The Reckoning

“The only relevant question is where they died,” said Kleat. “I need teeth, whole jaws, the entire skull if possible. Pieces of bone for DNA analysis. Wedding bands, class rings, wristwatches with initials. Words don’t matter.”

“Of course they matter,” Molly said. “They’re our best clues at this point.” She continued scrolling through the images on her display, landing on the photos of the journal pages. The LCD was chewing through the batteries, stealing from the future to pay for the past, so to speak, using up power she could be saving to take more pictures. But she justified it as part of the interview process. The evidence was speaking to them.

She studied the images, goosing the light, enlarging sections, penetrating the inky ruins of the manuscript. “There’s more,” she said. “I can’t tell what order the pages go in. And anyway, he seems to have written things wherever there was space”—she turned her camera—“even upside down. Here’s more of the inventory list. And some words to fill in around the segments, and a number on this page, ‘7/17/70.’ ”

“Three weeks after they arrived,” said Duncan. “A month before C. K. Watts carved his name.”

She tilted the display, straining to see. “ ‘We can’t not stay anymore,’ ” she read. “ ‘Where else could we have gone? It was finished the minute the TC took the wrong turn. Now we have to live with what we’ve done. The TC gets the tower for his tomb, the first of us to go. And now we know it’s not true that he loved the city more than us. He was only trying to preserve us all.’ ”

“The TC?” she said.

“The team commander,” Kleat said. “There would have been two of them, one for each ACAV. But one would have had seniority. He was the fool who brought them here.”

She returned to the display. “ ‘There is death in the life of the stone. We see that more every day. We try not to notice, but the walls talk to us. The statues speak. The city sings. The eyes see. The rain is killing us. Every day gets worse. We hide from each other, not sure who is who now. I’ve never been so lonely.’ ”

“Out of his mind,” said Kleat.

Molly scrolled to another section. “ ‘…he was right, but we were more wrong to become his rebels. It was mutiny…’ And this. ‘We let him go like Cain, but west from Eden on foot. Maybe we should have killed him for it. But we let him lead us into sin. So we were part of it, and now it’s done. And now we are scattered.’ ”

They were quiet for a minute.

“And?” said Kleat.

“They were at war all right,” she said. “You want glory. You want heroes. They were scared. They were boys trying to deal with an ugly, dirty little dead end. And they had themselves a mutiny. A revolution. And then they died off like animals.”

“Journalists,” Kleat snorted.

“Something happened here,” she said.

“How about this?” Kleat said. “Their commander fucked up. They believed in him, and he betrayed them with his stupidity. They could have killed him, but they spared him and drove him out like Cain. The man who led them wrong. He’s lucky they didn’t put a bullet through his head.”

“There are other ways to read this,” said Molly. “This says the commander got the tower for his tomb.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Part of this was written three weeks into their confinement. The rest of it sounds like it was written later, maybe over the coming weeks or months. But one thing is clear, they were at odds with one another. He talks about rebels, his rebels. There was a troublemaker. Tensions must have been running high. Nine men found themselves caught in a cage. Think about it. They were bound to start laying blame for their troubles. And somehow their commander died. Whoever wrote this sounds guilty. He talks about sin.”

“He also talks about talking statues and a singing city,” said Kleat.

Molly stopped. “Which is it, Kleat? Either the writer was insane and none of it mattered, or his words are fact, but muddled by time. You can’t have it both ways.”

Kleat released a cloud of smoke. His steel rims glittered. “None of it matters.”

The brothers had finished the turtle. They were passing the shell back and forth, sipping the gray broth.

Molly flipped the off switch. The camera display went black. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

She fit her camera into the bag, got her shoes and flashlight, and climbed down from the hut. Duncan started to follow. “Please don’t,” she said. She didn’t want to talk anymore.

He lagged back. “Don’t give up on us, Molly,” he said. “You’re right. I don’t know what, but something happened here.”

26.

She woke suddenly, in the middle of the night. Samnang’s fire cast a glimmer on her tent wall. Hours had passed. Her clothes had dried. Some second sense told her not to move.

It was raining again. Water grazed the outer skin of the forest with a muffled hiss. A rain to sleep by, she thought, drifting off.

Then she saw the shapes. The fire animated them. Their silhouettes trickled across the panels of her dome tent, bent low and ranging their rifles back and forth. The brothers. They’d come for her.

Crouched like cats, they stole along the terrace edge. She held her breath, looking for Vin’s thin figure. Maybe he could stop his brothers. Then she saw that there were more than three out there. That made no sense.

Just then, gunfire crackled up from the depths of the camp. Molly huddled behind her screen of nylon and fiberglass poles, thinking these stalking men must be the target. She braced for the explosions they would unleash in turn.

But none of the silhouette men returned fire. Instead they grew more misshapen, even their rifles, twisted and melting. Their arms trailed tendrils and became vines. The metamorphosis left her wondering what she’d seen in the first place. Pieces of the forest, nothing more.

The gunfire rattled again in the distance. That much was real. Her knees drew up against her chest. Her eyes squeezed shut.

The tent wall rustled. One of them was trying the door.

She willed herself invisible.

“Molly,” the man whispered.

He was the dark apparition of Oklahoma. She couldn’t help herself. Be a good girl. Fear squeezed the air from her lungs.

“Molly.”

Quiet, she instructed herself. Stand aside. Don’t be part of it. Return when all is safe again.

More gunfire.

“Molly.” Louder this time.

The door unzipped. She saw herself backed as far as possible into the corner. She saw herself with her eyes squeezed shut.

“It’s me,” he whispered.

She saw herself open her eyes. In the scant, cold light, Duncan hunkered at the doorway. His hair hung in long, wet strands.

The rifles crackled, on full automatic. She glanced at the tent wall. The images had fled. He was alone.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

She began to return to herself.

“I thought you might be afraid.”

She was shaking with fever fits. Her jaw unlocked. “Duncan.”

“Keep your voice down. They’re drunk. It will pass.”

She was convulsing. He couldn’t see it from out there.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She wasn’t. She had demons.

“Lie low,” he said. “Keep your light off. The bullets fall back to earth, but the canopy will protect us. You’re