peace unless I have an answer to it.
Yes, but you could go back to the village. Do you need the answer bad enough to lose your life?
He didn’t answer himself and instead walked for a long time that morning and into the afternoon. He passed road signs that had not blown down but had been scoured clean by violent sandstorms. The remains of a gas station were his home for the night. It had been looted, and when he checked the tanks they were bone dry. This caused him to wonder.
Gasoline has other uses than just to run cars.
At twilight he ate a packet of spaghetti and meatballs from the third MRE. He ate pound cake for dessert.
You are making a pig of yourself. You won’t be used to having less.
In the night, after the fire died, he heard something in the bushes outside the station. He lay still and after a few moments it was gone.
In the morning he ate a light breakfast and drank some instant cocoa from the MRE. The morning air smelled like rain, though there were only a few clouds to the south.
The blue desert sky was wide and the land a flat brown. He could see for thirty to fifty miles at a time. On the far horizon, dark mountain ranges cut jagged borders against the sky. He knew it was time for the monsoons and that when they came it would be very dangerous on the desert floor. A flash flood could come upon him from out of nowhere.
I should stay out of gullies and ravines. Also, don’t sleep in dry riverbeds.
At noon he caught two more rattlesnakes on the road and carried them along for another few hours. He would roast them over the fire at dusk.
By now he could see Picacho Peak in the distance. Between lay the burned remains of another small gas station city off to the left-hand side of the highway and a wild pecan orchard on the right.
Chapter 21
Himbradda led his small band down through the Sonoran Desert plains, skirting its eastern edge. They were many days ahead of the main body of the People. The People were returning to Picacho Peak to start their ceremonies again. The Professor had ordered the People to return to their most sacred place. Picacho Peak. So Himbradda had been sent ahead. To see if the Dragon still lived there.
Himbradda was very afraid, had always been afraid. The woman that delivered him into the world didn’t even know she was pregnant until he appeared nine months after she had been raped one morning, as the People grazed on wild beans and desert peyote. She lay under the hot morning sun, being raped in the rough yellow grass as she had been many times before and many times after.
When Himbradda arrived she carried him with her. Because of his withered left arm, he was accepted as part of the People and followed in the wake of their wanderings. He was fed on wild beans, pecans, uncooked coyote, and sometimes the warriors’ peyote. He even tasted the meat of other children, perfect unblemished children. Children not of the People. Once those children reached the bottom of the drop below Picacho Peak, then all of the People could take what could be grabbed and torn away.
Himbradda had been raped and he had raped. He had been hit and he had hit. He had been beaten and he had beaten. If he had known how to count, the number twenty would have represented the number of children he had begotten, the number thirty-two for the amount of people he had killed, and the number fifteen for how old he was.
Regardless of his withered left arm and crooked teeth, he was almost beautiful. He had a strong build and a taut hulking physique. Long hair hung over one of his green eyes. His good arm rippled with muscles at the biceps, triceps, and forearm. In his good hand he carried, dragging mostly by the long iron bar, a parking meter that had been taken from the hot ruins of Phoenix. Most of the thirty-two dead had met the parking meter.
Nu-ah, who dragged himself everywhere because of the missing legs he’d never known, eased down from his watch-place atop the tall sign that still read
Yes, but you could go back to the village. Do you need the answer bad enough to lose your life?
He didn’t answer himself and instead walked for a long time that morning and into the afternoon. He passed road signs that had not blown down but had been scoured clean by violent sandstorms. The remains of a gas station were his home for the night. It had been looted, and when he checked the tanks they were bone dry. This caused him to wonder.
Gasoline has other uses than just to run cars.
At twilight he ate a packet of spaghetti and meatballs from the third MRE. He ate pound cake for dessert.
You are making a pig of yourself. You won’t be used to having less.
In the night, after the fire died, he heard something in the bushes outside the station. He lay still and after a few moments it was gone.
In the morning he ate a light breakfast and drank some instant cocoa from the MRE. The morning air smelled like rain, though there were only a few clouds to the south.
The blue desert sky was wide and the land a flat brown. He could see for thirty to fifty miles at a time. On the far horizon, dark mountain ranges cut jagged borders against the sky. He knew it was time for the monsoons and that when they came it would be very dangerous on the desert floor. A flash flood could come upon him from out of nowhere.
I should stay out of gullies and ravines. Also, don’t sleep in dry riverbeds.
At noon he caught two more rattlesnakes on the road and carried them along for another few hours. He would roast them over the fire at dusk.
By now he could see Picacho Peak in the distance. Between lay the burned remains of another small gas station city off to the left-hand side of the highway and a wild pecan orchard on the right.
Chapter 21
Himbradda led his small band down through the Sonoran Desert plains, skirting its eastern edge. They were many days ahead of the main body of the People. The People were returning to Picacho Peak to start their ceremonies again. The Professor had ordered the People to return to their most sacred place. Picacho Peak. So Himbradda had been sent ahead. To see if the Dragon still lived there.
Himbradda was very afraid, had always been afraid. The woman that delivered him into the world didn’t even know she was pregnant until he appeared nine months after she had been raped one morning, as the People grazed on wild beans and desert peyote. She lay under the hot morning sun, being raped in the rough yellow grass as she had been many times before and many times after.
When Himbradda arrived she carried him with her. Because of his withered left arm, he was accepted as part of the People and followed in the wake of their wanderings. He was fed on wild beans, pecans, uncooked coyote, and sometimes the warriors’ peyote. He even tasted the meat of other children, perfect unblemished children. Children not of the People. Once those children reached the bottom of the drop below Picacho Peak, then all of the People could take what could be grabbed and torn away.
Himbradda had been raped and he had raped. He had been hit and he had hit. He had been beaten and he had beaten. If he had known how to count, the number twenty would have represented the number of children he had begotten, the number thirty-two for the amount of people he had killed, and the number fifteen for how old he was.
Regardless of his withered left arm and crooked teeth, he was almost beautiful. He had a strong build and a taut hulking physique. Long hair hung over one of his green eyes. His good arm rippled with muscles at the biceps, triceps, and forearm. In his good hand he carried, dragging mostly by the long iron bar, a parking meter that had been taken from the hot ruins of Phoenix. Most of the thirty-two dead had met the parking meter.
Nu-ah, who dragged himself everywhere because of the missing legs he’d never known, eased down from his watch-place atop the tall sign that still read
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