Come back. I can smell oranges. I’m scared. Mx
His wife had slipped into a fever alone while he’d been on the other side of the city. He blinked the tears away to keep his vision from swimming and looked at the other messages. There were no more from her. The infection must have taken hold quickly, as it did with some people. The rest of the messages were from colleagues who had heard the news before he had and were trying to get hold of him. Then he saw the last one, a message from a ghost.
When he had said good-bye to Gabriel he had firmly believed he would see him again. But as the days and then weeks passed by, and the disease continued to spread into the wider city, and the steady flow of the infected continued into the mountain with no sign of anyone coming out, he had finally let go of that hope. He rechecked the message. Whoever had sent it was asking for the picture Gabriel had sent from the desert. Who else would know about that? It had to be him.
Arkadian fumbled with the phone, his hands shaking as he went through his old messages, looking for the picture file from over a month ago. Gabriel was alive, and so was Arkadian’s hope. Because if one person could survive then others could. It meant the infection could be beaten and he might just see his Madalina again.
69
Shepherd felt the rise in the road out of Cherokee, heading north toward the Tennessee border. He was riding high on his discovery that Melisa was alive and buzzing on the coffee he had ordered from the Tribal Grounds Coffee Shop in grateful thanks for the WiFi that had brought him the news. Before leaving he had refined the search, inputting some of the new data and set it searching for recent passport information, visa applications, anything that might point him in the direction of where she was now. He had set it running and driven away, the mission to find Professor Douglas almost an afterthought, something to get out of the way so he could carry on with the real business of following the red threads of his lost love.
The weather had eased slightly, though powdery snow continued to fall from the low cloud that clung to the mountains rising ahead of him. There was maybe an hour of daylight left, possibly less. He knew he should have started this search earlier, but he didn’t regret the time he had taken to check the MPD results. Everything was different now, the rock he had been pushing uphill for the last eight years had finally tipped over the summit and started to roll down the other side. He was ready for anything and his eyes in the rearview mirror glowed and glittered back at him as though he’d just woken from a long, long sleep.
The road was deserted and the thin dusting of snow on the blacktop had few tire marks in it. Shepherd kept his foot steady on the gas pedal, his eyes scanning the way ahead, trying to match what he was seeing with the faded memory of twenty years ago. Franklin had been right: the snow did make everything look different, but he still had a few solid things to go on.
First, there was only one main road that headed north out of Cherokee toward the Tennessee border — Tsali Boulevard, named after a Cherokee prophet. Second, he remembered the road had run alongside a river for several miles before meandering up into the hills, and he could see the white frozen ribbon of the Oconaluftee River out of his passenger window. Finally, he knew Douglas’s cabin had been high up on the side of a ridge, with elevated views all around that had enabled them to see over all the other ridges and peaks, giving them the whole sky to look at. He had studied the topographical maps and located a section of the highway, close to the Tennessee border, that rose to nearly five thousand feet. It was right in the mountains, miles from the nearest town, and he also remembered how dark it had been at the cabin, well away from any sources of light pollution, making it perfect for stargazing. He felt sure, or as sure as he could be, that Douglas’s cabin was somewhere here in this part of the mountains. All he had to do now was find it.
He’d been driving for about ten miles when the road began to rise more steeply. His eyes flicked to the sat nav display in the central stack of the dashboard. He’d found an option in the menu that displayed the car’s height above sea level and he watched it creep steadily up, ten feet at a time, past three thousand feet and still rising. After another mile the river thinned out to little more than a mountain stream, fringed with ice, a steady babble of black water running through the middle on its way down to the main river. There was a break in the trees up ahead and he slowed as he approached it.
A forest track snaked up and away from the main road, the mud rutted and frozen and clogged with snow. A similar track had led up to Professor Douglas’s cabin. It had been rough, like this one, but this was not it. A quick glance at the sat nav confirmed that they were not high enough.
He carried on climbing, one eye on the altimeter as it continued its steady rise, checking each break in the trees and every track that wound its way up the side of the valley. He was edging close to the four thousand feet mark now and he noticed the temperature gauge on the dashboard was dropping. It was a few points below zero outside and the ground was starting to fall away sharply to his right. He eased his foot off the gas and tried to keep the car in the thin tracks of the few other vehicles that had come this way before him.
He rounded a corner and saw something tucked into a rest stop ahead — a car, the first one he’d seen since branching away from the main river and starting his climb. It was a big old station wagon and he slowed almost to a stop as he drew close to it, but there was no sign of the driver. There was a dusting of snow on it, including the hood, suggesting the engine was cold and it had been there a while. He noticed a baby seat in the back, probably just someone with car trouble who must have called a friend to come pick them up. He put his foot on the gas as gently as he could but the wheels still spun a little before they got a grip on the frozen surface.
The road continued to curve upward and the car disappeared behind him, swallowed by the tree line. After a couple of hundred yards the altimeter stopped climbing, hovering steady around the 4,600 feet mark as the road started to level off. He had to be close. He glanced up at the strip of sky visible between the trees. It was darkening fast as the day drew to a close. The temperature was now minus five and still falling. If he didn’t find the track soon he might be forced to head back and try again at first light, provided the weather didn’t worsen in the night and shut down the mountain roads altogether.
The curve of the road became sharper as it hairpinned back on itself, following the contours of the valley. Trees loomed overhead, laden with heavy snow and throwing deep shadows onto the road, making it hard to see very far ahead. Shepherd flicked the headlamps on high beam, which picked out the falling snow and the shallow shadow of another break in the tree line ahead. He drew closer, touching the brakes and feeling the slippery road through the steering wheel. His heart pounded and his hands gripped tightly as he willed it to be the turn he was looking for. He drew level and slumped in his seat as he saw that it was barely a track at all. It ended just a few feet back from the road in a wall of tangled branches.
He checked the altimeter again — still steady at 4,600—then turned his attention to the road again. With the curve it was impossible to see too far ahead. He couldn’t see any more breaks in the trees, but he could see the road starting to fall away. The altimeter dropped by ten feet, confirming that he was beginning to descend. Then something struck him.