Dalton Reed's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Morning came gray and cold. Dalton knew he could not stay boxed in the truck forever. To build his settlement, he had to move through these ruins. But the stone creature owned the dark, and he did not know where it slept or hunted. Any street he walked could be its street. So he climbed the water tower again, this time to watch, not to scout for shelter. He needed to learn the thing's paths before it learned his. From the top he mapped the blocks with his eyes. He marked scorched walls, broken windows, a fallen tower of mushroom-shaped stone at the edge of the field. He watched for hours. Then he saw movement below, and it was not the creature. A woman crossed an open lot fast and low. She wore a scout's vest heavy with pouches. She stopped at every corner, checked both ways, then ran. She moved like someone who had been hunted and lived. Dalton climbed down and cut across to meet her. She drew a pistol before he cleared the rubble. "Stop there," she said. "I'm not trouble." He raised his hands. "I have shelter. Steel walls. You look like you need them." Her eyes flicked past him, then back. "Maya," she said, and nothing else. She did not lower the gun. "There's a stone thing out here," Dalton said. "Six legs. Glows. I don't know where it dens." "I do." She said it flat. "I've been tracking it two days. I have to. It sits between me and the river." Dalton's chest tightened. "Show me." Maya studied him. "Why." "Because I mean to build something here. I can't build blind." She holstered the gun. She pulled a folded scrap of paper from a pouch and crouched. On it she had drawn lines, a rough map. She tapped one shape. "Old manor. Sits low, mushroom-capped, half fallen. Face carved over the door." Dalton knew it. The fallen tower he'd marked. "It dens inside by day. Feeds at dusk, works a wide loop, comes back before dawn." Dalton looked at the marks. The creature had a home. It had a schedule. The dark was no longer blind. "Why help me?" he asked. "One reason. Your walls." She stood. "A supply burn's coming. I need a place off the road for a night. That's the trade." He held out his hand. She shook it once, fast, and let go. They crouched together in the rubble while she walked him through the loop, corner by corner. When she finished, Dalton could see the safe hours and the safe streets in his head. He had his answer. He knew where the thing slept and when it hunted. But knowing the den changed everything. He could not just avoid the creature now. To have this city, he had to go to that sagging manor and drive the thing out of it.