SEVENTY-THREE

At a shimmering distance, they saw them: a vast field of turning blades, spinning in the wind.

The turbines.

They had kept to the deserts, the hot, dry places, sheltering where they could, and where they could not, building a fire and waiting out the nights. Once, and only once, did they see any virals alive. A pod of three. This was in Arizona, a place the map called “Painted Desert.” The creatures were dozing in the shade beneath a bridge, hanging from the girders. Amy had felt them as they approached. Let me, Alicia said.

Alicia had taken them all. Three of them, on the blade. They found her in the culvert, pulling her knife from the chest of the last one; they had already begun to smoke. Easy, she said. They didn’t even seem to know what she was. Perhaps they simply thought she was another viral.

There were others. Bodies, the barest remains. The form of a blackened rib cage, the crumbling, ashlike bones of a hand or skull; the suggestive imprint on a square of asphalt, like something burned in a pan. Usually they came upon these remnants in the few towns they passed through. Most were lying not far from the buildings where they had slept and then departed, when they had laid themselves down in the sun to die.

Peter and the others had skirted Las Vegas, choosing a route far to the south; they believed the city would be empty, but better to be safe than sorry. By then it was the height of summer, the shadeless days long and brutal. They decided to bypass the bunker, taking the shortest possible route, and make straight for home.

Now they were here. They fanned out as they moved toward the power station. The fence, they saw, stood open. At the hatch, Michael got to work, unbolting the plate that covered the mechanism and manually turning the tumblers with the end of his blade.

Peter entered first. A bright metallic tinkling underfoot: he bent to look. Rifle cartridges.

The walls of the stairwell were shot to pieces. Chunks of concrete cluttered the stairs. The light had been blasted away. Alicia stepped forward, into the cool and gloom, pulling off her glasses; the darkness was no problem for her. Peter and the others waited as she descended to the control room, following the point of her rifle. They heard her whistle the all clear.

By the time they reached the bottom, Lish had found a lantern and lit the wick. The room was a mess. The long central table had been overturned, evidently to serve as a defense. The floor was littered with more cartridges and spent magazines. But the control panel itself looked all right, its meters glowing with current. They moved through the rear to the storage rooms and barracks.

No one. No bodies.

“Amy,” Peter said, “do you know what happened here?”

Like all of them, she was looking in mute astonishment at the extent of the destruction.

“Nothing? You don’t feel anything?”

She shook her head. “I think … people did this.”

The shelf that had hidden the guns had been pulled away; the guns on the roof were gone as well. What were they seeing? A battle, but who had been fighting whom? Hundreds of rounds had been fired in the hallway and the control room, more in the barracks, an overturned mess. Where were the bodies? Where was the blood?

“Well, there’s power,” Michael declared, sitting at the control panel. His hair flowed to his shoulders now. His skin was bronzed by the sun, wind-bit and peeling at his cheekbones. He was typing into the keypad, reading the numbers that flew down the screen. “Diagnostics are good. There should be plenty of juice going up the mountain. Unless … ” He paused, patting his lips with a finger; he began to type furiously again, rose briskly to check the meters above his head, and sat down once more. He tapped the screen with the back of a long fingernail. “Here.”

“Michael, just tell us,” Peter said.

“It’s the system backup log. Every night when the batteries get down below forty percent, they send a signal to the station, asking for more current. It’s all completely automated, nothing you’d ever see happening. The first time it happened was six years ago, then just about every night ever since. Until now. Until, let’s see, three hundred and twenty-three cycles ago.”

“Cycles.”

“Days, Peter.”

“Michael, I don’t know what that means.”

“It means either somebody figured out how to fix those batteries, which I seriously doubt, or they’re not drawing any current.”

Alicia frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t they?”

Michael hesitated; Peter could see the truth in his face.

“Because somebody turned the lights off,” he said.

They spent a restless night in the bunker and set out in the morning. By half-day they had made their way through Banning and begun to ascend. When they stopped to rest beneath the shade of a tall pine, Alicia turned to Peter.

“Just in case Michael’s wrong and we’re arrested, I want you to know I’m going to say I was the one who killed those men. I’ll take whatever’s coming to me, but I’m not going to let them have you. And they’re not touching Amy or the Circuit.”

This was more or less as he had expected. “Lish, you don’t have to do that. And I doubt Sanjay will do anything at this point.”

“Maybe not. But just so we’re clear. I’m not asking, either. Be ready. Greer? Understood?”

The major nodded.

But this warning was for naught. They knew it by the time they reached the final switchback in the road, above Upper Field. They could see the Wall now, rising through the trees, the catwalks unoccupied, no sign of the Watch. An eerie stillness hung over all. The gates stood open and unmanned.

The Colony was empty.

• • •

They found two bodies.

The first was Gloria Patal. She had hanged herself in the Big Room of the Sanctuary, among the empty cribs and cots. She had used a tall stepladder, ascending to affix the rope to one of the rafters, near the door. The ladder now lay on its side beneath her pointed feet, freezing the moment when she had put the noose around her neck and pushed off, sending the ladder swooning to the floor.

The other body was Auntie’s. It was Peter who found her, sitting in a kitchen chair in the small clearing outside her house. She had been dead many months, he knew, and yet very little seemed to have altered in her appearance. But when he touched her hand where it lay in her lap, he felt only the cold stiffness of death. Her head was tipped backward; her face wore a peaceful expression, as if she had simply fallen asleep. She had gone outside, he knew, when darkness had come and the lights did not go on. She had carried a chair into the yard, to sit and watch the stars.

“Peter.” Alicia touched his arm as he crouched beside the body. “Peter, what do you want to do?”

He pulled his eyes away, realizing only then that they were full of tears. The others were standing behind her, a silent chorus of witness.

“We should bury her here. Near her house, her garden.”

“We will,” Alicia said gently. “I meant about the lights. It will be dark soon. Michael says we have a full charge if we want.”

He glanced past her to Michael, who nodded.

“All right,” he said.

They closed the gate and gathered in the Sunspot—all except Michael, who had returned to the Lighthouse. It was just twilight, the sky purpling overhead. Everything seemed held in suspension; not even the birds were singing. Then with an audible pop the lights came on, dousing them all with a fierce and final brilliance.

Michael appeared to stand beside them. “We should be good for tonight.”

Peter nodded. They were silent for a time in the presence of this unspoken truth: one more night, and the lights of First Colony would darken forever.

“So now what?” Alicia asked.

In the stillness, Peter felt the presence of his friends around him. Alicia, whose courage was a part of him. Michael, grown lean and hard, a man now. Greer, his wise and soldierly countenance. And Amy. He thought of all that he had seen, and those who had been lost—not just the ones he knew of, but those whom he did not—and he knew what his answer was.

He said, “Now we go to war.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 607