Loneliness

Nick did not think monsters that could be killed by physical means could cause any world-ending crisis, even if there were enough of them to carpet the entire canyon floor.

It was like the zombie world he had entered on his second trip. Even those hypermasculine zombies that could run and jump had been no match for an organized army.

So Nick believed the problem lay within this canyon. Probably only by discovering what caused the "Hollow Men" to appear and dealing with the source could he complete the so-called mission to save the world.

As for the other side mission, saving the heroine, he already had a rough guess: there was a ninety-nine percent chance she was the tower keeper in the eastern tower opposite him.

Unfortunately, he had not seen her over the past few days.

The bunker's armory was fully equipped, with everything from grenade launchers and high-strength safety ropes to parachute packs. Naturally, there was no shortage of military binoculars either.

However, most ordinary military binoculars offered seven- to ten-power magnification, which was still somewhat inadequate for the distance of over three hundred meters between the two towers.

Nick's eyesight had always been good, but thanks to the mist drifting out of the canyon, most of the time, aside from the Barrett sniper rifle's high-powered scope, only the tripod-mounted 20×80 observation binoculars on the tower's rooftop lookout terrace gave him a very clear view of the other side.

But he could hardly stay up in the tower forever without coming down, just to sit at the observation binoculars looking for someone.

In fact, Nick had spent very little time at the top of the tower lately. It was not until an airdrop arrived a week later and he dug a folding camp bed out of the packed supplies that he moved his sleeping quarters from the room beneath the lookout tower to the top.

Although JD had said winter temperatures here could drop to minus twenty degrees, making the top of the tower, with its huge lookout terrace, unsuitable for holing up through the winter, Nick still felt safer up there.

Aside from a camp bed, a large pile of books, some vegetable seeds, tea, and seasonings, the remaining weight of the airdrop he had requested consisted entirely of sheets of double-layer tempered glass twenty millimeters thick.

Over the next few days, Nick put nearly everything he had learned to use-mainly the little bit of carpentry he had picked up during his previous three months of training-to give the room at the top of the lookout tower a basic renovation.

Calling it a renovation was something of an overstatement. He simply resealed the long-neglected windows at the top of the tower, replaced rotten window frames and broken glass, and added a wooden partition thick enough to provide insulation, along with glass windows, between the room and the lookout terrace.

Through the observation binoculars, he had seen that the top of the eastern lookout tower opposite had been modified in just this way. Clearly, the Russians had more experience dealing with harsh winters.

Once he finished working on his living quarters, Nick threw himself straight into preparations for winter.

Since he expected to stay for a year, he had no intention of living on foul-tasting MREs-"moldy army rations"-every day, so he doubled the size of the small vegetable plot his "predecessors" had left behind.

He planted garlic, onions, spinach, carrots, and Chinese cabbage, vegetables that grew relatively quickly and could withstand low temperatures. There should still be time for one harvest before winter properly arrived.

Nick also found time to visit the small waterfall JD had mentioned, and he did indeed discover large numbers of migrating sturgeon.

He had no interest in caviar and was not particularly fond of salted fish, but nobody would turn down fresh fish. Along with catching several sturgeon with bulging bellies, he also roughly established where he was.

Nick was no naturalist and could not identify what species of sturgeon these were, but as someone who enjoyed watching the Discovery Channel, he knew there were only three regions in the world where sturgeon were densely distributed.

Those three regions were the eastern and western coasts of the Americas, the eastern coast of Asia, and the Caspian Sea, Black Sea, and Aral Sea regions of eastern Europe.

Eastern Asia and western North America could be ruled out first.

If this were in Asia, the Three-Nation Secret Alliance should have become a four-nation secret alliance long ago. The latitude here was not as far north as Sakhalin, and the Russians were unlikely to have kept it hidden from Cyrus.

Western North America was even less likely. Nick had lived in Portland for twenty years, and while he would not claim to know the West Coast's forest vegetation intimately, he could recognize most of it. This clearly was not it.

The Atlantic coast of eastern North America was too heavily developed and could basically be ruled out as well.

That left the Caspian Sea, Black Sea, and Aral Sea regions of eastern Europe, whose complicated geopolitics also happened to offer some possibility for this peculiar Three-Nation Secret Alliance.

Soon, as September drew to a close, Nick made his first routine report over the shortwave radio.

"Repeating, this is West Tower, making a routine report. Please respond if you receive."

On his second call, a strange voice altered by an electronic voice changer came through from the other end. "Received. Please state your authentication code."

Nick looked down at the radio's LCD screen, where a string of letters and numbers had appeared.

After he read out the code in reply, the voice continued, "Have you had any contact with the enemy?"

"No," Nick replied.

"Report the operating status of Big Ears," the voice asked.

"Big Ears is operating normally," Nick answered.

"Procedure complete. Make your next report in thirty-one days. End of transmission." Without waiting for a reply, the other party cut off communications, not wasting so much as a second.

Nick now had some idea why that old woman who looked like Ripley had chosen elite snipers like Rivi for tower-keeping duty.

Perhaps the only people in the world capable of enduring this degree of isolation were snipers who could remain concealed somewhere for days on end just to make a single kill.

Just as, at this very moment, Nick had quickly sunk into boredom after completing the work goals he had set himself lately.

The renovations in the lookout tower were complete, and one corner of the room was piled with neatly stacked firewood, enough to keep the fireplace burning for four months.

The refrigerator was stuffed with cleaned and portioned sturgeon and rabbit meat, and the vegetables in the garden outside were growing well. Just last night, Nick had eaten stir-fried rabbit with garlic greens.

After giving the automated turrets and Big Ears a thorough inspection and servicing, all Nick now needed to do each day was patrol once along the cliff edge and run a self-diagnostic program. At most, he could finish well before the morning was over.

The rest of the day was entirely his to spend as he pleased.

After switching off the radio, Nick swept his gaze over the bookcase against the wall. His "predecessors" here all seemed to have been artsy literary types. The dozens of books that had originally stood there were either poetry collections or essay collections.

He had used his precious airdrop supplies to add an entire bookcase of novels to this reading corner in one go, from Alexandre Dumas to J. K. Rowling, from Jules Verne to Raymond Chandler. He hoped those who came after him would thank him for it.

While sorting out the old bookcase, Nick had also found a collection of messages on the wall behind it, left by the tower's successive keepers. The last passage had been written by JD.

"If you feel lonely when you're alone, you're not keeping yourself good company." It suited the dark-skinned Brit's optimistic style.

But Nick's favorite was still the message left by the first tower keeper, Captain Bradford Shaw: "Only those willing to risk traveling far can discover how far they can go."

It was poetic, yet the meaning it expressed was very practical. He seemed more like a poet than Rivi, who had killed himself.

The others' messages each held deeper meanings as well. It seemed that prolonged solitude had turned every tower keeper who had stayed here into a philosopher. After all, only when people had absolutely nothing to do did they start thinking about this and that.