“There are a few options,” Girard said, and something in his voice made her look up, unease tightening her stomach at his grim expression. “I’m guessing, from the sheer amount of skeletons, that this was a swarm of some kind. Off-hand there are only a few creatures that do that kind of thing, and they are all dangerous.”
“Huh,” Hallie said, straightening to her feet. “So the ditch and wall could be there to stop wildlife after all.”
“Perhaps,” Girard said. “I don’t want to rule anything out right now.”
“That’s fair,” Hallie agreed. She took a last look at the grisly contents at the bottom of the ditch before she crossed the ramp and between the gap in the walls. Just inside the wall she spotted a gate - a single panel of tree trunks lashed together with rope. The rope seemed to have been made of knotted and woven grass, rather than the machine-made ropes she was used to seeing. The gate had been fully opened, resting against the inside of the wall. On the other side of the gap, there was what looked like a winch mechanism made of wood and more of the heavy rope. Hallie traced the line of the rope from the winch and lifted her brows. “The ramp can be raised?”
“It seems so,” Girard agreed.
“But it’s been left down, and the gate open,” Hallie said, talking mostly to herself. She frowned as she took a closer look at the gate, noticing that the rope that was holding the gate onto the wall was badly frayed, almost as if something had been chewing on it. Despite the heavy wood, it wouldn’t take much to cut through the rope and topple the gate. Before she could turn her attention to the rest of the settlement, something next to the wall caught her attention. “And what’s that?”
There was what looked like a makeshift step, formed of a couple of wooden crates, with a metal cannister next to it and a long stick with fabric wrapped around one end resting against the inside of the wall.
“I think it’s what they used to set fire to the ditch,” Girard said.
Moving closer, Hallie caught the strong scent of fuel from the metal container and looked from that to the long stick, then noticed that there was a simple plastic lighter on top of the nearest crate, easily to hand for someone wanting to set fire to the fabric wrapped around the end of the stick. She nudged the nearest crate with her foot, testing how strong it was. Satisfied that the crate would hold her weight, she got up onto it. The extra height allowed her to look over the wooden wall and although she couldn’t see into the ditch, she knew it was just outside the fence.
“Yes. You’d be able to reach over the wall and throw the stick into the ditch from here,” she said.
“And they were ready for the next time they needed it,” Girard added, holding out a hand as she prepared to step down from the crate. She didn’t really need the support, but she was happy to have an excuse to put her hand in his, welcoming the familiar warmth of his touch and the brief moment of connection. He squeezed her hand gently before he let her go.
She turned back to the set-up of the crates, can and stick. “So, they’ve needed this often enough to have it ready. And near enough to the entrance so that one person could close the gates, pull up the ramp then light up the stick and toss it into the ditch.”
“I’m guessing that the settlers probably added some kind of fuel or kindling to the bottom of the ditch, too,” Girard said. “This seems quite well thought-out.”
“The burned remains in the ditch look a few days old, at least,” Hallie commented.
“So, either the settlers haven’t needed it since then …” Girard said.
“Or no one has been here to use it,” Hallie finished.
“I like my option better, but I suspect yours is the right answer,” Girard said, turning to look around the settlement. Hallie turned with him, getting her first good look at what lay inside the wooden walls.
There were a half dozen small buildings scattered here and there, the ones with the basic thatched roofs she’d spotted from outside the fence. The building walls were formed of what looked like woven branches and not one of the structures looked weatherproof. In fact, Hallie thought a harsh storm might blow them over. The almost temporary nature of the small buildings was in sharp contrast to the pair of buildings at the centre of the settlement which were solidly built. Each was slightly raised from the ground on what looked like a concrete base, with brick walls and a tiled roof. One was low and long, the other was the taller building with the metal structure on the roof that she’d spotted from outside the wall.
The ground between the buildings was bare, packed earth, like the path that had led them here. It was slightly damp, showing the trace of footsteps here and there. With a few downpours of rain, though, Hallie suspected that the earth would quickly turnto mud. But it seemed that whoever had lived here had had other priorities than making the ground fit for winter.
Just behind the long, low brick building Hallie could see what looked like a workshop area. There was an open-fronted basic shed with a long, sturdy work table inside it sitting next to what looked like a large kiln. She’d seen pottery kilns in low city and wondered if that was where the settlers had fired the bricks used in the buildings. There was also a squat, metal cylinder set off the ground on a wooden frame. Some kind of water tank, she thought, perhaps catching rainwater for the settlers’ use. She’d seen similar arrangements in low city in some of the larger gardens where the households used the rainwater for their vegetable plots.
Despite the buildings and the shadows of footprints in the ground, which were clear evidence of a population, there was not one person in sight, and no movement that might suggest that there were people around, not even a door flapping in the breeze. The silence and the stillness made Hallie’s fingers twitch towards the gun at her hip. There was nothing to shoot at, though. Just a lot of empty-looking buildings. She might have believed the place abandoned entirely if it hadn’t been for the gleaming length of metal sticking up into the sky. That looked far too new and too modern for an abandoned settlement.
“Radio station?” Hallie asked, pointing to the taller brick building with the metal structure.
“I think so,” Girard agreed. “Let’s try there first. I don’t like this silence. Stay alert.”
Hallie just nodded and put her hand on the hilt of her gun, not wanting to carry it in her hands, and walked beside Girard as they headed for the largest building.
When they reached it, it had the same feel as the rest of the place. Empty and abandoned. It wasn’t like the abandoned buildings in low city, though. This building was in good repair,with the brickwork intact, the roof line straight, and the double doors at the end of the building having all their hinges, metal handles showing no sign of rust. With the hairs lifting on the nape of her neck, Hallie put her hand on the door nearest to her and pulled, then pushed gently, testing the weight. To her surprise, it opened easily, swinging inwards to reveal a dark interior. With a sideways look at Girard, she stepped inside, with him just behind her.
The first impression of the inside of the building was stale. The air was flat and dead against her face and in her nose and mouth and smelled strongly of old sweat and mouldy food.
The inside of the building was divided. They’d stepped into what looked like a common dining room of some kind, with a couple of long tables and basic benches to sit on, all made of plain wood. There were some plates of moulding, rotting food on the tables, which explained at least some of the smells reaching Hallie. The food had been out a few days at least, Hallie thought, judging by the state of decay. At the back of the room was another set of double doors. Girard led the way there, pushing the doors open as easily as Hallie had opened the outer doors.
The next room was bigger and looked like it had served a lot of different purposes. There was a wall full of shelving, with boxes and bags ranging from what looked like sacks of flour to boxes of nails or screws, with hammers and other tools hanging from hooks under the shelves. There were a few chairs set in front of a pair of small, basic wooden tables, what looked like ledgers and paperwork scattered on one of the tables, suggesting that they’d been used for some kind of office. Or possibly schooling, Hallie thought, seeing one sheet of paper covered with vivid colours and what seemed to be a child’s drawing of people with an improbably large and round yellow sun in one corner. The other table held a large basket of what looked like dried grass, and a coil of the same crude rope that Hallie had seen holding theouter fence and the gate together. It was all very ordinary and domestic. She could easily imagine one or two people making more rope while children drew or practised their letters.
Beyond the shelves and tables, against what Hallie thought was the back wall of the building, was what looked like some kind of engineering work station and a complicated-looking machine that Hallie assumed must be the radio, as there was a pair of large headphones and a microphone on a stand on the wooden surface in front of it. The set-up reminded Hallie of old-fashioned radios she’d seen in television shows. A far cry from the modern, sleek mobile phone she carried. But then, her phone wouldn’t get a signal here, whereas the simpler radio waves would carry without a phone mast to transmit them.
“No one here,” Girard said. Hallie had the impression he was speaking as much to break the silence as to communicate. She understood the impulse. The quiet and the stillness was pressing on her shoulders, and her skin was still crawling with unease. “I want to see if I can get the radio working.”
