The Survivors

Chapter Twelve: Blank Slate, pt. 1

12

BLANK SLATE

I boarded my flight the next morning after killing time all night. And by the time I landed in Moscow, I had purged the images of Cole's pained face from my mind. I was focused and ready to begin.

            The bright high ceilings of the Hotel National's lobby delighted me. Mesmerized by the architecture and classic style, I spent the afternoon wandering Moscow, getting my bearings in this foreign place, and speaking to as many people as I could to get used to the feel of Russian on my tongue. I had no idea what I would have done in my travels if I hadn't had the ability to speak any language I heard. And now that I could read minds, even more limitations had been lifted. When I couldn't read a sign—I could speak the language but I couldn't read it—or when I got confused, I could tune into minds around me and figure things out.

            After I found some landmarks to depend on, I went back to the hotel and unpacked. Moscow at this time of year was not a sunny place. The locals told me it was light out for only about three hours a day. This meant I had to be careful not to confuse darkness with isolation-too often I'd feel protected by a cloak of darkness, content that most people were asleep or off the roads at night. Given that it could be pitch black at three in the afternoon, I would have to pay close attention to who could see me.

  I dressed for a cold evening in rugged terrain. I stuffed myself into a long wool coat lined and quilted with down, fur trim around the collar, and wrapped a thick scarf around my neck and pulled on my hiking boots. I strapped a tight-fitting messenger bag across my frame. I stuffed it with pencils and my Moleskine journal, my digital camera with three or four fully charged batteries, battery-pack boosters that I could hook up to my iPhone, and a tiny laptop that could pick up the Internet wherever there was cell phone coverage. I'd picked up several different kinds of maps, and I had a slim compass I took everywhere with me. I also carried an unsafe amount of cash—American dollars, Euro, and rubles. One of the truest things I had learned in my time passing as a human was that money talks. And because I wouldn't go anywhere without it, I slipped my old book of Hesiod in the bag, wrapped in a scarf for safekeeping.

  I waited until the evening commute subsided, until most people were at home, and then I was ready to go.

            I had planned to rely on my instincts. My new ability to hear the humming of a supernatural mind from a distance was going to be my guide. The Winters had opened up my eyes to the existence of others like us, so now I was looking for them. They would be the best sources of the information I coveted.

            Once I made my way out of Moscow, I darted between towns and suburbs before I got to land empty enough that I could flat out run. I was headed south toward the Ukrainian border, but somewhere near Voronezh I heard a distinct humming that sent me eastward.

            By then, it was morning. I had to slow down when I passed towns and was close enough to be seen.

            For several days, I wandered, following the elusive humming. I passed through several towns big enough to have museums or tourist destinations dedicated to their own mythology. I stopped at each one, finding everything from monuments dedicated to witches burned at the stake to locals who believed in burying their loved ones face down so they wouldn't come back from the dead as vampires.