The Vagrant by Peter Newman Read Free Book Online Page A

Neither the warm dark under his arm nor the stimulus of the landscape bring consolation.
    There is little sustenance in the Blasted Lands, and so sacks of fruit and food are magnets for the lean denizens slipping between the rocks. New breeds appear regularly, half-breeds, quarter-breeds and blends unrecognizable. People have given up naming them. Most are lumped together as food, threat or nuisance.
    Eventually steps slow, the group’s previous exertions demand their due: the resting of tired limbs and heavy hearts. The Vagrant squeezes pasha juice into the baby’s down-turned mouth. Even the sweet liquid fails to draw a smile, though the smacking of lips and swallowing is more palatable than the wailing.
    As the hours tick by the Vagrant and the baby cling to each other, sometimes stealing snatches of oblivion. While the baby dozes, the Vagrant’s amber eyes twitch.
    Something ventures forward from the twilight, hunting. It scampers lightly, alert for danger. Scurry, pause, scurry, pause. Eyes dangle from its head, bouncing with each advance on sinewy threads. Its flickering tongue tastes the air before it storms the last few feet, scaled legs whirling with effort. Blisteringly fast, it seeks a way into the sack, racing up the coarse fabric, an opportunistic thief.
    Overhead a shadow moves. Preceded by a spike of white hair, it descends, opening until it blocks the creature’s path; a moving, living cave.
    Feet frantically spin in the opposite direction but the creature cannot stop, momentum delivering it straight into the cavernous mouth.
    As the suns rise, the goat chews.
    A rising wind flicks at their eyes, throwing grit and flecks of moist matter. The Vagrant moves on, arm raised against the clouds of dust that blow past.
    Distantly, shapes are visible, seeming to grow out of the ground.
    At first the shapes are simply shelter. The Vagrant crouches behind a structure, leaning into boned fabric that gives but takes his weight. Breathing becomes less laboured and he looks around, running his fingers along the edge of the thing he sits by. Coarse plastic is stretched around a frame that juts out of the ground at a forty-degree angle. The external bars are two inches thick, made for burdens. His hand pauses as it reaches the frame’s end; the metal there is flat, edged.
    Something has cut through it.
    The Vagrant frowns, investigates further. Objects lie just beneath the surface, so badly broken they seem foreign. He tightens his grip on the baby, digging one handed.
    Half buried in dirt and tipped on their sides, the waggons from the caravan are not immediately recognizable.
    Neither are the bodies.
    A face emerges, brushed into view. Sores stand proud on desiccated skin. Something has stolen the moisture, the eyes and more from the corpse. Further excavation allows it to be worked free. Tattered clothes hang loose on shrivelled bones, ridiculous, clown-like. The Vagrant slides his hand between the layers and new smells rise up. Muscles work in his jaw but he does not stop, exploring nooks and secrets.
    When his hand seeks air again, it brings out a prize. Small, silver, shining: a coin. The Vagrant stares at it, emotions threatening at the edges of his face. Amber eyes look back from the coin’s flawless surface, accusing. Under that stare his compsure breaks, swept away by grief and guilt.
    Disturbed, the baby stirs in his arms, wriggling until a more comfortable position is found. Sleepy hands find the Vagrant’s thumb and establish a firm grip.
    The Vagrant looks from coin to baby and back again.
    Nodding grimly he puts it away.
    When the winds falter after hours of pounding, and racing clouds slow and settle, the caravan’s inglorious end is revealed. The scene appears ancient, aged by the elements.
    The waggon’s roof moves, rising at the centre, a plastic pyramid. Dirt rolls off as it sweeps upward, folding, falling aside to reveal its treasures. From the hole, the Vagrant pulls himself into the afternoon,