I wondered how they were surviving, though. Where did they get the resources to sustain a community? It was impossible to tell from where I knelt just how big the community was, though it looked sizable on the map. Did that mean there was arable farmland inside? Were these wealthy residents really tilling their own fields? It seemed unlikely, though before the End Junie and I visited an intentional community in Central California made up of upscale organic farmers and artists. Was this like that? A place that had been built as a sustainable village before the need for such a thing became absolute?

A lot of questions.

“Come on, fuzzball,” I said softly to Baskerville as I started to rise, but then I saw him staring intently off to my right, and I settled back down. “What are you seeing, boy?”

His answer was a low, soft growl.

I trained my glasses on the vista, scanning the walls of the town, the open space between that and the woods, and then the tree-line itself.

That’s when I saw them.

Four men knelt in shadows very much as I was. They were rough-looking characters dressed in leather and denim, with lots of knives and guns at their hips or slung across their backs. Two of them had binoculars and were intently studying Happy Valley.

I made a small hand sign to Baskerville, telling him to scout quietly. He was off in a flash, but for all his bulk and armor, he knew how to move like a ghost when he wanted to. I put my binoculars away, loosened my sword in its sheath, checked the magazine in my sidearm, and followed.

The watchers were pretty intent on studying the town, but it didn’t mean they were oblivious to everything else. Caution has kept me alive all these years. Knowledge of how to move through the woods the right way has always been key. There’s a way to do it right. You listen to the woods. They’re never actually silent, and quiet is relative.

Once you open up your senses to the life of a forest, you begin a conversation. You listen in order to learn and form opinion, but you have to be careful not to allow assumption or judgment. Truth is absolute in the natural world. However, you need to interpret the truth and understand it. There is no guile in the way tall grass or leaves move in a breeze; there’s no lie to the way mud dries around a footprint or how crickets react to the presence of things that frighten them. If you are experienced and passive, you can hear sounds that don’t belong and see things that are out of place.