The Savage Boy

21



“WALK WITH ME.”

The command was simple, direct. the Boy saw her silhouette in the door to his hut by the half-light of early morning.

Outside, the Boy is wrapped in his bearskin and the sky is little more than cold iron. The village was quiet, as small wavelets drove against the sandy shore, slapping at the side of the old bomber.

When they were at the far end of the beach, nearing a series of slate gray rocks that fell into the waters of the lake, the Rock Star turned to him.

“I don’t know you. I suspect, though, you’re a man without a tribe.” She let the sentence hang.

The Boy remained silent.

Good. Let people assume things, Boy.

“But you were passing to the west when the hunters found you,” continues the Rock Star.

She paused to consider that for a moment.

“I imagine you want to continue west. But you can’t. Ain’t nothing there but Chinese now. You keep up that old highway and you’ll come to a big Chinese settlement in the foothills the other side of the pass.”

She picked up stones, flat and slate blue from the beach.

“Bad for you if you were thinking that was good. Chinese been trying to clear out the tribes. They took on one or two in the last few years and won pretty easily. They got the Hillmen working for them. But the Hillmen weren’t never no real tribe. And the tribes the Chinese wiped out were little more’n scavengers anyway.”

She seemed to want to throw a stone into the water, but the act of skipping it seemed something she knew was beyond her ability and strength.

“Now they—the Chinese, that is—have gone and stirred up a nest of hornets.”

The Rock Star looked at the Boy directly, staring hard up into his face, searching for something.

“That man you killed in fair challenge was my war leader. He was an idiot, but as they say, he was my idiot. In the next day, we got to start out despite this last winter storm that’s workin’ itself up to be something. The tribes, far down the range, almost even to the old Three ninety-five, are gathering. A big war leader is readyin’ hisself to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen.”

She took a deep breath.

“The headman called for me and mine to come. Wants my power.”

She turned back to the lake. Whitecaps were forming beyond the bay.

“I’ve danced with the dark one in the dead of night. My power has watched over this people since the Before. My power will slaughter the Chinamen. My power has stood against zombies and vampires and all the serial killers of Before. I was a powerful rock star in them days.”

She dropped the stones back onto the beach.

“So if you’re a spy, you know our plans. No good it’ll do you, though. So you’ll ride with us and know my hunters carry the poison. My poison is powerful. But my poison is not for you, see. My poison is for your horse. Ah, I see Bear Killer. I know’d the horse is a friend to you. So, you don’t step to my call to fetch and be my war leader, it’s the horse that gets it.”

She sighed heavily in the wind.

“That’s the way it be. Now take my arm and walk me back to the village, Bear Killer. And of a morning here shortly, we’ll ride to the hidden valley and rave with the tribes at the great lodge. And when the tribes go to lay a smackdown on the Chinamen, you’ll be my war leader and then you’ll see my power. I’m keeper of them bombs, never forget that. I’ll send the world back into darkness as I done the first time.”

She held out her arm.

After a moment, the Boy took it.

The wind came up and his ears burned. But not from the cold.

That’s right, Boy. I said involved.