“Christ! You’ll give me a heart attack.”
“Not so loud! Follow me.”
Art’s night vision was lousy. She was just a moving part of the darkness, but he blundered along after her in his too-big boots.
“How did you know I’d arrived?” he whispered after forty blind steps.
He heard an amused snort from in front of him. “Are you kidding? I could hear that thing you were riding when you were a quarter of a mile away. Let’s hope no one else realized where you stopped. Come inside, we can talk normally once the door is closed.”
He sensed the opening in front of him, held his hands out to make sure of the location of the doorjambs, and stepped inside. He still couldn’t see a thing, but presumably she could. He kept moving, heard the door close behind him, and stood sniffing.
“What have you been doing in here?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t do if you could. It’s the oil.” She moved around him and he heard her walk away. Eight steps, ten steps. A long pause, and then suddenly he could see.
He was in the bar of the Treasure Inn. Dana was standing at the counter, holding a jar with a flame at the top. “Vegetable oil burns all right,” she said. “It just doesn’t smell too good.”
“You brought it with you?”
“Just the oil and the wick.” She gave Art the smile he remembered, one that lit up the room better than the makeshift lamp. “I figured I’d find a jar or a can or something to put them in. Welcome to the Treasure Inn.” She followed his look. “Yeah. I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink.”
Art was staring across the counter, where on his previous visits hundreds of bottles had stood on the shelves in neat rows. Now there were just half a dozen — all empty. It was worse than that. The pump handles had been torn off, the mirrors smashed, the countertop marked with what seemed to be blows from an ax. He turned to examine the broken window blinds.
“It’s all right,” Dana said. “We face the hedge at the back of the parking lot. I checked, you can’t see the light unless you’re actually in the lot.”
“Someone did a real job on this place.”
“Yeah. They didn’t just clean the place out. I don’t know why, but they tore it to pieces, too.”
“You don’t remember the Turnabout riots in ’07?” Art sat down on one of the bar stools, as though taking the weight off his leg. Suddenly he felt weak and fragile. “You ought to remember, you’re certainly old enough.”
“That’s not very gracious, you know. I feel like an, old woman tonight, but I don’t need people telling me.”
In the dim light, with her fine jawline and high cheekbones, Art thought she looked about twenty-one. He said nothing, and she went on, “I saw coverage of the riots, of course I did, but I was out of the country and I had other things on my mind.”
“You were lucky. I was right here. Too much so. What were you doing?”
“The Great Rush.”
“Antarctica? I was thinking about it only today. What the devil were you doing down there? You don’t look like a prospector.”
“I wasn’t. I was twenty-four, divorced, trying for something exciting.” She saw Art’s doubtful expression. “No, I wasn’t a hooker. There were lots of them there, but I was just a supplier’s secretary. Two years, and it wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. I made a fair amount of money, though — the prices were outrageous, and the merchants who supplied the goods and equipment did a lot better than the prospectors. But I missed the riots.”
“Something best missed. If you’d been here at the time, you’d understand this.” Art waved his arm around the ruined room. “You see, the first wave comes in and takes out anything worth taking — drinks mainly, in this case. I’m surprised they didn’t take the chairs, but they don’t look as though they’d burn. When the second wave comes in, and doesn’t find anything worth having, they get real mad. So they smash the hell out of everything. And any more waves do the same thing, over and over. Get in their way, they’ll kill you without even knowing who you are. This place got off easy. The Turnabouts would have set fire to it, sure as sure.”
“They didn’t just take the drinks.” Dana pointed to the door that led through to the kitchen and dining room. “I hope you’ve eaten. They cleaned out every last bit of food. Even salt and spices.”
“I’ve got food.” Art patted his waterproof bag. “Did you eat?”
“Enough. I brought my own, too. I don’t want any more.”
“Well, maybe you’ll join me in a drink.” Art opened his mouth, then stopped and shook his head. “Either I’m way overtired, or I’m going crazy. I was going to ask you if there was any ice.”
“No power, no refrigeration, no ice. But never mind ice. I told you, there’s no drink in this place.”
“There is if you brought your own.” Art opened his bag, reached inside, and with the air of a magician taking a rabbit from a hat pulled out a quart plastic bottle. “Anything to drink out of?”
“I thought you were kidding. Wait a minute.” She went off through the door to the dining room, taking the makeshift oil light with her. Art had brought half a dozen candles from his mountain house, but he wasn’t willing to waste one. Sitting in the darkness he unscrewed the plastic bottle top and took a small sip. He grimaced at Dana as she came back holding two measuring cups and a larger metal pan.
“I don’t look gift horses in the mouth, Dana, but this isn’t one of Ed O’Donnell’s better efforts. We’ll need water.”
“Are you telling me that stuff’s homemade?” She put the pan and cups down on the counter. “I don’t know if I’m that desperate. But water, we have. I brought a bottle with me. There’s a big tank down in the basement, too. I filled the pan earlier and it looks fresh, but I don’t know if it’s safe to drink.”
“Boil it, and you can drink any water that doesn’t actually taste poisonous. Let me have those.” Art took the metal pan, dipped a measuring cup in to fill it halfway, and topped the cup from the plastic bottle. He took a trial sip, nodded, and handed the cup to Dana.
She stared at it suspiciously. “I thought you said you had to boil the water.”
“To kill bugs and bacteria. But alcohol does the same thing just as well.”
“So long as it doesn’t kill me.” She sniffed the liquid in the measuring cup and wrinkled her nose. “How long ago was this made?”
“You don’t look for vintage labels on drink that comes in plastic screw-top bottles.” Art made his own mix, using the same proportions of moonshine and water. He raised his cup. “Come on, Dana, I’m not using you as a test animal. You may not need this, but I do. Here’s to ruin.”
“We already have that. Here’s to us.” She raised her own cup and took a medium gulp. “Maybe I do need this. It’s been quite a week. You never called me after that first time, you know.”
“I sure as hell tried to. All I got was dead lines. I did reach two others, just yesterday. Morgan Davis and Lynn Seagrave. They said there was no chance they could make it, they’re off across country and no transportation systems are working. But they told me they’d try to network some others.” The drink was burning its way down through his digestive system, leaving a trail of pleasant heat behind it. “How did you make out? Any luck?”
“If you want to call it that. I tried a hundred times, but I only reached one person.”
“Who?”
“Seth Parsigian.”
The warm glow inside Art faded. “That figures. Did he say he’d be able to come here?”
“More than that. He’s here already. He arrived before I did and left this.” Dana handed over a piece of gray paper. On it, in meticulous block script, were the words: I WILL RETURN BY MORNING. I AM TAKING A LOOK AROUND.