The Road is a River. Nick Cole
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the button.
“Hello,” he began. He looked at his granddaughter. She nodded.
“We are here,” said the Old Man.
“Let go of the button now, Grandpa,” she whispered.
They waited.
And then they heard the voice.
“Who am I speaking with?” The voice was a woman. Older. But clear and crisp. A voice used to giving commands and having them obeyed.
“Us,” said the Old Man who had needed to be reminded that he must touch the button to reply.
“All right,” said the voice cautiously. “Are you operating the radio station that just went active a few weeks ago in Tucson?”
“Yes,” replied the Old Man. “Who are you?”
“My name is Brigadier General Natalie Watt. I’m the commander of forces at Cheyenne Mountain Complex and we need your help. We’re trapped inside our bunker and we need to get out very soon.”
The Old Man and his granddaughter looked at each other in the thick silence of the radio room.
“Are you still there?” asked the General.
“Yes.”
“Can you help us?” she asked.
Pause.
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
Pause.
“Yes,” said the Old Man.
The Old Man watched from the high window as his granddaughter slipped back through the quiet streets of Tucson to her family’s home. It was well after midnight.
If I go on this journey, I must go alone. It is too dangerous for her to come with me.
He thought of the route. All the way into California, then back to Nevada, through New Mexico, and up to Colorado Springs.
It is over a thousand miles. The tank can only hold two hundred and sixty-four miles’ worth of fuel according to General Natalie Watt. She said I could scavenge. Tanks can draw fuel from many sources. Even kerosene. There are no guarantees of fuel and then there is the radiation. Well, that would be why you need to go to California for the extra gear. And after I cross all that desert, I am to aim a laser at the back of a mountain surrounded by unknown enemies. A Laser Target Designator. And who are these enemies? The General doesn’t know. She only knows they are trying to tunnel into the bunker and that when they do, they will flood the complex with radiation and kill everyone inside. They only opened the main door once so that the dead man, Captain Roberts, could drive his dune buggy out of the complex.
There is too much for just an old man like me to think about. This is too much for just me.
A one-way trip, my friend. He’d volunteered.
General Watt said the radiation is so bad at the front entrance that Captain Roberts probably absorbed a lethal dose in just the few minutes it took him to drive away. So I cannot take my granddaughter with me to such a place.
The Old Man watched the night.
In my nightmare she is crying for me. I am dying. Just like I almost did after the last time I went into the wasteland alone. She is crying and there is nothing I can do to make it better. The last thing I will ever hear is her grief for me.
It’s just a nightmare, my friend, heard the Old Man as though his friend from the book were with him and they were discussing some problem of fishing or salvage together.
But it is my nightmare.
Everyone dies. What would you have her do? Laugh about it? Of course she will weep.
I was hoping it would be later. When she has her own family and everyone is tired of me. When I have become such a burden to them all that they will be glad to see me go. Then, that would be a good time to die.
She will still cry for you.
Of course.
The Old Man felt the night. Felt its emptiness was only a lie and that all the world and the places and dangers hidden in it were waiting to devour him.
I need to leave soon. In the dream she says, No, Grandpa. I need you. It’s terrible. I never want to disappoint her. I never want to hear her say those words. I never want her to have to say them. Is it too much to ask to just fade away and have no one miss me until I’ve been gone for a long time?
And yet you must leave, my friend. Soon.
Yes. If I leave when no one is watching, just as I did last time, then I will not hear her grief.
Still, you will know. You will know she’ll say that which you do not want to hear. And even if you don’t hear her, in your heart the nightmare will lie to you and tell you that you did all the same.
Yes, that is the thing about nightmares. They embrace us when we are vulnerable, telling lies that seem very real. Like an older child who teases a younger child by making the child believe things that aren’t true.
In our nightmares we are all children.
The Old Man looked down. In his nervousness he had picked up his copy of the book. The one he had read for those forty years in the desert. The one with his friend inside.
The Old Man settled into his sleeping bag. He held the book in his hands and watched the ceiling.
So we will go together, my friend?
Yes.
The Old Man listened to the soft howl of the wind outside the large windows.
Soon I will be asleep and tomorrow all this might have just been a nightmare. Things will be different by the light of day, right, Santiago?
They are trapped in the bunker, my friend. They need someone to come and help them.
Yes.
She said she was going with you.
Yes.
And you must leave soon.
Yes, that too.
The Old Man gathers the supplies he will need. There are only a few people inside the Federal Building now. Most have staked out homes and are busy salvaging throughout Tucson. Hours pass before any one person might encounter another in a city so large and the villagers so few.
There are only eleven rounds left for the main gun.
But there are the smoke grenades still in their canisters alongside the turret. You could use those when you need to run away from trouble, my friend.
Yes, Santiago, what I don’t think of you will, my friend from the book.
Yes.
He takes a large map that covers all the places he must go and folds it down until it fits in his pocket. He takes a hunting rifle and two boxes of ammunition. Canned and packaged food. Plastic drums full of water. He places his crowbar inside the tank.
When his granddaughter finds him in the late morning, he is exhausted and sweating from his efforts. She takes hold of the box of food he has been carrying and together they take it down into the depths of the garage and to the tank waiting in the darkness.
“When are we going to leave, Grandpa?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
They went ten more steps toward the