The windows were also locked, as was a door in the rear. Curtains were drawn across the glass, except for a room in front, where they were on the floor. We could see a fabric sofa and two armchairs. They looked as if they’d have been comfortable for us. An open book lay on a side table.
We circled the cabin and stood again at the front door. “What do you think?” I asked.
“Always play it safe.” Alex knocked. Softly at first. Then louder. Nothing stirred within. He picked up a rock, measured it against a window, and paused. “Damn,” he said. Then he broke the glass. The loud, dull bang echoed through the silence.
I wondered what he’d have done had something come charging out of the bedroom.
“Blame it on you, kid,” he said. I didn’t recall having spoken, but maybe he’d gotten to know me too well. He stuck his lamp inside, then climbed through. A moment later, the door swung open.
The room had a fireplace and a stove. A pile of logs was stacked against one wall. I took a close look at them and saw only dust. A faded picture hung near the door. The dust on it was so thick that it clung to the glass and resisted all efforts to brush it off. I took it outside and washed it in the river. It was a sketch. Of the waterfall. Someone stood nearby, looking out across the falls. He wore a long blue coat, with a hood pulled up over his head. His back was to the viewer.
The way it stood, the mode of contemplation, the upper limbs pushed into pockets, seemed very human.
The chairs and the sofa were corroded. The fallen curtains were stiff and had become part of the floor. Alex examined the lamp that stood on one of the side tables. “Oil,” he said.
In the kitchen, we found a metal container. An icebox. Dishes and glasses were neatly stacked in cabinets, though most were cracked. Alex found one in good condition, wrapped it in one of the protective cloths he routinely carried during a mission, and put it in his pouch.
A staircase rose to the upper level. Two rooms opened onto the landing. Alex went up and disappeared into one of the rooms. Moments later, he came back out and looked into the second room. Then he stood at the top of the stairs, hesitating. “Chase,” he said. His voice sounded odd. Strained.
I went to the foot of the stairs. “What’s wrong?”
“They’re dead.”
I went up. “Who’s dead?”
“Everybody.” He seemed tired. Dismayed.
“I’ll be back.” I looked at the open doors, picked one, and went in. Someone was in bed.
Something.
My God. There were two small, desiccated corpses.
A couple of kids. “Yeah,” I said. They were human. Alex stood in the doorway, but he wouldn’t come any farther.
“What the hell happened here?” he said, more to himself than to me.
They’d been dead a long time. I couldn’t tell their gender. When I looked more closely, I wasn’t so sure about their humanity.
The bed was cold. The blankets were stiff. Frozen.
He took a deep breath. “There’s more.” He looked at the other doorway. I went in. There was another bed. And two more corpses. Gray and withered. Adults this time.
One was holding a gun. Alex took it. Cracked it open. “Primitive. Fires eight rounds,” he said. “Four left.”
“Murder-suicide.”
“Yes.”
“They killed their own kids.” I’d never seen anything remotely like it before.
Alex dropped the weapon on the floor. He tried to pull the blankets up to hide the corpses. But they were frozen in place. “Let’s go,” he said.
THIRTY-THREE
I arrived at last on the street where once I’d lived, and found it full of ghosts.
—Walford Candles, “The Long Road Home”
“I have news.” Belle let it hang, as if enjoying drawing out the suspense.
“I’m listening,” said Alex.
“We have a city.”
“Another one—?”
“This one has lights.”
The lights were in rows. Streetlights. Others appeared to be inside houses! And we could see an area that might have been a mall or park.
It was a glowing diamond, accentuated by the vast darkness surrounding it.
Alex threw his head back in the chair. “How about that!” he said. “Chase, we’ve hit the jackpot.” He was out of his chair, bouncing around the cabin like a kid. “Belle, are there any radio transmissions?”
“Negative, Alex. There’s no activity.”
“All right, let’s try to provoke some. Open a broadcast channel for Chase.” He smiled benignly. “Once again, the honor is yours, beautiful.”
“Alex, I think you should be the one who—”
He raised a hand to silence all protest. “A second chance to make history, Chase. How often does that happen?”
“Channel’s open,” said Belle.
I cleared my throat and tried to think of something compelling to say. “Hello. Anybody out there? This is us, up here. Hello on the ground. How’s it going?” I think, by then, I’d become skeptical of a good outcome.
We got nothing back except static.
“Belle,” Alex said, “is there any movement in the streets? Any sign of life?”
“No, Alex. I thought I saw something minutes ago, but I did not have time to ascertain what it was. Possibly canines of some sort.”
It was another port city. The town itself was laid out in squares and rectangles, stone buildings with columns, statues, and colonnades clustered in the center, surrounded by wood and brick structures. The statues depicted humans. There were two overgrown areas that might once have been parks. A few carts were visible, mostly in sheds, a few out on the streets. “Belle, what time is it down there?”
“The sun disappeared below the horizon two hours and six minutes ago.”
Alex sat and watched the screens. I sent Belle looking for anything that might tell us who’d come out here, constructed a world, and gotten lost. There was nothing on the record. But that was no surprise. Over thousands of years, you tend to lose track of things.
We passed over the area a couple of times, and I must finally have fallen asleep. Then Alex was leaning over, pushing my shoulder, asking whether I was awake.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. But I want to show you something.” He looked discouraged.
Several views of the town were on the displays. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
I was surprised to see that I’d been asleep almost five hours. “How do you mean?”
He pointed at one of the images. “This is the first set of pictures. The way it looked when Belle first saw it. In the early evening.” Then he tapped the auxiliary screen. “This is the way it looks now.”
“It looks the same to me.”
He sat back in his chair. “That’s precisely the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chase, there’s no change in the lights.”
The streetlights were still on, and the lights at the park, but that was to be expected.
“Look at the houses.”
Again, I saw no difference. Lights burned everywhere. “What are we talking about?”
“Belle, what time is it down there?”
“Dawn will occur in about three hours.”