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 transgressor 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
