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A few minutes later, we were all basking in the warm glow of a bonfire. I held Anna’s hand, sitting on the ground, as both Makara and Samuel spoke to Marcus.
“It’s going to take them a while to go through everything,” I said.
Anna said nothing, merely watching the fire.
A stout, muscled man sat next to me. He had a scraggly black beard that went down to his chest. His weathered face was pockmarked with scars, and the skin of his hands seemed more like leather than flesh.
Even though the man was a little intimidating, I decided to initiate a conversation.
“What’s your name?”
“Harold,” he said, in a deep, raspy voice.
“How long have you been an Exile?”
“None of us are here because we chose to be. It’s Char that keeps us here.”
Around the fire, other heads nodded.
“So, you all hate Char?”
“He was in the wrong,” another Exile said from across the fire. “He kept us from passing Raider Bluff. Any who tried, he killed.”
“Can you remind me what happened again?” Anna asked. “You said there was a disagreement a long time ago. What was it about?”
The Exile who had just spoken stared at Anna balefully. The fire gave his dark eyes a devilish gleam. All the same, Anna did not look away.
“You’re about to see it, girl. You might not know this, but there was another city, on the opposite shore of the Colorado. Rivertown, they called it. It was a peaceful city. In the old days, Bluff and Rivertown would help each other. Then, the Raiders took over. Bluff became Raider Bluff. The old ones remember those times.”
The man stopped speaking. Everyone was listening now – Makara, Samuel, and Marcus included.
“Nathan was there from the beginning,” Harold said.
Nathan, the man who had been telling the story, nodded. “Aye, I was there. My wife lived in Rivertown. She died, that day, twelve years ago.”
“When the dam broke?”
Nathan scowled. “It didn’t break on its own, kid. Your friend Char broke it. Marcus was the only one with the guts to stand up to him.” Nathan shook his head. “Even when we backed up Marcus, Char wouldn’t listen. He was hungry for power, and he did not care who died in order to get it.”
“That’s not the Char I know,” Anna said.
Nathan stared hard at Anna. “You are still a child. You are too young to know anything.”
Anna’s face burned. She was about to speak again, but I held her arm. She kept her mouth shut.
“Maybe Char is different, now,” Nathan said. “But at the time, he was not. One night, in the Bounty, Marcus and Char fought. The entire bar was cleared to the edges of the room. They did not hold back – any weapon they found, they used. Then, Marcus won the upper hand, throwing his brother in the fire. Char landed face-first, earning the wounds that will mark him for the rest of his life as a sign of his sin.”
I watched the fire in front of me, probably not too different from the one that had burned twelve years ago. I wondered what Char’s side of the story was. I wondered, with twelve years of resentment burning, how it would be possible for everyone to work together.
“What happened after the fight?” I asked.
Nathan shrugged. “So began our exile. There was fighting in the streets, between Char and Marcus, and those who supported Marcus. But we could not win. I fought for my wife, who had lived in Rivertown before it was flooded. Violence was the new code, those days – and it all changed when the first Alpha took over – a man by the name of Victor.” Nathan paused. “I hear he is dead, now.”
“This Victor,” Anna said. “You are saying he changed Raider Bluff from a place of peace to a place of violence?”
Nathan nodded. “This was in 2048. Food was scarce, and some tough decisions had to be made. Victor decided that violence was the best means by which to attain food – from other settlements, mostly. This included Rivertown. This was before the farms, before the slaves.”
“Now, all of that is gone,” I said.
“Aye,” Nathan said. “It is. Raider Bluff was an evil place. It only became more corrupt as the years passed. It infects anyone who lives there long enough. You either become a violent barbarian, or you are crushed, subjugated into slavery, or worse.” Nathan sighed, long and tired. “When the dam finally did break, no one in Rivertown was safe. Those who survived had nowhere to go when the waters rose – nowhere to go but Raider Bluff. There, they became slaves, forced to work the farms outside the city.”
Nathan said nothing about his wife, having already said it earlier. She had died. I didn’t doubt his story. I didn’t like it, though, only because it complicated things. Char was supposed to be our main ally. And yet, he had done something horrible. He had killed innocent people for his own personal gain.
Somehow, we had to get these two disparate groups working together – Exile and Raider. Only, the Exiles were right. They had been the ones forced to wander for twelve years, eking out an existence in the most desolate part of the Wasteland. The Boundless would have long killed off other men, and it had probably killed off many Exiles over the years. I remember Marcus mentioning working for the Empire, when we had met them on our way to Bunker One. Maybe that was how they got by.
Though the Exiles were right, the Raiders were more numerous. We needed their help. More than anything, we needed Char and Marcus to reconcile. But when there was so much hatred, was it even possible?
I looked at Makara, who now spoke to Marcus in a low voice. It all now rested on the shoulders of this nineteen-year-old girl. It amazed me, what circumstances could do to a person. Makara had stepped into a leadership role seamlessly. If there was anyone who could get the Raiders and the Exiles to start thinking of themselves as New Angels, it was her.
But first, we had to find Char and the Raiders.
“Hopefully, the Raiders are in Vegas,” I said.
From beside me, Harold spoke.
“If they are, there will be blood.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Did you not hear the story? You are either for us, or for them.” He turned to me. “Who are you with?”
“We still need to hear Char’s side of things.”
Harold shook his head, standing up to walk away from the fire. Yeah, I had offended him. But I couldn’t tie my loyalty down to one group over the other. Not until I had heard everything.
Marcus stood, along with Makara and Samuel. I focused my attention on their conversation.
“I will speak with Char, but no more than that,” Marcus said. “He did something unforgivable. I will never let him go free from his crimes.”
“Even if it means the survival of the Wasteland?” Makara asked.
“Kid, there is something you must learn about being a leader,” Marcus said. “You can’t just do whatever you want. You have to have a moral compass. If you compromise with my brother – if you let him off the hook for what he has done – you place yourself in the same category he is in.”
Makara said nothing, merely staring hard into Marcus’s eyes. It was rare to see Makara rendered speechless, but it was clear that Marcus’s words had affected her.
“Char is like a father to me,” she said. “To think he would have done something like that is almost unthinkable, even if it was twelve years ago. Of course, I have heard of Rivertown before. Every Raider has. I just didn’t know all the details. I will have to talk to him about it.”
Marcus nodded. “See that you do. You must be unyielding. Don’t give him any slack because you think of him as a father. In fact, demand even more of him. If he is worthy of the name of father, then he might think twice about what he has done.”
“It could be that he has regretted it all these years,” Makara said.
“I think not,” Marcus said. “Wouldn’t he have found us, if that was true?”
“Char has a lot of pride,” Makara said, looking at Marcus. “Kind of like someone else I know.”
“Humph.” Marcus folded his arms, turning to stare at the crackling fire. The orange light reflected off his blue eyes. I couldn’t help but think of the rage that burned within him.
“We will see. But mark my words about leading, Makara. You must remain true to yourself and to your conscience. Otherwise, the only way you can possibly rule is by fear. And by doing that, you make yourself no better than Char, or Augustus, or Ohlan, for that matter. You say you want the New Angels to be like they were in the days of Raine.” Marcus turned back from the fire, and looked at Makara. “Ask yourself what Raine would do, and let that be your guide.”
“I have asked myself that question every day for the past three years,” Makara said.
“It is well, then.” Something in his tone signaled that the conversation was over. He looked at the ship. “Hard to believe, that such an artifact of the Old World still remains. I hope it will be enough to stop it.”
By “stop it,” I knew Marcus meant the xenovirus. Now, he knew everything we did. But would that knowledge be enough to get him to work with us, when it meant Char was going to work with us, too?
“We have a long day tomorrow,” Marcus said. “We will be passing a site of great sorrow for all of us.”
The men around the fire nodded, and it took me a moment to realize what they were talking about. To get to Vegas, we would have to pass through where Hoover Dam had once stood. It was all river, now, but apparently there was still some way to cross over.
I felt afraid, for a moment. With the Exiles and the Raiders enemies, we had to get our own house in order before approaching the Lords of Vegas. Yet there was no time for that. We just had to hope for the best.
And hope, in this world, was rarely enough.
***
WE ARRIVED AT THE CROSSING around mid-afternoon. The sight took my breath away. We had parked Odin, and now all stood on the edge of the canyon, looking down into the great chasm. Hundreds of feet below, the Colorado River churned angry and cold. Intermixed with the rock and water were the ruins of the massive explosion of twelve years past – large chunks of concrete, turbines, and metal, that were piled so thick so as to form a dam of their own. But the water flowed through, white, frothy, violent. The dam had long been conquered, and it was likely that the force of the water being released twelve years ago had pushed most of it downriver.
At points along the cliff edge, the sides had collapsed. This would have happened because the enormous force of water would have blasted away the canyon’s lower walls, leaving nothing to support the canyon’s upper reaches. This had another effect – the giant bridge that had once spanned the canyon now lay at the bottom of the gorge –broken, twisted, and useless. It was amazing what the people of the Old World had been able to construct. It was even more amazing how fast these intricately designed feats of engineering could be destroyed.
To the north, where Lake Mead once spread, was a great, empty basin, dry, cracked, and lifeless. It wasn’t only the cities downriver that the emptying of Lake Mead and the destruction of Hoover Dam had affected. Surely, that large lake had also been Vegas’s main source of water, even Post-Ragnarok – and without it, I couldn’t see how they survived, twelve years after the destruction of the dam.
“There’s the path down to the rapids,” Marcus said, pointing. “It leads to the bridge.”
At first, I couldn’t see what Marcus was talking about. Then, I saw it – a thin, crude bridge made from rope and planks that stretched across the river precariously. Below, the water of the mighty Colorado churned between rocks and ruins. If anyone were to slip and fall through one of the many gaps of that swinging bridge, it was sure death. At the far end stood two shapes, bearing rifles. Guards, most likely.
“Our bikes can’t cross,” Marcus said. “We’ll have to use Odin. Take a few at a time, so as not to overburden it.”
“Why can’t we do that now?” I asked.
“We have to talk to them, first,” Marcus said, pointing to the guards. “They need to know who we are and why we’re here. Otherwise, there’ll be trouble.”
“Marcus, Alex, and I will go down there,” Makara said, turning around to face the others. The rest of you, see to loading a few of the bikes into Odin’s galley. We’ll do six at a time.”
Makara turned back to me, her hair caught in the wind. I didn’t know why she had asked me to accompany her. I put a hand on my Beretta, ready to help keep both her and Marcus secure, should the need arise.
“Let’s go,” Marcus said.
We marched down a trail that snaked down the cliff’s side. It was clear from the many rocks covering the trail that not too many people came from this side of the desert, which made sense, because no one really lived on this side. The guards would surely be surprised once they saw us, if they hadn’t spotted us already.
As we neared the gorge bottom, its either side lined with red rock, the ferocity of the river became even more apparent. For so many years, all this water had been locked behind Hoover Dam. Just seeing the ruin of the dam, both up and downriver, made me wonder just what kind of force could have done this.
“Was the bomb nuclear?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “It was powerful, so that could have been the case. They also could have used a lot of high-grade explosives. The U.S. developed some very dangerous toys during the Dark Decade. There are several military bases nearby. By now, I’m sure they are stripped clean, but at the time, maybe my brother had managed to find something there.”
Makara said nothing, setting a quick pace down the trail. At last, we stood before the beginning of the bridge. On this side, the bridge was anchored to a piece of rock with a set of thick metal stakes. One of the guards held a rifle in one hand, and raised the other to indicate that we should remain where we were. Then the guard holstered the weapon on his back and began his long, torturous journey across the bridge to meet us. The bridge looked so fragile that it might snap at any moment.
When the man reached the middle, the very bottom of the bridge sagged so low that it was only a few feet above the raging river. A metallic turbine jutted from the water, reaching for the man’s leg. The man passed on, unworried. He had probably made this trip many times before. Finally, his speed increased as he came to the tauter section of the bridge. The shabby wooden planks now bore his weight rather than giving in to his step.
He exited the bridge, and now stood on the edge of the cliff. Up until now, I had not paid attention to his face. The man had a thick, black beard, coppery skin, and thick muscles. But I’d recognize that face anywhere, and when I saw who it was, it knocked the very wind out of me. It was a man I had believed dead three months, and it took me a moment to feel like I wasn’t staring at a ghost.
The man smiled as he looked at me. Unbelieving, he broke into a wide smile.
“Holy...!” The man shouted. “Alex! Alex Keener!”
I shook my head, walking forward to greet the man. We clasped arms; he drew me into a bear hug, nearly crushing me with its ferocity.
It was Michael Sanchez. He had survived Bunker 108.