That night I dreamed again. But it was not about my apparent friend, the Old Man with the poor English. Nor was it about the Cursed One and his gang of abominations. This was something different.

A lone mountain rose out of a bleak, dead forest. The side of the peak had been torn asunder in some sort of huge explosion. Trees had been shattered, stripped of their bark, or bent to the earth. Rock was charred and broken, the very foundations of the mountain had been cracked, and the face of the mighty peak had collapsed in an avalanche.

Amongst the shale and gravel was a low spot where the rubble had settled into what had once been a natural cavern or perhaps an underground structure. In the deepest depression, small bits of gravel and dust began to stir as something pushed against them from underneath, gradually and laboriously moving the weight of the earth above. Finally a dirt-encrusted hand thrust its way into the air, followed by a massively muscled arm. The torn and bloodied fingers clenched into an angry fist.

It was covered in black, swirling tattoos.

I woke up the next morning, groggy, sore, and cranky. We were staying at the bug-infested Radio City Motor Lodge in some little Georgia town that made Cazador look like a thriving metropolis. It had been the closest lodging to the dirt strip that passed for the local airport. It is hard to sleep when roaches keep skittering across your body. My understanding is that since roaches can't shift into reverse, if one of them crawls into your ear canal it can get really nasty and potentially kill you. Sleep on that.

The injured Hunters had been dispersed to seek medical care. The cargo plane had dropped off Boone's two injured men at their home city of Atlanta. Roberts' body had gone with them. The plane had then continued west, delivering Albert Lee and his fractured rib back to Alabama. Grant Jefferson had flown the plane. He had been sent back to the compound supposedly to take over and continue the Newbies' training. I figured that I probably needed some medical care as well, but Harbinger wanted to keep me around because of my dreams, and also possibly because he worried that I might murder Grant once I was left unsupervised.

So that left ten of us in coastal Georgia. Eleven if you counted our mysterious helicopter pilot, who had apparently slept in the chopper. I still had not seen the man without his face-shielding helmet, and he never seemed to speak. The experienced Hunters seemed used to the odd behavior and did not even bother to remark upon it.