For two more days, they followed the coast. Then the highway veered east, away from the shore. Although no one said anything, Chaka could sense the disappointment: They had hoped, had believed, this was the body of water that sheltered Haven.
Two days later, they angled around a ruined town whose name was something-Joseph. (The highway sign was badly worn.) The weather became erratic, warm one day, cold the next. The road turned gradually into a jumble of broken concrete, great chunks thrown up or collapsed. They got off and traveled through adjacent fields.
After a while the road sliced away and the signs took them down a hillside into a forest, which was dominated by a type of pine tree they had not seen before. It had thin, red-brown bark and bright green needles. The trunk was about a foot and a half thick, and it ranged up to seventy-five feet tall. There were also exotic birds and plants. It was a new world.
Ruins were less extensive than they had been near the City, but they were not uncommon. There was seldom a day without isolated buildings or half-buried villages. Highway signs indicated towns where only trees and fields existed. They found a farmhouse near a place called Joppa that was in excellent condition, save for a fallen roof in the rear. The damage was not immediately visible, and it would have been easy to believe the owners were still around somewhere. The town of Homer stood almost intact, complete with the Downtown Restaurant, Harry’s Hardware and Auto, and the Colonial Pharmacy.
A church sign advised passersby to get right with the Lord.
In the early morning hours of April 5, Chaka listened to the wind in the trees and the occasional movements of small animals in the surrounding brush. They were beneath a canopy of branches and leaves so thick that neither moon nor stars was visible. The fire was low. It was a warm night, she had the watch, and she was having trouble fighting off sleep.
The best way to stay awake was to get on her feet. She strolled over to a nearby spring and, for the fourth or fifth time, splashed water on her face. Then she checked the horses, which were in a clearing. They’d seen a black bear during the course of the day. The bear had looked at them without interest and rumbled back into the woods. But the creature had frightened the animals and unnerved Chaka. She was thinking about the bear when she heard a sound that did not belong in the forest.
She was uncertain at first what it was, something sharp and precise.
A twig snapping?
She laid one hand on her pistol but left the weapon in the holster.
Where was it coming from? She melted into the trees. It sounded again.
There was something almost rhythmic about it. And metallic.
She needed several minutes to zero in on the source, but she arrived at last in front of a post. It was made of one of the Roadmaker materials that felt like iron but did not corrode. It was three times her height, and was tangled with a sassafras tree.
The post was of a type that was common in Roadmaker ruins. Sometimes it was made of concrete, sometimes of pseudo-metal. But it was usually found near intersections, and it usually contained red, yellow, and green lenses. But this was the first one she’d seen that made noise.
The sounds formed a distinctive predictable pattern. Click. Count to six. Whir. Count to six. Click. Count to thirty and start a new series.
She stood a long time watching it, listening to it. These places are all haunted. At last, she returned to the fireside, where she had no more trouble staying awake.
In the morning, they discovered a brick building buried in the trees. A metal plate identified it as the First Merchants Bank. A cornerstone added:
It was a lovely morning. The woods were damp and the air was filled with the smell of green grass. The First Merchants Bank looked intact.
Flojian, who had an affection for commercial institutions, wanted to look inside. “I’ve never seen one in such good condition,” he said.
The forest overgrew the walls on all sides and pushed in through the main entrance and jammed tight an inner set of revolving glass doors. But they found a window whose frame was loose. Quait almost casually ripped it off.
Flojian looked in, saw a long counter, workstations, writing tables, desks, and chairs. Several rooms and two corridors opened off the lobby. He climbed through and descended onto a dirt-covered floor. He was behind the counter. Each of the workstations had the apparently ubiquitous glass sheet and housing that he had seen at the Devil’s Eye.
Although Illyrians thought of banks purely as money lenders, the concept of a centralized institution coordinating the flow of currency was not completely foreign. Flojian had been in the vanguard arguing for the establishment of a League bank and a common monetary system.
He stood now, visualizing how this bank had worked. Customers lined up at the counter to deposit money, which would be duly credited to their accounts, and interest paid. That same money would be loaned out to other customers, probably in confidence. That meant loan officers would be located in the rooms centering on the lobby. These loans would be used to capitalize individual enterprise, and they would be paid back at a fixed rate from the profits. All very neat, and a much more progressive system than the one he’d been faced with, in which opportunities were often not exploited and growth not achieved simply because funds were not available.
Quait came in behind him.
There were eight positions for cashiers. And there appeared to be a ninth one, facing out, at the point where they’d entered. (He didn’t understand that at all.) Each position was furnished with a workspace and a drawer. He opened one and was delighted to see coins. “Marvelous,” he breathed. “Quait, look at these.”
He picked up one of the larger coins, wiped it off, and held it in the sunlight. It was a quarter-dollar, its name engraved on the reverse, under the likeness of an eagle. He smiled appreciatively at it, slipped it into his pocket, and began to scoop out the others.
“Take as many as you can carry,” he advised Quait. “This place is scary,” said Quait, who seemed not to have heard.
“How do you mean?”
Quait opened another drawer. More coins. And more. Every drawer was filled.
“So what’s your point?” asked Flojian.
“These people left so suddenly, they didn’t even take their money with them. How bad could the Plague have been?”
“Bad, I guess. I really have no idea.”
“Remember what Mike said? They just didn’t come to work one day and he never saw them again. Here, they left their money. If we look in the shops, the merchandise is still there. Or what’s left of it. It’s as if they just walked off the Earth.”
“Listen,” said Flojian, “why don’t we talk about this later? I’m running out of pockets.”
Flojian saw movement. Incredibly, a writing table near the front door rose onto three legs and strode forward into the center of the lobby. His hair rose. It looked like a six-foot-tall drawing board with a tapered head connected to a short pliant neck. Two flexible limbs emerged from beneath the table top, and one of them pointed something that looked like a pipe or nozzle in their direction. “Stop what you are doing,” came a voice from directly overhead. “The police are on their way. Do not move unless directed to do so. Weapons will be used if you do not comply with all instructions.”
Quait swore softly. “Lay down your guns and come around the counter.”
Flojian debated his options and glanced at Quait. Was the nozzle a weapon? A gunfight with a machine that could simply walk over and shoot them did not seem promising. He heard Chaka behind him, in the window, say that she didn’t believe this.