A feathery rainbow of songbirds twittered in the leafy branches, and a cottontail coney darted among the laurel bushes in search of food. Off to the side, a hulking stone gargoyle sat amid a plethora of clover. The decorative statue was cracked across its weathered visage, giving the fantastic creature a lopsided grin. Oddly, there were no other remnants of a predark city in sight, and so it was impossible to tell if the gargoyle was all that remained of a once-mighty metropolis, or if the statue was merely windblown trash, just a chunk of debris that tumbled down from the sky into the sylvan field from a thermonuclear explosion a thousand miles away. Suddenly, a long black tube extended from behind the gargoyle to sweep along the rocky coast. “Okay, they made it to dry land,” Krysty announced, her relief painfully obvious. Lowering the yard-long Navy telescope, she compacted it back to the size of a soup can. Crouched on the other side of the protective statue, J.B.
