A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds) by Stephen Colegrove Read Free Book Online Page A

body’s normal reactions.
    Wilson’s left arm was as cold as ice––a side-effect. He flexed his fingers and stood up with the flickering lantern.
    “Thank founder you didn’t go out.”
    On the desk, assorted bones of the arm surrounded the skull: radius, ulna, humerus. A pelvic bone, vertebrae, and ribs had tumbled into a chair behind the desk. Mixed in with papers on the floor were the remaining bones, scraps of dirty fabric, and an old handgun.
    Wilson picked up the weapon carefully, like he would a dead rat. The firearm was a deep blue-black color with a rotating cylinder in the middle, and with barrel the length of his hand. Wilson had seen a couple of tribal firearms up close and in books but nothing like this. He stuck it in a pocket of his jacket.
    In the midst of the bones on the desk were several tiny objects mottled yellow and white in color. One was an irregular cylinder less than eight inches long, slightly flattened in the middle, with thread-like wires connected to a small sphere several feet away. Several miniature tubes with threads were also scattered near the skull.
    Wilson noticed a hole in the temporal bone of the skull and a larger hole in the parietal bone at the back. The yellowed grid of paper on the desk was stained black and gray and matched a spray of dots on the wall. Under the skull lay a thin journal. Wilson pushed the skull away with his knife and handled the book with the tips of his fingers. Someone had written “Mike Wong” in block letters on the stained cover. Most of the pages were blank and the rest too faint to read. Wilson put the journal in his pocket along with the white objects.
    A thump came from across the room. He turned to see a pair of fist-sized spiders meander out of the shadows.
    “Time to go!”
    Wilson grabbed his lantern and sprinted from the office. He kicked at a spider lounging on a desk and another next to the door. At the access ladder he put his back to the wall and tried to calm his beating heart with the trick. He was supposed to keep his mind blank but couldn’t shake the beady eyes and hairy black legs of those ungodly monstrosities. He gave up and simply watched the corridor.
    It could have been minutes or half an hour. A squeal of metal came from the access shaft and Mast’s voice boomed down.
    “Wilson! Stop playing with yourself and climb up!”
     
    HE TESTED THE HEATING systems in Office by taking a shower. Back at the rectory he passed Mina’s room and heard quiet voices. He changed from his jumpsuit into a blue hemp shirt and dark trousers then spread the strange items on his bed.
    The barrel of the black revolver was inscribed with “S&W.357 MAGNUM” and “SMITH & WESSON.” Wilson pushed out the cylinder with his thumb and removed the brass rounds with a fingernail. An empty round slid out the easiest. The other five required more delicate prying. Lead tips of gray and white rounded off the heavier rounds.
    The rules required him to turn over any artifacts––Reed constantly reminded everyone that old machines were dangerous until properly examined. Wilson remembered the bald-faced lie about Badger’s sickness. He put the pistol in a bag made of purple-dyed hemp and hid it behind his books. The “Kittens!” calendar he slid inside a large volume on leatherworking.
    Wilson opened the journal belonging to “Mike Wong” and inhaled the smell of musty old pages. Even held under the bright panel of his desk light the handwriting was still too faint. He looked through the founder’s registry on his shelf––a yellowed ledger with crude string binding––and no “Mike Wong” was listed.
    Wilson returned to the journal. As he flipped idly through the pages a delicate square of paper fell to the floor. He smoothed it flat on his desk.
     
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