Everything was lovely and new and filled with color and it could hurt your eyes just to look at it.”
He smiled, the gaps in his teeth showing black and empty. “I was a boy like you, long ago. I lived over there, beyond the mist.” He pointed west, glanced that way as if he might see something of his past, and then looked back at Hawk, his face stricken. “What we’ve done! What we’ve allowed! We deserve what’s happened to us. We deserve it all.”
“Speak for yourself,” Hawk said. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this.
The Ghosts didn’t do anything. Grown-ups did. Tell me what you know about the Lizard.”
But the Weatherman wasn’t ready to move on yet. “Not all grown-ups are bad, Hawk. Never were. Not all are responsible for what happened to the world.
Some few were enough to cause the destruction—some few with power and means. It was different then. Do you know that people could speak with each other and see each other at the same time through little black boxes, even though they were thousands of miles away? Did you know they could project images of themselves in the same way?”
Hawk shook his head. “Owl reads to us about that stuff, but what’s the difference? That’s all gone now, all in the past. What about the Lizard?”
The old man stared at him as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, then nodded slowly. “I guess it really is gone. I guess so.” He shook his shaggy head. “Hard to believe. Sometimes I think about it as if it never really happened. An old man’s dreams.”
He sighed. “There are things coming out of the earth, Brother Hawk.
Things big and dark, birthed by the poisons and the chemicals and the madness, I expect.” One eyebrow cocked. “Haven’t seen them myself, but I’ve seen evidence of their passing. Like your Lizard, a whole nest of Croaks, down by the cranes at the south end, torn to pieces. They fought back, but they were no match for whatever got them. That sound similar?”
Hawk nodded. Most creatures simply avoided Croaks, especially if there were more than one. What would attack several and not be afraid?
The Weatherman bent close. “It’s not safe in the city anymore. Not on the streets and not in the buildings. Not even in the compounds. There’s a change in the weather coming, Brother Hawk, and it threatens to sweep us away.”
“It won’t sweep me away,” Hawk snapped, angry at having to listen to yet another bleak prediction. His lean face tightened and his patience slipped. “You make these forecasts, Weatherman, like they don’t have anything to do with you.
But you’re on the streets, too. What are you going to do if one of them comes true?”
The other’s smile was gap-toothed and crooked. “Take shelter. Ride it out.
Wait for the storm to pass.” He shrugged. “Of course, I’m an old man, and old men have less to lose than boys like you.”
“Everyone has a life to lose, and once it’s gone, that’s it.” Hawk didn’t like what he was hearing. The Weatherman never talked about dying. “What kind of weather are you talking about, anyway?”
The old man didn’t seem to hear. “Sometimes it’s best to get far away from a storm, not try to ride it out.”
Hawk lost the last of his patience. “I’ll be leaving here one day soon, don’t you worry! Maybe I’ll leave now! I’ll just pack up and go! I’ll take the Ghosts out of this garbage pit and find a new home, a better home!”
The words came out of his mouth before he could stop himself. He didn’t really mean to speak them, but the old man was always predicting something dire, always forecasting something awful, and this time it just got to him. What was the point, after all? How much worse could things get than they were now?
The Weatherman didn’t seem to notice his distress. He turned away and looked off into the mist that hung over the bay. “Well, Brother Hawk, there’s better places to be than here, I guess. But I don’t know where they are. Most of the cities are ruined. Most of the country is dust and poison. The compounds are the way of things now, and they won’t last. Can’t, with what’s coming.
The worst hasn’t reached us yet, but it will. It will.”
Hawk shifted his feet from side to side, suddenly anxious to be gone. He glanced around the waterfront, then back at the old man.
“You better watch out for yourself,” he said. “Whatever’s out there in the city isn’t anything you want to run across.”
The Weatherman didn’t reply. He didn’t even look around.
“I’ll come back down in a few days to see if you’ve seen anything else.”
No response. Then suddenly, the old man said, “If you leave, Brother Hawk, will you take me with you?”
The question was so unexpected that for a moment Hawk was unable to reply.
He didn’t really want to take the old man with him, but he knew he couldn’t leave him behind.