Wolves (5 page)

Chapter 6

It is several hours later when Huxley realizes he can't see the tire tracks anymore. He stops where he is, in the middle of the road, and he looks all around. Here the landscape has actually begun to show some signs of improvement, rather than the bleak desert they came out of. Here there is actual soil, although it is a sandy loam. And there is more green growth.

Because there is less sand, the road is less swallowed by it. Here the road stretches and Huxley can actually see the concrete, a pale river of it, across the gradually rolling terrain, running east to west. And because there is no sand to cover the road, there are no tire tracks.

“Shit,” Huxley says, staring down at his feet. “When the hell did that happen?”

Jay looks down, seems to realize it at the same moment. “Oh,” he says.

Huxley looks east and can see no sign of the slavers or their wagon. Not even a rolling mirage of the ghastly thing and its poles topped with the jawbones of people that've fought back. Nothing. Like they never existed in the first place.

But they do exist. They're out there somewhere.

Where do the slavers go?

Huxley looks back west to see if maybe the trail is visible behind them. When he looks west he can see the shimmering figure of the Mexican caravanner, still following them. But no trail.

Huxley puts his hands on his hips, works some spit into his mouth. A strong wind out of the southeast has started to blow and it has been drying his mouth out, throwing dust into his eyes and chapping his lips.

Jay is looking at their follower too, shaking his head. “What are we gonna do with this guy?”

Huxley has no idea. “Why do you think he's following us?”

“Who knows?” Jay rolls his shoulders, stretches his back. “Probably just doesn't want to be alone out here.”

“He is alone,” Huxley says. “He's too far away for us to do anything if he was attacked.”

“Well …” Jay looks east. “Chances are, we'd be attacked first. Maybe we're just convenient for him. Maybe we're clearing the way.”

“Maybe.” Huxley wipes grit from the corners of his eyes. “Maybe he's heading east.”

“Clearly he's heading east.”

“I mean for the same reasons as us.”

Jay purses his lips, makes a thoughtful noise.

They wait in silence as the dark liquid figure of the caravanner continues to plod toward them, slowly but surely. He is still far away when he seems to realize that Huxley and Jay are standing there in the road. He stops and they can see his arms flopping about as though he is caught in some great indecision. Finally, rather than retreat or continue forward, he plops down in the middle of the road, in the bare sunshine, and crosses his legs underneath him, his wrists resting upon his thighs. Almost like he's meditating.

“Three is stronger than two,” Huxley says.

“M-hm,” Jay nods. “And harder to feed and find water for. Harder to hide.”

Huxley cocks his head at his companion, squinting against the sun. “We're not hiding, Jay. We're not running. We're heading east. To find out where all those slavers are going and to make them bleed.”

Jay flicks his fingernails. “Seemed like we were hiding last night.”

“We were biding our time,” Huxley corrects. “We were being smart. But imagine if we had more people, Jay? Even if we had five? Ten? We could've hit those slavers last night. Might even have hit them on the road when they first crossed our paths. We could've ambushed them, and they would never have massacred those caravanners.”

“Three ain't ten.”

“No, but it's a start.”

Jay grumbles and looks at him. “I think you feel bad for him.”

Huxley considers it. He looks into himself to see if Jay has spoken truth or not.
What do I feel?
But right now, the inside of him is as barren as the Wastelands themselves.

Finally, he shakes his head. “No. I don't feel anything for him. But I'd wager his feet are moving for the same reason as ours. He watched his whole family slaughtered. Probably watched sisters and daughters and sons, nephews, nieces … rounded up and piled into the slavers' wagon with their family member's jaws rotting over their heads.” Huxley tilts his head toward the distant figure. “He wants what we want.”

“Well,” Jay says. “If you're not gonna kill him, you might as well let him help. We'll see what his motivations are. But I'm keeping an eye on him.”

Huxley watches the caravanner for another few seconds, then raises both arms up over his head and waves them twice. Far away, the other man perks up a bit. Huxley waves with one arm now, a beckoning gesture.

Cautiously at first, the man stands and begins to approach them again.

Jay gives it a minute or two. “We'll be waiting all day if he walks that slow.”

Huxley waves again, more exasperated.

The man picks up the pace, but only slightly. Huxley can see him looking around. His pace slowing every so often as he tries to make sense of the situation. Why these two men are calling for him to get closer. Maybe they want to rid themselves of him. Maybe it's a trap.

That's the way you have to think in the Wastelands.

“Maybe that old man was his father,” Jay says. “Grandfather. Uncle. Doesn't matter. Maybe he saw us let the old man die. Maybe he's just waiting to slit our throats tonight.”

“He had that opportunity last night.”

Almost begrudgingly, Jay says, “I'm still keeping an eye on him.”

The caravanner stops about a hundred yards from them. The wind gusts again, flapping his over-large clothing around him. He stares at Huxley as he stands in the road. Huxley takes note of the man, the way his hands are empty and open and hanging at his side. He is not favoring anything, or holding anything. Huxley wonders if the man is even armed. He has a satchel on his back, it looks like, but that is about it.

“Oye,” the caravanner calls out.

Huxley just stands there, watching.

The caravanner shifts his weight. “Amigos?”

Huxley doesn't respond, because they aren't
amigos
. They're just two people with shared interests. Maybe.

Huxley waves the man forward again. “Come on,” he calls out, showing his hands. “We're not gonna hurt you. Come closer.”

The caravanner waits, but Huxley doesn't give him anything else. Now they are both waiting each other out. But Huxley has the water. He has the friend. And the caravanner has nothing. Nothing but dead family behind him and empty, dangerous roads in front of him.

After about a minute of staring at each other in silence, the caravanner hitches up his loose pants and starts walking forward again, slowly. When he is close enough that they can speak without shouting, he stops again. His good eye is looking at Huxley, but Huxley is looking at the bad one. The clouded one. Maybe that is rude. He doesn't care.

“Amigos?” the man asks.

“The slavers,” Huxley says, instead. “You know about them?”

The caravanner glances around, uncomfortable. His cloudy eye tracks with the same movements as his good eye, it just doesn't look like it works. “Los lobos,” he says, darkly.

“Slavers.”

“Yes. Slavers.”

“Where do they go?”

The caravanner looks a little confused, but shrugs, and then points east.

“Yeah,” Huxley says under his breath. “No shit.” He holds up his hands again and crosses the distance between the two men until he is standing right in front of him. For some reason, he feels like he needs to speak quietly. He's not sure why. “Are you going east?”

“Sí.” The man points east again. “I go.”

“Are you going after them?”

“Qué?”

“The slavers,” Huxley says with some irritation. “Are you going after them?”

The caravanner touches the corners of his moustache, deep in thought for a moment, his eyes—dark and light—looking away from Huxley. He is thinking something through. Sorting through his small repertoire of English words. When he finally speaks, he combines his words with exaggerated gestures.

“You call slavers,” he says, carefully. “They take. Hermano. Hermana. They kill. I go. Take back.” He makes a motion like he is gathering things close to his body. Then he forms a gun with his thumb and forefinger, fires it silently a few times. “Kill back.”

Huxley searches the other man's eyes. He has a round face. Maybe even jolly once. But his drooping, cloudy eye lends him a harder aspect, and his good eye holds the same cavernousness in it that Huxley feels in his own gut. The same lack of feeling. There's nothing left in this man either. It's all been taken from him.

Huxley looks back over his shoulder at Jay. “Give him some water.”

Jay, far from begrudging now, seems to be watching the other man with the same intensity as Huxley had. Seeing the same things. Recognizing the same emptiness. Huxley fully expects him to protest giving the man water, but instead Jay just takes the skin from his shoulder and holds it out.

The man hesitates, then takes it. He uncaps it hurriedly, like they might change their minds, and he drinks deeply.

Huxley watches the man's Adam's apple bob up and down as he drinks.

“Los lobos,” Jay says, quietly. “You know what that means?”

The way he asks the question, Huxley can tell that Jay does.

Huxley shakes his head.

“It means ‘the wolves.'” Jay crosses his arms over his chest. “That's what the slavers think they are. They think they're the top of the food chain. The most dangerous animal in the Wastelands. But they're wrong on that. Look at what they've done.” He gestures to the caravanner, then to himself and to Huxley. “Look at what they've made.” He laughs. “You take everything from a man and you leave him with nothing. Not even hope. And what does he have to live for?”

The caravanner leaves some water in the water skin, hands it back.

Jay takes it, caps it. Slings it over his shoulder. He looks between the newcomer and Huxley. “Desperate men. That's what they made us. And desperate men with nothing left to live for …” Jay pokes Huxley in the chest. “… 
they're
the most dangerous animal alive.”

Jay seems momentarily overcome by something. Some dark memory.

His fingers are flicking off his thumb, agitated.

He looks away from them.

Huxley stares at Jay's sunburned neck for a few seconds before turning back to the caravanner. “What's your name?” He pries at a little bit of Spanish in his memory. “C
Ó
mo se llama?”

“Soy Rigoberto.”

Huxley sniffs. “How about just Rigo.”

Rigo nods. “Is hokay.”

“Okay.”

Jay turns back to them. “His family was a trading caravan. He might know where to get guns.”

Huxley raises his eyebrows to Rigo in question. “Guns? You know where we can get them?”

“Guns. Yes.” Rigo points further on down the road.

East. Everything goes east.

“Borderline,” Rigo says, overenunciating the word. “We go.”

Huxley and Jay exchange a glance.

Rigo starts walking.

“Okay,” Huxley says, falling in step. “Borderline we go.”

Chapter 7

They happen across a sign that tells them they are leaving New Mexico and entering Texas. The sign is old and dilapidated, bent over on its rusted metal poles, the words scrubbed by years of wind and dust, and only just barely legible.

Huxley stops in front of the sign and looks at it.

“Texas,” Jay says with a smile and a laugh. He has nothing else to add.

Huxley wonders if this is what Rigo had spoken of—the borderline between the two states. Perhaps this sign is a waypoint to a stash of buried weapons. But Rigo pays the sign no mind. He's traveled these roads before, it seems. He keeps walking.

Another hour or two passes. It is midafternoon. The sun is heating their backs. Huxley crests a rise and stops dead in his tracks.

“Holy shit,” he says.

Ahead of them is a jumble of squat structures made from all manner of materials. Some of them are natural, and some of them are scrap. But if there is scrap, then there is civilization. And these little structures are surrounded by a wall.

“It's a settlement,” Jay says, with some wonder in his voice.

“Does this mean we made it across the Wastelands?” Huxley asks.

Jay shakes his head. “Hell if I know.”

Rigo realizes that the two of them are behind him, not moving. He stops and looks back at them, curiously. “Borderline,” he calls back to them. “Is hokay. Vámonos.”

The group of three stands in the center of the road and regards this small stand of civilization in the distance. Besides the occasional caravan, this is the first sign of other people that Huxley has seen in a very, very long time. He can't help but feel relieved by it. Huxley had run and hid from even the trading caravans, for fear that they were slavers in disguise. Jay was the first person he'd spoken to in over a month. Rigo the second.

Rigo continues on toward the settlement. There is this panicked moment in Huxley's mind when he doesn't want to get any closer. Other people mean danger, and he has spent so much time avoiding them. But then he remembers that he has nothing left to live for. He is not running anymore. He isn't hiding.

Just like Jay said. I'm the most dangerous animal alive.

As they approach the settlement, Huxley can see that two sentries are posted at the front gate. The closer they get, the harder these men look. Young and wild, with the look of people that fight and kill for their meals each night. One, watching the newcomers, holds a long rifle across his chest. The other stands at a big contraption off to the side of the gate—something that looks like five scattergun barrels on a rotating cylinder. Except they are bigger than scatterguns. Like small cannons, maybe. The man behind the big gun tracks the approaching travelers, the big bores following them steadily.

Rigo raises his hands.

Jay and Huxley mimic the motion.

“That's far enough,” The sentry with the rifle calls out. “Just keep your hands where we can see 'em.”

Huxley, Jay, and Rigo stop, hands held in the air.

The five-barreled minicannon creaks quietly on its metal hinges, the operator of the thing watching them with narrowed eyes.

“Why are you here?” the sentry with the rifle asks.

Rigo looks back at Huxley with a questioning glance.

Perhaps he is not as familiar with this settlement as it seemed.

Huxley takes a half step forward. “We're looking to do business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Trade business.”

“You plannin' on causing trouble?”

“No sir, hadn't planned on it.”

“See that you don't.” The sentry waves them forward. “You say you want to trade. Let's see what you got. And don't waste my time.”

The sentry gestures them to a table made of steel legs and a rotting plywood top. The sentry takes a position on the opposite side from them. Behind the table, the rusting scrap-metal walls rise up around the settlement, crowned with sharpened poles and sections of barbed wire and studded with broken glass. A hand-painted sign declares this settlement “BORDERLINE.”

The sentry waits expectantly for them.

Huxley isn't quite sure what to do. No one else seems to know either.

The sentry pats the table top. “Jesus Christ, gentlemen. Lay your shit out.”

The man from the minicannon speaks up. “They's Wastelanders, Bud. They don't know.”

The sentry eyes them, each in turn. “That true? Y'all Wastelanders?”

Again, Huxley isn't sure how to respond. But he gets the sense from how they say it that this somehow makes him of limited intelligence. Which is almost amusing to him. In the old life, under his old name, he'd been a scholar. A teacher. A reader. A lover of learning. These boys probably barely remembered the Old World. They probably hadn't learned as much now, in their burgeoning adulthood, as Huxley had learned by the time he made it out of middle school.

“We come from out west, if that's what you mean,” Huxley says. “You'll have to pardon us. This is the first settlement we've seen. We've been in the desert for … a while.”

“Well …” the lead sentry leans back a bit. “Idn't that something.” He seems sincerely surprised. “Be honest, we don't get many folks come from out west. I mean … the trade caravans and all. But not just a coupla guys walkin'. Y'all seriously never been in a town before?”

Huxley looks at the walls. “No. I come from a farming commune. Seen a few outposts here and there. But nothing in the desert.”

“What brings you so far east?”

Huxley senses Jay stiffen beside them. They are in an unknown situation right now. They haven't been in a settlement this far east. Were they friendly? Were they allied with the slavers?

“Just business. Personal business.”

The sentry narrows his eyes a bit. “Hm.”

“Out east,” Huxley clarifies. “Little farther east than this town, I think.”

“You mean the Riverlands?” the sentry balks a bit.

Huxley doesn't know how to respond to that.

“Christ, Bud,” the man on the minicannon gripes. “You tryna fuck the man? Check his pockets and let him go.”

The lead sentry rolls his eyes. He taps the table. “Anything you have to trade, lay it on the table. If you got enough to make our time worth it, you can go inside. Otherwise, you can pass on. This is a trading town only. No place for hanging out and rabblerousin'.”

Huxley and Jay and Rigo look amongst themselves.

Huxley has nothing of value but his knife, and that he is not willing to trade. Jay has the satchel of things he scavenged from the wreckage of the Mexican caravan. He upends this on the table, spreading the items out. It is an assortment of oddities from small, burned-out electronic parts and wiring, to some items of a more homemade nature. Some sorts of ointments and salves.

The sentry pokes through them, unimpressed.

Next, Rigo approaches the table and begins to empty his voluminous pockets. From inside these deep folds he produces several ancient candies, bottle caps, paper clips, intact fuses, batteries, a handful of 9mm rounds, and an old multitool.

The sentry bobbles his head. “Well. It ain't a whole lot. But I suppose it's enough.” He motions to the gate. “You can go.”

The young man at the minicannon steps from his perch at the helm of the contraption and pulls a metal cord that threads through a pulley system and lifts the heavy gate constructed of numerous layers of rusted steel sheeting.

With the huge, heavy thing creaking and groaning over his head, Huxley steps through into the town of Borderline. The earth has been crushed by thousands of footsteps so that nothing grows, except for skeletal strands of scrub brush along the edges of the shacks and shanties. Everything has been constructed of scrap metal and old wood remnants from stick-built houses.

The main businesses—traders' posts, liquor houses, and whorehouses—are clustered around the roadway that feeds from the gate, a sort of main street that extends just two hundred yards or so into Borderline and ends at the back walls of the town—it is small as Old World towns go, but Huxley supposes that when you have to put a wall around things, you can't make them that big.

The gate falls noisily back into place behind them.

Huxley looks around, standing in the middle of the main drag. It is an odd sensation, being in this place. After so long in the wide open, it is disorienting to be in such close quarters. It feels almost claustrophobic.

To his right, a small shack hangs with various jerkies and fills the air with the smell of charred meat as the shopkeeper stokes the flames of his cookfire, preparing a fresh batch of smoked meats for sale or trade. Beyond the smokehouse lies another shanty where a cruel-looking man pulls a tarp aside and yells inside. Two young girls emerge, scantily clad. Across from these two enterprises, Huxley sees a scrapper, his wares set around him, a store full of nameless goods that Huxley can't even identify, or imagine how they could be used. Next to the scrapper, there is the liquor house, hawking whatever spirits the locals have brewed from whatever fermentables they can come up with out here.

Tucked behind the businesses that line the main drag, there is a collection of shanties where the permanent residents of Borderline make their homes. They are all about ten foot cubes, some with windows cut into their sides, others that have been stacked, one on top of the other, to make a two-story structure. There is a surprising amount of people milling about. Most of them congregate in the center of the main drag of the open-air market, a lot of carts and small stands for traders that have no residence in Borderline, or at least don't own a shopfront.

Huxley eyes the trading posts that seem to have the widest variety of things.

Jay seems distracted by the two young prostitutes. They squirm for attention, doing the best they can to attract the eyes of men entering the town. And succeeding, by the look on Jay's face. It's been a long time since Huxley has been with a woman. But these are not women. They are just girls.

Huxley looks at the man that stands behind them. Their pimp, their owner, or their guard, he's not sure which. Maybe all three. Quietly, to Jay, he says, “You think those girls are slaves?”

Jay tilts his head, seems to reconsider them.

Huxley looks around the place. The cold burn of perceiving it in a different light. Maybe this is where slavers go. Little towns like this. Maybe his daughter was sold off to a man like the one that stands outside of the little whorehouse with his two girls.

“What's that now?” the man with the whores calls out. “You have a question about my ladies?”

Huxley looks back to him. He takes a few, slow steps toward him. It is odd how he feels this tension rising in him that he doesn't think the other man even recognizes. Huxley only has a knife, and the man is big, but Huxley knows that he is dangling on the precipice of violence, already imagining what he will do to this man, though he has not even asked the question … 

“Those slaves?” Huxley says. His voice is flat. Dry. Without inflection.

The man's face darkens and he spits in the dirt. “Fuck that and fuck the slavers. These is free women.” The man points a finger at Huxley. “And best you watch your tongue about shit like that. Chairman Warner can claim these lands all he wants, but the Black Hats don't reach out this far and there's some good people here that've lost loved ones to the slavers.” He takes a deep breath. “You buyin' or not?”

Huxley eyes the man, trying to wade through everything he just said. Trying to piece it together. But he understands the last question, even if everything else has gone over his head, so he shakes his head and backs away, mentally pulling himself off that edge of reaction. “No thanks.”

The man makes a face at Huxley then looks off to the gate, hoping for other potential patrons.

Huxley looks at Jay, suddenly feeling a little odd standing in the middle of everything. He can feel the townspeople watching him with some passing curiosity. “What the hell was he talking about?”

Jay shakes his head. “No idea.”

Rigo doesn't seem to have understood any words at all. He looks utterly lost, nervously hitching up his pants. Like at any moment he might take off running.

“Wastelanders?” a voice calls out from behind them.

Huxley turns toward the sound of the voice. Just a few yards behind them is a scrapper's trade hut. There are two men at the hut. One is an ancient old man with a dirty gray beard smudged with black grease. His prominent underbite continuously gnaws at his toothless gums as though he is always chewing something. His eyes are dark and liquid and appearing to lack anything beyond nominal intelligence. Huxley thinks he might not be all there.

The other is a younger man, who stands there and wipes grime from what looks to Huxley like an old engine component. The young man looks up from his work, his fingers still scouring away beneath an old stained cloth. His eyes are on Huxley, an interested smile on his lips.

Huxley raises his eyebrows in question, as though to ask,
Were you talking to me?

The young man sets the component down and waves them over, leaning on his display table with both hands.

Huxley walks up to the booth and takes a quick glance at the wares on the table. There are glass bottles, old electrical components that Huxley cannot fathom a use for, mirrors, a few picture frames with faded photos of strangers inside them. There is a stack of old books in the corner, their pages yellowed and torn. Several pairs of shoes hang from their laces, ranging from very old and worn to nearly new. Tools are displayed prominently upon a table in the same way a jeweler displays his wares. But there is also food, water, and what look like homemade knives.

The old man gives him a flicker of eye contact, and then a weathered, blackened finger begins to poke through a tray of metal components. He mumbles something and tilts his head, as though he is relaxing upon his own shoulder. His jaw keeps chewing.