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the scuffing of the relentless footsteps. If anyone spoke at all, it was almost always in a whisper.
    Shane understood that. A sense of shame tends to keep anybody quiet. After the last three days of his ordeal, his own sense of shame was so strong that it attuned him to the same sort of things in others. He could see the signs of it all over them. To him, the crowd of wanderers resembled children who have just been severely scolded. Back at St. Adrian's, the other boys in his dormitory used to look like that after they had all been subjected to severe whippings, convinced by the friars that they had deserved it.
    After all, everyone in San Francisco was aware that their town had a reputation for providing easy access to sins of every stripe. Throughout the seaport city, even people who never partook of the temptations offered by the sin trades nevertheless benefited from the money that sin brought to the local economy. The city's prosperity was related in countless ways to the infamous solicitations and brothels of the Barbary Coast's dark corners and to the hidden dens of Chinatown.
    These wanderers around Shane had all been among the lucky citizens living off of the surplus prosperity boosted by such things, up until that very morning when all of them bore witness to the destruction of their world. Even as the impromptu band searched for ways to get out of the city and escape the relentless firestorms, it seemed apparent to Shane that all of them were wondering just how much personal stock they held in the city's collective guilt.
    And how can this city's guilt be doubted?
Look at what had befallen them—it stretched out in all directions. For all he knew, for all that any of them could know, the entire planet was being shaken to pieces and burned to ashes, and there was nothing to do but watch. What difference would it make, if they ran in one direction or another?
    He overheard a couple of new arrivals to the shuffling crowd. They were telling others that there was something of a refugee camp up and running, nearby in Golden Gate Park. The messengers claimed that a few church groups had formed soup lines there.
    Hardly anybody turned to head for the park, though.
    Shane understood. Nobody wanted to set up residence in a refugee camp; it would be a place full of victims. The emanations in such a place are strong, like the fouled air inside a damp hospital. No one had any desire to stay in smoke-stained tents among others who could only remind them of their broken condition. What they all wanted, as if thinking it with a single brain, was to escape the crumbling city.
    The crowd passed squads of military men posted in front of certain mansions to fend off looters. The mansions seemed cruel and arrogant, amid the destruction. It was hard not to hate whoever lived in such places; some of these guards were looting the homes themselves. Shane just looked away and said nothing, so ashamed over his failure to stop the Nightingale murders that he couldn't feel superior to anybody. Twice, he and a few of the other young men found themselves pulled from the crowd by Army unit commanders and conscripted to help move rubble off of stranded victims. It was not necessary to talk in order to do the work, and he liked the feeling of being good for something. Still, every time they released him, he ran ahead to catch up with his shambling group of familiar strangers.
    The crowd reached the marina at around three in the morning. There was no one to help them. Any sort of seaworthy vessel had already sailed out. Rumors spread about a couple of ferries that would come and take anyone across the bay who could afford to pay profiteers’ rates. A few of the refugees decided to wait for that uncertain rescue, but the rest of them began to drift. Within a couple of miles, they came to the Pacific shoreline at the western edge of the Presidio Military Reservation. The soldiers on duty theredidn't look happy to see the crowd. They ordered them all