"You think maybe there's some people in a city somewhere, with bright lights and drug stores, lots of people?"

"And movies and television and stupid music, that's what you want, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, there's a city like that somewhere, ain't there?"

"Isn't there, not ain't there." He stared at her appraisingly. She was a clod, but even a clod, he supposed, could feel sadness and regret for all the lost, familiar things. On a low level, of course. Tossing the drumstick bone into the fire he said, "Why not face facts? There's no city like that."

For days they climbed further into the mountains. On the eighth day they followed a narrow path between pines along a ridge and into a group of weathered houses little more than shacks. A store and a gas station dominated the single street. In the store they found some cans of vegetables and dried packs of cigarettes. A small radio sat on a shelf behind a counter; the Earth Mother switched it on, listened, then turned it off. Smoking a very dry cigarette, Markel stood on the porch, looking down the street.

Suddenly he unslung the M-1, dropped to one knee, and fired. A man in black lurched from the doorway of a shack, took two steps forward, then sagged to his knees. Markel fired again and the man fell face forward in the dust.

Markel walked to the man. It was not Rocky. This was an old man with white hair and whiskers. He wore a black shirt and ragged overalls and he was gaunt. He looked at Markel with surprise and reproach in his eyes; then he died.

"I thought it was Rocky," said the Earth Mother.

"No," said Markel, covering the man's face.

In a shed behind one of the shacks he found a pick and shovel, with which he dug a grave. It took him most of the afternoon in the hot sun. Then he buried the old man, rolling him into the grave with the pick handle.

"We're going back," he said, walking to where the Earth Mother sat on the steps of the store.

"Where? What for?"

"Back to the ledge, to wait for Rocky. We can't spend the rest of our lives running from him, and wasting ammunition on every man wearing black."

They went back then to the waterfall, where Markel could command a slope on three sides and where the cliff protected his back. 

 Prev. P 15/25 next