This was the way it would always feel from now on. To feel her holding him as they rode. As they rode into the face of the world. Into cities and wherever they might wish to go.
All their days should be such.
“Hold, boy,” came the gruff voice of the Chinese general. He hobbled as fast as he could down the cracked and broken street leading back to the inner city.
The sun was overhead and the day was hot.
“I know,” cried the Chinese general. “I know it must be this way. At first I thought it might be a trick of my old age, that I was seeing things that weren’t there. I thought I was beyond understanding the ways of the young when they are in love. But I sensed what passed between the two of you. Now you must leave and go as far away as you can. If our leaders know of your whereabouts, then they will send men after you.”
Jin speaks rapidly in Chinese. The Boy could tell she was pleading.
“It’s all right, granddaughter,” said the Chinese general, her grandfather, breathlessly. “I understand. I don’t need to forgive you…”
The Chinese general began to shake, wobbling back and forth. Horse reared and the Boy fought to bring him under control as Jin clung to his back. The rubble all about them began to shift in great piles.
As soon as the shaking had started, it stopped.
“It’s just a tremor, boy,” said the general. “But there will be more.”
The Boy patted Horse, whose eyes were rolling and wild with fear.
The old general came closer, pulling the folded map from his uniform.
“I have one more question to ask, boy.”
The Boy felt ashamed, as though he had stolen something from the general in spite of all the old soldier’s kindness.
“But first, take this.” The general held the folded map up with trembling, gnarled fingers. The Boy reached down and took it.
“And this.”
The general held up a small sack.
“There are American dimes made of silver inside. Most traders will barter for them. You will need to know where you are, that’s why I want the two of you to take the map. Where you have been is not important anymore. You will need to know where you are going now.”
The Chinese general turned to Jin.
“You are precious to me. Your father and mother named you well. I shall think of all our walks together, always. You have been a faithful granddaughter, and beyond that, my friend.”
There were great tears in his tired, rheumy eyes. They poured out onto the brown wrinkles of his fleshy face.
“It is I who must beg for forgiveness… from both of you,” sobbed the general, fighting to maintain his soldierly bearing.
Jin speaks in Chinese again, crying this time.
“No,” commanded the general. “I must. I must ask for forgiveness. I must ask you to forgive me and those of my generation for… for destroying the world. And you must forgive us, so that you can be free to make something new. I am sorry for what we did.”
The general turned to the Boy, wiping at tears, his voice winning the fight for composure.
“And now answer my question. We will not survive the attack of the barbarians, will we?”
The Boy wheeled Horse, still skittish after the earthquake.
“I do not think so.”
The general lowered his eyes, thinking.
“Go now. Do not look back, never return here. The world is yours now. Do better with it than we did.”
The Boy felt Jin’s hot tears on his bare shoulder.
“Go!” roared the general.
The Boy put his good foot into Horse’s flank and they were off down the old road leading to the rusting bridge that was once called the Golden Gate.
It was very quiet out.
THEY RODE INTO the forested hills above the bridge, dismounted and crawled forward to the edge of the ridge and watched the sentries below.
“There are more guards than usual,” whispered Jin of the sentries who were watching the bridge.
“It might be because of the invasion. Or us, if word has gotten out.”
They watched, hoping the extra guards would leave. The sun was high above.
“Tell me about the bridge. Is it safe?”
“It is… dangerous. But there is a marked way.”
“What will we find on the other side? Are there people?”
“No, not in the city. There is only destruction there. People go there… to salvage. There are small villages… away to the south.”
Horse cried, signaling the Boy.
The Boy loped back to Horse and saw the riders. Chinese cavalry—gray uniforms and crimson sashes— carrying their heavy rifles, twelve of them, following Horse’s trail up from the ruins of Sausalito.
Chapter 44
“Hold on tight.” Then, “Tighter!” screams the Boy.
Horse was sliding downslope through the scree that abutted the shattered remains of the road leading to the bridge. The Boy held on for dear life as Jin clung to him.
The guards at the bridge raised their weapons to port arms, as if this act, as it had so many times before, would bend the offenders to their will.
You said, Sergeant,
Horse checks a fall and the Boy yanks him on to the road and straight toward the bridge.
The riders who had followed their trail, at the top of the hill above the bridge now, began to fire down upon them. Their shots were wild and the sentries at the bridge began to scatter, fearing they were being shot at by invaders. A wild shot hit the chest of one of the Chinese bridge guards with a loud thump, knocking him to the pavement.
Horse crashed past two guards and raced onto the bridge, straining hard for the distant far end.
Great iron cables ran skyward toward the suspension pylons, but other numerous cables that once were connected to the roadway had fallen onto the bridge or lay draped in great coils spilling over the edge. It even seemed to the Boy that the bridge hung lower on one side. A few ancient trucks, decrepit with crusted rust, littered the bridge at odd angles.
“Stay to the right… it’s the safest side!” screamed Jin above the bullets, above the
The gusty wind dragged at the Boy’s long hair as he looked behind them to see riders and horses tumbling down the steep slope leading to the bridge.
I have a lead and a little time. That is good. But I’m riding into the unknown, and that is bad.
For a moment he felt the familiar fear that had chased him all his days. But the embrace of Jin, her thin arms about his chest, reminded him of wearing the bearskin in the dead of a winter storm.
At the end of this bridge, somewhere, there must be a cave like the bear cave for us.
Halfway across the bridge, the Boy could see the concrete piles of once–San Francisco. Huge jutting slabs of gray concrete rose up into small mountains, stacked at different protruding angles. Only a few emaciated buildings remained upright.
‘The destruction is almost complete here,’ thought the Boy, and in the moment he had this thought, his
