Читать книгу The Wasteland Saga: The Old Man and the Wasteland, Savage Boy and The Road is a River - Nick Cole - Страница 26

Picacho Peak’s three peaks rose up in rocky defiance over the Old Man. Like a great ship beached in the desert, its tallest point, a mast, soared overhead. The Old Man craned his neck back to see the summit but could not make out anything there.

Another abandoned gas station town sat astride the main highway in the shadow of the peak and the Old Man inspected the ruins. Fire had long ago collapsed the roof, but inside the main building he found walls covered in rust-red handprints. Older writing, done after the fire in paint, lay underneath the handprints.

“Laws of the People” adorned one wall. On another, “History of the People.”

The Old Man stepped across the rotten charwood of the room and read the one marked “Laws of the People.”

THERE ARE NO LAWS

THERE IS NO GOD

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WRONG

DON’T HATE ANYTHING

YOU ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

The Old Man stepped to the side wall and read “History of the People.”

“On the day after we come. All those who heard and seen Phoenix go up in smoke and ash and those who seen the Cloud over Tucson. For many days we sat and cried. We didn’t no where to go. Then Professor said ‘This is our paradise.’ He gave us the laws and now at the end of our old world our perfect world has begun. It was laws that destroyed the old. It were hate that killed everyone. Now nothing is wrong and we is happy. We the People.”

But where did you go?

You know where they went.

He thought of the corpses stretched on the boards back at the Y.

The Old Man dropped his bandolier and stroked the whiskers he needed to shave. He took out the canteen and drank sparingly.

Laws. Rules. I think that’s what lets people get along. It must have been shocking once someone wanted something that was yours. Or murdered someone you loved.

The Old Man stepped out of the building. He walked toward the peak wondering if he should do what he was thinking he ought to do next.

If you fall.

Stop.

You won’t make it out of here alive.

Stop. I can’t think like that. I need to get to the top of the peak and take a look. I might be able to see Tucson from there.

They said they saw a cloud. That’s the answer.

Sometimes you’ve got to see a thing for yourself to know it.

He walked up a slope of scree and reached the jagged face of the peak. While it had looked sheer from far away, now he saw the cracks where he might make his way. Beyond that, leading to the highest peak, there seemed to be a trail he might take most of the way up.

He turned back to the valley, seeing the unbroken road heading south toward Tucson. The world was divided into blue sky and dusty orange dirt. Then he saw the flagpole and two flags hanging in the still desert air farther down the highway, near the base of the tallest peak. He hadn’t seen it from the ruins of the gas station town.

He slid down off the scree and walked in the afternoon shadow cast by the peak until he came to the flagpole.

“On June 3rd, 2061, a great battle was fought here at Picacho Peak. The 6th Troop, 1st Cav, ‘The Black Horse’ out of Fort Tucson, engaged and defeated the numerically superior main body of the Horde. This action was taken to stop the Human Sacrifice being conducted atop Picacho Peak, in which the leaders of the Horde would toss human children from atop the highest peak. During the battle and in the days that followed, over 10,000 enemies were estimated to have been killed in action against the Black Horse. They are buried at the base of the Peak and it is hoped that the Horde has scattered and will not return to this place for fear of the Black Horse.”

—Sergeant Major John Preston,

6th Troop, 1st Cav, “Black Horse”

The plaque at the base of the flagpole was a large piece of beaten sheet metal. The engraved words had been done in the same blowtorch-writing as those he had seen in the sewers of the burned-up village and on the highway at the Y. Above him, on the flagpole, a slight afternoon breeze out of the southeast snapped the tattered American flag to life. Drifting in the breeze below it, a yellow flag with a black stripe and the black silhouette of a horse’s head waved gently.