The Passage

Slide No. 1: Reconstruction of First Colony Site (33°74’ N, 116°71’ W)

Presented at the Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period

Center for the Study of Human Cultures and Conflicts

University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic

April 16-21, 1003 A.V.

DOCUMENT OF ONE LAW

KNOW ALL COLONISTS BY THESE PRESENT:

We, the HOUSEHOLD, in order to safeguard DOMESTIC ORDER; provide for the EQUAL SHARE; promote the PROTECTION of the SANCTUARY; establish FAIRNESS in all matters of WORK and TRADE; and provide for the COMMON DEFENSE of the COLONY, its MATERIAL ASSETS and all SOULS who dwell within its WALLS, until the DAY OF RETURN, do ordain and establish this DOCUMENT OF ONE LAW.

THE HOUSEHOLD

The HOUSEHOLD shall be composed of the oldest member of each of the surviving FIRST FAMILIES (Patal, Jaxon, Molyneau, Fisher, Chou, Curtis, Boyes, Norris), not to exclude those who have joined a second family by marriage, including WALKER FAMILIES; or, in such cases as the oldest surviving member declines to serve, by another of his surname;

The HOUSEHOLD shall act in consultation with the BOARD OF THE TRADES to oversee all matters of defense, production, illumination, and distribution of EQUAL SHARES, final authority to be retained by the HOUSEHOLD in all matters of dispute and in times of CIVIL EMERGENCY;

The HOUSEHOLD shall elect one of its members to be HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD, that person alone to serve without encumbrance of a secondary TRADE.

THE SEVEN TRADES

All duties of work within the COLONY, and without its WALLS, including the POWER STATION and TURBINES and GRAZING FIELDS and PITS, shall be divided into the SEVEN TRADES, to include: the Watch, Heavy Duty, Light and Power, Agriculture, Livestock, Commerce and Manufacturing, and Sanctuary-Infirmary;

Each of the SEVEN TRADES (“Works”) shall be self-administering, the HEADS of TRADE to form the BOARD OF TRADES, reporting to the HOUSEHOLD in such manner as the HOUSEHOLD determines and at its sole discretion.

THE WATCH

The WATCH is henceforth known to be one of the SEVEN TRADES, equal to all others, and comprised of no fewer than one FIRST CAPTAIN, three SECOND CAPTAINS, fifteen FULL WATCH, and a number of runners to be determined.

All FIREARMS and PIERCING WEAPONS (longbows, crossbows, blades longer than 10 cm) within the WALLS of the COLONY are to be kept and stored in the ARMORY, under the protection of the WATCH.

THE SANCTUARY

Each child shall remain in the safety of the SANCTUARY (“F. D. Roosevelt Elementary School”), never to leave its walls, until the age of 8 years, to depart its confines on the advent of her 8th birthday, whereupon that child shall select a TRADE, subject to the needs of the COLONY and the approval of the HOUSEHOLD and the BOARD OF TRADES.

That child’s EQUAL SHARE shall upon his release from the SANCTUARY revert to the HOUSEHOLD of which he is a part, to be carried with him at the time of his MARRIAGE.

Children in the SANCTUARY are to know nothing of the world in its present form outside the COLONY’s walls, including any mention of the VIRALS, the duties of the WATCH, and the event known as the GREAT VIRAL CATACLYSM. Any person found to knowingly provide such information to any MINOR CHILD is subject to the penalty of PUTTING WITHOUT THE WALLS.

RIGHTS OF WALKERS

WALKERS, or souls not of the FIRST FAMILIES, are fully endowed with EQUAL SHARES, not to be deprived of such shares by any person, with the exception of unmarried males who choose to dwell within the BARRACKS under the shares of their TRADES.

LAW OF QUARANTINE

Any soul, whether FIRST FAMILY or WALKER, who comes into direct physical contact with a VIRAL must be quarantined for a period of no fewer than 30 days.

Any soul, whether quarantined or at liberty, who exhibits symptoms of VIRAL INFECTION, including but not limited to SEIZURES, VOMITING, AVERSION TO LIGHT, CHANGES IN EYE COLORATION, BLOOD HUNGER, or SPONTANEOUS DISROBING, may be subject to immediate confinement and/or MERCIFUL EXECUTION by the WATCH.

Any soul who opens the gates, whether wholly or in part, by accident or design, alone or in the company of others, between SECOND EVENING BELL and FIRST MORNING BELL is subject to the penalty of PUTTING WITHOUT THE WALLS.

Any soul who owns, operates, or encourages the operation of a RADIO or other SIGNALING DEVICE is subject to the penalty of PUTTING WITHOUT THE WALLS.

Any soul who commits the crime of murdering another soul, such act to be defined as deliberately causing the physical death of another without sufficient provocation of infection, is subject to the penalty of PUTTING WITHOUT THE WALLS.

THUS ENACTED AND RATIFIED IN THE YEAR OF OUR WAITING,

17 A.V.

Devin Danforth Chou

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Deputy Regional Administrator of the Central Quarantine Zone

HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD

Terrence Jaxon

Lucy Fisher Jaxon

Porter Curtis

Liam Molyneau

Sonia Patal Levine

Christian Boyes

Willa Norris Darrell

FIRST FAMILIES

NINETEEN

On a fading summer evening, late in the last hours of his old life, Peter Jaxon-son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon, First Family; descendent of Terrence Jaxon, signatory of the One Law; great-great-nephew of the one known as Auntie, Last of the First; Peter of Souls, the Man of Days and the One Who Stood-took his position on the catwalk above Main Gate, waiting to kill his brother.

He was twenty-one years old, Full Watch, tall though he did not think of himself as tall, with a narrow, high-browed face and strong teeth and skin the color of late honey. He had his mother’s eyes, green with flecks of gold; his hair, which was Jaxon hair, coarse and dark, was pulled away from his brow in the style of the Watch, compressed into a tight, nutlike knob at the base of his skull with a single leather loop. A web of shallow creases fanned from the corners of his eyes, squinting into the yellowing light; there was, at the margin of his left temple, a single, hard-won streak of gray. He wore a pair of scavenged gaps, motley-patched at the knees and seat, and, cinched at his slender waist, a jersey of soft wool, beneath which he could feel the day’s scrim of dirty perspiration, prickling his skin. He had taken the gaps from the Storehouse three seasons ago, at Share; they had cost him an eighth-he had bargained Walt Fisher down from a quarter, a ridiculous price for a pair of gaps, but that’s how Walt did things, the price was never the price-and were too long in the legs by a hand, gathering in bunches at the tops of his feet, shod in sandals of cut canvas and old tire; he always wore sandals in the heat of the year or else went barefoot, reserving his one pair of decent boots for winter. Resting at an angle against the edge of the rampart was his weapon, a crossbow; at his waist, in its sheath of soft leather, a blade.

Peter Jaxon, twenty-one, armed at Full Watch. Standing the Wall as his brother had done, and his father, and his father before him. Standing to serve the Mercy.

It was the sixty-third of summer, the days still long and dry under wide blue skies, the air fresh with the scents of juniper and Jeffrey pine. The sun stood two hands; First Evening Bell had sounded from the Sanctuary, summoning the night shift to the Wall and calling in the herd from Upper Field. The platform on which he stood-one of fifteen distributed along the catwalk that ringed the top of the Wall-was known as Firing Platform One. Usually it was reserved to the First Captain of the Watch, Soo Ramirez, but not tonight; tonight, as for each of the last six nights, it was Peter’s alone. Five meters square, it was edged by an overhanging net of cabled steel. To Peter’s left, rising another thirty meters, stood one of the twelve light assemblies, rows of sodium-vapor bulbs in a grid, dim now in the last of day; to his right, suspended over the nets, was the crane with its block and tackle and ropes. This Peter would use to lower himself to the base of the Wall, should his brother return.

Behind him, forming a comforting cloud of noise and smells and activity, lay the Colony itself, its houses and stables and fields and greenhouses and glens. This was the place where Peter had lived his whole life. Even now, facing away to watch the herd come home, he could hold each meter of it in his mind, a mental inventory in three dimensions with complete sensory accompaniment: the Long Path from the gate to Old Town, past the Armory with its music of hammering metal and the shaded recesses of West Glade, where Auntie lived; the fields with their rows of corn and beans, the backs of the workers bent low over the black earth, tilling and hoeing; the broad, semicircular plaza known as the Sunspot, where the trading days and open meetings of the Household were held; the Sanctuary, with its ringing bell-tower and bricked-in windows and coils of concertina wire, barricades that somehow failed to suppress the voices of the Littles playing in the courtyard; the pens and barns and grazing fields and coops, alive with the sound and smell of animals; the three greenhouses, their interiors obscured by a fog of humidity, and, standing adjacent, the vast scavenged bounty of the Storehouse, where Walter Fisher presided over the stalls of clothes and tools and food and fuel; the blocks of houses in various states of repair, from crumbing cabins long abandoned to those that, like Peter’s, had been continuously occupied since The Day; the orchard and buzzing apiary and old trailer park, where nobody lived anymore, and, beyond it, past the last houses of the North Quarter and the Big Shed, at the base of the cutout between the north and east walls in a zone of perpetual cooling shade, the battery stack, three gray bulks of humming metal wrapped by wire and pipe, still resting on the sunken wheels of the semi-trailers that had pulled them up the mountain in the Time Before.

The herd had crested the rise; Peter watched from above as they approached, a jostling, bleating mass that flowed like liquid up the hill, followed by the riders, six in all, tall on their mounts. The herd moved as one toward him through the gap in the fireline, their hooves kicking up a cloud of dust. As the riders passed under his post, each gave Peter a tight nod of acknowledgment, as they had for each of the last six evenings.

No words would pass between them. It was bad luck, Peter knew, to speak to someone waiting on the Mercy.

One of the riders broke away: Sara Fisher. Sara was a nurse by trade; Peter’s own mother had been the one to train her. But like many people, she had more than one job. And Sara was built to ride-slender but strong, with an alert physical presence in the saddle and a quick, supple style on the reins. She was dressed, as all the riders were, in a loose jersey cinched at the waist, above leggings of patched denim. Her hair, a sun-warmed blond cut short to the shoulders, was tied away, a single loose strand swaying over her eyes, deep-set and dark. A leather bow guard sheathed her left arm from elbow to wrist; the bow itself, a meter long, was slung diagonally across her back like a single jouncing wing. Her horse, a fifteen-year-old gelding known as Dash, was said to prefer her above all others, pinning his ears and flicking his tail at anyone else who attempted to ride him. But not Sara; under Sara’s command he moved with a responsive grace, horse and rider seeming to share each other’s thoughts, becoming one.

As Peter watched, she cut through the gate again, against the current, back onto open ground. He saw what had drawn her away: a single lamb, a cosset born in spring, had wandered off, diverted by a patch of summer grass just inside the fireline. Setting her horse square to the tiny animal, Sara swung to the ground and in a burst of dexterous motion rolled the lamb onto its back, roping its legs three times around. The last of the herd was passing through the gate now, a roiling wave of horses and sheep and riders heading down the trace that followed the curve of the west wall toward the pens. Sara straightened and lifted her face toward the place where Peter stood on the catwalk; their eyes met quickly across the gap. On any other occasion, he thought, she would have smiled. As Peter looked on, she hoisted the lamb to her chest and draped it across the horse’s back, holding it in place with a steadying hand while she swung up into the saddle. A second meeting of the eyes, long enough to hold a sentence: I hope Theo doesn’t come, either. Then, before Peter could consider this further, Sara flicked her heels and rode briskly through the gate, leaving him alone.

Why did they do it? Peter wondered-as he had wondered through all the nights he’d stood. Why did they come home, the ones who’d been taken up? What force drove the mysterious impulse to return? A last, melancholy memory of the person they’d once been? Did they come home to say goodbye? A viral, it was said, was a being without a soul. When Peter had turned eight and been released from the Sanctuary, it was Teacher, whose job this was, who had explained all of this to him. In its blood was a tiny creature, called a virus, that stole the soul away. The virus entered through a bite, typically to the neck but not always, and once it was inside a person, the soul was gone, leaving the body behind to walk the earth forever; the person they had been was no more. These were the facts of the world, the one truth from which all other truths descended; Peter might just as well have been wondering what made the rain fall; and yet, standing on the catwalk in the sharpening dusk-the seventh and final night of the Mercy, after which his brother would be declared dead, his name etched into the Stone, his belongings carted off to the Storehouse to be patched and repaired and redistributed at Share-he thought it. Why would a viral come home if it had no soul?

The sun stood just one hand above the horizon now, descending quickly into the wavy line where the foothills declined to the valley floor. Even in high summer the days seemed to end this way, in a kind of plunge. Peter cupped his eyes against the glare. Somewhere out there-past the fireline, with its loose jumble of felled timber, and the grazing grounds of Upper Field and the dump with its pit and piles, and the scrubby woodlands hills beyond-lay the ruins of Los Angeles and, farther still, the unimaginable sea. When Peter was a Little and still living in the Sanctuary, he had learned about this, in the library. Although it had been decided, long ago, that most of the books the Builders had left behind were of no value, and potentially confusing to the Littles, who were not to know anything about the virals or what had happened to the world of the Time Before, a few were allowed to remain. Sometimes Teacher would read to them, stories about children and fairies and talking animals who lived in a forest behind the doors of a closet, or else allow them to select a book on their own, to look at the pictures and read as best they could. The Oceans Around Us: that had been Peter’s favorite, the book he’d always chosen. A faded volume, its pages dank-smelling and cool to the touch, the cracked binding held together by bits of curling yellow tape. On the cover was the name of the author, Ed Time-Life, and inside, page after wondrous page of pictures and photos and maps. One map was called the World, which was everything, and most of the World was water. Peter asked Teacher to help him read the names: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic. Hour after hour he sat on his mat in the Big Room, the book cradled in his lap, turning the pages, his eyes locked onto these blue spaces on the maps. The World, he gathered, was round, a great watery ball-a dewdrop hurtling through the sky-and all the water was connected. The rains of spring and snows of winter, the water that poured from the pumps, even the clouds above their heads-that was all part of the oceans, too. Where was the ocean? Peter asked Teacher one day. Could he see it? But Teacher only laughed, as she always did when he asked too many questions, dismissing his concerns with a shake of her head. Maybe there’s an ocean and maybe there isn’t. It’s only a book, Little Peter. Don’t you go worrying about oceans and such.

But Peter’s father had seen the ocean: his father, the great Demetrius Jaxon, Head of the Household, and Peter’s uncle Willem, First Captain of the Watch. Together they’d led the Long Rides farther than anyone had ever gone, since before the Day. Eastward, toward the morning sun, and west to the horizon line and farther still, into the empty cities of the Time Before. Always his father returned with stories of the great and terrible sights he’d seen, but none was more wondrous than the ocean, in a place he called the Long Beach. Imagine, Peter’s father told the two of them-for Theo was there as well, the two Jaxon brothers sitting at the kitchen table of their small house in the hour of their father’s return, raptly listening, drinking his words like water-imagine a place where the ground simply stopped, and beyond that place an endless tumbling blueness, like the sky turned upside down. And sunk down in it, the rusting ribs of great ships, a thousand thousand of them, like a whole drowned city of man’s creation, jutting from the ocean’s waters as far as the eye could see. Their father was not a man of words; he communicated only with the most sparing phrases and parceled his affections the same way, letting a hand on a shoulder or a well-timed frown or, in moments of approval, a terse nod from the chin do most of his speaking for him. But the stories of the Long Rides brought out the voice in him. Standing on the ocean’s edge, his father said, you could feel the bigness of the world itself, how quiet and empty it was, how alone, with no man or woman to look at it or say its name through all the years and years.

Peter was fourteen when his father returned from the sea. Like all the Jaxon males, including his older brother, Theo, Peter had apprenticed to the Watch, hoping someday to join his father and uncle on the Long Rides. But this never happened. The following summer, the scouting party was ambushed in a place his father called Milagro, deep in the eastern deserts. Three souls lost, including Uncle Willem, and there were no more Long Rides after that. People said that it was his father’s fault, that he had gone too far, taken too many chances, and for what? None of the other Colonies had been heard from in years; the last, Taos Colony, had fallen almost eighty years ago. Their final transmission, back before the Separation of the Trades and the One Law, when radio was still permitted, said their power plant was failing, the lights were going out. Surely they’d been overrun like all the others. What was Demo Jaxon hoping to accomplish, leaving the safety of the lights for months at a time? What did he hope to find, out there in the dark? There were those who still spoke of the Day of Return, when the Army would come back to find them, but never in all his travels had Demo Jaxon found the Army; the Army was no more. So many men dead now, to learn what they already knew.

And it was true that from the day Peter’s father returned from the last Long Ride, there was something different about him. A great weary sadness, as if he’d leapt abruptly forward in age. It was as if a part of him had been left in the desert with Willem, whom Peter knew his father loved most of all, more than Peter or Theo or even their mother. His father stepped down from the Household, passing his seat to Theo; he began to ride alone, leaving with the herds at first light, returning just minutes before Second Evening Bell. He never told anyone where he went, as far as Peter knew. When he asked his mother, all she could say was that his father was in his own time now. When he was ready, he would return to them.

The morning of his father’s final ride, Peter-a runner of the Watch by this time-was standing on the catwalk near Main Gate when he saw his father preparing to leave. The lights had just gone down; Morning Bell was about to sound. It had been a quiet night, without sign, and for an hour before dawn, a light snow had fallen. The day broke slowly, gray and cold. As the herd was gathering at the gate, Peter’s father appeared on his mount, the great roan mare he always rode, headed down the trace. The horse was called Diamond because of the marking on her brow, an orphaned splash of white beneath the swishing mask of her long forelock; not an especially fast mount, his father always said, but loyal and tireless, and quick when you needed her to be quick. Now, watching his father holding her reins, standing at the rear of the herd while he waited for the gate to open, Peter saw Diamond do a little quickstep, tamping down the snow. Jets of steam puffed from her nostrils, swirling like a wreath of smoke around her long, self-possessing face. His father bent low and stroked the side of her neck; Peter saw his lips moving as he whispered something, some gentle encouragement, into her ear.

When Peter thought of that morning, five years ago, he still wondered if his father had known he was there, observing him from the snow-slickened catwalk. But he had never lifted his eyes to find him, nor had Peter done anything to alert his father to his presence. Watching him as he spoke to Diamond, stroking the side of her neck with his calming hand, Peter had thought of his mother’s words, and knew them to be true. His father was in his own time now. Always, in the last moments before Morning Bell, Demo Jaxon would retrieve his compass from his waist pouch and open it once to examine it, then snap it closed as he called his head count to the Watch: “One out!” he would call, in his deep, barrel-chested voice. “One back!” the gatekeeper would reply. Always the same ritual, meticulously observed. But not that morning. It was only after the gates had opened and his father had passed, taking Diamond down the power station road, away from the grazing fields, that Peter realized his father had carried no bow, that the sheath at his belt was empty.

That night, Second Bell rang without him. As Peter would soon learn, his father had taken water at the power station midday and was last seen heading out under the turbines, into open desert. It was generally held that a mother could not stand for one of her own children, nor a wife for a husband; though nothing was written, the job of the Mercy had naturally fallen to a chain of fathers and brothers and eldest sons, performing this duty since the Day. So it was that Theo had stood for their father, as Peter now stood for Theo-just as someone, perhaps a son of his own, would stand for Peter should that day come.

Because if the person wasn’t dead, if they’d been taken up, they always came home. It might be three days or five or even a week, but never longer than that. Most were Watchers, taken on scavenging parties or trips to the power station, or else riders with the herd or the Heavy Duty crews, who went outside to log or do repairs or drag garbage to the dump. Even in broad daylight, people were killed or taken; you were never really safe as long as the virals had shade to move in. The youngest homecomer that Peter knew of had been the little Boyes girl- Sharon? Shari?-nine years old when she was taken up on Dark Night. The rest of her family had been killed outright, either in the quake itself or the attack that followed; with no one left to stand for her, it had been Peter’s uncle Willem, as First Captain, who had done this awful job. Many, like the Boyes girl, were fully taken up by the time they returned; others appeared in the midst of their quickening, sick and shuddering, tearing the clothing from their bodies as they staggered into view. The ones furthest along were the most dangerous; more than one father or son or uncle had been killed in this manner. But generally they offered no resistance. Most just stood there at the gate, blinking into the spotlights, waiting for the shot. Peter supposed that some part of them still remembered being human well enough to want to die.

His father never returned, which meant he was dead, killed by the virals out in the Darklands, at a place called Milagro. Their father had claimed he’d seen a Walker there, a solitary figure darting in the moonlit shadows, just before the virals attacked. But by that time, with the Household and even Old Chou having turned against the Long Rides, and Peter’s father in disgrace, having resigned to pursue his mysterious, solitary expeditions without the Wall-moving in the expanding orbit that even then had seemed to Peter a rehearsal for something final-no one had believed him. A claim as bold as that: surely it was just Demo Jaxon’s desire to continue the rides that made him claim something so absurd. The last Walker to come in had been the Colonel, almost thirty years ago, and he was an old man now. With his great white beard and wind-bit face, brown and thickened as tanned hide, he seemed nearly as old as Old Chou, or even Auntie herself, Last of the First. A single Walker, after all these years? Impossible.

Even Peter hadn’t known what to believe, until six days ago.

Now, standing on the catwalk in the fading light, Peter found himself wishing his mother were still alive, as he often did, to talk about these things. She’d taken sick just a season after their father’s final ride, the onset of her illness so gradual that Peter had at first failed to notice the raspy cough from deep in her chest, how thin she was becoming. As a nurse, she had probably understood only too well what was happening, how the cancer that took so many had made its lethal home inside her, but had chosen to hide this information from Peter and Theo as long as she could. By the end not much was left of her but a shell of flesh on bone, fighting for a single taste of breath. A good death, everyone agreed, to die at home in bed as Prudence Jaxon had. But Peter had been at her side through the final hours and knew how terrible it had been for her, how much she’d suffered. No, there was no such thing as a good death.

The sun was folding into the horizon now, laying the last of its golden road across the valley below. The sky had turned a deep blue-black, drinking up the darkness that was spilling from the east. Peter felt the temperature drop, a quick, decisive notch of cooling; for a moment everything seemed held in a thrumming stillness. The men and women of the night shift were ascending the ladders now-Ian Patal and Ben Chou and Galen Strauss and Sunny Greenberg and all the rest, fifteen in sum, crosses and longbows slung over their backs-calling out to one another as they thumped and clanged down the catwalks to the firing posts, Alicia barking orders from below, sending the runners scurrying. A small comfort, but real enough, the sound of Alicia’s voice; it was she who had stood by Peter through all the nights of waiting, leaving him be but never venturing far, so that he’d know she was there. And should Theo return, it would be Alicia who would ride down the Wall with Peter, to do what needed to be done.

Peter drew in a deep breath of evening air and held it. The stars, he knew, would soon be out. Auntie had spoken often of the stars, as his father had-spread out over the sky like glowing grains of sand, more stars than all the souls who had ever lived, their numbers impossible to count. Whenever his father had spoken of them, telling the stories of the Long Rides and the sights he’d seen, the light of the stars had been in his eyes.

But Peter was not to see the stars tonight. The bell commenced to ring again, two hard peals, and Peter heard Soo Ramirez calling from below: “Clear the gate! Clear the gate for Second Bell!” A deep, bone-shaking shudder below him as the weights engaged; with a shriek of metal, the doors, twenty meters tall and half a meter thick, began to slide from their walled pockets. As he lifted his cross from the platform, Peter made a silent wish that morning would find it unfired. And then the lights came on.

TWENTY

Log of the Watch

Summer 92

Day 41: No sign.

Day 42: No sign.

Day 43: 23:06: Single viral sighted at 200 m, FP 3. No approach.

Day 44: No sign.

Day 45: 02:00: Pod of 3 at FP 6. One target breaks off and attempts the Wall. Arrows released from FP 5 + 6. Target retreats. No further contact.

Day 46: No sign.

Day 47: 01:15: Runner Kip Darrell reports movement at fireline NW between FP 9 and FP 10, unconfirmed by Watch on station, officially logged as no sign.

Day 48: 21:40: Pod of 3 at FP 1, 200 m. One target makes approach to 100 m but retreats without engagement.

Day 49: No sign.

Day 50: 22:15: Pod of 6 at FP 7. Hunting small game, no approach. 23:05: Pod of 3 at FP 3. 2 males, 1 female. Full engagement, 1 KO. Kill at the nets made by Arlo Wilson, assist to Alicia Donadio, 2nd Capt. Body disposal referred to HD. Note to HD crew to repair split seam toehold at FP 6. Received by Finn Darrell for HD.

During this period: 6 contacts, 1 unconfirmed, 1 KO. No souls killed or taken.

Respectfully submitted to the Household,

S. C. Ramirez, First Captain

To the extent that any singular occurrence may be meaningfully placed within a local framework of events, the disappearance of Theo Jaxon, First Family and Household, a Second Captain of the Watch, could be said to have been set in motion twelve days prior, on the morning of the fifty-first of summer, after a night in which a viral had been killed in the nets by the Watcher Arlo Wilson.

The attack had come in the early evening from the south, near Firing Platform Three. Peter, stationed at his post on the opposite side of the Colony’s perimeter, had seen nothing; it wasn’t until the early-morning hours, as the resupply detail was assembling at the gate, that he received a full recounting.

The attack was in most ways typical, of the kind that occurred nearly every season, though most often in summer. A pod of three, two males and one large female; it was thought by Soo Ramirez-and others were in agreement-that this was probably the same pod that had been sighted twice over the previous five nights, prowling near the fireline. It often happened this way, in discrete stages, spread over several nights. A group of virals would appear at the edge of the lights, as if scouting the Colony’s defenses; this would be followed by a couple of nights of no sign; then they would appear again, closer this time, perhaps one breaking away to draw fire but always retreating; then, on a third night, an attack. The Wall was far too high for even the strongest viral to mount it in a single leap; the only way for them to ascend was along the metal seams between the plates, employing these slender cracks, caused by the inevitable shifting of the plates, as toeholds. The firing platforms, with their overhanging steel nets, were positioned at the tops of these seams. Any viral who made it this far was usually fogged by the lights, sluggish and disoriented; many simply retreated at this point. Those who didn’t would find themselves hanging in an inverted position under the nets, giving the Watcher on station ample opportunity to shoot them in the sweet spot with a crossbow or, failing this, to take them on a blade. Only rarely did a viral make it past the net-Peter had seen this occur only once during his five years on the Wall-but when one did, it invariably meant the Watcher was dead. After that, it was simply a question of how weakened the viral was by the lights and how long it took the Watch to bring him down, and how many people died before this happened.

That night, the pod had made a run straight for Platform Six; only one, a female-a detail Peter always found it curious to note, since the differences seemed so slight and served no purpose, as virals did not reproduce, as far as anybody was aware-had made it as far as the net. She was large, a good two meters; most distinctively, she possessed a single shock of white hair on her otherwise bald head. Whether this hair indicated that she had been old when she was taken up, or was a symptom of some biological change that had occurred in the years since then-the virals were thought to be immortal, or something close to it-was impossible to say; but no one Peter knew had ever seen a viral with hair before. Scrambling up the seam, a channel no wider than half a centimeter, she had quickly ascended to the underside of the platform. There she turned, leaping away from the Wall, into space, and grasped the outer edge of the net. All of this had unfolded in at most a couple of seconds. Suspended now, hanging twenty meters above the hardpan, she had rocked her body like a pendulum and, with a quick tucking motion, vaulted out and over the net, landing on her clawed feet on the platform, where Arlo Wilson had shoved his cross against her chest and shot her, point-blank through the sweet spot.

In the lifting morning light, Arlo related these events to Peter and the others with vigorously specific detail. Arlo, like all the Wilson men, liked nothing more than a good story. He was not a Captain, but he seemed like one: a large man with a heavy beard and powerful arms and a genial manner that communicated confident strength. He had a twin brother, Hollis, identical in all respects except that he kept his face clean-shaven; Arlo’s wife, Leigh, was a Jaxon, Peter’s and Theo’s cousin, which made them cousins, too. Sometimes in the evenings, when he wasn’t standing the Watch, Arlo would sit under the lights in the Sunspot and play guitar for everyone, old folk tunes from a book left behind by the Builders, or go to the Sanctuary and play for the children as they readied for bed-funny, made-up songs about a pig named Edna who liked to wallow in the mud and eat clover all day. Now that Arlo had a Little of his own in the Sanctuary-a mewing bundle named Dora-it was generally assumed that he would serve at most a couple more years on the Wall before standing down to work some other, safer job.

That it was Arlo who had gotten credit for the kill was a matter of chance, as he himself was quick to point out. Any one of them could have been stationed at Platform Six; Soo liked to move people around so much you never knew where you might be on a given night. And yet there was more than luck involved, Peter knew, even if Arlo’s modesty prevented him from saying so. More than one Watcher had frozen in the moment, and Peter, who had never taken a viral close in like that-all his kills had been dozers, shot in broad daylight-couldn’t say for sure that it wouldn’t happen to him. So if there was luck involved, it was everyone’s good luck that it had been Arlo Wilson who had been there.

Now, in the aftermath of these events, Arlo was among a group who had gathered at the gate, part of the resupply detail that would travel to the power station to swap out the maintenance crews and restock supplies. The standard party of six: a pair of Watchers front and rear and in between, on muleback, two members of the Heavy Duty crew-everyone called them wrenches-whose job was to maintain the wind turbines that powered the lights. A third mule, a jenny, pulled the small cart of supplies, mostly food and water but also tools and skins of grease. The grease was manufactured from a mixture of cornmeal and rendered sheep fat; already a cloud of flies had gathered around the cart, drawn by the smell.

In the last moments before Morning Bell, the two wrenches, Rey Ramirez and Finn Darrell, went over their supplies, while the Watchers waited on their mounts. Theo, the officer in charge, took first position, next to Peter; at the rear were Arlo and Mausami Patal. Mausami was First Family; her father, Sanjay, was Head of the Household. But the previous summer, she had paired with Galen Strauss, making her a Strauss now. Peter still couldn’t quite figure that. Galen, of all people: a likable enough guy, but when it came down to it, there was a vagueness about him, as if some essential substance inside him had failed to harden completely. As if Galen Strauss were an approximation of himself. Maybe it was his squinty way of looking at you when you spoke (everyone knew his eyes were bad) or his generally distracted air. But whatever it was, he seemed like the last person Mausami would choose. Though Theo had never said as much, Peter believed that his brother had hoped, someday, to pair with Mausami himself-Theo and Mausami had come up in the Sanctuary together, been released the same year, and apprenticed straight to the Watch-and the news of her marriage to Galen had hit Theo badly. For days after the announcement he’d moped about it, barely uttering a word to anyone. When Peter had finally raised the subject, all Theo would say was that he was fine with it, he guessed he’d waited too long. He wanted Maus to be happy; if Galen was the one to do that, so be it. Theo wasn’t one to talk about such things, even with his brother, so Peter had been forced to take him at his word. But even so, Theo hadn’t looked at him as he’d spoken.

Which was Theo’s way: like their father, he was a man of compact expression who communicated with silence as much as with words. And when, in the days that followed, Peter recalled that morning at the gate, he would find himself wondering if there had been anything different about his brother, any indication that he might have known, as their father had seemed to know, what was about to happen to him-that he was leaving for the last time. But there was nothing; everything about the morning was as usual, a standard resupply detail, Theo sitting atop his mount with his customary impatience, fingering the reins.

Waiting for the bell that would signal their departure, his mount jostling restlessly under him, Peter was letting his mind drift in these thoughts-it was only later that he would come to fully understand their bearing-when he lifted his eyes to see Alicia headed their way on foot from the Armory, moving at a purposeful clip. He expected her to stop in front of Theo’s mount-two Captains conferring, perhaps to discuss the night’s events and the possibility of mounting a smokehunt, to chase out the rest of the pod-but this was not what happened. Instead she moved straight past Theo to the back of the line.

“Forget it, Maus,” Alicia said sharply. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Mausami looked around-a gesture of puzzlement that Peter perceived at once as false. Everyone said Maus was lucky to have taken her looks from her mother-the same soft, oval face, and rich black hair that, when she undid it, fell to her shoulders in a dark wave. She carried more weight than many women did, but most of it was muscle.

“What are you talking about? How come?”

Alicia, standing below them, rested her hands on her slender hips. Even in the cool dawn light, her hair, which she wore tied back in a long braid, glowed a rich, honeyed red. She was, as always, wearing three blades on her belt. Everybody joked that she hadn’t paired yet because she slept with her blades on.

“Because you’re pregnant,” Alicia declared, “that’s how come.”

The group was stunned into a momentary silence. Peter couldn’t help it; turning in his saddle, he let his eyes fall quickly to Mausami’s belly. Well, if she was carrying, she wasn’t showing yet, though it was hard to tell under the loose fabric of the jersey. He glanced at Theo, whose eyes betrayed nothing.

“Well, how about that,” Arlo said. His lips curled into a broad grin inside the pocket of his beard. “I wondered when you two would get around to it.”

A deep crimson had bloomed across Mausami’s copper-colored cheeks. “Who told you?”

“Who do you think?”

Mausami looked away. “Flyers. I’m going to kill him, I swear it.”

Theo had shifted on his mount to face Mausami. “Galen’s right, Maus. I can’t let you ride.”

“Oh, what does he know? He’s been trying to get me off the Wall all year. He can’t do this.”

“Galen’s not doing it,” Alicia interjected. “I am. You’re off the Watch, Maus. That’s it, end of story.”

Behind them, the herd was coming down the trace. In another few moments they’d be subsumed in a noisy chaos of animals. Looking at Mausami, Peter did his best to imagine her as a mother, but couldn’t quite. It was customary for women to stand down when the time came; even a lot of the men did when their wives became pregnant. But Mausami was a Watcher, through and through. A better shot than half the men and cool in a crisis, each movement calm and purposeful. Like Diamond, Peter thought. Quick when she needed to be quick.

“You should be happy,” Theo said. “It’s great news.”

A look of utter misery was on her face; Peter saw that her eyes were pooled with tears.

“Come on, Theo. Can you really see me sitting around the Sanctuary, knitting little booties? I think I’ll lose my mind.”

Theo reached for her. “Maus, listen-”

Mausami jerked away. “Theo, don’t.” She averted her face to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist. “Okay, everybody. Show’s over. Happy, Lish? You’ve got your wish. I’m going.” And with that, she rode away.

When she was out of earshot, Theo folded his hands on the horn of the saddle and looked down at Alicia, who was wiping a blade on the hem of her jersey.

“You know, you could have waited until we got back.”

Alicia shrugged. “A Little’s a Little, Theo. You know the rules as well as anyone. And, frankly, I’m a little irritated she didn’t tell me. It’s not like this could stay a secret.” Alicia gave the blade a quick spin around her index finger and pushed it back into its sheath. “It’s for the best. She’ll come around.”

Theo frowned. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Theo. I already spoke with Soo. It’s done.”

The herd was pressing upon them now. The morning light had warmed to an even glow; in another moment Morning Bell would sound and the gates would open.

“We’ll need a fourth,” Theo said.

Alicia’s face lit up with a grin. “Funny you should mention that.”

Alicia Blades. She was the last Donadio, but everyone called her Alicia Blades. Youngest Captain Since The Day.

Alicia had been just a Little when her parents were killed on Dark Night; from that day it was the Colonel who had raised her, taking her under his wing as if she were his own. Their stories were inextricably bound together, for whoever the Colonel was-and there was considerable disagreement on this question-he had made Alicia into the image of himself.

His own history was vague, more myth than fact. It was said he had simply appeared one day out of the blue at Main Gate, carrying an empty rifle and wearing a long necklace of shimmering, sharp objects that turned out to be teeth-viral teeth. If he’d ever had another name, no one knew it; he was simply the Colonel. Some said he was a survivor from the Baja Settlements, others that he had belonged to a group of nomadic viral hunters. If Alicia knew the real story, she’d never told anyone. He never married and he kept his own company, living in the small shack he’d constructed under the east wall of discarded scraps; he declined all invitations to join the Watch, choosing to work in the apiary instead. It was rumored that he had a secret exit that he used to hunt, sneaking out of the Colony just before dawn, to catch the virals as the sun rose. But no one had ever actually seen him do this.

There were others like him, men and women who for one reason or another never married and kept to themselves, and the Colonel might have slipped into a hermit’s anonymity if not for the events of Dark Night. Peter had been just six years old at the time; he couldn’t be sure if his memories were real or just stories people had told him, embellished by his imagination over the years. He felt certain that he remembered the quake itself, though. Earthquakes happened all the time, but not like the one that had struck the mountain that night as the children were preparing for bed: a single, massive jolt, followed by a full minute of shaking so violent it seemed the earth would tear itself apart. Peter remembered the feeling of helplessness as he was lifted up, tossed like a leaf in the wind, and then the shouts and screams, Teacher yelling and yelling, and the great rush of noise and the taste of dust in his mouth as the west wall of the Sanctuary collapsed. The quake had hit just after sunset, taking out the power grid; by the time the first virals breached the perimeter, the only thing to do was light the fireline and retreat to what was left of the Sanctuary. Many of those killed had been left trapped in the rubble of their houses to die. By morning, 162 souls had been lost, including nine whole families, as well as half the herd, most of the chickens, and all of the dogs.

Many of those who survived owed their lives to the Colonel. He alone had left the safety of the Sanctuary to search for survivors. Carrying many of the injured on his back, he had brought them to the Storehouse, where he made a final stand, holding off the virals through the night. This group included John and Angel Donadio, Alicia’s parents. Of the nearly two dozen people he rescued, they were the only ones to die. The next morning, covered in blood and dust, the Colonel had walked into what remained of the Sanctuary, taken Alicia by the hand, declared simply, “I will take care of this girl,” and walked back out with Alicia in tow. None of the adults present in the room had been able to summon the energy to object. The night had made an orphan of her, as it had so many others, and the Donadíos were Walkers, not First Family; if somebody was willing to see to her care, this seemed like a reasonable bargain. But it was also true, or so people said at the time, that in the little girl’s compliance they had felt the workings of fate, of something no less than the settling of a cosmic debt. Alicia was meant, or so it seemed, to be his.

In the Colonel’s hut under the Wall and, later, as she grew, in the training pits, he taught her all the things he’d learned out in the Darklands-not just how to fight and kill but how to give it up. Which was what you had to do: when the virals came, the Colonel taught her, you had to say to yourself, I’m already dead. The little girl had learned her lessons well; at the age of eight, she had apprenticed to the Watch, quickly outdistancing everyone in her skills with bow and blade, and by fourteen she was on the catwalk, working as a runner, moving up and down between the firing platforms. Then one night a pod of six virals-they always traveled in multiples of three-came in over the south wall just as Alicia was headed down the catwalk toward them. As a runner, Alicia wasn’t supposed to engage-she was supposed to do just that, run, and sound the alarm. Instead she got the first one with a throwing blade, dead on through the sweet spot, drew her cross, and dropped the second one in midair. The third she took with a knife close in, using his weight to shove it under his breastbone as he fell upon her, their faces so close she could taste the breath of night washing over her as he died. The remaining three scattered, back over the Wall and into the dark.

No one had ever taken three like that, single-handedly. Certainly not a fifteen-year-old girl. Alicia stood the Watch from that day forward; by the time she was twenty, the rank of Second Captain was hers. Everyone expected that when Soo Ramirez stepped down, Lish would be the one to take her place as First. And ever since that night, she’d worn three blades at all times.

She told Peter about it late one night under the lights, the two of them standing the Watch. The third viral: that was when it happened, when she’d given it up. Though Alicia was Peter’s commanding officer, they had formed a bond that seemed to make the question of authority moot. So he knew she wasn’t telling him to make a point; she was telling him because they were friends. Not the first or second, she explained, but the third. That was when she knew, absolutely knew, that she was dead. And the strange thing was, once she knew this, drawing the second blade was easy. All her fear was gone. Her hand found the knife like it wanted to be there, and as the creature fell upon her, all she’d thought was, Well, here you go. As long as I’m headed out the door of the world, I might as well take you with me for the trip. Like it was a fact, like she’d already done it.

The herd had departed by the time Alicia returned on her mount, a small canvas bag and a canteen of water slung from the saddle. Alicia had no proper home to live in; there were lots of vacant houses, but she preferred to bunk in a small metal shed behind the Armory, where she kept a cot and the few things she owned. Peter had never known her to sleep more than a couple of hours at a stretch, and if he ever went in search of her, the Armory was always the last place to look; she was always on the Wall. She was carrying a longbow, lighter than a cross and more comfortable on horseback, but she wore no guard; the bow was just for show. Theo offered to cede first position to her, but Alicia declined, taking Mausami’s spot at the rear instead. “Don’t mind me. I’m just out to take the air,” she said, guiding her mount into the slot next to Arlo. “This is your ride, Theo. No point in confusing the chain of command. Plus, I’d rather ride with the big fellow back here. All the talk keeps me awake.”

Peter heard his brother sigh; he knew Theo found Alicia overbearing at times. She should worry a little more, he had said to Peter on more than one occasion, and it was true: her confidence bordered on recklessness. Theo turned in his saddle, looking past Finn and Rey, who had offered only wordless indifference through the entire scene. This was Watcher business, who rode with whom. What did they care?

“That okay by you, Arlo?” Theo asked.

“Sure thing, cuz.”

“You know, Arlo,” Alicia said, her exuberant mood lighting up her voice, “I always wondered. Is it true that Hollis shaved his beard so Leigh could tell you apart?”

It was commonly known that as young men the two Wilson brothers had swapped girlfriends more than once, allegedly without anyone being the wiser.

Arlo gave a knowing smile. “You’d have to ask Leigh.”

The time for talk was over; they were running late as it was. Theo gave the order, but as they were approaching the gate, they heard a shout from behind:

“Hold up! Hold at the gate!”

Peter turned to see Michael Fisher jogging toward them. Michael was a First Engineer of Light and Power. Like Alicia, he was young for this job, just eighteen. But all the Fisher men had been engineers, and Michael had been trained by his father straight out of the Sanctuary. No one really understood what the engineers did-Light and Power was by far the most specialized of all the trades-beyond the fact that they kept the lights on, the batteries humming, the current coming up the mountain, a feat that seemed both as remarkable as magic and also completely ordinary. The lights, after all, came on, night after night.

“I’m glad I caught you.” He paused to catch his breath. “Where’s Maus? I thought she was riding with you.”

“Never you mind about it, Circuit,” Alicia called from behind. Her mount, a chestnut-colored mare named Omega, was pawing the dust, eager to ride. “Theo, can we please just go?”

A flicker of exasperation crossed Michael’s face. At such moments, his eyes pinching under his thatch of blond hair, his pale cheeks reddening, he managed to look even younger than he was. He said nothing but instead reached up to pass Theo the object he’d brought with him: a rectangle of green plastic with shining dots of metal decorating its surface.

“Okay,” Theo said, turning it in his hand to examine it, “I give up. What am I looking at?”

“It’s called a motherboard.”

“Hey,” Alicia called, “watch your language.”

Michael turned toward her. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to pay a bit more attention to how we keep the lights on.”

Alicia shrugged. Her mutual antagonism with Michael was a matter of record; the two of them squabbled like squirrels. “You push a button, they come on. What’s to understand?”

“Enough, Lish,” Theo said. He tipped his eyes toward Michael. “Just ignore her. You need one of these things?”

Michael pointed to the board to show him. “See this here? The little black square? That’s the microprocessor. Never mind what it does. Just look for these same numbers if you can, but anything that ends in a nine ought to work. You could probably find the exact same one in almost any desktop computer, but roaches eat the glue, so try to find one that’s clean and dry, no droppings. You might try the offices at the south end of the mall.”

Theo examined the board once more before depositing it in his saddlebag. “Okay. This isn’t a scavenging trip, but if we can fit it in, we will. Anything else?”

Michael frowned. “A nuclear reactor would come in handy. Or about three thousand cubic meters of negatively ionized hydrogen in a proton exchange stack.”

“Oh, for godsakes,” Alicia moaned, “speak English, Circuit. Nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about. Theo, can we just please ride?”

Michael shot Alicia one last look of annoyance before returning his eyes to Theo. “Just the motherboard. Get more than one if you can, and remember what I said about the glue. And Peter?”

Peter’s attention had wandered toward the open gate, where the last of the herd was still faintly visible as a cloud of dust in the morning light, flowing up and over the hill toward Upper Field. But it wasn’t the herd he’d been thinking of. He’d been thinking of Mausami, the look of panic on her face when his brother had reached out his hand-as if she’d been afraid to let him touch her, that this would be too much to bear.

He shook the image away and returned his gaze to Michael, standing below him.

“My sister asked me to give you a message,” Michael said.

“Sara did?”

“Just, you know,” Michael said, and gave an awkward shrug. “Be careful.”

The distance to the power station was forty kilometers, nearly a full day’s ride. Within an hour of leaving, the group fell silent, even Arlo, lulled by the heat and the prospect of the day ahead. Portions of the roadway down the mountain were washed away, and they had to stop and lead the animals by hand across these sections. The grease had begun to stink, and Peter was glad to be riding up front, out of the plume of its smell. The sun was high and hot, the air breathless, without the slightest breeze. The desert floor shined below them like hammered metal.

At half-day they stopped to rest. The HD crew watered the animals, while the others took positions on a rocky outcrop above the cart, Theo and Peter on one side, Arlo and Alicia on the other, to scan the tree line.

“See there?”

Theo was using the binoculars and pointing toward the shadow of the trees. Peter held a hand over his eyes against the glare.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Be patient.”

Then Peter saw it. Two hundred meters distant, a barely detectable movement, no more than a rustling, in the branches of a tall pine, and a gentle shower of needles, floating down. Peter drew in a breath, willing it to be nothing. Then it came again.

“He’s hunting, keeping to the shade,” Theo said. “Squirrel, probably. Not much else around here. He must be one hungry son of a bitch to be out in the day like this.”

Theo whistled a long, windy note through his teeth to signal the others. Alicia turned sharply at the sound; Theo pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then a single outstretched digit toward the tree line. Then he held up his hand, cupping it in the shape of a question mark: Do you see it?

Alicia replied with a closed fist. Yes.

“Let’s go, brother.”

They clambered down the rocks and rendezvoused at the cart, where Rey and Finn were sprawled over the grease bags, chewing on hardtack and passing a plastic jug of water between them.

“We can draw him out with one of the mules,” Alicia said quickly. With a long stick she began to draw in the dirt at their feet. “Switch out the water for grease, move her down a hundred meters closer to the trees, see if he takes the bait. He probably already smells it. We set up three positions, here, here, and here”-she scratched these in the dirt-“and catch him in the cross fire. Out in the sun like that he’d be easy.”

Theo frowned. “This isn’t a smokehunt, Lish.”

For the first time Rey and Finn looked up from the cart.

“What the hell,” Rey said, “are you serious? How many are there?”

“Don’t worry, we’re moving out.”

“Theo, there’s just the one,” Alicia said. “We can’t just leave him there. The herd’s only, what, ten clicks?”

“We can and we will. And where there’s one, there are others.” Theo arched his eyebrows at Rey and Finn. “Are we ready to move out?”

“Who cares?” Rey rose quickly from the floor of the cart. “Flyers, nobody ever tells us anything. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Alicia regarded them another moment, her arms crossed over her chest. Peter wondered how angry she was. But she’d said it herself, at the gate: chain of command.

“Fine, you’re the boss, Theo,” she said.

They continued on their way. By the time they reached the foot of the mountain, it was midafternoon. For the last hour they’d descended in full view of the turbine array, hundreds of them spread over the flats of the San Gorgonio Pass, like a forest of man-made trees. On the far side, a second line of mountains shimmered in the haze. A hot, dry wind was blowing, ripping away their words the moment they were uttered, making any conversation impossible. With each meter of their descent the air grew hotter; it felt like they were riding into a smithing furnace. The road ended at the old town of Banning. From there, they’d head inland along the Eastern Road, another ten kilometers to the power station.

“All eyes, everyone,” Theo called over the rush of the wind. He took another moment to scan ahead with the binoculars. “Let’s close it up. Lish on point.”

Peter experienced a quick flash of irritation-he was in second position, the point was his to take-but let the feeling pass without comment; Theo’s choice would smooth things over between him and Alicia, and by the time they got to the power station, they’d all be friends again. Theo passed her the binoculars; Alicia heeled her mount and rode briskly ahead an extra fifty meters, her red braid swinging in the sun. Without turning, she held up an open hand, then dropped her palm so that it was parallel to the ground. A thin, birdlike whistle from between her teeth. Clear. Forward.

“Let’s go,” Theo said.

Peter felt a quickening in his chest as his senses, dulled by the monotony of the long ride down the mountain, revived, bringing him into a heightened awareness of his surroundings, as if he were viewing the scene from several angles at once. They rode forward at an even pace, their bows at the ready. No one spoke except Finn, who had climbed down from the cart and was leading the jenny by hand, murmuring calming words to her. The course they followed was little more than a sand track, rutted from years of use by the carts. Peter felt, like a tingling at his extremities, each bit of sound and movement from the landscape: the soft howl of wind through a broken window; a bit of flapping canvas caught on a tipping utility pole; the creak of a metal sign, its words long since scoured away, tossing to and fro above the fuel pumps of an old garage. They passed a pile of rusted cars, half-buried and twisted in a heap; a block of houses, piled with dunes that reached nearly to their eaves; a cavernous metal shed, bleached and pitted, from which issued the cooing of pigeons and, as they moved downwind, the fetid cloud of their droppings.

“All eyes, everyone,” Theo repeated. “Let’s get through here.”

They moved in silence into the center of town. The buildings here were more substantial, three or four stories, though many had collapsed, carving open spaces between them and filling the street with mounds of undifferentiated debris. Cars and trucks were parked at haphazard angles along the roadway, some with their doors standing open-the moment of their drivers’ flight frozen in time-but in others, sealed away beneath the blasting desert sun, were the dried-out corpses known as slims: raggy masses of bones folded over the dashboards or pressed against the windows, their shriveled forms virtually unrecognizable as human beings except for a tuft of stiffened hair still tied with a ribbon, or the glinting metal of a watch on a skinless hand that still, after nearly a hundred years, clutched the steering wheel of a pickup truck sunk to the tops of its wheel wells. All of it unmoving and silent as the grave, all just as it had been since the Time Before.

“Gives me the creeps, cuz,” Arlo murmured. “I always tell myself not to look, and I always do anyway.”

As they approached the highway overpass, Alicia pulled up sharply. She turned, one hand raised, and rode briskly back to them.

“Three dozers underneath. They’re hanging in the rafters on the back side, over the culvert.”

Theo absorbed this news without expression. Unlike the viral they’d seen on the mountain road, there was no question of taking on a whole pod, certainly not this late in the day.

“We’ll have to go around. The cart can’t make it without a ramp. Lish? Agreed?”

“No argument. We close up and go.”

They turned east, tracing the course of the highway at a distance of a hundred meters. The sun stood four hands; they were cutting it close now. It would be slow going over open ground with the cart. The next entrance ramp was two kilometers away.

“I hate to admit it,” Theo said quietly to Peter, “but Lish had a point. When we get back, we should put together a hunting party and clear out that pod.”

“If they’re still there.”

Theo was frowning pensively. “Oh, they’ll be there. A single smoke bagging squirrels is one thing. This is something else. They know we use this road.”

What the smokes knew and didn’t know was always a question. Were they creatures of pure instinct, or were they capable of thought? Could they plan and strategize? And if the latter was true, didn’t it follow that they were still, in some sense, people? The people they had been, before they were taken up? A great deal was simply not understood. Why, for instance, some of them would approach the Wall, while others would not; why a handful, such as the one they had seen on the road, would hazard the daylight to hunt; if their attacks, when they came, were simply random occurrences or triggered by something else; the distinctive manner in which they moved, always in groups of three, the actions of their bodies coordinated each to the others, like phrases of a rhyme; even how many there were out there, prowling the dark. It was true that the combination of the lights and walls had kept the Colony secure for most of a hundred years. The Builders seemed to have understood their enemy well, or at least well enough. And yet watching a pod moving at the edge of the lights, appearing out of the night to patrol the perimeter before departing to wherever it was they went, Peter often had the distinct impression of watching a single being, and that this being was alive, soulfully alive, no matter what Teacher said. Death made sense to him, the body joined to the soul in life, ceasing together in death. His mother’s final hours had taught him as much. The sounds of her last, ragged breaths, and then the sudden stillness: he knew that the woman she had been was gone. How could a being continue with no soul?

They reached the ramp. To the north, at the base of the foothills, Peter could discern, through a haze of airborne dust, the long, low shape of the Empire Valley Outlet Mall. Peter had been there plenty of times before, on scavenging parties; the place had gotten pretty picked over through the years, but it was so vast you could still find useful stuff. The Gap had been cleared out, and J. Crew too, as had the Williams-Sonoma and the REI and most of the stores on the south end near the atrium, but there was a big Sears with windows that offered some protection and a JC Penney with good exterior access so you could get out fast, both still containing usable things, like shoes and tools and cooking pans. The thought occurred to him that he might go looking for something for Maus, for the baby, and maybe Theo was thinking the same thing. But there was no time for that now.

Standing above the sand at the base of the ramp was a sign, bent with the prevailing winds:

nt sta e 10 E

P lm ings 25

In io 55

Alicia rode back to them. “All clear underneath. We better get a move on.”

The roadway was in passable shape; they were making good time again. A broiling wind was tearing through the pass. Peter’s skin and eyes felt scorched, like kindling on the verge of combustion. He realized he hadn’t urinated since they’d stopped to water the horses and reminded himself to drink from his canteen. Theo was scanning ahead with the binoculars, one hand loosely holding the reins. They were close enough now that Peter could see the turbines with enough detail to discern which were turning, which not. He tried to count the ones that were but quickly lost track.

The shadow of the mountain had begun to fall over the valley as they moved off the Eastern Road. At last they saw their destination: a concrete bunker, half-submerged in the valley floor, ringed by tall fencing charged with enough current to set anything that touched it aflame, and behind that the power trunk, a great rust-colored tube that ascended the mountain’s eastern face, a wall of white rock forming a natural barricade. Theo dismounted and took the leather lanyard that held the key from around his neck. The key opened a metal panel on a post; there were two such panels, one on each side of the fence. Inside was a switch to control the current, another to open the gate. Theo killed the current and stood back while the gate swung open.

“Let’s go.”

Adjacent to the station was a small livery, shaded by a metal roof, with troughs for the horses and a pump. They all drank greedily, letting the water stream down their chins and pouring handfuls over their sweat-soaked hair, then left Finn and Rey to see to the animals and went to the hatch. Theo withdrew the key once more. A thunk of metal as the locks freed, and they all stepped inside.

They were met by a blast of cool air and the basal hum of mechanical ventilation. Peter shivered in the sudden chill. A single bulb in a cage provided the only illumination to the flight of metal stairs that took them down below ground level. At the bottom was a second hatch, which stood ajar. Beyond it lay the turbine control room, and, deeper still, a barracks and kitchen and rooms for storage and equipment. At the rear, accessible by a ramp leading to the outside, was the stable where they overnighted the horses and mules.

“Anybody home?” Theo called out. He nudged the door open with his foot. “Hello!”

No reply.

“Theo-” This was Alicia.

“I know,” Theo said. “It’s weird.”

They stepped cautiously through the hatch. Across the long table in the center of the control room lay an assemblage of guttered beeswax candles and the remains of a hastily departed meal: tins of paste, plates of hardtack, a greasy cast-iron pot that looked like it had contained some kind of meat stew. None of it appeared to have been touched in a day or even longer. Arlo waved his blade over the pot, and a cloud of flies scattered. Despite the whir of the fans the air was close and rank, thick with the smell of men and hot insulation. The only light, a pale yellow glow, came from the meters on the control panel, which monitored the flow of current from the turbines. Above them the station’s clock told the hour: 18:45.

“So where the hell are they?” Alicia asked. “Am I missing something, or is it almost Second Bell?”

They moved through the barracks and storage areas, confirming what they already knew: the station was empty. They climbed the stairs and stepped back into the late-day heat. Rey and Finn were waiting under the shade of the livery’s awning.

“Any idea where they might have gone?” Theo asked.

Finn had balled up his shirt to douse it in the trough and was wiping down his chest and armpits. “One of the tool carts is missing. A jenny, too.” He cocked his head, shifting his eyes to Rey, then back to Theo, as if to say, Here’s a theory. “They could still be out on the turbines. Zander likes to play it close sometimes.”

Zander Phillips was the Station Chief. He wasn’t much to talk to, or look at, for that matter. All that time out in the sun and wind had dried him like a raisin, and the days of isolation had made him gruff to the point of silence. It was said that nobody had ever heard him say so much as five words in a row.

“How close?”

Finn shrugged again. “Look, I don’t know. Ask him when he gets back.”

“Who else is down here?”

“Just Caleb.”

Theo moved out of the shadow of the livery, to face the turbine field. The sun had just begun its dip behind the mountain; soon its shadow would stretch clear across the valley to the foothills on the far side. When that happened, there was no question: they’d have to seal the hatch. Caleb Jones was just a kid, barely fifteen; everyone called him Hightop.

“Well, they’ve got half a hand,” Theo said finally. Everyone knew this, but still it needed to be said. He looked at each of their party in turn, a quick glance to verify that his meaning was acknowledged. “Let’s get the animals inside.”

They led the animals down the ramp into the stable and sealed the bulkhead for the night. By the time they finished, the sun had dropped behind the mountain. Peter left Arlo and Alicia in the control room and went to join Theo where he was waiting at the gate, scanning the turbine field with his binoculars. Peter felt the first flickering chill of night across his arms, on the sun-baked skin at the back of his neck. His mouth and throat were dry again, tasting of dust and horses.

“How long do we wait?”

Theo didn’t answer. The question was rhetorical, just words to fill the silence. Something had happened, or Zander and Caleb would have been back by now. Peter was also thinking of their father, as he believed Theo was as well: Demo Jaxon, gone into the turbine field without a trace, headed out on the Eastern Road. How long had they waited that night to close the hatch on Demo Jaxon?

Peter heard footsteps approaching and turned to find Alicia striding in their direction from the hatch. She took a place beside them, directing her gaze across the darkening field. They stood without speaking for another moment, watching the night march down the valley. As the mountain’s shadow touched the foothills on the far side, Alicia drew a blade and wiped it on the hem of her jersey.

“I hate to say it-”

“You don’t have to.” Theo turned to face the two of them. “Okay, we’re done here. Let’s lock it up.”

The day-to-day. That was the term they used. Thinking neither of a past that was too much a story of loss and death, nor of a future that might never happen. Ninety-four souls under the lights, living in the day-to-day.

Yet it was not always so for Peter. In idle moments, standing the Watch when all was quiet, or lying in his bunk waiting for sleep to come, he would often find himself thinking of his parents. Though there were those in the Colony who still spoke of heaven-a place, beyond physical existence, where the soul went after death-the idea had never made sense to him. The world was the world, a realm of the senses that could be touched and tasted and felt, and it seemed to Peter that the dead, if they went anywhere at all, would pass into the living. Perhaps it was something Teacher had told him; perhaps he had come to the idea on his own. But for as long as he could recall, since he had come out of the Sanctuary and learned the truth of the world, he had believed this to be so. As long as he could hold his parents in his mind, some part of them would go on; and when he himself should die, these memories would pass with him into others still living, so that in this manner, all of them-not just Peter and his parents but everyone who had gone before and those who would come after-would continue.

He could no longer envision his parents’ faces. This had been the first thing to go, leaving him in just a matter of days. When he thought of them, it wasn’t a question of something seen but something felt-a wash of remembered sensations that flowed through him like water. The milky sound of his mother’s voice and the look of her hands, pale and fine-boned but strong too, as she went about her work in the Infirmary, touching here and there, offering what comforts she could; the creak of his father’s boots ascending the ladder of the catwalk on a night when Peter was running between the posts, and the way he had passed beside him without speaking, acknowledging Peter only with a hand on his shoulder; the heat and energy of the living room in the days of the Long Rides, when his father and uncle and the other men would gather to plan their routes, and later, the sounds of their voices as they drank shine on the porch well into the night, telling the stories of all they’d seen in the Darklands.

That was what Peter had wanted: to feel himself a part of them. To be one of the men of the Long Rides. And yet he had always known this would never happen. Listening from his bed to the voices on the porch, their rich masculine sound, he knew it about himself. Something was missing. He did not know the name for this thing; he wasn’t sure it had a name at all. It was something more than courage, more than giving it up, though these were a part of it. The only word that came to him was largeness; that was what the men of the Long Rides possessed. And when the time came for one of the Jaxon boys to join them, Peter knew it would be Theo whom his father would call to the gate. He would be left behind.

His mother had known it about him too. His mother, who had so stoically borne their father’s disgrace and then his final ride, everyone knowing but never daring to utter the truth; his mother, who, in the end, even when the cancer had taken everything else from her, had spoken not a single ill word of their father for leaving them. He’s in his own time now. It was summer, as it was now, the days long and blazing with heat, when she’d taken to her bed. Theo was Full Watch by this time, not yet a Captain though that was soon to follow; the duty of their mother’s care had fallen to Peter, who sat with her through the days and nights, helping her eat and dress and even bathe, an awkward intimacy they both endured because it was simply necessary. She might have gone to the Infirmary; that was how things were usually done. But his mother was First Nurse, and if Prudence Jaxon wanted to die at home in her bed, no one was going to tell her otherwise.

Whenever Peter recalled that summer, its long days and endless nights, it seemed a period of his life from which he had never completely departed. It reminded him of a story Teacher had told them once about a turtle approaching a wall; each time the turtle moved forward, he decreased the distance by half, guaranteeing that he would never reach his destination. That was how it felt to Peter, watching his mother die. For three days she had drifted in and out of a feverish sleep, speaking hardly a word, answering only the simplest questions required for her care. She would take a few sips of water, but that was all. Sandy Chou, the nurse on duty, had been to visit that afternoon, and told Peter to be ready. The room was dim, the light of the spots filtered into dappled shadow by the tree that stood beyond the window. A sheen of sweat gleamed on her pale brow; her hands-the hands that Peter had watched for hours in the Infirmary, going about their careful work-lay motionless at her sides. Since nightfall Peter hadn’t set foot from the room, fearing that she would awaken to find herself alone. That she was close to death, within hours, Peter knew; Sandy had made this clear. But it was the stillness of her hands where they rested on the blankets, all their patient labors ended, that told him so.

He wondered: How did you say goodbye? Would it frighten her, to hear him say the word? And what would fill the silence that came after? There had been no chance to do this with his father; in many ways, that had been the worst of it. He had simply slipped away, into oblivion. What would Peter have said to his father if he’d had the chance? A selfish wish, but still he thought it: Choose me, Peter would have said. Not Theo. Me. Before you go, choose me. The scene was perfectly clear in his mind-as Peter imagined it, the sun was coming up; they were sitting on the porch, just the two of them, his father dressed to ride, holding his compass, flicking the cover open with his thumb and closing it again, as was his habit-and yet the scene did not conclude. Never had he imagined how his father might have answered.

Now here was his mother, dying; if death was a room the soul entered, she was standing at the threshold; and yet Peter could not find the words to tell her how he felt-that he loved her and would miss her when she was gone. In their family, it had always been true that Peter was hers, as Theo’s was their father’s. Nothing was ever said about this; it was simply a fact. Peter knew there had been miscarriages, and at least one baby that was born early with something wrong and died within hours. He thought this baby was a girl. It had happened when Peter was just a Little himself, still in the Sanctuary, so he didn’t really know. So perhaps that was the missing thing-not something inside him, but inside her-and the reason that he had always felt his mother’s love so fiercely. He was the one she would keep.

The first soft light of morning was in the windows when he heard her breathing change, catching in her chest like a hiccup. For a terrible instant he believed the moment had come, but then he saw her eyes were open. Mama? he said, taking her hand. Mama, I’m here.

Theo, she said.

Could she see him? Did she know where she was? Mama, he said, it’s Peter. Do you want me to get Theo?

She seemed to be looking into some deep place inside herself, infinite and without borders, a place of eternity. Take care of your brother, Theo, she said. He’s not strong, like you. Then she closed her eyes and did not open them again.

He had never told his brother about this. There seemed no point. There were times when he thought, wishfully, that he might have misheard her, or else could attribute these final words to the delirium of illness. But try as he might to construe them otherwise, her words and meaning seemed clear. After everything, the long days and nights he had cared for her, it was Theo she had placed at her bedside in her final hours; Theo to whom she had given the last words of her life.

Nothing more was said of the missing station crew. They fed the animals and then themselves and retired to the barracks, a cramped, foul-smelling room of bunk beds and soiled mattresses stuffed with musty straw. By the time Peter lay down, Finn and Rey were already snoring away. Peter wasn’t accustomed to going to bed so early, but he’d been up for twenty-four hours straight and felt himself quickly drifting off.

He awoke disoriented, his mind still swimming in the current of anxious dreams. His internal clock told him it was half-night or later. All the men were still asleep, but Alicia’s bunk was empty. He made his way down the dim hall to the control room, where he found her sitting at the long table, turning the pages of a book by the light of the panel. The clock read 02:33.

She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Don’t know how you slept, with all that snoring.”

He took a chair across from her. “I didn’t, not really. What are you reading?”

She closed the book and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “Damned if I know. I found it in the storage room. There’s boxes and boxes of them.” She slid it across the table to him. “Go ahead and look if you want.”

Where the Wild Things Are, the title read. A thin volume, containing mostly pictures. Peter turned the brittle, dusty-smelling pages one by one. A little boy in some kind of animal costume, with ears and a tail, brandishing a fork as he chased a small white dog; the boy’s banishment to his room, and the room being enveloped by a forest, magically growing; a moonlit night descending, and a journey across the sea to an island of monsters, unimaginable beings of grasping claws and gnashing teeth and huge yellow eyes. The Wild Things.

“That whole business about the boy looking them in the eyes and telling them to be still,” Alicia said. She yawned into her hand. “I don’t see how that would do any good at all.”

Peter closed the book and put it aside. He had no idea what to make of any of it, but that was the way of most things from the Time Before. How did people live? What did they eat, wear, think? Did they walk in the dark, as if this were nothing? If there were no virals, what made them afraid?

“I think it’s all made up.” He shrugged. “Just a story. I think he’s dreaming.”

Alicia lifted her eyebrows, her expression saying, Who knows? Who can say what the world used to be?

“I was actually hoping you’d wake up,” she announced then, rising from her chair. She lifted a lantern from the floor. “I’ve got something to show you.”

She led him back through the barracks and into one of the storage rooms. The walls were lined with metal shelving, stacked with supplies: greasy tools, coils of wire and solder, plastic jugs of water and alcohol. Alicia placed the lantern on the floor and stepped to one of the shelves and began to move its contents onto the floor.

“Well? Don’t just stand there.”

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? And keep your voice down-I don’t want to wake the others.”

When they’d cleared everything away, Alicia instructed him to stand at one end of the shelf, positioning herself on the opposite side. Peter realized that the back of the shelf was a sheet of plywood, concealing the wall behind it. They pulled the shelf away.

A hatch.

Alicia stepped forward and turned the ring and swung it open. A narrow, tubelike space, with a flight of metal stairs rising in a spiral. Metal crates were stacked against the wall. The stairs vanished in the gloom, some unknowable distance over Peter’s head. The air was stale and choked with dust.

“When did you find it?” he asked, amazed.

“Last season. I got bored one night and started poking around. I figure it’s some kind of escape route left by the Builders. The stairs go straight to a crawl space on the roof.”

Peter gestured toward the crates with his lantern. “What’s in those?”

“That,” she said, smiling mischievously, “is the best part.”

Together they dragged one of the crates out onto the floor of the storeroom. A metal locker, a meter long and half as deep, with the words U.S. MARINE CORPS printed on the side. Alicia knelt to undo the hasps and lifted the lid to reveal six sleek black objects, cradled in foam. It took Peter a few seconds to understand what he was seeing.

“Holy shit, Lish.”

She passed him a weapon. A long-bore rifle, cool to the touch and smelling faintly of oil. It was shockingly light in his hands, as if made of some substance that defied gravity. Even in the dim light of the storage room he could detect the lustrous gleam in the finish of the muzzle. The guns he’d seen were all little more than corroded relics, rifles and pistols the Army had left behind; the Watch still kept some in the Armory, but as far as Peter was aware, all the ammunition had been used up years ago. Never in his life had Peter held anything so clean and new, untouched by time.

“How many are there?”

“Twelve boxes, six guns apiece, a little over a thousand rounds. There are six more crates up in the crawl space.”

All his nervousness was gone, replaced by a lusty hunger to use this wonderful new object in his hands, to feel its power. “Show me how to load it,” he said.

Alicia took the gun from his hands and drew back the bolt and charger. Then she took a magazine of bullets from the box, shoved it into place in front of the trigger guard, pushing forward until it caught, and gave the base two hard taps with her palm.

“Aim it like a cross,” she said, and turned away to demonstrate. “It’s basically the same, only with a lot more kick. Just keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean business. You’ll want to, but don’t.”

She passed the rifle back to him. A loaded gun! Peter raised it to his shoulder, searching for something in the room that seemed worthy of his aim, and finally selected a coil of copper wire on the far shelf. The urge to fire, to experience the explosive force of its recoil in his arms, was so strong it required an almost physical effort to push the thought away.

“Just remember what I said about the trigger,” Alicia warned. “You’ve got twenty rounds per magazine. Now, load this one so I know you know how.”

He traded the loaded rifle for a new one. Peter did his best to recall the steps: safety, bolt, charger, magazine. When he was done he gave the clip two hard taps, as he had seen Alicia do.

“How’s that?”

Alicia was watching him appraisingly, holding her rifle with the stock against her hip. “Not bad. A little slow. Don’t point it down like that, you’ll blow your foot off.”

He quickly raised his barrel. “You know, I’m a little surprised. I thought you didn’t believe in these things.”

She shrugged. “I don’t, not really. They’re sloppy and they’re loud, and they make you too confident by half.” She passed him a second magazine for his waist pouch. “On the other hand, the smokes believe in them just fine if you do it right.” She tapped a finger against her sternum. “One shot, through the sweet spot. Closer than three meters you have a little slop, but don’t count on it.”

“So you’ve used these guns before.”

“Did I say that?”

Peter knew better than to press. Six crates of Army rifles. How could Alicia possibly resist?

“So whose guns are they?”

“How should I know? As far as I can tell, they’re the property of the United States Marine Corps, just like it says on the box. Quit asking questions and let’s go.”

They reentered the hatch and began to climb. He felt the temperature rise with every step of their ascent. Ten meters up they reached a small platform with a ladder. In the ceiling over their heads was another hatch. Alicia rested the lantern on the platform, reached overhead on tiptoes, and began to turn the wheel. They were both sweating hard; the air felt almost too thick to breathe.

“It’s stuck.”

He reached up to help her. With a rusty squeal, the mechanism released. Two turns, three; the hatch dropped open on its hinges. Cool night air tumbled through the opening like a current of water, smelling of desert, of dry juniper and mesquite. Above, Peter could see only blackness.

“Me first,” Alicia said. “I’ll call you up.”

He heard her footsteps moving away from the opening. He listened for more but heard nothing. They were up on the roof somewhere, no lights to protect them. He counted to twenty, thirty. Should he follow her?

Then Alicia’s face appeared above him, floating over the open hatch. “Leave the lantern there. It’s all clear. Come on.”

He ascended the ladder and found himself in a small crawl space, with pipes and valves and more crates stacked along the walls. He paused, letting his eyes adjust. He was facing an open door. He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

He stepped into the stars.

It hit him in the lungs first, shoving the breath from his chest. A feeling of pure physical panic, as if he’d stepped onto nothing, onto the night sky itself. His knees bent beneath him, his free hand scrabbled at the air, searching for something to hold on to, to give himself a feeling of form and weight, the working dimensions of the world around him. The sky above was a vault of blackness-and everywhere, the stars!

“Peter, breathe,” Alicia said.

She was standing beside him. He realized that her hand was resting on his shoulder. In the dark Alicia’s voice seemed to come from very close and far away at once. He did as she said, letting deep gulps of night air fill his chest. Bit by bit his eyes adjusted. Now he could make out the edge of the roof, spilling into nothingness. They were in the southwest corner, he realized, near the exhaust port.

“So what do you think?”

For a long, quiet moment, he let his eyes roam the sky. The longer he looked, the more stars appeared to him, pushing through the blackness. These were the stars his father had spoken of, the stars his father had seen on the Long Rides.

“Does Theo know?”

Alicia laughed. “Does Theo know what?”

“The hatch. The guns.” Peter shrugged helplessly. “All of it.”

“I never showed him, if that’s what you mean. I’m guessing Zander does, since he knows every inch of this place. But he’s never said a word to me about it.”

His eyes searched out her face. She seemed different somehow, in the dark: the same Alicia he had always known, but also someone new. He understood what she had done. She’d saved it for him.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t go thinking this means we’re friends or anything. If Arlo had woken up first, it’d be him standing here.”

That wasn’t true, and he knew it. “Even so,” he said.

She led him to the edge of the roof. They were facing north, across the valley. Not a breath of wind was blowing. On the far side, the shape of the mountains was etched into the sky as a dark bulk pushed up against a shimmering rim of stars. They took positions, lying side by side with their bellies pressed against the concrete, still warm with the heat of the day.

“Here,” Alicia said, reaching into her pouch. “You’ll want one of these.”

A night scope. She showed him how to fix it to the top of the rifle and adjust the gain. Peter placed his eye to the viewfinder and saw a landscape of shrubs and rocks, all washed in a pale green light, with a pair of hatched crosshairs bisecting his view. At the bottom of the scope he saw a readout: 212 METERS. The numbers rose and fell as he swept the rifle back and forth. Amazing.

“You think they’re still alive?”

Alicia took a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Probably not. It can’t hurt to wait, though.” She paused again; there wasn’t much else to say on the subject. Then: “You think I was too hard on Maus today?”

The question surprised him. As long as he’d known her, Alicia had never been one to second-guess herself.

“Not the way it worked out. You did the right thing.”

“She’s a loss. You can’t say she isn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter. You said it yourself. Maus knows the rules as well as anyone.”

“I’d rather keep her than Galen.” She groaned. “Flyers. That guy. What the hell could she see in him?”

Peter lifted his face from the scope. The sky was so thick with stars it was as if he could reach out and brush them with his hand. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. It made him think of the oceans, the names in the book like the words of a song-Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic-and about his father, standing on the edge of the sea. Maybe the stars were what Auntie meant when she spoke of God. The old God, from the Time Before. The God of Heavens who watched the World.

“Do you ever… ” Alicia began. “I don’t know, think about it?”

Peter shifted to face her. Her eye was still pressed to her scope. “Think about what?”

Alicia gave a nervous laugh-a sound he’d never heard her make. “You’re going to make me say it? Pairing, Peter. Having Littles.”

He had; of course he had. Almost everybody paired by the time they were twenty. But standing the Watch made it hard-up all night, sleeping most of the day or else walking around in a daze of exhaustion. But when Peter faced the question squarely, he knew that wasn’t the only reason. Something about the idea simply did not seem possible; it applied to others, but not to him. There had been girls for him, and then a few he would have described as women; each had occupied a few months’ time, working him up into such a state that they were, briefly, most of what he thought about. But in the end he had always drifted away or found himself, inexplicably, directing them toward someone he thought of as more suitable.

“Not really, no.”

“What about Sara?”

A feeling of defensiveness rose up inside him. “What about her?”

“Come on, Peter,” Alicia said, and he heard the exasperation in her voice. “I know she wants to pair with you. It’s no secret. She’s First too, it would be a good match. Everyone thinks so.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying. It’s obvious.”

“Well, it isn’t obvious to me.” He paused. They had never spoken like this before. “Look, I like Sara fine. I’m just not certain I want to pair with her.”

“But you do want to? Pair, I mean.”

“Someday. Maybe. Lish, why are you asking this?”

He turned his face toward her again. She was looking through her scope across the valley, slowly sweeping the horizon line with her rifle.

“Lish?”

“Hold on. Something’s moving.”

He rolled back into position. “Where?”

Alicia quickly lifted the barrel of her rifle, pointing. “Two o’clock.”

He pressed his eye to the scope: a solitary figure, darting from one stand of scrub to another, a hundred meters past the fence line. Human.

“It’s Hightop,” Alicia said.

“How do you know?”

“Too small to be Zander. Nobody else out there.”

“He’s alone?”

“I can’t tell,” Alicia said. “Wait. No. Ten degrees right.”

Peter looked: a flash of green in the scope, skipping like a stone over the desert floor. Then he saw a second, and a third, two hundred meters and closing. Not closing: circling.

“What are they doing? Why don’t they just take him?”

“I don’t know.”

Then they heard it.

“Hey!” The voice was Caleb’s, high and wild and full of fear. He was up and running toward the fence, waving his arms. “Open the gate, open the gate!”

“Flyers.” Alicia rolled to her feet. “Come on.”

They raced back to the crawl space; Alicia quickly opened one of the containers stacked by the hatch. She withdrew a pistol of some kind-short, with a fat, snub-nosed barrel. Peter had no time to ask. They ran back to the edge and Alicia pointed it up and over the turbine field and fired.

The flare shot skyward, dragging a hissing tail of light. Peter instinctively knew he shouldn’t look but he couldn’t stop himself, he looked anyway, his vision instantly seared by the image of the flare’s white-hot center. At its apex the flare seemed to stop, suspended in space. Then it exploded, bathing the field in light.

“We’ve bought him a minute,” Alicia said. “There’s a ladder down the back.”

They slung their weapons over their shoulders; Alicia descended the ladder first, taking it like a pair of poles, her feet not even touching the rungs. As Peter scrambled down, she shot another flare, arcing it over the station toward the field. Then they ran.

Caleb was standing on the far side of the metal gate. The virals had scattered, back into the shadows. “Please! Let me in!”

“Shit, we don’t have a key,” Peter said.

Alicia shouldered her rifle and aimed it at the panel. A burst of fire and noise; a shower of sparks poured forth as the panel shot from its pole.

“Caleb, you’ll have to climb over!”

“I’ll fry!”

“No you won’t, the current’s off!” She looked at Peter. “You think it’s off?”

“How should I know?”

Alicia stepped forward and, before Peter could say anything, pressed her palm to the fence. Nothing happened.

“Hurry, Caleb!”

Caleb curled his fingers between the wires and began to climb. Around them the shadows flattened as the second flare completed its descent. Alicia withdrew a fresh flare from her waist pouch, loaded the pistol, and fired. Up and up it sailed, riding its tail of smoke, and burst above them in a shower of light.

“That’s the last,” she said to Peter. “We’ve got about ten seconds before they figure out the current’s off.” Caleb was straddling the top of the fence now. “Caleb,” she yelled, “move your ass!”

He took the last five meters at a drop, rolling as he landed and vaulting to his feet. His cheeks were wet from crying, smeared with dirt and snot; his feet were bare. In another few seconds they’d be in the dark again.

“Are you hurt?” Alicia said. “Can you run?”

The boy nodded.

They took off toward the station. Peter felt the virals coming before he saw them. He turned in time to see one launching toward them from the top of the fence. A blast of gunfire went off next to his ear: the creature twisted in the air and went down, skidding across the hardpan. He turned to see Alicia, her rifle shouldered, her eyes fixed on the fence. She let off three more shots in quick succession.

“Get him out of here!” she yelled.

He raced with Caleb to the ladder. Behind them, Alicia continued to fire, the sound of her rifle shots reaching him as muffled pops that echoed through the yard. More virals were inside the fence line now. Slinging his rifle, Peter mounted the ladder; when he reached the top, he turned to look. Alicia was backing toward the wall of the station, shooting into the shadows. When her gun went silent she cast it aside and began to climb; Peter shouldered his rifle and aimed in the same general direction and squeezed the trigger. The barrel kicked up, his shots sailing uselessly into the dark. His whole body shook with the feel of it, its wild force.

“Watch what you’re doing!” Alicia cried, pressing her body to the ladder below him. “And for godsakes, aim!”

“I’m trying!” There were three now, coming out of the shadows toward the ladder’s base; Peter took a step to his right, clamping the stock hard against his shoulder. Aim it like a cross. He had very little chance of hitting them, but maybe he could scare them off. He squeezed the trigger and they jumped away, rolling across the yard and skittering into the dark. He’d bought a few seconds at most.

“Shut up and climb!” he yelled.

“I will if you stop shooting at me!”

Then she was at the top. He found her hand and pulled hard, vaulting her onto the concrete surface of the roof. Caleb was waving to them from the mouth of the hatch.

“Behind you!”

As Alicia clambered down the hatch, Peter turned; a single viral was standing on the edge of the roof. Peter raised his gun and fired, but too late. The place where the creature had stood was empty.

“Forget the smokes!” Alicia yelled from below. “Come on!”

He dropped straight through the opening, tumbling into Caleb, who folded under him with a grunt. A sharp pain sliced his ankle as he hit the platform; the rifle clattered away. Alicia stepped over the two of them and reached up to seal the hatch. But something was pressing down on the other side. Alicia’s face clenched with exertion; her feet scrabbled at the ladder, fighting for leverage.

“I… can’t… close it!”

Peter and Caleb leapt to their feet and pushed. But the force on the far side was too great. Peter had done something to his ankle when he’d fallen, but the pain was vague now, unimportant. He scanned the platform below for his rifle and found it, lying at the top of the stairs.

“Let go,” he said. “Drop the hatch. It’s the only way.”

“Are you crazy?” But then he saw, in Alicia’s eyes, that she understood his intentions. “Good, do it.” She turned to Caleb, who nodded. “Ready?”

“One… two… ”

“Three!”

They released the hatch. Peter dropped to the platform, the pain exploding in his ankle as he made impact; he lunged for the rifle and swung around, thrusting the muzzle upward through the opening. There was no time to aim, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to.

He didn’t. The end of the barrel went straight into the viral’s open mouth. The barrel speared him like an arrow, sliding past the rows of glossy teeth, coming to rest where it pressed against the bony ridge at the top of his throat, and Peter looked him in the eyes and thought, Be still, giving the rifle one hard shove to drive it home before he shot Zander Phillips through the brain.

TWENTY-ONE

There was one great difference between the world as it was now and the world of the Time Before, Michael Fisher thought, and it wasn’t the virals. The difference was electricity.

The virals were a problem, sure-about forty-two and a half million problems, if the old documents in the HD shed behind the Lighthouse were correct. A whole history of the epidemic in its final hours, for Michael the Circuit to read. “CV1-CV13 National and Regional Summary of Select Surveillance Components,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia; “Civilian Resettlement Protocols for Urban Centers, Zones 6-1,” Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, D.C.; “Efficacy of Postexposure Protection Against CV Familial Hemorrhagic Fever in Nonhuman Primates,” United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, Fort Derrick, Maryland. And so on, in that vein. Some of which he understood, some of which he didn’t, but all saying the same basic thing. One person in ten. One person taken up for every nine that died. So, assuming a human population of 500 million at the time of the outbreak-the combined populations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico-and forestalling, for the moment, the question of the rest of the world, about which very little seemed to be known-and even assuming some kind of mortality rate for the virals themselves, say a modest 15 percent-that still left 42.5 million of the bloodthirsty bastards bouncing around between the Panamanian Isthmus and the Bering Frontier, gobbling up everything with hemoglobin in its veins and a heat signature between 36 and 38 degrees, i.e., 99.96 percent of the mammalian kingdom, from voles to grizzly bears.

So, okay. A problem.

But just give me enough current, Michael thought, and I can keep the virals out forever.

The Time Before: he sometimes trembled just to think of it, the great buzzing man-made electrical juiciness of it all. The millions of miles of wire, the billions of amps of current. The vast generating plants turning the bottled energy of the planet itself into the eternally affirmative question that was a single amp of current shooting down a line, saying, Yes? Yes? Yes?

And the machines. The wondrous, humming, glowing machines. Not just computers and Blu-rays and handhelds-they had dozens of these devices, scavenged over the years from trips down the mountain, socked away in the shed-but simple things, ordinary everyday things, like hair dryers and microwaves and filament lightbulbs. All wired up, plugged in, connected to the grid.

Sometimes it was like the current was still out there, waiting for him. Waiting for Michael Fisher to throw the switch and turn the whole thing-human civilization itself-back on.

He spent too much time alone in the Lighthouse. Fair enough. Just him and Elton, which most of the time was like being alone, in the social sense of things. In the let’s-chat-about-the-weather and what’s-for-chow sense of things. He didn’t say he didn’t.

And there was lots of juice still out there, Michael knew. Diesel generators the size of whole towns. Huge LNG plants fat with gas and waiting to go. Acres of solar panels giving their unblinking gaze to the desert sun. Pocket-sized nukes humming away like atomic harmonicas, the heat in the control rods slowly building over decades until someday the whole thing would just go sailing through the floor, exploding in a shower of radioactive steam that somewhere, high above, a long-forgotten satellite, powered by a tiny nuclear cell of its own, would record as the final agonies of a dying brother-before it, too, darkened, soaring headlong to earth in a streak of unacknowledged light.

What a waste. And time was running out.

Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The war of nature upon machines, of the planet’s chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that men had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn’t happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth.

Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last lights to go out.

The worst of it was, he’d be there when it happened. The batteries were decaying. Decaying badly. He could see it happening before his eyes, on the screen of his old battle-hardened CRT with its thrumming bars of green. The cells had been built to last how long? Thirty years? Fifty? That they could hold any kind of charge after almost a century was a miracle. You could keep the turbines spinning forever in the breeze, but without the batteries to store and regulate the current, one windless night was all it would take.

Fixing the batteries was impossible. The batteries weren’t made to be fixed. They were made to be replaced. You could retrofit all the gaskets you wanted, clear away the corrosion, rewire the controllers till the herd came home. All basically busywork, because the membranes had had it. The membranes were cooked, their polymer pathways hopelessly gummed up with sulfonic acid molecules. That’s what the monitor was telling him with that little-bitty hiccup in the day-to-day. Short of the U.S. Army showing up with a brand-new stack fresh from the factory-Hey, sorry, we forgot about you guys!-the lights were going to fail. A year, two at the outside. And when that happened, it would be he, Michael the Circuit, who’d have to stand up and say, Listen, everybody, I’ve got some not-great news. Tonight’s forecast? Darkness, with widespread screaming. It’s been fun keeping the lights on, but I have to die now. Just like all of you.

The only person he’d told was Theo. Not Gabe Curtis, who was technically head of Light and Power but had mostly checked out when he got sick, leaving Michael and Elton to run the shop; not Sanjay or Old Chou or anyone else; not even Sara, his sister. Why had Michael chosen Theo to tell? They were friends. Theo was Household. Sure, there had always been a touch of the gloom about him-Michael of all people knew this when he saw it-and it was a heavy thing, to tell a man that he and everybody he knew was dead, basically. Maybe Michael was just thinking of the day when he’d have to explain the situation, hoping Theo would break the news instead, or at least back him up somehow. Yet even to Theo, who was better informed than most, the batteries were more like a permanent fixture of nature than something man-made, governed by physical laws. Like the sun and sky and walls, the batteries just were. The batteries drank up the juice from the turbines and spit it out into the lights, and if something went wrong, well, Light and Power would fix it. Right, Michael? Theo had said. This problem with the batteries, you can repair it? Around and around like this for some time, until Michael in complete exasperation had sighed and shaken his head and spelled out the situation in words of exactly one syllable.

Theo, you’re not hearing me. You’re not hearing what I’m saying. The Lights. Will. Go. Off.

They were sitting on the porch of the small, one-story frame house Michael shared with Sara, who was off somewhere for the afternoon, riding herd or taking temperatures in the Infirmary or visiting Uncle Walt to make sure he was actually eating and washing-mooning around restlessly, in other words, the way she always did. It was late afternoon. The house stood at the edge of the short-grass meadow where they turned out the horses to graze, though the dry days of summer had come on early, and the field was the color of bread crust, burned clear through to the dirt in places, forming bare spots that pillowed with dust when you walked across them. Everybody knew the house as the Fisher place.

“Off,” Theo repeated. “The lights.”

Michael nodded. “Off.”

“Two years, you say.”

Michael studied Theo’s face, watching the information taking hold. “It could be longer, but I don’t think so. It could be less, too.”

“And there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”

“No one can.”

Theo exhaled sharply, as if he’d just taken a punch. “Okay, I get it.” He shook his head. “Flyers, I get it. Who else have you told?”

“Nobody.” Michael lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “You’re it.”

Theo rose and moved to the edge of the porch. For a moment neither spoke.

“We’ll have to move,” Michael said. “Or else find another power source.”

Theo was looking away, toward the field. “And just how do you suggest we do that?”

“I don’t. I’m just stating it as a fact. When the batteries drop below twenty percent-”

“I know, I know, that’s it, no lights,” Theo said. “You’ve made that clear.”

“What should we do?”

Theo gave a hopeless laugh. “How in hell should I know?”

“I mean, should we tell people?” Michael paused, searching his friend’s face. “So they can, you know, prepare themselves.”

Theo thought a moment. Then he shook his head. “No.”

And that was all. They’d never spoken of it again. When had that been? Over a year ago, along about the time Maus and Galen had gotten married-the first wedding in a long, long time. It felt strange, everyone so happy, and Michael knowing what he did. People were surprised that it was Galen up there with Mausami, instead of Theo; only Michael knew the reason, or could guess at it. He’d seen the look in Theo’s eyes that afternoon on the porch. Something had gone out of him, and it didn’t seem to Michael like the kind of thing a person could get back.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait, and listen.

Because that was the thing: the radio was forbidden. The problem, as Michael understood it, had boiled down to too many people. It was the radio that had led the Walkers to the Colony in the early days, nothing the Builders had ever planned on, since the Colony wasn’t supposed to last as long as it had. So the decision had been made that right then, in the year 17-seventy-five years ago-the radio should be destroyed, the antenna taken down from the mountain, its parts chopped up and scattered in the dump.

At the time, it might have made sense. Michael could see how that was possible. The Army knew where to find them, and there was only so much food and fuel to go around, so much room under the lights. But not now. Not with the batteries the way they were, the lights about to fail. Blackness and screaming and dying, et cetera.

It wasn’t long after Michael’s conversation with Theo, not more than a few days as he recalled, that he had happened upon the old logbook-“happened” being not quite the correct word, as things turned out. It was the quiet hour, just before dawn. Michael had been sitting at the panel in the Lighthouse like always, minding the monitors and flipping through Teacher’s copy of What to Name the Baby (that’s how desperate he’d become for something new to read; he’d just made it to the I’s), when, for some unknown reason, restlessness or boredom or the discomfiting thought that if the winds had blown a little differently his parents might have named him Ichabod (Ichabod the Circuit!), his eyes had drifted upward to the shelf above his CRT, and there it was. A notebook with a thin black spine. Standing there among the usual whatnot, tucked between a spool of solder and a stack of Elton’s CDs (Billie Holiday Sings the Blues, Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, Superstars #1 Party Dance Hits, a group called Yo Mama that sounded to Michael like a bunch of people yelling at each other, not that he understood the first thing about music). Michael must have looked right at it a thousand times, and yet he couldn’t remember seeing it before; that was curious, the thought that gave him pause. A book, something he hadn’t read. (He’d read everything.) He rose and took it from its place on the shelf, and when he cracked the spine the first thing he saw, inscribed in a precise hand, an engineer’s hand, was a name he knew: Rex Fisher. Michael’s great (great-great?) grandfather. Rex Fisher, First Engineer of Light and Power, First Colony, California Republic. What the hell? How had he missed this? He turned the pages, crinkled with moisture and age; it took only a moment for his mind to parse the information, to break it into its components and reassemble it into a coherent whole that told him what this slender, ink-filled volume was. Columns of numbers, with dates written in the old style, followed by the hour and another number Michael understood to be the frequency of transmission, and then, in the spaces to the right, short notations, rarely more than a few words but heavy with suggestion, whole stories folded into them: “unmanned distress beacon” or “five survivors” or “military?” or “three en route from Prescott, Arizona.” There were other place names, too: Ogden, Utah. Kerrville, Texas. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Ashland, Oregon. Hundreds of such notations, filling page after page, until they simply stopped. The final entry read, simply, “All transmission ceasing by order of the Household.”

A glow was paling the windows by the time Michael finished. He doused the lantern and rose from his chair as Morning Bell began to peal-three solid rings followed by a pause of identical duration, then three more in case you didn’t get the message the first time (it’s morning; you’re alive)-and crossed the mazelike clutter of the narrow room with its plastic bins of parts and scattered tools and dirty dishes in teetering piles (why Elton couldn’t just eat in the barracks Michael had no idea; the man was just flat-out disgusting), stepped to the breaker panel, and powered down the lights. A wave of weary satisfaction washed through him, as it always did at Morning Bell: one more night’s work accomplished, all souls safe and sound to face another day. Let’s see Alicia and her blades do that. (And wasn’t it true that when he’d lifted his face to see the logbook, it had been the image of Alicia in his mind that had distracted him? As it sometimes-often-did? And not just Alicia but the specific picture of sunlight flaring her hair as she had stepped from the Armory that very evening, Michael moving down the path toward her, unseen? An image that was, as he considered it again, quite striking? All this despite the fact that Alicia Donadio was, in point of fact, the single most annoying woman on earth, not that there was such a vast field of competitors?) He returned to the panel and moved through the steps, flipping the cells to charge, turning on the fans and opening the vents; the meters, which stood at 28 percent across the board, began to flicker and rise.

He swiveled to look at Elton, who appeared to be dozing in his chair, though it was sometimes hard to tell. Waking and sleeping, Elton’s eyes were always the same, two thin strips of yellow jelly, peeking through slitted eyelids of perpetually tearing dampness that never quite managed to close. His pale hands were folded over the curve of his belly, the earphones, as always, clamped to the sides of his scaly head, pumping out the music he listened to all night. The Beatles. Boyz-B-Ware. Art Lundgren and his All-Girl Polka-Party Orchestra (the only one that Michael sort of liked).

“Elton?” No answer. Michael turned his voice up a notch. “Elton?”

The old man-Elton was fifty at least-startled to life. “Flyers, Michael. What time is it?”

“Relax. It’s morning. We’re down for the night.”

Elton screwed himself up in his chair, setting the hinges creaking, and drew the earphones down into the folds of his neck. “Then what you wake me up for? I was just getting to the good part.”

Next to the CDs, Elton’s nightly forays into imagined sexual adventure constituted his major pastime-dreams of women, conveniently long dead, which he would recount to Michael in excruciating detail, claiming that these were actually memories of things that had happened to him in his younger days. It was all bullshit, Michael figured, since Elton hardly ever set foot outside the Lighthouse, and to look at him now, with his dandruffy head and tangled beard and gray teeth clotted with the remains of a meal he had probably eaten two days ago, Michael didn’t see how any of it was even remotely possible.

“Don’t you want to hear about it?” The old man gave his eyebrows a suggestive wag. “It was the hay dream. I know you like that one.”

“Not now, Elton. I… found something. A book.”

“You woke me up because you found a book?”

Michael scooted his chair down the length of the panel and placed the log in the old man’s lap. Elton ran his fingers over the cover, his sightless eyes turned upward, then drew it to his nose and gave a long sniff.

“Now, I’d say that would be your great-grandfather’s logbook. Thing’s been floating around here for years.” He passed it back to Michael. “Can’t say I’ve read it myself. Find anything good in there?”

“Elton, what do you know about this?”

“Couldn’t say. Things do have a way of popping up right when you need them, though.”

Which was when Michael realized why he hadn’t seen the book before. He hadn’t seen it before because it wasn’t there.

“You put it on the shelf, didn’t you?”

“Now, Michael. Radio’s forbidden. You know that.”

“Elton, did you talk to Theo?”

“Theo who?”

Michael felt his irritation mount. Why couldn’t the man just answer a question? “Elton-”

The old man cut him off with a raised hand. “Okay, don’t get your gaps in a twist. No, I didn’t talk to Theo. Though I’m guessing you did. I didn’t talk to anyone, except for you.” He paused. “You know, you’re more like your old man than you think, Michael. He wasn’t a very good liar, either.”

Somehow, Michael wasn’t surprised. He slumped down into his chair. Part of him was glad.

“So how bad are they?” Elton asked.

“Not good.” He shrugged; for some reason, he was looking at his hands. “Number five is the worst, two and three a little better than the others. We’ve got irregular charge on one and four. Twenty-eight this morning across the board, never over fifty-five by First Bell.”

Elton nodded. “So, brownouts within the next six months, total failure within thirty. More or less like your father figured.”

“He knew?”

“Your old man could read those batteries like a book, Michael. He could see this coming a long time ago.”

So there it was. His father had known, and probably his mother too. A familiar panic rose within him. He didn’t want to think about this, he didn’t.

“Michael?”

He took a deep breath to calm himself. One more secret for him to carry. But he would do what he always did, pushing the information down inside himself as far as it could go.

“So,” said Michael, “how exactly do you build a radio?”

Radio wasn’t the problem, Elton explained; it was the mountain that was the problem.

The original beacon had run off an antenna that stood at the peak of the mountain; an insulated cable, five kilometers long, had run the length of the power trunk to connect it to the transmitter in the Lighthouse. All taken down and destroyed by the One Law. Without the antenna, they were hopelessly blocked to the east, and any signal they might have picked up would be overwhelmed by electromagnetic interference from the battery stack.

That left two choices: go to the Household and ask for permission to run an antenna up the mountain; or say nothing and try to boost the signal somehow.

It was, in the end, no contest. Michael couldn’t ask for permission without explaining the reason, which meant telling the Household about the batteries; and to tell them about the batteries was simply out of the question, because then everyone would know, and once that happened, the rest wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just the batteries that Michael was in charge of; it was the glue of hope that held the place together. You couldn’t just tell people they had no chance. The only thing to do was find somebody still alive out there-find them with a radio, which would mean they had power and therefore light-before he said another word to anyone. And if he found nothing, if the world really was empty, then what would happen would happen anyway; it was better if nobody knew.

He got to work that morning. In the shed, piled among the old CRTs and CPUs and plasmas and bins of cell phones and Blu-rays, was an old stereo receiver-just AM and FM bands, but he could open that up-and an oscilloscope. A copper wire up the chimney served as their antenna; Michael refitted the guts of the receiver into a plain CPU chassis, to camouflage it-the only person who might have noticed an extra CPU sitting on the counter would be Gabe, and from what Sara had told him, the poor guy wasn’t ever coming back-and jacked the receiver into the panel, using the audio port. The battery control system had a simple media program, and with a little work he was able to configure the equalizer to filter out the battery noise. They wouldn’t be able to broadcast; he had no transmitter and would have to figure out how to build one from the bottom up. But for the time being, with a little patience, he’d be able to scoop out any decent signal from the west.

They found nothing.

Oh, there was plenty to hear out there. A surprising range of activity, from ULF to microwaves. The odd cell phone tower powered by a working solar panel. Geothermals still pushing juice back into the grid. Even a couple of satellites, still in their orbits, dutifully transmitting their cosmic hellos and probably wondering where everybody on planet Earth had run off to.

A whole hidden world of electronic noise. And nobody, not one single person, home.

Day by day, Elton would sit at the radio, the headphones clamped to his ears, his sightless eyes turned upward in their sockets. Michael would isolate a signal, clear out the noise, and send it to the amplifier, where it would be filtered a second time and pushed through the phones. After a moment of intense concentration, Elton would nod, maybe take a moment to give his crumby beard a thoughtful rub, and then proclaim, in his gentle voice:

“Something faint, irregular. Maybe an old distress beacon.”

Or: “A ground signal. A mine, maybe.”

Or, with a tight shake of the head: “Nothing here. Let’s move on.”

So they sat through the days and nights, Michael at the CRT, Elton with the earphones clamped to the sides of his head, his mind seemingly adrift in the leftover signals of their all-but-vanished species. Whenever they found one, Michael would record it in the logbook, noting the time and frequency and anything else about it. Then they’d do it all again.

Elton had been born blind, so Michael didn’t really feel sorry for him, not on that score. Elton’s being blind was just a part of who he was. It was the radiation that had done it; Elton’s parents were Walkers, part of the Second Wave to come in, fifty-odd years ago, when the settlements in Baja had been overrun. The survivors had walked straight through the irradiated ruins that had once been San Diego, and by the time the group arrived, twenty-eight souls, those who could still stand were carrying the others. Elton’s mother was pregnant, delirious with fever; she delivered just before she died. His father could have been anyone. No one even learned their names.

And for the most part, Elton got along fine. He had a cane he used when he left the Lighthouse, which wasn’t all that often, and he seemed content to spend his days at the panel, making use of himself in the only way he knew how. Apart from Michael, he knew more about the batteries than anyone-a miraculous feat, considering the fact that he’d never actually seen them. But according to Elton, this gave him an advantage, because he wasn’t fooled by what things merely appeared to be.

“Those batteries are like a woman, Michael,” he liked to say. “You’ve got to learn to listen.”

Now, on the evening of the fifty-fourth of summer, First Evening Bell about to sound-four nights since a viral had been killed in the nets by the Watcher Arlo Wilson-Michael called up the battery monitors, a line of bars for each of the six cells: 54 percent on two and three, a whisper under 50 on five and four, a flat 50 on one and six, temperature on all of them in the green, thirty-one degrees. Down the mountain the winds were blowing at a steady thirteen kph with gusts to twenty. He ran through the checklist, charging the capacitors, testing all the relays. What had Alicia said? You push the button, they come on? That’s how little people understood.

“You should double-check the second cell,” Elton said from his chair. He was spooning curds of sheep’s cheese from a cup into his mouth.

“There’s nothing wrong with the second cell.”

“Just do it,” he said. “Trust me.”

Michael sighed and called the battery monitors back up on the screen. Sure enough: the charge on number two was dropping: 53 percent, 52. The temperature was nudging up as well. He would have asked Elton how he’d known but his answer was always the same-an enigmatic cock of the head, as if to say, I could hear it, Michael.

“Open the relay,” Elton advised. “Do it again and see if it settles down.”

Second Evening Bell was moments away. Well, they could run on the other five cells if they had to, then figure out what the problem was. Michael opened the relay, waited a moment to vent any gas in the line, and closed it again. The meter stayed flat at 55.

“Static is all,” said Elton, as Second Bell began to ring. He gave his spoon a little wave. “That relay’s a bit squirrelly, though. We should swap it out.”

The door of the Lighthouse opened then. Elton lifted his face.

“That you, Sara?”

Michael’s sister stepped inside, still dressed to ride and covered in dust. “Evening, Elton.”

“Now, what’s that I smell on you?” He was smiling from ear to ear. “Mountain lilac?”

She pushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from behind an ear. “I smell like sheep, Elton. But thanks.” She directed her words to Michael. “Are you coming home tonight? I thought I’d cook.”

Michael thought he should probably stay where he was, with one of the cells acting up. Night was also the best time for the radio. But he hadn’t eaten all day, and at the thought of warm food, his stomach let loose an empty rumble.

“You mind, Elton?”

The old man shrugged. “I know where to find you if I need you. You go now if you like.”

“You want me to bring you something?” Sara offered as Michael was rising from his chair. “We’ve got plenty.”

But Elton shook his head, as he always did. “Not tonight, thanks.” He took the earphones from their place on the counter and held them up. “I’ve got the whole wide world for company.”

Michael and his sister stepped out into the lights. After so many hours in the dim hut, Michael had to pause on the step and blink the glare away. They moved down the path past the storage sheds, toward the pens; the air was rich with the organic funk of animals. He could hear the bleating of the herd and, as they walked, the nickering of horses from the stables. Continuing onto the narrow path that edged the field, underneath the south wall, Michael could see the runners moving back and forth along the catwalks, their shapes silhouetted against the spots. Michael saw Sara watching also, her eyes distant and preoccupied, shining with reflected light.

“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “He’ll be fine.”

His sister didn’t respond; he wondered if she’d heard him. They said nothing more until they reached the house. At the kitchen pump, Sara washed up while Michael lit the candles; she stepped out onto the back porch and returned a moment later, swinging a good-sized jackrabbit by the ears.

“Flyers,” Michael said, “where’d you get him?”

Sara’s mood had lifted; her face wore a proud smile. Michael could see the wound where Sara’s arrow had skewered the animal through the throat.

“Upper Field, just above the pits. I was riding along and there he was, right out in the open.”

How long had it been since Michael had eaten rabbit? Since anyone had even seen a rabbit? Most of the wildlife was long gone, except for the squirrels, which seemed to multiply even faster than the virals could kill them off, and the smaller birds, the sparrows and wrens, which they either didn’t want or couldn’t catch.

“You want to clean him?” Sara asked.

“I’m not even sure I’d remember how,” Michael confessed.

Sara made a face of exasperation and drew her blade from her belt. “Fine, make yourself useful and set the fire.”

They made the rabbit into a stew, with carrots and potatoes from the bin in the cellar, and cornmeal to thicken the sauce. Sara claimed to remember their father’s recipe, but Michael could tell she was guessing. It didn’t matter; soon the savory aroma of cooking meat was bubbling from the kitchen hearth, filling the whole house with a cozy warmth that Michael hadn’t felt in a long time. Sara had taken the empty skin out to the yard to scrape it while Michael tended the stove, waiting for her return. He had bowls and spoons set when she stepped back inside, wiping her hands on a rag.

“You know, I know you’re not going to listen to me, but you and Elton should be careful.”

Sara knew all about the radio; the way she came in and out of the Lighthouse, it had been impossible to avoid this. But he had kept the rest from her.

“It’s just a receiver, Sara. We’re not even transmitting.”

“What all do you listen to out there, anyway?”

Sitting at the table, he offered a shrug, hoping to kill the conversation as fast as possible. What was there to say? He was looking for the Army. But the Army was dead. Everyone was dead, and the lights were going out.

“Just noise, mostly.”

She was looking at him closely, her hands on her hips as she stood with her back to the sink, waiting him out. When Michael said nothing more, she sighed and shook her head.

“Well, don’t get caught,” his sister said.

They ate without speaking at the table in the kitchen. The meat was a little stringy but so delicious Michael could barely stop himself from moaning as he chewed. Usually he didn’t go to bed until after dawn, but he could have lain down right there at the table, his head cradled in his folded arms, and fallen instantly asleep. There was something familiar as well-not just familiar but also a little sad-about eating jack stew at the table. Just the two of them.

He lifted his eyes to find Sara’s looking back at him.

“I know,” she said. “I miss them too.”

He wanted to tell her then. About the batteries, and the logbook, and their father, and what he’d known. Just to have one other person carry this knowledge. But this was a selfish wish, Michael knew, nothing he could actually allow himself to do.

Sara pushed back from the table and carried their dishes to the pump. When she was finished washing up, she filled an earthenware pot with the leftover stew and wrapped it with a piece of heavy cloth to keep it warm.

“You taking that to Walt?” Michael asked.

Walter was their father’s older brother. As the Storekeeper, he was in charge of Share, a member of the Board of Trade, and Household too-the oldest living Fisher-a three-legged stool of responsibilities that made him one of the most powerful citizens of the Colony, second only to Soo Ramirez and Sanjay Patal. But he was also a widower who lived alone-his wife, Jean, had been killed on Dark Night-and he liked the shine too much and often neglected to eat. When Walt wasn’t in the Storehouse, he could usually be found fussing with the still he kept in the shed behind his house, or else passed out somewhere inside.

Sara shook her head. “I don’t think I could face Walt right now. I’m taking it to Elton.”

Michael watched her face. He knew she was thinking of Peter again. “You should get some rest. I’m sure they’re okay.”

“They’re late.”

“Just a day. It’s routine.”

His sister said nothing. It was terrible, Michael thought, what love could do to a person. He couldn’t see the sense in it.

“Look, Lish is riding with them. I’m sure they’re safe.”

Sara scowled, looking away. “It’s Lish I’m worried about.”

She headed first to the Sanctuary, as she often did when sleep eluded her. Something about seeing the children, tucked in their beds. She didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse. But it made her feel something, besides the hollow ache of worry.

She liked to recall her own days there as a Little, when the world seemed like a safe place, even a happy place, and all there was to concern her was when her parents would come to visit, or if Teacher was in a good mood that day or not, and who was friends with whom. For the most part, it hadn’t seemed odd that she and her brother lived in the Sanctuary and their parents somewhere else-she’d never known a different existence-and at night when her mother or father or the two of them together came to say good night to her and Michael, she never thought to ask them where they went when the visit was over. We have to go now, they’d say, when Teacher announced it was time, and that one word, go, became the whole of the situation in Sara’s mind, and probably Michael’s too: parents came, and stayed for a bit, and then they had to go. Many of her best memories of her parents came from those brief bedtime visits when they would read her and Michael a story or just tuck them into their cots.

And then one night she’d ruined it, quite by accident. Where do you sleep? she asked her mother as she was preparing to depart. If you don’t sleep here, with us, where do you go? And when Sara asked this, something seemed to fall behind her mother’s eyes, like a shade being quickly drawn down a window. Oh, her mother said, gathering her expression into a smile that Sara detected as false, I don’t sleep, not really. Sleep is something for you, Little Sara, and for your brother, Michael. And the look on her mother’s face as she said these words was the first time, Sara now believed, that she’d glimpsed the terrible truth.

It was true, what everyone said: you hated Teacher for telling you. How Sara had loved Teacher, until that day. As much as she loved her own parents, maybe even more. Her eighth birthday: she knew something would happen, something wonderful, that the children who turned eight went someplace special, but nothing more specific than that. The ones who returned-to visit a younger sibling or to have Littles of their own-were older, so much time having passed that they had become different people entirely, and where they’d been and what they’d done was a secret you couldn’t know. It was precisely because it was a secret that it was so special, this new place that awaited outside the walls of the Sanctuary. Anticipation gathered inside her as her birthday approached. So keen was her excitement that never did it occur to her to wonder what would happen to Michael without her; his own day would come. You were warned by Teacher never to talk about this, but of course the Littles did, when Teacher wasn’t around. In the washroom or dining hall or at night in the Big Room, whispers passing up and down the lines of cots, the talk was always of release and who was next in line. What was the world like, outside the Sanctuary? Did people live in castles, like the people in books? What animals would they find, and could they speak? (The caged mice Teacher kept in the classroom were, to a one, discouragingly silent.) What wonderful foods were there to eat, what wonderful toys to play with? Never had Sara been so excited, waiting for this glorious day when she would step into the world.

She awoke on the morning of her birthday feeling as if she were floating on a cloud of happiness. And yet somehow she would have to contain this joy until rest time; only then, when the Littles were asleep, would Teacher take her to the special place. Though no one said as much, all through morning meal and circle time she could tell that everyone was delighted for her, except for Michael, who did nothing to hide his envy, grumpily refusing to speak with her. Well, that was Michael. If he couldn’t be happy for her, she wasn’t going to let it spoil her special day. It wasn’t until after lunch, when Teacher called everyone around to say goodbye, that she began to wonder if maybe he knew something she didn’t. What is it, Michael? asked Teacher. Can’t you say goodbye to your sister, can’t you be happy for her? And Michael looked at her and said, It’s not what you think, Sara, then hugged her quickly and ran from the room before she could say a word.

Well, that was strange, she’d thought at the time, and still did, even now, all these years gone by. How had Michael known? Much later, when the two of them were alone again, she’d remembered this scene and asked him about it. How did you know? But Michael could only shake his head. I just did, he said. Not the details, but the kind of thing it was. The way they spoke to us, Mom and Dad, at night, tucking us in. You could see it in their eyes.

But back then, the afternoon of her release, with Michael darting away and Teacher taking her hand, she hadn’t wondered for long. Just chalked it up to Michael being Michael. The final goodbyes, the embraces, the feeling of the moment arriving: Peter was there, and Maus Patal, and Ben Chou and Galen Strauss and Wendy Ramirez and all the rest, touching her, saying her name. Remember us, everyone said. She was holding the bag that contained her things, her clothing and slippers and the little rag doll that she’d had since she was small-you were allowed to take one toy-and Teacher took her by the hand and led her out from the Big Room, into the little courtyard ringed by windows where the children played when the sun was high in the sky, with the swings and the seesaw and the piles of old tires to climb, and through another door into a room she’d never seen before. Like a classroom but empty, the shelves barren, no pictures on the walls.

Teacher sealed the door behind them. A curious and premature pause; Sara had expected more. Where was she going? she asked Teacher. Would it be a long journey? Was someone coming for her? How long was she to wait here, in this room? But Teacher seemed not to hear these questions. She crouched before her, positioning her large, soft face close to Sara’s. Little Sara, she asked, what do you suppose is out there, outside this building, beyond these rooms where you live? And what of the men you sometimes see, the ones who come and go at night, watching over you? Teacher was smiling, but there was something different about this smile, thought Sara, something that made her afraid. She didn’t want to answer, but Teacher was looking straight at her, her face expectant. Sara thought of her mother’s eyes, the night she’d asked her where she slept. A castle? she said, for in her sudden nervousness that was the only thing she could think of. A castle, with a moat? A castle, Teacher said. I see. And what else, Little Sara? The smile was suddenly gone. I don’t know, Sara said. Well, Teacher said, and cleared her throat. It’s not a castle.

And that was when she told her.

Sara hadn’t believed her at first. But not exactly that: she felt as if her mind had split in two, and one half, the half that didn’t know, that believed she was still a Little, sitting in circle and playing in the courtyard and waiting for her parents to tuck her in at night, was saying goodbye to the half that somehow always had. Like she was saying goodbye to herself. It made her feel dizzy and sick, and then she started to cry, and Teacher took her by the hand once more and led her down another hallway and out of the Sanctuary, where her parents were waiting for her, to take her home-the home that Sara and Michael lived in still, that she’d never known existed until that very day. It isn’t true, Sara was saying through her tears, it isn’t true. And her mother, who was crying too, picked her up and held her close, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It is, it is, it is.

This was the memory that always replayed in her mind whenever she approached the Sanctuary, which seemed so much smaller to her than it had back then, so much more ordinary. An old brick schoolhouse with the name F. D. Roosevelt Elementary etched in stone over the door. From the path she could see the figure of a single Watcher standing on the top of the front steps: Hollis Wilson.

“Howdy, Sara.”

“Evening, Hollis.”

Hollis was balancing a crossbow on his hip. Sara didn’t like them; they had a lot of power but were too slow to reload, and heavy to carry besides. Everyone said how it was just about impossible to tell Hollis apart from his brother until he’d shaved his beard, but Sara didn’t see why; even as Littles-the Wilson brothers had come up three years ahead of her-she had always known which was which. It was the little things that told her, details that a person might not notice at first glance, like the fact that Hollis was just a little taller, a little more serious in the eyes. But they were obvious to her.

As she ascended the steps, Hollis tipped his head at the pot she was carrying, his lips turned up in a grin. “Whatcha bring me?”

“Jack stew. But it’s not for you, I’m afraid.”

His face was amazed. “I’ll be damned. Where’d you get him?”

“Upper Field.”

He gave a little whistle, shaking his head. Sara could read the hunger in his face. “I can’t tell you how much I miss jack stew. Can I smell it?”

She drew the cloth aside and opened the lid. Hollis bent to the pot and inhaled deeply through his nose.

“I couldn’t maybe talk you into leaving it here with me while you go inside?”

“Forget it, Hollis. I’m taking it to Elton.”

A jaunty shrug; the offer wasn’t serious. “Well, I tried,” said Hollis. “Okay, let’s have your blade.”

She withdrew her knife and passed it to him. Only Watchers were allowed to carry weapons into the Sanctuary, and even they were supposed to keep them out of sight of the children.

“Don’t know if you heard,” Hollis said, tucking it into his belt. “We’ve got a new resident.”

“I was out with the herd all day. Who is it?”

“Maus Patal. No big shock there, I guess.” Hollis gestured with his cross toward the path. “Galen just left. I’m surprised you didn’t see him.”

She’d been too lost in thought. Gale could have walked right past her and she wouldn’t have noticed. And Maus, pregnant. Why was she surprised?

“Well.” She managed a smile, wondering what she was feeling. Was it envy? “That’s great news.”

“Do me a favor and tell her that. You should have heard the two of them arguing. Probably woke up half the Littles.”

“She’s not happy about it?”

“It was more Galen, I think. I don’t know. You’re a girl, Sara. You tell me.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Hollis.”

He laughed wryly. She liked Hollis, his easy manner. “Just passing the time,” he said, and motioned with his head toward the door. “If Dora’s awake, tell her hi from her uncle Hollis.”

“How’s Leigh doing? With Arlo gone.”

“Leigh’s been down this road. I told her, lots of reasons they might not be back today.”

Inside, Sara left the stew in the empty office and went to the Big Room, where all the Littles slept. At one time it had been the school’s gymnasium. Most of the beds were empty; it had been years since the Sanctuary had operated at anything close to capacity. The shades were drawn over the room’s tall windows; the only illumination came from narrow slices of light that fell over the sleeping forms of the children. The room smelled like milk, and sweat, and sun-warmed hair: the smell of children, after a day. Sara crept between the rows of cots and cribs. Kat Curtis and Bart Fisher and Abe Phillips, Fanny Chou and her sisters Wanda and Susan, Timothy Molyneau and Beau Greenberg, whom everyone called “Bowow,” a mangling of his own name that had stuck to him like glue; the three J’s, Juliet Strauss and June Levine and Jane Ramirez, Rey’s youngest.

Sara came to a crib at the end of the last row: Dora Wilson, Leigh and Arlo’s girl. Leigh was sitting in a nursing chair beside her. New mothers were allowed to stay in the Sanctuary up to a year. Leigh was still a little heavy from her pregnancy; in the pale light of the room, her wide face seemed almost transparent, the skin pallid from so many months indoors. In her lap was a fat skein of yarn and a pair of needles. She lifted her eyes from her knitting at Sara’s approach.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

Sara acknowledged her with a silent nod and bent over the crib. Dora, wearing only a diaper, was sleeping on her back, her lips parted in a delicate O shape; she was snoring faintly through her nose. The soft, damp wind of her breathing brushed Sara’s cheekbones like a kiss. Looking at a sleeping baby, you could almost forget what the world was, she thought.

“Don’t worry, you won’t wake her.” Leigh yawned into her hand and resumed her knitting. “That one, she sleeps like the dead.”

Sara decided not to look for Mausami. Whatever was going on between her and Galen, it was none of her business. In a way she felt sorry for Gale. He had always had a thing for Maus-it was like an illness he could never quite shake off-and everyone said that when he’d asked Maus to pair with him, she’d said yes only because Theo had already refused her. That, or he’d never gotten around to asking, and Maus was trying to goad him into action. She’d hardly be the first woman who’d ever made that mistake.

But as she moved down the path, Sara wondered: Why couldn’t some things just be easy? Because it was the same with her and Peter. Sara loved him, she always had, even back when they were just Littles in the Sanctuary. There was no explaining it; as long as she could remember, she had felt it, this love, like an invisible golden thread that bound the two of them together. It was more than physical attraction; it was the broken thing inside him she loved most of all, the unreachable place where he kept his sadness. Because that was the thing about Peter Jaxon that nobody knew but her, because she loved him like she did: how terribly sad he was. And not just in the day-to-day, the ordinary sadness everyone carried for the things and people they had lost; his was something more. If she could find this sadness, Sara believed, and take it from him, then he would love her in return.

Which was the reason she had chosen to become a nurse; if she couldn’t be Watch-and she absolutely couldn’t-the Infirmary, where Prudence Jaxon presided, was the next best place to be. A hundred times she’d almost asked the woman: What can I do? What can I do to make your son love me? But in the end Sara had kept silent. She had gone about the work of learning her trade as best she could and waited for Peter, hoping he would know what she was offering him, simply by being in that room.

Peter had kissed her, once. Or maybe Sara had kissed him. The question of who had kissed whom, exactly, seemed unimportant in the face of the thing itself. They had kissed. It was First Night, late and cold. They’d all been drinking shine, listening to Arlo strum his guitar under the lights, and as the group dispersed in the last hour before dawn, Sara had found herself walking with Peter alone. She was a little lightheaded from the shine, but she didn’t think she was drunk, and she didn’t think that he was, either. A nervous silence fell over them as they moved down the path, not an absence of sound or speech but something palpable and faintly electric, like the spaces between the notes from Arlo’s guitar. It was in this bubble of expectancy that they walked together under the lights, not touching but connected nonetheless, and by the time they reached her house, neither one having acknowledged that this was their destination-the silence was a bubble but it was also a river, pulling them along in its current-there seemed no stopping what would happen next. They were against the wall of her house, standing in a wedge of shadow, first his mouth and then the rest of him pressed against her. Not like the kissing games they’d all played in the Sanctuary, or the first clumsy fumblings of puberty-sex was not discouraged, you pretty much got around to anyone you were even vaguely interested in; the unwritten rule was this and no more, all of it, in the end, feeling like a kind of rehearsal-but something deeper, full of promise. She felt herself enveloped by a warmth she almost didn’t recognize: the warmth of human contact, of truly being with another, no longer alone. She would have given herself to him right then, whatever he wanted.

But then it was over; suddenly he pulled away. “I’m sorry,” he managed, as if he believed she wished he hadn’t done it, though the kiss should have told him that she did, she did; but by then something had shifted in the air, the bubble had popped, and both of them were too embarrassed, too flustered, to say anything else. He left her at her door, and that was the end of it. They hadn’t been alone together since that night. They’d barely spoken a word.

Because she knew; she knew it when he kissed her, and then after, and more and more as the days went by. Peter wasn’t hers, could never be hers, because there was another. She’d felt it like a ghost between them, in his kiss. It all made sense now, a hopeless kind of sense. While she’d been waiting for him in the Infirmary, showing him what she was, he had been on the Wall with Alicia Donadio the entire time.

Now, on her way to the Lighthouse with the stew, Sara remembered Gabe Curtis and decided to stop at the Infirmary. Poor Gabe-just forty, and already the cancer. There wasn’t much anyone could do for him. Sara guessed it had started in the stomach, or else the liver. It didn’t really matter. The Infirmary, located across the Sunspot from the Sanctuary, was a small frame structure in the part of the Colony they called Old Town -a block of half a dozen buildings that had once held various stores and shops. The building that served as the Infirmary had once been a grocery store; when the afternoon sun hit the front windows just right, you could still make out the name-Mountaintop Provision Co., Fine Foods and Spirits, Est. 1996-etched into its frosted glass.

A single lantern lit the outer room, where Sandy Chou-everyone called her Other Sandy, since there had once been two Sandy Chous, the first being Ben Chou’s wife, who had died in childbirth-was bent over the nurse’s desk, crushing dillonweed seeds with a mortar and pestle. The air was hot and heavy with moisture; behind the desk, a kettle was chuffing out a plume of steam from on top of the stove. Sara put the stew aside and removed the kettle from the heat, placing it on a trivet. Returning to the desk, she tipped her head toward the dillonweed, which Sandy was shaking out into a strainer.

“Is that for Gabe?”

Sandy nodded. Dillonweed was thought to be an analgesic, though they employed it to treat a variety of ailments-head colds, diarrhea, arthritis. Sara couldn’t say for a fact that it accomplished anything at all, but Gabe claimed it helped with the pain, and it was the only thing he was keeping down.

“How’s he doing?”

Sandy was pouring the water through the strainer into a ceramic mug, the lip chipped and worn. On it were the words NEW DADDY, the letters spelled with the image of safety pins.

“He was asleep a while ago. The jaundice is worse. His boy just left, Mar’s in there with him now.”

“I’ll bring him the tea.”

Sara took the mug and stepped through the curtain. The ward had six cots in it, but only one was occupied. Mar was sitting in a ladder-backed chair beside the cot on which her husband lay, covered by a blanket. A thin, almost birdlike woman, Mar had shouldered the load of Gabe’s care through the months of his illness, a burden plain to see in the crescents of sleeplessness hung beneath her eyes. They had one child, Jacob, sixteen or so, who worked in the dairy with his mother: a large, hulking boy with a face of perpetually vacant sweetness, who could neither read nor write and never would, who was capable of basic tasks as long as someone was there to direct him. A hard, unlucky life, and now this. Past forty, and with Jacob to look after, it was unlikely that Mar would marry again.

As Sara approached, Mar looked up, holding a finger to her lips. Sara nodded and took a chair beside her. Sandy was right: the jaundice was worse. Before he’d gotten sick, Gabe had been a large man-large as his wife was small-with great knotty shoulders and bulky forearms made for work and a prosperously round belly that hung over his belt like a meal sack: a solidly useful man whom Sara had never once seen in the Infirmary until the day he’d come in complaining of back pain and indigestion, apologizing for this fact as if it were a sign of weakness, a failure of character rather than the onset of a serious illness. (When Sara had palped his liver, the tips of her fingers instantly registering the presence that was growing there, she realized he must have been in agony.)

Now, half a year later, the man Gabe Curtis had once been was gone, replaced by a husk that clung to life by will alone. His face, once as full and richly hued as a ripe apple, had withered to a collection of lines and angles, like a hastily drawn sketch. Mar had trimmed his beard and nails; his cracked lips were glazed with glistening ointment from a wide-mouthed pot on the cart beside his bed-a small comfort, small and useless as the tea.

She sat awhile with Mar, the two of them not speaking. It was possible, Sara understood, for life to go on too long, as it was also possible for it to end too soon. Maybe it was his fear of leaving Mar alone that was keeping Gabe alive.

Eventually Sara rose, placing the mug on the cart. “If he wakes up, see if he’ll drink this,” she said.

Tears of exhaustion hung on the corners of Mar’s eyes. “I told him it’s all right, he can go.”

It took Sara a moment. “I’m glad you did,” she said. “Sometimes that’s what a person needs to hear.”

“It’s Jacob, you see. He doesn’t want to leave Jacob. I told him, We’ll be fine. You go now. That’s what I told him.”

“I know you will, Mar.” Her words felt small. “He knows it too.”

“He’s so damn stubborn. You hear that, Gabe? Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn all the time?” Then she dropped her face to her hands and wept.

Sara waited a respectful time, knowing there was nothing she could do to ease the woman’s pain. Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody’s business but yours.

“I’m sorry, Sara,” Mar said finally, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

“If he wakes up, I’ll tell him you were here.” Through her tears, she managed a sad smile. “I know Gabe always liked you. You were his favorite nurse.”

It was half-night by the time Sara got to the Lighthouse. She quietly opened the door and stepped inside. Elton was alone, fast asleep at the panel, earphones clamped to his head.

He twitched awake as the door closed behind her on its springs. “Michael?”

“It’s Sara.”

He removed the earphones and turned in his chair, sniffing the air. “What’s that I smell?”

“Jack stew. It’s probably ice-cold by now, though.”

“Well, I’ll be.” He sat up straight in his chair. “Bring it here.”

She placed it before him. He took a dirty spoon from the counter that faced the panel. “Light the lamp if you want.”

“I like the dark. If you don’t mind.”

“It’s all the same to me.”

For a while she watched him eat in the glow of the panel. There was something almost hypnotic about the motions of Elton’s hands, guiding the spoon into the pot and then to his waiting mouth with smooth precision, not a single gesture wasted.

“You’re watching me,” Elton said.

She felt the heat rising to her cheeks. “Sorry.”

He polished off the last of the stew and wiped his mouth on a rag. “Nothing to be sorry about. You’re about the best thing that ever comes in here, as far as I’m concerned. Pretty girl like you, you watch me all you want.”

She laughed-out of embarrassment or disbelief, she didn’t know. “You’ve never seen me, Elton. How can you possibly know what I look like?”

Elton shrugged, his useless eyes rolling upward behind their drooping lids-as if, in the darkness of his mind, her image was there for him to see. “Your voice. How you speak to me, how you speak to Michael. How you look after him like you do. Pretty is as pretty does, I always say.”

She heard herself sigh. “I don’t feel like it.”

“Trust old Elton,” he said, and gave a quiet laugh. “Somebody’s going to love you.”

There was always something about being around Elton that made her feel better. He was a shameless flirt, for starters, but that wasn’t the real reason. He simply seemed happier than anyone she knew. It was true what Michael said about him: his blindness wasn’t something missing; it was simply something different.

“I just came back from the Infirmary.”

“Well, there you are,” he said, nodding along. “Always looking after folks. How’s Gabe doing?”

“Not so good. He looks really terrible, Elton. And Mar’s taking it hard. I wish there was more I could do for him.”

“Some things you can, and some things you can’t. It’s Gabe’s time now. You’ve done all you could.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It never is.” Elton turned to search the counter with his hands, locating the earphones, which he held out to her. “Now, since you’ve brought me a present, I’ve got one for you. A little something to cheer you up.”

“Elton, I wouldn’t have a clue what I was hearing. It’s all static to me.”

A cagey smile was on his face. “Just do like I say. Close your eyes, too.”

The phones were warm against her ears. She sensed Elton moving his hands over the panel, his fingers gliding here and there. Then she heard it: music. But not like any music she knew. It reached her first as a distant, hollow sound, like a breath of wind, and then, rising behind it, high birdlike notes that seemed to dance inside her head. The sound built and built, seeming to come from all directions, and she knew what she was hearing, that it was a storm. She could picture it in her mind, a great storm of music sweeping down. She had never heard anything so beautiful in her life. When the last notes died away, she pulled the headphones from her ears.

“I don’t get it,” she said, astounded. “This came through the radio?”

Elton chuckled. “Now, that would be something, wouldn’t it?”

He did something to the panel again. A small drawer opened, ejecting a silver disc: a CD. She’d never paid much attention to them; Michael told her they were just noise. She took the disc in her hand, holding it by the edges. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf conducting.

“I just thought you should hear what you look like,” said Elton.

TWENTY-TWO

“The thing I don’t understand,” Theo was saying, “is why the three of you aren’t dead.”

The group was sitting at the long table in the control room, all except Finn and Rey, who had returned to the barracks to sleep. Peter’s daze of adrenaline had worn off, and the pain in his ankle, which did not seem to be broken, had settled to a low throb; someone had chipped a piece of ice off one of the condensers, and Peter was holding this, wrapped in a sodden rag, to the injured joint. The fact that he had just killed Zander Phillips, a man he had known, had yet to produce in him any emotion he could actually name. The information was simply too strange to process. But the station key had still been around Zander’s neck, so there could be no doubt who it was. There had been no choice, of course; Zander had been fully turned. Strictly speaking, the viral who had tried to force its way through the hatch hadn’t been Zander Phillips anymore. And yet Peter could not suppress the feeling that at the last instant before he’d squeezed the trigger, he’d detected a glimmer of recognition in the viral’s eyes-a look, even, of relief.

In the aftermath of the attack, Theo had questioned Caleb carefully. The boy’s story didn’t quite add up, but it was also clear that he was suffering from exhaustion and exposure. His lips were swollen and cracked, he had a big purple bruise on his forehead, and both of his feet were laced with cuts. The lost shoes seemed to pain him most of all; they were black Nike Push-Offs, he explained, brand-new in their box from the Foot Locker at the mall. They’d come off somehow in his race across the valley, but he’d been so scared he’d barely noticed.

“We’ll get you a new pair,” Theo had said. “Just tell me about Zander.”

Caleb was eating as he spoke, gnawing off bites of hardtack and washing them down with gulps of water. Well, everything had been normal, Caleb explained, until about six days ago, when Zander had begun to act… odd. Very odd. Even for Zander, which was saying something. He didn’t want to go outside the fence, and he wasn’t sleeping at all. All night long he’d be up pacing the control room, muttering to himself. Caleb thought it was just too much time at the station, that when the relief crew showed, Zander would snap out of it.

“So then one day he announces we’re going out to the field, and tells me to get the cart packed and ready. I was sitting here eating my lunch, and he just marches in and announces this. He wants to swap out one of the governors in the west section. Okay, I say, but what’s the big emergency? Isn’t it a little late in the day to be going to the field? He’s got this crazy look in his eyes, and he smelled bad. I mean, he stank. You feeling okay, I ask him, and he says, Just get your gear, we’re going.”

“When was this?”

Caleb swallowed. “Three days ago.”

Theo leaned forward in his chair. “You’ve been outside three days?”

Caleb nodded. He’d finished off the last of the hardtack and started on a dish of soybean paste, scooping it out with his fingers. “So we ride out with the jenny, but here’s the thing. We don’t go to the west field. We go to the east field. Nothing’s worked over there for years; they’re all dead sticks. And it takes forever to get there, two hours with the cart at least. It’s past half-day, we’re cutting it close as it is. I’m like, Zander, west is that way, buddy, what the hell are we doing out here? Are you trying to get us killed? So we get to the tower he says he wants to fix, and the thing’s a rust bucket. Completely backblown. I can see that from the ground. No chance swapping the governor’s going to do anything. But that’s what he wants to do, so I haul my ass up the ladder and set the winch and start stripping out the old housing, working as fast as I can. I’m thinking, Okay, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, as far as I can tell we’re risking our necks for nothing, but maybe he knows something I don’t. Anyway, that was when I heard the scream.”

“Zander screamed?”

Caleb shook his head. “The jenny. I’m not kidding, that was exactly what it sounded like. I’d never heard anything like it. When I looked down she’s just keeling over, going down like a bag of rocks. It takes me a second to figure what I’m seeing. It’s blood. A lot of it.” He wiped his greasy mouth with the back of his hand and pushed the empty dish of paste aside. “Zander always said this stuff tasted like balls. I was like, When did you eat balls, Zander, like I really want to know? But after three days, it’s really not half bad.”

Theo sighed impatiently. “Caleb, please. The blood-”

He took a long swig of water. “Right, okay, so. The blood. Zander’s kneeling by her and I yell, Zander, what the hell happened? When he gets up I see he’s stripped to the waist, he’s got a blade in his hand, and there’s blood all over him. Somehow I missed the signs. I’ve got about five seconds before he comes up the ladder for me, too. But he doesn’t. He just sits down at the base of the tower, in the shade of one of the struts, where I can’t see him. Zander, I yell down, listen to me. You got to fight this thing. I’m all alone up here. I’m thinking that maybe if I can get him to snap out of it long enough, I can make a run for it.”

“I don’t get it,” Alicia said. “When would he have gotten infected?”

“That’s the thing,” Caleb went on. “I couldn’t figure that either. I’d been with him just about every minute of the day.”

“What about at night?” Theo offered. “You said he didn’t sleep. Maybe he went outside.”

“I suppose that’s possible, but why would he? And plus, he didn’t really look any different, apart from the blood.”

“What about his eyes?”

“Nothing. No oranging at all, from what I could see. I’m telling you, it was weird. So I’m stuck on the tower, Zander’s at the bottom, maybe taken up and maybe not, but either way it’s going to get dark eventually. Zander, I yell, look, I’m coming down, one way or the other. I’m not armed, all I’ve got is the wrench, but maybe I can brain him with it and get away. I’ve also got to get the key from him somehow. I can’t see him from the ladder, so when I’m about three meters from the bottom I decide what the hell, I’m just going to jump. I’ve already tipped my hand, but I figure I’m dead anyway. I drop and come up with the wrench ready to swing. But it’s gone. Snatched right out of my hand. Zander’s right behind me. That’s when he says to me, Go back up.”

“Go back up?” This was Arlo.

Caleb nodded. “No kidding, that’s what he said. And if he was flipping, I still couldn’t tell. But he’s got the blade in one hand, the wrench in the other, there’s blood all over him, and without the key there’s no way I’m getting back inside the station. I ask him, What do you mean go back up, and he says, You’re safe if you go back up the tower. So that’s what I did.” The boy shrugged. “That’s where I was for the last three days, until I saw you on the Eastern Road.”

Peter looked at his brother; Theo’s expression indicated he didn’t know what to make of Caleb’s story either. What had Zander intended? Had he already been taken up or not? It had been many years, and not in living memory, since anyone had directly witnessed the effects of the infection’s early stages. But there were plenty of stories, from the early days especially, the time of the Walkers, of bizarre behaviors-not just the blood hunger and spontaneous disrobing that everyone knew to be a sign. Strange utterances, public speechmaking, manic feats of athleticism. One Walker, it was said, had broken into the Storehouse and actually eaten himself to death; another had killed all his children in their beds before setting himself aflame; a third had stripped naked, ascended to the catwalk in full view of the Watch, and recited, at the top of his lungs, both the entire Gettysburg Address-there was a copy of it hanging on the wall in one of the classrooms in the Sanctuary-and twenty-five verses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” before hurling himself over, twenty meters to the hardpan.

“So what about the smokes?” Theo asked.

“Well, that’s the funny thing. It was just like Zander said. There weren’t any. At least none that came close. I could see them once in a while at night, moving out in the valley. But they pretty much just left me alone. They don’t like to hunt in the turbine fields, Zander always thought the movement screwed them up, so maybe that’s got something to do with it, I don’t know.” The boy paused; Peter could see the weight of his ordeal finally catching up with him. “Once I got used to it, it was actually kind of peaceful. I didn’t see Zander after that. I could hear him, scuffling around at the base of the tower. But he never answered me. By then I figured my best chance was to wait for the relief crew to show up and try to get away.”

“So you saw us.”

“Believe me, I yelled my lungs out, but I guess you were just too far away to hear me. That’s when I realized Zander was gone. The jenny, too. The virals must have dragged it off. By then I only had a hand of daylight at the most. But I was out of water, and there was no way anyone was coming to look for me in the east field, so I decided to climb down and make a run for it. I got to within maybe a thousand meters when suddenly the smokes were just everywhere. I thought, That’s it, I’m meat for sure. I hid under the base of one of the towers and pretty much waited to die. But for some reason, they kept their distance. I couldn’t tell you how long I was under there, but when I looked out they were gone, not a smoke in sight. By then I knew the gate was closed, but I guess I just thought I could get inside somehow.”

Arlo turned to Theo. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would they leave him alone like that?”

“Because they were following him,” Alicia cut in. “We could see them from the roof. Using him as bait maybe, to draw us out? Since when do they do that?”

“They don’t.” Something hardened in Theo’s expression then; he stiffened in his chair. “Look, I’m glad Caleb’s safe, don’t get me wrong. But that was some stupid stunt, both of you. This station goes off-line, the lights go out, that’s it for everybody. I don’t know why I have to explain this, but apparently I do.”

Peter and Alicia were silent; there was nothing to say. It was true. If Peter’s rifle had gone just a few centimeters to the left or right, they’d probably all be dead now. It had been a lucky shot and he knew it.

“None of which explains how Zander got infected,” Theo went on. “Or what he was doing, leaving Caleb on the tower.”

“The hell with that,” Arlo said, and slapped his knees. “What I really want to know about are those guns. How many are there?”

“Twelve crates under the stairs,” Alicia answered. “Six more in the crawl space on the roof.”

“Which is exactly where they’re going to stay,” Theo said.

Alicia laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, yes, I can. Look what almost happened. Can you honestly tell me you would have gone outside there without those guns?”

“Maybe not. But Caleb’s alive because of them. And I don’t care what you say, I’m glad we went outside. These aren’t just guns, Theo. They’re like brand-new.”

“I know they are,” Theo said. “I’ve seen them. I know all about them.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “Of course I do.”

For a moment no one spoke. Alicia leaned forward over the table. “So whose guns are they?”

But it was Peter to whom Theo gave his answer. “Our father’s.” So, in the last hour of the night, Theo told the story. Caleb, unable to keep his eyes open another minute, had gone to the barracks to sleep, and Arlo had broken out the shine, as they sometimes did after a night on the Wall. He poured it into each of their cups, two fingers, and passed it around the table.

There was an old Marine Corps base east of there, Theo explained, about a two-day ride. A place called Twentynine Palms. Most of it was gone, he said, pretty much sanded up. You could hardly tell there was anything there unless you knew where to look. Their father had found the weapons in an underground bunker-all boxed up, tight and dry, and not just rifles. Pistols and mortars. Machine guns and grenades. A whole garage of vehicles, even a couple of tanks. They had no way to move the heavier weapons, and none of the vehicles would run, but their father and Uncle Willem had been moving the rifles back to the station a cartload at a time-three trips total before Willem had been killed.

“So why didn’t he tell anyone?” Peter asked.

“Well, he did. He told our mother, and a few others. He didn’t ride alone, you know. I’m guessing the Colonel knew. Probably Old Chou. Zander had to know, since he was stashing them here.”

“But not Sanjay,” Alicia cut in.

Theo shook his head, frowning. “Believe me, Sanjay was the last person my father would tell. Don’t get me wrong: Sanjay is fine at what he does. But he was always dead set against the rides, especially after Raj was killed.”

“That’s right,” Arlo said. “He was one of the three.”

Theo nodded. “I think it was always a sore spot with Sanjay, that his brother wanted to ride with our father. I never really understood it, but there was some bad blood between them from way back. After Raj was killed, it only got worse. Sanjay turned the Household against our father, voted him out as Head, put an end to the rides. That was when our father stepped down and began to ride alone.”

Peter held his cup of shine to his nose, felt its acrid fumes burning his nostrils, and put it down on the table. He didn’t know what was more discouraging-that his father had kept this secret from him or that Theo had.

“So why hide the guns in the first place?” he asked. “Why not just bring them up the mountain?”

“And do what with them? Think about it, brother. We all heard you out there. By my count, the two of you shot off thirty-six rounds to kill, what, two virals? Out of how many? Those guns’d last about a season if he just handed them over to the Watch. People would be shooting at their own shadows. Hell, half the time they’d probably be shooting each other. I think that’s what he was most afraid of.”

“How many are left?” Alicia asked.

“In the bunker? I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“But you know where it is.”

Theo sipped his shine. “I see where you’re going with this, and you can stop right there. Our father, well, he had ideas. Peter, you know this as well as I do. He just couldn’t accept the fact that we’re all that’s left, that there’s no one out there. And if he could find others, and if they had guns… ” His voice trailed away.

Alicia lifted in her chair. “An army,” she said, her eyes moving over all of them. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wanted to make an army. To fight the smokes.”

“Which is pointless,” Theo said, and Peter heard the bitterness in his brother’s voice. “Pointless and crazy. The Army had guns, and what happened to them? Did they ever come back for us? With their guns and rockets and helicopters? No, they didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Because they’re all dead.”

Alicia was undeterred. “Well, I like it,” she said. “Hell, I think it’s a great idea.”

Theo gave a bitter laugh. “I knew you would.”

“And I don’t think we’re alone, either,” she pressed. “There are others. Out there, somewhere.”

“Is that right? What makes you so sure?”

Alicia appeared suddenly at a loss. “Nothing,” she said. “I just am.”

Theo frowned into his cup, giving the contents a long swirl. “You can believe anything you want,” he said quietly, “but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Our father believed it,” Peter said.

“Yes, he did, brother. And it got him killed. I know it’s not something we talk about, but those are the facts. You stand the Mercy and you figure some things out, believe me. Our father didn’t go out there to let it go. Whoever thinks so doesn’t understand the first thing about him. He went out there because he just couldn’t stand not knowing, not for one more minute of his life. It was brave, and it was stupid, and he got his answer.”

“He saw a Walker. At Milagro.”

“Maybe he did. If you ask me, he saw what he wanted to see. And it doesn’t matter either way. What difference would one Walker make?”

Peter felt badly shaken by Theo’s hopelessness; it seemed not just defeated but disloyal.

“Where there’s one, there are others,” Peter said.

“What there are, brother, are smokes. All the guns in the world won’t change that.”

For a moment no one spoke. The idea was in the air, unspoken but palpable. How long did they have before the lights went out? Before no one remembered how to fix them?

“I don’t believe that,” Arlo said. “And I can’t believe you do either. If that’s all there is, what’s the point of anything?”

“The point?” Theo peered into his cup again. “I wish I knew. I suppose the point is just staying alive. Keeping the lights on as long as we can.” He tipped the shine to his lips and drained it in one hard swallow. “On that note, it’ll be daybreak soon, everyone. Let Caleb sleep, but wake the others. We’ve got bodies to take care of.”

There were four. They found three in the yard and one, Zander, on the roof, lying face-up on the concrete by the hatch, his naked limbs sprawled in a startled-looking X. The bullet from Peter’s rifle had blasted through the top of his head, shearing off the crown of his skull, which was hanging kitty-corner by a flap of skin. Already the morning sun had begun to shrivel him; a fine, gray mist was rising from his blackening flesh.

Peter had gotten used to the virals’ appearance but still found it unnerving to see one close up. The way the facial features seemed to have been buffed away, smoothed into an almost infantile blandness; the curling expansion of the hands and feet, with their grasping digits and razor-sharp claws; the dense muscularity of the limbs and torso and the long, gimballed neck; the slivered teeth crowding the mouth like spikes of steel. In rubber boots and gloves, wearing a rag around his face, Finn used a long pitchfork to lift the key by its cord and drop it in a metal bucket. They doused the key with alcohol and set it aflame, then left it to dry in the sun; what the flames hadn’t killed, the sun’s rays would. Then they rolled Zander, his body stiff as wood, onto a plastic tarp, which they folded over him, making a tube. Arlo and Rey hoisted it to the edge of the roof and dropped it to the yard below.

By the time they’d dragged all four past the fence line, the sun was high and hot. Peter, leaning on a length of pipe, watched from the upwind side as Theo poured alcohol over the bodies. He felt useless, but with his ankle the way it was, there wasn’t much he could do to help. Alicia was standing watch, holding one of the rifles. Caleb had finally awakened and had come outside to watch with the others. Peter saw that he was wearing a pair of tall leather boots.

“Zander’s,” Caleb explained. The boy shrugged, a little guiltily. “His extra pair. I didn’t think he’d mind.”

Theo removed a tin of sulfur matches from his pouch and drew down his mask. In his other hand he held a torch. Huge circles of sweat stained his shirt at the throat and armpits. The shirt was an old one from the Storehouse, the sleeves long gone, the collar frayed to threads; on the breast pocket, embroidered in a curving script, was the name Armando.

“Anybody want to say anything?”

Peter thought he should, but couldn’t find the words. Seeing the body on the roof had done nothing to change the disquieting feeling that, at the end, Zander had made it easy for him-that Zander had still been Zander. But all of the bodies in the pile had been somebody once. Maybe one of them was Armando.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Theo said, and cleared his throat. “Zander, you were a good engineer, and a good friend. You never had a bad word for anyone, and we thank you for that. Sleep well.” Then he struck the match, held the flame to the torch until it caught, and touched it to the pile.

The skin went quickly, vaporizing like paper, followed by the rest, the bones caving in on themselves to burst into puffing clouds of ash. It was over in a minute. When the last of the flames had died down, they shoveled the remains into the shallow pit Rey and Finn had dug, pushing a layer of earth on top.

They were tamping down the dirt when Caleb spoke. “I just want to say, I think he fought it. He could have killed me out there.”

Theo put his shovel aside. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but what worries me is that he didn’t.”

In the days that followed, Peter thought about the events of that night, replaying them in his mind. Not only what had happened on the roof and Caleb’s strange story of the tower, but also his brother’s bitter tone when they’d spoken of the guns. Because Alicia was right; the guns meant something. His whole life Peter had thought of the world of the Time Before as something gone. It was as if a blade had fallen onto time itself, cleaving it into halves, that which came before and that which came after. Between these halves there was no bridge; the war had been lost, the Army was no more, the world beyond the Colony was an open grave of a history no one even remembered. Peter, in fact, had never given much thought to what his father had actually been looking for, out there in the dark. He supposed this was because it had seemed so obvious: people, other survivors. But holding one of his father’s rifles-and even now, lying in the barracks while his ankle mended and remembering the feel of it-he sensed something more, how the past and all its powers seemed to have flowed into him. So maybe that was what his father had been doing all along, on the Long Rides. He’d been trying to remember the world.

Surely Theo had known that; that was the largeness inside him, inside all the men of the Long Rides. Peter had made up his mind, long ago, not to hold it against Theo, what his mother had said on the morning she’d died. Take care of your brother, Theo. He’s not strong, like you. The truth was the truth, and as the years went by, Peter discovered that knowing this about himself was bearable; at times it almost came as a relief. It was a difficult and desperate thing their father had attempted, built on a faith that flew in the face of every fact, and if Theo was to be the Jaxon to shoulder this burden-shoulder it for the two of them-Peter could accept that. But telling Arlo that there was no point, that the only thing left to do was keep the lights on as long as they could-saying this to Arlo, of all people, who had a Little in the Sanctuary-this was not the Theo he knew. Something had changed in his brother. He wondered what it could be.

They stayed at the station five days. Finn and Rey spent the first day restoring power to the fence, then got to work on the west field, regreasing the turbine housings. Arlo, Theo, and Alicia took turns escorting them, in shifts of two, always returning well before sundown to lock the place down tight. With nothing else to occupy his time, Peter resorted to playing solo from a deck with three missing cards and leafing through a box of books in the storage room. A random assemblage of titles: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, A History of the Ottoman Empire, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (Classics of Western Literature). In the back of each book was a cardboard pocket, printed with the words PROPERTY OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, and tucked inside it a card with a list of dates in faded ink: September 7, 2014; April 3, 2012; December 21, 2016.

“Who got these?” he asked Theo one night, after the group had returned from the field. A pile of books was stacked on the floor by Peter’s bunk.

Theo was rinsing his face at the washbasin. He turned, drying his hands on the front of his shirt. “I think they’ve been here a long time. I don’t know if Zander could read much, so he put them away. Anything good?”

Peter held up the book he had been reading: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure this is English,” Peter said. “It’s taken me most of today to get through a page.”

His brother gave a tired-sounding laugh. “Let’s see that ankle.”

Theo sat on the edge of Peter’s cot. Gently he took Peter’s foot in his hands and rolled it on the joint. The two of them had barely spoken since the night of the attack. None of them had, really.

“Well, it looks better.” Theo rubbed his stubbled chin. His eyes, Peter saw, were hollowed with exhaustion. “The swelling’s down. Think you can ride?”

“I’d crawl if I had to, to get out of here.”

They set out after breakfast the next morning. Arlo had agreed to stay behind with Rey and Finn until the next relief party arrived. Caleb said he wanted to stay too, but Theo convinced him otherwise-with Arlo there, and as long as they stayed inside the fence, a fourth was unnecessary. And Caleb had been through more than enough.

The other question was the guns. Theo wanted to leave them where they were; Alicia argued that it made no sense to leave them all behind. They still didn’t know what had happened to Zander or why the smokes hadn’t killed Caleb when they’d had the chance. In the end, they reached a compromise. The party would ride back armed but hide their guns outside the Wall for safekeeping. The rest would stay under the stairs.

“I doubt I’ll need ’em,” Arlo said, as the group was mounting up. “Any smokes show up, I can just talk them to death.” Though it was also true that he was wearing a rifle over his shoulder. Alicia had shown him how to load and clean it and let him fire off a few rounds in the yard for practice. “Holy damn!” he’d yelled in his big voice, and squeezed off another round, knocking the target can clean off its post. “Is that ever something!” Theo was right, Peter thought; once you had a gun, it was a hard thing to let go of.

“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.”

Theo slung his rifle and took a long drink of water. His face was ashen; Peter saw that his brother’s hands were trembling. “Goddamn Zander,” Theo said. “Why the fuck would he come here?”

“There’s a second flight of stairs at the back,” Alicia said. “We should check it.”

Theo spat and shook his head, hard.

“Let it go, Lish,” Peter said.

“What’s the point of checking the building if we don’t check the whole thing?”

Theo turned sharply. “I don’t want to spend another second in this place.” He was resolved, his words would be final. “We torch it. No discussion.”

They pulled books from the shelves and fashioned a pile near the front desk. The paper caught swiftly, flames leaping from book to book. They retreated through the door and stood back fifty meters to watch the building burn. Peter took a drink from his canteen, but nothing would wash away the taste in his mouth; the taste of bodies, of death. He knew his eyes had beheld something that would stay with him for all the days of his life. Zander had come here, but not just for books. He’d come to see the children.

And that was when the drifted sand at the base of the building began to move.

Alicia, standing beside him, saw this first.

“Peter… ”

The sand collapsed; the virals poured forth, clawing from the sand where it had covered the basement windows. A pod of six, chased into the blazing light of midday by the flames.

They screamed. A great, high-pitched wail that shattered the air with pain and fury.

The library was fully engulfed now. Peter raised his rifle and fumbled for the trigger. His movements felt vague, without focus. Everything about the scene seemed only half real, his mind finding no traction on any of it. More virals were emerging through the heavy black smoke that roiled from the upper windows, the glass exploding in a glittering rain of shards, their flesh blazing, trailing liquid fronds of flame. It seemed that whole stretches of time had passed since he’d lifted his rifle, intending to fire. The first group had taken refuge in a pocket of shade where the library steps rose from the sand, a single huddled mass, their faces pressed to the ground like Littles in a game of hide-and-seek.

“Peter, we can’t stay here!”

He shook off his torpor at the sound of Alicia’s voice. Beside him, Theo appeared frozen in place, the barrel of his gun pointed uselessly at the ground, his face slack, eyes wide and impassive: What’s the use?

“Theo, listen to me,” Alicia said, shaking him roughly by the arm; for a moment Peter thought she was actually about to strike him. The virals at the base of the steps had begun to stir. A collective twitch passed through them, like wind rippling the surface of a pool of water. “We have to go, right now.”

Theo shifted his gaze toward Peter. “Oh, brother,” he said. “I think we’re fucked.”

“Peter,” Alicia pleaded, “help me.”

They each took him by an arm; by the time they were halfway across the lot, Theo was running on his own. The feeling of unreality was gone now, replaced by one desire only: to get away, to escape. They rounded the corner of the filling station to see Caleb, on his horse, barreling away. They mounted their horses and kicked to a gallop, tearing after him across the hardpan. In their wake, Peter could hear more explosions of glass. Alicia was pointing, yelling over the wind: the mall. That’s where Caleb was headed. At full speed they tore up a ridge of crested sand and down into the empty lot in time to see Caleb leaping from his horse by the building’s west entrance. He slapped its hindquarters and darted through the opening while his horse raced away.

“Inside!” Alicia yelled. She was in command now; Theo said nothing. “Go, leave the horses!”

The animals were bait, an offering. There was no chance to say goodbye; they dismounted and dashed inside. The best place, Peter knew, would be the atrium. The glass roof had been torn away, there was sunlight and cover, they could make some kind of defense. Down the darkened hall they ran. The air was heavy and sour, the walls bulging with mold, exposing rusted beams, dangling wires, encrusted pipes. Most of the stores were shuttered but others stood open like amazed faces, their dim interiors clogged with debris. Peter could see Caleb running up ahead, fat beams of golden daylight falling down.

They emerged into the atrium, into sun so bright they blinked against it. The room was like a forest. Nearly every surface was choked with fat green vines; in the center a stand of palms reached toward the open ceiling. More vines dripped from the exposed struts of the ceiling, like coils of living rope. They took cover behind a barricade of overturned tables at the base of the trees. Caleb was nowhere to be seen.

Peter looked at his brother, crouched beside him. “Are you okay?”

Theo nodded uncertainly. They were all breathing hard. “I’m sorry. About back there. I just… ” He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes. “I’ll take the left. Stay with Lish.” He skittered away.

Kneeling beside him, Lish checked the load on her rifle and pulled the bolt. Four hallways met the atrium: the attack, if it came, would come from the west.

“Do you think the sun got them?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know, Peter. They seemed pretty mad. Maybe some but not all.” She wrapped the rifle’s sling tightly around her forearm. “I need you to promise me something,” she said. “I won’t be one of them. If it comes to that, I need you to take care of it.”

“Flyers, Lish. It won’t. Don’t even say it.”

“I’m saying if it does.” Her voice was firm. “Don’t hesitate.”

There was no more time for words; they heard footsteps racing toward them. Caleb careened into the atrium, clutching an object to his chest. As he dove behind the tables, Peter saw what he was holding. A black shoe box.

“I don’t believe it,” Alicia said. “You went scavenging?”

Caleb lifted the lid and tossed it aside. A pair of bright yellow sneakers, still wrapped in paper. He kicked off Zander’s boots and shoved his feet into them.

“Shit,” he said, wearing a crestfallen frown, “they’re way too big. They’re not even close.”

And then the first viral fell, a blur of movement first above and then behind them, dropping through the atrium roof; Peter rolled in time to see Theo being lifted up, tossed toward the ceiling, his rifle dangling where the sling had tangled in his arm, his hands and feet scrabbling at space. A second viral, hanging upside down from one of the ceiling struts, snatched Peter’s brother by the ankle as if he weighed nothing at all. Theo’s body was fully inverted now; Peter saw the look on his brother’s face, an expression of pure astonishment. He’d made no sound at all. His rifle fell away, spinning to the floor below. Then the viral flung Peter’s brother through the open roof and he was gone.

Peter scrambled to his feet, his finger finding the trigger. He heard a voice, his voice, calling his brother’s name, and the sound of Alicia firing. Three virals were on the ceiling now, launching from strut to strut. Peter detected, at the periphery of his vision, Alicia shoving Caleb up and over the counter of a restaurant on the far side of the atrium. Peter fired at last, fired again. But the virals were too fast; always the spot where he aimed was empty. It seemed to Peter as if they were playing a kind of game, trying to trick them into expending their ammunition. Since when do they do that? he thought, and wondered when he’d heard these words before.

As the first one let go, Peter saw, in his mind’s eye, the fatal dimension of its arc. Alicia was standing with her back to the counter now. The viral descended straight for her, arms outstretched, legs bent to absorb the impact, a being of teeth and claws and smoothly muscled power. In the instant before it landed, Alicia stepped forward, positioning herself directly under it, holding the rifle away from her body, like a blade.

She fired.

A mist of red, a confusion of bodies tumbling, the rifle clattering away. In the time it took Peter to realize that Alicia was not dead, she was on her feet again. The viral lay where he’d come to rest, the back of his head cratered with blood. She’d shot it through the mouth. Above them, the other two had come to an abrupt halt, stiffening, teeth flashing, their heads swiveling toward Alicia as if pulled by a single string.

“Get out of here!” she called, and vaulted over the counter. “Just run!”

He did. He ran.

He was deep inside the mall now. There seemed to be no way out. All the exits were barricaded, blocked by mountains of debris: furniture, shopping carts, dumpsters full of trash.

And Theo, his brother, was gone.

His only option was to hide. He tore down a hall of shuttered storefronts, yanking upward at their grates, but none would open; all were locked tight. Through the fog of his panic, a single question emerged: Why wasn’t he dead yet? He had fled from the atrium not expecting to make it more than ten steps. A flash of pain and it would all be over. At least a full minute had passed before he’d realized the virals weren’t pursuing him.

Because they were busy, he thought. He had to clutch one of the grates just to keep standing. He dug his fingers between the slats and pressed his forehead against the metal, fighting for breath. His friends were dead. That was the only explanation. Theo was dead, Caleb was dead, Alicia was dead. And when the virals were done, when they had drunk their fill, they’d be coming for him.

Hunting him.

He ran. Down one hall and into another, tearing past shuttered storefront after shuttered storefront. He wasn’t even bothering with the grates now; his mind was seized with one thought: to get outside, onto open ground. Daylight ahead, and a feeling of openness: he turned a corner and emerged, skidding on the tiles, into a wide, domelike space. A second atrium. The area was clear of debris. Sunshine descended in smoky shafts from a ring of windows, high above.

In the center of the room, standing motionless, was a herd of tiny horses.

They were grouped in a tight circle beneath some kind of freestanding shelter. Peter froze, expecting them to scatter. How had a herd of horses gotten into the mall? He stepped cautiously forward. Now it was obvious: the horses weren’t real. A carousel. Peter had seen a picture of one, in a book in the Sanctuary. The base would turn and music would play, and children would ride the horses around and around. He stepped onto the decking; a heavy layer of dust encased them, dulling their features. He squared his shoulders to one of the animals and brushed the grime away, revealing the bright colors beneath, the precisely painted-on details: the lashes of its eyes, the grooves of its teeth, the long slope of its nose and the flaring nostrils.

He felt it then, a sudden awareness at his extremities, like a touch of cold metal. He startled, lifting his face.

Standing before him was a girl.

A Walker.

He couldn’t have said how old she was. Thirteen? Sixteen? Her hair was long and dark, and thick with mats; she was wearing a pair of threadbare gaps cut off at the ankles and a T-shirt stiff with dirt, all of it too large on her boyish frame. Her pants were cinched to her waist with a length of electric cord; on her feet she wore a pair of sandals with plastic daisies poking between the toes.

Before Peter could speak, she raised a finger to her lips: Don’t speak. She moved briskly toward the center of the platform and turned to wave him on, to tell him to come with her.

He heard them then. A skittering in the hall, the rattle of metal grates on the shuttered storefronts.

The virals were coming. Searching. Hunting.

The girl’s eyes were very wide. Hurry, her eyes said. She took his hand and pulled him to the center of the platform. There she dropped to her knees and dug at a metal ring in the floor. A trapdoor, flush with the wooden decking. She climbed inside so that only her face was showing.

Quickly, quickly.

Peter followed her down the hole and sealed the trapdoor above him. They were under the carousel now, in some kind of crawl space. Angled blades of light, spangled with dust motes, fell through the slats of the decking over their heads, revealing a dark bulk of machinery and, on the floor beside it, a rumpled bedroll. Plastic bottles of water and tins of food stacked in rows, their paper labels long since worn away. Did she live here?

The decking shuddered. The girl had dropped to her knees. A shadow moved across them. She was showing him what to do.

Lie down. Be still.

He did as she asked. Then she climbed on top of him, onto his back. He could feel the heat of her body, the warmth of her breath on his neck. She was covering his body with her own. The virals were all over the carousel now. He could feel their minds searching, probing, hear the soft clicking in their throats. How long before they discovered the trapdoor?

Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

He closed his eyes tightly, willing himself into absolute stillness, waiting for the sound of the door being ripped off its hinges. The rifle was on the floor beside him. He might get off a shot or two, but that would be all.

Seconds passed. More shudders above, the sharp, excited breathing of virals with human scent in their nostrils. Tasting the blood in the air. But something was wrong; he sensed their uncertainty. The girl was pressing down upon him. Screening him, protecting him. Silence from above; had the virals gone? A minute moved by, and then another. His sense of expectation shifted from the virals to what the girl would do next. At last she climbed off him. He rose to his knees. Their faces were just inches apart. The soft curve of her cheek was like a child’s, but her eyes were not, not at all. He could smell her breath; there was something sweet to it, like honey.

“How did you-”

She shook her head sharply to silence him, pointing to the ceiling, then pressed her fingers to her lips again.

They’re gone. But they’ll be back.

She rose to her feet and opened the trapdoor. A quick turn of the head to show him her meaning.

Follow me. Do it now.

They emerged onto the decking of the carousel. The room was empty, but he could feel the virals’ departed presence, the air swirling in unseen eddies around the places they had stood. Moving quickly, the girl led him to a door across the atrium. It was propped open, held in place with a wedge of concrete. They stepped inside and she let the door close behind them, sealing them inside; he heard the click of a lock.

Blackness.

A new panic gripped him, a feeling of complete disorientation. But then he felt her taking his hand. Her grip was tight, meant to reassure; she pulled him farther in.

I have you. It’s all right.

He tried to count his steps, but it was useless. He could feel in her grip that she wanted him to go faster, that his uncertainty was holding them back. He stumbled on something in his path and the rifle fell away, lost in the darkness.

“Wait-”

A wang from behind, and the groan of bending metal. The virals had found them. Ahead he detected a glow of daylight; his surroundings began to emerge to his vision. They were in a long, high-ceilinged hallway; slims were shoved against the walls, a chorus of grinning skeletons, their limbs contorted in what seemed to be postures of warning. Another crash from behind; the door was failing, caving in on its hinges. The hallway ended at another door, which stood open. A stairwell. From high above came a glow of yellow daylight, and the sound and smell of pigeons. On the wall was a sign: ROOF ACCESS.

He turned. The girl was still standing in the hallway, just outside the stairwell door. Their eyes met briefly, hauntingly. Before another second passed, the girl stepped forward and, rising on her toes, pressed her closed mouth-a bird pecking water-against his face.

Just that: she kissed him on the cheek.

Peter was too stunned to speak. The girl backed away, into the dark hall. Go now, her eyes said.

Then she closed the door.

“Hey!” He heard the click of the lock. He gripped the handle, but it was immovable. He pounded on the sealed metal. “Hey! Don’t leave me!”

But the girl was gone, a departed spirit. He saw the sign again: ROOF ACCESS. That’s where she wanted him to go.

He began to climb. The air was roasting, nearly asphyxiating with the gas of pigeon. Long streaks of guano smeared the walls, encrusting the stairs and banister like layers of paint. The birds seemed to take scant notice of him, fluttering here and there as he made his ascent, as if his presence were no more than a curiosity. Three flights, four; he was panting with exertion, the taste in his mouth and nose was excruciating in its foulness, his eyes stung as if splashed by acid.

At last he reached the top. A final door and, on the wall above it, far out of reach, a tiny window, its edges scalloped by broken glass, yellowed by soot and time.

The door was padlocked.

A dead end. After everything, the girl had led him to a dead end. A furious clang shook the stairwell as the first viral hit the door below him. Birds lifted off and scattered all around him, swirling the air with feathers.

That was when he saw it, so encrusted with guano it had blended invisibly into the wall around it. He used his elbow to smash the glass, then yanked the axe free. A second crash from below. One more push and the virals would be through the door and streaming up the stairs.

Peter lifted the axe over his head and gave it a hard swing, aiming for the padlock. The blade glanced off, but he could tell he’d done some damage. He took a deep breath, calculating the distance, and gave the axe another swing, putting everything he had behind it. A clean hit: the lock split and shattered. He leaned into the door with all his might and with a groan of age and rust it fell open, spilling him into sunlight.

He was on the roof at the north side of the mall, facing the mountains. He hobbled quickly to the edge.

The drop was fifteen meters at least. He’d break his leg or worse.

Lying immobile on the hardpan, waiting for the virals to take him. It wasn’t how he wanted things to end. He was bleeding freely from his elbow; a trail of his blood had followed him from the open door. Though he had no memory of pain, he must have cut it when he’d smashed the panel. But a little blood would hardly make a difference now. At least he had the axe.

He was turning to face the door, preparing to swing, when a cry reached him from below.

“Jump!”

Alicia and Caleb, coming around the corner of the building on horseback, riding fast. Alicia was waving to him, her body arched forward from the stirrups. “Jump!”

He thought of Theo, lifted up. He thought of his father, standing at the edge of the sea, and of the sea and stars. He thought of the girl, covering his body with her own, the warmth and sweetness of her breath on his neck and on his cheek where she had kissed him.

His friends were calling and waving from below, the virals were coming up the stairs, the axe was in his hand.

Not now, he thought, not yet, and he closed his eyes and jumped.

TWENTY-THREE

It was summer again and she was alone. Alone with no one but the voices she heard, everywhere and all around.

She remembered people. She remembered the Man. She remembered the other man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. She remembered some more than others. She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy. For a time it pained her, made her sick.

She walked and walked. She followed the mountains. The Man had told her to follow the mountains, to run and keep on running, but then one day the mountains ended; the mountains were no more. She never could find them again, those same ones. Some days she went nowhere at all. Some days were years. She lived here and there, with these and those, with the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman and finally with no one at all. Some of the people were kind to her, before they died. Others were not so. She was different, they said. She was not like them, not of them. She was apart and alone and there were no others like her in all the world. The people sent her away or they did not, but in the end they always died.

She dreamed. She dreamed of voices, and the Man. For some time of months or years she could hear the Man in the howl of the wind and the scrape of the stars if she listened just so, and it gave her a longing in her heart for his care. But over time’s passage his voice became all mixed in her mind with the voices of the others, the dreaming ones, both there and not there, as the dark was a thing but not a thing, a presence and an absence joined. The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die. She thought: there is the ground below my feet, there is the sky over my head, there are the empty buildings and the wind and rain and stars and everywhere the voices, the voices and the question.

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

She was not afraid of them, as the Man had been, and the others also, the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. She had tried to lead the dreaming ones away from the Man and she had, she had done it. They followed her with their question, dragging it like a chain, like the one she’d read about in the story of the ghost, Jacob Marley. For a time she thought they might be ghosts, but they were not so. She had no name for them. She had no name for herself, for the thing she was. One night she awoke and she beheld them all around, their needful eyes, glowing like embers in the dark. She remembered the place because it was a barn and cold and raining out. Their faces crowded around her, their dreaming faces, so sad and lost, like the lonely world she walked in. They needed her to tell them, to answer the question. She could smell their breath on her, the breath of night, and of the question, a current in the blood. Who am I? they asked her.

who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I who am I

She ran from that place then. She ran and kept on running.

The seasons changed. They rolled round and round, and round some more. It was cold and then it was not. The nights were long and then they were not. She carried on her back a pack of things she needed, as well as the things she wanted to have because they were a comfort. They helped her to remember, to hold the time of years in her mind, both the good and the bad. Such things as: the story of the ghost, Jacob Marley. The locket of the woman, which she had taken from around her neck after the woman had died in the manner of all people dying, with great commotion. A bone from the field of bones and a stone from the beach where she had seen the ship. From time to time she ate. Some of the things in the cans she found were not good anymore. She would open a can with the tool in her pack and a terrible smell would rise from within it like the insides of the buildings where the dead people lay in rows or not in rows, and she knew she couldn’t eat that one but would have to eat another. For a time there was the ocean beside her, huge and gray, and a beach of smooth, wave-rubbed stones, and tall pines stretching their long arms above the surface of the water. At night she watched the stars turning, she watched the moon soaring and dipping over the sea. It was the same moon as over all the world and she was happy in that place for a time. It was in that place she saw the ship. Hello! she cried, for she had seen no one in ever and ever, and was joyful at the very sight of it. Hello, ship! Hello, you big boat, hello! But the ship said no words back to her. It went away for some time of days, past the edge of the sea, and then returned, moving on the tides of the moon at night. Like a dream of a boat with no one to dream it but her. She followed it over the days and nights to the place of the rocks and the broken bridge the color of blood, where its great bow came to rest, among the others large and small, and by then she knew the ship like its fellows upon the rocks was empty with no people on it; and the sea was black with a foul smell like that which came from the cans that were no good. And she moved on from that place also.

Oh, she could feel them, feel them all. She could stretch out her hands and stroke the darkness and feel them in it, everywhere. Their sorrowful forgetting. Their great and terrible brokenheartedness. Their endless needful questioning. It moved her to a sorrow that was a kind of love. Like the love she’d felt for the Man, who in his care for her had told her to run and keep on running.

The Man. She remembered the fires and the light like an exploding sun in her eyes. She remembered his sadness and the feeling of the Man. But she could not hear him anymore. The Man, she thought, was gone.

There were others she did hear, in the dark. And she knew who these were, too.

I am Babcock.

I am Morrison.

I am Chávez.

I am Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martínez-Reinhardt-Carter.

She thought of them as the Twelve, and the Twelve were everywhere, inside the world and behind the world and threaded into the darkness itself. The Twelve were the blood running below the skin of all things in the world at that time.

All this, through the years and years. She remembered one day, the day of the field of bones, and another, the day of the bird and the not-talking. This was in a place with trees, so tall. There it was, just a small fluttering thing in the air before her face. Her feet were bare on the grass in the sunshine that she had learned to walk in. To and fro it moved on a blur of wings. She looked and looked. It seemed to her as if she had been beholding this small thing for many a day. She thought the word for what it was, but when she tried to say it, she realized she had forgotten how. Bird. The word was inside her but there was no door for it to come out of. Humming… bird. She thought of all the other words she knew and it was just the same. All the words, all locked away inside.

And one night in the moonlight and after much time had passed, she was lonesome and without a friend in the world for company and she thought: Come here.

They came. First one and then another and more and more.

Come to me.

They stepped from the shadows. They dropped from the sky above and the high places all around, and soon they were a company without number, as they had been in the barn, only more so. They crowded around her with their dreaming faces. She touched them, caressed them, and did not feel alone. She asked: Are we the all? For I have seen no one, no man or woman, in all the years and years. Is there no I but I? But as long as she asked, they had no answer for her, only the question, fierce and burning.

Go now, she thought, and closed her eyes; and when she opened them again she found she was alone.

That was how she learned to do it.

Then, through the seasons of nights and the years of nights, she came upon the place of the buried city, where in the paling light of dusk she saw the men on their horses. Six of them, atop six dark horses of great muscularity. The men had guns, like other men that she recalled, in the time after the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman; and she hid herself away in the shadows, waiting for night to fall. What she would do then she did not know, but then the forgetful ones came to her as they always did in the dark and although she told them not to, they descended upon the men swiftly and with a great commotion and in this fashion the men began to die and then did so, three of their number.

She moved to where the bodies lay, the men and also their horses who were dead with no blood in them as was the case with all things that had died in this manner. Three of the men were nowhere to be found but the soul of one man was still near, watching from some nameless place without the form of solid things as she bent to regard his face and the look written upon it. It was the same look she had seen upon the face of the man and his wife and the boy and then the woman. Fear, and pain, and the letting go. It came to her that the man’s name had been Willem. And the ones who had done it to Willem were sorry, so sorry, and she rose and said to them, It’s all right, go now and do not do this again if you can help it, though she knew that they could not. They could not help it because of the Twelve who filled their minds with their terrible dreams of blood and no answer to the question but this:

I am Babcock.

I am Morrison.

I am Chávez.

I am Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martínez-Reinhardt-Carter.

I am Babcock.

Babcock.

Babcock.

She followed them across the sand, even though the light was a great brightness to her eyes and on some days she could not hide from it. She wrapped herself in a cloth she had found and on her face she had the glasses. The days were long, the sun in its arc cutting a swath in the sky above and plowing the earth below it with the long blade of its light. At night the desert grew still with only the sound of her moving across it and the beating of her heart and the dreaming world around.

Then it was a day when there were mountains once again. She never had found those men on their horses or where they had come from that some of their number should have died in the buried city before her eyes. The floor of the valley between the mountains was dotted with trees that turned with the wind, and that was where she came upon the building with the horses inside; and when she beheld them in their stillness and solitude she thought, Perhaps these are the horses I saw. The horses weren’t alive but they seemed so, and the look of them brought a peacefulness to her mind and a feeling of the Man and his cares for her that made her think she should stay in that place, that the time for running was ended. That this was the place where she had come to rest.

But now that time had ended, too. The men had returned at last on their horses and she had saved one of their company; she had covered his body with her own as her instincts had dictated in the moment and she’d told the dreaming ones to go, go now and do not kill this one; and for a while these urgings had worked upon them, but the other voice within their minds was strong and the hunger was strong also.

In her space in the dark and dust below the horses she thought of the one she had saved, hoping he was not dead, and listened for the sounds of the men and their horses and guns returning. And after a certain time of days, when she had detected no trace of them, she departed that place as she had departed all the others before it and stepped into the moonlit night of which she was a part, one and indivisible.

– Where are they? she asked the darkness. Where are the men on their horses that I should go to them and find them? For I have been alone through all the years and years, no I but I.

And a new voice came to her from the night sky, saying, Go into the moonlight, Amy.

– Where? Where should I go?

Bring them to me. The way will show you the way.

She would. She would do it. For she had been alone too long, no I but I, and she was filled then with a sorrow and a great desire for others of her kind, that she should be alone no longer.

Go into the moonlight and find the men that I should know them as I know you, Amy.

– Amy, she thought. Who is Amy?

And the voice said, You are.