He continues up the street, the sound of his boots a hollow echo in the midday silence. Office buildings and shops give way to homes. The homes are empty as well, those that are still intact. Many are burned out and sagging, settling slowly back into the earth. Weeds grow everywhere, even through cracks in the concrete of the streets. He wonders how long it has been since anyone has lived here. Counting the strays, the dogs and the children and the one or two others that linger because they have no place else to go, how many are left? In some towns, there is no one. Only the cities continue to provide refuge, walled camps in which survivors have banded together in a desperate effort to keep the madness at bay. Chicago is one such city. He has been there and seen what it has to offer. He already knows its fate.
A woman emerges from the shadows of a doorway in one of the residences, a frail, hollow-eyed creature, dark hair tangled and streaked with purple dye, arms hanging loose and bare, the skin dotted with needle marks. Got anything for me? she asks dully. He shakes his head. She comes down to the foot-of the porch steps and stops. She trots out a smile. Where ‘d you come from? He does not respond. She moves a couple of steps’ closer, hugging herself with her thin arms. Want to come in and party with me? He stops her with a look. In the shadows of the house from which she has come, he can see movement. Eyes, yellow and flat, study him with cold intent. He knows who they belong to. Get away from me, he tells the woman. Her face crumples. She turns back without a word.
He walks to the edge of the town, a mile farther on, out where the park waits. He knows he shouldn’t, but he cannot help himself. Nothing of what he remembers remains, but he wants to see anyway. Old Bob and Gran are gone. Pick is gone. Daniel and Wraith are gone. The park is overgrown with weeds and scrub. The cemetery is a cluster of ruined headstones. The townhomes and apartments and houses are all empty. What lives in the park now can be found only in the caves and is his implacable enemy.
And what of Nest Freemark ?
He knows that, too. It is a nightmare that haunts him, unrelenting and pitiless.
He stops at the edge of the cemetery and looks off info the shadows beyond. He is here, he supposes, because he has no better place to go. He is here because he is reduced to retracing the steps of his life as a form of penance for his failures. He is hunted at every turn, and so he is drawn to the places that once provided refuge. He searches in the vain hope that something of what was good in his life will resurface, even when he knows the impossibility of that happening.
He takes a long, slow breath. His pursuers will find him again soon enough, but perhaps not this day. So he will walk the park once more and try to recapture some small pan of what is lost to him forever.
Across the roadway from where he stands, a billboard hangs in tatters. He can just make out its wording.
WELCOME TO HOPEWELL, ILLINOIS! WE’RE GROWING YOUR WAY!
John Ross woke with a start, jerking upright so sharply that he sent his walking staff clattering to the. floor of the bus. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. It was night, and most of his fellow passengers were asleep. He took a moment to collect himself, to remember which journey he was on, which world he was in. Then he maneuvered his bad leg stiffly into the aisle, jockeying himself about on the seat until he was able to reach down and retrieve the staff.
He had fallen asleep in spite of himself, he realized. In spite of what that meant.
He placed the walking stick beside him, leaning it carefully against his knapsack, bracing it in place so that it would not slide away again. An old woman several seats in front of him was still awake. She glanced back at him briefly, her look one of reproof and suspicion. She was the only one who sat close to him. He was alone at the very back of the bus; the other passengers, all save the old woman, had been careful to take seats near the front. Perhaps it was the leg. Or the shabby clothes. Or the mantle of weariness he wore like the ghost of Marley did his chains. Perhaps it was the eyes, the way they seemed to look beyond what everyone else could see, at once cool and discerning, yet distant and lost, an unsettling contradiction.