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alongwith barns and silos, and trees that had been planted to shelter the buildings from the wind.
    Once in awhile a feral Chimera could be seen in the distance, searching for something to eat, and they passed the rotting remains of a cow. But other than an occasional bark from Rowdy as he took off after a rabbit, and the eternal hum of the wind, the land was silent.
    They saw cars of course, and trucks, and even a yellow school bus, but all were motionless. Some sat as if abandoned only moments before, out of gas perhaps, or broken down. Others lay every which way, having been attacked from the air, and shot full of holes. That had been at least a year earlier, of course. The drivers and passengers who could be seen through filthy windows looked like skeletonized half-mummies, still clad in scraps of rotting cloth, waiting for the elements to bury them.
    And they saw graves, too, with improvised crosses standing like lonely sentinels beside the road. Each marked the end of a desperate journey, back when there had been places to go and the strength required to dig.
    But amidst these signs of death there were unmistakable signs of life: Route 40 was a natural trail for people to follow. Capelli’s practiced eye took note of a recent campfire, a signpost with a cryptic message written on it, and a couple of .22 casings too bright to have been lying on the road for very long. All signs that, in spite of Chimeran efforts to exterminate them, human beings still walked the surface of the planet.
    They had been walking for three hours by the time Capelli called a halt just short of a bridge. The sun was high, and other than the white scar that a Chimeran shuttle had left on the blue sky, it was as if the threesome had the entire world to themselves. From the highway they had to skid down a steep bank into the shadowy area below. A stream ran under the bridge, and judgingfrom the trash left by others, they weren’t the first people to pause there. “You supplied breakfast,” Capelli said, “so lunch is on me.”
    Capelli opened his pack and brought out a jar of applesauce he had found in an abandoned farmhouse—plus two cans of Vienna sausages purchased a couple of weeks earlier. “Looks good,” Locke said. “Shall I heat the sausages?”
    Capelli shook his head. “No, save the Sterno for later. Rule number one is never light a fire during the day.”
    Locke nodded. “If you’ll give me your mess tin I’ll divide everything up.”
    Locke and Capelli made small talk during lunch, but not much, since the two men didn’t know each other that well. But Capelli learned that Locke had done a hitch as a hospital corpsman in the Navy after high school, inherited some money, and gone into business as a car dealer back before what he referred to as “the plague.”
    Then, after the Chimera overran Great Britain, Locke had been quicker than most to see how things were going. So he purchased a large quantity of supplies while they were still available, stashed them near his cabin in the mountains, and eventually moved there. At first, Locke had been satisfied to simply hide out, but after receiving a couple of runner-delivered letters from his sister, he eventually resolved to join her in Haven.
    Capelli was intrigued by the possibility of a truly successful survival community. But when pressed, Locke had very few details to add.
Still
, Capelli thought to himself,
it’s worth taking a look at. And the truth is that I don’t have anything better to do
.
    So Capelli finished the last of his applesauce, washed his plate in the stream, and removed a pair of binoculars from the top of his pack. “See the tree over there? The one on the east side of the stream? I’m going to climb it and take a look at our back trail.”
    Locke looked around. “Where’s Rowdy?”
    “Wherever he wants to be,” Capelli replied.
    The stream was shallow enough to wade through without overtopping his boots. So Capelli followed it as far as he could,