“We should check the other buildings first,” Hallie said. She’d made a mistake once, early in her career, of stopping before she’d checked the whole building was clear, thinking her job was done. It wasn’t a mistake she’d make again. There might not be anyone else in the settlement, but she didn’t want to take that chance. And she didn’t like the feeling of the air around them. It felt as though something profoundly wrong had taken place. Or was about to happen. Neither option was good.
“Alright,” Girard agreed. He gave the radio one last look before he led the way out through the dining area, with its stale and mouldy food, and into the weak sunshine.
A trace of static ran across Hallie’s skin and she hesitated just outside the building, putting a hand up to touch her face, wondering if she’d imagined the sensation. But, no, there it was again.
“Storm’s coming,” Girard said. He was frowning up at the sky. Hallie followed the direction of his gaze, eyes widening as she took in the changes since they had been left by the helicopter. When they’d landed, the skies had looked to her like normal rain clouds - heavy and dark, decked out in various shades of grey. The skies now were weighted with dramatic, ragged-edged clouds shaded from darkest charcoal to pitch black with their torn edges outlined by fading daylight. A chill, damp breeze brushed her exposed skin and in the far distance was a deep rumble that made the hair rise on the back of her neck. Thunder. But not like any she’d heard before. This sounded like a mountain moving. “It’s going to be a bad one. We should search the buildings before it gets here. I think our best bet is going to be to shelter in the radio room.”
“I’ve never seen clouds like that,” Hallie commented as she walked with him to the next building - the long, low building that was also made of brick with a tiled roof.
“We don’t usually get them around Daydawn. That’s just the build up. The storm itself might be thunder and lightning, rain, hail stones and probably winds strong enough to tear up trees.”
The strong winds, at least, were something Hallie was familiar with. Low city had been hit with a few storms like that over the course of her life. She’d seen roofs ripped off buildings and walls toppled from the sheer force of the wind.
“Any idea how long it will last?” she asked.
“The weather forecasters didn’t want to predict that,” Girard said, his voice dry, as if there was an old joke in there somewhere. “Could be anywhere from a few hours to a few days. That’s the whole storm, though. Where we are, it should be over by tomorrow.”
Hallie took another look back up at the sky. There seemed to be no end to the torn-up clouds and ominous black. And notmany places to take shelter on the ground if the storm was as bad as Girard suggested.
They’d reached the door of the next building, so she pushed the worry about the storm to one side, with difficulty, and focused instead on the double doors in front of her. Girard had his gun ready, so Hallie put her hand on the door and pushed it inward.
As with the other building, the door yielded with only a little bit of pressure, swinging silently open to reveal a shadowed interior.
From the way their boots echoed on the hard floor as they stepped inside, Hallie guessed that this building was one long room. A moment later, Girard produced a small torch and flicked it on, setting it to a wide beam so that weak, diffuse light spread around them. It was enough for Hallie to see that her guess had been mostly correct. This was just one long room, with what looked like two-storey beds in rows to either side. Bunk beds, Hallie remembered. She’d seen a few in children’s bedrooms in low city, but she’d never seen a room quite like this, with rows of them. At the far end of the room there were two smaller rooms, which she guessed to be bathrooms, and a narrow door which she thought should lead to the outside.
As Girard moved away, toward the nearest bed, Hallie remembered that she also had a torch. She drew it out and set her beam to the same wide angle, then headed to the beds on the opposite side to Girard.
The bunk beds were basic and crudely made, to Hallie’s eyes. In some cases it looked like tree branches had been used without bothering to strip off the bark, or sand down any rough edges. From a quick glance along the row, it looked like every one of them had been occupied - both the lower and upper levels. The mattresses looked lumpy and uncomfortable, the outer layer made of plain, heavy cloth, and she saw what she thought mightbe grass poking out of a hole in the nearest one. Something that a bunch of settlers with limited resources might be able to make. She wondered if they had remembered to shake out the grass to remove any insects before stuffing the mattress, and had to stop herself from scratching the phantom itches that sprung up over her body at that thought. The blankets were an odd mix of what looked like rough woven cloth, old coats and stretches of fabric she couldn’t identify. So the bedding had been made of whatever the settlers had to hand as well. The air was heavy with a faint smell of damp and unwashed bodies.
Next to the head of each bed unit was a large chest with a hinged lid. Opening the nearest one, Hallie found personal possessions. Spare clothes, some toiletries, and framed photographs of either groups of smiling people or couples. She glanced from the smiling faces to the basic beds and wondered if the people had known what they were letting themselves in for when they had moved here. Humans talked of Paradise as if it were some promised land, where everything would be easy and perfect out of the reach and influence ofhochlen. Hallie had always had her doubts. From the little she’d seen so far, it seemed she’d been right. She couldn’t imagine what a perfect place would look like, but there was a whole world she hadn’t seen yet.
“It looks like everyone was sleeping in here,” she said, turning to look for Girard. He’d made faster progress down the row of beds on his side of the room. “Is that usual?”
“No,” he said. He moved to stand at the foot of the nearest bed, facing her. Even in the poor light she could see his frown. “The only times I’ve seen or heard of rooms like this are for school camps or military training.”
“School camps?” Hallie asked, brow wrinkling as she tried to imagine what in the world that would be.
“Ah. Wilderness adventure type of thing,” Girard said. When she kept frowning at him, he went on. “A group of children and some supervising adults go off into a remote place and learn about nature and survival.”
“Alright,” Hallie said. Having seen the vast open stretches of land and forest outside the city, and the expanse of land that they’d flown over to get here, she could almost visualise what Girard was talking about. Although she wasn’t sure she’d have called it an adventure. That word always sounded to her like it referred to something fun to do. Surviving in wild country did not sound like fun at all. “I’ve never seen bunk beds outside a child’s room. And these ones seem pretty basic.”
“I agree. It looks like the settlers put the beds together in a hurry. Unlike the radio building, which is in good shape.” Girard moved along the rest of the row and stuck his head into the rooms at the end. “Basic toilets with wash basins. There’s running water in the taps which means they’ve got plumbing and drains. No showers or baths, though,” he said, coming back to her.
“And no people here, either,” Hallie said. “From the smell, I’d say that it’s been empty for as long as the other building. A few days at least. And whoever slept in here didn’t bathe or shower all that often,” she added. There was no judgement in her voice. Low city had its fair share of poor people struggling to survive for whom a shower or bath would have been a luxury.
“Let’s look round the other buildings,” Girard suggested, heading for the door.
Hallie moved with him, remembering to turn off the torch and put it away before she went back outside.
The sky had grown even darker, if possible, in the short time they had been in the sleeping house. They walked around the back of it and confirmed her guess that the structures there were a kiln, water storage tank and a working space. The kiln wascold and hadn’t been used in a while. The metal storage tank was held off the ground on a sturdy wooden platform. There were a few old metal buckets, all of them filthy and dented, on the ground under the tank. The working space had been built to last, with thick trunks forming the corner posts of the building, solid brick walls around the long back and two short sides and a heavy wooden workbench in the middle. A variety of large tools or outdoor implements hung around the walls or rested on the floor from a wooden wheelbarrow to hoes for tilling the ground and double-handled saw, the blade warped and showing signs of rust.
As they left the work shed, she saw Girard cast a look up at the sky and pick up his pace as he headed for the nearest of the flimsy buildings that made up the rest of the structures in the settlement.
The first building they reached gave her even more questions. The floor of it, and the foundations, from what she could tell, were solidly built. There were even pipes sticking up from the brick floor ready to plumb in what she assumed might be a toilet, sink and bath or shower unit, and perhaps a small kitchen. The pipes were closed off with heavy rags.
That all fit with what she’d seen of the brick-built buildings. The people who’d formed this settlement and worked on it had some knowledge of construction and knew what they were doing, and even though the bunk beds hadn’t been all that well made, they had at least been functional.
The rest of the building didn’t fit well with what she’d seen so far. The care taken in laying the foundation and setting up the pipework was absent from the rest of the building. The walls were far more basic and crudely made than the bunk beds. It looked like slender branches or saplings had been harvested and woven together. Hallie could see daylight through the supposedwalls, and looking up saw that the roof was just as badly put together, made of leafy branches over a basic wooden frame.
