“Fancy some music. Ryan?”
The one-eyed man followed his friend, hearing the plaintive, bossy little voice fading behind him in the kitchen. He looked into the room where J.B. stood by the window, beneath the elegant golden drapes.
“Notice the smell?” he asked.
The Armorer sniffed. “Yeah. Sort of bitter chemical kind of a scent.”
“What the embalming was done with.”
“And there’s death.”
Ryan nodded. It was true. Every room of every building that they’d been in contained that unmistakable odor, the sour-sweet taint of life departed.
Whoever had constructed this bizarre series of tableaux morts had obviously been aware of the problem. There were bowls of dried flowers and dishes of scented potpourri in each building. But their faded, dusty scents could do little to overcome the grisly reality of what stood and sat in all the chambers.
J.B. wound away at the handle that was set alongside a walnut harmonium. A young woman sat with her hands resting on the black and white keys, her head on one side, an attempt at a smile on her painted lips, a smile that resembled a rictus of horror at what had come to pass.
Ryan stood close behind her, and he pointed at a mark on the back of the neck, almost hidden by the tightly wound chignon of straw-colored hair.
“Bullet hole,” he commented.
At that moment the music began, wheezing and slow, with a thin little voice trilling out the words.
“‘Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river? Shall we gather at the river that flows by the throne of God of God God God God'” The repetitive click got louder, the music also halting and repeating the phrase. There was a faint grinding noise, like gears failing to mesh, and the silence returned.
The friends went back outside, Ryan holding the SIG-Sauer cocked and ready, the Armorer with his Uzi cradled in his arms. But there was nobody in sight.
It was late afternoon, the sun already slipping out of sight behind the range of mountains to the west. The township was still and silent.
Suddenly up beyond the school, they both heard the noise of a generator firing up, and the fragile evening breeze brought the odor of gasoline. All around them, lights began to flicker into life in the newly painted buildings.
Ryan instinctively crouched behind a tub of flowersartificial flowers, he noticed. J.B. flattened against the wall of the house.
“Might get to meet the creator of all this,” Ryan whispered. “Not sure how I feel about that.”
“Me neither.”
“Notice something?” the Armorer asked quietly.
“What?”
“No children.”
It was true. Even in the big mansion with the harmonium, where you would have expected to see little ones, in the nursery or in the living rooms, there had been no sign of any.
“School?” Ryan said.
“Could be.”
They moved up the street toward the crest of the hill, where the small white school stood. The rhythmic thudding of the generator was somewhere beyond it, just out of sight. They overlapped each other, in classic urban skirmish styleRyan going ahead while J.B. covered him, then the Armorer moving past, while Ryan kept watch with his blaster.
The church was on their right, the doors open, and a freshly printed poster pinned to the noticeboard outside Faith In The Lord Doesn’t Determine Who Goes Right AheadJust Who Gets Left Behind.
“Yeah,” said Ryan, to himself.
It was possible to make out several silent figures sitting in pews in the incense-scented pools of darkness inside the church. There was no need to go in and find out whether they were embalmed corpses.
They reached the school, looking at the gently swinging bell, listening to the sound of the gas generator.
“Up the hill?” J.B. asked.
“School first. You want to wait outside and keep watch or come in?”
“Guess I’ll come in with you.”
The grisly ville of the dead was getting to Ryan, his discomfort heightened by the memory of the puckered bullet scar in the tanned skin of the dead young woman at the keyboard of the harmonium.
The hinges of the entrance door had been recently oiled, and it opened without a sound.