“No sign of them yet. Whatever’s going on, it’s happening out here first.” He paused, his expression suddenly uncertain. “There’s something else you ought to know, Caleb. It’s about your father.”
Peter took the wheel east of Seguin. Amy had awakened briefly in midafternoon, asking for water. Her fever was down, and her eyes seemed to be bothering her less, though she complained of a headache and was still very weak. Squinting out a side window, she asked how much farther they had to go. She was wearing the blanket like a shawl over her head and shoulders. Three hours, Greer said, maybe four. Amy considered this answer, then said, very softly, “We should hurry.”
They crossed the Guadalupe and turned north. The first township they’d come to was just east of the old city of Boerne. It wasn’t much, but there was a telegraph station. Only two hands of daylight remained when they pulled into the small central square.
“Awfully quiet around here,” Michael said.
The streets were empty. Odd for this hour, Peter thought. They disembarked into ghostly silence. The town comprised just a few buildings: a general store, a township office, a chapel, and a handful of shoddily erected houses, some half-constructed, as if their builders had lost interest.
“Anybody here?” Michael yelled. “Hello?”
“Feels strange,” Greer said.
Michael reached into the Humvee and released the shotgun from the holder. Peter and Greer checked their pistols.
“I’ll stay with Amy,” Greer said. “You two go find the telegraph station.”
Peter and Michael crossed the square to the township office. The door stood open, another oddity. Everything appeared normal inside, but still there were no signs of life.
“So where the hell did everybody go?” Peter said.
The telegraph was in a small room in the rear of the building. Michael sat at the operator’s desk and examined the log, a large, leather-bound ledger.
“The last message from here was sent Friday, five-twenty P.M., to Bandera station. The intended recipient was Mrs. Nills Grath.”
“What was the message?”
“ ‘Happy birthday, Aunt Lottie.’ ” Michael looked up. “Nothing after that, at least that anybody bothered to record.”
Today was Sunday. Whatever had happened here, Peter thought, it had happened sometime in the last forty-eight hours.
“Send a message to Kerrville,” Peter instructed. “Let Apgar know we’re coming.”
“My Morse is a little rusty. I’ll probably tell him to make me a sandwich.”
Michael threw a switch on the panel and began tapping the key. A few seconds later, he stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
Michael pointed to the panel. “See this meter? The needle should move when the plates touch.”
“So?”
“So I’m talking to myself here. The circuit won’t close.”
Peter knew nothing about it. “Is that something you can fix?”
“Not a chance. There’s a break in the line, could be anywhere between here and Kerrville. The storm might have knocked down a pole. A lightning strike could do it, too. It doesn’t take much.”
They exited through the back door. An old gas generator was crouched like a monster in the weeds, beside a rusted pickup and a buckboard with a broken axle and tall grass poking through the floorboards. Trash of all kinds—construction debris, busted packing crates, barrels with their seams split open—littered the yard. The wreckage of the frontier, flung out the door the moment it had outlived its usefulness.
“Let’s check some of the other buildings,” Peter said.
They entered the nearest house. It was one story, with two rooms. Dirty dishes were stacked on a table; flies twisted above them in the air. In the back room was a washbasin on a stand, a wardrobe, and large feather bed covered by a quilt. The bed was sturdy and carefully made, with a tableau of interlocking flowers, quite detailed, carved into the headboard; somebody had taken their time with it. A marriage bed, thought Peter.
But where were the people? What had happened that the inhabitants should vanish before they had a chance to clear the dirty dishes from the table? Peter and Michael returned to the main room as Greer came through the door.
“What’s the holdup?”
“The telegraph’s not working,” Michael said.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Break in the line someplace.”
Greer leveled his eyes at Peter. “We really have to get moving.”
What weren’t they seeing? What was this haunted place trying to tell him? Peter’s eyes fell upon something on the floor.
“Peter, did you hear me?” Greer pressed. “If we’re going to make it back before dark, we need to leave right now.”
Peter crouched to get a closer look, simultaneously gesturing toward the table. “Hand me that dishrag.”
Using a corner of the cloth, he took hold of the object. The virals’ teeth had a way of catching the light, almost prismatic, with a pearlescent, milky luster. The tip was so sharp it seemed to fade into invisibility, too small for the naked eye to discern.
“I don’t think Zero’s sending an army,” Peter said.