Читать книгу The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River - Nick Cole - Страница 13

After the bombs there had been dreams. Dreams everything lost had come back. The dead might walk through the barroom door two years after the global car wreck. The survivors, drinking to forget, would put down their cups. All would be as it once was. The dreams after the bombs were like that.

The neon sign came stuttering to life in the twilight of the desert. The Old Man stopped in the smooth blown sand.

There is power here.

The sign showed a sleepy little boy, in nightgown and night cap drifting toward a bed. In rockets bursting script the words “Dreamtime Motel” loomed large, then recessed toward a universe of smiling faced stars. Vacancy, air-conditioning, and color TV were all available.

The cluster of buildings were merely an L-shaped motel complete with swimming pool and the blackened remains of a nearby gas station, its metal twisted in telltale strands away from where the pumps had once been.

The lights of the hotel came softly to life here and there where bulbs still burned.

The east is cursed.

He moved forward cautiously, remembering the pistol within his satchel.

The parking lot was gritty with the windblown sand of the years. Still, the cracks in it were nowhere near the rents and buckles of the main highway back near the village.

From the office, a man emerged wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.

“Room for the night, mister?” His voice the desiccated husk of a reptile. Used. Spent.

The Old Man remained staring.

If I am dreaming then this does not exist. Maybe the oasis of palo verdes did not exist. Maybe I am dying in the dunes still clutching the dead bee.

“Got room if yer lookin’.” Then the man with the mirrored sunglasses began to wheeze and laugh. After a second he said, “Have ever since before the bombs.”

The Old Man still standing in the twilight, his face illuminated by the flickering glare of the last wisps of neon, remembered the gun. His fingers, bony and old, adjusted the strap of his satchel.

“I got snake.” Mirrored Sunglasses moved forward. His body was long, though he wasn’t tall; the only roundness a potbelly that seemed more pregnant than fat. “You want snake for dinner?”

“What is this place?” croaked the Old Man.

Mirrored Sunglasses whirled, taking in the motel against the dying light in the west.

“This my hotel. Even before the bombs, I swear.” He seemed all out of breath and ragged at once.

“You got power.”

“Just a little ever’ night. Went solar before the bombs, but the panels ain’t doin so good these last few years. Got a well for water. Power ever’ night. No air-condition though. And snake. Lotsa snakes east of here.”

East is cursed.

“Where ya headed?”

“Into the town I thought used to be near here.”

“The town? Why ya wanna go there fer? Burnt down during the bombs.”

The Old Man was silent.

Still.

“Nothing left that way. All of it’s gone. Seen two clouds that week. First Phoenix then Tucson. Nothing there but death. Won’t be for another hundred years. Say where you come from?”

“West.”

“Really?”

“Three days to the other side of the dunes. On the Old Highway a couple days this side of the Great Wreck.”

“Never heard of no ‘Great Wreck.’”

They remained standing in the parking lot, the Old Man considering what was his and his alone.

“I’ll get the snake reheated. Et myself earlier, but I can get you some going.”

“That would be nice of you. Thank you.”

Mirrored Sunglasses turned and headed back into the darkened office mumbling, “Maybe afterwards you’d like to see the pool.”

The Old Man lowered his satchel to the ground.

How had this place remained? There was no sign of a town, other than the remains of the gas station. The road leading away from the motel seemed in better condition than the Old Highway near the village. It must have been new at the time of the bombs.

The Old Man looked again at the neon coursing through the tubes. The design of architecture had once meant something to him. He remembered living in a time when architecture was at war with itself. The old being swept away for the new. You could tell, he remembered, when you walked into someone’s house, a restaurant, even a gas station, what the architect’s idea of the future was. Glass blocks seemed so outdated to him at the time. That was all he could remember.

The snake was good. The two men stood in the parking lot as the Old Man ate it out of a bowl using a bent spoon. All this had survived the apocalypse under neon tubes humming and buzzing, manufactured before the world was the way it would be.

“Built it the year before the war. I did. I built it.” Mirrored Sunglasses never looked straight on at the Old Man. Always to the side or over his shoulder.

The moon would be full tonight. The last curled bits of snake were scooped up in a red sauce that might have been either peppers or ketchup, as the Old Man remembered ketchup to taste. Finally, the bent spoon clanged loudly against the silence that stood between them.

“Finished?” Mirrored Sunglasses held out a gnarled hand to take the bowl and spoon. The Old Man moved the bowl toward the hand noticing it didn’t move farther than initially extended. Another hand would always reach to meet what was offered. This one didn’t. When the bowl touched the fingertips of Mirrored Sunglasses, the tips curled instantly and the bowl was jerked away.

“Good huh? Made it myself.”

It was, nodded the Old Man.

Mirrored Sunglasses didn’t say anything and for a brief moment confusion crossed the craggy face beneath the sunglasses.

Mirrored Sunglasses is blind.

“Sure is. The best. Always got lots of snake. Always snake. Not much else but there is always snake.”

Blind, thought the Old Man. Blind for how long? Alone. No village. How had he survived? Who knew.

“Like a dip in the pool now? Then we can get you fixed up for the night. A real hotel room. Betcha never thought you’d have that again. I’ve kept ready since the bombs. Sometimes folk stay awhile. Like to stay for awhile?”

The Old Man considered the moon and the desert. It would be a good night for putting some distance toward the old town. But the chance of finding salvage after the moon went down was poor. He needed good light.

But wasn’t this place salvage? Was a motel beyond the wasteland with power salvage?

“That would be kind of you to put me up for the night.”

“A dip in the pool first? A good swim and you’ll sleep like a dead sailor.”

“Maybe in the morning. I think I need to lie down. It’s been a long few days.”

Mirrored Sunglasses turned to the office, muttering that the Old Man should follow along. Moments later he handed the Old Man a card.

“Room five. Card unlocks it like one of them fancy hotels before the war, ’member ’em?”

The Old Man looked at it. Had he ever stayed in a hotel with a card as a key? He had a vague memory of once having done so. A laughing girl at his shoulder as he ran the card through a slot and red became green and there was some meaning to him at that moment. Young. It must have meant something to a young man. The meaning of it now was lost among the blown sand and dying heat of a world where cards did not open locks. That was the work of crowbars.

“I’ll knock on your door before dawn. Then you can have a swim while the water’s still cold.”

The Old Man said that would be fine and left the office. Five was on the bottom floor, halfway down the long end of the capital L that was the shape of the place.

Inside the room it was quiet. It was not his shed where light came through at all angles and where the wind brought the unwanted gift of sand. Or where the business of the village could always be listened to. Comforted by. This room was too quiet. A quiet he had not experienced for many years.

He flicked a switch on the wall and one lamp cast a thin cone of light against the gloom. He lay on the bedspread. It was thick and stiff. It smelled of heavy dust.

Already his eyes were closing. For a moment he awoke and realized he had been sleeping. He needed to turn off the light. But he was too tired. More tired than he had ever been.

I feel as if I am made of grease. I must turn off the light. I would be a bad guest if I didn’t turn off the light and used up all the power. He flailed and heard the lamp fall.

He was asleep.