The travelers approached the mountains with wide eyes. All around them the foothills were barren, but high above them the Sierras were green with growth.

"See that," said Leggy, sweeping an arm across the verdant spectacle above them. "Snow gathers in the peaks and then melts and runs down the mountains. That’s what keeps them trees and shrubs and ferns and whatnot growin’. While we’re up there, we won’t have to worry about dying of thirst."

"But there are still plenty of things we could die of?" asked John.

"Oh sure," said Leggy. "Snakes. Bears. Lightning storms. Robbers. Renegades." He clapped John on the back. "Don’t worry about it though. You never tasted water like high country water. Almost worth getting’ eaten by a bear."

At dusk they made camp in the lee of several huge boulders. Teddy, who had taken a liking to Minna and Afha, relieved them of their packs and then patted them down with his strong hands. Derek walked a wide circle around their camp, scouting the perimeter. He found no signs of bug nests, and no signs that anyone had been here in a long time.

When he returned to camp, he found Teddy nearly hysterical with excitement. Leggy and John had already gathered around his brother and Afha, which Derek took to be the cause of Teddy’s animation.

"Look Der! Look at this!" shouted Teddy.

He showed his brother a pebble in one great hand. Then he put both hands behind his back, then made a show of bringing them out front again, fists closed. The guessing stone. Teddy could be amused for hours with the game. Derek remembered Teddy playing with his mother when Teddy was still a child. His brother shrieked with delight whenever he guessed the right hand. Now Derek thought Teddy wanted to play with him, but he was wrong. Teddy was holding both fists out to the mutie.

"Which hand, horsey? Which hand?" asked Teddy, his face nearly split in two with a grin.

"Jesus H. Christ, Teddy," said Derek. "Are you getting’ stupider on me?" He raised a hand to cuff his brother, but John tugged at his sleeve.

"No wait," he said. "Watch."

Derek watched. Afha stared at Teddy’s meaty fists, the milky cataract of his superfluous eye roiling. Then the mule reached out and nuzzled Teddy’s right hand.

"Hee hee hee hee!" shrieked Teddy. He opened his right hand. The pebble was on his palm.

"Come on," scoffed Derek. "It’s just luck."

"I don’t know," said Leggy, stroking his beard. "Your brother’s done it ten times already, and the mule’s got it right every time."

"Oh bullshit," said Derek. "Did you all just get radiation poisoning?"

"See for y’self," said Leggy.

Teddy played several more times, and each time Afha chose the hand that held the pebble.

Then Teddy said "OK horsey, last time now. OK? Last time." He put both hands behind his back, and fixed his face with a look of exaggerated seriousness. Derek instantly recognized the look--it was Teddy’s ‘I’m trying to fool you’ face. Derek sighed. Teddy never understood that if he really wanted to trick someone, he should keep that shit-eating grin on especially before he tried something sneaky.

With his hands still behind his back, Teddy leaned over to his brother and stage-whispered in his ear.

"I put the stone in my pants, Der," he said, the veneer of his serious face nearly cracking with the urge to laugh at his own cleverness. He composed himself and brought both hands out from behind his back.

Afha stood and stared at Teddy, blowing through his nostrils. Then he backed away two paces, shook his head, and whinnied.

"Pick, horsey. Pick a hand," sang Teddy. He waggled each fist enticingly, but the mule would not pick a hand.

Finally Teddy opened his hands. They were both empty. Afha brayed, and Teddy clapped.

"He knew! He knew I played sneaky!" shouted Teddy. "Smart horsey!"

"I’ll be damned," said Leggy.

"The Lord be praised," said John.

"Aw, it ain’t nothin’," said Derek. "Them Bedouins probably taught it how to play games. Or maybe the stone smells funny."

"It does now," said Leggy, watching Teddy fish in his drawers for the pebble. Then he looked up. The sky above was gradually being hidden by a thick gauze of gray haze, and the sun was going down fast.

"We better see about a fire. Looks like it’s going to be a dark night."

Leggy was right. The darkness fell fast, and hazy gauze above them hid the stars and moon. Just before Derek struck a spark to their campfire, the whole party felt as if a black blanket had been pulled over their faces. They were terribly glad when orange flames began to eat greedily at the deadwood they’d gathered.

The scraggly remains of dead, twisted trees provided copious firewood, and they stacked in a supply that would keep the fire hot and bright all night long if they wanted it to.

Nights had grown colder as they ascended the foothills, and they huddled close around the fire, glad for the boulders that threw back the warmth of the flames. The darkness was utterly complete outside the small ring of light--no moon, no stars, only an invisible landscape hidden behind a black curtain.

"I gotta piss," said John, "but I’m afraid if I go too far, I’ll never find you all again."

"Just siddle on up to the edge of the firelight and aim yourself away from us," said Leggy. "You’ll be all right. Just don’t piss on the mules."

John got up and did as he was told. As he urinated, he stared into the darkness, straining to see anything--anything at all--in the void. He seemed to have to pee for hours, and he didn’t like the way his urine just vanished into the night. He felt as if he were standing at the very edge of a chasm, that if he stepped forward he’d tumble from a high precipice and fall headfirst into the darkness and never stop.

He shook his head. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," he whispered, reciting the psalm to try and calm himself. But the words died on his lips as he detected movement in the distance, fluttery and uneven. He rubbed his eyes, thinking perhaps he was imagining it. But then he heard a sound, a soft chuffing sound, and it was getting closer. His bladder clenched closed with fear.

"Somethin’s comin’" he said, hurriedly buttoning himself into his pants again and scooting toward the fire. "Somethin’s comin’ outta that darkness."

"Huh?" said Derek. He turned and looked, but could see nothing.

"What’d you see?" asked Leggy. Suddenly he realized how foolish their fire was. It must be shining like a beacon for ten or fifteen miles. Who knows what the hell it might attract.

"Not sure I saw anything," said John. "But I heard somethin’. Sounds like, like wind."

"Wind?" asked Leggy. He was afraid raiders might be creeping up on them, but they sure wouldn’t make a noise like wind.

"Get this fire out," said Leggy, his voice urgent.

"Are you crazy?" said Derek. "We’ll be blind out here."

"Yeah, but so will whatever’s comin’ for us," said Leggy. He removed his heavy serape to beat out the fire, but then stopped. Suddenly he heard the noise too. John was right--it sounded like wind. Or like a set of sheets, hung out to dry on a line and snapping in a gust. Now Derek heard it--it was growing louder every second.

Leggy lifted his serape, but at that instant wings exploded out of the darkness around them, beating and flapping madly over the fire. Musty, cobwebby tendrils brushed against their necks and faces. Teddy howled in fear, throwing his hands up over his head. Minna and Ahfa joined in, braying with terror. John watched in gape-eyed horror and wonder as a dozen or more of the creatures swooped and dove among them.

They were moths, almost man-sized, with large, papery wings marked in swirling patterns of black and gray. Their faces were oval, with almond-shaped eyes and small mouths. Their wrinkled, cylindrical bodies looked like elongated infants wrapped in swaddling clothes. Their wings beat frantically as they swooped, turned and hovered over the fire.

"Angels" whispered John in terrified awe. "Are they angels?"

"No you dumb shit!" shouted Derek. "They’re bugs!"

"Put out the goddamn fire!" shouted Leggy. "They’re attracted to the light." He tried to flip his serape over the campfire, but one of the swooping creatures knocked it aside.

Then Derek snatched a blazing branch from the fire, leapt to his feet, and smashed one of the creatures to the ground. It shrieked in agony as its wings ignited in flame. Derek knocked down two more with wild swings.

One of them fell at John’s feet, and he watched in horror as the thing writhed in the dirt, its almond eyes wide with pain, its wrinkled torso flaring like a match. It locked its eyes on John, its mouth moving pathetically. John could feel the pain and confusion in the creature’s death gaze, but he did nothing, merely watched as fire engulfed the creature’s face and head, turning its body to black ash.

Derek killed three more before the creatures, still swooping and diving toward the camp fire, lifted themselves out of reach.

Leggy recovered his serape and quickly smothered the blaze. Derek scattered the hot coals and ash with several savage kicks. Darkness engulfed them, broken only by the orange glow of scattered bits of smoldering wood, which winked out one by one as they cooled. They could hear the creatures still troubling the air above them, but soon the noise of beating wings died away as the things returned to where they’d come from.

"Everybody all right?" asked Leggy in the stillness.

"I’m all right," said Derek.

"Me too," said Teddy, his fear gone now that the bugs had departed.

"I…I’m here," said John, his voice hoarse. The half-charred corpse of the moth was hidden in the darkness, but he could still see it in his mind. No creature deserved to die as horribly as these did. It just wasn’t right. And what if they were more than just bugs? Their resemblance to angels--at least what John imagined angels to look like--disturbed him. Surely their poor treatment of these creatures would come back to them somehow--not just Derek but all of them.

"I expect the mules bolted," said Leggy. "I didn’t hobble them very securely."

"No," said Teddy. "Horsies are still here. They don’t run away." From the darkness, Ahfa snorted as if in affirmation.

"Well that’s one good bit of news. Fellas, we’re gonna have to do without a fire for the rest of the night. I hope you all ain’t afraid of the dark."

"I’m not," said Teddy, but they could all hear the lie in his voice.

"The dark don’t worry me, but what about the cold?" asked Derek. "I can already feel a chill creeping into my bones."

"That we can do somethin’ about," said Leggy. "Let’s all gather up close, fellas. Just follow the sound of my voice."

Leggy hummed a creaky old tune as Teddy, John, and Derek clambered blindly toward him. There was a few moments of stumbling about. Teddy stepped on Derek’s foot hard enough to bring pricks of tears to his eyes, and John tripped over Leggy’s wheelchair, but soon they were close enough to hold hands, even if they couldn’t see each other.

Leggy instructed Teddy to lift him out of his chair and set him on the ground. "OK now, we just lie down back to front and use each other’s body heat to stay warm," said Leggy. "I done it a few times before when I was runnin’ freight and got into a spot where we couldn’t light any fires. I’d rather be bunkin’ down with a nice full-figured gall than you smelly lot, but it beats freezin’."

And so they bundled themselves together on the hard ground, with Derek and John bookended by Teddy and Leggy.

"Who’s teeth are chatterin’?" asked Leggy.

"Me," said Derek. "I don’t think this is workin’. "

"Just give it a minute," said Leggy. "You’ll warm up, and you’ll probably fall asleep before you know it."

"Shit," said Derek. "It’s so goddamn dark I could probably sleep with my eyes open." Teddy and Leggy laughed, but John was silent. The episode with the flying creatures troubled him, and he too thought he’d never get warm. But within a few minutes he realized that Leggy was right about body heat. Teddy was practically a blast furnace, and soon John felt drowsy. He desperately wanted to fall asleep and not wake up until daylight, so that he could forget this strange, dark night. But sleep eluded him, and he lay in a restless twilight while his companions snored around him. His long vigil was finally broken as the sky began to lighten around him, and the first tendrils of dawn reached slowly over the Sierras.

They marched further into the foothills that day, watching the landscape around them slowly transform. Scraggly, stunted trees with strangely curled branches and a creeping underbrush forced them onto a path of sorts, which meandered ever upward.

The greening landscape lifted their spirits. Compared to the dry and withered San Muyammo, the Sierras were edenic. They spotted numerous creatures in the brush and stones around them--scampering brown lizards, quick-footed rabbits and gophers, and flights of small birds. The white tail of a deer flicked through a copse of trees on a ridge. Teddy spotted a hawk high overhead, gracefully hovering on an updraft.

In the late afternoon, Leggy suggested they set up camp early, to try and bag some of the wildlife scurrying about. Derek set out traps while the others gathered brushwood and hunted up water. Then they rested. Leggy put his pipe in his mouth but didn’t light it. He felt content to sit in his chair and just be. A soothing bliss had fallen over him, better than anything he’d ever poured out of a bottle, and he wanted to fill himself up with it, to brim with it, because he knew what lay on the other side of the mountains: a blasted waste, a nightmare territory. Thoughts of what was to come began to crowd his mind, but with an effort he shoved them aside. That was for another time. Now, he would simply sit and watch the light change, and feel cool, moist air kiss his cheeks.

Derek checked his traps at dusk, but they were empty. "May not get anything till morning," he said. "May not get anything at all."

"No matter," said Leggy. "We still got rations."

They made supper over a hot, bright fire, then sat back to watch the flames.

The night was clear, and a brilliant moon held court over a thousand bright stars strewn across the sky. They drifted off to sleep without bothering to set a watch.

Near midnight, Leggy roused his companions from sleep.

"Look," he said, pointing up toward the moon.

They could see, on the horizon, a strange fluttering cloud, which slowly resolved itself--it was the moths, an indeterminate number of miles away. The creatures were high in the sky, and seemed to be straining to reach the moon itself, their papery wings beating inexhaustibly in the thin air.

John watched the creatures. From a distance they looked even more like angels. It looked like they were trying to fly up to Heaven. Something stirred in him, a mixture of sadness and joy.

Back home, the Judges spoke longingly of Heaven. They said Heaven should be the goal of every man, woman, and child. In Heaven there would be no more pain, no more hurt, no more desperation. Only milk and honey in plenty, and white light, and cool days that went on forever. These angels were trying to reach it.

"What are they doing?" asked Derek.

"Don’t know," said Leggy. "But it looks like they’re attracted to the light of the moon. Like they’re trying to fly to it."

"Dumb bugs," said Derek. "Even if they could, they’d die as soon as they got there."

"Why, Der-Der?" asked Teddy.

"Cause there’s no air on the moon. They’d choke to death."

"Oh," said Teddy.

"How do you know?" asked John, his voice sullen. He didn’t like Derek’s dismissive tone.

"What’d you mean, how do I know?" asked Derek.

"You ever been to the moon?"

"Course not."

"Then how do you know?"

"My pop told me."

"You mean your Pop went to the moon, then he came back and told you about it?"

"What the hell’s wrong with you John?" said Derek, turning on him. "It was somethin’ Pop knew from the Before Times. One of the damn things he was always tellin’ me about."

"But Leggy said there were men on the moon," said John. "If there weren’t no air, how’d the men stay alive?"

Everyone turned to Leggy. He coughed. "Well, I’m not too keen on the details, but I believe they had special suits. Special suits that helped them breathe."

John shook his head. "You don’t know any better either." He turned over and went to sleep.

The next day, Leggy has to abandon his wheelchair. The going had been getting rougher, with more roots and stones in the way, and the hard backs of boulders sticking up out of the ground. Thus far, Teddy had been able to manhandle Leggy over every obstacle, but even his great strength was waning, and the group’s progress was slowing.

Before mid-day, Derek called a halt. Teddy and Leggy were several hundred yards behind--again. Teddy was wrestling the chair through a particularly malicious tangle of roots and underbrush.

Derek strode back to meet them.

"Time to pack up the chair, old man."

Leggy looked up from the ground, where he’d been trying to search out a clearer path. Teddy stood behind him, panting and blowing.

"You’re slowin’ us up," said Derek, and Leggy knew there was no argument.

"Ah, shit," said Leggy. He found himself reluctant to give up his chair, a feeling that surprised him. He’d never particularly cared for his wheelchair. It had always been cumbersome and uncomfortable, and in the last year or so strange bits of metal had began to poke him in odd places, a sign that its frame was coming unaligned.

But now that the time had come to pack it up, he felt oddly attached to it. And he certainly wasn’t looking forward to its replacement--the hard spine of a braying mule.

"Time’s a wastin’," said Derek.

"All right all right," said Leggy crossly. "Get them mules back here and let’s saddle up."

Leggy watched from his wheelchair as the boys transferred Afha’s baggage to Minna, and then inexpertly applied the saddle to Afha.

"Tighten it up good," said Leggy. "I don’t want to be slippin’ off on some steep mountain pass."

Derek kneed Afha in the belly. The donkey brayed and exhaled, and Derek cinched the saddle an extra notch.

"OK cowboy," said Derek with a mocking grin, "mount up."

Leggy motioned to Teddy, who lifted the man from the wheelchair and placed him gingerly on Afha’s back. The mule took Leggy’s weight easily, and didn’t seem to mind the rider.

Teddy handed Leggy his serape, and a tattered old satchel that had hung behind the wheelchair and held Leggy’s possessions--his whisky flask, pipe and tobacco, matches, and a pocketknife.

"How’s it feel," asked John, as Leggy settled in to his new ride.

"Ain’t too bad, I guess," said Leggy, "though I expect by the end of the day I’ll be singin’ a different tune." He looked around for a moment and then asked Teddy to fold up the wheelchair and pack it on Minna’s back.

"What for?" asked Derek.

"What do you mean what for?" asked Leggy. "That’s my chair."

"Yeah," said Derek, "but I don’t think we can take it."
"Not take it? You expect me to spend the rest of my life on the back of a three-eyed donkey?"

Derek shrugged. "Don’t know. But look at it." Teddy had tried his best to collapse the chair, but it was rusted in sections and wouldn’t cooperate. Derek took it from his brother and approached Minna. "This one’s already got all the baggage. You expect her to carry this too? It’s heavy as shit, Leggy. And awkward to boot."

Leggy licked his lips. He could see that Derek was right, though the son of a bitch didn’t have to enjoy it so much.

"Maybe we can hitch it up and wheel it along behind us," said Leggy, already knowing it wouldn’t work.

Derek shook his head. "Sorry Leggy. Either we leave the chair, or we leave you. Which is it gonna be?"

"Fuck!" shouted Leggy. Afha shied a bit. John reached out and grabbed the mule’s bridle, spoke soothingly to calm the animal. "Fellas…" started Leggy, then stopped again.

Derek smirked. "You want us to leave you alone for a minute. To say goodbye?"

Leggy said nothing. He wanted to punch that boy in the mouth. Then he yanked Afha’s bridle. "Let’s get this goddamn show on the road."

And so they set off again, trudging higher into the hills, the mountains above them beckoning.

"Bye d’ bye chair," said Teddy with a wave. Soon they had passed out of sight, and the metal wheelchair stood alone in the stubby undergrowth, where it would pass through the seasons one by one, a mystery for any who might come across it.

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