He screamed out the boy's name. Then again, from the pit of his stomach.
But there was no sign of him.
Dead or alive, he was gone.
12
They left Donna and Pettibone behind in Llewellyn, hired a car and set off before the sun had risen. The air was chill and clear; Nigel wound down the window and sucked in great lungfuls until Heather, nose almost pressing against the windscreen as she got used to driving on the opposite side of the road, told him to close it before she got hypothermia.
As they left the small town behind and headed into the fladands, a watery red sun crept up from behind silhouetted mountains to reveal mile after mile of landscape unbroken by the sight of man or beast.
Three hours of seeing only the occasional car and isolated petrol station later, the road led them up a winding hill. As they descended from the summit, in the distance they could make out a small, unspectacular town, the first they had seen for more than fifty miles. Nigel checked the map; it was Liberty. It must be - there was no other town within thirty miles. He felt his stomach tighten. It wasn't every day you paid a visit to a town filled with fundamentalists who had chosen to cut themselves off from the civilized world. He didn't know what to expect and wondered whether this was such a good idea. The plan was for them to portray themselves as innocent, bewildered tourists on a road trip, perhaps seek out somewhere to stay and hope there was one person in the whole community who might be willing to speak to them without arousing suspicion.
'Is this a good idea?' he asked Heather as they made their way down the hill, shading their eyes. The sky above them was cloudless and the rising winter sun was directly in front.
Her eyes, red from tiredness and staring at a straight road, narrowed. 'It's the best one we've got. Why, are you getting cold feet?'
'No,' he lied.
We're going to go in and ask some questions as nicely as possible. Look upon it as a piece of local history. You once told me that nothing beat a field trip, getting out there and asking questions. Consider it research.' She smiled.
He felt partly reassured, but the grip of tension in his gut remained.
The town wasn't signed. It was just there, as if dropped from the sky fully formed and without warning. One minute there was open road and wilderness; the next, a few houses that became a street and then other streets. The houses were simple one-storey structures, sometimes with a car parked out front, which surprised Nigel. All of them were painted white. Everything was white - the fences, the doors.
He expected it to be rather more basic. An American flag fluttered limply from a pole outside one or two, which gave a lie to the idea of it being some separatist movement.
We need a shop, or some kind of cafe,' Heather said, driving slowly. We need people.'
'There's one,' Nigel murmured. A woman was out the front of her house washing her doorstep. She stopped as their car passed, watching them. Nigel checked the rearview mirror as they pulled away. The woman continued to look. He guessed the road into town, pockmarked and battered, was barely used and rarely repaired. He checked Heather's face and saw the first signs of apprehension.
The town itself was neat and well ordered, organized into an almost perfect grid. Nigel had half-expected it to be clapboard shacks with tin roofs, barefoot inbred urchins playing in open sewers, while wild prairie dogs roamed seeking scraps for food. Instead, although his experience of smalltown America was strictly limited, Liberty did not seem that different from Llewellyn, only reduced in scale.
Heather drove towards the centre of the grid, through identical white streets and past identikit white houses that made reference points difficult. Eventually she turned into a small square, overlooked by a larger building that Nigel guessed to be either some kind of town hall or civic building, a small fountain in the middle. The centrepiece was a tall dazzling temple, which towered over the square. On its roof a cherub blew into a trumpet. Like all the other buildings it was white, but it seemed to gleam.
There was a small parking bay filled by a few other vehicles and Heather pulled slowly in beside them. Nigel checked his watch -- 9 a.m. He looked around. There must have been some form of recent celebration. Small white flags lined one side of the square; a small marquee and a few stalls lined the other.
Nigel did not notice Heather switch a silver band from her right ring finger to her left. She scanned the square: no more than a dozen buildings. Nigel was forced to squint, as the bright winter sun glanced off the pure-white buildings to create a dazzling glare. He now understood what Pettibone had meant when he advised them enigmatically to take their sunglasses. He did not have a pair.
Heather did, and put them on before sniffing the air. 'I can smell bread,' she said. Sure enough, in one corner of the square there appeared to be a bakery. As they walked over, Heather's boot heels clip-clopping loudly, Nigel felt as if he was being watched by eyes from every window overlooking the square. He looked up but the glare hurt his eyes. They saw no one. It was like the bright morning after Armageddon.
A painted sign above the door said 'Liberty Bakers', and the smell was enticing. Loaves were stacked in the window.
A woman and a man were behind the counter in white hats. The store itself was empty. Flour hung in the air.
Heather walked in, bold as brass, Nigel in her slipstream, happy to give his aching corneas a rest from the fierce, reflecting light.
'Good morning.'
The man's face didn't change from its stony setting; the woman, however, smiled a rictus grin. 'Good morning,'
she said. There was a period of awkward silence. 'Can I help?' the woman finally asked, grin still fixed.
We're lost,' Heather said. We're hoping you could help.' ŚYou don't sound like you're local,' the woman said, still smiling, her eyes unblinking and wide.
'No, we're on a bit of a road trip and we needed to make a stop.'
The man dead-panned. 'Isn't much to see round here.'
'On our way to Oregon. Pinot Noir country.'
The woman kept smiling. 'I love your accent.'
'Thanks. English. My husband here is a wine connoisseur.'
Nigel
nodded eagerly, wondering inside, 'What?'
Well, you won't find any of that here,' the woman said, a hint of disapproval in her voice. We're a dry town.'
Heather held up her hand. 'That can wait for Oregon.
We're just after a place to wash and rest for a day before heading on. Made the mistake of driving through the night, miscalculating how far we had to go and everything.'
'A major miscalculation,' the man said, not even turning to look. 'The Oregon road is eighty kilometres north.
You're way off track.'
Heather turned to Nigel. 'See, I told you we'd taken a wrong turn,' she said, rather too theatrically he thought.
She shook her head. 'Is there anywhere in town we can stay, maybe get some help with directions? Lord knows we need them.'
The woman's smile never wavered as she gently shook her head. 'I'm afraid not. We have very few facilities for visitors here. But there's a motel nine or ten kilometres on the way out of town, back towards the Interstate.'
Nigel had seen it on the way in. Small and downtrodden.