Sam went straight to the barrier and stood looking at the black peak thrusting up behind Orc’s rock.
“Have you seen this anywhere else?” Sam asked Sinder.
“We never go anywhere else,” Sinder said.
“I appreciate the time you put in,” Sam said. But he wasn’t paying any attention to Sinder or Jezzie. He walked along the barrier toward the lake.
Howard fell in beside him, relieved that Sam hadn’t spotted his backpack.
“What do you think it is?” Howard asked.
“There. Another one.” Sam pointed at a much smaller dark bump rising from the dirt. He marched on and they reached the lake’s edge. Here again was a low, undulating ridge of black stain.
“What the…,” Sam muttered. “You see anything like this, Howard?”
Howard shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t notice it. Anyway, I don’t walk by the barrier that much.”
“No,” Sam agreed. “You just go back and forth to your still at Coates.”
Howard felt a sudden chill.
“Of course I know about your still,” Sam said. “You know it’s on the other side of the line. It’s Caine’s territory. He catches you over there, you won’t like it, unless you’re sharing your profits with him.”
Howard winced and decided to say nothing.
Sam stood looking at the stain. “It’s growing. I just saw it grow. Just now.”
“I saw it, too,” Sinder said. She looked to Sam for reassurance. Weird, Howard realized: he, too, was looking to Sam for reassurance. As much as he and Sam had been enemies at times, and still were, more or less, he wanted Sam to have some quick answer to this stain thing.
The troubled look on Sam’s face was not reassuring.
“What is it?” Howard asked again.
Sam shook his head slowly. His tanned face looked suddenly so much older than his barely fifteen years. Howard had a vision of Sam as an old man, hair gray and thin, face creased with deep worry lines. It was a face marked by all the pain and worry Sam had endured.
Howard had the sudden, ridiculous urge to offer Sam a drink. He looked like he could use it.
SEVEN
36 HOURS, 19 MINUTES
ASTRID STOOD GAZING down at the lake from the heights to the west. The barrier went straight into the lake, of course, cutting it roughly in half. The lake’s shoreline bulged out so that she could no longer keep following the barrier without going out of her way. Anyway, soon it would be too dark to see the stain. Time to turn toward the human habitations.
The sun was down and a small, far-off bonfire was burning in a circle of tents and trailers. Astrid couldn’t see the kids around the fire, but she could see shapes occasionally crossing in front of the flames.
Now that she was here she could no longer even pretend to suppress her emotions. She was going to see Sam. Others, too, and she would no doubt have to endure stares and greetings and probably insults.
All that she could handle. But she was going to see Sam. That was the thing. Sam.
Sam, Sam, Sam.
“Stop it,” she told herself.
A crisis was coming. She had a duty to help her friends understand it.
“Weak,” she muttered.
The suspicion had been growing in her head that she was just coming up with an excuse to see Sam. At the same time she suspected that she was looking for an excuse to back off and avoid her duty to help.
It occurred to Astrid that in days gone by she might have prayed for guidance. It brought a wistful smile to her lips. What had happened to that Astrid? Where had she gone to? Astrid hadn’t prayed since…
“‘Put aside childish things,’” she quoted mentally. A Bible quote, which was ironic, she supposed. She shifted her pack and slipped her shotgun off her sore right shoulder onto her left. She started toward the fire.
On the way she worked out a simple method for measuring the spread of the dark stain on the barrier. If someone had a functioning digital camera it would be easy enough. She ran the math in her head. Maybe five sample locations. Calculate the progression day by day and she would have pretty good data.
Numbers still gave her pleasure. That was the great thing about numbers: it required no faith to believe that two plus two equaled four. And math never, ever condemned you for your thoughts and desires.
“Who’s there?” a voice cried from the shadows.
“Take it easy,” Astrid said.
“Who is it or I shoot,” the voice said.
“It’s Astrid.”
“No way.”
A boy, probably no older than ten, stepped out from behind a bush. He had a rifle leveled, with his finger near but not directly on the trigger.
“Is that you, Tim?” Astrid asked.
“Whoa. It is you,” the boy said. “I thought you were dead.”
“You know what Mark Twain said? ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’”
“Yep. That’s you, all right.” Tim shouldered his weapon. “I guess you’re okay to go on in. I’m not supposed to let anyone pass unless I know them. But I know you.”
“Thanks. Good to see you well. Last time I saw you, you had the flu.”
“Flu’s all gone now. Hope it doesn’t ever come back.”
Astrid walked on, and now the trail was clearer and easier to follow, even as evening crept closer.
She passed a few tents. An old-fashioned Airstream trailer. Then she reached the circle of tents and trailers that ringed the bonfire. She heard kids laughing.