Flashback

When Leonard had lived in Colorado a couple of decades earlier, the area along Cherry Creek had been known for its homeless—at least one bearded man per intersection holding up a cardboard sign—and the less visible homeless sleeping under the many overpasses along the sunken pedestrian walkway. Now, he realized, there were thousands of homeless—entire families—permanently living along the banks of this small river. They didn’t seem threatening because the walkways on both sides of the river were a constant stream of bicycle traffic heading toward and away from Denver’s downtown. Businessmen and -women in expensive suits pedaled by, their briefcases in baskets attached to the handlebars.

But now that they’d stopped for a moment, the homeless men along the banks and in the shadows of the overpass they’d just walked under began taking notice of them.

“We’d better get going,” whispered Val.

Leonard nodded but didn’t rise immediately. He was very tired. And all during their walk so far, he’d kept raising his hands to feel his teeth through his cheeks, as if his flashback root-canal torture the night before had been real. “My bag is heavy,” he said at last, hating the hint of a whine he heard.

“Leave it,” said Val, tugging at his grandfather’s arm. Four men were ambling over from the shadows.

“I can’t leave it,” said Professor Emeritus George Leonard Fox, sounding shocked. “My pajamas are in it.”

Val got his grandfather to his feet and moving again and the four homeless men lost interest and went back to their bedrolls in the shade. Val said, “One of the motherfuckers in the convoy broke into my bag sometime last night and stole one of my last vials of flash. Can you believe it, Grandpa?”

“That’s terrible,” said Leonard.

They continued south along the river walk. The homeless men in the shadows under the overpasses backed away from Val in a way that made Leonard realize that his grandson was becoming a man.

“If we had a usable phone,” said Leonard, “we could call your father. He could come pick us up.”

“We don’t have a phone,” said Val.

“If there were still public phones, we have enough on my NICC to make a local call.”

“There aren’t any public phones, Grandpa. And you have to remember that we can’t use our cards.”

“I’m just saying that if they had phones and if those phones took change—if we still used coins—then we could phone and save ourselves this walk.”

“If we had some ham, we could have a ham and cheese sandwich,” said Val. “If we had some cheese.”

Leonard blinked. It was the first sign of humor, however sarcastic, that he’d heard from his grandson in a long time. He realized that something Begay had promised the boy—a chance, however remote, of joining the free truckers’ convoy—had brought Val out of the darkness. At least partway.

“If buses still ran, we could take a bus,” said Leonard. “Four miles is a perfect distance for a city bus.”

Val said nothing to that. Suicide bombers loved American buses in the same way that Palestinian terrorists had loved buses in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities decades ago. Subways and elevated trains still ran in major American cities because people and packages could be screened—with a fair degree of efficiency, even given the bad news of one or more explosions a month around the country—but buses were not defensible. Leonard thought that it had been a major retreat from civilization when American cities had given up on their bus systems.

Val’s small duffel bag had a strap on it and the boy put the strap over his shoulder, turned around, and took the heavier duffel from his grandfather. He didn’t say a word. They walked on with Val just a step ahead, but Leonard noticed that the boy kept his right hand free. The pistol was in his belt on the left side under his jacket.

Leonard found himself wishing that he’d fled his home and Los Angeles while wearing his sneakers rather than these dress shoes. His feet were already swollen to the point that it hurt to walk. Leonard had thought that his half-mile walk to Echo Park every day had kept him in shape, but obviously not.

The last news about Los Angeles he’d heard in Julio and Perdita’s truck that morning had said that the worst of the fighting in the city and suburbs was over and that the reconquista military forces were falling back along I-5 toward San Diego. The California National Guard and various anglo paramilitary groups had reestablished control of I-5 and the coastal corridor all the way from Long Beach to Encinitas. It was being announced as a major defeat for Nuevo Mexico expansion.