Now there was only a week to go before the date for the meeting, and Kyle, Carrie and Sly were around one hundred and fifty miles away from Muir Woods, as the crow flies. However, they’d all noticed that there didn’t seem to be that many crows flying around the leaden, overcast skies.
Next morning, the twenty-eighth, the wind had risen, blowing the snow cover in powdery heaps, bringing drifts at the sides of the highway.
Sly had trouble taking his tent down, but he stubbornly insisted on battling the flying material himself, refusing Kyle’s offer of help.
“Me do it on my own,” he said, smiling broadly as he finally managed to get the tent stuffed into its waterproof bag.
“Throw it in the back, Sly, and we’ll get rolling on north again.”
The boy clapped his hands. “Rolling and rolling and rolling we all gotta roar ‘Hide.’ ”
“Very nearly,” laughed Carrie, patting him on the arm.
THEY’D SEEN virtually no hard evidence in all of their journeying that General Zelig was anywhere out there.
But they had come across a couple of hopeful clues, and if there were two, then that must mean that there were probably more.
One was painted in black on the vertical wall of a steep bluff. Carrie had been driving, with Sly dozing in the middle of the front seat while Kyle had been fiddling with a broken camera he’d picked up in a wreck-strewn picnic area.
She’d stamped down on the brake, sending the pickup slewing onto the shoulder in a shower of pebbles and sand.
“Look!” she exclaimed, rolling down the window and pointing out to the left.
The message had obviously been daubed in a great hurry, with paint running streakily over the red-orange rocks.
“Rora North. Z.”
That was all.
The second message was longer and just a little more explicit. They found it when they detoured up a dirt road, avoiding a tangled mass of blackened vehicles fused together by a cataclysmic fire and totally blocking the highway. Whoever left the message had obviously driven the same way.
They stopped outside the tumbledown remains of what must once have been a beautiful old frame house. Now the outside staircase to the second floor had rotted and fallen, while the windows gaped glassless and menacingly dark.
“Spooky,” whispered Sly, hunching his shoulders protectively.
“Nothing to be frightened about,” said Kyle, who was at the wheel.
Carrie narrowed her eyes. “Hold it a second,” she said. “Just spotted something.”
She jumped down and walked across to the front of the faded, weathered building. The exposed joists looked like old bones.
Her keen eye had picked out something hanging from the battered mailbox. A small flag. It would have meant nothing to most people passing by, but she’d recognized it immediately as the insignia of the United States Space Authority—a circle of tiny silver suns set on a maroon background.
There was a piece of paper wrapped around the thin stick that held the little pennant in place in the box.
“What’s it say?” shouted Kyle.
She unrolled it, peering at it, then walked over and offered it to him. “Not too easy to make out. See for yourself.”
It was typed on what looked like the most ancient manual machine in all the Americas. The letter e was missing, as was the t. The lines were irregular, looking like a mule going up a ladder, and were so pale you had to angle the paper toward the sunlight to read them. It was obvious that the typewriter was also lacking any capital letters.
anyon wan s o know abou aurora should con ac caffs groc ri s in wrigh vill nor h of walk r on 395. will b h r un il nd nov mb r. jk z lig.
They were now within only a dozen miles of Wrightsville, north of Walker, ready to locate Caff’s Groceries.
WHEN AT LAST the pickup rolled to a halt, they stared in surprise.
“Christ! It’s open for business,” Kyle said.
All three of them got out of the cramped cab, their breath frosting in the icy morning air. Sly scampered to the rear of the truck, unzipping himself as he ran. Carrie and Kyle looked thoughtfully at the building that stood across from them.