As the night deepened, we pushed forward.
The Wastes slowly transformed into a ghostly landscape that was dotted with twisted structures reaching out with their gnarled arms in a desperate attempt to touch the skies.
The mangled towers and misshapen formations were so tall they made our little vehicle look like a little ant on the ground. We were a single lonely little ant, the only moving point of light in the entire concrete desolation.
I reached out with my mind and cast as far and wide as I could, looking for some sign of life.
Immediately, I shuddered and pulled back with an involuntary hiss.
My body started quivering uncontrollably. It was so very cold out there—and it had nothing to do with the ambient temperature of the air. I gasped and buried my face in my hands.
The twins immediately grabbed onto me, lending me their warmth and strength.
"What's wrong, are you hurt anywhere?" One of them whispered in my ear.
I shook my head.
The other twin stroke my head. "Shhh. Everything is going to be ok. We are here with you."
I nodded, too shaken to say anything. I could not tell them what I had felt. It was simply too horrifying to contemplate.
I had reached out and touched DEATH.
The seven of us held the only sparks of life in what was an utterly sterile terrain.
Nothing was alive outside this vehicle, as far as my feelers were able to go.
Not a blade of grass. Not a single earth worm. Not even a roach.
Death was everywhere around us!!!
The jagged mangled beams of steel and concrete looked macabre and contorted. It was home to millions of living human beings and hundreds of millions more of living animals.
In a flash, they had all been wiped out. Their life sparks had extinguished in a sudden horrifying manner.
Millions and millions of souls were trapped within the ruins of the towering concrete jungle, searching in vain for salvation.
They had died, but they had never left!
They were still here within these structures. I could feel their presence still, lurking about the ruins not knowing how to escape, even after death.
Their despair and misery pushed at them year after year, decade after decade, turning their collective desperation into a full-blown rage, seething with madness and savagery in an endless futile attempt to escape from the hell-hole that used to be called the City of the Angels.
Now, it was a wasteland that not even the angels dared to tread.
As we continued to motor through the dead city, the crumbling ruins towered high above on either side of the two-lane road, threatening to choke our escape route. The claustrophobia was real.
It was a great relief to finally break free of the structures and leave behind, the valley of the shadow of death. I felt a great sense of relief once we were back in the open plains of the dark relenting desert.
Despite Abe's forewarning about the state of destruction which had just hit the City of Zircon, we decided to continue onward.
We really had no choice.
The caravan did not have enough fuel to go anywhere else, and we were starting to run out of food and water.
The best we could hope for was to find what we need in Zircon so that we could move onward to the next outpost where we could meet up with civilization and a chance to find out where the primates and Tory had gone to.
Since we resumed our travels after sundown, we were expecting to arrive at Zircon past midnight, but as the minutes ticked on, the Wastes continued without change.
Here and there, the dark shadowed clumps of scrub grass looked odd and angular. I strained my senses searching for life signatures, but all I could sense was a huge emptiness, devoid of any living spark.
This lack of life sparks was very similar to the ruins of the City of Angels we had left behind not long ago but now that I knew what to expect, I was not so panicked.
Not trusting my magik instincts, I strained my eyes looking for camp fires, lamp lights, vehicle headlights, any signs of life and civilization at all.
But the darkness continued unending.
After awhile, we started to drive through whole sections of buildings and walls, much of it blackened and half-buried by the tar sands.
Abe tried to stick to the known streets as well as he could, but because the roads were covered over with the tar, he had to drive with care to remain on the flat pavement and avoid hitting any low-lying areas.
Everywhere, there was darkness, as the black tar sands on the building surfaces, fields, and roads absorbed all light, reflecting back nothing. Not a single light was on anywhere except what was coming from our headlights.
Abe kept driving, saying nothing. Eventually, he turned onto a small lane and drove on it for a few minutes, and then he stopped the caravan and switched off the engine.
"Why are we stopping here, Abe?" Simon asked, peering out into the darkness, unable to see much.
"I didn't know where you folks were wanting to go. Seeing there's nothing and no place here I could recommend any more, I decided to drive back to my house." He said, getting out of the car.
In one fluid motion, we all opened the caravan doors and piled out, following Abe into the darkness.
Abe was standing a few feet away from us, staring at a structure in front of us.
It was hard to tell what we were staring at so Corwin whispered a simple Illumination Command.
"Zhaominghuoyen"
A small blue flame appeared and hovered over us, shedding light over our little group.
No one said a word. There was nothing that could be said.
I stared at the structure that Abe was facing and my stomach dropped.
It may have been a house in its former life, but now, there was no longer a roof, and a side wall had caved in so that the house could not even be navigated with any amount of safety.
It felt so strange to be standing there, and I could not put my finger on the reason for the strangeness until I suddenly realized what was wrong.
A city is a city even if one was blind and cannot see the city because the noise of life is always there.
Zircon was absolutely silent.
Earlier, when we were driving through the City of Angels, I was inside the vehicle. There was, at the very least, sounds coming from the car and from all of us. Now, we were immersed in a death zone that had just occurred.
I found myself standing in the middle of a city that had just died. There were no sounds of people, machinery, vehicles, or even dogs barking. Missing too were the sounds of birds and insects.
We were in a dead zone. It was a fresh graveyard, encompassing all the souls who had died here, both human and animal.
I steeled myself to face the present. I could not afford to fall apart this time.
He turned back to face us, his hands splayed open. "Welcome to my humble home."
"I'm sorry your house got destroyed Abe." Connor offered his sympathy.
"Eh, it's just a place I go to in between jobs. My real home is further north, up in the redwood forests." He waved us through.
As we picked through the ruins of his house, Abe stopped here and there to pick up this and that, which he then threw back into the rubble.
There was nothing that was recognizable. Nothing that could be salvaged. Everything was black and sticky and utterly destroyed.
Towards the back of the house, he crouched down and began clearing the rubble from one spot. "Help me with this," he called out.
Corwin and Connor moved closer and saw a section of broken wall which had crumbled over the area where Abe was struggling to uncover.
With Tarzan's help, the four of them moved the crumbled walls away to reveal a latched door sunk into the floor.
"I'm going to need some light, so one of you boys come down with me." He lifted the hatch.
Corwin sent the blue flame ahead into the basement below where I could see boxes and stacks of supplies.
By some freak of a miracle, they seemed to be untouched by the scourge winds.
Corwin waited for Abe to enter, and then he descended behind the driver.
As Corwin and Abe went down into the cellar, Connor created a new flame above so we would not be standing in the dark.
Simon, Max, and Tarzan stood next to us. They were silent but on high alert, their eyes and ears attuned to the environment around them.
Connor said nothing, but his hand was at the small of my back, a welcoming comfort.
I had seen the wordless exchanges between the twins and had started to notice a certain pattern.
Corwin would always be the lead twin who jumped into the foray and did what had to be done to keep us safe, while Connor always remained at my side to protect me if anything untoward were to happen.
In that moment, I knew that as long as they were both by my side, I would be willing to walk through the hell-hole of the City of the Angels if they asked me.
Within minutes, we could hear noises coming from the basement.
Corwin and Abe were shifting items around, and then one by one, boxes and bundles started hovering up and out of the basement steps.
As they levitated toward us, Simon and Connor took over and shifted them to one side so other items could be moved upward.
After the last box had been lifted out of the basement door, the men surfaced.
"We got lucky," Abe pointed at the supplies that had been brought up.
"I checked my stash and it seems to have survived the scourge winds. We'll have to work fast, because I don't know if any other dangers are lurking or if another scourge wind will sweep through and catch all this stuff out in the open."
He started pulling the bundles apart.
"Here, look through and grab what we can use. I'll go and fill the tank with fuel so we can keep going." He scratched his head and stared into the distance.
"Further north, and to the west, there's another city up that way that was probably not touched by the scourge winds. I figure we could head on up there and see what we can see."
He turned back to us. "One of you is going to have to light the way for me here so I can see what I'm doing."
At Corwin's direction, Simon followed Abe, levitating a couple of fuel cans. He also threw a tiny blue flame above their heads with a bombastic flourish.
After they had refueled the vehicle, they came back and moved out as much fuel as the caravan could carry. There was no telling where the next fuel station would be located.
Max stood on guard, his back towards us, his nose to the wind, sniffing for any danger.
Meanwhile, Tarzan stood next to me, trying to be as helpful as he could, lifting heavy things and repacking things that I thought we would need.
There was some canned foods and dried packages of things that looked edible. I grabbed some foodstuff as well as several containers of water.
Connor found a trunk, which he handed to me and we started filling it with supplies. It was strong and had a good tight closure, which meant we could strap it to the roof of the car, allowing us to carry more items than we would have normally been able to carry.
By the time Abe and Simon had come back, we were almost done with the supplies packs.
Anything we didn't take with us, we returned to the basement just in case we were ever coming back this way again. Everything else, we stuffed into packs and bags and proceeded to fill the back of the caravan.
The last thing to come with us was the trunk, which the guys levitated onto the caravan's rooftop and secured with rope.
Then, without a backward glance, we drove on.