Cal’s father had done the best that he could. One of the things he’d done while he was looking for answers and for strength to face his struggles, was turn to the search for spirituality. He’d never been a particularly religious man, and he’d always made his way in the Chinese system by offering the kind of public acceptance of science as the supreme answer for everything that was expected of him. While he secretly admitted to an appreciation for traditional Chinese medical practices, and he had a deep and abiding faith in certain ancient Chinese cultural mores, he’d been successful in his career, to the point that some in the Chinese politburo were eying him for regional directorships. His success therefore, was precisely a result of his being seen as a man of industry and science and not of mythology. He’d been exactly the type of man the country needed as China moved toward more Western-style medical standards. At a minimum, he was good at managing business, a useful thing in a time when the pharmaceutical business in his country was on the ascent.
Still, there was the matter of the boy. Calvin was a fussy baby. From his very earliest days, he behaved as though he took it as a personal affront that his mother wasn’t there for him. This was understandable, but it didn’t make matters any better for the harried young father trying to raise him. The fact that Cal’s father had proved to be only a middling student made things even worse. In order to advance, he’d been forced to spend many hours reading and rereading texts that other students simply seemed to grasp at first glance.
Perhaps the turning point for Calvin’s father was the day he’d received, in the mail, from his family back home, a small book by a moral philosopher named Li Hongzhi. This philosopher had recently become famous in China for developing a movement founded on traditional Chinese physical exercises combined with the practice of certain moral beliefs. Chief among these beliefs were truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The book had changed Calvin’s father forever.
The pharmaceutical engineer became a member of the outlaw movement that eventually became known as Falun Gong.
Drawing strength from his new-found religion—if it could rightly be called a religion—Calvin’s father threw himself into his tasks. He took to his studies with a new vigor and seemed to grow in his role as a father in a way that surprised even his family back in China, as well as the few friends he’d made on campus. He became, in short, a zealot, and that zealotry infused him with energy.
All of this is by way of explaining why, on a day he’d taken to get out of the city and tour the beautiful hill country he’d heard so much about, he was doing his exercises in a small park next to the Vereins Kirch in Fredericksburg, Texas, and not caring a whit for the stares that he got from the people in that small Central Texas tourist town.
People were not used to seeing a Chinese man with a toddler at his side standing in the middle of an artsy Texas village next to an old Colonial-era Lutheran Church moving his body as if he were pushing the wind. The folks walking by stole their furtive glances and tried not to stop and stare. They were polite in their peering insouciance, but if one had stood to the side and watched, it would have been clear that their reaction was unimportant to Calvin’s father. He was impervious to even their walking amazement.
One young man in his later teens, standing in the park, did not steal furtive glances or peer through the side of his eyes at the Chinese man’s antics. That man noticed both the crowd and the man’s practiced disregard of them. He knew what it was like to be watched sideways and marginalized, and he figured that if you were going to look at a man, you should just go on and look at him.
His name was Jonathan Wall.
In the future, Jonathan Wall and Calvin’s father would become very close friends — and Mr. Wall would become even closer to Calvin.
CHAPTER 27
“Stephen, we have a serious problem.”
Veronica looked at her son with her fists on her hips, frowning—not at him particularly—but at the problem.
“We have to ride south through Brooklyn, and that will be difficult enough, boy, but then we have to cross the Verrazano Bridge, and that could be next to impossible. The bridge will almost certainly be blocked by bandits; people who will want to take our bikes; people who will steal our food if we will let them; people who might want to take our lives.”
“You think it will be that bad, mom?” Stephen asked. He concentrated on making sure that his face showed bravery and masked his fear.
Veronica noticed Stephen’s efforts and she was pleased. Half of any hard victory consists of overcoming the fears that might keep us from the battle in the first place, she thought.
“I think it will be worse than I think it will be,” she said, smiling.
“What’s the plan?”
“Getting over the bridge is the first thing. We’ll take our battles one at a time. We need to be prepared to ride fast and yet carefully. Watch for trash on the roadways, son, nails in particular. A flat tire on your bike makes it as useless as not having one. I found spare tubes in the storeroom, but there will be no time or place to stop and change them. We need to avoid anything that will keep us from getting out of here quickly.”
Stephen looked at his mother, wanting to mention a thought that had occurred to him While she was sleeping, he’d been silently drumming because drumming always seemed to help him think clearly. As his hands worked the rhythm in his head, his mind flashed back to a day when he’d been riding the subway. Beating the heels of his hands like a madman on the tops of his knees, keeping time to a song playing in his ears, he’d looked up and noticed that people had slid away from him on the seats, leaving him alone at the end of the train.
“What if we put on the fallout gear now?” he said, smiling. “It will freak people out. They’ll think we’re scientists or something, or maybe from the government, or that we’re sick. Maybe they’ll leave us alone.”
“Boy,” Veronica said, placing her long thin fingers on his cheek and giving his nose a little tweak, “I knew some sense had crept into you. Yes. What a great thought! And the suits will keep us warm… and… and…. they’ll be one less thing we have to carry. That’s an excellent idea!”
Within half an hour, they had packed, dressed in the hazmat suits, and were ready to go. They opened the bunker door, and, checking the area carefully, they proceeded out into the night.
Calvin Rhodes climbed into the cab of the truck and put the key in the ignition. He turned it forward a bit and heard the slow, whining grind of the starter kick in, pumped the gas pedal slightly and felt the motor rumble to life.
Pulling out of the circular driveway, he waved to the small crowd of people standing at the foot of the porch, and then proceeded slowly along the gravel driveway, hearing the crunch of the tires underneath him, until he came to a stop where the driveway met the county highway. He looked both ways, although that wasn’t really necessary. His was the only vehicle moving on the road. He pushed the knob forward, finding his gear, and gave the truck some gas. Cautiously, he drove the first ten feet of a journey that he hoped would take him halfway across the country. Gently shifting gears, he settled his butt into the seat.
The first hundred miles were mostly uneventful. He stuck to the back roads, cruising through the rural scenery of the rolling hill country, passing family farms and churches and schools and small towns, or the burned out buildings that had once stood for them.
Mostly, there was an eerie quiet, although in some yards kids were still at play as their parents watched warily from the windows. In many places, the storefronts along streets were smashed, and the shelves were emptied, leaning over like dominoes one against another, tossed by looters or panicked citizens or both.