The icy moon slid through the sky as the squad continued along the ruined highway. They’d done a much better job at maintaining silence in the dark of the night and managed to make the rest of the distance with only a handful of words spoken between them. The general had made the most noise with his deep, muffled coughs, but no one blamed him. He was lucky to be alive after taking the stinger.

The sign welcoming them to Westendale seemed to open up the land around them. Overgrown farmlands spanned as far as the bright moon let them see, flat as the concrete parking lots under the dome. At first, an overall increase of mood passed over the squad as they exited the thick, enclosing woods. It wasn’t long, however, before August wished to have them back.

The sudden absence of the trees was felt right away. The sea of grass on either side of them gave way to stronger winds and left them exposed. The winds howled into their suits, causing a few squadmates to shiver. August was one of them. Dalton West and Hilde Rosek seemed to be the only ones unbothered by the cold. Slupman trembled violently, and his teeth chattered audibly. The gaping hole where he’d detached the arm of his armor paired with the open face shield must’ve facilitated a continuous current of air to flow through.

The cold wasn’t the only thing dampening their moods. While the forest made it harder to detect predators, it had also acted as a sort of cover from any faraway eyes and had undoubtedly muffled their smells and sounds. Now they were exposed. Anything that might have been lurking in the distance could have spotted them with ease, and August knew of many creatures outside the dome with eyesight that put human’s to shame.

A figure stood in the middle of a field to their north. Seven nervous guns jutted its way simultaneously. Slupman’s reaction was slower than the rest, and August assumed he’d only moved because everyone else did, not because he’d seen what they had.

“Just a scarecrow,” Belmont said, allowing herself a chuckle.

“A what?” Wolf asked over a cough.

“It’s there to scare the birds off the crops,” Belmont said. “Granny used to have a smaller one on the balcony to keep them off the flowers. Didn’t work worth a damn.”

General Wolf coughed again despite his greatest efforts. The sound echoed over the swaying field. Two crows jumped off from the hatted figure’s shoulders and soared over the illuminated wisps of clouds that encircled the moon. Everyone laughed at that. Even Sterling laughed. August wondered when the next time they’d all laugh would be.

They’d been on the move again for half an hour. The landscape on either side of the road hadn’t changed. The field was almost white in the moonlight as strange plants that looked like ghostly reaching hands carpeted both horizons. The horizon seemed to breathe in the wind like the sea. August wished for a blanket, but he knew better than to share that thought.

They passed their first building. It was a lone gas station where ice cream cone cutouts flanked the tiny shop’s entrance. The sight of another gas station added heat to the fire of recent memory. The sight of the ice cream made him long for home. Other buildings appeared not long after and in larger clusters.

It started as a lone farmhouse here and there but quickly transitioned into a neighborhood not much different than the one he and Rosek had patrolled earlier in the day. The houses were huge, mostly all three storeys with strong, white brick columns on the front porch to hold up stone awnings. The backyards were massive but most likely owned by one of the farmhouses from up the road if the people of the past were anything like those beneath the dome today.

The city loomed in the distance. History class had taught about the folks of the past and their cities, but August had always assumed their cities would be smaller and more sparse based on what he’d heard. The neighborhood they walked through was a mirror image of what the cities of the past looked like in his mind, but the forest of concrete and steel ahead was enough to make his jaw drop.

It was still a decent walk before they’d reach it, and just as August’s hopes climbed and injected the dose of energy that would be necessary to make it the rest of the way, General Wolf called the company to a halt.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” He pointed off the road to his right.

The city in the distance had dropped his jaw, but the sight at the end of the general’s pointed finger extracted an audible gasp from August. It only took a moment to realize he was looking at a church. Two elms towered before it, but he could see the golden spear on the multi-colored brick wall through gaps in the branches and foliage. Even in the dark, the spear seemed to shine brilliantly. A pallid statue of a man with his arms raised inquisitively stood before the wall that split a wide stairway into two. The white stairs converged ten steps up behind the wall and led to a wall of tinted glass doors.

“Why not keep going at this point?” Dalton West asked. “The city’s only a few miles off.”

“I’d rather make our entrance with the sun at our backs,” Wolf said.

Not waiting for any other objections, the general made his way down the cobblestone path that led to the statue, where it branched off to touch both stairways. The squad followed. A tense feeling hovered over them as they passed beneath the dark foliage of the elms. August looked up. The branches of both trees interlocked at the tips like skeletal hand-holding, and the slight breeze rustled the leaves and creaked the branches against one another.

Belmont’s bright eyes were the only ones wandering around as much as August’s. Sterling, Rosek, Slupman, West, and the general moved their gaze from left to right casually but mostly kept their sights on the doors ahead.

“Most of the doors are shattered,” Wolf said. “I’ve never heard of dolo nesting inside buildings, but be ready for anything.”

They stepped through the door with the least remaining glass and managed it without making any noise other than the crunching glass beneath their boots. Once inside, Wolf unlocked the doors and opened them to make room for Rosek’s ample mech suit.

August stood at the start of a long, royal blue carpet that flowed down the church's length like a river between two dozen rows of pews. The carpet ended at a set of three blue stairs that spanned from one wall to the other, rounding out at both corners of the room. On the far left of the elevated dais was a massive organ, one of the vintage folk’s religious instruments. He wondered if it still worked but remembered what had happened with the car and decided his curiosity could go unfed for once.

A mahogany podium stood at the center of the dais, glinting in the moonlight that seeped in through the colored windows high on the walls, nearly touching the roots of the arched ceiling. And straight ahead, behind the podium, on the far wall that greeted whoever dared enter the church, was Vanno’s golden spear, pointing straight up toward Akwarea.

School had taught about organized religions of the past. Such a thing no longer existed beneath the dome. The few folks who still believed in a god would worship him in their own way and on their own time. According to history class, organized religions were one of the significant factors in ending the vintage era and leading humanity to the dome. August had always doubted that. He’d found an old bible in the library once and had given it a glance. It had been nowhere near as militant as school had led him to believe, but he wouldn’t argue it. They were indeed under the dome, so something must have happened, and why would teachers lie?

The place was empty.

The breeze moaned through the shattered doors and whistled in through other unseen holes. It seemed to August that if anything like ghosts or spirits existed, this would be the place to find them. He gripped his skybeam, not that it could do anything against such terrors.

“Will we camp in the city tomorrow?” Slupman’s voice bounced along every wall of the church and finally died in the curved peak of the ceiling.

Wolf just looked at him, demanding elaboration through cold silence.

Slupman stammered. “I assume we’re going into the city to scavenge. Maybe we should stay an extra day, try to get as many goods as we can.”

“We’ll stay how long it takes,” Wolf said, eyeing the engineer with furrowed brows.

“What do we even expect to find out there?” Sterling asked. “Any food in that city expired centuries ago. I wouldn’t use the water to wash my ass, and I can’t think of anything else the fools of the past would have that we might need.”

“Just because you can’t think of anything doesn’t mean we won’t find anything,” Wolf said.

Sterling made a satisfied grunt, likely thinking the general’s non-answer meant that he had been right in his objection.

The general removed his pack and set it on a mahogany pew. He plucked the components of the firebox from his belt and assembled it. Dalton West peeled the royal blue carpet to the side, giving the general a patch of polished stone floor. The part of the floor that had been hidden beneath the carpet was noticeably brighter than the rest. Wolf set the firebox down in the middle of the aisle, and each squadmate claimed a nearby pew.

Rosek parked her mech suit atop the dais just beside the podium. She stepped out of it and looked around in wonder. Her hair displayed none of its brilliant colors in the church's low lighting—none but a natural blonde. “Isn’t this incredible?” She asked to no one in particular.

August was going to agree, but Sterling spoke first. “The architecture, yes. Such a waste, though, considering its purpose. I don’t know why those idiots lived in such ugly homes. They clearly had decent architectural skills, even compared to ours, but it seems they only used it for their god. It’s a shame.”

Vern Slupman selected a pew and started writing in his journal.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Rosek said, looking up at the golden spear of Vanno. “It shows a sort of humble nature that I wish were still possible. There’s something about viewing God above everything else, including yourself, that’s just so powerful to me. I bet there weren’t as many arrogant people back then as there are now.”

“I bet there were,” Sterling said. “I’d bet there was more arrogance back then.” His voice took on a mocking tone. “Oh! We have a great and powerful god. We don’t need to worry about this or that. We built him this beautiful house. He won’t let anything happen to us. Why should we prepare?” His voice went back to normal. “That was probably said just before they all started begging to be allowed into the dome.”

“I think you underestimate the people of the past,” Rosek said. “They built the dome, after all. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Those who were smart enough to flee to the dome,” Sterling said, “were the ones allowed to pass their genes on. There’s a reason why you won’t find anyone out here. They were too stupid and arrogant to survive.”

“What does that make us, then?” West asked.

“What do you mean?” Sterling asked.

“The seven of us, here in this church,” West said. “We’re stupid and arrogant enough to wander outside the dome. So how are we any different?”

“For starters,” Sterling said. “We know the risks involved in this mission, and we have all trained for years before getting to this point. Secondly, we are using the only actual value this building has to offer: shelter. We aren’t sitting in here thinking some force will do all the work for us while the dolo crash through the doors, kill us, and carry us away to their nest so the larvae can feed.”

A chill crawled through August’s spine. He looked over the shattered doors and wondered if that were indeed what had happened here. He hoped not. He wanted to pray that it wasn’t the case, but he wouldn’t have known where to start.

“I don’t think we can know how the vintage folk thought of their god,” Rosek said.

“We have journals of multiple religious figures,” Sterling said. “Didn’t you listen in history? They were militant and arrogant. They thought their god invincible, and they thought that invincibility would pass on to them so long as they followed His strict rules and build Him nice houses.”

“It seems overly simple to me,” Rosek said. “Besides, we have first-hand accounts of like, five different guys. That’s hardly enough to speak for the population as a whole. Just look at elections. Could you base the opinion of an entire group on only half of its voters?”

“I don’t even know what you’re arguing anymore,” Sterling said. “I’m tired.” He glared at August. “I had a long day.” He sauntered in his strange, almost feminine way to his pew, removed his armor and grunted a dozen times as he lay himself down.

Belmont stood over him and bent to inspect his face.

“What are you doing?” Sterling asked with an edge in his voice.

“You gotta quit making that pouty face when you argue,” Belmont said. “You’re wrinkling the skin under your bandage strip.” She yanked it off as if she were waxing unwanted hairs from his skin and pursed her lips in concentration. “It’s all good. It’ll heal no problem.”

“Just leave it be,” Sterling said.

The medic stuck a fresh piece over the wound. “You’re welcome,” she said sarcastically.

“You know I appreciate it,” Sterling smirked.

“I want us to break up into groups tomorrow,” Wolf said. “It’s a big city, and we’ll be able to cover more ground this way. There is very little, if any, history of dolo nesting in cities, so we should be good. It’s a calculated risk, but I’m confident that we could stay in the city for a week or even a month without seeing any bugs. Well, roaches, maybe, but nothing worse.”