Grants Pass (17 page)

Ida suddenly burst into tears. “You
know!
”
she sobbed, “you know about it!”

“
Uh,” Jim
said awkwardly, putting an arm around his wife, “ah, we...I once saw a stack of
maps in your railroad station here. The map was big; covered all the northern
US as well as Canada. I hoped I could find some of those maps. I thought we
could follow the rail lines to Grants Pass; I don’t know any other way to get
there. Our library — we’re from out past Lake Orion — didn’t have a good atlas,
it just used the Internet. I hoped...” His voice ran down again.

“
Are you...”
Ida Adams fought down tears enough to speak, her voice soaring in hope. “Are
you going to go there, too?”

“
Nope,”
McTavish and Mary both replied, more or less together.

Ida wilted, slumping back into her
husband’s arm. “But...but you printed it out, you said...”

“
Lady,”
Clint almost growled, “Oregon means the Rocky
Mountains
. Getting
through
them, that is. And it’s a
long
way, across land we don’t know, most of
it not the forests — the firewood — we
do
know. And this Kayley was just
a kid, a teen; we don’t even know if she made it there, or Monte or
anyone
did. You’re chasing not much more than hope.”

“
Hope that
might be nothing at all,” McTavish told them sourly.

“
And just
what’s wrong with that?” Jim Adams blazed up into sudden anger, waving his arms
as if no one had guns and he wasn’t silhouetted against a burning city, with
boats of armed men getting nearer behind him. “Just what the Sam
fuck
is
wrong with chasing hope?”

“
Nothing,”
Clint replied. “But moving across this land, this continent, chasing it —
hoping things’ll be better somewhere else, instead of trying to make the best
of it right where you are — that’s the mistake we always make. The mistake
we’ve gone on making for more than
three centuries
.”

He started to pace along the aisle,
long-broken glass crunching under his boots, as if he was back in some
classroom teaching to bored teenagers. “The settlers came across the Atlantic,
hoping for land and food enough for a better life, then moved west. Always
seeking something better, somewhere else, until they ran out of land and found
themselves staring at the Pacific. Later, with banks making millions, oilmen
making more, and everyone being told a lot of crap about the American Dream, we
hopped on planes or packed up and moved from state to state — or province to
province, up here — chasing better jobs. Or any work at all. Always ‘moving on’
to somewhere better. Instead of making ‘better’ right here.” He sighed. “That’s
always been our mistake, all of us.”

“
Not
all
of us,” Mary said sharply. “We — we natives, we Indians — we lived ‘here’
first, until the rest of you came and walked all over us. Looking everywhere
for riches, and taking everything, and messing up everything you couldn’t take.
Back then, we —
my
people — knew all about living our lives right here.”

“
All
right
,”
McTavish told her. “Not you Indians. Point granted. Now can we get back to
grabbing cans and getting the
hell
out of here?”

As if his words had been a
proverbial cue, a boat engine roared and then died out on the river, someone
down by the bank cursed, there was a gunshot, more cursing, another shot, then
a shriek of pain from what sounded like a wolf but might have been a man.

The crazy woman giggled suddenly,
loud and high, and turned to wave her white flag at all the noise — or perhaps
at burning Detroit.

Which promptly erupted in a
ground-shaking explosion, as something went up over on Slug Island as the
flames reached it.

Clint ignored all the tumult.

“
We know all
about hope,” he told the Adamses. “That’s why we printed out this Kayley
person’s post, and kept it. But we’re staying here. Back where we can farm, I
mean, not down here in what’s left of Windsor, where it’s men with guns roaming
around day and night. We’re not, repeat not, going off on any wild goose chase
to Grants Pass.”

“
Y’see,”
McTavish told the Adamses, “for us, nothing much has changed, really.”

Jim Adams gaped at him.

“
Nothing
much has
changed?
”

Adams was so incredulous he thrust
his head forward through the big open space where the shop window had been, to
try to get a better look at McTavish’s face.

Then he glanced at giggling,
mumbling Jess for a moment before looking back at McTavish, making his opinion
of McTavish’s sanity more than clear.

Surprisingly, McTavish chuckled.
“Yeah, all right, everything’s changed, but look at it this way: for me, life
is still a lot the same. I need to be with people I can trust, and to get
enough to eat. To do that, and get through the days, means the usual sweating,
never-ending shitload of hard work. All that’s changed is that there’s no one
left to come looking for taxes — and numbers on a bank’s computer monitor mean
nothing anymore. No bank, no monitor coming on, and no one left to look at it,
either. Now
things
have value again, not...not dirty scraps of paper
with dead presidents on them.”

He ran out of words, and looked at
Heston. “
You
tell them, Clint.”

Who shrugged and said, “Oh, I think
you put it pretty well. There’re a whole lot less people around, but we meet
nasty, desperate ones. And wild animals who’ll kill you just as dead.”

“
We’re
not
nasty,” Ida Adams insisted, sobbing, “but we
are
desperate. We hoped
you’d help us!”

“
We will,”
Clint told them firmly. “Come back here tomorrow. Not early, but before sunset.
We won’t be here.” He slammed his hand down on a freezer. “But I know where
those maps that you’re looking for are — and some better ones. I’ll leave them
in here.”

“
I—” Jim
Adams seemed to be having trouble finding words again. It sounded like he was
fighting to keep from crying. “I...thank you.”

“
You’re
welcome,” Mary told him. “Now get the hell out of here before we
all
get
killed!”

Not quite sobbing again, Ida stepped
out of her husband’s arms to tug at the mumbling woman’s sleeve. Looking at no
one, Jess turned and came with her, singing to herself of the love of Jesus for
her and everyone.

“
Thank you,”
Ida said into the darkened shop. “Thank you
so
much. I thought you
wouldn’t help us, after what you said, and — and—”

Jess stopped singing, turned her
head to look Clint Heston right in the eye, and asked, as courteously and yet
as sharply as if she’d been a Supreme Court judge, “Why are you helping us?”

Everyone was so startled that they
stared at her in silence long enough for someone else to noisily and profanely
shoot a wolf down on the riverbank.

Then Clint replied quietly, “Because
you’re right; we all need hope. And you can be ours. If you get to Grants Pass,
by damn and all you still hold dear, you find a way to get word to us and tell
us who’s there and how you’re getting on, you hear?”

Jess nodded approvingly — and
started singing again, turning to look at the flames of Detroit.

“
We’ll do
that,” Jim Adams promised. “We
will
get to Grants Pass, and we’ll find a
way to let you know. Somehow.”

“
We’d better
go,” Ida said, towing Jess.

“
Get away
from the river,” McTavish advised them. “Find a roof you can get to, not a high
one if you don’t have a rope. Stay quiet and don’t make any light.” He waved at
the flames of Detroit. “And stay out of that firelight as much as you can; you
can be seen a long way off. By people who’ll shoot you just to cut down on the
competition for stuff — or to take what you might be carrying.”

“
But we’re
not carrying anyth—”

“
They don’t
know that,” Mary told them flatly. “Good luck.”

“
You, too,”
Jim Adams replied, with a strange sort of dignity, and turned away from the
window. Ida and Jess turned with him as smoothly as trained dancers or skaters
— and they were gone.

McTavish crouched down again, and
darted forward to where he could watch them go. “Cans, remember?” he reminded
Clint and Mary, over his shoulder.

Mary let one crash noisily down into
her blue box by way of reply.

A few busy, hard-breathing moments
later, Clint came up to McTavish’s elbow and said, “We’re all done. Here’s your
box, full. They’re gone, right? Not watching from somewhere, so they can follow
us?”

“
They’re
gone. Down past the casino parking lots; too far to see where we go, unless
they’ve got nightscopes and still-working batteries for ‘em.”

“
Let’s go,”
Mary said softly. “There are
more
boats out now; see? I swear Detroit is
still effing
full
of men with guns!”

They went, seeing no lurking
Americans in hardhats or anyone else that moved, except something that was
probably a raccoon, and something else, farther off, that might have been a
coyote.

They made it to their chosen roof
without incident and drew up the last bit of ladder, marooning themselves for
the night where no one could get at them. The housing of a long-silent air
conditioner sheltered them on three sides, leaving them only a view of
Detroit’s flames.

In silence they put down their boxes
and got out the blankets they’d left there earlier, and in silence they lay
down together — still fully clothed and booted, with Mary in the middle, as
usual — and looked at the stars.

Clouds like dirty smoke were racing
across the sky tonight, not letting them gaze at any stellar twinklings for
long. Clouds that were an angry, flickering orange on their undersides,
courtesy of Detroit.

“
Grants
Pass,” Mary murmured, head pillowed on the extra blanket. “I wonder...”

McTavish groaned disgustedly. “Aww,
for Chrissakes! They’ll be dead, those three, before they even get out of
Detroit.”

“
You shut
up,” Mary told him, cupping his crotch with firm fingers to back up her
command. “I know you’re right, but have the effing decency to let me go on pretending
you’re wrong. Hope, remember? That’s what Kayley, whoever she is — and those
Adams idiots, just now — gave us. Don’t you pee on that, or it’ll be no more
bed-and-tickle for you, hey?”

“
You play
dirty,” Derek McTavish told her, his voice sounding even more disgusted.

“
Shut up and
watch the city,” Clint told him. “It’s not like there’s anything else on any of
the other channels.”

“
Haw
haw,” came the reply, but it sounded amused.

“
Besides,”
Mary added, from between them. “It’s not raining for once, or hurling down
lightning. Nice and clear. In fact, it’s a perfect night to watch Detroit
burn.”

Biography

Ed Greenwood

Ed Greenwood is an award-winning
Canadian writer and game designer, best known for creating The Forgotten
Realms® fantasy world (featured in board, roleplaying, computer and card games,
comic books, and a bestselling novel line). Once hailed as “the Canadian author
of the great American novel” (bestselling fantasy author J. Robert King)) and
“a true genius” (bestselling sf and fantasy author Elaine Cunningham), Ed has
published over 170 books that have sold millions of copies worldwide in over a
dozen languages. He has written three fantasy novels already this year, and by
the time they are all published, this fall, he will have written at least the
first drafts of three more.

Ed was inducted into The Academy of
Adventure Gaming Arts & Design’s Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2003, has
been a Guest of Honor at more than four dozen conventions worldwide, and has
judged both the World Fantasy Awards and the Sunburst (Canada’s sf awards).

In real life, Ed Greenwood is a
large, bearded, well-padded man who is all too often mistaken for Santa Claus.
He has worked in public libraries for over thirty years, and lives in an old
farmhouse with more than 80,000 books. Ed has been an editor of DRAGON®
Magazine and a columnist for more than a dozen periodicals.

Afterword

Three things have always
fascinated me about post-Big Doom stories set in North America. One of them is
something I’ve had ever since I was a child: the imagined fun of foraging in
deserted stores and homes and factories, being able to take and have, for free,
just
anything
to carry off to have and use (the same fun I get when
re-reading the chapters of
Robinson Crusoe
while the title character
scavenges useful rope after useful board after vitally-important tool off the
wrecked ship).

The second thing is the
juxtaposition of gleaming modern society with enforced back-to-the-land
self-reliance (or at least fumbling attempts at same) of survivors, clawing
amid the wreckage and abandoned belongings and homes of vanished people.

The last and most important thing is
hope. The hope that, whatever happens, we (the characters in the stories that a
reader can identify with, no matter how different from us they may be) can
survive and struggle on to some sort of success, even if it’s just managing to
stay alive amid the ruins. Hope is what drives us all on, and hope is what a
Grants Pass story must be all about, in the end.

And I find I very much like creating
hope.