“I’ll leave that to my descendants,” I said, and he busied himself, digging a bag of almonds out of his pack, pouring some into his hand, and passing the rest around.
Just before nightfall a gun battle began over toward the highway. We couldn’t see any of it from where we were, but we stopped talking and lay down. With bullets flying, it seemed best to keep low.
The shooting started and stopped, moved away, then came back. I was on watch, so I had to stay alert, but in this storm of noise, nothing moved near us except the trees in the evening breeze. It looked so peaceful, and yet people out there were trying to kill each other, and no doubt succeeding. Strange how normal it’s become for us to lie on the ground and listen while nearby, people try to kill each other.
22
As wind,
As water,
As fire,
As life,
God
Is both creative and destructive,
Demanding and yielding,
Sculptor and clay.
God is Infinite Potentiaclass="underline"
God is Change.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2027
We’ve had over a week of weary, frightening, nerve wracking walking. We’ve reached and passed through the city of Sacramento without real trouble.
We’ve been able to buy enough food and water, been able to find plenty of empty places in the hills where we could make camp. Yet none of us have had any feelings of comfort or well-being along the stretch of Interstate-5 that we’ve just traveled.
I-5 is much less traveled than U.S. 101, in spite of the earthquake chaos. There were times when the only people we could see were each other. Those times never lasted long, but they did happen.
On the other hand, there were more trucks on I-5.
We had to be careful because trucks traveled during the day as well as at night. Also, there were more human bones on I-5. It was nothing to run across skulls, lower jaws, or bones of the pelvis and torso.
Arm and leg bones were rarer, but now and then, we spotted them too.
“I think it’s the trucks,” Bankole told us. “If they hit someone along here, they wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t dare. And the junkies and alcoholics wouldn’t be that careful where they walked.”
I suppose he’s right, although along that whole empty stretch of road, we saw only four people whom I believed were either not sober or not sane.
But we saw other things. On Tuesday we camped in a little hollow back in the hills to the west of the road, and a big black and white dog came wandering down toward our camp with the fresh-looking, bloody hand and forearm of a child in its mouth.
The dog spotted us, froze, turned, and ran back the way it had come. But we all got a good look before it went, and we all saw the same thing. That night, we posted a double watch. Two watchers, two guns, no unnecessary conversation, no sex.
The next day we decided not to take another rest day until we had passed through Sacramento. There was no guarantee that anything would be better on the other side of Sacramento, but we wanted to get away from this grim land.
That night, looking for a place to camp, we stumbled across four ragged, filthy kids huddled around a campfire. The picture of them is still clear in my mind. Kids the age of my brothers— twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, three boys and a girl. The girl was pregnant, and so huge it was obvious she would be giving birth any day. We rounded a bend in a dry stream bed, and there these kids were, roasting a severed human leg, maneuvering it where it lay in the middle of their fire atop the burning wood by twisting its foot. As we watched, the girl pulled a sliver of charred flesh from the thigh and stuffed it into her mouth.
They never saw us. I was in the lead, and I stopped the others before they all rounded the bend. Harry and Zahra, who were just behind me, saw all that I saw. We turned the others back and away, not telling them why until we were far from those kids and their cannibal feast.
No one attacked us. No one bothered us at all. The country we walked through was even beautiful in some places— green trees and rolling hills; golden dried grasses and tiny communities; farms, many overgrown and abandoned, and abandoned houses.
Nice country, and compared to Southern California, rich country. More water, more food, more room… .
So why were the people eating one another?
There were several burned out buildings. It was obvious that there had been trouble here too, but much less than on the coast. Yet we couldn’t wait to get back to the coast.
Sacramento was all right to resupply in and hurry through. Water and food were cheap there compared to what you could buy along the roadside, of course. Cities were always a relief as far as prices went. But cities were also dangerous. More gangs, more cops, more suspicious, nervous people with guns. You tiptoe through cities. You keep up a steady pace, keep your eyes open, and try to look both too intimidating to bother and invisible. Neat trick. Bankole says cities have been like that for a long time.
Speaking of Bankole, I haven’t let him get much rest on this rest day. He doesn’t seem to mind. He did say something that I should make note of, though.
He said he wanted me to leave the group with him.
He has, as I suspected, a safe haven— or as safe as any haven can be that isn’t surrounded by high-tech security devices and armed guards. It’s in the hills on the coast near Cape Mendocino maybe two weeks from here.
“My sister and her family have been living there,” he said. “But the property belongs to me. There’s room on it for you.”
I could imagine how delighted his sister would be to see me. Would she try to be polite, or would she stare at me, then at him, then demand to know whether he was in his right mind?
“Did you hear what I said?” he demanded.
I looked at him, interested in the anger I heard in his voice. Why anger?
“What am I doing? Boring you?” he demanded.
I took his hand and kissed it. “You introduce me to your sister and she’ll measure you for a straitjacket.”
After a while, he laughed. “Yes.” And then, “I don’t care.”
“What does she do for a living? Farm the land?”
“Yes, and her husband does odd jobs for cash-which is dangerous because it leaves her and the children alone for days, weeks, even months at a time. If we can manage to support ourselves without becoming a drain on her few resources, we might be useful to her. We might give her more security.”
“How many kids?”
“Three. Let’s see…eleven, thirteen, and fifteen years old by now. She’s only forty herself.” His mouth twitched. Only. Yeah. Even his little sister was old enough to be my mother. “Her name’s Alex.
Alexandra. Married to Don Casey. They both hate cities. They thought my land was a godsend. They could raise children who might live to grow up.” He nodded. “And their children have done all right.”
“How have you kept in touch?” I asked. “Phone?”
“That was part of our agreement,” he said. “They don’t have a phone, but when Don goes to one of the towns to get work, he phones me and lets me know how everyone is. He won’t know what’s happened to me. He won’t be expecting me. If he’s tried to phone, both he and Alex will be worried.”
“You should have flown up,” I said. “But I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Are you? So am I. Listen, you are coming with me. I can’t think of anything I want as much as I want you.
I haven’t wanted anything at all for a long time. Too long.”
I leaned back against a tree. Our campsite wasn’t as completely private as the one at San Luis had been, but there were trees, and the couples could get away from each other. Each couple had one gun, and the Gilchrist sisters were baby-sitting Dominic as well as Justin. We had put them in the middle of a rough triangle and given them my gun. On I-5 they and Travis had had a chance to do a little target practice. It was all of our duty to look around now and then and make sure no strangers wandered into the area. I looked around.