Again, she felt the teeniest bit better, like his words were big swigs of numbing stupidwater, but it was in a daze that she slowly released the body and stood up. It must be a dream, she thought. One of those really scary, life-like nightmares. Maybe that was it. In deep shock, not really believing in what she was experiencing anymore, she sniffed and wiped her eyes and looked at the Old Man.
“That’s my girl,” he said, smiling sadly. He looked up at Still and Lumler, who were standing at hand, looking angry and sad and nervous all at once, and gave them his sharpest stare. “You will,” he said, “give this man a decent funeral. At least a proper grave.”
Lumler nodded his big head. “I give you my word,” he said. “We’ll see to him. Him and CJ and Santiago. I promise.”
She was about to let them lead her away, deep inside her daze of pain and rage, but then spun back, stooped down, and kissed him once more. After that, when they led her out, the short trip in the dark to the airplane, then climbing into the thing and lots of noise and rough, strange jostling all passed in a fog. All she knew, all she could feel or know or think of, was that Justin was dead.
Epilogue:
San Francisco, Republic of California, One Year Later
The Hunter stopped at a bakery on the way to Teresa’s house and picked up some of the sweet cakes she liked so much, the yellow ones with cream inside, before heading up the wide, shaggy expanse of Van Ness Avenue. The city of San Francisco spread out before him. Partially burned, partially overrun by vegetation, a shadow of its former self, it was nonetheless a living city. All around him, stirring in the morning fog, were its residents, gearing up for another day, and down on the docks and mammoth, abandoned piers, small ships sounded their horns on the way out to sea. It would still take time and a lot of work, but there was life here, and more of it all the time, as the steady stream of former New Americans swelled its population.
Passing a bicycle shop, already open and bustling, and a coffee shop where at least a dozen people waited in line, chatting and listening to music on the shop’s radio, he kept walking.
He thought about Teresa and hoped that she would like the cakes. Lately she’d been better, not so desperately sad and listless, but there was still a wound, deep in her heart, that would never really heal. Her son helped, the baby boy she’d given birth to six months ago (and named, of course, Justin), and there was also the Kid (now called, in honor, Santiago), who she’d more or less adopted as her own, but sometimes the look he saw in her eyes almost made him, the flintiest bastard around, want to break down and weep like a schoolgirl. Like all the pain in the world was in those beautiful, perfect eyes.
Like the man who made sure he’d gotten there, who’d given everything for the sake of the human race, the Old Man was dead. After he’d donated as much blood as the doctors would let him, after they’d gotten everything they needed to make their vaccine, he’d lived quietly and modestly with Teresa for about three more months, telling stories from old vids, drinking beer, and smoking those nasty old pre-Fall cigarettes, until passing away quietly one night in his sleep. No goodbyes, no big scenes at his deathbed, just quietly slipped away and nothing left but a bag of bones. The spark that had driven the ancient sinews and the razor mind had finally flickered out.
It was, of course, no surprise. After all, Lampert had been 103 by then! But it still was hard on Teresa. Not even moving into her new place, a huge apartment in the North Waterfront district, had really cheered her up that week.
But she had plenty of company and they all tried to make sure that she at least wanted for nothing. There was Barb Cass, the nurse, who baby-sat when Teresa needed a break—when she wasn’t working with the other medical types down in the labs in the Mission. And there was Erin Swails, who had a new job on the radio, managing the only station in town, and who stopped by often with food and toys for the children.
Doug Lumler was also a frequent visitor. Having emigrated to the West Coast after the end of New America, he was now a fisherman, working on the steam-powered trawlers that plied the bay for tuna and salmon for the big markets on the Wharf, rarely speaking of his life in New America. The fate of the settlement itself was obvious. Most of the citizens of NA had quickly abandoned Lawrence, Kansas and, within weeks, had started showing up in Frisco. Men, women, kids, old and young, they all seemed, if a bit wary and skittish at first, to be fitting in alright. A few had not been so easily assimilated; there had been thefts and beatings, but nothing serious. Likely these bad apples would either see the light or hit the road.
Thinking of Lumler, passing a man pushing a cart of water jugs, who greeted him cheerily and moved on, the Hunter grinned a little at the vision of the big man, hovering over the baby and mother, wringing his cap, terrified of knocking things over, and smiling and laughing like a great big old teddy bear. It just made him smile.
Besides these visitors, Teresa and the kids had the Hunter. He didn’t exactly live there, but he might as well. Every day, whether she needed him or not, he made sure she was alright, with plenty of food and good water and the best place to live that he could find. It wasn’t a romantic thing, at least not yet, and it went beyond simple pity, although she certainly deserved pity, but he somehow just liked being around her and the kids. It made him feel like he was part of something, anything, for once in his life, and not just roaming around looking for dirt-bags and claim jumpers. And if maybe, some day in the misty future, Teresa saw fit to think of him in that way, at all? Well, that was almost too much to hope for. And if she never did? That was perfectly fine, too. He was more than willing to devote himself to her happiness either way. He owed her that much.
Turning onto Bay Street, he walked another few blocks as the sun started to burn off the morning fog and the sea began to glitter, out past the sagging remains of the Golden Gate. Like a perfect symbol of the Fall, the once-mighty span now lay half-collapsed in the bay. Huge rusted cables trailed in the water and only nesting birds had any use for it. It had fallen.
But it sounded, from the first reports anyway, like the human race would not suffer the same fate. The doctors and scientists were already testing a new vaccine for the Sick that they said would stop it once and for all. Maybe not plague itself, and not everything else that people died of, either, not disease or old age or violence, but at least now the main threat, the shape-shifting, evil strain they’d all come to call the Sick, would be tamed and humanity would at least have a fighting chance. Oh, humanity might still flicker out, but if it did, now it would be its own fault.
And all thanks to Dr. Justin Kaes. To be fair though, the Hunter reminded himself, there had been plenty of others without whom they would never have succeeded. Teresa, the Reform Council of New America, Santiago and CJ and Stiletto and that whole group. Justin’s colleagues, Dr. Poole and the others who’d died so terribly and needlessly along the way. The Kid, little Santiago Junior, who’d saved them all, not to mention crusty old Mr. Lampert himself. Even Bowler, the poor dumb bastard, had played a part. So many, and so few survivors.
As for his own role, he tried to think that, once he’d come around (regrettably late, of course, but still in time), he’d done all he could to help. He still felt bad about his past, the terrible things he’d done, especially Cornell, but he was working hard to make up for it, in any way he could find, and had no intention of going back. Maybe, with a little luck, he would rack up enough good karma to even the scales, a least a little.
Walking up the path to Teresa’s building, he heard laughter and then a kid’s shriek of pure joy. Probably little Justin. Already, the little boy was a handful; bright, inquisitive, expressive, he was into everything and afraid of nothing. Much like his parents.