Page 73 of Last Light

“Ha! Told you!” Yes, I’m petty enough to say it out loud. He kind of deserves it.

“What is this place?” Travis asks, stretching out from under the top of the vehicle so he can get a better look.

“Looks like a house, doesn’t it?”

I can understand his question, however. The building is odd.

The house is only one floor, and the siding is unpainted wood shingles. But the roof is covered with reflective panels, and there’s a lot of strange equipment on one side. The only thing I recognize is what looks like an industrial-sized propane tank.

“Are those solar panels on the roof?” I ask, still trying to get a sense of what we’re looking at.

“Looks like it. Drive around to the side there.” He points to the mechanism on one of the back corners.

I drive over, and I can see Travis looking, assessing, putting pieces together.

“Thought so,” he says at last. “Solar generator.”

“You’re kidding! Out in the middle of nowhere like this?”

“And that back there is definitely a water well. Looks like a manual pump, but he’s got it rigged up to go into the house. Bet there’s running water in here.”

I grip the steering wheel and peer at the setup. “It sure is weird-looking.”

“It’s probably a homemade job. Whoever did this really wanted to live off the grid.”

“That’s true of a lot of people.”

“Sure. But setting this place up had to take years. He started long before impact. We’re gonna have to be careful. Someone like that ain’t gonna cut and run. Might be here. And he’s not gonna want visitors. Drive us out to the front again.”

When I do as he says, Travis reaches over to tap on the horn a few times. Then he calls out, “Hello! Anyone there? We’re not looking for trouble. Just a safe place for the night. You want us to leave, we’ll leave. Anyone there?”

We wait for a couple of minutes, but there’s no sound, no movement.

“I don’t think anyone’s in there. Surely if someone was home, he’d either answer or shoot at us.”

Travis is frowning. “Maybe.” He honks the horn a few more times.“Anyone there?”

“It seems empty to me.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll drive us around the whole perimeter so we can get a good look.”

“Good idea.”

We make a circuit of the house and find a large workshop in the back that looks just as empty as the house. Travis peers into a window of the workshop. “Hold up. There. Look.”

I lean over almost on top of him so I can see in too.

On the floor of the workshop is a body, lying facedown on the dirt floor.

Not really a body anymore.

Mostly a skeleton wearing disintegrating, tattered clothes.

“Don’t get out,” Travis says. “Just pull up to the door. I wanna see what happened.”

I drive a few feet, and he tries to the door to the workshop. It’s not locked. Travis steps out and leans down.

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