Karla hesitated. Her first impulse had been to flee in the other direction. But Schroeder seemed to know what he was doing. She hurried to catch up.

The alley led to another street similarly lined with buildings. The street was deserted. There were only the squat little structures with their windows staring like vacant eyes in the strange half-light. Schroeder checked his internal compass, and again started in a direction he hoped would take them to the far side of the city.

After they had walked for a few blocks, Schroeder stopped suddenly and raised his rifle. He lowered the weapon after a second and rubbed his eyes. “This strange light has me crazy. Now it's my turn to start seeing things. I saw something run from one side of the street to the other.”

“No. I saw it too,” Karla said. “It was large. I don't think it was human.”

Schroeder started off again. “That's good. We haven't had much luck with humans lately.”

Karla's nostrils picked up a familiar musky odor. The shed housing the baby mammoth had the same smell. Schroeder's nostrils had picked up the scent as well.

“Smells like a barnyard,” he said.

The fragrance of mud, animals and manure became stronger as they made their way through an alley to another street. The street ended in a plaza similar to the public square they had encountered at the entrance to the city. The plaza was rectangular, about two hundred feet to a side. Like the earlier square it was dominated by a step pyramid about fifty feet high. But what caught Karla's eye was the immediate area around the pyramid.

Unlike the first plaza, whose pavement was made of the same glowing stone as the rest of the city, this space looked as if it were covered by a thick dark growth of weeds or grass. Karla's first impression was that she was looking at an untended garden similar to something she might see in a public park. That didn't make sense given the lack of sunlight. Drawn by her natural curiosity, she started toward the pyramid.

The vegetation began to move.

Schroeder's aging vision had trouble seeing details in the half-light, but the movement caught his eye. The training ingrained long ago came into play. He'd been taught that the best insurance when faced with a potential threat was a lead curtain. He stepped in front of Karla, and he brought his rifle to his hip. His finger tightened on the trigger as he prepared to saturate the square with a lethal spray.

“No!” Karla shouted.

She put her hand in front of his chest.

The plaza undulated, and from the moving mass came a sound of snorts and squeaks and heavy bodies starting to stir. The image of vegetation disintegrated, to be replaced by large furry clumps the size of large pigs.