Read The The Wasteland Saga: Three Novels: Old Man and the Wasteland, The Savage Boy, The Road is a River for Free Online Page A

script the words “Dreamtime Motel” loomed large, then recessed toward a universe of smiling faced stars. Vacancy, air-conditioning, and color TV were all available.
    The cluster of buildings were merely an L-shaped motel complete with swimming pool and the blackened remains of a nearby gas station, its metal twisted in telltale strands away from where the pumps had once been.
    The lights of the hotel came softly to life here and there where bulbs still burned.
    The east is cursed.
    He moved forward cautiously, remembering the pistol within his satchel.
    The parking lot was gritty with the windblown sand of the years. Still, the cracks in it were nowhere near the rents and buckles of the main highway back near the village.
    From the office, a man emerged wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.
    “Room for the night, mister?” His voice the desiccated husk of a reptile. Used. Spent.
    The Old Man remained staring.
    If I am dreaming then this does not exist. Maybe the oasis of palo verdes did not exist. Maybe I am dying in the dunes still clutching the dead bee.
    “Got room if yer lookin’.” Then the man with the mirrored sunglasses began to wheeze and laugh. After a second he said, “Have ever since before the bombs.”
    The Old Man still standing in the twilight, his face illuminated by the flickering glare of the last wisps of neon, remembered the gun. His fingers, bony and old, adjusted the strap of his satchel.
    “I got snake.” Mirrored Sunglasses moved forward. His body was long, though he wasn’t tall; the only roundness a potbelly that seemed more pregnant than fat. “You want snake for dinner?”
    “What is this place?” croaked the Old Man.
    Mirrored Sunglasses whirled, taking in the motel against the dying light in the west.
    “This my hotel. Even before the bombs, I swear.” He seemed all out of breath and ragged at once.
    “You got power.”
    “Just a little ever’ night. Went solar before the bombs, but the panels ain’t doin so good these last few years. Got a well for water. Power ever’ night. No air-condition though. And snake. Lotsa snakes east of here.”
    East is cursed.
    “Where ya headed?”
    “Into the town I thought used to be near here.”
    “The town? Why ya wanna go there fer? Burnt down during the bombs.”
    The Old Man was silent.
    Still.
    “Nothing left that way. All of it’s gone. Seen two clouds that week. First Phoenix then Tucson. Nothing there but death. Won’t be for another hundred years. Say where you come from?”
    “West.”
    “Really?”
    “Three days to the other side of the dunes. On the Old Highway a couple days this side of the Great Wreck.”
    “Never heard of no ‘Great Wreck.’ ”
    They remained standing in the parking lot, the Old Man considering what was his and his alone.
    “I’ll get the snake reheated. Et myself earlier, but I can get you some going.”
    “That would be nice of you. Thank you.”
    Mirrored Sunglasses turned and headed back into the darkened office mumbling, “Maybe afterwards you’d like to see the pool.”
    The Old Man lowered his satchel to the ground.
    How had this place remained? There was no sign of a town, other than the remains of the gas station. The road leading away from the motel seemed in better condition than the Old Highway near the village. It must have been new at the time of the bombs.
    The Old Man looked again at the neon coursing through the tubes. The design of architecture had once meant something to him. He remembered living in a time when architecture was at war with itself. The old being swept away for the new. You could tell, he remembered, when you walked into someone’s house, a restaurant, even a gas station, what the architect’s idea of the future was. Glass blocks seemed so outdated to him at the time. That was all he could remember.
    The snake was good. The two men stood in the parking lot as the Old Man ate it out of a bowl using a bent spoon. All this