He stood by the side table under the window, where he’d laid out one of his Civil War battle tableaux using the miniature models that he’d cast and painted himself. To his amazement, the tiny soldiers still stood, unharmed, among the rolling hills of dark green cardboard.
Nanci had glanced at it as she prowled around the apartment, and now she got up and sauntered over.
“Antietam,” she said, softly.
Jeff was flabbergasted. “How the sweet fuck do you know that?”
“Majored in History. The War between the States was my last-year dissertation.” She looked out of the window into the darkening sky. “September 17 of ’62. Bloodiest day of the whole war.” Her finger traced a pale yellow line on the diorama. “Hagerstown Turnpike. That’s Dunker Church, I guess.” A straggling, thin blue smear. “Antietam Creek. Burnsie’s Bridge. Toombs up here with his Georgians, amongst the thick trees. Heavily outnumbered.” She indicated a rounded incline. “Cemetery Hill. And Jeb Stuart away on Nicodemus Hill. It’s nice, Jeff, very nice indeed.”
He faced her, wanting to change the subject to what really interested him. “We go south tomorrow?”
“Right.”
“How?”
She smiled, looking suddenly younger. “Jeff… I could walk it from here to Calico easily in the time we have. A whole month. But I prefer to travel with a modicum of style.”
“First-class?”
“Absolutely. And if we find adequate transport, we can discuss the entire Civil War as we motor our way gently along toward this ghost town of yours. It’ll be admirable.”
“Transport, Nanci?”
“Let me do the worrying, Jeff.”
Some distance away they both heard a sudden piercing scream, cut off as quickly as it started. It was impossible to tell whether it had come from a man or a woman. Or a child. Neither of them took any notice.
“Can I ask you something, Nanci, since we’re going to be traveling together?”
“Why am I interested in Zelig and how did I know about Tempest?”
“And who the hell you are and what the hell you do.”
“You believe schoolteacher?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s partly what I was. Rest of the time I was an assassin for Central Intelligence.” She stretched lazily and cast him an amused glance. “Now I’m for bed.”
Jeff watched her, unable to decide whether she was joking or not about her job.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was a bitingly cold fall morning, with the previous day’s norther veering to a ferocious easterly, dropping the wind-chill factor close to thirty below zero.
There were periods of hail, pattering off Mac’s face, stinging the skin. Every hour or so the sky would darken to the color of tarnished pewter and it would tip snow across New England.
The Norton kept going, reliable as ever, though Mac had to slow it down to less than ten miles per hour on the patches of sheet ice.
It seemed as if he’d never finish the journey to Mystic. His hands and feet felt frozen, and he began to have serious worries about getting frostbitten.
His endless travels from the warmth of the Nevada desert to this bitter wilderness were beginning to seem more and more pointless.
It was as though there’d been nothing but pain and death from the first traumatic moments of their reawakening. As he rode on endlessly, the cold and the monotony amplified his fears that nothing good awaited him, either.
Unbelievably it grew colder and darker.
The headlight on the old Norton barely penetrated the driving snow that rolled across the blacktop in front of him.
Mac dropped his speed to walking pace, keeping both feet down, toes scraping along the glassy surface of the highway. Several times he had to swerve around tangled vehicles, many of them burned-out, blackened shells.
Once something darted from the blizzard, right in front of him, making him drop the bike with a jarring crash. There was the momentary flash of vast bulk and towering horns. His nostrils filled with rank, bitter scent.
The moose, or whatever it had been, vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and he hauled the bike upright and moved slowly eastward through the numbing cold.
When he saw the sign, it seemed like something out of a dream, and he stared at it uncomprehendingly.