Gretchen smiled. “No more Loop for you. Your family has done enough.”
“Thank you,” Watkins said, and she turned for her car, but Gretchen’s voice stopped her.
“Can you cook?”
“Still looking at the monument?” the Keep asked Captain Griffin.
He didn’t move the binoculars from his eyes. “It hasn’t changed.”
“Other things have,” the Keep said. “The Cellar and the Nightstalkers have closed a big chapter in history. I’m still sorting the pieces out with Hannah and Ms. Jones, but I don’t think we’ll ever know the full story since Burns went back through the Portal the other way and it’s shut.”
“Permanently, I hope,” Griffin said.
“One can hope,” the Keep said, but her voice lacked confidence.
Nada sat with Scout on the riverbank. They were smoking electronic cigarettes, one of Nada’s conditions for meeting her.
“How are your folks?” he asked.
“Rested,” Scout said. She nodded toward the dock where a boat rested in the lift. “My dad finally got his boat. Said life was too short. Support gave him a really good cover story. He thinks he and Mother and I barely survived a train wreck and chemical discharge.”
“Support is good at that,” Nada said.
“You know something?” Scout asked, and then she took a puff of nicotine. It wasn’t as good as a real cigarette, but it would be enough for now. She knew that eventually she wouldn’t need this either.
“What?” Nada said.
“It was a very complex plan,” Scout said.
Nada remained silent, because he and Moms had been over this several times at forward operating base and they got confused when they got mired in the details of everything that happened.
Scout continued. “Craegan opening that Rift in Arizona, then the drive going to Winslow, while Ivar worked in the lab opening a Portal while you shut the Rift in Senator’s Club, and then multiple Ivars coming through, then shutting that Portal. But Ivar was affected. And whatever was in my toothbrush was planted. Then my dad getting assigned to Oak Ridge, so we moved here to the river, near the dam.” She shook her head. “Gives you a headache if you believe it was all one long, complex plan by whatever is on the other side just to spit back out all those people.”
“It scares me,” Nada said. He stood.
Scout stood up. “It scares me too. Because Ms. Jones and Hannah are the best we got and whatever this is outthought them.”
“A lot more people than just them.”
“What’s going to happen to those people?” Scout asked as they walked along the riverbank. “The Odessa people?”
Nada shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’m sure the Cellar will handle it.”
They paused. The Snake was waiting, engines whining, the ramp open. The team was inside, watching. Nada held out his hand. “Until we meet again?”
Scout shook it. “Until.”
Nada turned for the ramp.
“Hey,” Scout said.
Nada paused. “Yes?”
“You owe me a piggy bank.”
Nada smiled. “I’ll bring it.”
“So you’ll be back?”
“You know it.”
On top of the Gateway Arch, a pair of magnets with duct tape partially attached were solidly anchored onto the stainless steel. The Park Service had yet to figure out how to remove them safely.
Even more puzzling was how they got there.
Still caught in the power lines cutting across the Tennessee River, a tattered parachute hung limply. The TVA had removing it on its to-do list, but resources were focused on repairs to the Loudoun Dam, where an accident had caused a power outage.
In the Cellar, Hannah looked at images of both the magnets and the parachute, still there after dawn. Ms. Jones wasn’t on top of this.
Hannah reached for the phone, and then she realized what the magnets and the parachute signified. She lowered her head and said a short prayer, not that she was religious, but sometimes it’s all you have. Then she got up and headed toward the door. She had an appointment to make.
Ms. Jones stared at the photo. The image of a young man smiled up at her. “Ah,” she sighed. He’d died at Chernobyl. Died trying to open a Rift. Perhaps he’d been right. After all these years, she now knew she might have been wrong. Then and every time since, when the Nightstalkers had slammed shut each Rift before a Portal opened.
Who knew? Who knew?
Why were humans always so afraid of the unknown even while some of the brightest minds probed into the unknown?
Ms. Jones closed her eyes, placing her hands over her chest, the photo clutched in her fingers.
Her heart slowed and then stopped. Lights flashed and Pitr came rushing in, but he halted short of the hospital bed and stared at the old woman.
Her orders had been strict and clear.
A single tear coursed down Pitr’s cheek. At least she was finally at peace.
Hannah sighed. “You’re not going to ask me to keep a journal or draw pictures or something like that?”
Dr. Golden had her pad out, pen at the ready. “No. You’re too smart for that.”
“But not too smart to become better,” Hannah said.
“Better?”
“At being human.”
The prototype Snake landed inside the Barn. The Nightstalkers off-loaded, stowing their gear and then packing into the Humvee. Eagle got behind the wheel while Roland took his place in the gun turret, holding the grips for the .50-caliber machine gun.
As they rolled out of the barn toward the Ranch, they began to sing, as if on cue, Warren Zevon’s “Werewolf in London.”
The Humvee rolled across the desert, while overhead the running lights of an old aircraft flickered by.
As they reached the chorus, Roland howled from the hatch and the team echoed him.
The Nightstalkers were back home.
Colonel Thorn’s hands were steady on the controls of the C-47 Skytrain as he flew over the Ranch and the team in the Humvee far below. Where they’d dug this relic up, he had no idea, but these folks sure were efficient.
He appreciated that.
He glanced over his shoulder at the German and Japanese scientists sitting on the web seating along both sides of the plane behind him. One of the Germans had somehow wrangled a couple of bottles of schnapps and was passing them down the line. The Japanese were partaking. Nero had told Thorn many years ago that the Japanese had gotten along quite well with their Nazi compatriots in Odessa.
No shit, Thorn thought.
Peering to the right, Thorn could see the long runway at Area 51. The base around here had been built up, to be expected after so much time.
But he didn’t bank the plane to begin the long guide to the runway. Instead, he aimed due west.
It took a few minutes before those in the back became aware they weren’t going back “home” where they could perform more experiments in secret and under the protection of the U.S. government.
Thorn took it as a positive sign that some lessons had been learned and that this mistake, at least, wasn’t going to be repeated.
He flew directly over Papoose Mountain and then Papoose Lake. He heard some argument behind him as the scientists were looking out the windows, wondering why they weren’t turning.
Thorn saw the first blast craters of the Nevada Test Site as he cleared the next ridgeline. There were dozens and dozens of them. Hundreds as he looked to the left and right.
Even the scientists behind him grew silent as they saw the shattered landscape wrought by the hand of man.