We followed the statue’s pointing arm north, my eight-year-old companion, and I a more than four hundred-year-old man.  It led us to the wrack and ruin of Navy Pier, which had a rusting tipped over ferris wheel visible in Lake Michigan.

My companion and once guide shivered to see it.  I turned to him to ask him what was the matter, and he refused to say for nearly a minute as he made frantic passes in front of him that I recognized as primitive warding gestures to turn aside evil magic.

"Its the gate of the dead.  Where you go when you die to the palaces of the Dead King under the water, or if you are evil to his dungeons."

I almost laughed, but then my eyes narrowed.  Yes, it might be just a ferris wheel, knocked over by whatever had wrecked Chicago, but the boy could be right.  It could be more.  An item could have multiple realities.

A locket holding a picture could be worth gold by weight, of sentimental value, an interesting archeological piece, and have a spell of protection on it.  So too, a ferris wheel might be the gate to the Other Side.

I spoke facing to the four cardinal points, and to the archangels of these points and they drew a glimmering circle of protection about me and the boy.  It was not the sort of thing you could clearly see, but instead only saw out of the corner of your eye.  I had more fearsome protections, but I doubted that most of them would work in this world which had no great store of magic although the magic was returning.

We moved on after the boy spotted a faded mural of a woman pointing east, and I felt there was indeed something watching us with ill will held in check momentarily.  Later, I saw scrawny thin humans with distorted face masks, like those of rats slipping in and out of shadows behind us.  A quick demonstration of what the plasma cannon could do to a rock shed them from our trail.

One does want to cook one’s food rather than be cooked by it, after all.

A statue in a square in the midsts of a fountain curiously undamaged pointed us southward, and I felt certain we were getting closer indeed.  But my excitement was dimmed when my young companion stumbled.

I took a look at him, and seeing the pale cheeks and the dim eyes cursed my self-involvement.  The young boy had probably walked more miles today than ever before in his life.  And its not like he was on a good diet well-balanced and with plentiful calories.

I pulled out a package of granola to tide him by, and picked up a handful of stones.  While he sat and chewed, I drifted off a bit, and surveyed a pile of rocks.

Soon enough a bunny appeared.  And then another. These creatures recover the fastest from devastation.  Although I would not be at all surprised if there were wolves walking the streets of this Chicago.

A flick, flick, with opposite hands, and I had two dead bunnies, their skulls crushed by the rocks in my hands.  Still, I wanted another.  A white bunny hopped out, and I took aim.

It dissappeared.

I blinked, and reran the memory in my mind.  Yes, it had disappeared.  Troubled, I collected my two carcasses, and some scrub brush, and went back to make a rabbit stew with knife and a container of dehydrated vegetables.

I ate enough to keep me going, and my companion ate three-fourths of the meal, and scraped the bowl for the last bit of corn starch thickened rabbit gravy.

I took it easy for the next hour because a good meal like that might give my young friend cramps, but he showed no sign of such being quite hardy.  When I asked him about it, he told me he sometimes got cramps, but not bad, after eating carrion.  I shuddered, but secretly at the bacteriological hazzard.  My companion must have a stomach like the wall of a nuclear reactor.

And then we came to a mural of a lady sitting which adorned the lower four stories of a skyscraper.  It only went up twenty stories with the top eighty forming the debris field we stood in.

In the midst of her gigantic right hand was a doorway.

So we took it.

And upwards we went.  Finally at the roof or the top floor which was open to the outside with a jagged and intermittent wall about hip-high on the outer edge of the building about us, we saw the Gem of Brilliance.

It was a car-portable laser communication link with the outer housing removed.  And quite visible in the midst of the bars and un-corroded wires lay a large artificial ruby.

A simple ruby laser.

I strode over the remnants of a years-gone campfire, and examined it.  Then I pointed to my young companion, and he turned it on with a softly muttered prayer to Saint Laser, the Holy Light which None May Stand Before and All Must Shield their Impure Eyes From.