Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

The sun hung in a bluish-red sky, burning away the dawn mist.

Stone resented its clarity and anger swelled inside him. He preferred the dark, so adept at hiding the twisted contours of the world. Daylight brought starkness and reminders of those who had suffered.

Leaden clouds blanketed the skyline, attempting to push the sun away, and rain soon fell, coming down in shimmering waves, loud on the leaking metal roof of the shack.

It was the first morning in six months he had not thought of Nuria. His thoughts were elsewhere.

His strong arms were wrapped around Cali. She was trembling and had been for nearly an hour. He lightly stroked her blood-caked hair. He’d missed the first trap and it had cost Travis his life. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake. He’d seen it in her eyes as he’d moved to cut her free.

The explosive had been wired to her back. Sudden movement would’ve caused it to detonate. He’d carefully disconnected it from her, his brow thick with sweat, his heart thumping, and they’d only just made it outside before it had blown. He had no idea what caused it to explode.

He patched her up the best he could, with barely any supplies, and told her they would need to return to the compound, but she shook her head, and held onto him tightly. She didn’t want to go anywhere. She was a pale shadow of the loud-mouthed girl he’d first encountered at the refuge, flinging herself around, daring and pulsing with life and energy. They had come to him cloaked in lies, and those lies had cost Jeremiah his life, and it had nearly cost her everything.

There had to be truth.

“His name was Jimmie,” said Stone, his voice almost a whisper. “He was a gambler with big debts. He sold his nine-year old daughter to pay for them but the guilt ate him up. So he did what men do - he drank even more, gambled even heavier, got into even more shit with the kind of people you don’t owe to. Gangs like Head Smash and Red Dog. But Jimmie had heard there was a man in the city, taking on the scum, and he figured he could put it all right. He came to me and offered up a deal.”

Stone paused.

“Jimmie was dying. He kept having these bad headaches and was coughing up blood. He wanted redemption, wanted to die knowing his daughter was safe. He hired me to get her out of the city. His payment would be his life. The plan was to trick the League of Restoration, like you guessed, Cali. He was a tall guy, a little shorter than me and not as much lean muscle on him, he was ravaged from the drink, but he was passable, and he had a scar on his face from a bottle in a bar brawl. It was the wrong side of the face but it would have to do. I was out of ideas. The bridges were gone. I couldn’t find the Pathfinder. I couldn’t even get a working vehicle. I knew it would be crazy to flee into the Black Region with the League chasing after me. They’d hunt me down easily out there. This was the only way. They had to believe I was dead.”

Stone listened to the rain, heavier now.

“Only I knew the League weren’t stupid. They’d recognise him. So I told Jimmie I’d torch his body. I found his daughter easily enough, she was a year or so older now and I got her to the outskirts of the city. I gave her some coins, a gun, but I reckon she didn’t split. She probably sold the gun and used all the money for drugs. Jimmie had condemned her. But it was done. I met with him. He was living in the ruins near the production factory. It had been an old gambling den, one of his favourite haunts, but half the building had collapsed sometime before so the place went out of business. Jimmie stayed. He lived amongst the rubble, couldn’t afford to rent a room.”

Cali eased into an upright position. His grim eyes held tears. She gingerly put her fingers to his face. Her palms were bound with cloth, covering the multiple burns. He drew her close. He was too ashamed to look at her.

“Jimmie was there. I thought he would betray me to the League but he hadn’t. For such a scumbag he came through in the end. He kept his word and I put a bullet in his head. I didn’t feel anything when I shot him. He’d given his daughter a chance – even though I doubt she took it – but it was there for her. He knew redemption as he died. That was what he wanted. I started a fire. I needed him to burn. It was only a small fire. I’d left word in a few places that I was sheltering in the old gambling den. I knew it would filter back to the League within a few hours. But the fire spread, got out of control, and I had to go back in there and drag Jimmie’s body to the front, like he … like I was trying to escape.”

The rain continued to fall.

“What I didn’t know … what neither of us knew … was a family had taken shelter there. Jimmie didn’t always go … home. He hadn’t been back for nearly a week. It was night. They would’ve heard the gunshot, stayed silent. The fire was wild. Bits of the building collapsed. It must have trapped them. I didn’t know. I stood in the dark waiting for the League, not realising those people were in there, suffocating from the fumes. The League got there a little while later. They dragged Jimmie onto the street, put a chain around his ankles and tied him to the back of a pickup. They were going to parade him … me … around the city.”

Stone lowered his head.

“But then one of the soldiers came out of the building, throwing up his guts. And the celebrations stopped. They took the chain off Jimmie’s ankles, dumped his body in the back of the pickup and drove away. I waited until they left and then went back inside.”

“You didn’t know,” she whispered.

“There were four bodies. Nothing can balance that out, Cali. I’m not a good man. I told Jeremiah. I’m telling you.”

Cali pulled away from him.

“I don’t need a good man. I need you, Stone. Jimmie found redemption with you. Maybe you can find it with me.”

She stepped away from him. The floor space of the shack was packed dirt, cold and damp.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Innocents get hurt when you make a stand, sacrifices are made. They have to be. Jeremiah was a sacrifice for what he believed in. I was almost one for believing in the same thing. That bitch ordered Timo to rape me and he would’ve done if you hadn’t set off one of their traps. They would’ve killed me because that’s what they believe in. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“So what did Jeremiah believe in? What is it that you still believe in?”

“All this,” said Cali, snorting, and waving her arms around. “Yeah, look at it. It sucks, right? But this is what the fight is for, man.”

Stone frowned.

“It wasn’t a random snatch,” she said. “But you knew that already, right? They were a professional team. I mean, booby-traps, grenades, an automatic weapon. You had a feeling in your gut we were being followed and you were right. Jeremiah knew they were out there. I should have told you. That’s why he hooked up with you. There was a list of fifteen men and women, the soldiers he’d sent. Those fuckers who took me executed them all. They had a copy of the list. Someone betrayed Jeremiah but it was too late to recall them. There’s a rogue sixteenth dude out there. I don’t know shit about him and nor does the woman, Pavla.”

Stone was silent.

”Jeremiah found out where it was. He needed a thief to get it. That’s why I was travelling with him.”

“What was he looking for?”

She held out a piece of paper with her bandaged hand.

“I’ve seen this before. When I searched your pack. Stars in the night sky. I don’t get it.”

“No good asking me, man.”

“But you drew it.”

She shook her head. “I draw in my notebook. I didn’t draw this. Jeremiah did. He gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“He said it was the future.”

Stone handed it back.

“I guess this thing he wants you to steal is at Silver Road, right?”

She stuffed the piece of paper into her pocket. “It’s sitting in a bank vault.”

“Why did you complicate things by stealing from Triple Death?”

She laid out the story for a second time, piece by piece, the robbery, planting the coins in the bank, getting the layout.

“We didn’t give a shit about the money. The coins were our way in, that’s all. The only danger Jeremiah saw was Triple Death. He didn’t count on them figuring out so quickly who’d ripped them off. He was hoping we’d get further from Kiven. Then the blizzards came and messed things up. But lucky that they did, otherwise we wouldn’t have found you.”

“Did you tell the woman all this?”

Cali nodded. “I told that cunt everything.”

“Why does she want it? Whatever it is.”

“Jeremiah said that anyone else but his people would destroy it.”

“Why haven’t the people of Silver Road destroyed it?”

“I dunno.”

He grunted with frustration.

“Pavla has two languages, Stone. She spoke fluent to me, but kind of not, if you know what I mean? She could, like, say the words, but it wasn’t natural for her. They came out all choppy and shit. When she spoke to the man, Timo, she used her own words.”

Stone narrowed his eyes. “What was Jeremiah planning to do with it?”

“Carry it home back to his people with me at his side.”

“Home?”

“New Washington. That’s where he said he was from.”

The name meant nothing to Stone.

“The third war ended the age of the Before. Jeremiah reckoned our world couldn’t survive a fourth one. Said this thing would save thousands of lives.”

Stone allowed time for the words to settle. He thought back to his conversation with Jeremiah at the refuge. The old man had mentioned something about a fourth war.

“I thought he was talking about the civil war between Ennpithia and Kiven, getting his numbers scrambled.”

“Nah,” said Cali, shaking her head. “This is bigger than that. He said it was coming and this thing would help pull the townships together.”

She paused.

“Here it is, Stone, your shot at redemption, your chance to bury the memories of Kiven. We go to Silver Road and follow Jeremiah’s plan.”

“So who was he really?”

“He told me he was military. Major Jeremiah Cartwright. 2nd Rangers, URA.”

“URA?”

“United Republican Army.”

“He had his own army?” Stone shook his head. “So we’re looking for a weapon, right?

“I reckon so. He wouldn’t tell me what, though. Look, you took down the missiles. Help me solve this shit, whatever it might be.”

He studied her. “Why do care so much?”

She suddenly let out an anguished cry. “You think I got anything else?”

Stone grabbed her and she cried it out. Questions bounced around his head but they would have to wait.

A Major? The URA? 2nd Rangers? A secret weapon? He didn’t like the sound of any of it.

But she had talked of saving thousands of lives and he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, turn his back on that.

“We can follow through with the plan. Put the coins in the bank, then rob the place and see if we can find this thing.”

“Are we going to New Washington?”

“One thing at a time.”

“What about Pavla?”

“We’ll take that bitch down. You can count on it.”

“But she’s no longer behind us and she knows about the bank.”

“Yeah, and she thinks we’re dead.”

Cali stopped crying, sniffed, and peeled away from him, embarrassed. He got to his feet, flexed his left arm, sore from the bullet wound.

Gingerly, he approached the door of the shack.

“Yuan is out there,” he said. “Let’s put her out of her misery and tell her we’re still alive.”

The dark-haired girl was fifty yards away, skulking in a half-ruined building. The area was covered with rubble and Travis was somewhere beneath it. The sky was grey and gloomy and matched the despondent expression on her face. She glanced at the packs of equipment beside her, belonging to Stone and Cali. She touched Stone’s coat. She had not given up on them. They might have made it out of the building before the shocking explosion. But if they had then where were they? Her mood descended. The rain continued to fall.

She thought of Suyin and Joe, recovering in the medical hut, deeply traumatised and surrounded by relatives. She was delighted her cousin was safe but she could not be there for her.

There was a poisonous atmosphere inside the community and she could not stand another minute around her father.

She folded her arms, sighed.

She wore an ankle-length, homespun dress with a belt around her narrow waist and a heavy coat with wooden toggle buttons. She paced, boots echoing across the cement floor, waiting, hoping and praying.

Her heart stopped as Stone and Cali emerged from a nearby metal shack.

“I saw the explosions and then the building went down. I was so …”

She saw Cali, battered and slashed, and her words stuttered. Then she bombarded them with questions none of which they wanted to answer. She also told them she’d made a decision. She was leaving her community and coming with them. Stone told her she was staying put.

“Then I’ll walk behind you, I’ll follow you both.”

Stone abruptly raised his hand. “What did you bring?”

She was stung by his manner. “I have food, water and medical supplies. I know what you’ll need.”

Stone spun her around. There was a pack on her slim back. He rooted out a needle and thread.

“We need wheels,” he said, turning her face forward. “Do you know anywhere in this city we can find a working car?”

Yuan thought for a moment.

“Panola Avenue. It’s a taboo place. There is a community there. Deshi and some of the other men go there to trade. We grow our own food and produce water from …”

“Do they have vehicles?” barked Stone.

Cali placed a bandaged hand on his arm. “She’s only trying to help. Just rein it in a bit, OK?”

“It’s not OK,” said Stone, looking at her slashed cheek. “None of this is OK.”

He sat Cali down, dug out the whiskey, and offered it to

“Drink,” he said.

“It’s too early for me, man.”

“Drink.”

She took the bottle, gulped it down. The three of them retreated deep into the building. Cali gritted her teeth as he sowed her wound, carefully knitting the skin together. He told Yuan to talk. She explained it was a single street, hundreds of people occupying buildings and shacks and hundreds more passing through.

“My father doesn’t approve of our people going there but he is happy when Deshi brings back tobacco and papers for his smelly cigarettes. There is a lot of trade there. Weapons, drugs … people.”

Her ex-man, Deshi, had once told her of a garage where they stripped down old cars and mended them, making them work again.

“He said he wanted to own one. He couldn’t even drive. I think he was trying to impress me.”

“That dude ain’t worth shit,” said Cali, wincing. “You should have got in with Travis. He worshipped you.”

Stone lowered the needle and covered her cheek with a large adhesive.

“Why do we need a car?” asked Yuan.

“We’re going to Silver Road and we don’t have time to waste walking.”

“You’re not leaving me behind. I’m coming with you.”

His eyes sharpened.

“Do you still have that knife?”

She opened her coat. It jutted from a deep pocket.

“Good, you’ll need it, because we’re going to kill anyone who gets in our fucking way.”