They were always there, the remnants of the old world, the refuse left over from the destruction and the madness. He felt a certain sympathy for the creatures that prowled the night, hunting and being hunted. They hadn’t wanted this any more than he had. They, too, were victims of humankind’s reckless behavior and poor judgment.
He thought of Tessa and tried to figure out what else he could do to persuade her to come to live with him. But her attachment to her parents was so strong that he couldn’t see any way around it. He resented it, but he understood it, too. He knew that her feelings for them must be as strong as his own were for her. But things could not continue like this. Sooner or later, something would happen to change them. He knew it instinctively. What worried him was that when it did, Tessa would be standing in the way.
He would talk to her about it again tomorrow night. He would talk to her about it every night until she changed her mind.
When he reached the underground, he paused to take a careful look around, making sure that nothing was tracking him. Satisfied, he went into the building that led down to their home. He went quickly now, Cheney at his side, feeling suddenly tired and ready to sleep. The heavy door was barred and locked, and he gave the requisite series of taps to alert Owl of his presence.
But it was not Owl who opened the door. It was Candle. She stood just inside as he entered, small and waif-like in her nightdress, red hair tousled.
Hawk waited for Cheney as he padded over to his accustomed sleeping spot, and then closed and locked the door behind them. When he glanced back at Candle, he saw for the first time how big and scared her eyes were.
He knelt in front of her right away. “What is it?”
“A dream,” she whispered. “Owl went to bed, and I stayed up to wait for you and I had a dream. I saw something. It was big and scary.”
“What was it, Candle?” he asked. He put his hands on her thin shoulders and found that she was shaking. He drew her close to him at once, hugging her.
“Tell me.”
He could no longer see her face, pressed close to him as she was, but he could feel the shake of her head against his shoulder. “I couldn’t be sure. But it’s coming here, and if it finds us, it will hurt us.” She paused, her breath catching in her throat. “It will kill us.”
A vision, Hawk thought without saying so to the little girl. And Candle’s visions were never wrong. He ran his hand along her silky hair, then down her thin back. She was still shaking.
“We have to leave right away,” she whispered. “Right now.”
“Shhhh,” he soothed, tightening his arms to steady her. “That’s enough for tonight, little one.” Right now, she had said. At once he thought of Tessa.
Chapter EIGHT
ALTHOUGH LOGAN TOM hadn’t expected to be able to track down the slave camp—hadn’t even been certain, in fact, that it was there—he stumbled on it almost without trying. Daylight was failing and darkness closing all about the countryside as he drove west out of Iowa into whatever lay beyond—he couldn’t remember and didn’t care to stop long enough to check maps that no longer had relevance—when he saw the glow of the watch fires burning on the horizon like a second setting of the sun. Crimson against the pale shading of twilight, the glow drew his attention instantly, signaling its presence in a way that all but invited him in for a closer look. He had seen this glow before—in other times, at other camps—and he realized quickly enough what it was and drove toward it.
Darkness had fallen completely by the time he arrived at a dirt road that led in from the main highway, driving the S-l 50 with the lights off and the big engine idled down to a low hum. As he approached, the watchtowers and the barricades took shape and the slave pens became recognizable. The glow emanated from a combination of lights powered by solar generators and pillars of flame rising out of fire pits. The latter gave the landscape a hellish and surreal look, as if devil imps with pitchforks might be prowling the countryside. The camp was huge, stretching two miles across and at least as deep. It had been a stockyards once, he guessed, that had been turned by the once-men and their mentors to a different use. The odor of cows and manure and hay was strong, although he knew that the smell could be deceiving and its source something else entirely.
By the time he cut the engine, still well back from the watchtowers and their lights, he could hear the mewling of the prisoners. He sat motionless in the AV, ashamed and enraged by the sounds, unable to stop himself from listening. He could make out shadowy forms moving back and forth behind the fences in the hazy glow of the lights, a listless, shuffling mass.
Humans become slaves, become the living dead, made to work and to breed by the once-men and their demon masters. It was the fate decreed for all who weren’t killed outright during the hunts. It was the punishment visited on humans for their foolishness and inaction when the collapse of civilization began, and it was horrifying beyond imagining.