Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

 

"I had to do that."

 

"I know that."

 

"If I hadn't-"

 

"Then she'd probably have died, and you wouldn't have known where the boy was. Just that he was somewhere in the Newyork ville."

 

"But I Slapping a dying woman who's maybe saved the life of"

 

"Your son," Krysty said. "Come on, lover. It's not that difficult to say, is it?"

 

"Yeah." He stopped and glared at her. "Yeah, Krysty, it's actually very fucking difficult to say. My son . Up to fifteen minutes ago I didn't even know I had a son. Or a daughter. Or any children. It's going to take me a while to get used to that. My son, my son, my son. Right?"

 

She smiled at his anger and his uncertainty, then stepped in close and kissed him on the cheek. "Course. Glad you've gotten that off your chest, lover. Easier all around. Be easier for Dean, as well."

 

"Krysty" He hesitated. "Look, I think we should talk some about this. It doesn't make any difference to you and me, you know. It was ten years ago."

 

Doc, with J.B. and Mildred, had been waiting, listening. The old man repeated a runic remark he'd made once before. "And it was in another country, and besides, the bitch is dead."

 

 

 

THE SKIES OVER NEW YORK had cleared and it was a bright, fresh morning. The shadows were sharp-edged as they walked south.

 

Once again they slipped naturally into a skirmish line, keeping to the center of what remained of the streets, Ryan leading, holding his G-12 caseless. Then came Krysty, Doc, Mildred and J.B.

 

As he walked on, Ryan's mind kept sliding back ten years to the blazing heat and murderous winds of the baked Southwest. And Sharona Carson. "Rona." He'd never heard anyone call her that. As the wife of Baron Alias Carson, she'd been entitled to respect. Sharonadazzling blond hair, beautifully styled; expensive jewels; fabulous clothes that fitted her like a second skin; skin, with its sharp, exciting taste; teeth that had nipped at him, leaving him marked and bleeding; and deep violet eyes that had suckered him.

 

"Something ahead left," Krysty called from just behind him, jerking Ryan out of the reverie about the past and back into the dangers of the present.

 

He realized he'd lost concentration by brooding on Towse and the woman. And his son.

 

He stopped and raised his G-12, looking where Krysty had pointed. Something was watching them from around the corner of a pile of rubbish, but it was in shadow and he couldn't make it out. As soon as they paused and looked, the creature darted away out of sight again.

 

"Scalie?" J.B. called.

 

"Don't think so. The head looked normal shape. Just a scavenger, one of the triple-dirties who lives here."

 

 

 

THE FARTHER THEY TRAVELED, the worse the desolation grew. Hardly a building stood above ground-floor level, and virtually all had been stripped of wood. To their left, where there had once been great buildings that scraped at the lower edges of the sky, there was a permanent haze.

 

Ryan noticed that the tiny lapel rad counters he, J.B. and Krysty wore were showing a potential hazard. The color had shifted from the faded green of safety through the middle band of orange toward the crimson of danger.

 

J.B. was also aware of it. "Some serious hot spots over east."

 

Ryan looked around. "Can't be that far. How many blocks should it be?" he asked, addressing the question to either Doc or Mildred.

 

It was the old man who answered. "The bus terminal was around Fortieth Street. It backed on to Ninth Avenue. Woman said down to Twenty-eighth. Twelve or thirteen blocks."

 

Mildred looked around. "Not all that far from Greenwich Village, but it's impossible to work out. Some roads have totally vanished. No landmarks. Just head south and look for that park she mentioned."

 

"Chelsea Park," Ryan said.

 

They did what they could to quarter the area, looking for anything that might resemble a park. As far as they could tell, they were in roughly the right part of the ville, but they drew a blank.

 

"Noon," J.R announced, glancing up at the bright sun from under the brim of his fedora.

 

"Not that much food left." Krysty turned to face Ryan. "What do you reckon, lover?"

 

"Keep moving. Woman was dying. She wouldn't tell us lies. Got to be around here."

 

In some of the shadowed parts in the lee of the piles of debris, there were small patches of unmelted snow. J.B. stepped aside to take a leak behind a heap of dark red bricks near one of the white drifts. "Hey! Look here. Some scalies been here."

 

They made out the marks of studded boots and a few scuffed smears of heelless footwear as well as the clear imprint of a set of small bare toes.

 

"Still sending out their hunting parties," Ryan commented. "Never known muties so well organized. Really are like fireblasted sec men."

 

Doc gazed vaguely at the fallen walls and ice-coated rubble. "That's most interesting," he observed.

 

"How's that, Doc?"

 

"Well, my dear Ryan, unless I am much mistaken, someone has painted the number over there as an indication of the street. Twenty-seven. Of course, it may be the merest coincidence."

 

The numbers were in faded white paint, poorly executed, the dribbles running from both the two and the eight.

 

Ryan looked toward the west and took a deep breath. "River's close. Can taste it. Let's go two or three blocks to the east and then cut south. If we move west along what's left of that highway, we should hit this Chelsea Park."

 

 

 

"MUST BE."

 

"Some park."

 

The only thing that made them think this had once been a park was the fact that there were no piles of rubble on the ground, merely a narrow rectangular space of brownish mud. It was totally featureless except for small ice-slick puddles.

 

"Said there was a cellar around the back of a tumbled building or something like that."

 

"More scalies been here." J.B. pointed to the clear line of boots, etched across a long, narrow bank of snow.

 

Ryan knelt and peered closely at the tracks. "Recent. Look at the edges. Kind of blurred and rounded. Been this morning. Not last night."

 

Both men straightened and looked around uneasily, both conscious of the prickling possibility of sudden, bloody ambush.

 

"Better find this cellar real quick," the Armorer suggested.

 

The companions looked around the wasteland.

 

"There," Krysty said.

 

"Behind that broken archway?"

 

She nodded. "I can feel it, Ryan. Someone's been there."

 

"Still?"

 

She shook her head slowly. "No. No, I don't think so."

 

"Best look."

 

They climbed over heaps of brick, tangled about with iron girders, some rusted to orange ribbons. The sun was bright enough to see clear tracks that said others had been there before them. There was a path between the twin pillars of the arch. Ryan hesitated, looking at the carved figures that had once supported the keystones. More than life-size, they were female, their heads wrapped in stylized shrouds, as though they were frozen in weeping.

 

"Here," he said, seeing immediately that Krysty had been correct. They were too late, probably only by an hour or so.

 

After ten years, he'd missed the son he'd never seen by a matter of minutes. It was one of the most bitter moments of Ryan Cawdor's life.