Sole Survivor

a strange glimmering joy that scared him.
        His voice was shakier than hers. “It's not far now.”
        “Too far,” she whispered. “Just hold my hand.”
        “Oh, shit.”
        “It's all right, Joe.”
        The shoulder of the highway widened to a scenic rest area. He stopped the car before a vista of darkness: the hard night sky, the icy disc of a moon that seemed to shed cold instead of light, and a vast blackness of trees and rocks and canyons descending.
        He released his seat belt, leaned across the console, and took her hand. Her grip was weak.
        “She needs you, Joe.”
        “I'm nobody's hero, Rose. I'm nothing.”
        “You need to hide her… hide her away…”
        “Rose-”
        “Give her time… for her power to grow.”
        “I can't save anyone.”
        “I shouldn't have started the work so soon. The day will come when… when she won't be so vulnerable. Hide her away… let her power grow. She'll know… when the time has come.”
        She began to lose her grip on him.
        He covered her hand with both of his, held it fast, would not let it slip from his grasp.
        Voice ravelling away, she seemed to be receding from him though she did not move: “Open… open your heart to her, Joe.”
        Her eyelids fluttered.
        “Rose, please don't.”
        “It's all right.”
        “Please. Don't.”
        “See you later, Joe.”
        “Please.”
        “See you.”
        Then he was alone in the night. He held her small hand alone in the night while the wind played a hollow threnody. When at last he was able to do so, he kissed her brow.
        The directions Rose had given him were easy to follow. The cabin was neither in the town of Big Bear Lake nor elsewhere along the lake front, but higher on the northern slopes and nestled deep in pines and birches. The cracked and potholed blacktop led to a dirt driveway, at the end of which was a small white clapboard house with a shake-shingle roof.
        A green Jeep Wagoneer stood beside the cabin. Joe parked behind the Jeep.
        The cabin boasted a deep, elevated porch, on which three cane backed rocking chairs were arranged side by side. A handsome black man, tall and athletically built, stood at the railing, his ebony skin highlighted with a brass tint cast by two bare, yellow light bulbs in the porch ceiling.
        The girl waited at the head of the flight of four steps that led up from the driveway to the porch. She was blond and about six years old.
        From under the driver's seat, Joe retrieved the gun that he had taken from the white-haired storyteller after the scuffle on the beach. Getting out of the car, he tucked the weapon under the waistband of his jeans.
        The wind shrieked and hissed through the needled teeth of the pines.
        He walked to the foot of the steps.
        The child had descended two of the four treads. She stared past Joe, at the Ford. She knew what had happened.
        On the porch, the black man began to cry.
        The girl spoke for the first time in over a year, since the moment outside the Ealings' ranch house when she had told Rose that she wanted to be called Nina. Gazing at the car, she said only one word in a voice soft and small: “Mother.”
        Her hair was the same shade as Nina's hair. She was as fine-boned as Nina. But her eyes were not grey like Nina's eyes, and no matter how hard Joe tried to see Nina's face before him, he could not deceive himself into believing that this was his daughter.
        Yet again, he had been engaged in searching behaviour, seeking what was lost forever.
        The moon above was a thief, its glow not a radiance of its own but a weak reflection of the sun. And like the moon, this girl was a thief-not Nina but only a reflection of Nina, shining not with Nina's brilliant light but with a pale fire.
        Regardless of whether she was only a lab-born mutant with strange mental powers or really the hope of the world, Joe hated her at that moment, and hated himself for hating her-but hated her nonetheless.

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    17
        
        Hot wind huffed at the windows, and the cabin smelled of pine, dust, and the black char from last winter's cosy blazes, which coated the brick walls of the big fireplace.
        The incoming electrical lines had sufficient slack to swing in the wind. From time to time they slapped against the house, causing the lights