Ain't Talkin'

A cloud of dust that must have been visible for miles and miles and miles followed the convoy as they made their way down the 50 towards New San Fran. Roche had caught a brief glimpse of Alex Markus hopping aboard one of the trucks before they’d been given the order to leave, but the kid hadn’t even bothered to look up. Miner, too was aboard a transport, being the local authority in the Res, though he was near-enough to pushing daisies to be of no combat effectiveness. In all, the Res had left a paltry score of soldiers at the compound and was en route to New San Fran in a half-dozen transport trucks, assorted motorbikes and synthetics with nearly a hundred men, armed to the teeth with gasoline in their hearts for a cause that Roche had less and less interest in.

Seemed to be the path the road was taking him in though. Worse ideas had struck in the past. Not today and not yesterday, but worse ones.

Lucky kept pace with the trucks at something between a trot and a canter. The going was slow, and most of the roads, despite a hundred years of gradual clearing by all passers-by, were still tough to drive on. They were all crumbling pavement, dust-drifts, immobile rusted wrecks and the occasional heap of bones that were both human and animal from cannibs who’d taken time to camp on the roads for easier prey. The world continued to pass right on by as if nothing were going on, though to look into the eyes of some of the young Resistance men, it might as well have been the last day in forever. for some of them it might be.

Near Carson City where Roche was sure he was still a wanted man, the convoy thankfully turned north on a main road whose signs had somehow all disappeared.

They were making for the 80 route, which Roche knew would be more direct, though possibly slower. He might have advised against turning north in order to go south, he was old-fashioned in that way, but he also wasn’t running the caravan. So north they turned.

The 80 would wind south and west, passing by the city of Sacramento, which Roche understood was still a bustle and thrum of activity on Terra 1, and from there they would be less than a days serious trek to New San Fran.

Some hours north of Carson City, just as they turned onto the 80 West, the caravan stopped to refuel and collect itself before the final stretch of long road.

There was an overpass that had been made into a longhouse with corrugated metal, bits and pieces of blown down cityscapes and the odd road sign. It served mainly as an inn for travelers. It was a place Roche had been once before, though many, many years ago, and he doubted if the proprietors would be the same folks he’d known before.

The caravan situated like a group of protective animals, all of the trucks backing around each other, with the bikes and horses in a second ring around the main group.

Soldiers hopped from their transports and stretched their legs before chow shifts and checking their perimeters. Three men in full assault gear went to the inn to pay for their time, though the caravan would only stop for little more than a half-hour. Still, it seemed politeness had not completely abandoned the wasteland. Or maybe the new proprietors were known for being greasy-palmed. Didn’t matter.

Roche tethered Lucky to the back of one of the trucks and stood smoking outside the center ring while soldiers hurried here and there, acting productive while their fellows took turns tearing at salted meat with their teeth and rationing water.

The doctor came up so silently that he actually caught Roche off-guard.

“Pleasant isn’t it, Mr. Roche? A stop on the long road towards almost certain destruction?”

“If you’re so sure of our deaths than aren’t you on the wrong side?”

“Oh, no my walking friend. I am assuredly as close to you as I’ve ever wished to be, bindings or not.” Doctor Weaving twisted his wrists, the ropes binding them creaked like old wood.

“Why me, then?”

“Your story fascinates me. A man who went into the white with pure intentions and came back out a twisted remnant of a human being. You are an invigorating study. Precisely why I’ve made such great strides to land where you did.”

“And how, if I may ask, did you come to know where I’ve been and how I’d get here?” Roche puffed on his menthol and made a point of blowing the smoke directly into the doctor’s shit-eating grin.

“This is the wasteland of America, of the world, my dear friend. Information is always worth a numerical amount.” He spoke over the gnash of his big ol’ teeth.

Then perhaps I could ask you for some information?” Roche had been holding on to this one. “What happens to your grand-scheme plan if I die in the battle?”

“Oh, but you won’t. You’re far too stubborn for that, my friend.” Grin.

“Maybe. But I’m not too stubborn to not die of a serious illness.”

The corners of the doctor’s mouth wavered only a little, but the rattle was clearly there. “Whatever do you mean?” Grin.

“I mean this weird smell I been figuring on for months now. Comes and goes, and sometimes it ain’t there for weeks at a time, but it always comes back. I didn’t know it for sure until it happened in the ether. And then the kid drove the point home. He’s as smart if not smarter than you by a long throw.”

“Smell?”

“Campfire usually. Smell it when there ain’t a campfire for miles, and then when there ain’t nothing until the edges of the universe but white and basic universal coding for nothing and everything all at once. I figured it out a little bit ago, but now that I’ve got you pissin’ up my tree I done and come to terms with it better than ever.”

Weaving’s expression faltered further, his grin became an open lip spread of teeth minus the glee.

“I got cancer, dipshit. The kind you don’t get better from, I imagine. Maybe from all the walking, maybe from all the drink and the smoke and the nonsense of not needing to eat or sleep or shit or piss like the rest of you mortal paraphernalia. Maybe I’m just not as lucky as I ought to be. But if it’s fucking with my sense of smell I’m smart enough to know that’s in an organ that mankind didn’t even understand before all this world-weary end of days shit. I’m gonna die, and maybe it’s gonna be sudden and maybe it’s not. But now that I got a good reason to stay the high and highwaters away from you. So you won’t get to poke and prod and pick at me. . .your favorite subject in school.” Roche spat on the ground, dropped his cigarette into the glob of phlegm and stomped it out.

Weaving’s face had become something grim and sad. He might not get his plaything and he knew it. “I can help you, Mr. Roche. I am a trained surgeon. Wherever the growth is-”

“Save it. I ain’t letting the likes of you anywhere near my gray matter. Enjoy this trip, Doctor. When this is over I’m putting a bullet through those teeth and watching you bleed out quick.” Roche swept his coat out and turned to walk back to Lucky. The soldiers were mounting up and the caravan was about to get moving again.

“If I die you’ll never find her. If I don’t want you to, you’ll never find her.” He said with some finality.

“I don’t doubt that. Which is why you get to live just long enough, my friend.” Roche cussed. The walker swung a leg over his horse and trotted off. He didn’t look, but he could hear the scuffle as soldiers dragged the Doctor back onto the truck to keep moving.