Daily the weather had become colder, and that night there was frost. The next day he went through Trenton, and as in Philadelphia, the ruins were ubiquitous, the growth stunted and malformed.

Although it took him several miles out of his way, he went through the city in his canoe, and didn't leave it until the woods looked normal again. Then he carried the boat to high ground and secured it and headed north on foot. The Delaware turned west here, and he was bound for New York. That afternoon the rains started. Mark blazed a trail now; he didn't want to have to make a search for the canoe when he returned. He traveled steadily through the heavy rain, protected by his great poncho, which covered him from crown to feet.

He could find no dry wood for a fire that night, and he chewed his cold beef and wished he had another of the succulent fish instead.

The rain was undiminished the next day, and now he knew that to continue was foolish, that he might lose his direction completely in a world whose boundaries had been erased, with no sky, no sun to plot his course. He searched for a spruce grove and crept under the largest of the trees and huddled in his poncho, dozing, waking, dozing again throughout the day and night. The sighing of the trees wakened him and he knew the rain was over; the trees were shaking off the water, murmuring together about the terrible weather, wondering about the boy who slept among them. He had to find a sunny place, dry out his pack, the poncho, his clothes, dry and oil his moccasins… He crawled out from under the spruce, whispered a thank you, and began to search for a good place to dry out everything, make a fire, have a good meal.

When he came upon the deformed underbrush late that afternoon, he backed up a hundred feet, squatted, and studied the woods before him.

He was at least another day's distance from New York, he suspected, twenty miles, maybe even more. The woods here were too thick to be able to see if the deformities were localized. He retreated half a mile, made camp, and thought about the days ahead. He would not enter any place that he thought had been irradiated. How many days was he willing to detour? He didn't know. Time had stopped for him, and he couldn't be certain now how long he had been in the woods, how long since the paddle wheel had entered Washington. He wondered if the others were all right, if they had found the warehouses, had brought out the stuff they were to collect. He thought how they might blindly stumble through the poisoned areas in Philadelphia, through the poison here. He shuddered.