The wagons or tanks rolled through the gate in a caravan that was more akin to a carnival than a group of tradesmen; all the wizards with their pointed hats were shaped magnificently against the browns and grays, some wore white porcelain dramedy masks beneath headwear as dark as pipe resin, men and women and those between—as that was common from where they hailed. Their company was perhaps forty and their mules and mares were thirsty and were led to troughs to idle while the wizards removed goods from their wagons or tanks and although it was not a spectacle for them to arrive within Golgotha’s walls, it was something still and the citizens gathered to greet whatever wizards they might know but mostly perhaps to whisper rumors on them. The wizards seemed a taller folk, but that was because of the hats, and they seemed wider too, but that was for the robes they adorned with costume jewelry, trinkets, or fingernail-sized lanterns which contained magical properties hung off their clothes as ornaments (some metal and other crudely wooden). I never knew a people that could trek the wastes in that time as well as me till I knew them.

Boss Maron was there at the gates with his wall men, hollering—shouting really, “The Whores of Babylon have come again!” And the bells signaled from atop the highest tower over the hall of Bosses and I met the front square with a morning headache and a cigarette. The Boss sheriff was clothed, cowboy hat pulled tightly to his ears, and he waltzed through the square, inspecting the new arrivals with his crotch out in front of him as he moved in a swagger like a cup of shifted water. Morning sunlight crested the wall to reflect on the pistol in his holster as it did on the star pin of his hat.

Among them, there was only one wizard I cared to see. Their name was Suzanne.

The hanged bodies of the men remained on the wall, dead and stiff and shifting to the little wind there was.

The square had filled with carts (some drawn by animals and others pushed on oil), and even if it were not for the bells which signaled their arrival, I’d have surely known their presence for the clatter of their metal engines.

“Well goddamn!” said Maron while examining a wizard, “What’s that you’ve got on your legs?”

The wizard, a young woman in plain pants wore a set of leg braces and whenever she moved, she did so in shifting her hips around. “Braces,” she said.

“What’s it for? Or is it some of your all’s secret whodo?”

“I’ve got bad legs. The braces help.” She said plainly, attempting to angle herself straight like a stick against one of the traveling party’s wagons.

“Bad legs?” Boss Maron’s expression was incredulous. “Who has bad legs? What sort of nonsense is it? If a lady like you’s made it this far in life with bad legs, then someone’s done you a disservice.”

She looked on questioningly while the other wizards continued with their unpacking or their conversating—whether it be amongst themselves or with the freckle-spaced citizens in the square.

“How are you to outrun trouble when you’ve got them?” He nodded at the young woman’s legs.

“I don’t.” Her face was red either because of the sun or because of the scrutiny. “I’m just bow-legged.”

“Damn,” he shook his head, “Well how much you want for one of them?”

“One of my braces?”

“Yeah. All I want’s the one anyway.”

“I need both of them.”

“C’mon. You wouldn’t notice just one missing. I mean, you’ve got a spare right next to it.”

Upon noticing a robed figure I recognized by the animals at the troughs, I moved to them instead and let Maron’s conversation fall to the wayside. The chatter of the crowd was wild and startled words came as a wizard exposed their collection of tonics to passersby.

“Suzanne,” I said.

The figure turned to face me, moving their head to look away from a mare they’d been brushing to expose one of those white porcelain masks.

I knew it and could not contain a smile.

“Harlan?” asked the figure. The mask on its face was split in the middle with hinges on either side and they opened it to show their face; it was Suzanne. They’d grown some hair around their throat and wore lipstick on their lips and dyes on their eyes.

“It’s good to see you.” I pushed myself into a hug with them and I could smell the travel off them but didn’t care.

They shifted timidly before hugging me back and I pretended not to notice. Once we’d separated, I looked on Suzanne’s face again and they were looking on at the hanging men on the wall. “Again?” they asked.

I nodded and shot a look towards the Boss across the way.

“What justice?” they asked no one while shaking their head.

Trying an answer, I said, “Justice is something man made, I think. I’ll leave men to men and the rest to God.”

“God.” Suzanne nodded glumly then shook their head. “Which one?”

I laughed a good laugh that felt real but nervous too then kicked the ground and took the last drag off my cigarette before chucking it to the ground. “What’s brought you here?”

Suzanne answered plainly. “We took a long time east out near Pittsburgh.” Their eyes scanned the buildings further on from the square. “The people there are worse than here, it seems. At least you still have your walls.”

“Pittsburgh’s fallen?”

They frowned. “Not completely. They’ve mostly gone underground. A skitterbug infestation caused a plague directly before an attack of proportions I’ve yet seen.” Suzanne’s brow furrowed. “It was awful.” The words hung in the air for a moment. “But we’re here now and thought we’d stop for a rest and some guns and ammo before returning to Babylon. We’ve brought some medicines to trade.”

I learned from my friend that Pittsburgh’s infrastructure and fortifications were decimated in an attack the wizards only caught second-hand and the survivors—holed away in the tunnels beneath Pittsburgh—told of how the demons ran the walls once their reserves were low.

Then the wizards gathered there began unpacking books, some scrolls, and there were medicines too and some of the Bosses other than Maron (he pushed his harassment of the young wizard with leg braces) graced us there with their presence as they came on and began to pick across the goods, haggling prices. Boss Frank was there, and he stood before a wizard by a tank with a wooden table of jars—capped elixirs of varying colors—he grew increasingly frustrated with their selection and took on in his braggadocious way, speaking of numbers. A few of the idle wizards leaned against carts or even took across town and a small group of them had gathered for a quick show near the guard posts, playing instruments (strings over the vocals of “In My Life”) and there in the front of them was a young wizard man that had removed his hat to show how he played with fire flames off his hands—it was a sideshow play—and the citizens wore variations of bemusement or disgust. The children of Golgotha, all dirty faced with sprigs of hair jutting about from their morning’s waking, seemed totally bewildered in the joy of song and clapped their hands or shook their hips all with smiles.

I stuffed my hands in my jacket and prodded Suzanne, “What’s with the plague? I mean, was it contained? None of your lot got sick, did they?”

Suzanne scoffed, perhaps a little pridefully, “No. I wouldn’t worry about that.” They patted a nearby mule then withdrew a brush and moved it across its thin coat before looking over its hooves. “I’ve brought you some books I found out that way though. You still read?”

I nodded.

“Don’t expect any of that fiction. The only ones I’ve found recently are old pamphlets or medical texts.” Suzanne paused and smiled, returning the animal brush to their robes, “You haven’t happened upon anything that might interest me, have you?”

Their shown teeth were infectious. “Mayhap. I’d need you to come back to my place so I could give them to you.” An awkward pause followed and the roar of the still accumulating crowd overtook the space between us before I continued. “Mostly interesting containers and a few flecks of gold I took from some old computers—they’ve been waitin’ on you for weeks now. I got some parchment that might be of use to you too. You can take what you need as always.”

“How about we get some food? I’m famished. Riding through the night takes its toll.”

Me and Suzanne took from the square up a narrow route that led through residences where the lower levels had their curtains drawn and then we took stairs toward balconies and catwalks configured from reinforced metal; we spoke as we went and a few odd glances from passersby met the wizard as we did.

“The tide on the east is rising again,” said Suzanne.

“Worse than before?”

“Worse than before.”

“God, I don’t think I’ve seen the ocean for a decade or more.” I slid my hand along the railing once we came to what was essentially my front porch; it was a perch among the catwalks that cut against the domicile where I shared walls with others on three sides and we stopped there outside my door. “We saw a dragon only a few days ago.”

Suzanne’s interest seemed piqued. “A dragon? And what direction was it traveling?”

“Well,” I craned over the railing, looking down the narrow walkway that separated my building and the one across the way; I couldn’t see the front square from outside my home, but I could still just make out the music echoing from that direction, “Could’ve been north or west. I was preoccupied, but I wouldn’t worry much. The wall men gave it a pretty good thrashing before it took off.”

“Hmm.”

“So, the ocean? It’s rising, huh?”

They joined me there on railing, supporting themselves against their forearms. “It is. Faster than ever. Some bad magic’s taken the water. I imagine by the end of the year Pittsburgh will be under it. There’s something bad coming. You might call it intuition if you want, but I know it’s coming. Something bad. Revelations bad. There comes a time when even those of us forsaken are brought worse.”

“Bah!” I couldn’t help it, “John thought it was the end times while he wrote the damn thing. And what about all the other books? Hm?”

Suzanne put up their hands. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. You know I’m only the mildest scholar on the topic.”

“Anyway. You’d better not start having visions. Got enough to worry about as is.” I’d not realized my shoulders were tense until their hand touched me, and I flinched.

“You’ve a bruise around your neck. Care to elaborate there?”

I shook my head. “Got into a fight.”

Suzanne laughed, removed their pointed hat and playfully put it on my head. “C’mon. Cook me something. You might not know a thing about spices, but your cooking’s always tasted better.”

We took through my door to my small single room where simple amenities awaited and an ancient, decommissioned pump-shotgun hung on the wall over the bed. “That’s just ‘cause you ain’t the one laboring over it.”

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Across a meal of potato cakes and toasted bread, we drank coffee until I broke into the liquor to spice my coffee and alleviate my hangover, and we shared the drink and Suzanne took to wash in the sink while I smoked outside on the overlook. Upon returning to the room, I saw them there with a wet rag stuffed beneath an armpit and they were beautiful caught without robes, frame cast in sunglow through the crack in my doorway. In a moment, our hands glided around one another in a scramble of arms at the middle point between us and we took to bed for a while.

Come midday, we remained there, staring at the ceiling, chests bare, and blanket strewn across our lower halves.

“You’re going gray,” said Suzanne.

“You’re getting old too, ya’know.”

“Yes.”

“How long did you say you’ll be staying?” I asked while trying to mask whatever excitement may be present.

“Few days. Once we’ve enough ammunition.” They traced their index finger along my ear lobe.

“Stay.” I offered.

They frowned. “Come.”

“I did already.”

They gave me a light shove and cut their eyes at me. Hazel. How good that color was. “Really. What keeps you here?”

“Things.” I pushed up in the bed to sit, finagling my underwear from the jeans on the floor.

“I wish you would.”

“I’m no wizard.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“Maybe there will come a time when I take you up on that offer. Who knows?” I slid into the drawers.

“Is it Maron?” they asked, “I don’t know your fascination with him. He’s the worst combination cruel and dumb I’ve seen.”

“Like an animal.” I nodded. “Like something real bad’s wrong with him. But no. He’s not my fascination.” Lying was always hard with them. “I worry about this place. I wouldn’t do the things I do if I didn’t. What if I were to leave it and then it turns out like Pittsburgh.”

“Oh, you’re an expert in plagues now?”

“No,” I scoffed, “I guess it’s just a place that weighs on my conscious.” I went to sit on the bed alongside them.

“You hate it here. I can see it more on your face every time we meet.”

“That I do. Call it an investment dilemma. I’ve put time in it, and I want it to be well.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

I caught Suzanne’s face there, staring up from the flat pillow, flustered. My reasoning was hard, but I continued, “There is one thing I should undo before I leave here. It’s a long time coming, and I don’t know if I can. But it’s important,” upon seeing their quizzical expression, I added, “And it is secret.”

“I wish you’d come with us. You’d be welcome.”

“I’ll visit Babylon sometime next month. I promise.”

“You shouldn’t call it that. I don’t like it when you call it that.” The wizards never called their home Babylon; that was a name conjured by the many religious fanatics that considered their magic evil (even if they did trade with the ‘heretics’ from time to time). The name they’d given their own city of medicine was Alexandria; it was fitting for I’d seen their expansive libraries and could become lost in them easily.

“Fine. I’ll be there.” I squeezed their hand in mine. “I’ll miss you once you’ve gone.”

“Don’t get sappy,” they said before planting a kiss on my forehead.

The day went and then the next and another and the wizards packed their belongings. No more music for Golgotha, only quiet agony. As Suzanne said, they’d left me a few books and I’d given away my parchment, jars, and gold. While they were in town, I even was able to snag a few more bottles of their famous wizard liquor along with a few vials of medicine—always good to have whenever I set foot beyond the walls or when someone within might need it.

There came a time finally—as every time it does—where I watched the caravan, with gray smoke clouds off the engines, take on north first where there was an opening wide enough in the ruins to accommodate vehicles, then it hooked around a wide bend that took them west then their black shapes against the red morning skyline disappeared like fading ink as their magic cloaked them entirely. I wished them well, but at the moment of dissipation, I felt an urge to leap from the top of the wall, charge across the field, scream that I was coming and scream it loud enough that I’d hurt myself. I think I just loved—though I never said it aloud and neither did they—and love is a bad thing more often than it is good, for the longing it leaves in its absence drives a person mad and I did not want to be mad; the feeling burst from me quietly there on the wall while I was flanked on either side by guards. I was sure all along the way they went that I could just make out Suzanne among them; that was probably a fault in my vision, but I imagined they were casting glances back, hoping to hold me as strongly as I wished to hold them. I went to the streets of Golgotha where the town quieted from the previous days’ engagements with the wizards.

Normal came and settled and then came chanting from Lady as she moved through sullen quiet streets. She was so far off that I was not sure it was her at all and then came the lines as she drew nearer by the hydroponics towers, and she shouted them vigorously and shook her fist above the air and held a staff with a swinging lantern of incense in her opposite hand, partly for ceremony and partly for support. The words came harshly, gravelly:

“They called to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

“The lamb will be your shepherd. He will guide you. Hallelujah! He will lead you to the springs of living water and wipe away every tear!”

“Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand! Do not be tempted by the deviousness of the whorish Babylonians for all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

A person, among the catwalks, shouted down at Lady, “Shut-the-fuck-up!”

I watched her come fully down the avenue as she dodged a thrown egg from somewhere unseen, then dashed away toward an offshoot alley to hide somewhere, incense lantern smoking, clanging against her back while she screeched off more scripture from memory. After she was long gone, I moved to the spot where the egg was, rubbed it into dirt with the sole of my boot and looked up through the spiderweb network of catwalks overhead; there was no one.

Without a thing keeping me, I took off the following day, and upon meeting the gates, Maron was there and I could see he was the proud owner of a used leg brace; he grinned upon seeing me, patting his mustache down with his forefinger and thumb.

“Whatcha’ think?” He motioned to his left leg. “It’s a bit of a conversation starter, ain’t it?”

“Get your boys to open the gate, I’m going out.”

He shook his head. “Won’t find anything out there. It’s all dirt and rubble, you know.”

“Just open it.”

“You know what?” He cut his eyes at me. “There’s gonna’ come a day when you won’t be so able bodied or maybe the Bosses won’t like you coming and going as you please.”

I inhaled heavily then let it go. “Now can’t we skip to the end where you acquiesce to my request?”

“Words words words you’ve got. You’ve got a lot of words. Acquiesce. Psshaw.” Boss Maron waved for the guards to open the gate and they did, and I stepped by him, and he spit somewhere behind me before I heard him hobble around with his single leg brace.

The path was clear and open on all sides and in no time, I’d taken across the field to the east and found myself on the edge of the ruins where things stank, and I was free from no other thought than to live. Creeping hot overcame me and brought my hair to my forehead and I holed off in a shadow to drank from my gourd before continuing. The sun was red in the sky in the places where I could see sky from around the black shadows of towering structures. I ducked beneath an old shop counter when I heard the skittering of fart heads and pulled a sleeve to kill the scent of their chlorine breath.

Once they’d gone, I pulled through the wreckage more and more till I came upon the markings for an old safehouse in the back office of a garage I’d not been to in a while. What were my intentions? Was I going to go all the way to the coast? Throw myself into those bad magic waters? There’s a thing they don’t teach you in religion. They prattle all day to do this or that and they say that Hell awaits sinners or Hades or maybe its in layers or circles or what have you. They’ll tell you about the places and they’ll say that if you take life into your own hands, you end in Hell, but what’s a person to do when those creeping intrusions come along—the ones that call to a person in the darkness, the ones where they tempt you to jump from a high place or there’s always a gun or a poison. Maybe a person could bribe another to do it for them. Where do they end up then? What are you supposed to do to stave off those thoughts? Should a person contend such melancholies with prayer? That did not seem helpful. What is the soulless to do without the promise of those pearly gates anyway?

Anyway, I took on past the safehouse and found a utility hall in the side of a tall industrial building just beyond a partially erect chain link fence. The wall was opened up like a cracked shell from years of standing alone, and after ducking through there, I found some old matches in a drawer, plastic gas cans whose contents had long since congealed within; I kicked them (not that I expected anything more). Moving further down the wide hallway, there were shelves of dusty tools, and I took some hammers and knives (cheapo stuff).

Further still down the hall, there was a staircase, and I took it quietly; the stone stairs made hardly a sound against the bottoms of my boots, and I took the stairs more quickly till I was out of breath and caught myself on a landing where I supped silent air before rushing further up the stairs. An old metallic cabinet or console—I couldn’t make it out—lay strewn across the steps to the second-highest floor and I climbed over it before coming to the building’s roof access. Upon coming to the door with a metal push bar across its middle, I gave it a shove and it did not budge but a minor clink and I took a moment to collect myself before rummaging through my gear.

Slung through a loop on the inside of my pack was a short prybar that was so worn around its tooth it was more rounded than an edge; I shimmied the piece of metal into the spot where the door latched into the way and began crimping the spot apart, trying all the while to maintain a relative quiet in the dead ruins. Once I’d bent away at the door for a few moments, I elevated my body weight at an awkward angle to pop the door free and it did so, half open, with a rusty screech that forced a long pause from me; I stood there by the newly opened doorway for a full minute, holding the prybar, holding my breath. Upon hearing nothing in response to the noise of the door, I slid the tool into my pack and slipped through the threshold.

The flat roof of the industrial building sloped to one corner—where the opening in the wall of the first floor was—and sitting there in the middle of an open platform was an old helicopter, blades half torn away or rusted off and the remaining slanted from the top of the old vehicle, touching the platform it sat upon. The roof access looked like a little square house atop the flat headed structure and around the side of the access, I found an old corpse (entirely bones) wrapped in black plastic-like armor, the white dry fingers laid across its lap, several digits gone and its hollow eye holes staring off into the sky with a permanent smile. I moved to the thing that hadn’t been human in a long time and prodded it; the skeleton slumped to the side and looked on the ground by its shoes. How long had it been staring at the sky and how long had it been waiting for me to come and change its dead visage?

I moved to the edge of the building, to the corner where the building sloped and looked off the edge to the ground below; all was quiet, and nothing moved save the shadows’ stalwart creep across the ground. Examining from above, I could see the opening I’d climbed through and beneath my shifting feet, I felt the ground give a little; timidly, I angled more forward and for a moment I thought I knew why I’d gone up there in the first place. Suddenly six-stories felt high. The urge to jump came. Perhaps on the way down, I’d have just a blink to convince myself I’d slipped.

“Hey!” A shout from somewhere down below came from the direction I’d come from. I shook my head as it felt as though it was a ghost echo, a noise that wasn’t. Then it came again, “Hey!”

I squinted my eyes and there in the crumbled road below, there was a human I didn’t initially recognize; it was only after the figure tumbled through the remains of the chain link fence that I recognized it as Dave. I blinked.

Out of breath, he angled over to the opening at the base of the structure and called up at me, “Hey! I see you up there!”

Whisper-yelling, I cupped my hands, “Shutup!”

I took back to the stairs, and he hollered after, “Where you going?”

With reckless abandon, I took the stairs many at a time, leapt the cabinet on the stairs, scrambling while also reaching for the prybar I’d put away. I held the cold metal in my hand and charged toward the industrial storage hallway where I could see him silhouetted in the frame of the crumbled opening.

His chest heaved and he wiped at his brow; slung across his shoulder was a small supply bag and worn like a necklace was a pair of binoculars. “God, you move fast. Like a fuckin’ cockroach in light.” His eyes shifted from my face to the prybar in my hand as I approached him.

Standing within the echoey hallway, I lifted the weapon and pointed it at him. “What’d you follow me for?”

“You wouldn’t use that on me.” He took his eyes from the prybar. “I don’t think you would anyway. You might be shady, Harlan, but I don’t take you as a stone-cold murderer.”

“You take me wrong,” I said.

“Maybe.” He seemed to think on it a moment. “You wouldn’t?”

“If you’ve given away my position to those things, I might.”

“Lots of bluster.” Dave offered an incredibly forced smile, and I could see just from the little shine of the sun in the opening that his eye had blacked but remained functional. “I been watching you.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “I snuck out after you.”

“You ought to go back.”

“You ought to just listen. There ain’t a thing back there for me.”

“I don’t care.” The sharpness in my voice felt good. “I don’t need some sorry sack sneaking up on me when I’m mindin’ my own.”

A quiet laugh. “There’s nothing there for me. I been farming all my life and if I die,” he shrugged, “So be it.”

“Idiot. Fuckin’ idiot.”

“You manage out here! Wizards can too!”

“Wizards have magic.”

“You got some of that?”

I lowered the crowbar.

“We’ve got to stop starting our conversations with fights.” He paused and moved into the shadowy hallway of the building before perching in a half-sit half-lean against the wall near me. “I never was violent anyway, so if you want to hit me with that then do it.”

“Hmm.”

His shirt clung to him, sweat thick and dark on his chest and pits. “Goddamn you move fast.”

“You should wear a jacket or something. Long sleeves keep the sun off and a thicker material gives you a modicum of protection.” I took to squatting too, maintaining ample distance betwixt us. “A hat helps too, but I’m always losing hats.” I chewed on my tongue while mulling over whether I should leave him.

“Are you going to try and slink away while I’m not looking?”

I blinked. “No.”

“Liar.” He took a healthy gulp from his water gourd then wiped his mouth. “East is the ocean?”

I nodded.

“Is it far?”

I nodded. “For you.”

Dave sighed. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Telling me.”

“Okay.”

“You ever have any kids?”

I shook my head.

“It’s somethin’. Henry had so much energy—especially when he was little—there was times I didn’t think he’d ever settle down.”

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“Helen told me she was the same way when she was his age. She had energy too. I feel so tired.”

“Dave. What the fuck are you doing out here? Why’d you follow me?”

He took one last swallow from his gourd before shoving it into his pack. “I wanted to talk to you about killin’ the Bosses.”

I laughed into my hand. “That’s—that’s a thought.”

“I mean it.” His stare was like pinpricks.