The old man stumbled back, knocking over his chair. His bottle fell and rolled off the table, hitting the floor with a clink and soaking the sawdust with stale beer. His hands were clutched at his throat as blood bubbled between his fingers and through his mouth, he hacked and coughed. In the giants hand was an open switchblade. He put it on the table then grabbed the old man by the front of his shirt.
“You brought this misery! Your cravenness and lies! Look at me!” He gave the old man a backhand slap, spraying blood from his throat and exposing the wound, causing several other patrons to shriek. “It all comes back to the vileness you embody. You took my Catamite. So you die. Die here amongst the filth, the filth you hated so much! You’re home now. Go! Die amongst these heathens.” He spit in the man’s face, then released him, letting him fall to the floor. After a moment he turned away.
He looked around the room, challenging everyone there. When no one got up he moved to the door. Henry dropped his gaze. Without another word, the giant strode out of the bar into the hot afternoon. The old man was still choking, but soon enough he’d be dead.
Conversation picked up once more, most people ignoring the body of the old man and avoiding discussion of what had just occurred. With the help of the boy, who looked like he was about to suffer another fit of nausea, Henry dragged the surprisingly light body out the back door and into a shed. If nobody came to claim it in the next few days he’d burn it; you couldn’t let the wolves get a taste for human flesh.
He felt no sympathy for the old. Whatever the situation had been between them, he’d probably had it coming; and even if he hadn’t, what was he supposed to do about it anyway?
It wasn’t the first time he’d something like that had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. Henry had long ago perfected the art of keeping his head down, his mouth shut, and his bar running. He wasn’t about to throw it all away over the life of a derelict.
Chapter 27
Another hamlet. Wentworth had lost count of how many they’d visited, maybe half-a-dozen or so. Behind dark lenses his eyes roamed suspiciously despite his relaxed stance. Vince was hawking his wares to the locals. It wasn’t a market day but there were enough people milling about to justify the stop. He’d made steady custom for the past fifteen minutes, selling and bartering away the tech items stored on the trailer, and there were still customers waiting their turn.
Raxx was playing face-man. The grubby local children seldom saw motorized vehicles, and to have two of them stop by was a special treat. The one-room Schoolhouse had let out for a special ‘field-trip.’ Raxx chatted amiably with the students and their teacher while at the same time keeping an eye open for vandals. Wentworth knew he’d get tunnel vision if he was forced to interact with the locals so he let Raxx deal with them on his own. There was no law out here, away from the major cities. None of them could afford to let their guard down.
Navigating the highways of past generations was an acquired skill. The age of asphalt gridlines had followed an earlier time of foot-paths and river-fords. There’d been compromises made as the former was built over. Large urban centres had spent huge amounts fine-tuning their transit systems, but outside of them a road might start out south-bound before gradually curving west. Other times what looked to be a major route would dwindle, becoming little more than an overgrown foot path. Combined with the social drift following the war, as well as the general neglect of the roadways, the few street signs that remained were useless.
Raxx had become almost prescient when it came to route planning, and Wentworth was no slouch either, but often enough he’d return from scouting ahead with a thumbs down and they’d be forced to backtrack.
It wouldn’t have been such a problem if they’d been travelling by animal power. Vince was well acquainted with the trade routes. What made this journey difficult was the fact that many of the roads were so torn up that few of them were passable in Raxx’s truck or Wentworth’s motorcycle.
The Datapad helped but it wasn’t a perfect solution. Its maps were out of date, and the hamlets they stopped at seldom correlated to prewar towns. On top of this the GPS kept cutting out. He had set it up to plot their line of travel but the trace was inconsistent and broken. In the early afternoon it had jumped over a kilometre east from where they were, plotting over a lake for half-an-hour. By evening it had failed completely. The receiver was unable to detect any satellites overhead and he had no dead-reckoning unit installed.
Despite the setbacks the journey was good. The problems which arose were challenges, not frustrations. The hamlets were easy to spot as they drew near, by the green of their tilled soil. Farmers had to pump water from underground wells if they wanted to grow anything, and outside of city limits everything was baked dry by the sun. Only the stringiest of weeds and grasses survived. Trees could sent their roots deep enough to find water, but the underbrush surrounding them died off during the summer months. On either side of the road stretched rolling valleys with the colours washed out of them, pale yellow and olive drab.
At first Maria had been nervous about riding in the truck. The noise from the engine, the pressure from acceleration, and the constant jarring from the road’s surface had put her on edge. She tried to remain calm but Vince and Raxx could make out her distress by the white-knuckled grip she kept on the armrests. Raxx kept his speed to a minimum and by mid-afternoon she had started to relax. Thankfully she didn’t suffer from motion sickness, as many new to driving did.
Speeding ahead of Raxx’s truck, Wentworth pushed his bike to the limit, narrowly avoiding pot holes, and tearing around turns, leaning his body into the wind. The cycle’s engine would rise in pitch, an angry growling noise, as he shifted gears, then drop back down to idle as he slowed. The wind was on his face and flowing up into his helmet and the sleeves of his jacket, cooling off the sweat which built up under the hot sun. His face stung where bugs hit him and the ride took his full attention.
It allowed him to forget the many weights upon his mind. He took in the scenery. This was freedom.
It was growing close to sunset when they finally stopped for the night. They’d been driving down a dirt-road since leaving the last settlement, only to find that it ended in a collapsed bridge and a dried-up river. The embankments on either side were steep and the riverbed was too full of boulders and debris for either vehicle to ford. Rather than drive an hour back up the road and try to find an inn, they settled for sleeping outdoors. They’d find another path in the morning.
Wentworth had wanted to set a watch during the night, but Vince chided him. He said that if Wentworth would stop looking for trouble less of it would find him. Grudgingly, the soldier admitted that there was little reason for caution; they were in the middle of nowhere and he doubted if anyone was looking for them.
Their vehicles parked, they started to set up camp. There had once been a building next to the bridge. All that remained were a few stone walls with gaps for doors and windows. The roof had long since disappeared and grass grew where the floor had been. They decided to set up in its perimeter, using the walls as windbreaks. While Maria and Raxx unloaded, Vince and Wentworth collected wood for a fire and got it going.