Выбрать главу

It took him less than an hour to reach the town. He was nearly all the way across Illinois, come to a place he had never been to before. But the Lady had made it clear that this was where she wanted him to go. She had visited him in his dreams, as she often did, providing him with directions and guidance, giving him what brief relief he found from the constant nightmares of his past. Once, another Knight had told him, they had dreamed of the future that would come to pass if they failed in their efforts to prevent it. Now there was no reason to dream of the future; they were all living it. Instead he dreamed of the darker moments of his past, of failures and missed opportunities, of losses too painful to relive anywhere except in dreams, and of choices made that had scarred him forever.

He hoped that after his business here was finished and it was time to sleep again, the dreams might let him be for at least one night.

Houses began to appear in the distance, dark boxes against the flat landscape. There were no lights, no fires or candles, no signs of life. But there would be life, he knew. There was life everywhere in towns this size. Just not the sort you wanted to encounter.

He eased the AV down the debris–littered highway toward the town, past broken signs and buildings with sagging roofs and collapsed walls. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. feeders. Where there were feeders, there were other things, too. He scanned the warning gauges on the

Lightning and kept driving.

He passed a small green sign off to one side of the road, its lettering faded and worn:

WELCOME TO

Hopewell, Illinois

Population 25,501

Twenty–five thousand, five hundred and one, he repeated silently. He shook his head. Once, maybe. A hundred years ago. Several lifetimes in the past, when the world was still in one piece.

He drove on toward his destination and tried not to think further of what was lost and forever gone.

TWO

HAWK WALKED POINT as the Ghosts emerged from their underground lair beneath what had once been Pioneer Square and set out on foot for midtown

Seattle. It was an hour before midday, when trade negotiations and exchanges usually took place, but he liked to give himself a little extra time to cushion against the possibility of encounters with Freaks. Usually you didn't see much of them when it was daylight, but you never knew. It didn't pay to take chances.

As leader, it was his responsibility to keep the others safe.

The city was quiet, the debris–littered streets empty and still.

Storefronts and apartments stood deserted and hollow, their glass windows broken out and doors barred or sagging. The rusted hulks of cars and trucks sat where their owners had abandoned them decades ago, a few still in one piece, but most long since cannibalized and reduced to metal shells. He wondered, looking at them, what the city had been like when vehicles had tires and ran in a steady, even flow of traffic from one street to the next. He wondered, as he always did, what the city must have been like when it was filled with people and life.

Nobody lived in the city now outside the walls of the compounds. Not unless you counted the Freaks and the street children, and no one did.

Hawk stopped the others at the cross streets that marked the northern boundary of Pioneer Square and looked to Candle for reassurance. Her clear blue eyes blinked at him, and she nodded. It was safe to continue. She was only ten years old, but she could see things no one else could. More than once, her visions had saved their lives. He didn't know how she did it, but he knew the

Ghosts were lucky to have her. He had named her welclass="underline" she was their light against the dark.

He glanced momentarily at the others, a ragtag bunch dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers. He had named them all. He had tossed away their old names and supplied them with new ones. Their names reflected their character and temperament. They were starting over in life, he had told them. None of them should have to carry the past into the future. They were the Ghosts, haunting the ruins of the civilization their parents had destroyed. One day, when they ceased to be street kids and outcasts and could live somewhere else, he would name them something better.

Candle smiled as their eyes met, that brilliant, dazzling smile that brightened everything around her. He had a sudden sense that she could tell what he was thinking, and he looked quickly away.

"Let's go," he said.

They set off down First Avenue, working their way past the derelict cars and heaps of trash, heading north toward the center of the city. He knew it was

First Avenue because there were still signs fastened to a few of the buildings eye–level with the ornate streetlights. The signs still worked, even if the lights didn't. Hawk had never seen working streetlights; none of them had.

Panther claimed there were lights in San Francisco, but Hawk was sure he was making it up. The power plants that provided electricity hadn't operated since before he was born, and he was the oldest among them except for Owl. Electricity was a luxury that few could manage outside the compounds, where solar–powered generators were plentiful. Mostly, they got by with candles and fires and glow sticks.

They stayed in the center of the street as they walked, keeping clear of the dark openings of the buildings on either side, falling into the Wing-T formation that Hawk favored. Hawk was at point, Panther and Bear on the wings, and the girls, Candle and River, in the center carrying the goods in tightly bound sacks. Owl had read about the Wing-T in one of her books and told Hawk how it worked. Hawk could read, but not particularly well. None of them could, the little ones in particular. Owl was a good reader. She had learned in the compound before she left to join them. She tried to instruct them, but mostly they wanted her to read to them instead. Their patience was limited, and their duties as members of the Ghosts took up most of their time. Reading wasn't necessary for staying alive, they would argue.

But, of course, it was. Even Hawk knew that much. Overhead, the sky began to fill with roiling clouds that darkened steadily as the Ghosts moved out of

Pioneer Square and up toward the Hammering Man. Soon rain was falling in a soft, steady mist, turning the concrete of the streets and buildings a glistening slate gray. The rain felt clean and cool to Hawk, who lifted his angular face to its cool wash. Sometimes he wished he could go swimming again, as he had when he was a little boy living in Oregon. But you couldn't trust the water anymore. You couldn't be sure what was in it, and if the wrong thing got into your body, you would die. At least they had the rain, which was more than most of the world could say. Not that he had seen much of that world. At eighteen, he had lived in exactly two places–in Oregon until he was five and in Seattle since then. But the Ghosts had a radio to listen to, and sometimes it told them things. Less so these days, as the stations dropped away, one by one. Overrun by the armie of the once–men, he assumed. Once–men. Madmen.

Sometimes they learned things from other street kids. A new kid would show up, wandering in from some other part of the country to link up with one of the tribes and provide a fresh piece of news. But wherever they came from, their stories were pretty much alike. Everyone was in the same boat, trying to survive. The same dangers threatened everyone, and all anyone could do was decide how they wanted to live: either inside the compounds like a caged animal or out on the streets like prey.

Or, in the case of the Ghosts, you lived underground and tried to stay out of the way.

It was Owl who knew the history behind the underground city. She had read about it in a book. A long time ago, the old Seattle had burned and the people had buried her and built a new city right on top. The old city had been ignored until parts of it were excavated for underground tours. In the wake of the Great