He wanted to see that one more time. Even though it wasn’t much to see.
One lone cow, and it’d been off its feet for a bit. He could tell, even from his elevated vantage point, that the beast was dead and beginning to droop. Its skin hung across its bones like laundry on a line.
Of course that happened out on the trail. Every now and again.
But a quick sweep of the vista showed him three more meaty corpses blistering and popping on the pie-crust plain.
He said, “Huh.” Because he could see a few more, dotting the land to the north, and to the south a little bit too. If he could get a higher view, he imagined there might be enough scattered bodies to sketch the Goodnight-Loving, pointing a ghastly arrow all the way to Salt Lake City. It looked strange and sad. It looked like the aftermath of something.
He did not think of any battlefields in east Virginia.
He did not think of Stanley, lying in a ditch behind a broken, folded fence.
He ran through a mental checklist of the usual suspects. Disease? Indians? Mexicans? But he was too far away to detect or conclude anything, and that was just as well. He didn’t want to smell it anyway. He was plenty familiar with the reek, that rotting sweetness tempered with the methane stink of bowels and bloat.
Another check of the gauges told him more of what he already knew. One way or another, sooner rather than later, the Majestic was going down for a refill.
Walter wondered what ship he’d get next. A two-seater, maybe? Something with a little room to stretch out? He liked being able to lift his leg off the floor and let it rest where a copilot ought to go, but almost never went. That’d be nice.
Oh well. He’d find out when he got there, or in the morning.
Out the front windscreen, which screened almost no wind and kept almost no bugs out of his mouth, the sun was setting—the nebulous orb melting into an orange and pink line against the far, flat horizon.
In half an hour the sky was the color of blueberry jam, and only a lilac haze marked the western edge of the world.
The Majestic was riding lower in the air because Walter was conserving the thrust and letting the desert breeze move him as much as the engine. Coasting was a pleasant way to sail and the lights of Reluctance should be up ahead, any minute.
Some minute.
One of these minutes.
Where were they?
Walter checked the compass and peeked at his instruments, which told him only that he was on course and that Reluctance should be a mile or less out. But where were the lights? He could always see the lights by now; he always knew when to start smiling, when the gaslamps and lanterns meant people, and a drink, and a place to sleep.
Wait. There. Maybe? Yes.
Telltale pinpricks of white, laid out patternless on the dark sprawl.
Not so many as usual, though. Only a few, here and there. Haphazard and lost-looking, as if they were simply the remainder—the hardy leftovers after a storm, the ones which had not gone out quite yet. There was a feebleness to them, or so Walter thought as he gazed out and over and down. He used his elbow to wipe away the dirt on the glass screen as if it might be hiding something. But no. No more lights revealed themselves, and the existing flickers of white did not brighten.
Walter reached for his satchel and slung it over his chest, where he could feel the weight of his brother’s Colt bumping up against his ribs.
He set himself a course for Reluctance. He was out of hydrogen and sinking anyway; and it was either set down in relative civilization—where nothing might be wrong, after all—or drop like a feather into the desert dust alone with the coyotes, cactus, and cougars. If he had to wait for sunrise somewhere, better to do it down in an almost-town he knew well enough to navigate.
There were only a few lights, yes.
But no flashes of firearms, and no bonfires of pillage or some hostile victory. He could see nothing and no one, nobody walking or running. Nobody dead, either, he realized when the Majestic swayed down close enough to give him a dim view of the dirt streets with their clapboard sidewalks.
Nobody at all.
He licked at his lower lip and gave it a bite, then he pulled out the Colt and began to load it, sure and steady, counting to six and counting out six more bullets for each of the two pockets on his vest.
Could be, he was overreacting. Could be, Reluctance had gone bust real quick, or there’d been a dust storm, or a twister, or any number of other natural and unpleasant events that could drive a thrown-together town into darkness. Could be, people were digging themselves out now, even as he wondered about it. Maybe something had made them sick. Cholera, or typhoid. He’d seen it wipe out towns and troops before.
His gut didn’t buy it.
He didn’t like it, how he couldn’t assume the best and he didn’t have any idea what the worst might be.
And still, as the Majestic came in for a landing. No bodies.