middle ridge on the hood housed the engine, flanked by two lesser bulges ending in headlights. The wheel wells swept down into running boards, before coming back up and ending in fins on either side of the bed. It had once been a sleek juggernaut of the highways, but the years had been harsh, wearing down its polish. The chrome was corroded, its body had faded from black to russet, and in some spots Raxx had covered up the rust-holes with welded sheets of steel. It had a definite rigged look about it.

  But despite it all the machine glowed; in its belly was a fully functioning engine and a full tank of fuel. Raxx’s worn down pickup truck was a thing of beauty.

  The two of them started loading the tools into the back, along with some boards, and tie-down straps for the bike. While they worked Raxx told him the story behind his truck.

  “When I first found her she was in pretty rough shape — it happened one day, back when I was a kid, out exploring. I used to do that a lot, when I wasn’t busy at the farm; I’d load up a bag with water and food and take off for an adventure in some of the nearby ruins. One day I came across a building which had been mostly destroyed — it almost looked like a bomb had gone off — roof gone, walls fallen over, and the floor all wrecked from rain — you know… maybe there’d been a gas line explosion in the town? There was a lot of… whatever. I was just strolling through, not really expecting to find anything, when I noticed this door down below, subsurface.

  “So I cleared out all the stuff blocking the stairwell, and I pried it open. Behind I found a garage — I hadn’t seen it earlier because the ramp on the outside was too full of rubble. Sitting in the garage, that’s where I found this baby.

  “She’d survived pretty well. The gara
ge had kept her safe except for a bit of dampness — that was a huge stroke of luck — and then I lucked out a second time; whoever had lived there must have been a Mechanic. He had a workbench, tools, manuals — everything I needed to figure out how all this stuff worked.

  “Which isn’t to say that’s what I did — I was a kid at the time. All the gadgets were neat, but I didn’t think much deeper about it, not then.

  “But I didn’t tell anyone what I’d found and I kept going there over the next few years. Just tooling around for the most part. Then one day it hit me — with the state she was in, I might be able to get her operational. See, here’s the rub; even closed up in the garage, she’d still fallen apart over the years. A truck’s supposed to be driving — you leave her idle for long enough and she just dies — that goes for any machine. They’re designed to be operated.”

  By this point they’d finished loading up the vehicle, and were driving down the highway at a decent clip. Underneath the hood the engine was making a deep rumbling noise, and Raxx had to almost shout over its growl. To Wentworth’s ears it sounded healthy but expensive. “So what kind of mileage do you get?”

  “About twelve litres per hundred kilometers, with a seventy litre tank.”

  “Ouch.”

  Raxx shrugged, “Yeah, it’s not that great, but it’s got a lot of torque. I think there might be some problems with the alternator — her lights flicker on idle — but I’m still looking into it; the problem could be something else.” He shrugged. “But it isn’t really that big of a deal, since I’m not driving that much lately.”

  “So where do you get your petroleum?”

  “Well, the town gets a shipments with the caravans that come in every so often,” he shifted down to fourth to climb a hill, “I figure eighty-five’s the best overall…” As they crested he shifted back into fifth. “That’s how I heard of Blackstock in the first place, from one of the guys making the shipments out to here. I’d left Hope with a full tank, and only had to wait a couple of months before the next caravan came through. I told the guy what I was interested in, and he took care of it for me. Guy named Vince — I think he’s coming into town later this week. The nearest city’s a couple of days if you’re got an Ox pulling you like most of the traders do, so he’s not by too often. He’s the one who gets me my supplies, and I try and keep some extra in the station’s storage tanks,” he glanced over at Wentworth, “Don’t worry about this trip, though, it’s free. She’s fully charged, so I don’t care about driving out to your bike. Hell, it’s good to be on the road again. I don’t usually have an excuse, so I don’t drive as much as I’d like to.”

  They settled into a comfortable silence. The sun was rising to its zenith and in the distance the road wavered, mirages phasing in and out. The light hit the right angle, and the road turned to glare. Wentworth had been wearing his goggles since leaving the Landfall’s, but Raxx was had to reach for a pair of sunglasses sitting on the dash. The sun drove the night’s moisture from the earth, leaving new cracks in its wake. Wind currents picked up the loose dirt, and dust devils rode across the land, calling it their own.

  Staring out the window Wentworth saw all the landmarks from his journey the day before flash by with a rapidity he did not remember. Barns weathered to a lonely grey, homes with their roofs caved in. The orange twines of rusted fences. A brick house, once home to a family, now inhabited by mice, louses, and black moulds and mildews waiting for a bare foot or a pair of lungs to take root in. The hills rolled by. In places the old forest had reclaimed the land, but more often than not it was the dust and barren earth. The grasses eked out an existence between the two.

  “You know,” said Wentworth, breaking the silence, “I was surprised to meet somebody as skilled as you with the old tech — to meet a Mechanic. I’d thought I was going to have to abandon my bike — either that or fix her on my own, which wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t really expect to find anyone, especially not in a place like Blackstock, who’d worked on bikes before.”

  Raxx shrugged, “Well, to be honest, I haven’t — I haven’t worked on bikes before, just Susie here. It’s not easy to find the machines to practice on. I’m stuck with old manuals, mostly, and that’s about it. But it’s all pretty much the same — motorcycles are just like trucks, only easier. The basic mechanism is a lot less complex — really, there shouldn’t be anything that could go wrong with a motorcycle that I couldn’t fix, as long as I’ve got the tools, which I mostly do. You take my truck, though, and there’s a bunch of things I still don’t understand, and other things that I don’t think anybody out there’s got the right tools to fix.” He shook his head. “I really don’t want to do any transmission work. That’s why I’ve got that other one sitting back in the bay.” He paused, thinking of the crunch he’d felt shifting into second earlier. “So your bike’s going to be kind of new to me — meaning I’m going take it slow — but it’s definitely not a problem.”

  Wentworth nodded, “Oh, I trust you with it, that’s not the issue. I was just saying that not many people are educated on the old tech. It’s rare to find someone who is.”

  “The problem’s will, not education.”

  “Say again?”

  Raxx sighed, looking exasperated. “Alright, it’s like this — take Blackstock. It’s been isolated for a long time; there isn’t much trade that comes through there, and they haven’t got any neighbours. But even so — the people are pretty stable, mentally speaking. They’re still in touch with reality. Their biggest weirdness is that tattooing of theirs.”

  “Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that. Everyone I saw had them.”

  Raxx shrugged, “It shows bloodline. They get them done when they turn nineteen. It’s like — to us it’s a bit odd because we weren’t born there, the same way the metal in my face might look odd to you, depending on where you’re from. But there’s nothing wrong with it; nothing crazy.”

  “I don’t quite read you. You’re talking about cultural traits, right? How can you say that this one’s okay, but that one’s weird? If you’re going to say that one’s crazy, then really; shouldn’t you admit they all are? What are the formal greetings? Do the leaders wear hats? How do grandmothers dress? None of them have any grounding in… in tech; none of them are make sense, they aren’t necessary. They’re just quirks.”

  He’d just finished a cigarette, but he pulled out another. “What I’m trying to get at is that culture’s nothing more than a bunch of commonly held, made-up norms — isn’t it?”

  Raxx smiled. “I like the way you talk. And yes, that’s true. But what I’m trying to say is that in Blackstock there’s no craziness attached to the tattoos. They only show family history and that they’re adults. I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but in Blackstock they don’t think… I don’t know, that it helps them get more rain, or something. Know what I mean?”

  “Your problem’s with superstition, not culture?”

  “Yes! Exactly.”

  “Okay… I think I know what you’re talking about. Too much isolation… well… yeah, it can do some weird stuff. But you’re saying that Blackstock, even though it’s pretty isolated, isn’t bad. They’ve just got tattoos. They’re not crazy. Is that it?”

  “Yes… they even speak good, for locals off the trade routes. But my point isn’t just that they’re normal — Blackstock’s actually pretty average, all things considered…

  “But then here’s the problem — there’s no new construction in the town. The buildings that aren’t prewar are all scrapped together.”

  “Yeah, but it’s like that everywhere.”

  “Exactly my point. It’s as if… people — people everywhere — have just given up. They’d rather sit around trying to forget the past than pick up the pieces and try to rebuild. Even out West where the people are richer and they’ve got more tech, all anybody focuses on is politics and cash. Not learning. Not rebuilding.”

  Raxx reached into his pocket to pull out ano
ther cigar, then changed his mind and put it away. “I think it’s because people are trying to forget about the war, forget about the tech — I can even understand why. Every day we’re paying for it — just look around, the war’s everywhere and it doesn’t stop. People just want put it out of their minds — but that’s crazy because as long as they forget about the tech, and the learning behind it, everything we have is broken.

  “We’re squatting on the shoulders of giants. We live in their houses, use their tools, we even keep the same names for the cities. How about the fact that I make a living by maintaining the old tech? There’s a lot of guys that do. I try and build some things, sure, but mostly what I do is just fix stuff that’s broken down — stuff that I can’t build in the first place!

  “The old tech is everywhere, it’s in the roots — but nobody knows how to build it. Most guys, sure, they know what buttons to push, they know how to fix parts of it, but they don’t know the whole process. They don’t know why they push the buttons…

  “Everyone’s closed their eyes to the underlying truth. It’s… it’s ignorance on purpose, and it’s everywhere. It’s like knowledge scares people — you know what? I think it does. There aren’t many who want to hear me explain what I’m doing, or how to prevent the malfunction from happening again, no matter how much cheaper it’d be. They just want it fixed and working so that they can forget about it.”

  This time he did pull out the cigar and light it. “Some places actually think that being ignorant is a good thing, and that learning about this stuff is evil. It’s like; instead of examining, they ignore reality — finding out what’s going on would break whatever they want to be true. They won’t try to see the gears behind the walls, they won’t open up the black boxes, they won’t look under the rug; they just want everything to keep doing its magic.”