"The Children," Cartley said, "never had a chance to be any other way. But we're the oldsters, and we've got this obligation, Sal. Man's a cultural animal. He isn't born with any inherent concepts of right, or wrong, or good or bad, or even an ability to survive on an animal level. We have to be taught to survive by the elders, Sal. And we're the elders." He hesitated, "We're the only ones left."
A flare of horrid light exploded over the warehouse down river and it lit up Cartley's face and turned it a shimmering crimson. His hands widened to perfect roundness and he raised his hands in a voiceless scream to stop the sudden explosions of burp guns, grenades, machine guns, and rifles.
Looking down river then, Sal could see the flames eating up through the warehouse. The pier, the barge, everything for a hundred square yards was lit up as bright as day, and the flare spread out over the river and made a black ominous shadow of the opposite bank.
"They're getting away," Cartley said.
Sal watched the barge move out. The Children came screaming out of the blazing warehouse, overran the pier, streamed into the water. But a steady blast of fire from the barge drove them back, and in a few more minutes the barge dissolved downriver into darkness.
Cartley's hands were shaking as he gripped Sal's arm. "Let's go now. We need time. Time may help us a lot, Sal. We can wait and watch. We can figure something out."
Sal heard the screams and mocking savage cries coming up over the water, and then the jagged cries of some oldsters who hadn't managed to get away.
Still looking downstream toward the blazing pier, Sal pushed Cartley into the rowboat, and they shoved off. Sal started rowing, but he kept looking back.
"They should have put them in the same shelters with us," Sal said, "that would have made a difference. But they put us in separate shelters."
Only the oldest and the youngest had been saved. The old out of pity and because they were helpless, had been granted the safety of shelters. The young because they were the symbols of hope had been granted shelters, too.