They stood silent and grateful—except Baker, who broke the spell with a brusque grab at his guns.
"Hot damn!" he yipped, stuffing them back in his belt. "Felt bare-ass naked without 'em."
Geri soberly examined the food cache.
"A lot given by those who don't have much to spare."
Trennt motioned toward the medkit.
"Take some out for us. Leave the rest here."
Geri did as instructed, but coming upon more of the thick sugar and salt electrolyte packs, her fingers paused. After a moment, several were eased out and slid deep into a cargo pocket.
They'd passed through the town's chilly fringes for the better part of a damp afternoon. Weaving a trail through the flattened roofs and buckled, weed-grown streets of some extinct blue collar burg, they toured yet another quake victim—one more left with its neck wrung and its name forever lost in the growing bitter drizzle.
Rising from beside the truck, Trennt swiped mud and pine needles from his knee as Top jumped into the chill beside him.
"Now what?"
"Loose rim."
The old man scowled at yet another in the irritating rash of recent mechanical ailments.
"Damn, Jack! Never, ever had this many gremlins hit me in any one trip. Next thing'll be a flat in the puncture-proof tires. Lugs okay?"
Trennt rubbed them again. "Yeah. Just in time. Threads were starting to fret. A couple miles more and they would've begun to pop."
Again, it wasn't anything grave; merely another quirk in the chain of loose nuts, bolts, and assorted fittings, which had sprouted in the week since their return to the woodlands.
Trennt surveyed the dismal swirling mist. Sodden tufts of shredded house insulation drooped from surrounding treetops like grotesque wads of filthy pink moss. Splintered lumber, twisted sheet metal, and tumbled brick walls cast foreboding shadows as far as he could see. There wasn't any night cover that didn't appear inadequate or risky.
"No sense pushing on and chancing a wreck in this soup," he declared. "Let's tighten up the rim and pull over in that tree stand for the night. Seems like the best we can do."
It looked to be the miserable start of another chilly evening, napping upright and digging deep for warmth inside their foul clothes. But drawing up her collar, Geri spied a dim flash of color and pointed.
"What's that?"
Top swung the truck's spotlight over. In its damp glow a broad amber-glazed shape rose: the shiny brick of a wall nearly smothered in wild brush and vines. Above it flashed a crazy glint of shattered tinted glass.
"A church," Geri gushed, answering her own question.
"Could be a jail cell for all I care!" squawked Baker. "Tonight it's home an' dry. Let's scope it out."
A quick examination revealed a partially collapsed, though stabilized wall and roof; a complimentary drive-through entrance for the truck and natural vent for an indoor fire.
First inside, Top played his flashlight about the moldering brick and fallen plaster. Aside from its scattered pews, crackled marble altar, and random artifacts, the sizeable building was a shell.
His light bounced harshly off a stainless steel baptism font, then tracked up a bird-stained wall to a clump of uneasy pigeons roosting in the rafters. The birds bunched uncomfortably against the invading glare, but did not fly.
Top dropped his beam happily.
"Far out! If someone wants to wrestle that stew pot from the wall and start a cook fire, I think we just found supper."
Windfall branches were dragged in and water added to the remaining gourd meat. Mixed with soup stock from the half dozen hapless birds Top and Baker clubbed and plucked, the first hot meal in many days began to stew. Its simmering aroma and bright hearth imparted a certain, quick hominess to the dank and abandoned building.
The group split up to gather wood and explore. Top, having taken up station as self-appointed chef, brought out his private stash and plopped down comfortably by the fire to indulge in a predinner smoke.
Beside him, Baker unloaded his weapons. He set the edge of a rough, whisking hand to the marble altar top before shamelessly pouring out his cleaning tools. He noticed the stone surface didn't seem as dusty as it might have been, left alone for who knew how long. But he continued on and soon the clinking of tempered steel parts jingled through the deserted sanctuary.
From his spot at the fire Top took a deep hit off his smoke, shifted to a side, and curiously scouted Baker's exacting movements.
"You go through that same bull on every piece, every night, even if you don't use them?"
Baker answered without looking up. "It relaxes me. Besides, precision goods need care. Not like that old steam driven piece of yours. Where'd you find that muzzle loader anyway, the Civil War?"
Top affectionately nudged a dirty boot against the SKS carbine beside him.
"My daddy brought it home from the Nam—place you probably never even heard of. Dinks knew how to make them last without all the crap you go through."
"Well, just stay downwind if yah ever have to pull the trigger. Don't want that blowin' up around me."
Top drew another hit from his smoke and surveyed Baker.
"How many dudes've you greased, man?"
Baker shrugged. "Quit keepin' score."
"Bet you've bagged your limit."
The slender gunman disassembled his custom-made sniper rifle and lovingly reset each piece in its formfitted case. "The Good Book said when you find a talent, you should let your light shine on through. Army gave me the trainin' and job opportunities. The rest is all natural ability."
Across the church, Top saw Trennt disappear up a run of dim choir-loft stairs.
"You two been tight a long time, huh?"
"Me 'n' Jimbo? Like ticks."
"Meet up in the Army?"
"Yep. Doin' LURP work down in the Amazon war—long range recon stuff. He was an 82
nd
Airborne trooper and me, a sniper. Had us spots in a nice ole Special Ops squad.
"We'd go up past the DMZ. Snoop around. Blow a bridge here. Wax some enemy official there. Mebbe plant laser homing devices for our planes along high-traffic guerrilla routes. Mess with 'em. You know."
The gunman paused in his chores, smiling fondly. "That was good duty. No questions, no rules. Just do the job. Kinda sad when it ended. We got disbanded and the Army went back to all its silly-ass stateside regulations. Me 'n' Jimbo, we lost track of each other until just a year or so ago. And here we are today, doin' almost the same thing, together again. Funny how stuff works out."
"Deju vu," Top concurred.
Then it was Baker's turn to critique and he glanced down with a discerning eye.
"Musta dropped the hammer a time or two yourse'f, Whiskers. Why the questions?"
Top sucked another deep hit from his roach. He blew a smoke ring and regarded its rise toward the cracked ceiling.
"Old-fashioned I guess. War or self-defense is one thing; a gun for hire is another. I don't care to be somebody's amigo today and their dinero tomorrow."
Something caused Baker to pause, but he didn't speak.
"Back in the desert," continued the old-timer, "you'd have taken on that whole black rifle platoon right there out in the open, wouldn't you?"
Baker replied without hesitation.
"In a blink. I'm still disappointed I didn't kill ole scarface. He'd better hope we never meet up again."
Top rocked his head in sour amusement.
"You are one certified trip, Jack. I only hope if we ever do get in a firefight on this gig, you're half as good as you make out to be."
Baker grinned privately. "Time comes, watch me work."
"Whatever turns you on. Just don't trip out and blow your mind like back at the tribe. That's a number ten, baa-aad scene."
Baker looked at the fire from under heavy-lidded eyes. A dark chuckle filled his throat.
Geri took in the church's ruined grandeur as she gathered kindling. Pausing before a huge shattered window, she studied the random shards of leftover color still clinging determinedly to its weathered leadwork. Even in this advanced dilapidation, a certain nobility remained here that she admired.
Her study was interrupted by a flash of movement up the dim adjacent stairway. It was Trennt, involved in a more practical investigation of the ruins. Minutes later, he descended the choir loft steps to find Geri, kindling under arm, blocking his path.
"Must've been beautiful here at Christmas," she commented idly.
Trennt slowed, yet he didn't answer as he came down, set to begin a search of the far side. But Geri wasn't about to be put off—or let him alone.
"What is it with you?" she demanded. "What exactly are you supposed to be? No one out for kicks, like your friend over there. He lights up every time he fingers a gun. But there's no cheap thrill like that for you. So why? What was it with that little tribegirl back there in the desert? Or in getting me 'back to my people'? In your mind, are you the great twenty-first-century crusader? Some rough and ready, new generation Don Quixote, rescuing damsels in the second millennium?"
Trennt hovered in an ill-at-ease stop. When he tried starting around her, the woman swayed with him.
"Well?"
So cornered, he told her, "You ask a lot of questions that are none of your concern."
A wicked smile crossed her face. "Humor me."
"Okay," came his even-tempered reply. "Why not me? Somebody's got to do it."
But Geri stood with eyes dull, already having passed other judgment.
"As long as it pays."
"Yeah." Trennt smirked. "That's right. Big money. I'm saving up for my new Corvette. Of course, I don't know that the factory will be taking orders any time this century."
His flippant answer didn't put her off.
"Crusader or not, down deep inside you're still no better than Baker. You're dried out and used up, Trennt. You've become some kind of sick monument to your own pain and that makes you even more dangerous than he is."
Trennt coolly regarded her, head to foot and back. His own gaze narrowed as he took the offensive.
"Lady, you don't know a thing about me or what I do. And I wouldn't get in line for a halo just yet, if I were you. But if you want to ask questions, ask yourself something. What was your sainted Doctor Keener thinking the whole time he was working on whatever dark project it was back there? It didn't seem they were exactly holding a gun to his head for results."
He'd touched a nerve. Geri straightened, yet she held her ground. "Maybe I deserve that. But he doesn't. You saw him. Was he the picture of a power hungry madman? Or just a simple, misused and innocent genius?
"You say I don't know you. Well, you didn't know him, either. But I did. And he was a good, gentle man. Giving Martin a task was no different than handing a jigsaw puzzle to a very bright child. No politics or practical reality entered into it. Just finding a solution. But you're not the type to—"
A thundering voice bellowed down from the choir loft.
"This place might be in ruins, but it still deserves respect for what it once was!"
Trennt shoved the woman away. His sidearm was out and on target with Top and Baker; all simultaneously trained on the darkened voice as it continued, unafraid.
"Any of us travelers who take shelter here should treat it with proper respect—by keeping our voices down and not defiling its altar with guns!"
Even at this distance, Trennt could sense Baker's trigger finger constricting and he raised a belaying hand.
He called beyond. "Who are you?"
"Someone spending the night. Like yourself."
"Step out so we can see you."
From the shadows a tall and haggard man of scarecrow proportions appeared. He said no more, but crunched down the grit-covered stairs of the other loft, walking fearlessly into their midst, and headed directly for Baker.
The stranger stopped at the altar. He gazed appalled at the obscene streaks of dirty gun oil glistening across its web of fine marble veins. When he did speak again his voice was restrained, as though addressing an imbecile, forever beyond understanding the profanity of his actions.
"Do you have any idea what this place is?"
Lowering his gun hand, Baker tossed his head nonchalantly about.
"Yeah. A mess."
"It never occurred to you that it might be a house of God?"
Baker shrugged, appraising the newcomer.
"Well, by the look o' things, Cuz, I'd say He done moved away."
The stranger lunged at the clutter of parts. But Baker was quicker, yanking the man's shirt across the dingy marble block and jamming the pistol squarely in his forehead.
From behind its cocked hammer the shooter's tone issued cool as the grave. "Don't ever try somethin' like that again, Cuz. Never."
Though frozen at mid-stride, the unarmed man didn't buckle.
"You've obviously never been in a church before."
"A time or two. But I found me a better religion. The one stuck to your head. Care for a hollow-point baptism?"
Still, the man didn't flinch and even Baker yielded a respectful grunt.
"You don't rile easy. I'll give yah that."
More so, Trennt felt something refined and unthreatening in the stranger's bearing. He stepped up.
"What's your name, friend?"
"Wayne," came his reply. Nothing more.
"You alone?"
"Yes."
"What're you doing here?"
"What's it matter?"
" 'Cause Jimbo says so," chimed in Baker.
Top looked up from his stew tending. Also seeing no apparent danger in the man, he smiled and shook his head.
"Don't mind Slick. He's always quick to make friends."
"Screw you, Whiskers! I don't trust nobody I don't know!"
Trennt motioned Baker's gun away and obliged the stranger with a provisional nod.
"We can leave it as your business—provided we're not in for any surprises. Because then, my enthusiastic friend there would have my full permission to deal with you as he sees fit."
Baker settled in behind a broad smile.
"In the meantime, Wayne, you're welcome to share our fire and meal . . . if you don't mind it being made from some earlier members of tonight's congregation."