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FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
When we left town, no one came to see us off.
No one.
How screwed up is that?
73
THEY GATHERED UP AS MANY OF THE PAPERS AND MAPS AS THEY COULD and shoved them into the largest pockets of their canvas vests. Maybe Chong could make sense of the science stuff, and perhaps they’d eventually find someone who needed to have this information.
Someone from the American Nation, perhaps.
The door to the cargo bay was heavier than the cockpit door, but there was the same kind of unbroken wax seal over the lever-style metal handle.
Above it, the word DEATH seemed to glare at Benny.
“So encouraging,” he said.
He placed his fingers lightly on the handle and arched an inquiring eyebrow at Nix.
“We have to,” she said.
“I guess we do.”
He gripped the handle, took a breath, and turned it. The wax snapped and fell away. The big lock went clunk, and then the door shifted in his hand. Nix rested her hand on her pistol, and Benny drew his sword. It was too big a weapon for practical indoor use, but he’d rather have a clumsy weapon than none at all when going through any doorway marked DEATH.
I’m crazy, he told himself, but not that crazy.
Benny nudged the door open with his foot. “I’ll go first,” he said.
In truth he’d rather go first out of the hatchway and down to the desert floor. Then all the way back to Mountainside. Hopefully no one would be living in his old house yet. Maybe his bed would even still be there.
“Okay,” said Nix. No argument, no tussle over who was pack leader.
Nix’s quick agreement did absolutely nothing to bolster Benny’s confidence as he stared into the ominous darkness of the big plane’s cargo bay.
Faint light from the hatchway reached tentatively into the bay but failed to reveal anything. He took a cautious step inside. The air smelled heavily of industrial grease—the old stuff, made from oil, not the stuff they mostly used in town that was made from animal fat; and there were other smells. Dust, animal dung, and some sharp chemical smells that reminded him of the kind of booze that Charlie Pink-eye and his crew drank. Stuff Mr. Lafferty at the general store sold as whiskey but that Morgie Mitchell’s dad used to call “rotgut.” And the ever-present stink of death. It wasn’t as strong as the other smells, but it was there.
All they could see were dozens of crates lashed together with nylon bands and secured to metal rings set in the floor. Most of the crates were made from some tough-looking plastic; but a few were metal and the biggest were wooden.
“What can you see?” whispered Nix.
“Nothing much. Bunch of big crates and boxes.”
“Boxes of what?”
“Don’t know. Probably not puppies, apple pie, and new baseball gloves. Pretty much bet on that.”
He took a few steps inside, listening for sounds and hearing only his own nervous breathing. The cargo bay stretched past the stacks of crates and vanished into the gloom. He had all-weather matches in his vest, but he didn’t really want to put down his sword long enough to fish one out and light it. Not yet.
The floor creaked under his weight, and Benny remembered all the cracks he’d seen in the plane’s crippled body.
A soft scuff behind him told him that Nix had entered the bay.
“You have your gun out?” he asked very quietly.
“Yes.”
