Shut up, Hale.
That’s shut up “sir” to you, the voice responded sternly. Because I’m an officer. Or was, until you blew my brains out.
You were changing, Capelli countered, for what might have been the thousandth time.
You could have taken your concerns to the Major, or to Dr. Malikov, the voice said accusingly, but you didn’t. Why was that, Capelli? Was it because you were afraid I would turn into something like Daedalus? Or was it because you’re an insubordinate sonofabitch who can’t take orders?
Screw you.
Peals of laughter echoed inside Capelli’s head. The laughter faded away as he heard the familiar click of claws and Rowdy materialized out of the gloom. He was panting and he produced a soft whining sound as he bumped Capelli’s leg. Then, having announced his presence, he surged forward to take up a position roughly fifty feet ahead.
They went on like that for another ten minutes when the bulk of a barely seen building blotted out a section of stars. Capelli gave a low whistle to let Rowdy know that he was turning off the road, then activated the shotgun’s light as a church loomed in front of him.
They climbed a few stairs, the blob of white light playing across the gaping door and probing the chapel beyond. It revealed signs of a battle: spent casings, the projectile-riddled pews, and what might have been dried bloodstains. Then, as Capelli made his way down the center aisle, he saw that some words had been painted to the right of the altar. “Why, God, why?”
It was a good question. One that Capelli couldn’t answer.
Locke gave the only eulogy the people who had taken refuge in the church were likely to receive. “Poor bastards.”
“Yeah,” Capelli agreed as he spotlighted the choir loft above. “See that? We’ll spend the rest of the night there. Then, immediately after daybreak, we’ll follow U.S. Route 40 east.”
Locke looked from the loft down to the man next to him. “So you’ll take me to Haven?”
“Yes.”
“But you said you wouldn’t.”
“That was then,” Capelli answered. “This is now. Let’s get some rest.”
No matter where Capelli found himself, he was almost always able to get a reasonable amount of rest since Rowdy’s finely tuned senses were on duty twenty-four hours a day. That night the dog, a half German shepherd, half Rhodesian ridgeback mix, gave no warnings, so both Capelli and Locke were able to log six hours of sleep. But it seemed like only a matter of minutes before a beam of bright sunlight slanted down through a dirty window and threw a carpet of gold across the choir loft’s wooden floor.
That woke Capelli, who wiggled out of his sleeping bag and slipped the Magnum back into its shoulder holster. Both Locke and Rowdy were awake and watching him. “I’m going to climb up into the tower and take a look around,” Capelli announced as he laced his boots. “Assuming the area is clear I’ll be back down. Then we’ll make breakfast and hit the road.” If Locke resented taking orders from what amounted to an employee, he showed no signs of it as he began the process of extricating himself from his bedroll.
After retrieving a pair of binoculars from his pack Capelli went over to a narrow door, pulled it open, and began to climb the twisting-turning stairs. The stairs delivered him to a small platform just below a large pair of church bells. Four vertical windows allowed Capelli to scan the area without being seen. The air was cold, but the clear sky suggested that the day would warm up later.
After about ten minutes of peering out through the narrow slits, he saw that with the exception of a wispy column of smoke spiraling up into the sky from town, there were no signs of life, Chimeran or otherwise. Having eaten their fill and resterilized the town, it appeared that the stinks had left for parts unknown.
Satisfied that there weren’t any imminent threats to worry about, Capelli returned to the choir loft. Locke was in the midst of preparing breakfast for the two of them, black coffee and thick oatmeal, with some precious raisins thrown in, all brewed over a can of Sterno. The meal was followed by half a Tootsie Roll each.
Haute cuisine it wasn’t, but Capelli felt pleasantly full after the meal, and ready to begin the thirty-five-mile hike to the city of Goodland. He figured it would take about two days, unless the weather turned bad or some stinks got in the way.
After checking the surrounding landscape, the threesome left the church and made their way east onto Route 40. The two-lane blacktop led them through mostly flat farmland with overgrown wheat fields on both sides of the highway. Houses could be seen here and there, along with barns and silos, and trees that had been planted to shelter the buildings from the wind.
Once in awhile a feral Chimera could be seen in the distance, searching for something to eat, and they passed the rotting remains of a cow. But other than an occasional bark from Rowdy as he took off after a rabbit, and the eternal hum of the wind, the land was silent.
They saw cars of course, and trucks, and even a yellow school bus, but all were motionless. Some sat as if abandoned only moments before, out of gas perhaps, or broken down. Others lay every which way, having been attacked from the air, and shot full of holes. That had been at least a year earlier, of course. The drivers and passengers who could be seen through filthy windows looked like skeletonized half-mummies, still clad in scraps of rotting cloth, waiting for the elements to bury them.
And they saw graves, too, with improvised crosses standing like lonely sentinels beside the road. Each marked the end of a desperate journey, back when there had been places to go and the strength required to dig.
But amidst these signs of death there were unmistakable signs of life: Route 40 was a natural trail for people to follow. Capelli’s practiced eye took note of a recent campfire, a signpost with a cryptic message written on it, and a couple of .22 casings too bright to have been lying on the road for very long. All signs that, in spite of Chimeran efforts to exterminate them, human beings still walked the surface of the planet.
They had been walking for three hours by the time Capelli called a halt just short of a bridge. The sun was high, and other than the white scar that a Chimeran shuttle had left on the blue sky, it was as if the threesome had the entire world to themselves. From the highway they had to skid down a steep bank into the shadowy area below. A stream ran under the bridge, and judging from the trash left by others, they weren’t the first people to pause there. “You supplied breakfast,” Capelli said, “so lunch is on me.”
Capelli opened his pack and brought out a jar of applesauce he had found in an abandoned farmhouse—plus two cans of Vienna sausages purchased a couple of weeks earlier. “Looks good,” Locke said. “Shall I heat the sausages?”
Capelli shook his head. “No, save the Sterno for later. Rule number one is never light a fire during the day.”
Locke nodded. “If you’ll give me your mess tin I’ll divide everything up.”
Locke and Capelli made small talk during lunch, but not much, since the two men didn’t know each other that well. But Capelli learned that Locke had done a hitch as a hospital corpsman in the Navy after high school, inherited some money, and gone into business as a car dealer back before what he referred to as “the plague.”
Then, after the Chimera overran Great Britain, Locke had been quicker than most to see how things were going. So he purchased a large quantity of supplies while they were still available, stashed them near his cabin in the mountains, and eventually moved there. At first, Locke had been satisfied to simply hide out, but after receiving a couple of runner-delivered letters from his sister, he eventually resolved to join her in Haven.