Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

Weaver drove.

Batesville faded in the rear-view mirror. He’d lived in the city for five years and wasn’t sure if he would miss it or not. He doubted he would be returning to it anytime soon. It would require all his diplomacy to ensure he went anywhere after this journey. He hadn’t planned on ending his life at the wheel of a crummy two-door with a grim assassin. It wasn’t how he’d planned on ending his day. He should be in bed right now, hammering Pavla. OK, she had cruel eyes, and a mean-looking mouth, and a hard face, and had thrown a grenade at them, but that body, oh boy, that tight, firm body. He bet it was all muscle. He’d tasted all colours and all flavours the world had to offer but it was never enough. That was the way to go. In bed with a woman, or two.

The deserted highway stretched before him, brightened by sunlight.

Stone was engrossed in an old-looking map.

“That’s a rare thing,” said Weaver. “I’ve never seen a map of the Before. Is it genuine?”

“Yeah, it’s genuine,” answered Cali, from the back. “It ain’t no kid’s map, asshole. That thing came all the way from New Washington.”

“From where?”

The car went silent.

“Where are we going?” asked Weaver.

No one answered him.

“Are we going to this New Washington?”

Nothing.

“Look, I’m a hostage, I’ll accept that. I’m not going to cause any trouble but I deserve to know where we’re going.”

He adjusted the mirror, ran a hand through his hair, and studied his teeth.

“At the very least.”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” said Stone.

“You have a serious attitude problem, Mr Cartwright. You need to develop more of a warm personality.”

Stone raised his head. “I think we can ditch that name.”

“No, Mr Cartwright is fine with me,” said Weaver, brightly. He stared across the wheel. “If anyone asks I sold a car to a Mr Cartwright and his companions. Mr Cartwright. That’s the only name I know you by. Mr Cartwright.”

Stone looked out of the window. The terrain was flat with dilapidated ranch houses sitting at the end of long rutted tracks. There was a rusted tractor alone in a dead field with a broken well and a solitary swing, the plastic bucket seat hanging askew from a length of frayed cord.

His mouth tightened. He lowered the window a fraction, allowing cold air to brush his rugged skin.

The car moved in the same direction, barely a curve in the road. He didn’t need to keep his gun on Weaver. The man was no fighter. Besides, he had only one bullet left and he wasn’t wasting it on him. Weaver had complained but that was as far as he was prepared to take it. Stone knew his ruse of Mr Cartwright had not convinced Weaver for a single minute. The automobile dealer was a regular to Kiven. He was a man of money with connections. It was conceivable that he had never seen Stone’s wanted poster but why take any chances?

He focused on the map and traced his fingers across it. Weaver fiddled and fidgeted. The man had the attention span of a child.

Grinning, Weaver drummed his fingers on the wheel as the car motored along the four-lane highway, swerving once to avoid a crashed wreck. One door hung open and there was a smear of dried blood. Stone noticed arrows protruding from the deflated tyres. Now Weaver was tampering with the dashboard, pushing buttons, turning dials. He opened his window, then raised it, and then opened it again. He began to hum for a short time until that progressed into an annoying whistle, and Stone shifted in his seat, letting out a frustrated grunt.

Weaver went back to humming, though in a deeper tone than before, with more variations, and finally he began to sing, looking around the car as the words crossed his lips, seeking praise or confirmation he was bugging the hell out of everyone.

Even Stone couldn’t deny the man had a decent voice. But he didn’t care for words that were sung. He wasn’t that keen on spoken ones, either.

Why did some men always need to fill a silent space? He went to open his mouth but Cali beat him to it.

“Man, will you shut the fuck up and stop bouncing around like a little kid.”

The singing tailed off. Weaver looked over his shoulder. Her bandaged hands held her notebook.

“What are you doing?”

“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing? Stop disturbing me.”

She was quiet for a moment. Her pencil scratched the page.

“I’m drawing you and it’s killing my fucking hands so get your eyes back on the road and stopping messing up your profile.”

Weaver said nothing for a minute or two, clearly humbled. But then he started up again.

“I want to know where we’re going.”

“Drive,” said Stone.

“No, you have to tell me.”

Stone didn’t answer him.

“You have to tell me where we’re going.”

He drove around a small bus. It was rolled over on its side, windows smashed, bodywork peppered with arrows.

“Are you going to kill me? Is that it?”

“Hey, sit still, man,” said Cali.

“Answer the question, Mr Cartwright. Are you going to kill me?”

Stone continued to ignore him.

“No one will hurt you,” said Yuan.

“I’m sorry, Yuan, you have a kind and beautiful soul but you shouldn’t promise what your companion has no intention of delivering.”

He slammed on the brakes. The tyres squealed. The car snaked across the lanes. Everyone was thrown forward.

“Look, I’ve had enough of this. You stroll into my …”

Stone opened his door, then lunged at Weaver and dragged him across the seats. He pulled him from the car and threw him on the road.

“You fucked up, man,” said Cali, picking up her dropped pencil and drawing a line through Weaver’s half-drawn sketch.

The automobile dealer scrambled onto his feet, and bunched his fists.

“Is this what you want? OK, OK, enough’s enough. I’m a businessman. But if you want me to …”

Stone cracked him across the jaw. Weaver spun and slammed against the hood of the car, groaning.

“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck. What was that?” He kept his face against the metal. “You hit me with something.”

Stone peeled him from the hood. Weaver held up his hands. “OK, OK, I’ll drive. I’m sorry, alright?”

But Stone wasn’t finished. He clamped a thick hand around Weaver’s neck and marched him past the two-door car.

“What do you see?”

Weaver looked back north. “What do you mean?”

Stone rattled him like a doll. “Open your eyes.”

“The road, I mean, what? I can see the road, a few wrecks, trees … what do you want me to say?”

“Two vehicles only a few minutes apart with the same arrows taking them down.”

Stone dragged him back toward the car.

“That means this highway isn’t safe. It could happen at any moment. Or it might not happen at all. So you drive and I’ll fight. Do you understand me, Weaver?”

The man rubbed his jaw, smoothed out his rumpled shirt.

“I understand,” he said, meekly.

Stone expanded his telescope, swept the landscape, a full circle. “Nothing,” he said. “For now.”

The two men climbed into the car.

“You drive until I say otherwise. And when we’re a long way from Kiven you can take the car and go running back and tell them who you saw.”

Weaver stepped on the gas.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you’re pretty switched on.”

He looked offended. “I’m not a member of the League. I was born into the Society of Souls.”

“One Kiven faction is as bad as the other,” said Cali. “All liars and murderers, all out for themselves.”

“The Society believes in peace.” He grinned at Stone. “We’re lovers.”

“That was a tap,” said Stone. “You keep talking and I’ll hit you like a man.”

“The Society is part of the Alliance,” said Cali. “And you fucks sat back and let that lunatic fire off missiles in the summer.”

“What missiles?” asked Yuan.

“The Society isn’t perfect,” said Weaver, battered from all sides. “But we do not agree with the direction the League wishes to take the city. Why do you think I live in Batesville? There is no government, no alliance, just communities making their own rules and living by more simple codes. I’m not a trouble maker. I swear it. I don’t care about Kiven politics or who they have on their posters. I’m not going to rat you out.”

He shook his head.

“Did you have to hit me so damn hard?”

The highway stretched ahead, bleak and flat. The car rocked in the sharp wind and Weaver noticed it had grown rapidly cold and gloomy as clouds thickened overhead, blocking out the sun. His passengers didn’t remark on the change in temperature or the imminent threat of rain so he said nothing. The three of them appeared consumed in thought and he let out a sigh, the miserable weather compounding his depressing situation.

The car threaded past thinly-grassed verges dotted with bare trees. The soil was dark from the heavy downpour of the day. He yawned. There were four lanes, evenly divided by a strip of rough grass and he hugged the left hand ones. He glanced at the empty lanes to his right and recalled an intriguing conversation he’d had about how men drove in days gone by.

“Do you know we’re on the wrong side of the road?”

Cali had her eyes shut. Yuan was holding the hourglass Travis had given her, trying to close out the image of his body beneath the rubble.

“What do you mean?” asked Stone.

“In the Before there used to be laws about what side of the road you could drive on and how fast you could travel.”

They crested a low rise. Weaver twisted in his seat.

“We should actually be on the other …”

And Stone shouted at him.

Cali opened her eyes. Yuan dropped the hourglass, startled.

Weaver slammed on the brakes.

“Oh, shit.”

The car skated forward. Stone held onto the door.

“Shit, shit, shit,” shouted Weaver.

It ground to a halt, with only seconds to spare, and the four of them peered through the grilled windshield.

Weaver was pinned to his seat. His armpits streamed with perspiration. Dark patches showed through his shirt. The steering wheel was locked in his hands. He couldn’t turn it or work any of the pedals. His mind was blank. He refused to accept what he was looking at, but he couldn’t deny it because the front tyres were only a few yards away. He attempted to regulate his breathing and tried to clear his head. He wasn’t a man who built fires, hunted wild animals or faced down men in a gunfight. He wasn’t Stone. He was educated, raised by a family with a moral compass. He knew how to survive this world with words and charm and an eye for a deal. That was all this was, he told himself, a complicated deal and he needed to remain calm, and to smooth out the wrinkles and reach the endgame.

“What’s wrong with your breathing?” asked Stone.

White panic flew through Weaver. His temple of inner calm had been shattered. He began to pant harder.

“The road,” gasped Weaver.

The fifty-five had gone. The land had swallowed at least four hundred yards of it and the car creaked on the lip of a sinkhole.

But the devastation wasn’t only ahead. Ravines snaked off in all directions, jagged black lines of varying widths and lengths. They had torn through verges, uprooted trees and spread far and wide into the rough scrubland, claiming the old farmsteads.

There was a sudden and faint vibration beneath the car. Pieces of road crumbled away.

Stone had experienced his share of quakes in Ennpithia. Thinking men in quiet quarters believed that it was a trade-off with nature, that she was taking her sweet time in settling down her roots. Nature had to be a woman, they guessed, and the aftershocks were a consequence of the newly born forests, pastures, and rivers that flourished within their borders. They had to be guarded with such views because the Holy House had a much grander version of the rebirth. The Lord had forgiven the sin of the Cloud Wars, the ultimate sin of man, and granted a paradise for those who bent the knee and bowed the head, and the rest of the land could live in shit and dirt and sand. Stone wasn’t so sure on either count, and didn’t care at this moment, knowing only that he’d rather face down a score of men with his bare fists than butt heads with nature.

Weaver was sweating profusely, hands clamped around the steering wheel. Stone reached across to the man, gently placed a hand on his arm.

“I’m going to put us in reverse,” he said, quietly. “Then you ease down on the gas, OK?”

There was fear in Weaver’s eyes.

“You can do this. Nice and easy, OK?”

Stone cranked the gear-stick. Dead leaves twisted in the wind. There was another tremor beneath the car, lasting only a few seconds.

“Push down gently on the pedal.”

Cali moistened her lips.

Yuan clenched her thighs.

“Take us back,” said Stone.

Weaver loosened the cramped muscles in his leg. Pieces of asphalt disappeared into the vast hole.

He eased against the gas and the car slowly began to move backward. There was a spasm in the highway and the spot they’d been on fell away.

He sucked in air, sharply.

“You’re doing fine,” said Stone.

The car continued to wind its way back.

“I’m doing fine,” he said.

“That’s right.”

They reached an exit road, peeling away to the left. It was a single lane with a gradual ascent but was heavily pitted.

“Did you see that?” said Weaver, awed. He looked around the car. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Yeah,” said Cali, nonchalant.

Stone pushed open his door, stepped out, keeping one foot in the car. He scanned the landscape with his telescope.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“What’s that noise?” asked Yuan.

Cali could hear it as well but she couldn’t make it out. It sounded like people in the distance.

A lot of people.

“Can you see a way around?” said Cali.

“Yeah,” said Stone. His mouth tightened. “I’ll drive.”