He was afraid to choose, he understood then. And he was afraid to live with choice.
It was easier to be the best, to be a weapon in someone else’s hand.
He remembered the fear-caster, staring at him with cold eyes like ball bearings, filling him with terror that only his anger could quell. He had run toward the fear, howling his rage. . and the fear had been defeated.
Shango drew in his breath and let it out. He felt dizzy and disoriented, as he had after anger had burst through both fear and the self-imposed bonds of the job; shaky, as he’d heard men were, after they’ve been imprisoned for years, at the sight of wall-less places and sky.
He thought, I could get another job. There were plenty of them around. A job such as Griffin had chosen, to find the weak point of the Source. A job like the ones McKay had done, struggling to keep help and life flowing to those that needed them, until death overtook him.
Shango shook his head. Most times, he’d learned that the windmill was bigger and tougher than the knight.
And the windmill didn’t care.
The stars moved, leaving the question: What now? South to New Orleans? The town would be underwater by now, of course, with the pumping stations dead. The local military authorities would be in charge. Mother, brother, sisters would be somewhere nearby, surviving, he was sure, probably in the middle of a giant gaggle of cousins and neighbors and church ladies, hanging together as they always hung together.
His family. His people. You have family in town? Czernas had asked, and he wondered, for the first time, what message Czernas had left for his own family, and whether they had ever gotten it. Shango parked his own family like baggage, years ago. Maybe it was time to go back.
West to the Source? It had been a week since he’d spoken to Griffin and his friends, since he’d sent them on toward Boone’s Gap. Whatever that young man and those around him were going to try to do when they found the Source- or the fragment of it in the South-it had not altered the horrible change wrought in the world. Had they been obliterated? he wondered. Or had they only failed?
McKay had known the truth, even in that first moment. The lights were not going to come back on. And he, Larry Shango, might be the only person now who had the clue that might lead to its location.
For what that clue was worth. Evidently it hadn’t gotten Griffin anything.
But there was another thing that only he knew: that McKay was dead. And almost certainly, with McKay’s death, any concern for retrieving that little boy from the wilds of Maine had vanished.
Did his road lie north, then? To make sure, at least, that the child lived, in this shaky and increasingly perilous world? To do what he could to help him, if necessary, as he had been unable to help McKay and Jan?
The sense of calm he felt in his heart told him that his choice-the first real choice he’d made in a long time- was the right one for him, for now; it also told him, a little to his surprise, what a right choice felt like. Maybe it’s not so hard.
He sat for a long while in thought, between dog and wolf, turning his fragment of paper, his memories and his choices, over in his mind: Who he was, and what he was, and what he might or could be. At last, he got to his feet and walked silently along the empty street, north past Lafayette Square and on up New York Avenue by starlight.
By dawn, he was far away.
Darkness clung to the mountains.
Again, Cal watched Tina being wrenched away from him, vanishing into that blinding whirlwind that was neither light nor darkness, woke up crying her name. Suddenly, he wasn’t certain if it was his mother’s face he’d seen, or Tina’s, or his own.
I’ll find her, he thought, and knew it was true.
But he shivered a little at the thought of what it might be that he found.
Giving up on sleep, he rose and dressed. He found Hank sitting on Wilma’s porch, where Cal had heard them talking quietly far into the night.
He drew up at the sight of cans of tuna, loaves of bread, bags of rice and assorted sundries that had been piled high.
Hank smiled. “Happy trails.”
“We can’t take this,” Cal said, knowing Boone’s Gap would need every bit.
“It’s not charity; it’s an investment. Where you’re goin’. . well, everyone here kinda wants to be in on the fight.”
Without apparent effort, Hank lifted the entire pedicab onto the porch, and together they began to load.
“Some people say we’re given what we deserve,” Hank said, tying down a ration of sweet corn. “Maybe it’s just what we need.”
And what did Cal need, for the road ahead, for the Big Kahuna? Strength? Strength to endure whatever might come in the hard days, to endure loss and pain and not falter.
Lights moved in the house behind them, and Cal heard voices. Wilma’s and Doc’s. Goldie. Colleen making some disparaging comment about greedy overfed butter-stealing cats.
The question of his strength faded into nothing. Cal knew he wasn’t strong enough, he didn’t have to be.
He had the strength of others.
Wilma, Hank and Bob walked them to the edge of town. Cal realized that Boone’s Gap was in fact exactly that: a pass through the mountains. Dawn was paling the sky, and Hank blinked and flinched.
“Here,” Goldie said and handed the grunter a pair of raffish blue sunglasses.
Sunlight broke over the crests of the mountains, golden on the tips of the trees, dew transforming the grass to a silver ocean. Riding the thermals, a single hawk cried its song of challenge. Cal and his party started down the road, into the blue shadows that still lay to the west.