Of the fifty-six buildings, only twenty-two have collapsed entirely or fallen into such ruin that it is dangerous to enter them. Those that remain are mostly simple, decaying houses. The largest structure might have been a modest lumber mill, though all of the equipment and internal features that could have positively identified it were stripped out and taken away at some point during the settlement’s demise.
As best he can determine, the first residents staked their claim here around 1860. The settlement, which was never formally designated as a town, was abandoned by the last of its citizens in the late 1890s. He can’t help but be impressed by the quality of their masonry and carpentry; for if they had possessed any less skill, nothing whatsoever would be standing. They employed native stone and heavy timbers and masterful joinery. Evident dedication marks everything they constructed, so that he wonders if they might have been members of a religious sect.
At the entrance to the town, he’d found a weathered plank mortared into the face of a stone plinth. Eight letters had been burned in the wood. He believes this is the name of the place: Zipporah. On one of his visits to buy supplies in the nearest center of commerce—over thirteen miles from here—he researched the word and learned it was the name of the wife of Moses. This discovery, combined with the fact that by far the most formidable building in town is a stone church, seems to confirm his speculation.
However, another building is a saloon, which on his first tour had sung in many voices when the wind was high and sieving through it, before he made repairs to the structure. Why would a town of religious types sanction such a den of iniquity? That question amuses Asher, although he spends no time pondering it. He isn’t surprised that the settlers were hypocrites, for in his estimation, all human beings are hypocrites, himself excepted.
Ghost town.
Such a location is not just conducive to the work he has set out to accomplish, but it is also properly symbolic. His purpose is to ensure that Earth becomes, from pole to pole, a collection of ghost towns and cities, a planet where not a single human presence disturbs the peace of any continent or sails on any sea.
Here, in this place, the end will begin.
No. The end already has begun. Four are dead and another waits to die.
Having walked the length of the street, Asher returns to the saloon, which is at the heart of the settlement. The weathered walls of time-silvered wood glow softly with reflected moonlight, a gray ghost of a building. Most windows are broken out and boarded over from inside; others are etched by dust, like cataractous eyes.
After finding Zipporah on the second day of April, Asher had spent a month hauling in supplies and weatherproofing the saloon for the coming winter. With thirty-four large tubes of caulking, several rolls of insulation, and a lot of plastic sheeting, he has banished the wind that had enjoyed easy access for decades. He has installed a cast-iron pot-bellied stove to provide heat and used a chain saw to cut a firewood supply from dead trees in the forest.
From the exterior, the saloon looks as it did when he first came upon it. Inside, a spare yet cozy living space is furnished with an armchair and footstool. Two straight-backed chairs stand at a simple plank-top table he constructed himself, where he can sit to take his meals and spend hours every day writing the manifesto that will change the world and bring an end to human history.
Ophelia will be where he left her: sitting on the floor, her hands zip tied in front of her. A padlocked chain around her neck shackles her to a wall stud.
He climbs two steps onto the wide veranda. Approaching the front door, he expects to hear Ophelia weeping softly. Sooner or later, they all weep, the men as well as the women. If ever Asher abducts others who strive to meet their fate with tearless courage, he will employ whatever methods are required to break their resolve. They must not go to their deaths with the illusion that dying means something. He intends for them to understand that they are nothing, that they mean nothing. He needs them to die twice, first to suffer the death of the spirit and only then the death of the body. This is the path that all of humankind must follow in order to ensure that the future envisioned in his manifesto comes to pass.
This Ophelia bitch is not yet weeping.
He opens the door.
7
Most days at dawn, Joanna Chase took a long, brisk walk to clear her mind for a session of writing. Santa Fe was a city with a richness of museums and churches and missions, with much beautiful architecture to distract a fitness enthusiast from the tedium of morning exercise.
That Thursday in August, under a cloudless pale-blue sky, she took a shorter walk than usual, a mere ten minutes to Katherine Ainsley’s house. Even though retired as the general manager of one of the city’s best hotels, Aunt Katherine was always up before first light. Joanna passed under the spreading branches of the thirty-foot juniper that shaded the house, and went around back. Through panes in the kitchen door, she saw Katherine dressed in red silk pajamas and matching robe, sitting at the breakfast table with a bagel, a plate of lox, a pot of tea, and the newspaper.