Madelyn began to pick her way across the stream. She lost her balance, but caught herself with a hand on a rock. “Do people still do that? Do they name the girls after the fathers and the boys after the mothers?”
Jacob watched her cross and then seemed to float over the rocks with no effort. He joined her on the other side.
“No,” he said. “People pick names out of books. So nobody lives around here?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Dad thought that more people might have sought refuge up here in the mountains. He said we might find some trading going on, you know?”
Madelyn shook her head slowly.
“If you see any people around, expect trouble.”
#
#
#
#
#
Madelyn put her hand out and stopped Jacob in his tracks. He was smart enough to keep his mouth shut while she evaluated what they were looking at. The cabin was sitting there, right where she had left it. The door was still closed. The rocking chairs still sat on the porch.
“Someone has been here,” she said.
Jacob fell in behind her as she approached.
Madelyn circled the cabin. She seemed to sniff the air as she walked. She scuffed her shoe across some rocks on the north side of the place. She backed up and peered at the roof.
“Are they inside?” Jacob asked.
She shook her head.
They completed their tour of the outside and came back to the porch. Madelyn pointed the barrel of her gun at the door.
“There’s no sign of tampering on the door,” she said.
Madelyn dug out her keys. Electronic locks could be hacked without leaving a mark. Her grandmother’s old deadbolt had a serpent key. Those couldn’t be picked without it showing. Still, she pushed open the door and stood for a second, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.
“Get in. Quick.”
Once inside, she buttoned up the door again. One glance around the place put her at ease. Whoever it was hadn’t gotten inside.
“You’re in there,” she said. She pointed Jacob towards the door to her grandmother’s room. He was already headed that direction. The boy paid a heathy respect to the wall of skulls as he passed. Madelyn went to check the security cameras. For years she had managed to avoid interacting with technology. She had lived in concert with it—allowing it to recycle her heat and provide water—but the past few days had brought constant fiddling with controls and viewing screens.
She ran the footage back, watching the time-codes and hoping that she was wrong. She kept backing up until she saw a view of herself leaving the compound. Just to be sure, she went back even more.
She missed the part when Jacob left.
Madelyn frowned and ran the footage forward again. She saw herself outside, and then saw herself go back in to pack Jacob a bag. She hated the way she looked on camera—she was puffy and old.
“What are you doing?” Jacob asked.
She turned, startled.
“You scared the life out of me. I was trying to see if someone has been poking around this place or not. No sign yet.”
“It would be well after that,” he said, pointing at the timecode.
“I know. I didn’t want to miss anything.”
She ran it forward again, saw herself leave, and then ran quickly through a full cycle of the sun.
“Stop!” he said. “You’re going too fast.”
She was definitely going too fast to spot anyone who might have snuck around while she was away. But that wasn’t her objective at the moment. While the footage ran forward, Madelyn had decided that she wanted to find out something else. She wanted to see footage of her approach of just a few minutes ago. She wanted to see herself and Jacob walk up to the camp. She especially wanted to see Jacob on camera.
He reached forward and pushed her hand from the controls.
He backed it up to the evening when nobody was home. He slowed the playback until they could see a shadow moving from one camera to another. Finally, when the figure moved to the camera mounted on the porch, they saw a decent shot.
It was an old man. Jacob zoomed in until the man’s face filled the screen. One lens of his glasses was cracked. His open mouth showed them as many gaps as teeth.
“Do you know him?” Jacob asked.
Madelyn shook her head. She was only partially lying. She recognized the man, but she really didn’t
know
him.
“Who is he?”
“Nobody,” she said. The years hadn’t been kind to him. She struggled to come up with a name. None would come.
“You know who he is,” Jacob said.
Madelyn shook her head.
“Mac.” His look contained an unspoken accusation.
“I’ll set up the guns. How well do you shoot?” Madelyn asked.
“I don’t shoot people unless there’s a good reason.”
“He’ll give us a reason.”
T
HEY
STAYED
INSIDE
UNTIL
evening. As soon as the shadows moved over the north side of the roof, Madelyn showed Jacob how to climb up and creep across to one of the two lookout positions. By then, she had gone through her old journal and put a name to the man.
His name was Gabriel Saxon. At least that what he had called himself. David was the last one to run him off, and Gabriel had finally limped away with one of David’s bullets in his thigh.
“You’re covering Sacrifice Rock and the old access road,” Madelyn said.
“I told you that I won’t shoot a person.”
“Will you shoot if he shoots first?”
Jacob nodded.
“Good. Then you’re going to shoot. Gabriel Saxon will shoot as soon as he sees you. If you survive, I hope you manage to drill one into his skull. I should have done it years ago.”
“I thought you said that nobody lived around here.”
“No people,” she said. “I didn’t say anything about demons. Gabriel Saxon is nothing more than a demon.”
Madelyn took the other lookout. She was ninety-percent sure that Gabriel would come from either the deep woods or the path that led up from the stream, so that’s the direction she was covering. She wouldn’t wait for him to fire. More than likely, she wouldn’t even wait to make sure it was Gabe she was shooting at. As soon as she saw something move, it was getting bullets thrown at it.
She lowered herself down to the roof and waited.
The metal roof was warm. The gun was cool. Madelyn existed in the temperature range between the two.
“Tell me what you know about this guy,” Jacob said over his shoulder.
“Talking will give away our position. It’s a bad idea.”
“You said he wouldn’t come until full dark. We have a while, don’t we?”
Madelyn frowned. She hated it when people used her own arguments against her.
“What’s the point? If he’s nosing around here, then he’s desperate. Given desperation, only one of us is going to make it through the night. What do you need to know about a man who’s going to be dead before morning?”
“Maybe if you convince me that he’s desperate, I will be more inclined to shoot him on sight. Then you’ll have an even better chance of surviving.”
Madelyn thought.
It was a compelling argument in a way. She was pretty good at defense, but there was always a chance that Gabriel would win in a firefight.
“Who was that guy you told me about? Christian? You said he was a bachelor?”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. She could tell by his voice that he was squeezing one eye shut and looking through his sight. That was good.
“Why did he cut those people with his machete?”
“Christian didn’t run fast. He knew that the only way he could outrun the others was if they were injured. He cut them so that he could get away while the injured were being collected.”
“Right, but why?”
“Survival.”
“
Selfish
survival. He didn’t care about the group and he didn’t care about humanity. He wanted to save his own skin for no reason.”
“I suppose,” Jacob said. “Aren’t we all motivated by that though?”
“Not all of us. Some people are motivated to save themselves because they have a family to take care of. Some people will sacrifice themselves for their spouses or their children. There’s a need to protect the ones we love. It’s selfish, but only in the broadest terms. We know that life isn’t worth living without them.”
Jacob didn’t answer. She could hear the fabric of his shirt rubbing as he nodded along.
“Sometimes you get an extreme loner who doesn’t play by the rules. Sounds like your Christian was one. This Gabriel fellow is certainly that way. David once said that Gabe ate his own family to stay alive. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think David did either. But the reason that David was able to exaggerate like that and make it seem so plausible wasn’t a coincidence. With one look at Gabriel, you could tell that it was something the man was capable of. He’s smart and dangerous.”
“So why didn’t David kill him back then if he knew the man was so dangerous.”
“David stopped just short of killing him. The last time I saw Gabriel, David ran him off. Frankly, I would have bet good money that Gabriel
did
die. I was surprised when I saw him on that screen.”
She heard the metal slide as Jacob verified his chamber.
“There are people who won’t be satisfied with what they have, even though they have enough. When we met Gabe, he seemed healthy and well-fed. Still, he wanted us to invite him in. David saw through it immediately. The guy wanted to get a look inside my defenses so he could see what I had and the best way to steal it.”
“If you had a community up here, theft would be punished with excommunication. The problem would disappear quickly.”
“Unless the thief killed the people he stole from. Then he might get away with it.”
“Cameras that post right to the ether would solve that.”
“You can’t cover the whole world with cameras, and you can’t expect someone to look at the footage.”
Jacob didn’t have an immediate answer for that.
“Gabriel caught me alone one day. I don’t know exactly what he planned to do. He stripped me of my weapons and ordered me to put myself face down on the ground. I hate to think what would have happened if David hadn’t tracked us down.”
“That’s when David ran him off?”
“Yes. Normally, if someone puts a bullet in you, the best thing to do is attack. They’re not going to be stupid enough to fire again. Gabriel and I both saw the same truth in David’s eyes. He would have fired fifty times if Gabriel hadn’t run.”
#
#
#
#
#
“Mac!” Jacob whispered.
She blinked and realized what she was looking at. Gabriel was creeping through with woods with his eyes trained on the cabin. The man hadn’t spotted her yet. It was lucky that Jacob had warned her. She might have let him reach the cover of the old outhouse.
“Get out of sight,” Madelyn whispered over her shoulder. “He doesn’t know about you. You can surprise him.”
Gabriel looked up. His ears were sharp to pick up her whisper.
She put her eye to the sight and focused the crosshairs on his neck. She waited for him to dodge.
Gabriel was an old man. He might have one good feint in him, but then she was going to put an end to him with her bullet.
When his hands shot up, she nearly squeezed off a round.
Gabriel shook his head.
“Who are you talking to?” he asked. In the still evening, his voice carried easily.
“Nobody. What do you want, Gabriel?”
Her finger twitched. It was time to end the man, but her finger wouldn’t obey.
“I came to tell you that it’s over, Maddie. The world belongs to us again. Everything is fixed.”
“This isn’t one of your better tricks, Gabe. Nothing has changed.”
“It has, Maddie! Check your machine. The ether has been abuzz for weeks. Hell, what do you think I’m doing out here wandering around when it’s almost dark.”
“You came last time in the dark. You might be smart, but you prefer to act dumb.”
“Maddie, don’t take my word for it, but go check your ether. You can watch a documentary about the process. People have been trapping the Zumbidoes for months. They drew them down out of the woods into Fairbanks and buttoned them all up.”
That movie had initially struck her as real. It seemed preposterous that people would have the time or energy to make a fictional movie these days. Everyone was too focused on survival. Jacob was the one who had convinced her that it wasn’t real.
“Jacob?” she whispered. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
Her nephew didn’t answer. She glanced over her shoulder. The gun was there, propped up on her second lookout. The young man wasn’t.
“Look, Maddie,” Gabe said while he did a slow spin, “I’m unarmed. I’m camped down at Circle Poke. That’s as far as I could get my truck up here. I know I did you wrong before, and that’s why I climbed all the way up here to make sure you had the good news. Please take my apology and check your ether. If you want a ride down into the city, I’ll stay at the Poke for three days. I won’t bother you again.”
She let him back away.
When his face was hidden by the bough of a pine, and all she could see was his legs, she had the urge to ventilate his leg again in David’s memory. Something inside her was broken. She couldn’t find the strength to pull the trigger.
Regardless of what he had said, she was going to have to spend the night up on the roof, watching. Caution dictated it.
#
#
#
#
#
Madelyn had a cramp in her leg that wouldn’t go away. She flexed and released, over and over. Her brain found the worst-case scenario and fixated on it. There was a clot in her leg and it was sending off little clusters of cells into her bloodstream. Any second, one would lodge in her brain and take her life.