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 so some of us humans will have a future... whether it deserves a future 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.

"We've had good hunting," Winch said to Martin as their horses ambled along the dusty asphalt. "And we have a good balance of sexes and ages now. Nineteen of us, nine males, ten females, seven of which could or will be able to have children. We might make it past our generation."

"If August doesn't kill us first with talking."

They could hear him rattling on behind them. At the moment, he was regaling Roy with a complex tale of alleged sludge-dumping by renegade environmentalists.

Martin couldn't wait to get back to Catrin and Land. And the others. But to Catrin especially. She was like a strange magnet to his soul. The further away from her he was, the stronger was her attraction.

Chapter 65.

Diaz blazed down I-95, maxing the Harley till its noise was a blurry hum. His psychic curtain had started to lower - grim days snaked toward him out of the future. He could already hear them hiss, ready to venomize him with helplessness and confused slow-witted moronism. There was no time to stop and smell the roses, bask on the Floridian beaches, or write any poetry - he just had to move, roll, run, to a hospitable place where he could vegetate and revile a world that allowed him to inhabit it.

He passed Cape Canaveral at an even 100 miles an hour. Though the gnats and mosquitoes smeared across his goggles, he saw the silver nose of a rocket on one of the launchpads, set up and abandoned. To be strapped in, he thought, oh, to be strapped in and set free of the earth, lifted on wings of fire, to ride that baby up, make one incredible orbit of the earth, and drive her down, nose first, everything glowing cherry-red, straight into the Mariana Trench!

Self-destructive thoughts. The curtain was dropping faster than he thought. He cranked up to 110. The highway was an asphalt blur six inches under his boots.

He made a wrong turn somewhere around Fort Lauderdale and ended up at the beach. He hadn't slept more than twenty minutes in four days - his mind was a vortex of random thoughts, and his mouth felt like it had died somewhere in Georgia.

"Hey man," someone said. "Chill out. Have a Bud."

Diaz heard the wet hiss of a pop-top. He looked up. It was strangely quiet, no bike noises, no wind howling in his ears, and he had sand in his mouth. Someone put a warm can in his hand. He took a pull of the beer, rinsed, and spit. The second drink he swallowed and felt some sand go down his throat. So what. He'd had worse things in his mouth.

"Where am I?" he croaked.

"Atlantic Ocean, man. That's what that water is." The guy was twenty, twenty-five, maybe forty. To Diaz, everything looked strange, twisted, with evil around the edges. But this guy on the beach was definitely different. He did not look troubled. That was clear. He was leaning back in one of those ground-level beach chairs. He wore a green sun visor and a baggy bathing suit with palm trees and bananas printed on it. "Drink up. I got plenty. I found the warehouse."

"Where's my bike?"

"Over in that ravine."

"I musta missed the freeway." Diaz finished the Bud, crawled over and popped a second one. He was feeling better. "Name's Diaz."

"I gave up my name. Since everybody died, I'm just a guy on the beach."

Diaz attempted comprehension of any lurking significance in that remark. "You... you trying to be one with nature or something?"

"Already did that," said the guy on the beach. "Now I just hang around. Be real."

Diaz pondered that. Be real. Be real? He felt like he was a nightmare crawling all over himself. That was all too real all right all over okay, oh boy. He socked himself in the chest. Maybe the pain would distract him from overdrive thinking.

"Where you headed?" asked the guy on the beach.

"Uh. South."

"All the way south? Key West?"

"All the way."

"You all right?"

Diaz's eyes had fixed on the low, rolling surf. "Bipolar. Cycle's on a downswing. I got maybe a day left. Then I'm screwed. Few weeks. Like death."

"Bummer."

Diaz crawled most of the way on his hands and knees, down the incline back to his bike and dug though his medical kit. He had three whites left, then he was going to hit the end of the trail - hard - like a bug on a windshield. Rectal thoughts. He held the whites in his fist and staggered back toward the guy on the beach, threw the pills in his mouth, along with some sand, and washed it all down with another Bud. "Wish I was you, man," he mumbled. "You ever get lonely?"

"Lonely? Nah. Ever since I unwrapped my mind, talking to you is just like talking to me. Never know what I'm going to say next. I could be anybody."

Diaz tried to think about that. There had to be significance, but it eluded him.

"You have to go now," said the guy on the beach.

"Yeah. I have to go now." There wasn't much time left. He struggled to his feet and waded through the sand back to his bike. Somehow, the guy on the beach was already there ahead of him and helped him right the motorcycle and push it back up to the asphalt parking lot.

"I'd wish you good luck," the guy said, "but it would be an empty gesture."

Diaz had been expecting him to grin and say Good luck! and he was glad he wouldn't have to hear it.

Diaz swung his leg over the cycle and felt the whites start to kick in. "Which way is south?"

"To get to Key West, go out to the end of the parking lot and turn left. When the road runs out, you're there."

"When the road runs out. Got it."

Diaz kicked the bike to life, gunned it once, and nodded at the guy on the beach. "Later!" he yelled, waved, and rode like the wind.

He followed the white line from key to key, over the ocean on long bridges, till he got to the end of the road. Having done that, he realized he no longer had a plan. On the asphalt under his feet was an arrow. His rat brain kicked in and Diaz knew that to reach his destination, he should follow the arrows, every arrow he came to, on the streets or on signs, no matter what color or size, turning down this street, back this way, even following tiny arrows till one of them pointed to an old but well-kept two-story house, surrounded by an iron-picket fence and a yard full of banana trees, huge overhanging mimosas, and creeping vines. And cats. Cats everywhere, some of them with big puffy, multi-toed feet.

When Diaz fell going up the stairs, a dozen of the cats sat around him and waited patiently for him to get up. Black cats, pregnant cats, speckled kittens, orange, moon-faced toms, all quietly sitting around him on the narrow stairs, licking their paws, icons of patience.

Chapter 66.

Martin heard Isha's happy barking as she ran up the road to meet them and then he saw Catrin step into view. The way she carried herself, her arms limp at her side a long moment before she waved, he knew there would be bad news. Something was wrong. He nudged the horse with his heels and galloped up to meet her for a minute alone.

As soon as he jumped off and got within arm's reach of her, ready to hold her to him, he stopped. "What is it?" -and he dreaded her answer. "Are the children all right?"

Her eyes were dark-circled and tired.

"No one's been hurt. But there are new people here. A group of them from up in the hills, and guess who's among them - Paul and Leona. Their leader calls himself Joshua. He's over at Winch's house. Martin, people have stopped talking to each other. I'm afraid we're going to have trouble."

"Are they armed?"

"Not that we've seen."

"We'll take care of it." If this was another Curtiz, he was thinking, he would make short work of the problem. "Come and meet who we found up north."

Catrin made a good show, smiling and shaking their hands, and when Martin introduced her to Ross, he said to the boy, "This is my wife," and the boy hesitantly shook her hand and then hugged her around the waist.

"We have another son," Martin said. "He was alone until he found us."

"I'm so glad to meet you," she said, holding his face. She ran her fingers through the boy's hair and held his head against her, but Martin could still see the worry in her eyes.

"Take everyone to the big house up the street. They can stay there tonight and settle in tomorrow." Martin took Winch aside and told him what Catrin had told him about Joshua. Winch pulled out his revolver enough to click off the safety and then reholstered it. "Winch and I are going to meet our other guests."