The Parade by Dave Eggers

Author:Dave Eggers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2019-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

XI

FOUR WENT TO bed early, in part to end his engagement with the man with the medallion, who hovered around his tent for an hour before leaving. Four woke at just after two to a rooster’s mad wailings. He unzipped his tent to relieve his bladder and found Nine still gone. There was no tent and no quad.

The night was quiet and soaked in black. There was no electrical grid in the region, so the nights were unsullied by human striving. Four looked up to a moonless sky, only a shard of starry space visible through the cloudcover. The rooster screamed again and Four returned to his tent to finish his sleep.

He awoke with the dawn’s bloodless light and again found no sign of Nine. He ate a breakfast of compressed nuts and dried fruit and packed his tent into the RS-80. He planned to get most of a standard day’s work done by noon, and then allow for the vehicle to cool before embarking on a second, extended session in the afternoon. Nine’s absence was emboldening. Without him, Four could complete a day and a half’s work in one.

Throughout the early morning he was relieved to see no sign of the man with the medallion. By 8:00 a.m., Four had paved five kilometers without incident. The foliage that had until then served as an emerald colonnade gave way and the land opened up into a kind of wide flat plain, devoid of trees and dotted by mounds of rusted steel—dead machines. Some were recognizable as burned jeeps and pickups. There was a downed and half-charred helicopter, its rotors limp. This was the contested area Medallion had mentioned. A pair of stray dogs were chewing at a carrion bird. High above, vultures circled, waiting for their turn. Brick buildings in the distance bore the white star-scars of artillery fire. The structures had all been rendered roofless, the jagged walls now reaching fruitlessly to the sky. Amid the destruction there was a group of young men playing volleyball. They briefly stopped to watch the RS-80 pass, then resumed. At the edge of the town, before the trees again overtook the landscape, Four saw a large black heap, gleaming in the sun. When he got closer he saw that it was a high hill of plastic garbage bags, the same sort he’d been seeing since he left the southern city. Until now he’d seen the bags alone or in groups of one or two. This small mountain of the full and jagged bags indicated a different level of organization and intent. It reminded him of the mountains of tires in rural parts of his own country. He did not know what became of mountains like this here, though, and could not imagine what kind of machine might eventually address a hill like this. Perhaps, he thought, this was to be the country’s dump.

A loud rapping startled him. Someone had struck the window of the cab. He turned to find a woman, elderly but fierce.

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