The stranger's initial antagonism flickered out.
"Thanks." He then looked to Top. "I happen to have wild onions and carrots found fresh today. Some dry seasonings too, if you'd like to add them to your pot."
Top swung a welcoming hand. "Outta sight, dude! Shake 'em in!"
The stranger knelt to pull at his knapsack. "In answer to your first question, my full name is Wayne Truax. As far as I know, I'm the only member left of this parish. I stay here every so often. Wild crops supply the little I need and I spend my time traveling alone, trying . . . to make some sense of things."
"Good luck," snorted Geri, punctuating her words with another armload of dropped branches.
"Pretty big place for just one person," said Trennt. "Nobody else from town weathers here?"
Wayne shook his head. "None left. The Quake took some. The Flu, others. The rest moved on."
The new man said no more as he began peeling and slicing up his meal contributions.
The stew rose to a delicious simmer. After dinner, the banked fire burned down to a cozy heap of pink and sapphire coals, guaranteed to warm the travelers until morning.
Again occupying his idle time in a pointless rehash of the satchel's contents, Trennt glanced toward a crunch of approaching boots. It was Top, returning from patrol.
"Anything going on outside?"
"Negative." Top unslung his carbine to squat by the fire. "Made a few laps around the perimeter. Even the owls are sitting tight in this soup."
"Bring in the guard, if you want. I think for once everybody can share in a decent night's sleep."
The old Marine nodded and went for his bedroll.
Baker casually trundled over as soon as Top had left. After a few moments spent superficially gauging the flames, he crowded beside Trennt, speaking in an odd, off center tone.
"You know, Jimbo. I been in for doin' this from the start. But what happens if'n we don't see the bird again? Ain't once since we got back from the desert—four days now. Or what if we see it crash out in the ocean? Then what good's all this been?"
It took Trennt a moment to realize what he was hearing.
"Well? What if?" Baker asked.
Trennt leveled a condemning glance.
"I don't know what you're saying. But who got us into this? Quit now if you want and take everybody with you. But until I personally do see that plane go down in the ocean or find it plowed in somewhere, my part isn't done."
Baker nodded emphatically. "Yeah, I know. And you're right. The professional code and all that. But, shoot, Jimbo. Y'all heard ole Corealis hisself fire us. What's the sense in doin' him a job we ain't apt to finish?"
Trennt zipped his jacket with a perturbed swipe.
"I said it once, I'm not doing it for him. If anybody, it's for Kosinski. Finding the chemical samples or any data still aboard will be a bonus."
Yet, Baker dogged on. "Okay, even then. So we get the plane. What's the odds of him bein' alive or even aboard? He coulda jumped or fell out anywhere in a thousand square miles. Besides, he was just another bus driver runnin' his route. Prob'ly wouldn't even 'member, if you two met on the street. Who cares what happened to him?"
"I said, I care." Trennt paused, sensing an alien gulf spreading rapidly between them. "And why the different tune from you all of a sudden?"
Baker swung a fretful hand about. "Well, lookit us, Pard. We been at this for what—three, four weeks now? Doin' it from our own pocket. Livin' like bums on whatever nuts and berries we find. Sweatin' to death one day, freezin' the next. Always thirsty and turnin' into a traveler's aid club for any charity case we find along the way.
"All's I'm sayin' is it just might be time we call in the dogs and piss on the campfire. Cut our losses on this goose chase and get to worryin' 'bout ourselves.
'Member, from here on out, we're independent contractors. We need to get back to Freeville and make contacts to start payin' for groceries."
A passing shadow paused. It was Wayne. He seemed to linger, listening to their exchange, and after a few seconds Trennt glanced over his shoulder: "Problem?"
Wayne answered as if shrugging off a trance. "Sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It's just that I haven't seen Latin script in quite a while."
Trennt straightened, pointing to the frayed booklet sitting forgotten in his lap.
"You recognize this stuff?"
"Only as far as a language requirement of higher education. Not a personal favorite. But something I muddled through." He motioned to the folder. "May I?"
Trennt gladly handed it up. "You bet. What's it say?"
Wayne leafed through the coarse and faded pages.
"It's a diary of sorts, I'd guess."
With a last look at Trennt, Baker dropped the other matter and departed, but Wayne remained, studying the sheets. Something distressing suddenly clouded his gaunt face, then passed away. His eyes swept cautiously down.
"Mind if I ask whose this is?"
"A man who died being rescued. Why?"
"Besides me being more than a little rusty, its author was a lot better at the language than I could ever hope. A little background might help me understand his intentions better. But even so, this could take a while."
"Whatever you decipher tonight would help," said Trennt. "We're on a tight schedule."
Obligingly taking possession of the booklet, Wayne settled in yoga-style, directly across the fire. Watching him for a time in its orange wash, Trennt dozed off noting how the moment and man combined, to project the fitting likeness of a scholar extracting lost knowledge.
Trennt bolted upright in the dark. He drew quick, shallow breaths as the ragged tatters of his nightmare swirled and thinned.
The same. Always the same. Buried alive. Unable to free anyone from the strange quicksand, but himself. Him rising; them sinking, being pulled away, slipping through his grasp. The faces of Dena, Andy, and Jennifer, glowing with incandescent anguish as they cried out to him in terror.
But in the thick molasses of that horrible dreamscape there never was any release, except his own. No way to turn. Or hug. Or even say good-bye. Just feel the clawing pain of his own survival as he was drawn away; left to endure the ghastly echo of their dimming cries.
Trennt strained for breath, amazed even in his terror. It had been such a long spell since his last haunting that he foolishly believed he might have finally been freed of it for good. But, fresh as ever, the old wound was still there. Lurking in the shadows like some untiring demon, it was simply deferred to just the right moment in which to strike out and harvest its greatest pain.
Riding out his slowing chugs of breath, Trennt stayed glued in place, erect and mute; still as a trapped rabbit, until he was certain of his surroundings. Through fading beats of a thundering heart, he dared slide his eyes about the still-sleeping forms. There was no motion illuminated in the firelight. With luck, he'd been quiet enough.
Damn.
Yards away, a shadow separated from that of the truck. Of all people, it was the woman, gazing over at him like some unwitting voyeur.
Trennt shifted about. He hoped his feigned nonchalance would conceal him, but, as soon as she spoke, he knew otherwise.
"You okay?"
He sucked in a quick, self-conscious breath. "Yeah."
"No one awake but me," she added in an odd, reassuring tone.
They faced each other for a brittle moment. Then Trennt snatched up his weapon and climbed to his feet. Shouldering the cold shotgun, he started off through the dark.
He stopped in the crumbling church vestibule, staring out at the dense fogbank as tentative footsteps trailed up behind.
"You loved them a lot," Geri declared without preamble.
He answered in the first civil tone he'd found for the woman.
"Not enough to keep them alive."
"I'm sorry," she offered. "We've all lost people we've loved, all of us powerless in one way or another to prevent it. The best we can do is keep them alive in our hearts."
With those few words he felt a quick and obscure need to uncover his grief and, for the only time he could remember, Trennt spoke of himself.
"We were logging people, from right here, upstate. My family got dragged to Chicago with the census because I'd been born there when my folks passed through one time. So, like in the Bible, it was where we all had to go when the government decided on that national head count and 'skills redistribution,' after the plague.
"What a nightmare. Buses arriving from all over the country with us outsiders. Not wanted by the locals, not liked by arrivals from different states—and blamed by everyone for starting the N.A. Flu. Might as well've blamed us for causing the Quake.
"All us West Coasters were packed into one downtown reservation like the worst kind of outcasts. Little sanitation or clean water; everybody catching everyone else's germs and, with the ozone inversions, coughing and hacking all the time. Those really sick barely stayed alive on public medicine and rations illegally reduced, just because of who they were.
"Then one day a rich kid wandered into our sector, a stupid-ass, punk, rich kid out for kicks or a dare from his buddies. Maybe looking for cheap sex from one of the widows desperate to make ends meet. A pigeon served up on a silver platter. And right in front of me."
Trennt's eyes brimmed with tears. He continued slowly.
"So easy. He was lost and scared. I wouldn't've even needed to hurt him, just shake him down and turn him loose. But a fool like me let him go. Even then, with my whole family sick as dogs, I couldn't even steal from someone who had more than he deserved. I dragged the dumb ass out of there and didn't let anybody touch him. And my reward was to have everyone turn on my family because of it.
"Better if they'd killed us. But they didn't. They shunned us, instead—and that was worse. In the middle of all that city we were locked away by a wall of silence like we were the only ones there."
Trennt let out a long, deliberate sigh.
"Probably nothing could really have been done for my wife and kids, anyway. I don't know. But knowing no one would lift a finger to help me tend them made it worse than you can imagine.
"They all died on the same night, burning up with fever and choking on their own phlegm. Next day the sanitation department bagged them for that week's cremation at Soldier Field. Everything I loved was mixed with old tires and cooked away in that black greasy smoke drifting out over Lake Michigan."
He chuckled mirthlessly. "Funny thing. Through it all I never got so much as a sniffle. Afterward, I begged God to kill me. When He didn't answer, I asked the devil. Finally, I gave up on them both and everything in between.
"I thought hard about different ways of doing myself in. But they all seemed too easy, compared to what my family was dealt. So, I came to this work, somehow hoping it'd offer me a way to hurt slow and long in payment for failing them."
Trennt drew a wretched breath.
"The worst thing a man can do is outlive his children."
Another silence sprouted between them, one as heavy and labored as any of the hateful, intolerant moments they'd shared since meeting. But this time, it was different. Here was a new silence, one underscored with patience, one punctuated by a hand that stretched through the cold darkness and came to settle, warm on his arm.
Trennt wheeled slowly toward it—to thank her, maybe to apologize for everything prior. But she was suddenly too close for any of it. Wanting to speak, he could only focus on the rubied highlights of her auburn hair. And even now, after so many hard days on the move, he was starkly aware of how fresh and sweet she seemed.
From nowhere Trennt felt a bloom of desire spark and smolder deep inside him. He shuddered before its unsettling, abrupt heat. It was preposterous. And wrong—all wrong. Wrong for the time and place. Wrong for the memory of what he'd had with Dena. Yet those very facts only made his need more urgent.
Trennt fell back on his trusted defenses, but the fabric of logic and restraint which had so long sustained him began to quickly unravel. A critical glue was giving way inside that was both frightening and wonderful. Like a suicidal moth, he dove headlong into the flames.
Trennt grabbed Geri by the shoulders and reeled her back to him. He layered the woman in fierce, greedy kisses; desperate to smother and absorb every spare inch of her warm, soft flesh.
But there was no response in Geri. She merely stood fast in the moment, isolating herself from the too-familiar method of handling. Mentally leaving shore, she began the slow and protective backpedal into deeper, secluded waters.
Yet for the first time, she found that dependable harbor gone suddenly shallow. With no warning, she was left aground on something rare, energizing, and all-terrifying. A storm of raw craving blazed to hot life within her as well. Tested old battlements swayed drunkenly to the man's determined caress.
Geri drew a sustaining breath. She struggled to remember that she utterly detested him. But the notion withered pitifully in his grasp. And with a final gush, she abandoned herself and plunged headlong into Trennt's embrace.
Her arms lashed tightly about his neck. Her lips met his with equal passion. Thrust together in this dark and indifferent arena, man and woman clung to each other and the fragile moment. Their fury was a balm for all the cold and lonely nights ever spent alone.
But the gears of an indifferent universe ground quickly onward and fast-rising floodwaters were loosed against them.
Trennt blinked first. The mechanism setting him aflame sputtered and starved, and as quickly as it had taken flight, his racing system laid on the brakes. In an instant, an unstoppable flow of molten lust was quick-frozen in the heaviest shame.
Geri felt the stumble, but denied it. She stretched across the sudden crevice, willing to bridge and compensate, yet driving herself harder into his arms was a lost effort. The spell had broken and the moment crumbled to one of mutual embarrassment.
Arms were disengaged and retracted; lips parted, heads bowed, eyes swept aside. Trennt retreated, back inside his tempered core. Geri withdrew into familiar, secluded waters.