“Anybody spot him before then?” Koda intones, deliberately ignoring the none-too-subtle byplay between her two companions. “He might have slipped out when the convoy returned.”

Maggie narrows her eyes, about to protest. Then she thinks better of it and sighs, resigned. “I’ll check again, but I doubt it. No one made any mention of seeing him at all since sometime yesterday.”

Crossing the room, Koda lays her hands, palm down, on the Spartan desk. “Do you know where Tacoma is?”

“Yeah, I sent him out with the squad to scour the base. Why?”

“He’s a damn good tracker.” Rising to her full height, Dakota eyes Maggie steadily. “Send someone out to find him and tell him to see if he can spot any tracks that might lead to our man. Kirsten and I will comb over his house and see if there’s anything to be found there. We’ll meet you back here, or in your office in, say, two hours. Sooner if we find anything.”

Maggie nods crisply, resisting the urge to snap off a salute. Inwardly, though, she’s smiling at the effortless way that Dakota assumes command of the situation. It’s something she saw in the tall, quiet woman from the first moment they met, and she’s pleased to see the shining potential slowly coming to fruition.

It is only when the dynamic duo has left the office and the door closes quietly behind them that she lets the smile bloom fully over her face. With a jaunty little whistle, she turns back to work.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

“GOD! THIS PLACE stinks!!” Striding across the darkened living room, Kirsten draws aside the heavy, smoke-impregnated curtains, and throws open the large westward facing window. Fresh air flows in on a strong breeze, helping neutralize the stench of unwashed clothes, rancid food, half-empty beer and liquor containers, though doing nothing to touch the foul undercurrent of far more identifiable, and personal, odors permeating the house like a miasma.

Turning, she watches as Koda, seemingly unaffected, casually lights one of the two kerosene lamps she’s brought with her and lifts it in her lover’s direction. “You have a cold or something?” Kirsten asks as she approaches and grasps the lamp’s wire handle. “This place is enough to gag a maggot and you’re not even breathing through your mouth!”

“I’m a Vet. I grew up on a ranch. I have seven brothers.” Koda lights the second lamp, her smirk hiding in the shadows sliding over her features.

“Point,” Kirsten grants, hefting her lamp and turning in a circle. “Well, this is gonna be fun.”

“You take out here and I’ll tackle the bedroom.”

Kirsten grins over her shoulder, straight white teeth glittering in the flickering lamplight. “Better you than me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Holler if you find anything.”

“In this mess? If you hear me holler, it’ll be because a rat just bit me.” Shuddering inwardly, she makes her way, with her lamp, to the tiny kitchen. As she advances, she hears her partner’s soft steps retreat, and she silently wishes Koda luck in her quest.

Holding the lantern shoulder high, Koda uses her free hand to push open the door to the bedroom. It gives grudgingly, jammed from behind by gods only know what refuse. The boards groan as she forces her way into the dark, stinking room, and she lifts the light high, scanning the small space with narrowed eyes.

The bed, unmade, sports sheets that she’s quite sure could stand up on their own and dance a jig with the equally offensive pillowcases. The quilt and blanket, lying in a tangled heap on the floor and covered with dried filth that Koda can all too readily identify, are obviously lost causes.

Pushing several glasses onto the carpeted floor where they land with muted thunks, she sets the lamp down amidst the half empty bottles of Ol’ Grandad and Wild Turkey on the small bedside table. Rounding the bed, she lifts the fallen quilt and blanket, shaking them out and turning her head from the stench the covers emit as they’re disturbed. She drops them back down into a heap when nothing is shaken loose.

Walking over to the closet, she shuffles through the few remaining uniforms that hang with military precision on the rail, turning up nothing of interest. A quick pass-through of the bathroom makes her wish she hadn’t, and then she heads back to the nightstand, opening its single drawer with a smooth tug. Her search yields a small bible, well-read, but with nothing pressed between its thin, fragile pages.

With a soft sigh, she replaces the bible, closes the drawer and lifts the lamp, heading back into the living room and closing the bedroom door behind her.

“Anything?” she asks Kirsten as her partner steps out of the kitchen.

“Not unless you want to count the swarm of drunk cockroaches breeding merrily in what’s left of the beer. You?”

“Zip.” She takes another quick look around the living room. “There’s no way to tell if he’s been gone hours or weeks in this mess.”

“Maybe Maggie and the others have found something by now.”

“Maybe,” Koda agrees, though it’s clear she doesn’t really believe the word she’s uttered. “Shall we?”

“None too soon for me, thanks.”

*

Dakota, Kirsten, Manny, Andrews, Harcourt, Maggie and several other ‘insiders’ are packed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip in the Colonel’s small office. Before them, just inside the door, stands Tacoma, a slightly chagrinned expression on his otherwise somber face. “I wish I had better news to report,” he intones. “Fact is, it’s just been too dry, and with all the base traffic, trying to track one human male is difficult, to say the least. Especially if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Alright, then. We’ll need to—.”

Before she can finish, Maggie is interrupted by the door being flung open, almost sending Tacoma across the room. Kimberly, winded and disheveled, steps through, a mess of slickly printed leaflets in her left hand. “Toller’s gone.”

“General Hart’s assistant?” Kirsten asks.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Moving fully into the room, she closes the door behind her and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought that since you guys weren’t having any luck in the search, I’d see if Toller knew where he was. I went over to his house. It was all closed up, which isn’t like him. He must have forgotten to lock the side door, though, because it opened right up.” She worries her lower lip for a moment before continuing. “He wasn’t there. His uniforms were gone. His luggage was gone. All that was left behind were these.”

Dakota takes the leaflets from Kimberly’s outstretched hand, riffling quickly through them and glancing at the titles only.

Android = Armageddon

Multiculturalism: Satan’s Garden

Will YOU be among His Saved?

Curling her lip, Koda tosses the pamphlets onto Maggie’s desk where they splay out in a fan of Fundamentalist claptrap. “Answers that question.”

“What now?” Kirsten asks, thumbing through the leaflets and wincing at the titles.

“Little weasel’s got family in Grand Rapids,” Andrews remarks. “We could—.”

“I’m there,” Tacoma interrupts, already headed for the door before he’s stopped by his sister’s voice.

“Wait.”

He turns, eyebrow raised. The expression is so eerily like that of his sister’s that Kirsten finds herself turning to the woman beside her to make sure she’s still there and not suddenly across the room.

“Look,” Koda continues, spreading her hands out on the desk, “I appreciate wanting to find the man, but what I appreciate more is the fact that those androids out there aren’t going to wait for us to do that. We need to start planning for the war that’s just outside our doorstep, and that planning includes everyone in here.” Turning her head slowly, she eyes them all, watching as they straighten and seem to throw off the fatigue touching each and every one of them.

“I shall endeavor to track down your vermin and his master.” Harcourt’s voice is soft from the corner where he’s been quietly standing throughout the proceedings. He eases his way forward until he is standing before Maggie’s desk. He holds up a hand in the face of Dakota’s immediate objection. “We had a deal, Ms. Rivers, as you’ll recall. I enter and leave when I please, as I please. While I am far too old to be lobbing armaments at the enemy, I am quite experienced in hunting down animals who have gone to ground, as it were.” He smiles slightly, and there is something of the predator in it. “Make your plans, prime your trumpets for the walls of Jericho. I shall play my small part through to the end.” His own look, diamond hard and razor sharp, cuts off any and all objections at the knees. His smile broadens infinitesimally, showing the points of his canines. “I bid you all adieu, then, and wish you luck.” He turns to Dakota. “Should you wish to contact me again, you know where to find me.”

With a slight incline of his head, he eases forward as the bodies give way, and slips through the door, leaving everyone to stare, stunned, after him.

“Be right back,” Dakota remarks and pushes through the crowd and through the door.

*

“Fenton, wait!”

Hearing Koda coming quickly up behind him, he stops, back still turned to her, and surveys the land before him. His voice is soft and contemplative as he recites from a favored poem.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.”

With a smile set on his face and a fine walking stick in his hand, he turns to his listener, eyes seeming to glow with vitality and a surge, seldom seen, of good humor.