Dalton had a wife and children. They’d want to bury as much of their father as they could. Finding everything he could took Simon the biggest part of an hour.
At midnight, miles from the campsite and well on their way back to Cape Town, Simon stood guard while Saundra took care of the clients. He kept his hunting rifle across his knees.
Most of the clients were quiet. If left to their own devices, Simon felt certain they would have eventually gone to sleep in the tents. But Saundra had insisted on heating some of the soup stock they’d brought.
After their clients were taken care of, she brought a bowl of soup to him. It was crowded with chunky vegetables and beef, a substantial meal. Despite the scent of death that still hung in Simon’s nostrils, the soup smelled divine.
Saundra sat cross-legged across from him with her own bowl of soup. They ate in silence for a while.
“I don’t think we can count on any return business with this group,” Saundra said. “Nor any good word-of-mouth from any of them. Not even the travel writer.”
Simon nodded. She was just talking. He knew that.
“You feeling any better?”
Glancing at her, Simon nodded. “I’ll feel even better when we get back to Cape Town.”
“That should be by tomorrow afternoon now that we have the Land Rovers.”
Simon shook his head. “I didn’t think to check the fuel.” He started to set the bowl aside.
“I already did. We’ve got enough.”
Some of the tension unwound from Simon’s stomach. Saundra was bright and capable. It felt good that not everything was riding on his shoulders.
“How’s our other guest?” Simon referred to the surviving poacher.
“Hurting. Scared. I think the bleeding’s finally stopped. I thought we were going to have to cauterize the wounds.” Saundra ate some of her soup. “He’s worried that he could be crippled for life.”
“With the court system, he won’t live long enough to get through rehab.”
Saundra looked at him. “You sound different.”
“Different how?”
She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Cold.”
Simon thought about that. His father and the other Templar had taught him that about life. When he’d grown up, he’d trusted little outside of the Templar. Most of his life had been spent down inside the Underground in London. For the first few years he’d been homeschooled there. He hadn’t gotten out into the real world until he was a teen.
And he’d never been able to make friends. He couldn’t bring those people back to the Underground and show them the dojos and training schools that were set up there. He hadn’t been able to have fights, either. The first time he had, he’d nearly killed the two boys who had tried to hurt him. He still didn’t know what Grand Master Sumerisle had had to do to get him out of trouble. But he hadn’t been allowed out of the Underground complex for a month afterward.
“I just want to get back,” Simon said finally. But he also wanted to talk to the poacher, to learn more about that supposed invasion of London.
The man was sleeping in back of one of the Land Rovers. He lay atop a pallet of tusks. Simon hadn’t gotten rid of those because disposing of them would have been useless. Someone would have claimed them. And they were valuable. The money gleaned from the sale could help pay for Dalton’s and Carey’s funerals.
“Wake up,” Simon growled.
The man opened his eyes and looked groggy. Saundra hadn’t mentioned giving him painkillers from the med kit, but Simon suspected that she had.
“What?” Fear and suspicion tightened the man’s voice.
“What did you hear about the London invasion?” Simon stood with his arms folded across his chest.
“You woke me to ask that?”
Simon reached out like he was going to grab one of the man’s heavily bandaged feet.
“Don’t,” the man moaned. He bent his knees and pulled his feet up toward him.
“Tell me about London.”
“There’s not much to tell. We heard about it in a bar before we left Cape Town. They had some vid, too, but it looked like a bunch of crap if you ask me. They showed these images of these…things. I don’t know what else to call them.”
“What did they look like?”
“I don’t know. The vids they had on the news weren’t very good. Said that only a few people had made it out of London at the time. These things had some kind of weapons that made it impossible for most people to leave. Either that, or they’re all dead. The reports said a lot of people have gotten killed over there.”
“How did they get there?”
The poacher pinched his nose. Simon knew it was the painkillers. He’d had to take them in the past for injuries he’d received skateboarding and base-jumping. A lot of them had made his nose feel numb and tingly at the same time.
“Don’t rightly know. The newsmen were guessing that they mighta beamed down. Other people guessed that they opened up some kind of dimensional portal and stepped through.”
“What about the British Army? Surely they’re dealing with this.”
“They’re dead,” the poacher said. “Most of ’em, anyway. I seen lots of footage of them getting killed.”
Simon stepped away from the poacher and headed back to where he’d left Saundra standing guard. Things his father had told him kept coming back to haunt him. Thomas Cross had always claimed that when the demon forces came to the earth, no human without special training and weapons would be able to stand against them.
“Well?” Saundra asked.
Simon shook his head.
“Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“Enough that I wish we were in Cape Town right now.”
“You’ve got family in London, don’t you?”
“My father.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died from cancer when I was three. I barely remember her.” That was something Simon had never gotten past when he’d learned of it. His mother had died in one of the hospitals where the Templar were cared for.
