Chapter 6: Down the Highway

The empty pack flopped against Lily’s back as she limped down a half-buried road.

Her skin had tightened over her bones and her cropped hair had grown to nuisance length. Time had gone strange. There had been some sandstorms. One rainstorm, but the rain had been black and undrinkable. After the food ran out every day lasted a year.

She watched the sand-clogged doorways of the cluster of ruined buildings, cradling her scattergun like a child.

When a man in a tattered grey coat stepped out into the street a few paces ahead of her, she stopped walking and laid the gun down without argument.

“Drop the pack too,” he rasped. A machete shook in his outstretched hand.

Most of them couldn’t talk. Lily was so startled to hear actual speech that she almost forgot to do as she was told.

As she stood there shivering, three more ragged shapes stepped out into the road behind her. One of them grabbed her by the arms and held her still, which she had anticipated but could barely tolerate.

They scuffled over the gun. Grey Coat bared his blackened teeth and struck another man in the stomach with it. A third crouched to open her knapsack, and something hummed past her ear and into Grey Coat’s throat.

He fell, drooling blood, and Lily spun away as the man touching her collapsed too.

Finally.

One of them wrenched the scattergun from Grey Coat’s dead fingers and leveled it, but he screamed as another slim metal bolt hit his shoulder with a meaty thud. Lily drove a long knife under his ribs.

The last man cut his losses and ran.

A lack of food and water had taken their toll, and her leg ached, but Lily tackled him to the ground before he took his third step and straddled him as she scanned the decrepit buildings.

“Michael! I got one!”

He stepped out from behind a crumbling wall, crossbow propped on his shoulder. The Wasteland had worn him down until he was all hard edges, lean and sharp and terrifyingly quick.

“Took you long enough,” Lily panted. Their captive smelled like he’d rolled in a rotting carcass.

“There were more than I expected.”

He wanted to play with his new toy, more like; he’d found a crossbow back in the last camp they’d cleared out, and spent the ensuing two weeks pretending not to enjoy it.

“Do you still think this was a good plan,” Michael asked, tugging down his mask. Grey dust chalked the top half of his face and further lightened his curly hair.

“It was my plan, so yes.” Lily released a little of the pressure on the man’s throat. “You got a stash? Food? Water?”

“I’ll show you,” he stammered, nodding so fast she thought his head would fall off. At least this one could talk. The last three camps had been full of half-human things, barely even bipedal.

She let him up, and collected the scattergun from the bloodstained sand while Michael gathered the rest of his bolts.

He stopped over Grey Coat’s corpse, frowning. Lily kept her gun on her captive. “What?”

“This is a Regular’s coat.”

“Can’t be.” Lily shook her head. Then she shook the survivor. “Hey. Where’d that coat come from?”

“Dead,” he screeched, covering his face. “All of them!”

Lily shrugged. “There you go. Problem solved.”

Michael looked unconvinced, even though they had not seen even a suggestion of pursuit in months. Lily was convinced that 63 and his entourage had either died or turned back. He believed that 63 could not be killed, but had failed to persuade her. All men could die. Some just took longer than others.

He left the body with apparent reluctance and fell in beside Lily as their guide led them to the nearest building.

“In,” he urged, licking his lips.

“Your stuff’s in there,” Lily prompted.

“Oh yes. Inside.”

She gestured. Michael kicked the man abruptly through the empty doorway into the deep shadows. His scream was cut short, and when Lily peeked in she saw dust crumbling away from the edge of a crude pit.

In the neighboring shed two long carcasses hung gutted and flayed, swaying gently, crawling with flies.

Back home there’d been a saying: don’t eat the steak if you didn’t see the cow. Lily shuddered and shut the door.

Traces of ancient green paint peeled from the siding of the largest building. Heavy canvas covered the doors and windows. They readied their weapons, and Lily tried the handle.

Sand drifted against a rusted counter, half-burying stools still welded to the ground, seats long since rotted away. There was a knee-high mess of bones in a corner, and a double row of plastic jugs lined up along the wall next to a pile of silver tins.

The door thumped shut behind them.

Michael unscrewed the cap from one of the jugs, sniffed, and took a cautious mouthful before passing it to Lily.

She drank long and deep, washing a day of sand out of her throat, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve and handed it back.

“What,” she grinned as Michael finished the water off, “do you think is in those cans?”

They were all marked with the Coalition eagle, but she decided to worry about that on a full stomach. Instead she held one to her ear and shook it. “Beans.”

Michael turned it to show her the faded label. Black text on white. “Lentil stew.”

“Close enough. Help me find peaches.” Lily dove back into the pile.

“There won’t be any. The Border War—” He crouched beside her, paused, examined a can in disbelief. So close she could smell the dust on him. “Pears.”

“That’s just as good!”

Food could be found in the Wasteland; insects, hairless scampering things, the occasional balding crow, anemic plants…but water was harder. Usually they had to kill for it.

This was good. The first good thing to happen in a long time.

Lily slid behind the counter and into the back, which looked like it’d been a kitchen before. Something had been cooked there more recently, on a makeshift spit straddling a pit chipped into the blue tile floor. Large blackened ribs jutted from the ashes.

No ammo, no meds. Nothing to explain the Coalition supplies or the Regular’s coat.

Michael was opening tins when she returned: beans, pears, meat in a dark brown sauce. He sat stiffly on one of the less rusted stools, and Lily clambered up to perch cross-legged on the counter.

She cleaned her plate too quickly to even taste it. Hope was a full belly. It was as close to happiness as she could manage.

Michael passed her his plate. She finished what was left there, then asked, “Not hungry?”

He shrugged.

They weren’t friends. Not even the Wasteland could work that miracle, but they were something. Lily didn’t like to think about it.

“I’m glad we found this place,” she said.

As with everything, there followed an unspoken question: will it be enough? Water, food, ammunition, the soles of their boots, their undefinable partnership. Would it be enough to get them to the other side.

As if he’d read her mind, Michael said, “What if it never ends.”

Lily drew in a deep breath. “It will.”

Instead of repeating tired propaganda, he shrugged again. His hands moved restlessly, then stilled. “I don’t understand how you could come all this way without knowing for sure.”

That was several words, all in a line, without pause. Lily had to take a few seconds to reckon with it. “You’re here too.”

He nodded, unreadable as always. “What made you decide to look for it.”

She’d told him about her destination at length one night: the peninsula, the ocean, a city on seven hills where the bombs never fell and everything was safe and green. A place where she could start over.

He’d let her talk without interruption or comment, a featureless shape in the frigid dark, and when his silence took the wind out of her at last he’d laid down with his back to her, wrapped in his coat, and slept. Or pretended to sleep. It hardly mattered.

“There has to be more than this,” Lily said at last. “This can’t be all there is.”

“Yes,” he countered, and there was almost an emotion in it. “It can.”

Lily unfolded her legs to kick him in the thigh. Not hard. “I’m getting real tired of you.”

To her shock, a minute smile softened his face. A real one. It was gone and done in a second, and he was a thing halfway between Operative and human again. “We should camp here.”

“We need to figure out how to haul all this, too.” Lily slid down, taking care not to bump against him. “I’m going to lay down. First watch is yours.”

He never challenged her; he liked having orders to follow. She waited until he ducked outside with the crossbow before she made a nest of blankets behind the counter and rolled herself up.

She wouldn’t have made it this far alone. The knowledge chewed on her conscience like a starving dog. It would fall apart without him, in ways she was afraid to examine.

It felt like just five minutes before he shook her awake. Lily groaned and threw her arm over her face, words spilling out independent of thought. “We killed everything.”

“Not 63. Not the bugs. Keep the door shut, it’s storming.”

“Nothing’s gonna attack—” Lily opened her eyes. Her blood froze.

An Operative leaned over her. Short haired, clean-shaven. Familiar and unfamiliar in the low light.

“In a dust storm,” she finished, when she remembered how to speak. “Take the blankets.”

She and Michael traded places. He eased into the warm depression she’d left behind and lay his arm over his eyes, going still with a faint sigh.

Lily never would’ve admitted it, but she’d liked the hair. It had made him into a sheepdog instead of a wolf.

Unease clung to her as she settled in facing the door. Michael’s fear of 63 was contagious. He didn’t find them that night, though, and neither did anything else.

Morning dawned still and quiet. The storm had buried the corpses and half the front door, and they dug out to greet a frigid grey-white sky. Lily’s breath left her in thin clouds.

“One more day,” she said, hands braced against the small of her back.

“One more day,” Michael agreed.

After breakfast he tried teaching her to fight instead of brawl. What Lily actually wanted was to learn to move like he did, effortless and fast. She wanted to be untouchable.

Once she’d watched in breathless disbelief as he killed six pitiful Wasteland scavengers in about a minute, one after another, with just his knife. Afterwards he’d cleaned the blood off his hands and face with fistfuls of ashy dirt while she pretended not to be impressed.

Everyone had to start somewhere.

In the relative warmth of their shelter, Lily shed a layer and tucked in her bootlaces, still wishing he hadn’t cut off all his hair.

She tested her footing. “You’re gonna pull your punches, right?”

Michael looked smaller with his coat off. She had tried to forget that he was real, with skin and a body. “Yes.”

“Were you going to before I asked?”

“Yes. Elbows in, right foot back.” He demonstrated. Lily imitated him. Satisfied, he nodded for her to go ahead.

She socked him in the ribs and he didn’t even flinch; he watched dispassionately as she hopped back, shaking her stinging hand and cursing. Then he beckoned for her to come closer.

“Like this. Don’t make a fist.” The heel of his calloused hand pressed light against her sternum, and she forced herself to hold position for one heartbeat before leaning back.

She settled into the stance and jabbed at him, and her blow connected with a deep, satisfying thump.

He blinked.

“Better,” he said, voice strained.

Lily was delighted. As the lesson progressed, however, her frustration and dismay came quickly to a head. Michael moved so slowly it seemed like a pantomime. He could’ve killed her a thousand times over. He could’ve done anything.

“I want to try something else,” she panted, limping to their gear. She jerked 86’s knife out of its sheathe and extended it hilt-first.
Something in Michael’s bearing changed as he took it, and Lily’s cheek throbbed with phantom pain.

He flipped the blade around and gave it back. “No.”

“Yes. Show me.” She feigned a jab at Michael’s stomach, and he disarmed her so fast her hand clenched in confusion around the space the weapon had occupied.

“No,” he said.

Lily knew that pushing him further would be like trying to demolish a brick house with a spoon. She slid down the wall, extending her bad leg with a grimace. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. “Fine, I need a break anyway. How’d I do?”

He passed her a half-empty water jug and sat down an arm’s length away. She saw him choosing his words carefully. “You’re quick, but you still punch with a closed fist.”

“And?”

“Don’t.”

Lily tested it. “Feels more solid like this.”

Michael held up his hands and made slow fists. The right wouldn’t close all the way, the fingers stiff-jointed. “You can’t throw a second punch with a broken hand.”

“Maybe I’ll kill him with my first punch,” she countered, capping the water jug and sliding it back. “Maybe I’m better than you.”

This smile was something he did with his eyes instead of his face. “Maybe. I wasn’t a good Operative.”

“Bet the pay was good, though.”

Michael considered this. “Room and board.”

“Oh. Shit.” Lily rubbed her shin. “Why’d you take the job, then?”

His face hardened, and she wondered if this had been a step too far. Maybe he’d been a conscript. Maybe he’d lost as much as she had. Wait — had 86 been his brother? They’d favored each other; same hair and eyes.

“I used to be a courier,” she offered, speaking to her boots. “I loved it. I was fast. Made a good living.”

Michael cleared his throat, gesturing at her leg. “What happened?”

She’d never actually heard him ask a question before. Usually he just made faintly interrogative statements, but there it was.

Lily still remembered the sound. The dry snap. Now her left leg was a finger’s width shorter than the right, and under the camouflage of her trousers the shin was as crooked as a water seller. “I fell on the ice, and it…it healed wrong.”

Michael studied his hands like they held answers. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault.” She pulled her right knee up to her chest. “I was young. Thought I was invincible.”

“Everyone does,” Michael said, and there was a horrible bitterness in his voice. He rubbed the back of his neck.

There was no more conversation after that, and no more practice either.

Days passed in an indistinguishable blur as they followed the ancient highway toward the setting sun. They hauled the wealth of food and water behind them on a makeshift sled, and every time Lily took her turn she was unavoidably aware of how much lighter it was getting.

Huge machines with iron teeth rusted in barren fields, and the crumbling remains of vehicles lined a road that disappeared and reappeared like a magic trick. Once Lily saw a single intact house off in the distance, standing alone on a vast plain of dust.

It was better than nothing. It had to be a sign. Maybe as they pushed on west the ruins would become intact buildings. Maybe they’d find living plants, real people, rivers…

Optimism was addictive, but it was a poison. If Lily filled her stomach with dreams she would starve to death.

Two weeks after leaving the raider camp she watched an unseen sunset leech the light from the charcoal sky. Part of a sandblasted brick wall stood here in a shallow depression, maybe the cellar of a vanished house. It would do as a windbreak. The ground was too hard to pitch their scavenged tent.

Michael dropped his pack and Lily dropped herself, canteen sloshing.

“I think we’re close,” she said, wetting her lips without drinking and holding it out.

He didn’t take it, just lowered himself down and patted dust off his coat. “Maybe.”

There was no distinguishing where the land ended and the sky began; everything was the same shade of blackening grey. Sometimes Lily saw flickering lights in the distance, a sobering reminder that they weren’t alone, even here.

Tonight there were no lights. She felt very small.

Michael coughed, too long and too deep. Lily offered the canteen again and this time he took it, holding it against his chest.

“You have to drink,” she said. “And eat. We’ve got enough.”

Enough for what, she thought as he complied. Enough for another week or two of careful rationing? Not enough to get them out.

How long before they sought out the small fires burning at night and took whatever they could carry from whoever was there. How long before he left. How long before her bones joined the rest…

Michael coughed again. He set the canteen down. “I’ll take first watch.”

“It’s my turn,” Lily protested.

He pushed himself up with the crossbow and went to sit on the windward side of the wall in silence.

She pillowed her head on her pack, huddling inside her coat. He was going to leave. She’d noticed a few things.

First and most worrying was the fact that he claimed to need less food and water than she did. She’d tried his pack once and found it significantly heavier than her own, like he was holding back his share for later.

And he wouldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the dreams; he suffered from quiet nightmares, shaking and tensing like a dog. Or maybe he was looking for an opportunity to cut his losses and move out.

Instead of Castor, Lily’s own nightmares of late were of wandering alone in a white void, calling out, never hearing an answer.

In spite of cold, hunger, and lingering worry, she drifted away. It felt like she’d barely closed her eyes when she woke to Michael urgently shaking her shoulder.

“G’off me,” she slurred, sneezing dust away. The light looked different, pale and cold.

Michael’s hand stayed on her arm, but Lily’s protests died half-formed. He was smiling.

“Look,” he said, pointing up.

She looked. Then she scrambled to her feet and craned her neck, mouth open.

The clouds had peeled away from a slice of inky sky, and a spray of stars surrounded the pale disc of the moon like sparks rising from an unseen fire. It was cold, so cold, and it was beautiful.

“There are so many,” Michael said. “I didn’t know.”

There was an odd quality to his voice; awe, maybe. The words were distant, questioning. Lily got the feeling he was talking to someone else, and wished…

He sat next to her on top of the wall, never taking his eyes off the sky. Lily recoiled as their arms brushed and then pressed together, but he didn’t seem to notice what he’d done. His face had softened. Or maybe it was just the moonlight that did it.

She should tell him about something: a red sunrise bloodying the cold, pale Coalition concrete, her eyes and heart burning at the savage beauty of it. Maybe he’d seen the same one. It was nice to think about.

The wind kicked up. Clouds scudded in. One by one, as impossibly as they had appeared, the stars winked out. At last even the moon flickered and was extinguished.

The words had not come. It was too late. Instead, Lily said, “Let me finish your watch.”

Finally he looked at her. He leaned away like he’d only just realized how close he was sitting, and after a brief hesitation he handed Lily the crossbow and slid down.

“I’m not tired,” he said, but a broad yawn betrayed him.

Lily pointed at the blankets she’d recently vacated, feeling her dry face crack into a smile. She thought he smiled back before he went, but the light was bad.

What if he didn’t vanish in the night? What if he stayed and they survived to the edge of the Wasteland? What if everything turned out all right.

Lily looked down. Michael had rolled himself in the blankets, and already his breathing had evened out.

She pulled her hood up and settled the crossbow over her knees, listening to the wind blow across a landscape that seemed a little less bleak.

Omaha Base had lain in the floodplain of a broad river, but on clear days Lily had been able to see distant blue smudges to the east and west. Mountains. A concept impossible to visualize: take a rock, make it massive. But what did that mean?

The largest things she’d ever seen were the slumped and tumbled remains of old world skyscrapers and bridges. And a grain silo, once.

A mountain, she’d reasoned, could not be so much larger than those. It would rise abrupt and unannounced from the flat Wasteland plain like the wall around Delphi but perhaps three times as high, with an obvious access point like a city gate.

Instead the mountains were insidious. They came like a thief.

Lily had paused for a short rest, sweat she couldn’t afford to lose streaming down her forehead and tickling between her shoulder blades as she wondered why her lungs weren’t working.

Michael, who somehow looked just as bad, had said something about elevation gain as if she knew what that meant.

“We’re in the foothills,” he’d added.

“Foothills of what?”

And he’d looked at her like she’d started speaking backwards before answering, “The mountains.”

It was infuriating how much she didn’t know. She’d seen maps, but that had been almost a decade ago and she’d been worried about other things. Like the man they’d belonged to.

The wind whipped and bit. They tied dust cloths over their faces, and on the first bad day Michael gave Lily his goggles. Her pride stung less than her eyes, so she wore them, but breathing through the rag was a secondary agony. It clung to her face, growing heavy as her exhalations transmuted the dust to mud. The goggles frequently fogged. Her lungs were full of knives.

But if these were mountains…if the shadows looming in the middle distance were the mountains, then they were almost out. Lily had a waking dream of cresting a final rise and seeing dawn break over a green valley, but she had no frame of reference for that either.

One night Michael created a map for her. They’d made camp beneath an outcropping of rock to the side of the road, piling loose stones on top of the tent spikes so it wouldn’t take off like a startled bird.

With the sun setting it was easier to tell how high up they were. Little fires speckled the plain below them, scattered like fallen stars. That had been them. They’d been down there, fighting and walking and starving. Now they were in the air.

Lily ate with her fingers from a tin of anonymous brown mush as Michael sketched a vaguely familiar shape with the can opener, clawing up the hard-packed earth. He added a line for the Brown River, an X for Delphi, and a deep gouge down the western edge of the map.

He glanced up at her. “We’re here, somewhere.”

“You got a good memory,” Lily remarked.

Michael faded. Not just the spark behind his eyes, but all of him. He began to erase the sketch from east to west, wiping out Delphi first.

“No,” he replied, as the flat of his palm obliterated the suggestion of mountains too, leaving only a faint scar behind. “Not really.”

Lily left it alone. “You gonna eat?”

He shook his head, so she opened her pack and picked an unlabelled can at random, rolling it to him.

Michael could have been smiling; whatever it was, it was happening only to his eyes. He picked up the tin, tapping the top with two fingers.

“Don’t ask me how much is left,” Lily warned, returning to her own dinner. “Open it, tell me what it is.”

He obliged, prying up the lid. “It’s green.”

“Lucky you.”

It wasn’t just his eyes anymore.

They’d been going on like this. Something had eased, and Lily’s whole body felt lighter despite the thinning of the air. She’d been alone so long she’d forgotten there was any other way to be.