Chapel knew she would eventually lose her cool, that she would have to move to alleviate cramped muscles or just to keep from falling asleep. It would happen to him, too. He had no idea how long it would take.
In the end they got lucky.
The soldier in the sentry box was keeping himself awake by drinking caffeinated soda. He had a big two-liter bottle of cola that he sipped at from time to time, wincing at its bite or maybe because it had gotten warm. The problem with using soda to keep yourself alert was that it was a diuretic. Less than half an hour after Chapel picked his hiding spot, the soldier was forced to answer the call of nature.
He lifted a radio to his lips and said something Chapel couldn’t hear, then climbed out of the box and waddled toward the trees on the far side of the road.
Chapel wasted no time. He tapped Julia on the shoulder, then sprang up and moved quietly across the cratered earth and through the gap in the fence.
They were in.
CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:22
The camp comprised a hundred acres of woods surrounded by a fence. A hundred acres can be an interminable wasteland if you don’t know what you’re looking for and you have to search every corner.
For the most part the camp was exactly what it looked like — uninterrupted forest, an endless stretch of trees that grew so close together the two of them were forced to stick to winding, cramped trails that twisted between them. Occasionally they would cross a chattering creek, the icy water bright in the starlight. Very seldom they found an old shack or lean-to, beaten down by years of wind and weather until it was little more than bare lichen-smeared planks sticking up from the broken remains of a concrete foundation.
Those were the only signs that anyone had ever lived in Camp Putnam. Chapel found himself wondering if the shacks had been built by the chimeras, or by mountain men who lived up here a hundred years ago. It was impossible to tell just by the wan light of Julia’s flashlight. Some of the shacks had latches on their doors, while others had more modern doorknobs. Beyond that they all looked the same. They were all empty save for a few scraps of fabric in one, the remains of a campfire in another. Everything inside them was sodden and bristling with mushrooms.
“It looks like this place has been abandoned for years,” Julia said at one point.
“The chimeras were here less than two days ago,” Chapel said, though he had to agree with her.
They found no sign of habitation for nearly an hour, until they stumbled on a pond in the middle of the forest.
The water stretched away from them as far as they could see, black and full of stars except where mist snaked across its surface. A stout rope hung down over the water, perfect for swinging out over the still pond. Nearby a row of changing stalls had been built back in the trees. The door of each stall had been torn from its hinges and lay shattered on the ground. Julia shone her light into one of the stalls, and Chapel saw a splash of bright red on its back wall.
He stepped closer, intending to take a closer look, and nearly crushed a skull under his shoe.
The skull was half buried in the dirt, only one eye socket looking up at them as if its owner had been disturbed in his bed and wanted to go back to sleep. Nearby the remains of a rib cage could be seen. The limbs were missing, perhaps dragged off by animals.
“Jesus,” Julia said. “If a guy with a chain saw and a hockey mask shows up, ask him for directions. He’ll be the least creepy thing in this place.”
Chapel squatted to examine the skull. It was fractured in a couple of places, but otherwise it seemed normal enough. “Looks human,” he said.
Julia shook her head. “But… look at those ribs — they’re too thick, and too close together.”
When he knew what to look for, Chapel saw it at once. This was the skeleton of a chimera. The thickening of the ribs explained, perhaps, how they could take multiple gunshots to the chest and not even slow down. The skull was human enough that when you shot them in the head they tended to die. It matched what he’d seen in the field.
“Looking at this,” Julia said, “I’d say he came here to hide. Someone was chasing him. He went into the stall to hide, but it didn’t work. The pursuer tore the stalls open one by one until he found him. After that the cause of death looks to be multiple traumas to the head with a blunt weapon.”
Chapel felt his jaw fall open. “Impressive analysis, Doctor,” he said.
Julia shrugged. “When your patients can’t tell you what’s wrong, you have to get all kinds of CSI on them. You learn to spot the signs of abuse and trauma.”
“That’s no poodle,” Chapel pointed out.
She shrugged. “I’m about to wet myself with fear. Acting like a professional helps.”
“Then please, keep it up,” he told her. “Look over there, on the far side of the pond,” he said, pointing.
She swept her light across the water, but it couldn’t reach that far. It didn’t matter. Something big and shadowy was hidden in the trees there, something made of right angles, which suggested a building.
“Ellie mentioned a schoolhouse, big enough for her and two hundred students,” Julia said.
Chapel nodded. “Let’s take a look.”
CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:31
It proved difficult to get around the pond. The trees grew right down to the water, and all the paths seemed to wind away into dark groves, farther and farther from where they wanted to go. Eventually, though, they stumbled out into a massive clearing full of buildings, some small and haphazardly built, some massive and made of durable brick. The building they thought was the schoolhouse was the largest, a two-story edifice with lots of broken windows, but it looked mostly intact. Other buildings had been burned down to cinders. Directly in front of the schoolhouse lay a broad patch of open grass that had grown knee-high. On the other side of this lawn lay a little church with a cross on its roof.
“It’s like Smalltown, USA,” Julia pointed out, letting her light play over the broken windows of the nearest buildings. “After the bomb dropped.”
Chapel took in a tall flagpole in front of the schoolhouse. A tattered rag hung lifeless from its top. In the starlight he could almost make out its stripes. “You see anything that looks like a laboratory? Or maybe a cloning facility?”
“That could look like anything, but… no,” Julia said. She shrugged. “You’d expect it to look clean, I guess. Maybe to have its own fence so the boys couldn’t wander in and disrupt the experiments. Everything I see here is kid-friendly. I mean, if the kids in question are superstrong and violent.”
Chapel had to agree. There was nothing resembling a scientific facility in the clearing. He approached one of the bigger buildings and peered inside. It was mostly dark, but part of the roof had fallen away and he could see a line of steel cots with no mattresses. “Dormitory,” he called.
Julia had gone to look at a low, long building with multiple chimneys studding its roof. “This is a kitchen. Like the kind you’d see at a school — big enough to feed two hundred people every day.”
Chapel nodded. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s check out the schoolhouse.”
If Ellie hadn’t told them there was a schoolhouse, he might have given the building a different name. Maybe “town hall” or “auditorium.” A pair of double doors had once stood at its entrance, but one of them was missing now. Debris — broken wood, bits of glass, a pile of leaves — clogged the entry, but he kicked it out of the way and stepped inside.
Julia followed with her light, which she shone around the interior of the building. It turned out not to be two stories after all, just one big floor and most of that open space. Starlight streamed in through high, filthy windows but showed Chapel little. He could only take the place in piece by piece as the flashlight moved across its surfaces. A yellow wooden floor — cracked and scored now — stretched away to a raised stage at the far side. A podium stood on one side of the platform, and at the back of the stage stood a massive blackboard, scrawled with obscenities and doodles of—