The landscape they passed over was bleak. The ash fall had slowed, but not stopped. The sun was a ruddy smear on the western horizon. Below them, cities bled into each other without so much as a tree or a swath of grass between them. Most of the windows were empty. The streets and highways were filled with cars, but few of them were moving. They swung out to the east as they passed by New York City. The great seawall had been shattered, and the streets flooded like canals. Several of the great towers had fallen, leaving holes in the skyline.
“Where is everyone?” Peaches shouted over the chop of the rotors.
“They’re there,” Erich shouted back, gesturing with his bad arm and holding on to the strap with his good. “They’re all there. It’s just there’s not as many as there were last week. And more than there are going to be.”
Over Boston, someone fired a missile toward them from the roof of a commercial shopping district, and the copters shot it down. The sky to the east was the low bruise-dark that made Amos think of storm clouds. In the west, the sunset was the color of blood.
“We gonna have trouble with the rotors icing up?” Amos asked the pilot, but he didn’t get an answer.
They set down at an airfield a few klicks south of the lake, but Amos got a look before they landed: low hills holding the water like it was being cupped in a massive palm. There were maybe a dozen islands scattered across the lake, some as crowded with buildings as the shore, others with little tame forests if someone rich enough for the luxury lived there. The landing platform was a square of floating ceramic with red and amber lights still blinking for visual landings.
When they actually got to the water’s edge, it wasn’t as pretty. The water stank of dead fish and a coating of ash lay across the surface like someone had sifted chalk dust over the whole place. Erich’s people waded in up to their thighs and dropped three packages that unfolded into hard, black pontoon boats. By the time they started toward the enclave on Rattlesnake Island, the sky was a perfect black. No stars, no moon, no backsplash of light pollution. The night was like sticking his head in a sack.
They spun to the north side of the island where a wide bridge on a coated steel pier ran out toward the launching pad. Hangars and boathouses encrusted the shore, boxes for the toys of the wealthy as big as basic housing blocks for a thousand people. The pontoon boat they were in surged forward over the chop of the water. The boathouse they chose was painted bright blue, but outside the circles of their lights, it could have been anything. It only took a minute to find the keypad on a pole that poked up from the dark water. Peaches leaned over, stretched her thin arm, and tapped out a series of numbers. For a second, it looked like it hadn’t worked, then the boathouse doors silently rose and automatic lights came on. The interior was all wood paneling, rich red cedar, and enough room for a tennis court. An angry barking came out from the darkness as they steered inside.
A wolfhound stood on the deck of a little powerboat, its paws on the rail. The pontoon boats snugged up in the space next to the powerboat. Amos hauled himself up and the wolfhound darted toward him, growling and snarling. It was a beautiful animal, genetically engineered, he figured, for the gloss of its fur and the graceful lines of its face.
“Hey there,” Amos said, squatting down to its level. “Someone didn’t bother taking you along when they left, huh? That shit’s gotta suck.”
The dog shied back, uncertain and frightened.
“How about this,” Amos said. “Don’t start anything with us, we won’t shoot you.”
“It doesn’t talk,” Erich said as the dog retreated, barking over its shoulder.
“How do you know? Assholes with this much money, maybe they put some kind of translator into its brain.”
“They can’t do that,” Erich said, then turned to Peaches. “They can’t, can they?”
“This is the Cook estate,” Peaches said. “Darwa and Khooni lived here. I used to sleep over on Wednesday nights in the summer.” She shuddered a little and Amos cocked his head. “It’s a long time since I’ve been here. It seems like it should have changed more.”
“You know how to get to their hangar?” Erich asked.
“I do.”
But when they got there, the space was empty. When they crossed the broad gravel yard to the next hangar over – the Davidovics’ – it was empty too. The third one didn’t have a ship, but it did have a dozen people. They stood in the center of the space with handguns and the kind of cheap suppression sprays they sold over the counter at grocery stores. The man in front was maybe fifty with graying hair and the beginnings of a new beard.
“You, all of you, stay back!” the man yelled as Amos and Butch and three more came in through the side door. “This is private property!”