As I Walk These Broken Roads br-1 Page 23

  His eyes felt heavy. “Patty — it meant something.” He stared at her for a moment, then kissed her hand. She brought a hand to her face and held it there.

  Patricia was… competent. In his own mind, he couldn’t think of a better compliment. She was competent, strong, and deep inside she was all woman. But there was no hope here. Not for him. The old loneliness swept over him again.

  “Will I ever see you again?” Patricia was staring dully at the stones in front of them.

  Wentworth tried to think of what he should say but he was at a loss. The dream-like nights they’d spent in each other’s arms washed up against his chest. He met her eyes and answered as honestly as he could. “I don’t know.”

  Now she made eye contact with him, finally, a sad and wistful smile on her face. “Well, Iain Wentworth, take care. I don’t hate you. Though I probably should. I hope you find whatever it is that you’re looking for.”

  He met her gaze but didn’t reply. After a few second she moved towards him, awkwardly and took his chin in her hands. They shared one last kiss, trembling, like nervous teenagers. Then she stood up and marched off.

  Wentworth watched her go.

  * * *

  Raxx rolled out from underneath his truck. He got up and put away the wrench he’d been holding, then grabbed a rag and wiped the grease off of his hands.

  He kneeled down by the back end and inspected the shot-out taillight. “Don’t know where I’m going to find another one of those,” he said to himself. Running his hand over the cargo door he traced the circles where bullets had punctured the metal, “Ah, it gives you character girl.” He stood up and patted the vehicle lovingly.

  * * *

  “Oh, I forgot my duvet. I can’t forget that. Are all the preserves packed up? I hope we can find a good place to set up shop once we get there. Did you make sure that Raxx will meet us on time? I don’t—”

  “Sweetheart!” Vince grabbed Maria by the shoulders and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You’re worrying too much. We’ve got everything in hand.”

  She sighed, and smiled at him. “I know. But I’m just so excited and nervous. I’ve never been far outside of Hope — you know that! Are you sure we’re going to be alright?”

  “We’re going to be just fine, Sweetie!”

  * * *

  The sun had set but still she hadn’t turned on the lights. The bottle of whiskey was almost empty. She downed the shot in front of her and refilled it. She looked up at the prewar posters and caressed her glass. “Oh, Iain…”

  The tears wouldn’t flow.

  * * *

  He’d done the full pre-driving inspection on his cycle and she’d checked out. Oil, coolant, everything was topped off and she was in perfect driving condition. Outside of Hope’s perimeter wall he sat on her, fully kitted up, rifle strapped to his back, with the bike humming underneath him, burning through the fuel.

  His arms were crossed over the handlebars and his head resting on them as he watched the sun clear the horizon. The dawn winds had picked up and they were cool against his exposed skin. Red, pink, and black, the sky filled with colour as the shadows of lone trees and ruined structures spread across the land towards him. His goggles polarized with the light and tiny dust devils swirled around his feet.

  By the time the sun had risen and turned the sky light-blue he heard the rumble of Raxx’s truck coming out the city gate. He pulled over next to Wentworth. Vince and Maria were in the cab with him, the back was piled high with goods under a tie-down tarp, and a trailer was hooked up to the rear.

  “Hey buddy, been here a while, eh?”

  “Just listening to the open road.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about it all night. What do you say, ready to get going?

  “Fuel tank’s full.”

  “Right on. Let’s get out of here while the getting’s good, and maybe the pot-holes will leave us alone today.”

  Wentworth nodded, did up the chinstrap of his helmet, and shifted the bike into gear, closing the kickstand in the process. With a roar he throttled up the cycle and Raxx followed, racing onwards, eating up the highway which stretched on endlessly in front of them.

  They were still alive and the future was full of possibility. There were so many places left to see.

  Interlude II

  Henry grunted as he hauled the urn in from outside. It was made of orange plastic and ribbed like a beehive. He’d picked it up from a passing merchant a few years back, and after filling it at the water pump it had grown heavy. He wrestled it through the door, onto the back shelf behind the bar, and wiped his brow. The damned boy was supposed to have done this after close, but he’d probably been drinking again.

  There was no time for him to dwell on it. The customers across the street at Mel’s Flophouse would be waking soon, hungry for their breakfast. One of them had woken already; he’d seen him while he was filling the urn. The old man had been wearing a long coat and a wide brimmed hat, just standing there smoking a pipe, waiting for the bar to open.

  He went back to work cleaning up the mess from the night before, wiping down the tables, making sure there was fresh sawdust on the floor, and lighting a few candles. The windows were high on the walls, they didn’t let much light in. The building had been a warehouse when it was built, and back then there had been electrical light to fill the interior. It had made a decent bar, though, the tin roof reflected enough light to keep it cool during the summer, and during the winter body heat was enough to keep it warm. On the exterior he’d painted ‘Henry’s’ in two-meter tall orange letters with a black background, that and the ‘Open’ sign were enough to tip off travelers as to what lay inside.

  Finally he was done, or at least close enough as to make no difference. He opened up the heavy wooden door and hung his ‘Open’ sign on the screen; soon enough there was a steady trickle of business coming in. For the next few hours he was kept busy serving drinks and frying eggs.

  His place and Mel’s were the only occupied buildings at an otherwise barren crossroad; enough traders, merchants, and wanderers came through to keep them in business. It was more dangerous than the place where he’d grown up, but he liked it better, paradoxically because it was both more and less isolated than his hometown. He was free of nosy neighbours, but there was always someone new to talk to. Some of the wanderers were a problem, but for the most part they knew well enough to leave the bartender alone.

  The breakfast rush finished and was replaced with sporadic travellers. He took the opportunity to tidy up the last few things the boy had left undone. A couple of working girls from the Flophouse came in and he nodded at them.

  When the boy finally arrived mid-afternoon he was both late and hungover. Henry cuffed him before setting him to work cleaning the sink full of dishes and refilling the urn. The stream of business had picked up and there was much to do. It was then that he took note of a customer who’d come in an hour before, who was now standing at the bar. He was slight, with wispy black hair, a thick beard, and a broken demeanour. It took him a second to respond when Henry asked what he wanted, and he hesitantly asked for a bottle of beer. Henry gave it to him and was almost tempted to over-charge the man. He might of got away with it, but that was that sort of thing that would get you knifed out here between the cities.

  He charged him a fair price.

  The man took the beer and moved to a table. He slumped in his seat, looking broken, slowly nursing the drink. Despite his odd behaviour he wasn’t a threat; not to himself, anyway, and he wouldn’t attract any predators looking the way he did. His dark clothes were tattered, and he didn’t look to have anything of value.

  The derelict slipped from Henry’s mind. He didn’t order anything after the first beer, and the traffic was getting heavier as the afternoon wore on. The boy was in the back puking into the piss trough.

  Henry tried to think of a punishment before deciding that puking into a piss trough that hadn’t been cleaned the night before was punishment enough.r />
  The bar grew quiet and Henry looked to the doorway to see what was blocking the light. A huge man stood silhouetted in the frame, scanning the room. He was wearing a loose robe to keep the sun off of himself, but it did nothing to conceal his massive shoulders. His eyes alighted on the old man Henry had noticed earlier, and a brief look of surprise passed between them.

  The din of conversation in the bar resumed once everyone had looked. The giant strode over and sat down with the old man, ignoring Henry completely, and the two of them, odd couple that they were, dropped out of his thoughts; it was busy and he had people to serve. Half-an-hour later he was filling up a pitcher with luke-warm beer when the bar quieted again. The giant was speaking with a rising tone, silencing those around him.

  “…you gave rise to a race of monsters! You created us in your own image — and that makes you think you’re a prophet? You’re more deluded than any of us — at least we knew what we were! But you… listen — you were never in control. Never. You’re just a broken little thing that thinks his dreams are the reality. I was using you. And I was going to kill you.” There was a silver flash. “Like this.”

  The old man stumbled back, knocking over his chair. His bottle fell and rolled off the table, hitting the floor with a clink and soaking the sawdust with stale beer. His hands were clutched at his throat as blood bubbled between his fingers and through his mouth, he hacked and coughed. In the giants hand was an open switchblade. He put it on the table then grabbed the old man by the front of his shirt.

  “You brought this misery! Your cravenness and lies! Look at me!” He gave the old man a backhand slap, spraying blood from his throat and exposing the wound, causing several other patrons to shriek. “It all comes back to the vileness you embody. You took my Catamite. So you die. Die here amongst the filth, the filth you hated so much! You’re home now. Go! Die amongst these heathens.” He spit in the man’s face, then released him, letting him fall to the floor. After a moment he turned away.

  He looked around the room, challenging everyone there. When no one got up he moved to the door. Henry dropped his gaze. Without another word, the giant strode out of the bar into the hot afternoon. The old man was still choking, but soon enough he’d be dead.

  Conversation picked up once more, most people ignoring the body of the old man and avoiding discussion of what had just occurred. With the help of the boy, who looked like he was about to suffer another fit of nausea, Henry dragged the surprisingly light body out the back door and into a shed. If nobody came to claim it in the next few days he’d burn it; you couldn’t let the wolves get a taste for human flesh.

  He felt no sympathy for the old. Whatever the situation had been between them, he’d probably had it coming; and even if he hadn’t, what was he supposed to do about it anyway?

  It wasn’t the first time he’d something like that had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. Henry had long ago perfected the art of keeping his head down, his mouth shut, and his bar running. He wasn’t about to throw it all away over the life of a derelict.

  Chapter 27

  Another hamlet. Wentworth had lost count of how many they’d visited, maybe half-a-dozen or so. Behind dark lenses his eyes roamed suspiciously despite his relaxed stance. Vince was hawking his wares to the locals. It wasn’t a market day but there were enough people milling about to justify the stop. He’d made steady custom for the past fifteen minutes, selling and bartering away the tech items stored on the trailer, and there were still customers waiting their turn.

  Raxx was playing face-man. The grubby local children seldom saw motorized vehicles, and to have two of them stop by was a special treat. The one-room Schoolhouse had let out for a special ‘field-trip.’ Raxx chatted amiably with the students and their teacher while at the same time keeping an eye open for vandals. Wentworth knew he’d get tunnel vision if he was forced to interact with the locals so he let Raxx deal with them on his own. There was no law out here, away from the major cities. None of them could afford to let their guard down.

  Navigating the highways of past generations was an acquired skill. The age of asphalt gridlines had followed an earlier time of foot-paths and river-fords. There’d been compromises made as the former was built over. Large urban centres had spent huge amounts fine-tuning their transit systems, but outside of them a road might start out south-bound before gradually curving west. Other times what looked to be a major route would dwindle, becoming little more than an overgrown foot path. Combined with the social drift following the war, as well as the general neglect of the roadways, the few street signs that remained were useless.

  Raxx had become almost prescient when it came to route planning, and Wentworth was no slouch either, but often enough he’d return from scouting ahead with a thumbs down and they’d be forced to backtrack.

  It wouldn’t have been such a problem if they’d been travelling by animal power. Vince was well acquainted with the trade routes. What made this journey difficult was the fact that many of the roads were so torn up that few of them were passable in Raxx’s truck or Wentworth’s motorcycle.

  The Datapad helped but it wasn’t a perfect solution. Its maps were out of date, and the hamlets they stopped at seldom correlated to prewar towns. On top of this the GPS kept cutting out. He had set it up to plot their line of travel but the trace was inconsistent and broken. In the early afternoon it had jumped over a kilometre east from where they were, plotting over a lake for half-an-hour. By evening it had failed completely. The receiver was unable to detect any satellites overhead and he had no dead-reckoning unit installed.

  Despite the setbacks the journey was good. The problems which arose were challenges, not frustrations. The hamlets were easy to spot as they drew near, by the green of their tilled soil. Farmers had to pump water from underground wells if they wanted to grow anything, and outside of city limits everything was baked dry by the sun. Only the stringiest of weeds and grasses survived. Trees could sent their roots deep enough to find water, but the underbrush surrounding them died off during the summer months. On either side of the road stretched rolling valleys with the colours washed out of them, pale yellow and olive drab.

  At first Maria had been nervous about riding in the truck. The noise from the engine, the pressure from acceleration, and the constant jarring from the road’s surface had put her on edge. She tried to remain calm but Vince and Raxx could make out her distress by the white-knuckled grip she kept on the armrests. Raxx kept his speed to a minimum and by mid-afternoon she had started to relax. Thankfully she didn’t suffer from motion sickness, as many new to driving did.

  Speeding ahead of Raxx’s truck, Wentworth pushed his bike to the limit, narrowly avoiding pot holes, and tearing around turns, leaning his body into the wind. The cycle’s engine would rise in pitch, an angry growling noise, as he shifted gears, then drop back down to idle as he slowed. The wind was on his face and flowing up into his helmet and the sleeves of his jacket, cooling off the sweat which built up under the hot sun. His face stung where bugs hit him and the ride took his full attention.

  It allowed him to forget the many weights upon his mind. He took in the scenery. This was freedom.

  It was growing close to sunset when they finally stopped for the night. They’d been driving down a dirt-road since leaving the last settlement, only to find that it ended in a collapsed bridge and a dried-up river. The embankments on either side were steep and the riverbed was too full of boulders and debris for either vehicle to ford. Rather than drive an hour back up the road and try to find an inn, they settled for sleeping outdoors. They’d find another path in the morning.

  Wentworth had wanted to set a watch during the night, but Vince chided him. He said that if Wentworth would stop looking for trouble less of it would find him. Grudgingly, the soldier admitted that there was little reason for caution; they were in the middle of nowhere and he doubted if anyone was looking for them.

  Their vehicles parked, they started to set up camp. There had once b
een a building next to the bridge. All that remained were a few stone walls with gaps for doors and windows. The roof had long since disappeared and grass grew where the floor had been. They decided to set up in its perimeter, using the walls as windbreaks. While Maria and Raxx unloaded, Vince and Wentworth collected wood for a fire and got it going.

  Soon there was a pot boiling and their sleeping bags were set up in a line next to the most complete of the walls. Vince took charge of dinner, despite Maria’s protests; he was the most experienced at field-cooking, and it frustrated her that she wouldn’t have been able to compete, no matter how good she was in a properly stocked kitchen.

  Wentworth had found a good sitting place where the stones lay scattered. He smoked his cigarette and chatted with Maria about the wildlife, his jacket off and next to him. He finished his cigarette and threw it into the fire when something wet hit him in the shoulder. He looked around, trying to figure out the source. Suddenly he felt a splash of water on his arm, and watched as more drops began to darken his jeans.

  “Oh, crap,” he said, just as the sky opened up and it began pouring. The clouds which had been gathering all evening began unleashing a full-on downpour.

  They scrambled around, grabbing the sleeping bags and stuffing them under the tarpaulin covering the truck bed. The rain shower quickly turned into a deluge, soaking them to the skin as the rain poured down in sheets, rippling across the muddy surface of the road in waves. The fire was extinguished and the meal ruined. They finished grabbing everything but the cooking utensils and jumped back into the truck; Raxx and Wentworth in the front, Maria and Vince sitting along the back bench. They closed the doors but kept the front windows open a crack, protected from the rain by a thin plastic overhang.

  “Well that came out of nowhere,” commented Raxx.

  “They usually do, this time of year,” said Vince, “Though really it’s not until September that we’re supposed to be getting this much.”