9 THE TRUTH
I grab a jug of what appears to be water and we climb out over the junk. We walk fast away from the drug addicts camp, the lawmaker's laughter echoing in the darkness behind us. It's nighttime and the scorpions will soon be on the prowl. We need a hiding place, badly.
Standing on a hill we look down over yet another nuked town. Not too far off I can see a lit sign that reads "Clinic," but I don't hear a generator. That must have been where the junkies were getting their shit. We need a destination.
"Where's Triple?" Tee says and I'm glad the lizard is gone.
I take a step forward and my foot clunks on the ground and makes a hollow sound. I get on my hands and knees and start pushing away the dust and dirt, exposing a man-hole cover. I could just make out a message scratched into it: "Please go away."
I pry the lid off the entry and slide it aside and we are hit by a blast of humid air. Do we dare? The clinic is no better a place to go, with a sign like that in the night every wastelander will be headed there. Tee and I lean over the hole, I shine my flashlight on the ladder and follow it down to a dirty white carpeted floor. I can hear the gentle hum of a generator now, and smell something delicious cooking.
"Hello?"
"Who's there?" a startled reply comes back, the deep voice sounds like a big man.
"We need to hole up, permission to enter sir?" It helps to be polite in the wasteland. It gives people a sense of humanity. A man appears at the base of the ladder and shines his torch up at us.
"You're not a goddamn junkie I hope?"
"No sir, my daughter and I need sanctuary."
I can hear him saying "fuck" over and over under his breath.
"Get lost," and he points a large hand gun at my face.
"I have fresh food and vegetables, I promise we mean you no harm."
"Please mister?" Tee chimes in and puts on a big smile even though she is scared. The man runs his fingers through his hair and sighs loudly.
"Alright. I'm sure I'll regret it. Toss down your weapons."
We do, rather than face the predators of the night, and as we clamber down the ladder I feel his gun press into my buttock.
"Don't try anything. I've got the reflexes of a scorpion and I can crush your skull with my bare hands. You can stay the night but I'm locking you in the spare room. Got it? And you're outta here in the morning."
"Yes sir," I say, stepping off the ladder into the metal corridor.
He's an old man, wearing a green sweater and blue sweatpants. His eyes are alive, watching my every move. I wipe my hand on my shirt and offer it to him.
"I'm Russ, this is Tee," I say as she climbs down next to me.
"Pleasure I'm sure," but he doesn't extend his hand. The man is clean, I have never seen someone that clean, no radiation burns, no dirt, and he's old. I wonder how he survived the endemic rad-poisoning that claims even the strongest of the wastes.
"Just stay off the furniture, and for fucks sake take your boots off, look at my carpet!" The carpet had been ruined long ago, but people have to find their sanity however they can. We take off our shoes but our feet are no cleaner.
"Into the bath with both of you! Now!" It's making out to be a humorous evening. I sense the old man means us no harm.
"Here," he says, pushing us into the next room where there's a shower and a tub. He deposits a small white bar in my hand and an armful of clothes,
"take this soap and wash yourselves, you fucking stink!" and he closes the door.
I look into Tee's green eyes and she looks up at me. "I don't think we're in danger, he seems ok," I say to her as I turn on the shower and help her in. Half an hour later I kick her out and take a turn. Waves of black roll off me and disappear down the drain. It feels great and I don't want to get out of the hot water. The soap is better than the stuff we used to make from ashes and iguana grease, it doesn't leave that half cooked smell on me.
We emerge from the bath in clean clothes and sit down on the floor. The man helped himself to my iguanas and crabapples but that's ok.
"So, what's your story?" He says as he stirs a pot of something delicious smelling on the stove.
"Just wandering,” I say as if it was so simple a thing.
"That's not your daughter, she doesn't look like you."
"No sir, I found her in a dresser crying for mom. I think she got left behind while the mother was scavenging."
The man shakes his head, "I hate the wasteland."
I look down at my clean feet and feel sad. I love the wasteland. It's all I have. It's my only home, away from people and all the pain they bring. I look at Tee.
"You seem like decent folk," the man says, "call me Archie." and he serves us each a bowl of hot soup. Tee lifts hers to her face and slurps greedily but I look at it and wonder. All I had cared about before Tee was the next meal.
"Sir, if you don't mind me asking, how come you're not dead, I mean, where's your radiation burns?"
"Just luck I guess," he says but I know it isn't. “I don’t take rad-out”
I knew about rad-out, it took away the rads but it made folks crazy. We sit down around the dinner table and eat in silence. We finish our food and I feel a pleasant burning sensation through my body and I become warm and tingly, my strength returning.
"What's the secret ingredient?" I ask.
"Scorpid poison."
"What?"
"You heard me," and he reaches into the cooker and pulls out a whole stinger.
"You've poisoned us,"
"No my lad, you don't understand. The poison kills the rads. You think I'd have my head together if I'd been junking on rad-out?"
"You know, I had a strange experience, Archie, where I got poisoned but the scorpions didn't chase me."
"The scorpions are intelligent."
"Bullshit, they're bugs.
"No, they're smart. They want to help us."
"You're full of it, they're just stupid insects. All you ever hear is people getting killed by those things."
"So let me guess, they surrounded you?"
"Yeah,"
"And turned away?"
"Yeah except for one, and I drank the poison, I don't know why they didn't kill me,"
"It's because you drank. They see a lot of radiation poisoned folk roaming the wastes and the bugs have compassion for them, they don't want them to die the slow radiation death. You drank the poison so they let you go."
I shake my head and look into my bowl, pondering the poisoned meal. I look at the skin on my bare arms and see that my ever present burns had healed into ugly scars somewhere along the way. The old man had obviously lost his marbles though. I don't care if it healed radiation, it's probably just a way for the scorpions to get a healthy meal.
"They'll hunt me again, Archie. They'll kill me next time, I know it."
"You can't escape from a circle of scorpions. Not alive. Not if you’re sick from radiation." he says as he slurps up the last of his soup. The man is in good shape. His arms are like tree trunks and his blue eyes are bright.
"So if they're intelligent, how come they don't build a scorpion town and farm iguanas or something?"
"They're perfectly adapted. You know how they got so big - people hunted them for generations, killed the stupid ones. Now they rule the wastes and look at you, barely surviving, sick from radiation. The scorpions are your friends Russ."
I shake my head. My world is spinning. All those years fleeing from them, all of my friends who had died at their claws.
"So next time,"
"Next time, stay in the circle."
"Why?" But he only smiled.
"The bugs are your friends. Don't forget it."
I shake my head in disbelief. The old man had obviously taken too much rad-out somewhere along the line. Scorpions are my friends? It's too ridiculous to consider. I'd seen folks get ripped apart by a pack of them, more than once.
"The bugs," he repeats slowly, "The bugs love us."