They rode into the compound. The plant comprised three long, two-story buildings arranged in a U, with a fourth, much larger than the others, closing the square—a windowless concrete bulk connected to the grain bins by a maze of pipes and chutes. The skeletal husks of rusted vehicles and other machinery filled the spaces between the weeds. The air had stilled and cooled; birds were flitting through the glassless windows of the buildings. The three small structures were just shells, their roofs long collapsed, but the fourth was mostly tight. This was the one Eustace was interested in. If you were going to hide a couple hundred people, that would be a place to do it.
“You got a windup in your saddlebag, don’tcha?” Eustace asked.
Fry retrieved the lantern. Eustace turned the crank until the bulb began to glow.
“Thing won’t last more than about three minutes,” Fry warned. “You think they’re in there?”
Eustace was checking his gun. He closed the cylinder and reholstered the weapon but left the strap off. Fry did the same.
“Guess we’re going to find out.”
One of the loading dock doors stood partially open; they dropped and rolled through. The smell hit them like a slap.
“I guess that answers that,” Eustace said.
“Fuck me, that’s nasty.” Fry was pinching his nose. “Do we really need to look?”
“Get ahold of yourself.”
“Seriously, I think I’m gonna puke.”
Eustace gave the lantern a few more cranks. A hallway lined with lockers ran to the main work space of the building. The smell grew more intense with every step. Eustace had seen some bad things in his day, but he was pretty sure this was going to be the worst. They came to the end of the hallway, and a pair of swinging doors.
“I’m thinking this might be the time to ask about a raise,” Fry whispered.
Eustace drew his pistol. “Ready?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
They pushed through. Several things hit Eustace’s senses in close order. The first thing was the stench—a miasma of rot so gaggingly awful that Eustace would have lost his lunch on the spot if he’d actually bothered to eat. To this was added a sound, a dense vibrato that stroked the air like the humming of an engine. In the center of the room was a large, dark mass. Its edges appeared to be moving. As Eustace stepped forward, flies exploded from the corpses.
They were dogs.
As he raised his pistol he heard Fry yell, but that was as far as he got before a heavy weight crashed into him from above and knocked him to the floor. All those people gone; he should have seen this coming. He tried to crawl away, but something awful was occurring inside him. A kind of…swirling. So this was how it was going to be. He reached for his gun to shoot himself but his holster was empty of course, and then his hands went numb and watery, followed by the rest of him. Eustace was plunging. The swirling was a whirlpool in his head and he was being sucked down into it, down and down and down. Nina, Simon. My beloveds, I promise I will never forget you.
But that was exactly what happened.
* * *
46
It was nearly nine o’clock when Sister Peg walked Sara out.
“Thank you for coming,” the old woman said. “It always means so much.”
A hundred and sixteen children, from the tiniest babies to young adolescents; it had taken Sara two full days to examine them all. The orphanage was a duty she could have let go of long ago. Certainly Sister Peg would have understood. Yet Sara had never been able to bring herself to do this. When a child got sick in the night, or was down with a fever, or had leapt from a swing and landed wrong, it was Sara who answered the call. Sister Peg always greeted her with a smile that said she hadn’t doubted for a second who would be gracing her door. How would the world get on without us?
Sara figured that Sister Peg had to be eighty by now. How the old woman continued to manage the place, its barely contained chaos, was a miracle. She had softened somewhat with the years. She spoke sentimentally of the children, both those in her care and the ones who had moved on; she kept track of their lives, how they made their ways in the world, and whom they married and their children if they had them, the way any mother would do. Though Sara knew the woman would never say as much, they were her family, no less than Hollis and Kate and Pim were Sara’s; they belonged to Sister Peg, and she to them.
“It’s no trouble, Sister. I’m glad to do it.”
“What do you hear from Kate?”
Sister Peg was one of the few people who knew the story.
“Nothing so far, but I didn’t expect to. The mail is so slow.”