“Absolutely,” agreed Benny weakly.
In single file they followed Lilah around the clearing toward the cliff wall. There was no way anyone could have picked out a safe route through without knowing exactly where to step. Benny was impressed.
Along the wall was a screen of bushy pine trees, and it wasn’t until they’d all reached them that Benny and Nix could see that there was a narrow path behind them, which led to a depression behind the waterfall. The water cascaded out and away from the wall, and there was a cave mouth five feet high and seven feet wide. The whole mouth of the cave was covered with multiple sheets of heavy industrial plastic that Lilah had scavenged from somewhere. She pushed through, and they followed her into a short, damp chamber. Another set of plastic was hung ten feet in, and behind that was a thick layer of heavy drapes. Benny was blown away by how smart this was. The plastic kept the water out and the drapes kept light in, and together they muffled the roar of the waterfall. Lilah went in first and Benny followed, with Nix holding the drapes open to allow diffused light in. Lilah apparently didn’t need it, because she went into the darkest depths of the cave, and soon there was the scrape and smell of a sulfur match. Lilah lit an oil lantern, and a comfortable yellow glow expanded out to fill the huge inner chamber.
Benny and Nix were speechless. The cave was a treasure trove. There was a comfortable chair and a small table, a wire rack of dishes, barrels filled with canned food, some old toys, and books. Thousands and thousands of books. Technical manuals and novels, anthologies of short stories and collections of poetry, biographies of great thinkers and joke books, magazines and comic books. There were stacks of books on every surface, heaped against the walls. Even in the town library, Benny had never seen so many books. Nix looked dazed, her mouth open in a silent “oh.”
Lilah looked from them to the books and back again. “I read,” she said simply.
Then Benny noticed the second thing that Lilah had been collecting. There was a table made from boards stretched across stacks of heavy encyclopedias, and the table bent under the weight of weapons. Handguns and boxes of bullets, knives and clubs, spears and axes. Enough weapons to start—and win—a war. Benny realized Lilah was doing exactly that—fighting a war. He walked over to the table, aware the Lilah was watching him, and saw that a how-to manual for making bullet reloads was open and looked well-thumbed. There were coffee cans filled with lead pellets and gunpowder, and a bullet mold with castings for various calibers. Several men in town had similar setups.
“This is amazing,” he said.
She shrugged. It was commonplace to her. It was her day-to-day life.