Savage Boy. Nick Cole

over the interior lands between the ravaged cities would not be found along the devastated ruin of the eastern coast.

      One morning, in the center of a town that had burned to the ground long before the Boy had been born, standing in the overgrown weed-­choked outline of an intersection, Sergeant Presley said, “If there is anyone here, I’ll find them in the Capitol—­or in the president’s bunker below the White House.” They were both looking at an old fire hydrant that had been knocked out into the road. The road was covered in hardened dirt that had once been muddy sludge.

      “Who am I kidding?” Sergeant Presley had suddenly erupted into the silence of the place. “There ain’t anybody left. There wasn’t since it all went sideways and there hasn’t been since. I know that. I’ve known it all along!”

      His shouted words fell into the thick forest turning to swamp. An unseen bird called out weirdly, as if in response.

      “But orders are orders,” he’d said softly, his sudden rage gone. “And someone had to come and find out. Once I know, we’ll head back to the Army in Oakland. We got to cross the whole country. You up for that, Boy?”

      Sergeant Presley had smiled at him then.

      The Boy remembered, nodding to himself.

      “Still, it’d be nice if someone was there. That’d be something,” Sergeant Presley had said.

      But there hadn’t been.

      Now, beside the fire in the mountains as the first big snow of winter came on, almost to the other side of the country, the Boy knew there hadn’t been anyone in the old Capitol or at the president’s bunker beneath the White House.

      Sergeant Presley was gone all that next day.

      In the morning the Sergeant had put on some special gear they’d found in a place called Fort. They’d spent two weeks looking through the place, scouring warehouses that had long since been looted, searching through ash and rubble. Finally, in a desk drawer they’d found the gear Sergeant Presley had been looking for.

      “Some clerk probably got told to bring in his MOPP gear in case things went that way in those days. So he brings it in and his section sergeant checks it and then sends him off to do paperwork. And now I’m gonna wear it and hope the charcoal and other protectants are gonna hold out long enough to get me to the White House without getting radiation poisoning.”

      When he’d left, wearing the dull green cloth and rubber shoes, fitting the gas mask and hood over his head, Sergeant Presley had looked like a monster.

      He was gone all that day.

      Sitting by the fire, the Boy couldn’t remember what he’d done after that. Probably exploring with Horse.

      In the swarming-­insect early evening, outside the Capitol in the swamp camp, it was misty. The gloomy ruins of the Capitol faded in the soft light of dusk. It looked like a dream. The Boy remembered that in the last moments of light, the Capitol, whatever it had once been, looked like a dream castle—­like something that might have once had meaning for him. Like things that seem so important in a dream, but when you awake, those things seem of little value and you can’t imagine why they’d held such a place in the dream.

      That was what the Capitol had looked like to the Boy in those last moments of daylight.

      In the early evening of that long lost waiting-­day, Sergeant Presley had finally come up the hill to their camp above the swamp. Threading his way through the tall grass, Sergeant Presley took off the bug-­eyed gas mask. He dropped or threw the mask off into the sea of silent yellow grass. He tore off the suit, coughing. Crystal droplets of sweat stood out in his short curly hair.

      The Boy gave him water from their bag, then some of the cakes they always made back then.

      “Still hot in there.” Sergeant Presley coughed.

      The Boy said nothing.

      “Hot” meant forbidden. If sometimes they saw a city on the horizon, like the one by the big lake, its tall towers skeletal and bent, Sergeant Presley would simply say “still hot.” And sometimes he would add, ”When you’re an old man, if you live long enough, you can go in there. But I never will.”

      Sergeant Presley drank more water and coughed.

      “I woulda brought you somethin’, but it’s too hot in there. I swear I came right up on a bomb crater. Must’ve been low yield. But hell if it didn’t go up twenty degrees. I look around and everything is black ash. Even the marble on one of them old government buildings, the House I think it was called, had turned black.”

      He coughed again.

      He will never stop coughing, thought the Boy. That was when the coughing had started. That day everything changed, though at the time neither of them knew it.

      Sergeant Presley knew it, he suspected. But he didn’t say anything.

      Sergeant Presley coughed again.

      “Made it all the way to the White House.”

      He coughed and then drank, swallowing thickly.

      “There was never anything there. It wasn’t a direct hit. See, back then our enemies were fighting unconventionally. Dirty-­bomb strikes by remote-­controlled aircraft launched within our borders. Terrorists. They went after Washington early on. We knew that. It wasn’t until later, when China got involved, that we didn’t know for sure what had really happened anywhere. After that it was just plain dark everywhere.”

      He chewed numbly on the cake, staring at their wispy fire. The Boy watched him, saying nothing.

      “The bunker was a deep hole. Must’ve used the Chinese equivalent of a J-­Dam on it. I saw one of those take out the TransAmerica Building in Frisco. I’ll show you when we get there. Anyways, they must have used a ‘bunker buster’ on it. Then, whether before or after, there must have been a nuclear strike, probably an airburst. Whole place was cooked.”

      He coughed, choking on the cake.

      NOW THE BOY looked up at the night sky. It had stopped snowing. The stars were out, shimmering in the late night or early morning. His face was hot. He stood up and walked to the cliff wall.

      He leaned against it, feeling the cold stone on his back.

      You should sleep, Boy. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.

      I wish, thought the Boy, that all of the days that had been were long days. I wish you were here.

      He did not hear the voice of Sergeant Presley and wondered if he had ever heard it. Or if he would ever hear it again.

      As he walked back to the fire, a pebble fell off the side of the cliff and the Boy turned, staring up into the heights. His shadow loomed large against the wall. He saw his powerful, strong right arm and when he moved the withered left arm, it looked little more than a thin branch.

      He stared at the wall and its many shadows. For a moment he could almost see a man.

      The man was sitting. Hunched over. Staring sightlessly out into the world. His hand was holding something up to his mouth.

      A cake.

      It was as though he was looking at Sergeant Presley on that hot, sweaty, and very long day outside the ruins of the Capitol.

      Sergeant Presley, sitting, tired, sweating. Eating a cake. Alive.

      He turned back to the fire after staring at the image for too long. But he wished it were true. He wished Sergeant Presley were here with him now, across the country. Almost to the Army. Alive.

      He picked up a piece of burnt wood from Escondido’s lodge.

      He turned back to the cliff wall.

      And he began to draw that long lost day. Sergeant Presley at the end of his mission. At the end of his country. At the beginning of the end of his life.

      Chapter