back in the room. She shut her eyes, waiting for the bang, yet it never came.
“Goddamn,” said a hoarse voice. “Samantha?”
She cracked one eye and saw a gray electric light fluttering on far back in the room. A figure was hunched on the bed with a pistol pointed to the floor. The light grew to show Garvey staring at her, breathing hard. “What the hell are you doing with a gun?” he asked.
“I could ask the same of you,” she said faintly, pointing at his own weapon.
He looked down at the revolver in his hand as though confused about what it was, then hastily put it on the table. As he stood she ran to him and he caught her in his arms.
“Jesus Christ, Sam,” he said. “Thank God you’re all right.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I went to your apartment, but you weren’t there. What happened?”
“I didn’t think it was safe,” he said. “I waited a while and then I snuck out the window. I think maybe Hayes’s paranoia is catching.”
“I don’t think it’s paranoia if it’s justified,” she said. She let go of him. “Listen, Donald. We found that friend of his. And he told us what Tazz has been doing.”
She went over what she had heard and seen out in the woods. Garvey listened carefully, his body seeming to tighten with each word.
“So Tazz arranged this?” he said softly at the end. “Bringing in these guns and holding hostages?”
“It would seem so. I’m not sure.”
“And then starting this. This fire.”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus,” he said, and shook his head. “This just got a whole lot nastier. What about that thing you found? Down underground?”
“I don’t know much about that. Hayes seemed to recognize it. It seemed to speak to him. About what, I don’t know. I think he’s handling that. He said he was going up to Kulahee Cave.”
“What the hell? Kulahee Cave? What for?”
“To look for something, he said. I don’t know what.” She glanced around the apartment. “Where are the files?”
“Under the bed. Half of them, at least. I took half in to Collins to show him I meant business.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said to come in. Tomorrow. Or today, depending on whatever the hell time it is. I just hope there’s still a city in the morning.”
“And you still plan to? To go?”
“Yes,” he said. His face seemed starved and thin, like too little skin stretched over too much bone. “Especially now, Sam. I mean… someone has to be accountable. We just need to wait now. Wait until it’s safe to go out.”
Samantha looked out the window at the sheet of smoke pouring off the horizon. “Yes,” she said. “Safe.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Once the fires had died out Hayes crept away and stole a car at the edge of Lynn and drove south and west. He passed out of the city and roved through the dark woodland roads until he came into the hills and the little towns there. He could not remember exactly where it was, so he drove for two more hours until his headlights fell upon an enormous blue-and-gold sign that read: SEE KULAHEE CAVE, BIRTHPLACE OF GENIUS. He stopped the car and stared at the sign, then looked off down the road in the direction the big yellow arrow pointed. He primed the engine and continued.
He kept rising. The car strained on the little dirt roads, but he followed the signs until he came to a small home with a large sign proclaiming it to be the visitor’s center for Kulahee Cave. He got out and walked to the little building, then peered into the dusty windows and tried the knob. There was nothing of interest there save an electric torch on the back stoop.
He took the torch and walked down the path into the pines. He wandered until he came to a small, neat little entrance into the side of a hill. Two wet, mossy stones made the doorway, leaning against each other. He touched them and shone the torch inside. It was empty. Nothing but small signs educating the visitor about the life of Kulahee and his great contributions to society. Whatever he was looking for, it was not here.
He walked out of the cave and looked up into the hillside. He shone the torch up and the beam of light bobbed around the rocks and the brush and the sparse grass.
There was something else. Something else farther up. Buried just under the skin of the earth. He felt it, though he could not understand how.
He began climbing up the hillside. A few hundred feet up he turned and looked out. He saw the smoking remains of Evesden far away, lining the shore. Then he turned and looked at the hills around him.
From this angle it appeared that there had once been some work done here. There was a road on the north face, he saw, but it had long been out of use and was now overgrown. It led to some large basin, unnaturally made, which had been somewhat filled in. As he rose farther he saw there were divots and carvings in the very hills, as if they had been torn apart, clay and stone rivulets running through the earth. A scarred countryside, moonwrought and alien in this strange night.
On the far side of the pit was a small river, worn deep into the stone around it. A knot of pines clutched it at the lip of the basin. There were no other trees in this part of the hills. Only those remained untouched. Somehow the little copse felt like a flag or a cairn, marking where something was buried.
He walked across the basin to the trees and where the river crested and fell. Then he walked to the edge of the water. The rock edge was smooth and rounded. Slick with the wear of time. The river had to be thousands of years old. Millions, even. He looked down into the waters and saw nothing but darkness. He felt strangely cold, yet it was a feeling he had felt before, in the city. That strange pounding machinery, deep underground in the trolley tunnels…
He knelt down. Put his hands in the water. It was icy cold, so cold it hurt.
Yes, said a voice inside of him.
He stood and took off his leather fireman’s coat and threw it away. Then he looked into the waters again.
There was something down there. Something looking back. Something that had lain there for uncounted years, sitting in darkness, waiting.
He grabbed the torch and took a breath and dove in.
The power of the cold was deafening, overwhelming. The shock of it nearly drove the breath from his body. He strained to hold on to it. A little column of bubbles escaped one of his nostrils and threaded its way toward the surface. He struggled to orient himself and the beam of light from the torch thrashed about, catching smooth rocks and stabbing into the deeps. Then he steadied and began forcing himself down, the torch clapped to his side as he kicked, driving his body into the darkness as far as he could go.
He caught a glimpse of it first, a random flash from the torch in his hand. Something silver and white in the rock wall. He stopped where he was, breath burning within him, and then flashed the light around again. Finding nothing, he tried once more, and saw he had gone too far. It was above him. He fixed the beam on what he could see of it and looked, and then fought to hold on to his breath.
The machine was enormous. Huge and long and thin, just breaching the wall of the mountain river, and now that the torch had found it the machine seemed to refract or enhance the light until it gained a faint luminescence. Its surface was smooth and pristine, almost unearthly, and still completely intact after so long. He knew he was only seeing a bare fraction of it, that the rest was hidden up under the shelf of rock below the river.
He saw that the metal was slightly translucent, and deep within it there were things moving, delicate threads and tubing and miniscule gear-works churning away quietly and smoothly. He somehow suspected he’d seen it before, or something like it. Then he remembered the wonders he’d glimpsed down in the factory’s floors, spindled glass and pearly alloys, and Tazz’s machine. They were similar, he realized, as if they were related, though those were primitive toys compared to this. But the golden device he’d found mere hours ago matched this buried thing
