Matt and Kindle approached the Sterno fire in front of Abby’s trailer expecting a brisk who-goes-there from Joey. The fire cast tall, nervous shadows on the aluminum wall of the camper. The camper was dark and the door was closed, but Joey wasn’t there.

“Maybe he got tired and found somewhere to sleep,” Matt said. “Or took a bathroom break.”

Kindle shook his head. “Joey doesn’t sleep, and he pees in the bushes when he figures he’s alone. This is peculiar.” He rapped his bony knuckles on the door.

Abby’s voice, sleepy and chastened, came from inside: “Who’s there?”

“Me,” Kindle said. “Me and Matt. We need to talk.”

A few seconds later, she was at the door in an old blue nightgown, looking at Kindle with sleepy eyes and a stew of emotions. “You selfish son of a bitch—you left.”

“Selfish SOB came back,” Kindle said. “Abby, I didn’t know he was going to lock you up.”

“Where is Joey?” Abby wondered.

She turned her head at the sound of the gunshot.

“Hold up!” Kindle said. “Christ’s sake! Hold up!”

He stopped Matt and Abby before they ran across the open space to the Connor house. The shot had seemed to come from there. “Think about this. Who’s in the house?”

“Tyler, probably,” Matt said. ” I don’t know who else.”

“Which room is Tyler using?”

“Around the side.”

“Show me. But stay back from the house.”

They circled clockwise in the dark behind the row of RVs, where lights had begun to come on.

“That window,” Matt said.

It was a small side window with a roll blind across it. They saw a second flare of light in that confined space, a second gunshot; and moments later, a third.

Rosa Perry Connor didn’t hear the shots. She was far away, attending to another summons.

She had flown miles from the Connor farmhouse. Carried more by wind than volition, she had flown south past the Artifact, had soared high above the faint smudge of Denver, an abandoned city, and then away from the mountains and across the plains in a wordless ecstasy of flight.

Her lifespan in this altered body was short but sufficient. Night fell. She approached the stars on gusts of colder, darker air. She grew lighter as her physical resources were exhausted.

It was time to go Home. The summons had gone out all over the world. Sojourners in the air, the sea, on the land: come Home, come Home now. Time for the great departure. But like a guilty child at bedtime, Rosa lingered a moment longer.

The moon rose over the lightless immensity of the high plains. One wingbeat more, Rosa thought, one more, savoring the brisk night wind that would carry her dust away.

Chapter 35

Wounds

Joey had been doing sentinel duty every night since they crossed the Snake, and he had learned how to listen to the dark.

Every night, he made a fire to keep himself warm. It was spring and the days were often hot, but after dark the heat bled into the sky, the air grew cold, and the wind cut close to the bone.

Make a fire too big, though, and the sound of it would obliterate every other sound. At first he burned windfall, roadside trash, loose barn boards or stick furniture from wasteland shacks abandoned long before Contact. Pine knots in the old wood exploded like gunshots, and their sparks threatened to ignite the dry sage beyond the blacktop highway. It was Colonel Tyler who showed him how to light the little cans of Sterno jelly, and Joey had begun to collect them from the sports-supply and general-merchandise shops in the towns they passed. The Sterno burned almost silently, just a whisper as the wind whipped the flames. It gave off precious little heat—with luck, enough to warm his hands. But in his leather jacket he was generally okay.

The campers were lined up outside the Connor house, and Joey sat minding his Sterno fire on the concrete drive at Abby Cushman’s door, listening.

He had honed his listening skills quickly. The world might seem empty, but Joey knew it wasn’t. There were animals, for one thing. Dogs: ex-pets, maybe, learning how to survive in the wild; or wild dogs; or wolves—he had heard some howling the last couple of nights. And people. It was amazing, the variety of noises people made on a still night. These camper-trailers had thin walls, and he often heard the murmur of night talk. People talking to themselves, talking in their sleep. Or rolling over in bed, rocking the RV a little. Maybe somebody trotting into the house to use a toilet; somebody else, restless, stepping outside to look at the stars.

Tonight he tried to calm himself, to make his ears come alive.

But he couldn’t help rerunning his encounter with Beth.

It was stupid, what she had said. Joey knew what went on in this camp, especially at night. He knew all about Beth and what Beth did at night: slept alone, mostly; snuck over to the doctor’s RV sometimes.

Which was bad enough. The mystery of Beth was that he simultaneously wanted her and didn’t. Sometimes just looking at the way she moved across the tarmac in her blue jeans was enough to give Joey a raging hard-on. Other times she was as appealing as a day-old cut of meat. Sometimes he hated to think about her; sometimes he hated to think of anyone else thinking about her.

He guessed she was fucking the doctor; and as bad as that was, he had begun to live with the idea.

But the thing she had told him tonight—her dirty comments about Colonel Tyler—

No.

It was impossible. Colonel Tyler, Joey thought, was like an avenging angel, a pure and powerful force from far beyond the limits of this ratty trailer caravan. It was Colonel Tyler who had come into the ruins of Buchanan with clean clothes and a pistol on his hip and asked to talk to Mr. Joseph Commoner. It was Tyler who had trusted Joey to walk the perimeter, Tyler who had trusted him with a gun.

The idea that the Colonel would stoop to some furtive little night fuck with a nonentity like Beth—it was obscene, and he didn’t believe it.

But the night wore on, and the moon began to rise, and the new Artifact radiated a pale light of its own, and Joey heard Beth’s door ease open—the whine of the hinges above the moth-flutter of the Sterno flame—and he stood and took three silent steps to the corner of Abby’s camper, helplessly curious, and watched Beth moving, a shadow, to the front door of the Connor house and inside.

Probably she was just using the toilet. But Joey itched with the insult of what she had told him, and he circled around the house to the side, to the window where Colonel Tyler’s light was still burning. The blind was down, but Joey put his face to the glass and was able to capture an angle of vision where the blind gapped against the sill. Colonel Tyler sat motionless in a chair. His pistol rested on the arm.

Joey touched his own pistol, snug against his belt. He knew the Colonel couldn’t see him, that the lamp and the blind would have made a mirror of the window on a night this dark, but his face was hot with shame and suspicion and his heart was beating wildly.

He saw Colonel Tyler look toward the door, saw his lips move but couldn’t make out the words.

The door was at the wrong angle and Joey wasn’t able to see who had arrived… but who else could it be?

He began to take small, sharp breaths.

Colonel Tyler spoke, paused, spoke again.

Joey registered these images but ceased to think about them. He couldn’t think any longer; could only watch.

Now Beth moved into his range of vision. She was dressed too lightly for the weather. She was blushing a little. She looked nervous and aroused, her — hair hanging loose around her shoulders.