Read Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse for Free Online Page B

where the factories could stink up the whole sky and no neighbours ever complained about it.

    A lot of other people joined them on the steep dirt road that led down to the harbour. Nobody lived right in Bingham City itself, because it was just a working place, day and night. Shifts in, shifts out. Lehi was a shift boy, lived with his family across the Jordan Strait on Point-of-the-Mountain, which was as rotten a place to live as anybody ever devised, rode the ferry in every day at five in the morning and rode it back every afternoon at four. He was supposed to go to school after that for a couple of hours but Deaver thought that was stupid, he told Lehi that all the time, told him again now. School is too much time and too little of everything, a waste of time.
    "I gotta go to school," said Lehi.
    "Tell me two plus two, you haven't got two plus two yet?" "You finished, didn't you?"
    "Nobody needs anything after fourth grade." He shoved Lehi a little. Usually Lehi shoved back, but this time no.
    "Just try getting a real job without a sixth-grade diploma, OK? And I'm pretty close now." They were at the ferry ship. Lehi got out his pass.
    "You with me tomorrow or not?"
    Lehi made a face. "I don't know, Deaver. You can get arrested for going around there. It's a dumb thing to do. They say there's real weird things in the old skyscrapers."
    "We aren't going in the skyscrapers."
    "Even worse in there , Deaver. I don't want to go there."
    "Yeah, the Angel Moroni's probably waiting to jump out and say booga-booga-booga."
    "Don't talk about it, Deaver." Deaver was tickling him; Lehi laughed and tried to shy away. "Cut it out, chigger-head. Come on. Besides, the Moroni statue was moved to the Salt Lake Monument up on the mountain. And that has a guard all the time."
    "The statue's just gold plate anyway. I'm tellin you those old Mormons hid tons of stuff down in the Temple, just waitin for somebody who isn't scared of the ghost of Bigamy Young to -"
    "Shut up, snotsucker, OK? People can hear! Look around, we're not alone!"
    It was true, of course. Some of the other people were glaring at them. But then, Deaver noticed that older people liked to glare at younger ones. It made the old farts feel better about kicking off. It was like they were saying, OK, I'm dying, but at least you're stupid. So Deaver looked right at a woman who was staring at him and murmured, "OK, I'm stupid, but at least I won't die."
    "Deaver, do you always have to say that where they can hear you?"
    "It's true."
    "In the first place, Deaver, they aren't dying. And in the second place, you're definitely stupid. And in the third place, the ferry's here." Lehi punched Deaver lightly in the stomach.
    Deaver bent over in mock agony. "Ay, the laddie's ungrateful, he is, I give him me last croost of bread and this be the thanks I gets."
    " Nobody has an accent like that, Deaver!" shouted Lehi. The boat began to pull away.
    "Tomorrow at five-thirty!" shouted Deaver.
    "You'll never get up at four-thirty, don't give me that, you never get up " But the ferry and the noise of the factories and machine and trucks swallowed up the rest of his insults. Deaver knew them all, anyway. Lehi might be only sixteen, but he was OK. Someday Deaver'd get married but his wife would like Lehi, too. And Lehi'd even get married, and his wife would like Deaver. She'd better, or she'd have to swim home.
    He took the trolley home to Fort Douglas and walked to the ancient barracks building where Rain let him stay. It was supposed to be a storage room, but she kept the mops and soap stuff in her place so that there'd be room for a cot.
    Not much else, but it was on Oquirrh Island without being right there in the stink and the smoke and the noise. He could sleep and that was enough, since most of the time he was out on the truck.
    Truth was, his room wasn't home anyway. Home was pretty much Rain's place, a drafty room at the end of the barracks with a dumpy frowzy lady who served him good food and