"You may not like it, but I'm prepared to be brutal to build a new future. I don't want to be. It's not my nature." He ran one finger along his mustache and again, without opening his lips, he tapped his teeth together. "Back in the old times, I managed the Santa Miranda Airport. I was a paper-pusher. I signed forms. When I was in high school, I thought I had a greater destiny in front of me." He shook his head. "Whatever was meant to happen never happened. One trivial thing after another ate up my future. Then, last year, everything went to hell, and for some reason, I was immune. I lived. My wife, kids, everybody, they all died. I waited for my turn, but for some reason, Fate spared me for this. Martin-" He took his wrist. "Will you pray with me for success in our adventure?" The skin of his hand was soft and hot.

"Like I said, I'm not a religious person."

The man stared at him as though he hadn't seen him before, examining him as if he were an insect. "That's right. You went to college, so you don't believe in God."

"Sorry."

The First Leader got up and went back to the head of the table. "I believe in religious toleration, even for atheists, as long as they're helpful." The word did not sound neutral when he said it. "You and Ryan leave tomorrow at 600. I'll have the details for you before you leave. By the way." He looked up at Martin again, his eyes flat and inexpressive. "That kid - like I said, we don't have time for pets. If you want to be responsible for him, fine. Otherwise, we turn him out."

"I'll be responsible for him."

"Fine. Ryan!"

He appeared in the hall doorway. In the evening light, his thin hair was the same color as his skin. He looked bald.

"Martin here says the kid's hungry. Throw some food at 'im."

Ryan nodded and crossed the room into the kitchen. A minute later he reappeared with a paper plate filled with cold canned raviolis.

Martin took them without saying thanks and was escorted back to the converted bedroom. He handed them to Max, who thanked him and sat in the middle of the floor and ate ravenously.

Chapter 14.

When Curtiz took Martin out to the front of the house the next morning, it was dark and drizzling. Rain dripped out of the trees and made heavy metallic plops on top of the van that had been brought up. It was idling quietly with its interior lights on. Ryan sat with his hands on the wheel staring straight ahead. Through the opened side doors, Martin saw a cooler of canned drinks, a few plastic packages of lunchmeat, Curtiz' bullhorn, and a half dozen five-gallon gas cans tied against the inside.

A couple of the other men, both wearing their camouflaged uniforms, were bringing other hardware from around the house and loading it into the van - chain, a hand winch, crowbars, several sizes of rope, and some road flares. Martin guessed that their mission involved more than looking for survivors.

Curtiz stood near the front of the van, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. His hair was wet and combed down and he wore a freshly pressed tan bush jacket. Around him hung the strong smell of menthol aftershave.

"Bon voyage," he said, sipping his coffee.

"Could I have some breakfast first?" Martin asked. "I haven't had anything to eat since day before yesterday." He was asking matter-of-factly, but in truth hunger had kept him awake and he had felt dizzy several times since being awakened half an hour before.

From one of his pockets, Curtiz pulled out a candy bar and tossed it to him. "Bon appetite," he said with a grin. "Maybe you can convince Ryan to give you something out of the cooler."

"You'll give Max some breakfast, won't you?"

"As per our agreement yesterday, he's yours. You can feed him when you get back. He's your responsibility." He sipped his coffee and steam swirled out around his face into the cold dark air. "You don't come back, he's on his own."

The candy bar crinkled in Martin's hands. "Would you give him this?" He tossed it back to Curtiz.

"He's your responsibility, Marty. But sure. This one time I'll do your work for you."

"Let's go," Ryan croaked from inside the van. He didn't turn his head when he spoke, still gripping the steering wheel with both hands. He looked drowsy and sour.

"I might cooperate more willingly," Martin said, "if every order didn't have a threat behind it."

"You might, but then you might not. You're an atheist, Marty, and that means you've got no morality except what you choose to have. You don't have any Higher Order to tell you right from wrong like we do, so you could cut my throat in my sleep and not be bothered a bit. Isn't that right?" He tapped his teeth together inside his closed mouth.

"No," Martin said, "that isn't right."

"Come on," Ryan said dully.

He sipped at his coffee again. "Ryan has your orders. I turn the kid loose at ten tonight. You want to be back before that. He'll probably be wanting a second candy bar."

"We'll be back," Ryan said. "Come on. Get in."

Martin got in and slammed the door shut. "Drive," he said.

The wide rich fields on the west side of Santa Miranda were overgrown with waist-high weeds. These broad fields, the richest farm land in the world that had at one time fed millions, were now weed-clotted and flooded with wind-whipped rain. Along the highway, weeds grew nearly as tall as the van's windows, and sheets of water slid from one side of the road to the other. When the rain would slacken, the noise of their van would startle great gatherings of birds. Thousands of them would rise up out of the foliage and make the air vibrate as they turned and swooped over road. So many of them perched on the power and telephone lines that for hundreds of yards at a stretch not an inch of wire could be seen. Where the highway wound along the San Joaquin River for several miles, Martin counted a dozen hawks of one kind or another. Nature had started to re-balance itself.

"I hate birds," Ryan muttered, leaning forward and looking up through the windshield. "They sneak up on you."

"Kind of like Curtiz," Martin said.

Ryan gave no response. He just drove, keeping to his side of the road.

"What's our mission?" Martin asked, trying not to sound too interested.

"We go to Oakland, I got some addresses, we get any heavy weapons we find. Do the same in San Francisco. We look to see there's any people around and bring back some women if we can. I just drive and you do what I say."

"No problem."

"Curtiz has your kid."

"Right."

"We'll be back in time you can get him some dinner."

"I'd appreciate it," Martin said. Maybe, he was thinking, Ryan had a heart after all. "You ever been hungry?"

"Yeah, I been hungry. Not in a long time, though."

The highway turned west, toward the pass in the Coast Range. The land, as far as Martin could see was emerald green and range cattle grazed everywhere in the belly-high grasses. Calves stood next to their mothers. Twice, through the dim light under the heavy overcast, Martin thought he saw movement along the highway, next to the weeds. He suspected that coyotes had already moved back in. How long before the wolves returned?

"The kid's name is Max," Martin said. Ryan kept looking straight ahead, but he nodded. "He said there was a woman back at the house."

Ryan expressed nothing.

"Is there a woman back at the house?"

"I don't know. There was."

"Did something happen to her?"

"I don't know. I only saw her once, a week ago." He seemed profoundly uninterested. In the dimmer light inside the van, hovering over the steering wheel, Ryan's face looked even more hollow.

A flock of blackbirds swooped near the car and Ryan jerked sideways and then breathed heavily. "God damned birds."

"What did you do before you hooked up with Curtiz?" Martin asked.

"I did head jobs up in Alaska."

Martin glanced at Ryan, dreading the explanation.

"Mike would shoot 'em and I'd chainsaw the heads off," Ryan said without expression.

"Off people?" Martin asked casually.

"Walruses."

"You cut the heads off walruses."

"For the tusks. Ivory. I'd get a pack of dope a head, last me ten days, twelve or thirteen if I scrimp. But I never skrimpted."

They drove a few miles in silence. The fences were down in many places, and sheep grazed in the wide highway divider.

"Where d'you get your dope now?" Martin asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

"Curtiz. That's why I want to be back early. You hungry?"

"Very."

"I'm going to speed up," Ryan said, "and then you can go in the back and get something to eat. If you mess with me that way, see, I'll crash and you'll probably die. Mr. Curtiz told me to do it this way."

"Wouldn't you die too?" Martin asked.

"So?"

Ryan said nothing more till he got the van up to 90; it wavered in the wind. Then he said, "Okay, now."

Martin unsnapped his belt and climbed into the back. He never thought he could put lunchmeat between two slices of bread so fast. Then he got back in the passenger seat and snapped on the seatbelt.

"Thanks," Martin said, trying to remember to chew and not just swallow chunks.

"I don't eat much myself," Ryan answered, slowing down to 60. "I kind of lost the taste for it."

Chapter 15.

Diaz stood up, knocked the dirt and gravel out of his clothes, rinsed the blood off the heels of his hands in some ditch-water at the side of the road, and thought, "Didn't even hurt! I got the power in me!"

Outside Reno, he'd slalomed a corner on sand and gravel, watched the bike slide sideways from under him, then, momentarily airborn, he broad-backed off the shoulder, skidded across some loose dirt and rolled off into a shallow ditch.

On a rush, on a roll, he restarted the bike, baby-talked it, and spun-out, heading east, into the rolling desert hills, the sand, the sage brush, and the scrub, flat out, a hundred and ten, clean smooth rich desert air pressed into his face like a woman's breasts.

"Go go go!" he screamed, bugs popping on his front teeth, engine throbbing between his legs, "Go mama go mama go mama!" everything cool and hot, nerves zinging, eyeballs tight in his head, hundred and fifteen now, engine doing its high-pitched "eeeeeeeeeeee!" Wind screamed over his ears, and Diaz screamed back, up one hill, faster down the backside, up another, east, faster into the sun, across the continent!

Chapter 16.

Oakland looked like a battle had raged from street to street. Most of the stores had been looted, many of them burned out, and twice they had to detour around street-wide barricades of cars. Martin held a map on his knees and tried to direct Ryan to their destination, but many of the street signs had been cut off their poles and other streets were impassable.

"We could tell Curtiz we were there and the place was burned," Martin said, but Ryan became immediately jumpy.

"He'll cut me off," Ryan said.

It was all for nothing. The first address, Gun World, no longer existed. Most of the block had been reduced to chunks of smoke-blackened concrete. Iron grillwork stuck out of the rain-soaked rubble, protecting nothing from no one.

On his address paper, Ryan made a laborious note. Then he looked up at Martin. "See any women around here?"

Martin almost laughed. Instead, he said, "No, Ryan, I don't see any women. Out here in the rubble, in the rain - why aren't they standing around waiting for us?"

Ryan made another one-word notation.

Martin wondered how difficult and puzzling the world must seem to somebody with Ryan's impaired wits.

By ten o'clock, they found the second Oakland address, and Martin watched Ryan carefully write on his piece of paper, "Emptie."

The building had not been burned, but it had been utterly gutted. Apparently, toward the end, others had also been collecting guns.

"Now what?" Martin asked.

"We go to Frisco."

The Bay Bridge was eerily empty. Across the bay, the red spires of the Golden Gate were hidden in the steady rain and low clouds. A few cars were parked on the highest part of the suspension section of the bridge.

"Fliers," Ryan said dully, as they passed by the empty cars. "It was a fad."