So while we got dressed on the landing, I actually looked at what I was wearing. There were three stripes on each of my sleeves, and my last name, KIRK, was stenciled on my left chest.

And when I buckled up my pants, that’s when I could tell that I was holding half the broken lens in my right front pocket. The Marbury lens, from the kids’ garage in Glenbrook. Crazy shit.

I wasn’t about to take it out and screw around with it in front of this crew.

Who knew what kind of shit might happen?

That’s when everything started to sink in, too, and I started to get more than just a little scared, wondering where everyone else ended up.

Because I figured that something big had changed. It never rained and thundered like this in Marbury before, So maybe, I thought, this wasn’t Marbury at all. And maybe my friends had all ended up somewhere else, too.

So part of me wanted to bust that lens out of my pocket and see if I could find anything in it, but I was also afraid of all these other people, and just how bad we might have fucked everything up beyond our ever getting back.

“Okay, I’ll take care of the horses,” I said.

“Then eyes out for Preacher and Pittman inside. They’re getting the food tonight,” Fent said.

“Okay.”

I turned to leave and she grabbed my arm and pulled me around.

“Is something wrong with you?”

“Uh. No,” I said.

Anamore Fent studied my eyes, like she could see something inside there. It scared me a little.

She said, “You don’t look right.”

“Nothing’s wrong, sweets.”

I could never get away with calling her that if any of the team was around. She’d have kicked me in the balls so hard, I’d sprout a nutsack from my throat. And she was a lot of things, but definitely not sweet, even if she did have an occasional preference for me over her other options. What can I say?

This wasn’t Glenbrook, Jack.

She let go of my arm, and that was that.

*   *   *

Duties rotated among the groups for guard posting, but the fireteams remained segregated during meals and sleeping.

Some of us were much better off than others; and that’s just how it was. Social classes are always going to exist, as long as you have at least two people on the same fucked-up planet.

Competition.

Afterwards, Rangers would mix in the big churchlike main hall of the station, playing games, gambling, sometimes for food or equipment, guns, they’d even play for sex.

It’s just how things were, and unless I was really drunk and brave, or stupid, I kept my distance from the game players. We, none of us, had had any alcohol for … how long? It doesn’t matter, anyway. Some guys knew ways to get high by snorting a kind of black salt they could find after the rains. It wasn’t actually salt, though, and I’d never put shit like that up my nose. It was actually a kind of mold, I think. I’d see guys fry their brains on that shit.

That first night was difficult, because all these memories started filling in like scrambled pictures and random snippets of sound.

I didn’t say anything, I just hovered around the team, keeping a slight distance, and when the hall finally started to quiet down a little, and most of the game debts were being paid, we took our boots and shirts off and stretched out with our guns on the pew benches we’d walled into our own small areas—like five states—so we could listen to Preacher play his little accordion.

Sometimes, I thought I’d catch a glimpse of her and some of the others whispering about me. She knew I was different, but how could she tell? What could she possibly know about us? That she’s just a fragment of something that might not even be real, that happens to be stuck on a wire we impaled ourselves on, like fish on a gill string?

That is, unless I am totally alone.

But I didn’t even want to think about that.

eleven

CONNER’S STORY [2]

Preacher played. It sounded sweet.

The old man was high. He snorted that shit all the time, and it made him tell the craziest stories. I don’t know if the crew believed him or not, but they usually did shut up and listen to the fucker.

Brian Fields was out somewhere in the darkness of the hall settling a debt, and Fent put Charlie on watch. Even when it wasn’t our turn on duty, she usually kept one of us guarding. We all preferred it that way. In the past, especially after the breakup of the army, Rangers suffered more attacks from our own than from the monsters.

Now that there were fewer than forty Rangers left, disputes over ownership weren’t so likely to flare up, but with just four females to all these guys, we all watched one another with suspicion.

Jay Pittman lay on a pew across from me, and Fent took the one bridging our gap. I tried to keep my eyes away from hers and pretend I was falling asleep to Preacher’s music, but she was too smart to be fooled. That’s why she was still alive.

When he’d stop playing, he told his stories, ones he’d either memorized from his Bible or just made up on the spot. Nobody knew how to read. I’d maybe only seen a few books, trash, in my entire memory with the team.

Preacher coughed. He was just trying to see if we were still awake. When he unhooked the accordion from his hands, it made a dying sigh on its own as it folded down onto the floor.

He said, “God breathed demons out from his own mouth. He did this to entertain himself while the Jumping Man was up in the sky.”

Pittman carried his chain of bug pricks around everywhere he went, like it was a kind of warning to the other Rangers, or some type of statement about his own masculinity, even though he was the only one of our team besides Preacher who’d never had sex even one time with the captain, at least as far as any of us knew.

“How do you remember this shit, brother? You just make it up as you go, don’t you, Preacher?” Pittman said.

Preacher eyed him without answering. The bottom of his nose was black with salt and he didn’t seem to care about the clear strand of snot that stretched to his upper lip. Younger guys would fight over words like that, especially if they were jealous, or hadn’t screwed anything in a long time. The captain and I both knew it was just Pittman letting off steam, testing things, maybe trying to let her know he was man enough, and why didn’t she ever show any interest in him?

I could have answered that.

The guy carried a string of penises around with him.

Case closed. He was a complete dipshit.

Preacher said, “It entertained our God to watch the demons pursue the Jumping Man. Everything else had been accomplished.”

Somehow, that meant something to me.

I rolled over and looked at Preacher, and that’s when I saw the name that was stenciled on his shirt: MARKOE.

Preacher. Uncle Teddy.

Now I remembered the name that went with the face—from everything we’d seen through Seth’s eyes—his entire story about growing up in Pope Valley, and how he accidentally killed the Preacher when he caught Seth and Hannah making love.

Fucking Marbury.

What can you do about this shit?

I straightened up, so I could sit with my knees pulled in to my chest, and watched Preacher as he kept his eyes locked on Jay Pittman. Then Fent snubbed him even deeper when she got up and sat beside me on my bench.

She wasn’t fooling around, either.

She cupped her hand right up between my legs and squeezed. It actually hurt, but I didn’t pull away. I grunted, and she nodded her chin at a darker corner of the hall near the front entryways, where there used to be a small shop with a roll-down metal door. At one time, maybe they sold newspapers or tobacco there, but was now just a little hole Rangers used when they wanted to go have sex.

She said, “Let’s go over there.”

That’s just how things worked.