The Zona Read online

  Lead shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted through fingers. Every attempt at vision was thwarted by grains of sand inevitably peppering his eyes. Lead waived his chair leg like a blind staff and continued short steps against the storm’s winds. Sand tore at his bare skin and scoured off much of the filth he’d carried from the Hall of Gluttons. His feet stubbed against rocks and cactus as he stumbled first without sense, then without direction.

  Lead pushed on against the storm. All sense cut away, he saw nothing, his ears filled with the ubiquitous howl of wind, he felt nothing but sand against his skin and rocks at his feet. Lead was alone.

  A dark image peered before him, a shelter against blinding sand, a black obelisk jutting from the earth. Lead knelt against object and cleared the grit from his eyes. It was a limousine, flung upside down and half-buried in earth.

  Lead leaned against the body and propped his back against black glass. Above him the sandy winds ebb and flowed. Lead put the hand against the window. It was warm and smooth in a way alien to his touch. He pressed his face against it but saw nothing through the heavy tint. Lead swung his chair leg, the window imploded and little shards of glass like rice scattered into the dark unknown.

  The air inside the limo hung thick with death, like a mausoleum. Velvet upholstery crumbled in Lead’s hands as he pulled himself into the shelter. At the back end of the limo, just visible at light’s edge, sat a body mummified by time.

  Lead crawled to the mummy. Its skin had converted to leather, snug against skull and hands. The mummy was clothed in a lavish business suit, dress shirt and a blue silk tie; all items Lead recognized from magazines he’d seen. It was the uniform of rich and important men, men of influence who had won and then lost the physical world.

  The corpse’s left hand was fused to a revolver. Tiny glass bottles littered the floor around the body. Lead touched the man’s cheek. The skin rasped like tree bark, the eyelids hung low over empty sockets. The back of the man’s skull was an absent and obvious victim of the revolver.

  “Why’d you swallow your muzzle?” Lead asked.

  He pulled the gun out of the man’s hands, fingers snapped and rolled and were lost in the compartment. The piece was a hulking .44 caliber, coated in rust and patina. Lead thumbed the hammer, but it was fused to the frame and would not budge. He laid down the gun down.

  “This car was yours. This gun was yours, why did you snuff your own light?”

  Lead turned from the corpse, the passenger compartment was lined was storage bins. Lead opened one and three water bottles fell out. Lead opened another and found bars of chocolate and bags of peanuts. Another compartment held tiny bottles of spirits, cans of soda, and more bottles of water. Lead’s heart raced; here was a bounty of food and water, sustenance to battle his rampant hunger and thirst. Lead piled his bounty in front of the corpse and bowed his head.

  “I thank you, and God thanks you. I pray that you are in Heaven, and that I may someday meet you and thank you for what you have left behind,”

  Lead greedily devoured the candy bars. He drank one of the bottles of water. Lead lay uncomfortably with a full stomach. The winds outside whistled through the shattered wind, grit sprayed across the opening. His eyes grew heavy and his mind drifted to dreams.

  When Lead woke, the wind was still whistling and a pool of sand had grown through the shattered window.

  “I have to go, sir,” Lead said to the corpse. “Please forgive me for what I’m about to do.”

  Lead took a deep breath and started stripping the clothes off the corpse.

  The suit jacket and pants hung on Lead’s body. Malnutrition gave him the look of a man succumbing to illness. Thankfully, a belt of fine, black leather was still attached to the pants. Lead pulled the belt tight and cut a hole with a collapsible corkscrew he’d found in the pants pocket. The corpse also wore ornate dress shoes, stiff and cracked with age and natural decomposition. Lead removed them carefully and slipped them over his bare feet. They fit, though the low cut and thin soles were not ideal for the desert.

  The corpse’s shirt was threadbare and stained. Lead tore off a sleeve and ripped it lengthwise to the cuff. He wrapped one end around the handle of the broken gun and covered the useless hammer and cylinder. He then threaded the neck tie through the trigger guard and tied the ends behind his neck, like a Van Cleef.

  Lead cut out a leather seat cover and used it to bundle the remaining food and water. He exited the shattered window and rose into the desert winds.

  The winds shifted, the sands settled. Night had fallen and the stars stretched out to infinity, tracing their slow spiral through the moonless sky. Despite his many and varied travels, Lead had never seen the evening sky so radiant. It felt to him as though God were reaching out with hands that comforted and yet proved conclusively what a diminutive and insubstantial creature man is.

  The limo stood alone, empty save the mummy and trash; an oddity in a world of rocks, cactus, and sand. Lead’s eyes traced the sky until he found the North Star, Jesus’ Star. Lead followed the orb, used it to orient himself. He traveled through the night desert, fearing no monsters or demons, his mind cleansed of doubt and fear.

  XIII. A nomad treks through life and shortly leaves thereafter

  Lead wondered through valleys and dunes. He stayed low, out of the sight line, avoiding the men and dogs of Purgatory he knew must be following.

  Lead trekked through dawn and dusk, always moving south. He sheltered in the daytime. Sometimes he slept under brush, though without fear of snakes or demons. Sometimes he slept in cars, though with no fear of the dead or their viruses.

  Lead had been purged. All the sin, all the fear, all the doubt in his mind had been burned asunder by the shit and grime and horror of Purgatory. God did not speak to him with voice, but he felt God’s hand control his fate. His unbalanced mind found causes and reasons. Why had he met Terence Wood? Why had he suddenly decided to stop killing, to betray the Church? How had he survived the Crusaders and cannibals and filth? Lead incurred the belief that he was God’s true soldier. That he was protected from on high and had come to deliver His will.

  God’s hand pressed itself in all he did. The early mornings and late afternoons were filled with divinities and shadows made clear in Lead’s addled mind. Lead traveled without fear. Things natural and old became to him an acknowledgment from God. Sunsets lit burning bushes. Boulders gave life to the faces of Moses, Jesus, Job, and the Apostles.

  Lead giggled to himself. He contemplated the necessity of signs. God did not need to give him a sign; his constant survival was his sign. His inability to die was Abraham’s Angel or the Immaculate Conception or the parted Red Sea.

  He ate all the candy and peanuts scavenged from the limo and his hunger drove him to capture bugs from under rocks. The fear of consuming poisonous venom and the sin of the desert’s mean creatures left his mind. At dawn of the third day he uncovered a rattle snake and crushed its head with a stone. He consumed the meat raw, without worry of illness.

  Lead’s face and hands turned crimson in the unshielded sunlight, but he did not feel them. He had long ago scoured the filth of the Hall of Gluttons from his skin with desert sand, though it did nothing to erase the musk of excrement and insanity that wafted from him.

  On the fourth dusk of his trek, Lead caught a smoke line in the distance. Lead crouched to the sand and stealthily crested the dune. A rag man sat shielding his meager fire from the wind; his skin was glowed yellow and sick in the fire’s light. Lead saw no markings of the Church, so he stood up and walked to the fire with hands raised. The rag man looked up at Lead.

  “Evening stranger, no chance of you sneaking up, I smelled you long ago. You are welcome none the less.”

  The rag man looked back to the fire.

  “Please join me, company is rare here.”

  Lead sat at the fire. The rag man’s face was as aged and tanned and wrinkled as a brown bag paper. The rag man pulled a dead lizard from his sleeve and skewer
ed it on a metal wire. He held the lizard over the fire.

  “Who are you?” Lead asked.

  “I should ask first. It is you at my fire,” the rag man replied. “You’re dressed strangely. You have what almost could be taken for a Preacher’s Van Cleef around your neck and you smell worse than any man, woman, or child I’ve ever encountered. So I ask you good sir, who are you?”

  “I am Lead.”

  “That’s it, just Lead? No grand story, nothing to explain yourself?” The man said.

  Lead thought for a moment. He gave gentle contemplation to the torrents and rage running wild in his mind. He looked to shapes shifting in the sand and the early stars smiling and realized the task of explaining himself was overwhelming.

  “No.” Lead replied.

  “At least you can tell me where the name came from. Last I remember mommas weren’t naming their babies Lead.” The man said.

  “It was my regiment name in the Church Guard,” Lead replied.

  “Well then that explains the Cleef. I don’t suppose you still preach with that shabby rig?”

  “I don’t preach anymore, I’m…” Lead contemplated again. “I’m a pilgrim, I guess.”

  The rag man smiled slyly. “Sure friend, you’re pilgrim, I’m a pilgrim, I think all us wanderers are pilgrims. Where is your pilgrimage to?”

  “New Pueblo,” Lead said.

  “Boy, I’m pretty sure that place doesn’t exist.”

  Lead spit in the sand. “I’m pretty sure it does,” he said.

  Lead let his finger drift to the handle of his Cleef. The rag man cleared his throat and shifted his seat.

  “I’m on my way to New Mexico, maybe Albuquerque if it’s still there,” the man said nervously.

  “I’ve heard there’s a lot of radiation zones out there, hot enough to kill a man pretty quick. You should consider New Pueblo,” Lead said.

  The prospect of a traveling companion excited him; to have someone to talk to, another human being to interact with instead of silence or the rustling of hidden animals and desert winds. He could share the light of God.

  “If it’s all the same to you friend, I’ll keep traveling my way,” the rag man said. “I don’t believe in radiation, anyway. All that nonsense about invisible beams killing you, government made it all up.”

  The rag man turned the lizard in the fire. The smell of sizzling meat was intoxicating to Lead.

  “No offense to your pilgrimage, I just plan to go my own way.”

  Lead was briefly disappointed, then he rationalized that it was God’s will to let the man pass.

  “Why are you leaving the Zona?” Lead asked.

  “Lots of reasons. Were I to pick only one, I reckon one large one in particular, it would be the fact that I’m a drinker. When I find spirits and alcohol I consume what I can. When a young man, I used to joke that I was just trying to kill the beast inside me. As an old man I recognize it as the truth. I got a beast in me that demands I drink, and there’s no fixing or distracting it.”

  Lead rationalized divinity again in his mind. He unraveled his car seat satchel and produced eight tiny liquor bottles. Lead held the bottles up to the fire’s light. The colored liquids radiated warmth. The rag man forgot his discomfort and drifted closer to Lead.

  “You truly are a holy man. I tell you my problems and you bring me the solution and more problems. If you don’t mind sharing your wealth, I don’t mind sharing my dinner.”

  The rag man’s eyes flashed eager in the fire light. He wet his lips with a brown tongue. Lead placed four bottles in the man’s palm. The rag man’s hands shock as he unscrewed the first bottle and held it up to Lead.

  “Cheers, brother pilgrim,” he said and swallowed the contents in one swig.

  The rag man closed his eyes and slowly shook his head in ecstasy. He held the now empty bottle over his heart.

  “Scotch whiskey. Scotch whiskey is the patient man’s reward. It tastes silkier with age, and I tell you pilgrim, this little bottle has aged.”

  The rag man licked his lips again. He opened his eyes and gestured to Lead.

  “Please, I don’t want to drink alone. Have a drink with me. It will stoke your appetite.”

  The rag man motioned for Lead to drink. Lead unscrewed a bottle and sipped the contents. Instantly, his mouth and tongue burned, Lead coughed and his eyes watered. The liquid spread warmth throughout his limbs but left the tasted of burnt toast on his tongue.

  “That was not silky,” he croaked.

  The rag man laughed and downed another bottle.

  Lead steeled himself and drank the rest of the bottle. His body shook and more warmth spread to his chest and stomach.

  “Where’d you find such goods?” The rag man asked; he sipped his next bottle of gingerly, savoring the taste.

  “A big car. A limo, I think.”

  Lead pulled the word “limo” from his childhood.

  “A few days back I found a limo, these were inside.”

  Lead’s words were somehow heavier and harder to get out of his mouth.

  “That makes you lucky, these have value,” the rag man said.

  Lead grabbed another bottle. The label showed a man in a dapper suit, much like the mummy from the limo. Lead twisted off the cap. The liquid smelled distinctly of juniper berries and fluids used to clean metal. Lead drank the liquid and steeled himself again for the bitterness and inevitable shakes. The rag man watched Lead with open amusement.

  “I’m guessing this is your first time drinking?” He asked.

  Lead nodded his head; he did not trust his mouth to speak properly.

  “Well that was gin. I’m not a gin man, but if memories serves, that was a good brand you just drank.”

  Lead ran his tongue across his lips. His mouth had grown numb. The rag man pulled the burnt lizard from the fire and cut strips of meat off with a rust speckled kitchen knife. He handed Lead three of the greasy strips.

  “Hope you don’t mind eating with your hands,” the rag man said.

  Lead devoured the charred meat. It tasted better than anything he had ever eaten.

  “Sss good food,” Lead said, his words slurred together.

  He finished his food and reclined in the sand.

  The rag man licked grease from his palm and fingers.

  “I got another good reason for leaving the Zona, if you want to hear it,” the rag man said.

  Lead lifted his head off the sand; he had been drifting into dreams. He smiled and nodded at the rag man, the hot food and intoxicants made him cheerful.

  “This place is fucked, that’s why. I’ve been in Arizona my whole life and this place has always been fucked.”

  The rag man nodded his head as though agreeing with himself.

  “Storms come in and kill men, viruses come in and kill men, and after all that, man goes and blames himself for all those deaths. There ain’t a lot of people living and breathing but we go around murdering each other just the same. I’ve never known or heard of a time when man wasn’t committed to one war or the other. That’s fucked.”

  The man nodded to himself again.

  “I don’t care if New Mexico or Nevada are nuclear hot zones, or if Utah is a haven of murderers and bandits, or if California is flooded, ravaged and a breeding ground for the new and particular diseases. The Zona is fucked and I’m leaving it.”

  The man stirred his fire with his meat skewer. Sparks drifted up into the night sky.

  Lead nodded again. His mind swam in liquor, his eyes drifted back to the stars.

  Lead woke alone next to the cold ashes of the campfire. The rag man had left in the night, after Lead had fallen asleep. Lead slept through the morning into the late afternoon. The sun shone bright and dangerous. Lead’s face and hands were coated in sweat and sand. He searched the camp site for his belongings. The rag man had stolen his leather satchel with all his liquor and water bottles. Lead searched for a foot trail but the shifting sands had covered the passage of all men and beasts t
hrough the night. Lead took shelter from the sun in the shade of sage brush. He accepted the loss of his goods as God’s punishment for drinking. When the sun dipped low enough, Lead left the camp and continued south.

  XIV. An account of Lead’s second visit to Tucson and the violence done therein

  Lead stumbled upon the outskirts of Tucson at the dawn of his sixth day out of Purgatory. As before, the dilapidated structures were alive with the shifting and shuffling of lepers and virals. Lead walked down a street of dirt and blacktop rubble kept clean and pressed by the constant influx of hooves, wheels and feet. He arrived back at the church that had briefly housed the ex-Preachers. Lead stared hard at deformed faces peering out of windows and doorways.

  “Bring me Reverend Greek.” Lead demanded to the invisible crowd. He hefted the broken .44 and shook it.

  “Tell him Lead is here and has goods to barter for food and water.”

  A man with half a face exited a building. Lead recognized the twisted man from his last visit to Tucson.

  “The Reverend thought you may be returning, please follow me, quickly.” The twisted man sprinted into an alley between the church and another building. Lead ran after the man, ducking clothes lines and weaving around trash heaps to keep up. They left the populated part of the city and went into an area long ago reduced to rubble and black char. The Reverend sat at a plastic lawn table, sipping tea. Lead caught up to the twisted man and stopped, heaving at the effort of running so fast.

  “Welcome back, Preacher. I’m sorry that you did not reach your destination,” the Reverend said.

  He took another sip. The teacup was brilliant white porcelain, thin as paper.

  “I’m also sorry to hear that your friend was robbed of his mortal life.”

  “Where…did you…hear…that?” Lead said between gasps.

  The Reverend frowned and placed the teacup back on the table; he lifted his left hand from under the table and placed it next to the cup. It was wrapped in white cloth, stained red and seeping with blood. For the first time Lead noticed how much paler the Reverend’s face was.