A mile and a half from the bridge, they come to clear pavement, and the sudden change jolts up through Koda’s back and shoulders. Ahead of them on the road, coming nearer, seven huge silver shapes loom against the sky like prehistoric beasts. Wings canted back, bristling with missiles that jut out from underneath their bellies like spines, they might be pterodactyls set down to roost. Movement catches her eye, and Koda glances up.
A hawk glides smoothly across the white sky. Something eases inside Koda, a tension she scarcely has known was there. It is a good sign, she thinks, lelah wakan.
When she takes the turn that leads toward a slim column of smoke to the west, the hawk follows.
3
An old, old song pounds through Kirsten’s head. She navigates the Interstate with the attention of a barrel-rider, avoiding wrecked trucks, spilled cargo, here and there a corpse. As the frozen asphalt stretches out between her van and the city, though, obstacles become fewer. She still passes the occasional abandoned vehicle, doors broken and hanging open like the valves of a plundered clamshell. She has no way of knowing whether the occupants have escaped or been taken. She cannot slow down to find out, cannot concern herself with the wounded or the possibly salvageable. Her own survival is paramount. She tells herself over and over again that this is not the Highway to Hell. Through Hell, maybe, but not to Hell. It is the highway to Minot, North Dakota, and it is already more than all the hell she ever thought she would see.
Keep it simple. Keep it literal.
Somewhere around noon she crosses the thin spike of West Virgina that juts up between Pennsylvania and Ohio. Her forehead and scalp, which have ached dully since her collision with the steering wheel, have begun to itch with the dried blood from her wound. Little flakes sift down every now and then into her eyes, blurring her vision momentarily. Her bladder, in fact her whole abdomen, has felt for the last half hour as though a whole firing squad of porcupines has used her for target practice. For twice that time she has been promising herself to hold on in fifteen-minute increments. Finally, Asimov settles the matter for her, whining piteously and batting at the door handle with one huge paw.
“Okay, boy. I get you. Hang on just a few minutes more.” She reaches over to ruffle his ears and receives an exceptionally slobbery lick in return. “God,” she mutters, “how I do love gratitude.”
Just over the Ohio line, the Interstate dips to pass under a railroad bridge. Kirsten pulls over and ducks into an embrasure between the concrete struts. Asimov finds himself a satisfactory pillar near the further side of the overpass and irrigates it copiously. The puddle steams in the frigid air.
Asimov quarters the patch of highway, nose down and tail stiff, snuffling ecstatically at a sprayed stain on the cement and lifting his leg to obliterate it with one last, joyful squirt. Kirsten allows him to run off some of the stiffness of the hours in the van, stretching her own cramped legs and shoulder at the same time. When the cold begins to seep through her insulated boots, she whistles her dog back to the van. “Asimov, come! Let’s go!”
He wheels to obey, then freezes, ears straight up. He gives two sharp barks, whines and repeats the alarm. Without even thinking, Kirsten grabs the gun off the van’s seat. “What is it, boy? Where?”
Asimov barks yet again, and this time she hears it. Faint at first but coming steadily nearer, the steady whup-whup of a helicopter’s rotor sweeps toward them down the highway.
“Asimov!”
This time her voice is sharp, and he comes to her. Holding his collar with her left hand, her right gripping the automatic, Kirsten crouches down behind the bulk of the van. In her thoughts she makes herself small. Transparent. Not there.
The noise grows louder and louder until it seems to Kirsten that the chopper must be hovering directly above them. Maybe even landing on the tracks over her head. By the sound it is a large craft, a Black Hawk, maybe, or an Apache gunship. Definitely not a two-seater bubble. It is low enough that the rotor wash kicks up snow, making little funnel clouds and eddies in the drifts piled against the sides of the culvert. The racket is deafening.
There are two possibilities. The helicopter may be operated by human soldiers or law enforcement officers. If it is, they might be able to get her to Minot in half a day.
Or the crew may not be human. In that case, she will destroy as many as she can.
Finding out is not worth the risk.
The pitch of the rotor changes, intensifies unbearably for half a minute. Then the sound begins to recede, fading finally somewhere to the west and north of the overpass. Whatever has drawn the pilot’s attention, it is not one more derelict vehicle on the highway. It is only when her heart dislodges itself from her throat and begins to slow that she realizes it has been beating like a trip hammer to the rhythm of the blades. Her mouth feels cotton-dry. From somewhere deep in her mind a childhood memory rises up. Ms. Tannenbaum’s Sunday School class, little Passover lambs molded of papier maché and covered with fringed and curled white tissue paper.
Take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames . . . eat with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in hast; it is the Lord’s Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn. . .The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.
Somehow the words have remained with her, overlaid by the smell of polymer glue and newsprint on a hot spring morning in Southern California, where her father had been stationed at Thirty-Nine Palms.
Shakily Kirsten gets to her feet and sets down the gun. “Stay, Asimov.”
As he waits patiently, she tops off the gas tank from the jerry cans she has stashed in the back of the van. Then she wets her bandana with as little water as possible and scrubs the dried blood from her forehead. There is a faint tinge of red when she brings it away; she is still bleeding slightly. She ties a fresh strip around her forehead, eats a granola bar while she studies the map. When she is certain the helicopter will not return, she whistles Asimov onto the front seat and sets out again onto the open road.
4
The ranch is good sized, though smaller than her family’s by a good bit. Which isn’t all that surprising, given Clan Rivers has managed to hold on to their piece of land since Time Immemorial, or so it seems.
The main house is a long, rectangular structure with several outbuildings trailing behind like goslings to their mother.
Dakota steps out of her truck into snow that is nearly knee deep, and watches as the others likewise exit their vehicles and head for the promising warmth of the house. She follows along slightly behind, taking careful inventory of those with whom, for better or for worse, she’s thrown in her lot.
For the tough Air Force Colonel, she feels a rather immediate kinship, which gives her pause, given that outside of her family, she trusts very few. While more than intelligent enough to realize that circumstances sometimes make for strange bedfellows, she believes that in this case, perhaps, circumstances have very little to do with things.
The others—those she’s met, anyway—seem capable, and very loyal to their commanding officer.
Her internal musings are interrupted by Montoya, who, with a rakish grin and a flourishing bow, ushers her inside the house. The interior is over warm, given the bitterness of the outside air, and she pauses for a moment as the flush of warming blood hits her tanned skin, painting her in a rosy hue. Montoya notices the flush and, mistaking the reason for it, tips the striking Vet a wink, which is abruptly cut off as cool blue eyes laser into hers.
“I’ll…um…you know…just go over….there….”