"We'll go slow," Martin said. "Winch, when do you think you'll be rested up enough to ride up to San Francisco?"

He sighed heavily. "Two days, three. Tell you what. Let me get the pedal-powered generator put together, and when that's done, we'll go."

"Don't bring back any snivelers," Catrin said. "We have to protect our gene pool."

"We'll ask for credentials," Winch said.

"No handsome men," Xeng said, waving his hands in front of his face and shaking his head. "Only ugly guys."

"And homely women," Jan-Louise said. "I couldn't take any competition."

"Okay," Martin said. "We'll only bring back well-balanced ugly people. I'll make a note of that, Winch. We'll probably find dozens of them."

They finished the bottle of wine and said their good nights.

In their bed, Catrin slept against him, holding him tight even in her sleep. He had spoken of the trip to San Francisco as though it were nothing unusual, but they all knew that away from their settlement, anything could happen, most of it bad.

And Martin, remembering Curtiz and Ryan and Stewart, decided that this time, even though it could cause more problems than it prevented, he would go armed. Whatever else happened, he wanted to come home.

Chapter 62.

The trip to San Francisco was uneventful. On the way, Martin and Winch stopped several hours in every cluster of houses or businesses they came to, slid off their horses to stretch their legs, and looked for signs of recent habitation. Winch had the louder voice, so he was the designated caller and every few minutes shouted, "Hello! Anyone around?!"

On the second day, as they ambled along between towns, they heard a voice behind them, turned and saw a boy on a bicycle with one flapping flat tire, furiously pedaling after them. When he saw them looking back, he waved and leaned over the handlebars and pedaled even harder.

"Wait!" he shouted, skidding to a stop beside them. His grimy face was wet with sweat. "Are you guys-" and then his face contorted and he broke in to terrible sobs. Blindly, he stepped off his bike and reached up and grabbed fistfuls of Martin's pant leg and cried. "Don't go away! Please don't go away! Everybody's gone!"

As it turned out, his name was Ross, he was fourteen, and he had been alone nearly the whole time. He had heard them calling out in the last town but he'd been several blocks away, searching through a house for food and hadn't been able to see which way they had gone when they left. So he had ridden a mile or two in the opposite direction before doubling back.

Martin stepped down off the horse and tossed back the flap of the saddlebag. "Hungry?" he asked.

"I don't care about that. Take me with you," the boy pleaded. He stared into Martin's eyes as though he'd never seen a human face before. "Everybody died and then the phones didn't work, or the television-" He started sobbing again and then controlled himself. "I tried to be grown-up. I tried to drive-"

Martin held the boy against his chest. He would have preferred to have Ross wait until they came through town on their way back, but he couldn't ask him to be alone again. He still remembered too well what that was like, how he himself had volunteered to let life pass him by.

"Ross, you don't have to worry about being alone. You're with us now. In a week or so we'll take you where there are other people too, kids, other adults."

"You have a family now," Winch said, "as long as you want us."

He clung to Martin. "Don't leave me here," he begged.

"You won't be alone again," Martin said. "I promise."

For the rest of the trip, Ross never left their sides.

Chapter 63.

Isha lifted her head as she roused from her afternoon sleep. There was a smell... the smell of dried blood in their clothes and of meat on their breath. Now fully alert, she stood, gave herself a quick shake, and from the front porch stared down the road that led past her house. Nothing.

But again, there was the smell. Beside Isha, Mona lifted her nose and breathed the air, her ears turning separately one direction and then another, searching for a sound to go with the smell.

Then, a voice. Two voices.

Isha barked once, twice, and stalked stiff-legged back and forth in front of the house. Mona got out of the way.

Catrin came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel and said Isha's name, but Isha ignored her and stood in front of the door, barking in the direction she had heard the noise. The woman stood unmoving and silent, also looking down the road.

Isha ran halfway toward the voices, still barking furiously, the smell of old blood in her nose. Ahead, around the corner, coming at her, she could see the two of them now - a man and a woman. They spoke soothingly to her, lowering their hands and cooing at her.

They stank.

Within their other smells was the smell out of Jojo's house where there was a dead human.

Isha bolted when a hand from behind seized her scruff. She whirled and snapped, biting only air.

"Isha!"

It was Catrin - Isha cowered and slunk away, almost having bitten her. A horror swept over her far worse than her reaction to the strangers. She withdrew to corner of the house, where Mona had impassively watched it all. Isha felt fear and shame.

Catrin spoke to the man and the woman, who used only quiet voices, and then together the three of them came back to the house and went inside.

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.