“It’s going to get dark soon. We need to find shelter.”
She nodded affirmatively and picked herself up, clutching at the blanket and cup given to her earlier — the handkerchief and sunglasses unceremoniously left behind. She climbed aboard, buckling her seatbelt again, and the sentinel drove over to where the heat signature faded into nothing — it was a jackrabbit, felled by the sentinel’s railgun — the shot having gone clean through. The sentinel reached its humaniform hand downwards, picking the carcass up in one swift motion, and then sped back to the road and continued south. The girl looked on with curiosity at the dead rabbit dangling from the sentinel’s clutch, swaying softly in the air as they drove on. She stared off into the sunset, wondering how many days had it been since she left her mother’s side. She wondered what would happen to them. She wondered how her new friend found her, and why it was that she was spared.
They ventured further south until they hit San Xavier Road. The sentinel slowed as they neared the crossing. The highway spanned over the street but had been destroyed — a chasm dividing both the south and north sections of the highway from the stretch of I-19 just beyond. Just to their left, tumbled into the dust of the darkened berm, was a wrecked HC-130P. A Hercules. The massive bulkhead was detached from the wings, which were scattered and broken in the distance, each turboprop splayed into the earth. The aircraft had crashed near the highway and rolled over a great distance. Its cargo bay door had torn off and the kilned, congealed bodies of several paratroopers were thrown into the dirt — their flesh torn off and limbs ripped out. Desert fatigues were strewn about the hardened soil. A solitary revin, its skin wrapped tight around its bones and skull, eye sockets dried and empty, sat beside the body of a paratrooper — a single gunshot wound in its torso. The sentinel zoomed in on the revin — it was long dead, having come to its end in this akimbo death rattle amongst the bodies it had picked clean. The vertical stabilizer bore the designation of the aircraft: 79th Rescue Squadron out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, only a short distance from where it had come to rest in the dust.
The brink of the overpass had been bolstered with sandbags and machine gun nests — an impromptu and unadorned checkpoint, blocking all travel south. They moved off the highway and into the gravel, in between mile marker 57 and the guardrail, and headed towards the off-ramp. They got onto San Xavier Road heading southwest. They passed ruined farmlands and caved-in Spanish hovels. The sentinel hit another intersection — Little Nogales Dr. — and headed north. They drove on in silence in the fading light until they came before some white visage standing starkly in the waste before them, rising up into the night sky. The sentinel lit its LED lamp and illuminated the façade just ahead. A white glow of winter walls, awoken in the luminescence. There stood an intricate, pale monument in the desert. Moorish buttresses and balustrade lined an alcazar from one great tower to the next, and on around ad infinitum. An alabaster dome rose into the black, supported by the high arches and squinches of Baroque masonry. A series of sandy walls lined the perimeter and the coat of arms of St. Francis greeted them in the half-light. This white palace in the Sonoran solitude. The white dove of the desert. The Mission San Xavier del Bac.
The girl rubbed her eyes, staring up at the face of the cathedral. They stood there, in the dust, looking up at the entranceway — a twisting, chiseled archway watched by statues of Mary and Joseph set inlaid above the thick, wooden door. The sentinel scanned the interior and perimeter — devoid of life. It reviewed the satellite data — a significant weather pattern was moving in. She asked:
“What is this place?”
“This is where we’ll shelter for the night.”
They rolled forward towards the archway. The moon was cresting in the east, a crescent scythe swinging slowly in the cool air of dusk. They came to the weathered, wooden door — the sentinel’s tire rubbing up against it, casting it ajar. It pushed forward and the giant mesquite portal swung slowly open. The latch was broken off — pushed in by some blunt force. They entered the church, lighting up the nave and the altar at the far side of the antechamber. The moonlight cast its glow from their wake and then vanished as the wooden door closed on its own behind them. The girl unbuckled her belt and slid off the sentinel’s frame. She approached the battered, chipped pew — the row of small wooden benches just beyond the vestibule. She slid her hand along the arched seatbacks, pacing from right to left, as the sentinel scanned the door. It panned around, analyzing the flaws and damage done to the ancient door. It stood there, dead rabbit in hand, as the girl gazed at the darkened altar, barely lit by the cracked, high rose windows lining the dome. The sentinel dropped the rabbit carcass and turned to the corner — a clutter of old student desks and broken pews were piled high. DDC39 rolled over to the pile and pulled a series of beams, legs, and desk joints towards the door — twisting, pinning, and creasing them into the egress until it was firmly blocked. It turned its attention back to the girl, who was tiptoeing gingerly up the narrow aisle, her right leg limping.
She had sidled up to the altar steps, gazing up at the ornate reredos looming over them in the dark. The carved woodwork stretched from the base to the ceiling — Spanish saints inlaid into walls, reaching out from the niches above them. A patchwork of mosaics and iconography surrounded the dais, lining the womb of the room like a corrugated tomb. The sentinel rolled up behind the girl dragging a broken chair, the legs screeching along behind it, then dropped it before her upon the cracked, Spanish tiles. It spoke to her in a calm, softened voice:
“Look for matches near the altar. And bring a bible down from the pulpit.”
She turned her gaze to the sentinel, who shined its LED lamp on her face. They looked upon each other in the half-light of the mission ruin. She turned her head to her side, looking quizzically at the altar, before getting up and rummaging about the dais. She found a long stem lighter and an old Spanish copy of the King James bible.
That night, the girl helped the sentinel skin the jackrabbit — holding tightly on it as the machine clutched the other end, rolling backwards. The skin ripped from tissue and the girl stood there holding the carcass from its downy ears, sinewy haunches gleaming in the LED lamp. She lit the bible and they built a fire before the altar from the kindling of the broken desks, billowy smoke rising up through the dome and escaping into the cracks of the rose windows above. The sentinel taught the girl how to clean the dead rabbit, watching as she lifted it above the fire with a broken candlesnuffer. She sat there, smiling, plucking pieces of charred rabbit haunch off the bone, and gulping another cup of water from the sentinel’s tank. She looked up at an oil painting on the wall, lit by the flickering tongues of the fire.