It had been left to Jak Lauren, with seemingly bottomless reserves of stamina in his slight body, J.B. and Ryan, to keep working on the clumsy steering paddle. Heaving it backward and forward, each stroke making the muscles of shoulder and spine scream in protest. Each stroke pushed the raft a scant couple of feet nearer to land.

Now the worst was over. Lori, Doc and Krysty had recovered a little, relishing the cooler breeze coming off the beach. Jak and the Armorer were at the oar.

Krysty smiled weakly at Ryan as they sat together. "I felt awful about stopping."

"Don't be stupid."

"Could have used the power of the Earth Mother. But it..."

Ryan squeezed her hand. "No. I've seen you after you've done that. Not worth it. Only 'bout another half hour and we can get off this bastard raft."

"You know we were talking 'bout Harmony? And your old ville?"

"Front Royal?"

"Yeah. If we get there and you kick Harvey Cawdor's ass out of the land... what happens then?"

"Do I get to be the baron? Take over the line? Is that what you mean?''

"Course. Would you take it on? Give up all these mat-trans jumps? Give up all the killing? Settle? That's why I left Harmony in the first place."

Ryan looked around them. "We've talked 'bout this before. I don't know, lover. That's the fucking truth. I just don't know."

"Want to spell me, Ryan?" J.B. called.

"Right. One minute."

"Answer me, lover," pressed Krysty. "I want to know what I'm getting into when we get down to the Shens and your ville."

The jagged cut the mutie had inflicted on Ryan's hand seemed to be healing. He picked at a small piece of rough skin around it, trying to sort out how he wanted to answer Krysty's question.

"A baron holds his ville by his weapons and by fear. That's always been the way of it. I don't know if that's the way I want to live, Krysty."

"It can change."

"You can never turn your back when you're the baron. I was old enough and saw enough before I left Front Royal to know that. You never sit, unless you've got your back 'gainst a wall. You never sleep long and easy. You never trust a smile, Krysty. You have too many enemies and no friends."

With that he stood up and took the place of J.B. at the steering oar, leaving Krysty Wroth with her own thoughts.

A half hour later, with a grating sound, the raft beached on the New Jersey shore.

Chapter Twelve

The rad count had slipped well away from the dangerous hot spots of the red area, but it still lingered way over into the orange.

They left the raft, which had grounded on a mix of sand and shingle. They picked up their backpacks, checking weapons, leaving nothing behind, before striking off inland to camp for the night. Ryan led them only a mile into the dunes, not wanting to risk stumbling in the dusk over some double-poor mutie commune farther from the sea.

The evidence of heavy nuking was still to be seen everywhere. There was a great area of sharp-edged glass, twisted and warped into molten, lethal shapes. Ryan had never seen anything like it, but the Trader had told of seeing patches like it down in the deserts of Vada. It was where missiles had exploded in sand, the unbelievable temperatures fusing the mica into the lake of nuke glass.

Nothing grew taller than some stunted alders and willows, their trunks rotting and turning in on themselves. They camped for the night in a clearing on top of one of the sand dunes. They could watch for at least a quarter mile in any direction and not even Krysty could hear or see anything. The wind had turned once more, becoming a gentle breeze from the west. J.B. suggested they not risk a fire, and Ryan agreed with him. It was several degrees above freezing, with a clear sky that held no threat of rain.

Krysty moaned in her sleep, clutching at Ryan, her body trembling. She was so close against him that her scarlet hair, with its own mutated life, folded its tresses around his neck and upper arms, as though it, too, sought comfort.

In the morning he asked the girl what her dark dream had been, but she couldn't recall much about it.

"I was cold. I remember that. Sitting on a ruined harbor on the edge of a gray sea with slick granite rocks that reached out into the water. I was huddled up without any protection. Waiting. I was waiting for something or somebody."

"Me?"

She shook her head, stippled with the early morning moisture like tiny pearls amid an ocean of rubies. "No. Not you, lover. Can't... It was the cold that was worst."

They started off, moving westward, just after dawn. Until the blurred outline of the sun was nearly overhead, they saw absolutely nothing to indicate any life-form. Ryan was walking point, checking the soft earth for tracks and finding none, not even any tiny scuttling lizards around the exposed roots of the dwarf bushes.

"Where's the nearest town to here?" Krysty asked. "What's the map say, J.B.?"

The Armorer tutted through his teeth. "No map for this part. I recall Washington and Philly were around here. Don't know where. Doc? You got any idea?"

The old man was marching along, wrapped in his own world, humming a song about following a drinking gourd. He turned at J.B.'s call.

"My deepest apologies, my dear Mr. Dix. I fear that I was traveling some byway of my own. Could you repeat the question?"

"Know any towns around here?"

"The city of Brotherly Love was... No. We are in a dull area for my memory. When I was born I learned in school of a march to the sea. The blue and gray. But towns?.. I fear not."

Ryan looked at the sky. "No sign of any chem storms. I know we're headed in the right direction. We keep on westward, then south. Into the Shens. What kind of nukes they use round here, Doc?"

"All kinds. High yield. Low yield. Air-burst. Water-burst. Low-alt and high. Some neutron stuff."

"Down near my ville, when I was a kid, most roads were passable. Never went that far north or east then. But I'm certain sure that a lot of the blacktops weren't too wrecked."

"That'd be neutron," Krysty commented. "Take out life and leave things standing. The idea was you could come in and take over. Didn't figure on doomsday and everyone gone everywhere."

During the afternoon, they reached the ruins of a major highway, which blocked their path, coursing like a stone arrow from north to south. A couple of hundred yards to their right was a tumbled sign, hanging off its broken support. Jak trotted off, and Krysty followed him. They came back together.

"What's it say?" Ryan asked.

"Garden State something. Begins with a P and an A, so it might be Parkway. Some roads was called that kind of name." Krysty was seized with a coughing fit from the dust they'd kicked up. "Gaia! Could do with some fresh water."

They crossed the wide six-lane highway and kept moving west.

During the next day and a half, they found the land was changing. The bleakness gradually eased away, being replaced by a greener, softer look. The arid sand was covered in clumps of coarse grass that slowly became gentler turf. Here and there they found small copses of live oak and sycamore. And there were flowers again.

Purple orchis jostled among clusters of delicate starry campions. Huge sundrops overshadowed tiny arrow-leaved violets. The six walked at a steady pace through fragrant meadows, past streams that ran east toward the sea.

They found a fine place to set up camp for the night near a clean stream that ran through a pool, which was like liquid crystal and fully ten feet deep with a rock bottom. Trees grew in abundance, but well spread, so that it would be hard for anyone to come at them unseen, not that they'd found any sign of human activity since they'd come ashore.