“I mean what I say, Arlo,” Theo warned. The horses, after so many days without exercise, were antsy to go, shifting beneath them, tamping down the dust. “Something’s not right. Stay inside the fence. Lock it down each night before you see the first shadow. Agreed?”
“No worries, cuz.” Grinning through his beard, Arlo looked at Finn and Rey, whose faces, Peter thought, did nothing to conceal their feeling of doom. Stuck in the station with Arlo and his stories; probably he’d just break down and sing for them, guitar or no guitar. Hanging from Arlo’s neck was the key they’d taken from Zander’s body. Theo had the other one.
“Oh, come on, guys,” Arlo called to the wrenches, and clapped his hands. “Buck up. It’ll be like a party.” But as he stepped to Theo’s horse, his expression sobered abruptly. “Put this in your pouch,” Arlo said quietly, slipping him a folded sheet of paper. “For Leigh and the baby, if anything happens.”
Theo tucked the paper away without looking at it. “Ten days. Stay inside.”
“Ten days, cuz.”
They rode out into the valley. Without a cart to pull, they cut across the fields toward Banning, bypassing the Eastern Road to shave a few kilometers off the route. No one was talking; they were saving their energies for the long ride ahead.
As they approached the edge of town, Theo drew up.
“I almost forgot.” He reached into his saddlebag and removed the curious object that Michael had given him at the gate, six days ago. “Anybody remember what this thing is?”
Caleb drew his mount alongside, taking the board from Theo to examine it. “It’s a motherboard. Intel chip, Pion series. See the nine? That’s how you can tell.”
“You know about this stuff?”
“Have to.” With a shrug, Caleb handed the board back to Theo. “The turbine controls use Pions. Ours are hardened military, but basically the same. They’re tough as nails and faster than snot. Sixteen gigahertz without overclocking.”
Peter was watching Theo’s expression: he had no idea what this meant, either.
“Well, Michael wants one.”
“You should have said something. We have plenty of extras at the station.”
Alicia laughed. “I have to say, you surprise me, Caleb. You sound like the Circuit. I didn’t even know you wrenches could read.”
Caleb twisted in the saddle to face her; but if he was offended, he gave no sign. “Are you kidding me? What else is there to do down here? Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books. There’re, like, boxes and boxes of them stacked in the toolshed. And not just technical stuff. Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
“What did I say?” asked Caleb.
The library was located near the Empire Valley Outlet Mall on the north edge of town: a squat, square building surrounded by hardpan tufted with tall weeds. They took shelter behind a filling station and dismounted; Theo retrieved the binoculars from his saddlebag and scanned the building.
“It’s pretty sanded up. The windows are still intact above ground level, though. The building looks tight.”
“Can you see inside?” Peter asked.
“The sun’s too bright, reflecting off the glass.” He passed the binoculars to Alicia and turned to Hightop. “You’re certain?”
“That Zander came here?” The boy nodded. “Yes, I’m certain.”
“Did you ever go with him?”
“Are you serious?”
Alicia had clambered up a dumpster to the roof of the filling station to have a better look.
“Anything?”
She drew down the binoculars. “You’re right, the sun’s too bright. I don’t see how there’d be anything inside, though, with all those windows.”
“That’s what Zander always said,” Caleb added.
“I don’t get it,” Peter said. “Why would he come out here alone?”
Alicia dropped down. She dusted off her hands on the front of her jersey and pushed a sweat-dampened strand of hair off her face. “I think we should check it out. Middle of the day like this, we’re not going to have a better chance.”
Theo’s face said, Why am I not surprised? He turned toward Peter. “What’s your vote?”
“Since when do we vote?”
“Since now. If we do this, everyone has to agree.”
Peter tried to read Theo’s expression, to guess what he wanted to do. In the question before him, he felt the weight of challenge. He thought, Why this? Why now?
He nodded his assent.
“Okay, Lish,” Theo said, and reached for his rifle. “You’ve got your smokehunt.”
They left Caleb with the horses and approached the building in a loose line. The sand was pushed high against the windows, but the front entrance, at the top of a short flight of stairs, was clear. The door opened easily; they stepped inside. They were in some kind of entryway. Hung on the wall just inside the door was a bulletin board covered with paper signs, faded but still legible. CAR FOR SALE, ’14 NISSAN SERATA, LOW MILES. LOSE WEIGHT NOW, ASK ME HOW! BABYSITTER WANTED, AFTERNOONS, SOME EVENINGS, MUST HAVE CAR. CHILDREN’S STORY HOUR, TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS 10:30-11:30. And, larger than the rest, on a sheet of curling yellow paper:
STAY ALIVE. STAY IN WELL-LIGHTED AREAS.
REPORT ALL SIGNS OF INFECTION.
DO NOT LET STRANGERS INTO YOUR HOME.
ONLY LEAVE SAFE ZONES IF INSTRUCTED BY A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL.
They moved inside, into a wide room lit by tall windows that faced the parking lot. The air was sharp and thick with heat.
Sitting at the front desk was a body.
The woman-Peter could tell it was a woman-appeared to have shot herself. The gun, a small revolver, was still clutched in her hand where it had fallen to her lap. The corpse was brown as leather, the woman’s desiccated flesh stretched taut over the bones, but the bullet hole in the side of her skull was plainly visible. Her head was tipped to the side, as if she had dropped something and had taken a moment to look.
“I’m glad Arlo isn’t here to see that,” Alicia murmured.
They moved in silence into the stacks. Books were strewn everywhere on the floor, so many it was like walking on drifts of snow. They circled back around to the front; Theo gestured with the barrel of his rifle toward the stairs.
“All eyes.”
The stairs opened on a large room flooded with sunlight that poured from the windows. A feeling of spaciousness: the shelves had all been pushed aside to make room for the lines of cots that had taken their place.
Each cot bore a body.
“There must be fifty of them,” Alicia whispered. “Is it some kind of infirmary?”
Theo moved deeper into the room, sliding between the rows of cots. An odd muskiness clung to the air. Halfway down the column, Theo paused beside one of the cots and reached down to remove a small object. Something floppy, made of disintegrating cloth. He held it up for Peter and Alicia to see. A stuffed doll.
“I don’t think that’s what this is.”
The images began to resolve in Peter’s mind, forming a pattern. The smallness of the bodies. The stuffed animals and toys clutched by tiny hands of leathered bone. As Peter stepped forward, he felt and heard the crunch of plastic. A syringe. There were dozens of them, scattered over the floor.
The meaning hit him like a fist.
“Theo, this is… these are… ” The word stopped in his throat.
His brother was already headed to the stairs. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They didn’t stop until they were outside. They stood on the front stoop, breathing in great gulps of fresh air. In the distance, Peter could see Caleb standing on the roof of the filling station, still scanning the scene with the binoculars.
“They must have known what was happening,” Alicia said quietly. “Decided it was better this way.”