Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

Stone crashed through a line of splintered trees and sped a short distance across the rugged scrubland, crushing tangled undergrowth. Branches whipped and scraped at the bodywork and one became wedged in the grilled windshield. He reached around and tugged it free. The suspension groaned as the car bounced and shook and Weaver cried out more than once. Stone steered the car away from the sinkhole and the exit road and then swung the wheel violently to his right, skidding to an abrupt stop in a shower of dirt.

He left the engine idling, waiting for the dust to clear.

The car was perched at the top of a crater. The slope was heavily-pitted and dotted with stunted trees.

“Down there?” said Weaver.

Stone nodded.

“Through them?”

Cali leaned forward. “Oh, man.”

The engine ticked over.

“Who are they?” asked Yuan.

The exit road had once led to a first-world city, a city with a name and a history, an identity. There had been streets, avenues, and a long boulevard named after a famous man. There had been a railroad network rattling with freight wagons, and power lines that fizzed overhead, and water pipes beneath the asphalt that pumped clean water into homes. A twist of the faucet and out it sprang for drinking or bathing or washing the damn car. There had been houses and apartments and motels with lives played out, school and careers and babies and track marks. There had been a fire department and a police department, but the lights no longer flashed and revolved and the sirens no longer wailed at 3am – whatever the hell that was.

There had been truck stops, depots and grocery stores with handguns beneath the register. There had been diners with coffee-stained aprons over black skirts, thrift stores with rails of junk that would make you king in the second-world, and bars with flashing neon where a spent wage packet solved all your problems and created new ones. There had been parkland for pushchairs and teenagers and couples drifting hand in hand. There had been churches with a faith for this man and a faith for that man, until the bombs dropped and it all counted for shit.

Man had perpetuated a heinous crime and his wanted poster had never been taken down. He’d stabbed the sky and ruptured the ground, consuming a population and the tightly-knitted infrastructure around it. The land had opened and thousands had died instantly whilst thousands more had clung on for seconds, minutes, hours or even days – bodies pinned, organs failing; crying out and growing weak, scrabbling and hoping and still believing in the rescue stories they saw on CNN.

The crater had spread for ten or twenty miles, at least one hundred feet down, and in the years that followed there was only rubble and corpses and winter. But survivors had emerged, horrified at what had passed, horrified at what it would take to move forward, to carve a new generation. More perished, and more after that. Wretchedness became the new markers in society with misery upon misery and shame upon shame. The powerful rose, then fell and rose again only to fall once more. Then a beginning was cultivated, a grain of hope. The city had gone, and so had its name and with it the history, the identity, but the spirit pulsed, vibrant, and the survivors refused extinction. The work begun and brick by brick they carried away the first-world and built a new one and it bore a new name, a new history and a new identity.

There were mountains of metal and brick and concrete that scaled above the rim of the crater and within the miles of open space stood a proud, second-age settlement. It had dirt roads marked out with rocks, wide enough for one vehicle, though nothing down there was motorised. It had mud huts and timber shacks, log cabins and rusted vans that had been recycled into homes. It had animals, children and laundry blown stiff in the wind.

A smudge of wood smoke hung in the gloomy sky.

Bare-chested men wheeled barrows brimming with the debris of the past. The work had begun centuries before but no one had clocked out yet.

That was who they were.

“Look at those people, they’re probably cannibals,” said Weaver. “You know that, right?”

“They have animals,” said Yuan, pointing hesitantly. “You’re wrong, Weaver.”

She paused.

“Is this the right thing to do?”

“What if these fuckers turn on us?” said Cali.

“We’re not stopping,” said Stone. “We go straight through.”

“Man, you only have one bullet.”

“No choice,” said Stone.

And there was no choice. The scrubland was ripped with holes and the car wouldn’t last five minutes on that terrain. They had to go down, come back up and rejoin the highway south.

Stone nosed the car forward, leaving deep ruts in the ground as it crunched and half-slid down the side of the crater.

A tall and long-limbed man emerged from the undergrowth, his face obscured by a cotton hood with holes for the eyes and mouth. He carried a bat wrapped with coils of razor-wire. A bone whistle hung around his neck. He put it to his lips, blew and yelled out a single word.

“What did he say?” said Yuan.

“He said Uppers,” said Weaver, more tuned in to the varying dialects of the Black Region. “I don’t know what that means.”

“I have never heard of Uppers,” she said.

The back end slammed hard as the ground evened out and Stone nudged the mud-spattered car onto the dirt road.

“React to nothing,” he said.

The hooded man watched them, the bat resting on his shoulder.

Stone kept his speed low, nudging the car along the dirt lanes and keeping within the misshapen markers. There were children scattered all around and the last thing he wanted was to collide with one of them. He drove by the primitive homes, mountains of metal and concrete providing a grim backdrop a few miles in the distance. A small population began to emerge, summoned by the shrill blast of the whistle. There were men dressed in colourless clothing, armed with wooden bats and lengths of metal and axes.

They were horribly outnumbered and this wasn’t a fight he wanted.

There was a foul stench in the air and a low murmur as people began to talk and grunt loudly. The crowd followed the slow pace of the car and Stone continued to look for a clear run, a place to floor the accelerator and burst out of the claustrophobic crater, but the lanes were becoming tighter and the homes more compact and he wondered if he was driving into a dead-end. The children pointed and some threw mud that bounced off the car.

Stone reached the middle of the new world city, still without confrontation despite the large number of armed and hooded men trailing behind and alongside them. A few more missiles were thrown. Then a rock was hurled and the back window cracked and Yuan gasped.

A red light appeared on the dashboard beside the fuel gauge.

“What’s that?” he said, frowning, but Weaver didn’t answer.

Stone continued to negotiate tight bends, as the number of men swelled around the car.

He jabbed Weaver.

“What’s that light?”

“I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

“Is it the fuel?”

“Just keep driving.”

“The gauge is showing the tank is only half-empty.”

“It’ll go off in a minute,” said Weaver, wiping his hands on his thighs.

Stone narrowed his eyes.

“What did you do, Weaver?”

“Nothing.”

Stone lunged across the seat, thrust a hand into the man’s lap and cupped his balls.

“What the fuck did you do?”

Weaver winced. A few more stones skated off the car.

“I didn’t do anything.”

Stone twisted. The man’s eyes watered.

“I forgot about it,” he said. “OK? I forgot. Please, let go. I wouldn’t have left it like that. With all the excitement it slipped my mind … it’s not everyday someone comes into my business tossing grenades.”

Stone released him. Weaver laughed, nervously.

“What is it, man?” asked Cali, as the car stuttered.

“This asshole rigged the gauge. We’re out of fuel.”

“What?” said Cali and Yuan, in unison.

“Look, I have overheads,” said Weaver. The car stalled. “Do you know how much it costs to truck the fuel in from Kiven? No, you don’t, OK? I have men to pay. Costs keep rising in the market, OK? So they need more and I give them more because men with skills are hard to come by. I work my ass off in that garage. We put in half a tank of fuel and tamper with the gauge to show a full tank. No one ever comes back …”

Weaver stopped complaining. The crowd swarmed around the car. Hooded faces pressed toward them.

“Uppers,” shouted the children.

“One bullet,” said Cali.

Stone nodded, grimly. “I’ll make it count.”

The car began to rock from side to side. Men were shouting, thrusting weapons into the air. A hardcore group clambered onto the roof and hood and began to jump up and down and kick the windshield.

Stone pushed open his door and forced his way into the hostile crowd. They edged back a little, intimidated by his tall frame and menacing face and the handguns in his belt.

He growled. “Get the fuck away from us.”

The hardcore group weren’t afraid. A bat swung, a window shattered and Yuan screamed.

“You get one chance before I start killing,” said Stone.

One man came forward, laughing, and pointed a bat at him. “Uppers take no shit. Fucked up coming. Ain’t scared.”

The crowd roared.

He was the ringleader of the hardcore group. He was black, his face hidden behind a grubby hood. His throat was mottled. His threadbare clothing stank.

Uppers take no shit, thought Stone. As in, we’re Uppers and we take no shit from no one?

But then Stone ran it through his thoughts a second time, in less than a second, and translated the true meaning of the words, so he hoped.

These people were not Uppers. It was the Uppers they feared.

“We’re not Uppers,” said Stone. “We were running from them.”

The words had no effect. Men crushed against the car. Children threw mud. A hand grabbed Stone and he put the man down, busting his jaw.

“Fucking Uppers take no shit,” said the ringleader. “Not this fucking time.”

He punched the air with his bat. Stone drew his revolver, lightning fast, and lodged his last bullet into it. The bat spun from the man’s grip and hit the ground. The crowd gasped and backed away. The gunshot had punched a hole in the noise. A few men whispered at how fast he’d drawn and how he could have dropped Remy on the spot.

Stone stood with both guns empty.

“You Remy?”

The man gingerly picked up his bat and studied the bullet hole.

“My name is Stone.”

He swept his weapons across the crowd.

“I’ll say this only once. We’re not Uppers. We’re travellers. We’re going south. We’re not here to take anything or anyone. But if you stop us I’ll keep shooting and put you all in the dirt. Men, women, children, babies. I’ll kill you all.”

The hardcore group bristled, ready to fight.

“How’d we know you got any bullets, Upper?”

Stone whirled around at the voice and thrust his revolver against a hood. He cocked the weapon.

“Only an asshole would play that game. Look in my eyes. Do I look like an asshole to you, fuck-head?”

He slipped his finger onto the trigger.

“Well?”

“No.”

A path began to clear through the crowd and Stone saw a heavily pregnant woman waddling forward. She was round-faced with scrunched together features. One hand cradled her enormously swollen belly. One hand leaned against a metal staff, decorated with dangling pieces of black plastic.

She was not much older than twenty but Stone noted how respectful the crowd had become in her presence.

“I am Carrier.” She shook the staff. “I am Gemma Rae. Uppers good and fucked. You bitches come here to die bad.”

“Reckon they ain’t Uppers,” shouted one of the hardcore.

She thoughtfully stroked her belly.

“Carrier knows lies and truth. Punish like the old days. Uppers come in and take, damn Uppers, think they got it all – take, take, take.”

“We’re not Uppers,” said Stone. “We were running from them. They were chasing us, shooting arrows.”

Remy marched toward Stone, gripped his bat with both hands and drew it shoulder height, ready to swing.

Stone lowered his guns, tucked them into his belt.

“We’re not Uppers.”

He looked into Remy’s eyes. There was hesitation and puzzlement. The bat didn’t move.

“Why’d you do that?”

“We have the same enemy,” said Stone.

The hardcore group swayed and murmured. They looked toward Gemma Rae for guidance.

“That right?” said Gemma Rae.

She jabbed the staff at the car.

“Out or we get.”

Stone banged on the dented car roof. The three of them climbed out and bunched up behind him.

“The Uppers turned back when we reached the sinkhole,” he said. “They must fear you.”

The hardcore cheered.

“They wanted to take us, they take everything. Took down two vehicles, dragged people away.”

“He’s right,” said Cali, stepping out. “We’ve had run-ins with Uppers before. Look at the shit they did.”

She peeled off her adhesive, showed the raw knife wound. Remy shook his head and swore.

“Ain’t right. Uppers do bad shit to girls. Rape and eat them. We don’t eat girls here.”

He jerked his thumb toward a pen of livestock. A goat bleated.

“We came here to get away from the Uppers. We know you stand up to them. Word gets around on the road.”

Gemma Rae patted her belly. “Carrier getting a boy. Gonna stand strong, not let Uppers take no shit from us.”

Stone nodded. “Uppers take no shit.”

An hour later, they were beyond the second-world community, striking out beneath dark clouds.

They moved across rain-sodden scrubland, hugging the fifty-five, the wide lanes empty, vegetation snaking through cracks.

Stone navigated with the old map of the Before. He thought on how simple it must have been to move from one place to another. Metal on the ground and metal in the sky. He wondered how it would have looked and sounded. There would have been so much noise and noise irritated him, jammed his head. He studied the map once more. Jeremiah had marked the first-world town of Canton and scribbled beside it the words SILVER ROAD followed by a question mark.

Was it the location of the town Jeremiah had been uncertain of or the credibility of the information concerning weapon?

What if the information was wrong? What if the weapon didn’t even exist? What if this was all for nothing?

He twisted his mouth, concerned and frustrated. He flexed his left arm, sore from the bullet wound he’d suffered in Batesville.

He wanted to talk with Cali but he had no intention of discussing things with Weaver around.

He kept walking.

The landscape was scattered buildings and old vehicles half-buried by centuries of ash and dirt, water-starved lakes and hills crowded with trees. No one spoke. No one wanted conversation.

No one except Weaver.

“I want you in the rear,” said Stone. “You need to watch behind us.”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“You should.”

“Well, I don’t. How will I get home without the car? You left it with those people.”

“You can walk.”

“That’s not funny, Stone.”

“Have you seen me smile? Have you heard me laugh? You can walk and you can start now.”

Weaver stopped, placed his hands on his hips.

“That’s impossible and you know it. I’ll never survive that highway on foot.”

Stone halted, turned.

“You stranded yourself by rigging the fuel gauge.”

“Yeah,” said Cali. “That was a nasty con to pull. What if Stone hadn’t been able to dig us out of that place?”

“We all need to calm down,” said Yuan.

“That’s another thing,” said Weaver. “Can I ask you a question about that, Stone?”

“No.”

Weaver fumed, but he was proud of his roots within the peaceful Society of Souls, and had to ask anyway. “You talked our way out of that place only because you had no bullets.”

“That isn’t a question,” said Yuan. “Stop getting at him.”

“OK,” he said. “But this is important. Would you have done the same thing if your guns had been loaded?”

The question was ignored but Weaver saw the look in Stone’s face and turned away, horrified.

He was suddenly very afraid, and dropped to the back of the line, behind Cali and Yuan.

Stone continued to walk them south, saying nothing.