by Nick Cole
“No one else lives here?” asked the Boy.
“There are dogs and ghosts. The dogs . . . are very wild.”
Dusk was falling to gloom as they rode slowly down the long highway leading away from the city. In the darkness ahead the Boy saw a building standing off by itself. It was only two stories high. It was long and squat.
M-O-T-E . . . he spells.
Probably “motel.”
He left Jin atop Horse in the parking lot as he checked the ruined place. All the doors had long since been torn off. He found the evidence of campfires in the bathtubs of most of the rooms.
Someone had stayed here for a time, but not for long. Now they were gone.
They took a room downstairs. The bed was little more than exposed coils and springs. He pushed it against the wall and tried to clear the floor of debris as best he could. There was a large hole in the wall leading to the next room. He led Horse through the doorway of that room and settled him for the night.
“I’ll be back,” he told Jin.
He was gone for some time, and when he returned he brought wood and placed it in the bathtub for a fire.
Once the fire was going he gave her the last of Horse’s corn and they chewed it and drank cold water.
He watched her dark eyes staring into the fire.
“Are you happy still?”
She turned to him and smiled.
“So happy. So . . . free.”
‘Other women are not like you,’ he thought as he watched her. ‘Most—all the ones I have ever met in all the villages and places like the Cotter family’s old dark house—are merely possessions to be had by whoever is strong enough to take and keep them. But you want to find out who you are and you will let no one own you. And I do not think anyone could keep you if you did not want to stay.’
“It will not be easy. But in time we will find a place and make it our own,” he said.
“We will,” she agreed softly.
He pushed the frame of the bed against the doorway of the room and draped a blanket across it. The Boy hoped this would help hold the heat of the fire in the room. About the hole in the wall between rooms he could do nothing. Their breath was now forming tiny puffs of moisture in the cold night air.
When he turned back from securing the doorway, he found Jin at the end of the room near the door to the bathroom, close to the fire.
She had wrapped herself only in the bearskin.
She beckoned him within.
Chapter 45
They rode south the next day, stopping early to make camp in an abandoned place that would hold for the night. There was fire. There was water. The Boy hunted during the day, using the rifle to take small game.
The night that followed was long and cold, and their embraces became deeper and more meaningful in the passing quiet.
Lying awake, she on his chest in deep sleep, the Boy thought.
He thought of all that he had to do and places they might go and be safe.
He thought of life, and though there was a new problem he could think of in each day ahead, he was glad.
To have these problems was to have her.
My life has never been this good.
And . . .
I never want it to be another way.
He slept and did not dream.
IN THE MORNING they crossed a small mountain ridge and saw the ocean stretching away to the south and west. The Boy saw the overgrown ruins of a thin spreading town that must have once climbed up to the ridge.
But it had been consumed and little remained other than concrete pads and crumbling, blackened walls that poked through the coastal vegetation.
“The village is farther along the coast. I . . . doubt they will be looking for us there yet. We can purchase . . . food and other things. Where will we go after?”
He looked toward the south.
How far away is the city of Los Angeles? On the map it seems a long way off. If those who she says must follow us are afraid of the damage caused by radiation then maybe they will turn back if we head into the worst of it. Or at least make them think that we intend to.
“Into the poisoned lands,” he said.
She was silent.
“Do not worry. I have faced monsters. Our bearskin was once one.”
“But . . . why must we go there?” she said softly.
“You said that they must follow us?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will go where they will not follow us.”
Chapter 46
Shao Fan walked the road at night.
‘It will be a good spring after such a hard winter,’ he thought.
His hunters were spread out behind him, his trackers far ahead, looking for any sign of the fugitives.
We will not find them tonight.
It has been a long day. And yet you must be out and away from your home for another night.
Yes.
This day, for Shao Fan, had started just before dawn, out on Point Reyes, above the lighthouse. His trackers had been watching the lighthouse keeper and his family.
When the man left at dawn, they’d followed him along the coast and up to a little bay. Savages had been allowed to dwell there and sell the fish they took from those waters where the old Chinese aircraft carrier had been grounded in the shallows and surf.
They watched the lighthouse keeper. He entered an old building, perhaps once a seaside resort. Smoke came through the roof and Shao Fan and the hunters could smell bacon cooking.
Later, when the man came out, holding his tea, the little half-caste children racing out behind him onto the dewy grass in the golden light of midmorning, Shao Fan knew that the rumors about the lighthouse keeper were true.
The air had seemed thick with salt.
The children were tainted, so you know . . . you had to . . . do what must be in done in such cases, thought Shao Fan.
Did I?
Now, on the night road far to the south of Point Reyes, on the other side of the bay, searching for the barbarian and the general’s granddaughter, drawing his long, thick coat down across his lean frame, Shao Fan did not answer his own question.
That morning, when Shao Fan, followed by his crew, came out of the scrubby coastal pine, crossing the field onto the beach, the man, the lighthouse keeper, did not move. His handleless cup is held too high. As if, in that moment before one drinks his tea, he has decided that this day should be the measure by which all days are judged.
As if one could make such a request.
And then when the lighthouse keeper saw Shao Fan and his men, he knew the error of such thinking on the subject of days and their measure.
Today of all days, the lighthouse keeper must have thought, was the end of the measuring stick.
They’d drowned the children.
It was the law.
The birth defects that always come with the American barbarians, the survivors of our nuclear weapons, must not be allowed to continue. In time, they, their ways, their defects will disappear, and the world will be a better place.
Or so says the council.
The concubine was dispatched, swiftly, even as the lighthouse keeper’s cry for mercy was drowned out by the thundering surf in the misty morning air.
There was no protocol for her demise. Only that it must be.
And then the march with the lighthouse keeper to the crossroads.
That also was the law.
And for that there was a protocol.
The salty cold of morning and crashing waves had faded in the hot steaming fields inland. Everything was golden.
It would be a good spring and a hot summer.
They’d hung the lighthouse keeper at the crossroads.
A warning.
Do not mix with the barbarians.
Shao Fan recalled the words he always thought of whenever the sentence was carried out.
Be careful who you fall in love with.
Shao Fan always remembered those words when the transg
ressor was pulled aloft by the rope and horse.
Be careful who you fall in love with.
And that was how the day had begun for Shao Fan and his hunters.
And the day ended and night fell as Shao Fan sought another who had broken the law.
The general’s granddaughter.
He had crossed to the southern end of the bay by swift sail. His men, without their horses, walked the fields near the old highway leading inland. They waited in the sudden night breezes that swept the southern bay for the scent of campfires. But there were no camps to be found and no trails to be followed on this windy night.
‘They have gone south across the mountains and into the ruins of Santa Cruz,’ thought Shao Fan. ‘We will not find them tonight.’
They will try for the village at Moss Landing.
He called for a halt and the men turned to their packs seeking food and hot tea.
We’ll halt for an hour and march hard for Moss Landing through the night.
Chapter 47
The village lay on the far side of a muddy estuary. They passed long-gone fields that had lingered through a hard winter. A cemetery of wrecked boats wallowed near the entrance to the estuary.
They crossed a small road leading to a wide bridge.
The village was little more than a line of warehouses from Before, arranged along a narrow road running the length of the islet. An ancient and rusting large commercial fishing boat, now rigged with a mast and furled sail, had come into port to unload the night’s catch. Villagers flocked to its side as the fish were unloaded in great netted bundles.
“Where do we go?” asked the Boy. He was leading Horse while Jin rode.
“Take us to that long hall there. We should be able to . . . purchase there. Remember . . . say nothing. Otherwise they will think you are more than just . . . my servant.”
The Boy led them onto the street and they passed down its length until they reached the parking lot of an old warehouse. Fish were being trundled within by handcart.
The Boy helped Jin down from Horse. She adjusted her robe, ensuring the bag of silver coins was tucked within her sleeve.
Then they wandered the stalls.
There was little they needed to purchase beyond a large, wide wok made by a local blacksmith. At another stall she purchased oil and spices. Later they found a few more blankets of good quality and some rice. Finally they decided upon two large bags to carry their purchases.
The sun was high overhead when they exited the warehouse. They smelled frying oil and saw the villagers gathered around a large fire where a bubbling cauldron seethed and hissed. Strips of fish were being fried and quickly eaten.
A villager, jolly and smiling, waved them over.
The villagers talked with Jin in animated Chinese. The Boy held Horse and shortly Jin returned with a woven grass plate of fried fish and a small shell full of dark sauce.
The jolly villager smiled at them as they stood in the warm sunshine eating the fish, dipping it in the pungent, salty sauce.
“I do not . . . think . . . they care . . .”
“Care for what?”
“Care that we . . . we are together.”
“We could stay and join their village?”
“No . . . that will never be possible. In time the leaders will send someone to look for me . . . they will find us here. And then it does not matter what the villagers care for. Still . . . all the same it is nice that they do not care. Maybe one day things will change.”
The Boy said nothing.
If he had to mark this place on Sergeant Presley’s map he would write, the Village of Happy People.
They mounted Horse and turned toward the south.
It was bright and hazy with mist.
“What lies that way is unknown,” she said. “We are at . . . the edge.”
Then, my whole life has been at the edge.
He turned to her.
She looked up at him. Her eyes shone darkly in the bright sunlight.
“I hope things change for . . . all people . . . one day. I hope they will have then the happiness we have now,” he said.
“Me too.”
They rode south onto a long beach where the surf thundered against the shore and white sandy cliffs rose above them.
In the afternoon, the sky turned gray and the wind was whipped with salt and water.
“A storm is coming on shore,” she said.
In time, while there was still light in the sky, they came upon old wooden buildings surrounded by drifting dunes. The wood was gray with salt and sun and age. Bone-white fingers of driftwood poked through the sand.
“We’ll camp here tonight.”
Chapter 48
In the night, surrounded by the warm silence of the dunes, the Boy heard the breaking waves beyond their camp rolling hard onto the beach.
‘We will continue straight into the south,’ he thought. ‘According to the map there was an old highway that ran along the coast there.’
He thought of the map in his mind. He saw Monterey south of where they were now, a place called Carmel and the old highway south to Los Angeles.
Everyone knew Los Angeles was destroyed. Sergeant Presley always said so.
On the map there was a large red X across Los Angeles.
They will not follow us there.
You would say, You think so, Boy.
And
Or do you hope so?
I am doing the best I can, Sergeant.
And
I know. I just got to ride ya, Boy. Make ya check yourself.
I know. You would say that to me. You would tell me to be both cautious and sure at once.
The breaking waves pounded the shore beyond the silence of the dunes.
If we could live here . . .
When he returned to their fire, Jin had reorganized their packs.
Sergeant Presley’s lay open.
There was the knife.
The flannel shirt.
And the gray feather with the broken spine.
“I have . . . never seen a feather like this . . . before,” she said, holding it up, inspecting it. “Where did it come from?”
The Boy knelt down beside her.
“I don’t know.”
“Boy” is what they called you. It’s the only thing you responded to. So “Boy” it is.
But why then did you keep the feather, Sergeant? Why is its touch almost familiar? As though it meant something once . . . about me.
I remember being carried as we ran. There was yellow grass and a blue sky. Someone, a woman, was screaming.
And the feather.
And . . .
“I think it was once my name.”
She stared at the feather.
Then she looked at the Boy.
She said nothing.
IN THE MORNING, the Boy smelled other horses coming out of the north.
They could have been anyone’s horses. Even wild ones, roaming. He’d seen them before.
But he knew it was a lie even if the voice of Sergeant Presley didn’t tell him so.
They’d be coming.
“Let’s go.”
Soon they were dressed and away from the bones of the old lodge sinking into the dunes. Horse threw up a great spray of sand as they kicked away from its ruin.
Farther down the beach there was no smell of horses. The Boy listened to the wind.
He heard no jink of harness and tack.
No cries of men calling to one another as they searched.
Behind him, the Boy saw the trail of Horse through the sand and grass and knew they were not hard to follow.
There was little left of the place once called Monterey, the skeletal remains of a few tall buildings, the foundations of many smaller buildings consumed by fire and forest. Massive green pines grew in wicked clumps up through the old roads and foundations.
They rode up a long hill of once-neighborhoods that were now little more than ancient charred wood overgrown b
y sea grass and pine. Just before starting down the other side, the Boy turned to scan their backtrail.
He saw the men on horses coming for them.
A line of riders picked their way along an old road. Ahead of them he saw individuals running back and forth across the fields and ruins, searching for their trail.
The Boy urged Horse and they rode hard over the small saddle of the mountain and down into a forest the map would name Carmel. Huge foundations of houses that once must have been little palaces dotted the sides of their track. The forest floor was littered with pine needles and thick brush.
‘They will follow us easily,’ thought the Boy.
Off to his right and down toward the rocky coast, he could see the remains of other ancient stone palaces crumbling into the sea.
Don’t just run, think.
They’re following you like dogs.
You would say that, Sergeant, wouldn’t you?
We can’t run. Horse might fall and then that would be then end of us.
I could start a fire to cover our trail.
Too damp from the storm.
Stay ahead of them for now and look for a place to lead them into a trap.
It’s all I can do.
“Is everything . . . good?” asked Jin.
“Yes. We are good.”
But he heard her worry. He thought of what traps he might make.
What do I have?
The tomahawk.
The rifle.
What remains of the parachute cord.
Two knives.
It’s not much.
It is all I have.
‘THEY KNOW WE are on their trail,’ thought Shao Fan.
He rolled a cigarette and wished it was the weed he smoked at night, alone, in the dark.
I have been too many days at this.
You are an assassin.
There is no rest for the assassin.
No rest for the wicked.
He looked at the marks on the ground.
The horse had turned several times. They must have watched them come up the valley.
We will have to watch their trail for traps now. It is their only chance to escape us.