Authors: Wayne Wightman
As soon as the screen slammed, Isha hurried to the door and watched them through the screen. Mona delicately sniffed the air and departed. The people stood briefly and then they sat at the table with Catrin, who spoke to them as she spoke to everyone, but the strangers only used quiet voices. Their smell filled the house and poured out through the screen.
Chapter 64
They got to San Francisco on the evening of the fourth day. Like most closely-built cities they had seen, vast sections of it were ashes and gutted skeletons of buildings.
Martin stopped at several undamaged stores along their way through and picked up a can of paint thinner, some white paint, and a brush.
“I'm curious,” Winch said at one point, watching Martin tie two small tires together and hang them behind his saddle. “How long did it take you to dream this one up?”
“I was thinking, 'How do we find people?' and it occurred to me I was going at it backwards. It would be easier to have them find us. And there it was.”
Winch shook his head.
“What's he doing?” Ross asked. He was sitting behind Winch, holding tight, as usual.
“He's going to set a signal fire to find more members for our family.”
It was Martin's idea to signal from the middle of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. Most of the cities were burned, but he couldn't imagine they were empty.
Halfway across the Bay Bridge, they stopped and tied the horses and waited for nightfall. From the bridge at night, they would be able to see any lights or fires for miles in all directions.
Then, in the morning before they left to search for any campfires they saw, he would paint a message on the bridge roadway — “Looking for people. Will be here at sunset.”
He'd pour paint thinner on one of tires and set it afire. Wind cooperating, the black smoke would be visible for miles — and smoke coming from the middle of the bridge would, he hoped, tell others that someone was signaling.
The next evening, depending on how things went, they would do the same from the middle of the Golden Gate.
Their first night they spotted three campfires and a possible fourth. Before leaving the next morning, Martin set the fire. Black smoke boiled off it as the rubber sizzled and stank.
....
By noon the next day they had found nine other people.
Rusty was the first they'd come to, a grizzled sixty-some-year old, a farmer in the old days, who had been fishing the bay with his two wives, Dora, a serious matronly woman in her mid-forties, and Christie, a homely young woman who might have been in her twenties but looked thirty-five, with limited abilities.
Martin and Winch found them at the end of a pier. Rusty greeted them, shook their hands, and then slumped his husky body back into one of their lawn chairs. Dora had just finished gutting a fish and was wiping her hands on a rag. Christie quietly watched everything with wide, wonder-filled eyes.
“I dunno,” Rusty drawled. “We kinda got it goin' okay 'round here. Good fishin', little vegetable garden back up the hill. House. I dunno.” He chuckled. “I might have t'work!”
“You have a doctor?” Martin asked.
“You have a doctor?” Dora, the older woman asked quickly.
“He set my arm when I broke it,” Winch said, “and delivered two babies.”
“Christie lost her baby,” Dora said. She gave Rusty a vile look.
“We could use someone who knows about farming,” Martin said.
“I dunno,” he said, scratching his stubbly chin. “Real good fishin' here.”
Dora took Rusty's arm and led him away, out of earshot, and began speaking to him. Christie was left standing with Martin and Winch. She shuffled around. “Is that your little boy?” she asked shyly.
“Yes, he is,” Martin said, pulling Ross from behind him. “Ross, this is Christie.”
“I'm fourteen,” he said.
Martin nudged him forward and Christie put her arms around him and began asking him where he was from and what grade he had been in.
“We'll come with you,” Dora announced, leading Rusty back. She smoothed out the front of her dress. “What do you want us to do?”
“See if you can find some kind of wagon or cart for your stuff and yourselves that can be horsedrawn and ready to go day after tomorrow. We'll see about coming up with a horse and will be back then.”
“We'll be ready,” Dora said.
Rusty was nodding. “Don't have much to pack,” he said, “except a few fishin' poles.”
“We have a river down the hill from us and the ocean's an easy distance.”
“Don't leave me here,” Ross whispered to Martin after pulling away from Christie.
“I promised you,” Martin said, lifting him onto the back of his horse. “We keep our promises.”
Rusty pointed them the way to the next campfire they'd seen. He even knew Mark, the young man they found there. Mark had several rifles leaning against the tree behind him and wore a heavy pistol on his hip. He unsnapped the hammer strap when he saw them approach. They pulled up their horses twenty yards away.
Winch said, “Worrisome sort,” under his breath.
“Don't mean to intrude,” Martin called. “Just passing by and thought we might talk.”
The young man stood immobile, his hand on the gun butt, watching their moves. “State your business,” he said. It was a command.
“Bad vibes and big guns,” Winch whispered under his breath.
“We have no business to state,” Martin said. “You have a nice day.”
At the next campfire site, they were welcomed by what appeared to be an entire family. There were five of them — and whatever they had been in the old times, they looked like a family now. Besides the mother and father, both of whom were in their early thirties, there were two pre-teen girls and a boy a year or two older than Ross.
“Welcome, welcome!” the man said. “I'm August, this is April, my wife, that's May, our youngest, there's June, and the boy is Charlie.”
“I like your names,” Martin said, and then introduced himself, Winch, and Ross.
After sitting down with a paper plate of warm rice and freshly opened smoked fish, August started talking. “We figured, hey, it's a new world, time for new ways to do things, new names, new anything, since the law and order broke down. I was a lawyer for the Western Cascade Condominium Corporation. Ever hear of them? We had developments everywhere. April was a philosophy major and says she learned we may not be here at all. This could all be the dream of a brain in a jar that has electrodes wired up to it.” April grinned. “April comes from Boston. Whatever you say, she can prove to you the opposite is true.”
“That must be handy,” Martin said.
“Completely useless.” August rattled on. “For example, when I worked for Western triple-C, I took care of EPA lawsuits....”
He talked till Ross fell asleep at Martin's feet and Winch was yawning. As would be expected, after the disease had swept through, August and April and the children had gradually found each other, with Charlie having joined them only four months before. He was quiet but he was creative, August assured them, telling how when they found Charlie, the boy had filled a swimming pool with trout and was growing tomatoes and corn in a greenhouse. “But he doesn't say much,” August concluded. “Now the girls....”
When Martin interrupted to ask if they wanted to go back with them, he had barely got the question out before August accepted. “Sure, sure. My wife gets tired listening to me all the time, so sure, yes, we'll go along. More people to talk to. Got a commune or something going?”
“It's just some people living together.”
“What form of government you guys got set up there? Is it a—”
“We're just friends helping each other out. Maybe that's socialism.”
“Better hope not—” He took a deep breath and raised an instructive finger.
Martin interrupted him to ask if they could find a wagon and be ready to go in forty-eight hours.
“Forty-eight hours? Sure, but the wagon, I don't know.”
In a small voice, Charlie said there was one at a hardware store he knew about.
“Any horses around?” Martin asked.
Charlie nodded. “I know where there's usually one.”
Martin liked the boy already. He was quietly competent. It would be interesting to know what else he knew, but with August talking, he'd have to wait till some other time to find out.
....
At sunset, Martin and Winch and Ross rode up one of the on-ramps to the Bay Bridge. The tire had burned most of the day, sending out plumes of black smoke. And out in the middle of the bridge stood a half dozen people. One man was staggering drunk, wearing nothing but baggy flower-print shorts, and another, wearing camouflaged clothing, also wore a sidearm, crossed bandoliers, carried a pump shotgun. The others, a man, a woman, a teenage girl and a five or six-year-old boy, all looked normal enough.
“Good evening,” Martin said, waving and climbing down off his horse and then helping Ross down.
“You leave this message?” asked the armed man in a not terribly friendly manner.
“Yes I did,” Martin said.
“Why?” he demanded.
“As it says, we're looking for people. We have a small group south near the coast, and we thought we would get along better if we had a few more members with a few more skills.”
“I'll joint up,” said the man with the liter of bourbon. “Join up, whatever. I got needs, you understand, that I'm not gonna get met over in that... that ash heap. You got someone down there that distills?”
“We don't,” Martin said.
“How many of you are there?” asked one of the men who had not spoken before. He had a soft voice and kept a conspicuous distance from the one with the guns.
“Eight so far.”
“Who's the boss, you?” asked the armed man.
“We don't have a boss,” Martin said.
“Bullshit.” He shook his head in disgust. “You don't have a direction, someone to keep you organized, you don't have a future.”
“So far, it hasn't been a problem,” Martin said. “You want to come with us and take charge and help us out?” Martin asked.
The man cocked his head a little, slightly squinting his eyes, and said, “Is that an offer? I could do that. I could probably save your butts.”
“Then we definitely don't want you,” Martin said.
The man's mouth twisted down and he put his hand on his pistol butt.
“Martin,” Winch said from behind him, still on his horse, “why don't you and Ross step a little to the left.”
Martin stepped aside and saw that Winch held his revolver loosely in his hand, aimed generally in the direction of the man in camouflage.
“I didn't want you to have to kill another one,” Winch said to Martin, “It wouldn't be right.”
Martin had even forgotten that he wore a pistol.
“Mister,” Winch said, “you should probably put all your weapons down and leave. Like he said, we don't need you. Just everything on the ground. We'll leave 'em there, you can come back later.”
The man was trying to swallow and his throat clicked dryly several times. “You asked me a question and I answered it!” he bellowed. “So god damn it—”
“Kids,” Winch ordered, “turn your backs.”
In seconds, the man had dropped his shotgun, the bandoliers, and pistol. Then he backed away a dozen steps, turned, and stalked away.
“Thank god,” the quiet man said.
“No,” Martin said, “his name is Winch.”
Winch chuckled off and on for ten minutes after that.
They left the drunk with his bottle. The rest of them returned to the camp where they had met Rusty, Dora, and Christie. Halfway there, the quiet man, Roy, pulled Martin aside as they walked. Martin had noticed that Roy kept careful watch of those around him and rarely spoke except when spoken to. He was a solid, good-sized man, in his mid-thirties, good looking, with thick black hair, a narrow face, and quick observant eyes.
“There's something I need to tell you,” he said in a barely audible voice, “before we get any further in this. I'm not going to let you make any false assumptions about me.” He took a deep breath and paused before continuing. Beside them, the horses clopped on the pavement, and up ahead, August was chattering about how much money he used to have. “I'm gay. I don't have AIDS — I got myself tested before the clinics closed — but I thought you should know, first thing, in case your people have some kind of agenda that doesn't include me.”
“In the current situation,” Martin said, “your sexual preference doesn't seem very important. What we're trying to do here is help each other stay alive, extend our human future a little bit, whether we deserve one or not.”
“Thanks,” Roy said, shaking Martin's hand. “Thanks a lot. I'll do what I can to help.”
After delivering the new people to August's camp, Martin and Winch rode over to their signal on the Golden Gate, but it was a bust. One person who showed up kept talking about a “jumping party” and the other one was so blitzed or brain-damaged that nothing coherent was revealed.
....
During the next thirty-six hours, they got three wagons and four horses together, and the following day, just before sunrise, they started south.