Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 76 of 150

Ben watched the sky for an hour. The winged creature did not come back. Millie slept beside the pool with her boot off and her ankle wrapped in wet cloth. The crate sat between them in the dry wash, sealed and silent, but the wash had no walls. When the sun came up, anyone on the ridges above would see two figures and a box in the open stones. Ben needed cover before dawn, and dawn was maybe three hours off. He stood and turned in place. Pines to the north. Bare rock south. East was the way the creature had gone. West was where the wash bent and climbed and then flattened out into scrub. He walked that way, quiet, leaving Millie at the pool. The wash rose. The scrub thinned. Then he saw it, tucked against the hillside where the wash cut past — a squat stone tower, no taller than two men. It pinched in the middle like a spool. Three narrow slits high up. A low arched door with no door in it. Old work, older than the road maps he had used all his life. A watch post, maybe, from before the kingdom carved its border. Thick walls. Thick enough. Ben ducked inside. The air was cold and dead. No hum could carry through stone like this. He came back at a run. Millie was awake and had her knife out. She lowered it when she saw him. "There's a tower," Ben said. "Ten minutes up the wash. Stone. No door but the walls will hold the sound." "I can walk on it if you carry the box." "You'll ride the crate. I'll drag." He cut two lengths from the waxed cord she had emptied out earlier and lashed them under the crate to make handles. Millie sat on the lid with her bad leg out. Ben pulled. The crate scraped over gravel, jumped on stones, and he leaned into it until his shoulders burned. Millie kept watch behind them and whispered when he needed to stop. They reached the tower with the sky still black. Ben dragged the crate through the arch and pushed it against the back wall. He piled loose stones in the doorway to break the sightline from outside. Millie crawled in after him and lay flat on the dirt floor. Ben listened. No hum. No horn. Only Millie's breathing and his own. He sat with his back against the stone and let his hands shake. He had shelter. He had walls. He had a hurt girl and a sealed crate and no way to know if his message had reached Eileen. But the scouts would sweep the ridges at first light, and now they would sweep past a tower with no door and see nothing worth a second look. The first gray showed in the slits above his head. Ben did not move.