Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

An hour into a muggy, humid morning, they picked up on the ribboned remains of what rusting green signs told them had once been old I-64. Now it was a faded patchwork of broken slabs and undulating sections of concrete, overgrown with full trees a hundred feet high in places. But there were weaving tracks along it, showing that motorized transport still used the highway.

 

And it showed them the way west to Memphis.

 

In several places there was stark evidence that this region of Deathlands had been badly hit by the earthquakes and major geographical changes that had altered the face of the United States of America and turned it into the new world of Deathlands. The road disappeared under rolling hillsides and lakes spread across its original route. Twice the highway vanished completely in a clean, savage cut and suddenly reappeared up to half a mile away in either direction.

 

In each case a rutted trail showed that the wags had carried on around all of the skydark obstacles.

 

 

 

"GUESS OLD-TIMERS wouldn't be able to recognize very much of this," Ryan said as they paused by a stream to refresh themselves.

 

They'd been walking steadily for about three hours and covered, at Ryan's guestimate, close to thirteen miles, and they hadn't seen a living soul.

 

Doc lay back and fanned himself with his swallow's-eye kerchief, wafting away a cloud of tiny midges that seemed attracted to the rivulets of sweat that settled in the crevices of his cheeks. "I don't believe that there's much in this tired land that 'old-timers' would recognize, young fellow," he agreed. "Mighty little."

 

"Where's this lift that you said we were going to pick up, Mildred?" Krysty asked. "I'm kind of interested in Elvis's home, but to walk two hundred miles through this heat and damp I'm getting less keen."

 

Mildred stood and stretched, looking around at the yellow fields around them and the strip of tarmac that wobbled away to east and west. "Well, now, like my pa said, you have to pray before you can get your prayers answered. Maybe he was right."

 

She was pointing to the east, behind them, where they could all now see a faint smudge of dust on the horizon.

 

Ryan uncoiled with the grace of a sidewinder, unslinging the Steyr. "Anyone make it out?"

 

Krysty had about the best day sight, and she stood frozen for several seconds. "Five or six wags. Trucks. Some kind of convoy, coming slow and easy this way."

 

"Could be what we want. Or it could be some serious firefight material. Everyone take cover, condition triple-red, and we'll see what we see. Move it."

 

Everyone hustled away from the center of the highway, looking for concealment among the ridges and rises.

 

Ryan was last to move, staring at the cloud of dust, the rifle cradled at his hip, finger through the guard, wondering what the next half hour would bring.

 

Good or bad?

 

 

 

THE WAG JOLTED AND ROLLED as though the suspension had last been checked a couple of weeks into the long winters. The engine labored, often missing and choking.

 

Mike Sullivan was a jovial, sweating, red-faced man, head of the convoy of five trucks that was shipping grain from a large farm in eastern Kentucky, heading southwest all the way to what remained of the metropolis of Memphis.

 

He'd been more than happy to pick up the six heavily armed strangers, spreading them in pairs among his vehicles.

 

"Nobody robs grain wags," he said in a high-pitched giggle. "We got us blasters, as well, and I reckon there'd be more blood spilled than profit made."

 

"You going all the way into town?" Ryan asked.

 

"Nope. Do business with the countess, little way this side of the big ville."

 

"Countess?" Krysty clung to the edge of the seat, balancing against the reeling movement of the wag.

 

"Sure. Countess Katya. Runs her own ville tight as a tick's ass. Mighty powerful, handsome woman. Got herself through at least three husbands and the Lord knows how many 'friends.' Each time she walks away stronger than ever, and they mostly end up buying themselves a six-foot plot."

 

"Never heard of her." Ryan glanced behind, making sure the others were still following in line. He could see Mildred and J.B. perched on the high front of a nameless rebuilt wag just a dozen yards back, its rear brimming with golden grain. And there was the shock of Jak's white hair, with Doc alongside him on the third vehicle in line.

 

"You'll get to meet her. Everyone passes through Memphis gets to meet the countess. She got some triple-odd people around her. Not a woman to cross, if you take my meaning."

 

 

 

THEY STOPPED for the evening by a looping waterway. Sullivan told them that it was called the New River, since it had appeared out from nowhere some time after the ending of the long winters.

 

"Good drinking," he said. "One thing you can rely on." He slapped the side of his engine, ticking as it cooled. "Like a John Deere engine."

 

"How do you do for gas?"

 

The farmer looked at Ryan. "I do what I can. Quality gets worse as the processing plants fall apart. But there's still places. Long as you know where to look for it and you got the pocketful of jack to pay them for it. We tow it in the pair of bowsers at the back of the last two wags in line. That's more of a risk from cold-hearts than the grain."

 

 

 

SULLIVAN HAD TWENTY good men working with him, with a couple of hard-faced women to do the cooking and washing. Everyone was related to everyone else and all came from the same farming ville, speaking rarely in the soft Kentucky twang.

 

Sentries were posted for the night camp, and the offer from Ryan to let them share the guard was gently but firmly refused. It was done with a generous good nature, but Ryan would have done the same thing if he'd been in the farmer's place. You didn't just up and trust armed outlanders to the extent of letting them watch over you while you slept.

 

It was a good night, and Ryan slept dreamlessly, waking with the freshness of dawn dew on his sleeping bag, lying alongside Krysty, appreciating a magnificent golden sunrise that spilled all across Tennessee.

 

"We reach Memphis today?" he asked, seeing Sullivan toweling water from his gingery hair as he walked by toward one of the cooking fires.

 

"No. Some rough track to come, where the land shift was worse. Stop off at Country Row for the night. Make the ville by noon tomorrow."

 

"What's that?"

 

"Oddball little ville. Tell you about it over bacon and biscuits. Time you folks was up and doing. We'll be hitting the highway within the hour."

 

 

 

THE FARMER ELABORATED as they sat around snatching the relics of breakfast, while the taciturn women waited to clear away their plates and get them washed and stacked. Engines were coughing into life on the grain carriers, turning the air blue-gray with their thick fumes.

 

"Country Row's one of them places that got born and popular just because it was there. Nukes didn't leave much of Nashville, and what was left kind of fell apart. But in these parts everyone still loves country music, so folks wanted a focus. A place to hear the beating heart. Touch the soul of old America. About ten years ago a guy called Wolfram came and opened up Country Row. Filled it with costumes and guitars and all kinds of stuff he swore was genuine. Waxworks. Records. Memorabilia"

 

"Wolfram?" Ryan said. "There's a name you keep stumbling across. He still there? Be good to finally catch up with him after all we've been hearing over the years."

 

"Long gone. But place is thriving. It's kind of become its own myth."

 

"Sounds fun," Mildred said.

 

Sullivan looked sideways at her, hesitating. "Fact is, ma'am, and I don't want you to think we're prejudiced"

 

"But?"

 

He caught the note of instant anger in her voice and held up his work-hard hands. "Not me, lady. I don't give a flyin' fuck what color a person is or how they choose to worship their own gods. But that don't apply everywhere and for everyone around this neck of the woods."

 

"I've been dealing with redneck peckers ever since I was knee-high to a possum hound, Sullivan," Mildred snapped, lips a thin line of bitterness. "Few more won't make any odds."

 

"Country Row's a kind of redneck heaven, ma'am," one of the younger, freckled drivers said hesitantly. "Black folks keep clear and" he turned toward Jak, who was brushing out his long mane of snow-stark hair "long hair doesn't go well with them good old boys, neither. My advice might be for you to stay with the rigs for the night. We can put a real good watch on you so there's no trouble."

 

"That your advice, too, Mike?" Ryan asked. "Stand aside from the racists?"

 

"Easy and safe," the farmer mumbled, shuffling his scuffed boots in the roadside gravel.

 

Doc rapped the ferrule of the swordstick on the highway. "All it takes is for the decent people to stand aside when evil passes by."

 

J.B. had been polishing his glasses furiously, a sure sign that he was thinking deeply about a problem. "Let's lay this on the back burner," he said quietly. "Something we can tackle when we have to. Meanwhile, time's passing...."

 

 

 

THEY SAW MORE SIGNS of civilization as they made their slow way west, along the break-back remains of the highway, stopping twice to refuel from the bowsers.

 

There were little hamlets and isolated sodbusters' homes, shacks and shanties surrounded by a few miserable acres of windswept crops, dark-skinned faces peering from curtained doorways. Broken-down wags looked as if they'd been settled there on their broken axles since before skydark, and instant suspicion darkened every eye.

 

"Friendly," Jak said to their driver.

 

"You live close to the edge and you get friendly to strangers," he replied.

 

"If you only got a little, then you don't take to anyone got even the smallest tad more," added the shotgun guard, a one-armed, grizzled man riding on a high shelf seat behind Doc and the albino teenager.

 

"Truest words I ever heard," Doc said, nodding wisely. "That lies at the root of most of the world's evils over the last millennium."

 

 

 

A GAWKY BOY in faded coveralls, looking about eighteen with a melon-shaped head that lolled on narrow shoulders, came running from a ditch and threw a stone at Mike Sullivan, missing by inches. Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and would have blasted the kid off the broken highway, but the farmer laid a hand on his arm.

 

"Thanks, but no thanks," he said, raising his voice above the crackling rumble of the powerful old engine. "Won't make the world a better place, Ryan."

 

The blaster was holstered and Ryan felt the sting of the reproach, aware how easy it was to live by your own set of rules, forgetting that some people operated differently.

 

Chilling wasn't always the only answer.

 

 

 

AN INDICATION of the appalling way that the total nuking of a century earlier had altered the land was the bizarre sight of a series of five small volcanoes, ranged to the north of the highway. None was more than a thousand feet high, but all were sending out thin tendrils of pale gray smoke against the blue afternoon sky, streaking southward, carrying the taint of sulfur.

 

"Used to be the Chickasaw Rustic Park, so folks reckon," Sullivan said, gesturing with the stem of his corncob pipe toward the odd little line of volcanoes.

 

Ryan was standing, letting the wind blow through his black curly hair, stretching his legs, and he pointed ahead of them. "Smudge along yonder. That Country Row?"

 

"See the billboard on the right. Be able to read it when we get a mile closer. Tell you everything you want to know about Country Row."

 

 

 

GERT WOLFRAM INC. Presents Country Row. For Your Enrichment And Pleasure. Country At Its Best. Old And New, Borrowed And Blue Songs. All You Ever Heard And All You've Ever Wanted To See.

 

There followed a series of smaller boards, listing some of the attractions that were on offer in Country Row the car where Hank Williams had passed his last, lonely, dying hours; Dolly Parton's finest stage wardrobe, including her star-spangled underwear; Johnny Cash's guitar; Carl Perkins's blue suede shoes; Garth Brooks's top five Stetsons.

 

The list seemed endless and included displays of waxworks, living positronic-activated representations of some of the biggest and best.

 

Ryan recognized a lot of the names, but a number of them were obscure and meaningless.

 

Meanwhile, the smudge was growing closer and was resolving into a number of buildings. It was possible to make out a large rectangular block that Sullivan told them was the nerve center of Country Row, holding the main exhibitions. Clustered close around it were the bars and eateries, nearly all with country themes, with the tawdry glamor of sparkling lights twinkling around them in the fading evening dusk the Lone Star, Green Coyote, Guitar an' Pick, Golden Mouth Harp, Alamo, Merle and Earle, Eggs'n'stuff, Blue Bayou, Lonesome Eats.

 

There seemed an endless array.

 

Sullivan throttled back. "Remember that warning about the kind of boys drink and eat in Country Row, Ryan," he said. "Take it serious."

 

Ryan nodded. "Always take warnings serious."