“Johnny!”

He watched hopelessly as the bundle and the boy chasing it were swept around the next bend in the river. From just ahead there came the heavy, heartless growl of rapids.

Cursing, Gordon dove into the freezing current and swam with all his might to catch up. His pulse pounded and he inhaled icy water along with every desperate breath. He almost followed Johnny around the bend, but then, at the last moment, he grabbed an overhanging branch and held on tightly… just in time.

Through the curtain of foam he saw his young friend tumble after the black package into the worst cascade yet, a horrible jumbling of ebony teeth and spray.

“No,” Gordon whispered hoarsely. He watched as Johnny and the packet were swept together over a ledge and disappeared into a sinkhole.

He continued staring, through the hair plastered over his eyes and the blinding, stinging droplets, but minutes passed and nothing emerged from that terrible whirlpool.

At last, with his grip slipping, Gordon had to retreat. He drew himself hand over hand along the shaky branch until he reached the slow, shallow water at the river’s bank. Then, mechanically, he forced his feet to carry him upstream, slogging past the wide-eyed women to the ruined bark canoe.

He used a driftwood hook to draw it after him behind a jutting point in the canyon wall, and there he pounded the little boat to pieces, smashing it into unrecognizable flinders.

Sobbing, he kept striking and slashing the water long after the bits had sunk out of sight or drifted away.

16

They passed the day in the brambles and weeds under a tumbledown concrete bunker. Before the Doomwar, it must have been someone’s treasured survivalist hideaway, but now it was a ruin — broken, bullet-scarred, and looted.

Once, in prewar days, Gordon had read that there were places in the country riddled with hideouts like this — stockpiled by men whose hobby was thinking about the fall of society, and fantasizing what they would do after it happened. There had been classes, workshops, special-interest magazines … an industry catering to “needs” which went far beyond those of the average woodsman or camper.

Some simply liked to daydream, or enjoyed a relatively harmless passion for rifles. Few were ever followers of Nathan Holn, and most were probably horrified when their fantasies at last came true.

When that time finally arrived, most of the loner “sur-vivalists” died in their bunkers, quite alone.

Battle and the rain forest had eroded the few scraps left by waves of scavengers. Cold rain pattered over the concrete blocks as the three fugitives took turns keeping watch and sleeping.

Once they heard shouts and the squish of horses’ hooves in the mud. Gordon made an effort to look confident for the women’s sake. He had taken care to leave as little trail as possible, but his two charges weren’t even as experienced as the Willamette Army scouts. He wasn’t at all sure they would be able to fool the best forest trackers who had lived since Cochise.

The riders moved on, and after a while the fugitives were able to relax just a little. Gordon dozed.

This time he did not dream. He was too exhausted to spare any energy for hauntings.

They had to wait for the moonrise before setting out that night. There were several trails, crisscrossing each other frequently, but Gordon somehow kept them going in the right direction, using the semipermanent ice on the north sides of the trees as a guide.

Three hours after sunset, they came upon the ruins of a little village.

“Illahee.” Heather identified the place.

“It’s been abandoned,” he observed. The moonlit ghost town was eerie. From the former Baron’s manor to the lowliest hovel, it seemed to have been picked clean.

“All the soldiers an’ their serfs were sent up north,” Marcie explained. “There’s been a lot of villages emptied that way, last few weeks.”

Gordon nodded. ‘They’re fighting on three fronts. Macklin wasn’t kidding when he said he would be in Corvallis by May. It’s take over-the Willamette or die.”

The countryside looked like a moonscape. There were saplings everywhere, but few tall trees. Gordon realized that this must have been one of the places where the Holnists had tried slash-and-burn agriculture. But this country was not fertile farmland, like the Willamette Valley. The experiment must have been a failure.

Heather and Marcie held hands as they walked, their eyes darting fearfully. Gordon couldn’t help comparing them to Dena and her proud, brave Amazons, or to happy, optimistic Abby back in Pine View. The true dark age would not be a happy time for women, he decided. Dena had been right about that much.

“Let’s go look around the big house,” he said. “There might be some food.”

That sparked their interest. They ran ahead of him to the abandoned manor with its stockade and abatis surrounding a solid, prewar house.

When he caught up they were huddled over a pair of dark forms just within the gate. Gordon flinched when he saw that they were skinning and flaying two large German shepherd dogs. Their master couldn’t take them on a sea voyage, he realized a little sickly. No doubt the Holnist Baron of Dlahee grieved more over his treasured animals than over the slaves who would die during the mass exodus to the promised lands up north.

The meat smelled pretty ripe. Gordon decided he would wait a while, in hopes of something better. The women, though, weren’t quite so finicky.

So far they had been lucky. At least the search seemed to have swept westward, away from the direction the fugitives were headed. Perhaps General Macklin’s men had found Johnny’s body by now, falsely confirming the trail toward the sea.

Only time would tell how far their luck would last though.

A narrow, swift stream swept north from near abandoned Illahee. Gordon decided it could be nothing other than the south fork of the Coquille. Of course there were no convenient canoes lying about. The torrent looked unnavi-gable anyway. They would have to walk.

An old road ran along the east bank, in the direction they wanted to go. There was no choice but to use it, whatever the obvious dangers. Mountains crowded in just ahead, hulking against the moonlit clouds, blocking every other conceivable path.

At least the going would be quicker than on the muddy trails. Or so Gordon hoped. He coaxed the stoic women, keeping them moving at a slow, steady pace. Never once did Marcie or Heather complain or balk, nor were their eyes reproachful. Gordon could not decide whether it was courage or resignation that kept them plodding on, mile after mile.

For that matter, he wasn’t sure why he persevered. To what point? To live in the dark world that seemed certain to come? At the rate he was accumulating ghosts, “crossing over” would probably feel like Homecoming Week anyway.

Why? he wondered. Am I the only Twentieth-Century idealist left alive?

Perhaps, he pondered. Perhaps idealism really was the disease, the scam, that Charles Bezoar had said it was.

George Powhatan had been right, too. It did you no good to fight for the Big Things… for civilization, for instance. All you accomplished was getting young girls and boys to believe in you — to throw their lives away in worthless gestures, accomplishing nothing.

Bezoar had been right. Powhatan had been right. Even Nathan Holn, monster that he was, had told the essential truth about Ben Franklin and his constitutionalist cronies — how they had hoodwinked a people into believing such things. They had been propagandists to make Himmler and Trotsky blush as amateurs.

… We hold these truths to be self evident …

Hah!

Then there had been the Order of the Cincinnati, made up of George Washington’s officers who — halfway embarked one night upon a mutinous coup — were shamed by their stern commander into giving their tearful, solemn vow… to remain farmers and citizens first, and soldiers only at their country’s need and call.