“Thinking in bendy lines, were you?”
He hugged her, feeling her frail body. “Yeah. I was thinking in seriously bendy lines, honey.”
She looked around in the growing light. “Snow’s gone real fast, Daddy.”
“And we’ll soon be going real fast, as well. To join up with Uncle Jim and the others.” He stood up, the gun dangling in his hand like a forgotten gift. “But first we’ll start up some coffee and breakfast and wake the others. What d’you say to that, honey? Sound good to you?”
She nodded and kissed him on his cold cheek.
JIM HILTON WAS STIRRING the oatmeal in the kettle, squatted down on his haunches.
The weather had changed in the past forty-eight hours as the wind veered around, bringing warmth and chasing the snow away from Muir Woods.
“What day is it, Dad?”
Heather was standing by the truck, rubbing her hands together, her steady blue-gray eyes taking in the morning.
“Eighth of December.”
“You said we’d wait until the eighth.”
He nodded. “Right. Looks like it’s just you and me heading north toward Aurora.”
“Will there be other children there?”
“Don’t know.” He added hastily, “But I’m certain that there will be.”
“Girls my age?”
“Of course. And boys.”
Heather sniffed. “Bad news, Dad. Boys are just gross gherkins, and all they want is to get in your pants.”
Jim Hilton stopped stirring and looked up at his daughter, startled. “How’s that?”
“Andrea had a friend. Kyrie Ellison. Her mom was big in promo-vids. She told us that.”
It crossed his mind that this might be a good moment to embark on a serious father-to-daughter conversation on the subject of personal relationships but decided almost immediately that it would involve opening a can of worms he’d much rather leave firmly closed.
“Breakfast’s nearly ready,” he said.
“We going, then?”
“I suppose so.”
“Leave a message?”
“Course.”
“Do you think that the others…?” The sentence faded away into the dank, dripping stillness.
Jim sighed. “I’ll sort of be surprised if I don’t ever meet up again with old Mac this side of the Pearly Gates. Tough son of a space suit, Mac. Kyle and Steve and Carrie and the rest…i just can’t even begin to make a guess. The world’s turned upside down, Heather.”
“I bet that Nanci makes it.”
Jim didn’t particularly want to pursue that line of conversation, either, and he busied himself with dishing out the steaming oatmeal.
“Maybe,” he said. “Eat this before it gets cold. We’ll have a last look around and then leave before noon.”
“Can I go to the gift shop again, Dad?”
“No. Yeah. Not if you bring any more surplus junk along with you.”
“Junk!” Her voice for a moment reminded him with agonizing clarity of his dead sweetheart from high school days, Lori. “What junk?”
“Wind chimes made from hand-colored mica. Place mats showing the Golden Gate Bridge. That doll that you filled with gunk and then squeezed it and…”
“It did the business,” she said, squeaking with delight. “You laughed, Dad, at that.”
“Laughing to keep from puking, Heather. And those slices of wood.”
“Burls. They grew, didn’t they? No Earthblood on them.”
It was true. Heather had found the wrecked gift shop and eatery, with everything edible or drinkable gone. But the shelves of souvenirs of Muir Woods remained, including the redwood burls and hundreds of packets of seeds of all sorts. The girl had spent hours out on her own in the cold and wet, cultivating a small patch of ground and planting all of the seeds. Wildflowers and shrubs and squashes. Jim reckoned that most of them would die, but some might make it.
A small start to the greening of the ailing planet.
“And no more piñon candles, Heather.”
“All right, Dad, but… What’s that?”
Jim had already heard the sound, a crackling in the brush, not too far away on the other side of their van. He drew the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter in what had become an easy reflex action in the past three months and put his finger to his lips.
“Animal,” mouthed the girl, catching the hoarse, snuffling noise.
He stood up, waiting.
Something was padding through the wet mud and leaf mold that lay everywhere.