by Ilsa J. Bick
“You were a kid once. Your teacher gets shot, you freak out. If your teacher tells the class to be calm ...”
“Okay, I see that. It might also mean she’s not going to be part of the group for much longer, or whenever they get where they’re going. More reasons to do something sooner rather than later. Did you see what direction they came from?”
He shook his head. “The original group was heading roughly southeast toward Dead Man. Since we know there’s no direct route east, they could have been on a parallel course dropping straight north before intercepting them or on a perpendicular course coming in from the south. Either way, they look as if they’ve met up by design.” That jogged something, too. He’d seen something earlier, when they first spotted two men, armed to the teeth, their guard dog, and six girls with no business in the backcountry. “A couple of hours before we changed direction, one guy was talking into a handheld. It bothered me then. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing or who he might be talking to, but now I’m wondering if he wasn’t in contact with these new guys.” He ducked his head to the scope to check something. “Yeah, and you can see they’ve all got units clipped to their vests. Big suckers, too. Their antennae are so long, they’re folded over. We did that in Afghanistan, kept from getting whipped in the face or the thing getting snagged. Ten to one, those aren’t shortwave. If they’re long-range units, I bet they have GPS, too.” Although good luck with that; communications didn’t do well in these parts, not even sat phones.
“To keep track of each other and tell them where to meet up?” She made a small sound at the back of her throat as she mulled that over. “Okay, I’ll buy that. The question now is why they’re going to Dead Man. There’s no way in or out, right?”
“That’s the rumor. Doesn’t stop folks from trying. Before the state made it protected wilderness, a lot of people broke their necks. The whole area’s a death trap.”
“Where are they going, then?”
“Only one thing on this particular route.” Beyond the slide itself, it was the mountain’s most distinctive feature because of its shape and size. This close, it was also clearly visible. “They’re headed right for the old drift, and that makes no sense. The state sealed up the adit. Bats can make it in and out through old ventilation shafts, but that’s it.”
“Unless they know another way in.” Frowning, she tucked hair behind the shell of an ear. “Is there one?”
“Beats me. The ventilation shafts are too narrow, like straws.” Then he thought of something he’d once read. “You know, there was one survivor.”
“Who?”
“More like what. There was this mine pony named Sammy. Before rail cars got mechanized, they used ponies to haul cars. Poor things spent their whole lives in the mines. Never saw daylight, never went topside at all. When they died, they were buried down mine. Anyway, after the collapse, this rescue operation gets going.”
“How? I thought the way was impassable.”
“It was. But mountains are three-dimensional.”
He saw when she got it. “They went through the other side?”
“Pretty damn close. Remember, the thing’s a drift mine. The seam didn’t follow a straight line, but they originally got at it by drilling in from the side instead of sinking shafts. So, what the rescuers did was tunnel down next to an old ventilation shaft. This went on about a month, I think. They never did find the miners, but Sammy was still there. The pony had survived by eating bark from timbers and drinking seep. They get the pony out, everyone makes a fuss, gives it beer and oats and stuff—and then the poor thing dies from bloat.” Talk about killing with kindness.
“Are you saying these people are going for the rescue shaft?”
“Shafts, plural, they sank more than one, but, no. Once they figured out no one was coming out, they collapsed them. Behind Dead Man, though, there used to be a system of paths leading east where the owner, some Scottish guy named McGillivray from down around Alabama …”
“You’re shitting me. Alabama?”
“Place is lousy with Scots, apparently. They migrated in from Georgia, and a lot made it big in Alabama coal and iron. So, McGillivray builds this estate, some monstrous castle-thing in a couloir. Thing was, you couldn’t get there any way other than going through the mountain, but the entrances and actual routes were secret. Only the right people were allowed through. One book I read claimed a bunch of the tunnels were booby-trapped, not just with explosives but false floors, fake branches, corridors that led nowhere or doubled back on themselves so many times there was no way to retrace your steps. There’s more than one story about McGillivray’s competitors being given the wrong route on purpose and then just flat-out disappearing.” Horrible way to die, too, he thought, wandering around in the dark until you either died of thirst or exposure. Like Twain’s Injun Joe.
“Where are the paths now?”
“Beats me. McGillivray was careful never to commit anything to paper. His guests had to destroy their copies and he had them searched before they left. Even drivers bringing supplies to the house didn’t know the precise route because McGillivray maintained teams that switched off at various points through the tunnels, each taking a different path.” If he’d been a driver back then, he’d have thought twice. Two people can keep a secret, but only if one is dead.
“That is wild. What happened to those tunnels and paths?”
“They supposedly collapsed when the mountain did.”
“Supposedly.” She arched an eyebrow. “You’re saying those guys might have found one of these secondary routes? Through the mountain? To wind up where?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. I’m just talking what I’ve read in books. A guy as paranoid and secretive as McGillivray, you have to imagine he had escape routes out of these mountains. I know this much: after the slide, no one ever saw him again. Poof. Just gone. A good thing, too, because the company went bankrupt from lawsuits. Historians don’t think he died, either. The slide happened on a Sunday, while most people were in church. They got wiped out when the church was swamped, but remember how I said he designed his estate after this old Scottish castle? It had its own chapel. McGillivray showed up in the town church only once a year on Founder’s Day. For all anybody knows, he might be bones up there, holed away in that old house. I wouldn’t put money on it, though.” He hesitated a beat then said, “I also think this changes things, Mac.”
Her expression settled into an almost icy neutral, edged with just a touch of defiance as if offering a dare. “How so?”
“When there were only two of those guys, you going in alone while I hoof it over to Chaney and then down to town made some sense.” A vanishingly small degree in his opinion, but this wasn’t his party. “Now, it makes zero sense.”
“How do you figure?”
“What, you need me to draw you a map?” he rapped. Surprise sparrowed through her features, but to hell with it. Yeah, he got he was injured—fine, okay, he’d shot himself and fucked up, and now she thought he was weak, a coward, the type of person who needed someone else to do the thinking for both of them. “Get real, Mac. First off, it’ll take me hours, probably the better part of a day just to get to Chaney. The map says it’s not manned, so the chances anyone will be hanging around are slim to none, and slim just left the building. Second, I don’t know if you’ve noticed the snow, but it’s coming down pretty good, which means it’ll take me that much longer even with spikes.”
“So? The snow will slow them down just as much, maybe more with those girls.”
“Those guys have five miles or to cover, and they’re at Dead Man. I got fifteen and then another eleven to Lonesome. Those guys will be history long before the cavalry comes.”
“Which means we have to get moving.”
“Mac, even if I do manage to get to a sheriff’s or police station, I’ll have no proof to back up a single thing, and then there’s this.” He waved a hand toward his injuries. “A gunshot wound looks like a gunshot wound. They’
ll think I’m making the whole thing up for the attention. We should stick together, Mac. I know you want to do this on your own. I understand you’re different and strong and futuristic and all that. Two guys, you could probably take—”
“I could take twice—”
“Shut up.” He muscled back a shout. He didn’t think an argument would carry four miles, but you couldn’t be too careful. “Just be quiet for a second, all right? Hear me out.”
“I don’t need you to ...” She broke off, her gaze briefly flicking up and to the left, her head tipping ever so slightly before her jaw settled into a stubborn jut. Anyone watching would think she’d been told to button it. He’d seen her do this before, too: that little flick, the head tilt. Now, as then, he was reminded of guys who’d been in the shit and completely lost it, whose minds were always elsewhere, actively hallucinating, listening to voices and commands only they heard. Mac seemed so with it, he’d discounted psychosis, thought of this as a small, involuntary tic, perhaps. What if that wasn’t it, though? She was wired for sound. Her brain was crammed with hardware and software. Was she listening to someone? Talking to someone? A new thought: might she not also broadcast or get a signal out? All she’d said about the people involved in this project was they were DARPA. DARPA meant big bucks, top secret tech. If he had someone like Mac, he’d sure as hell figure out a way of keeping in touch.
Did this mean she could signal for help? If she could, wouldn’t that solve all their problems?
And if she could but hadn’t ... why not?
“Fine.” Emerald eyes blazing, she barricaded her chest with folded arms. “What?
“Listen, I’ve no doubt you’ve had training. The Army and DARPA would want to make sure everything works.”
“And?”
“And I got to think you’ve been tested. Field exercises, live fire, the whole nine yards—and you work. For all I know, you’re only getting better. It explains why you’re so confident.” Perhaps overly so, and bullheaded to boot, but he kept that to himself.
“Yes. I’ve done a lot of LFX. So?”
She hadn’t bitten his head off, score one for the good guys. “Live-five exercises are designed to test new field systems, new tech. If the system fails or gets shot up, it sucks, but it’s not the end of the world. You just go back and build a better mousetrap. Did it ever occur to you, though, you’re not standard-issue tech? They bust you up too bad, that’s a lot of time, money, and oh, a person for whom all this was tailor-made down the drain.”
“And?” she repeated.
“Come on, Mac, you’re not stupid. You know where I’m going with this.”
“You’re saying they pulled their punches.”
“Did they?”
“So as not to really break Humpty Dumpty?” Something moved behind her face. “No. I broke a few of them, though.” Her eyes shuttered. “Messed some guys up pretty bad.”
Bet a couple wanted to put you down, too. He kept that himself, but he could relate. He’d only seen her take off her legs and kill a tree, and he was spooked.
“You’re saying I’m overconfident because I’ve never been tested in a real world situation where someone doesn’t mind if I die,” she said.
“And you’re not invincible. If you remember, I did save your ass.”
“Okay, fine, message received. I’ll be careful.”
She’d given him an opening he thought he had to take. “Speaking of messages, on the rocks back there where you found me and I pulled you up? We both got lucky. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t been there?”
“Eventually? Nothing good. My arm could’ve held, I guess, but not my shoulder or back.” She gave one of her half-shrugs. “Muscles fail. Joints separate.”
Machines throw in the towel, too. He wondered what happened to the nanobots if her brain died. Would they continue? Go dormant until reactivated in living tissue? Or were they symbionts, as dependent on her as she now was on them? Could they organize into a being of their own creation? All creatures want to live. “That’s my point. You’re part machine, Mac. What does the Army do when a plane fails? When a helicopter crashes?”
“Examine the wreckage and decide where they went wrong and then, like you said, build a better mousetrap.” Instead of anger, her face settled into something close to amusement. “You’re asking if I’ve got a homing device or beacon or something because DARPA and the Army wouldn’t want to misplace me if something happened.”
“Yeah, they’d want to examine the wreckage.” Strange, how he’d lost his shyness when it came to the topic of what she was. “Do you? Have a beacon or homing device or whatever?”
“What if I did?”
He blinked. “You have to ask? Jesus, Mac, if there was ever a time to call for backup, this is it. Can those”—he gestured toward her head—“can they send out a distress signal or something? Are they tied into some bigger system?”
“Without me telling them to do something, or them sensing the need?” A small wrinkle appeared above her nose. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
It seemed to him those were two different things: her telling versus them sensing. “Maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Her normally direct gaze faltered. “There have been a couple of changes.”
“In you?” Holy God, what was she becoming? “What kind?”
“They’re not that important. I see better, and I sense things. You know, by their smell. Like, I can tell stuff about the wolves. Not a language, but I understand a little. And you’ve got a special smell, too. When you’re depressed, it’s like this black, oily funk. Hard to describe. Anyway, the changes aren’t bad, just unexpected.”
“Not bad? Mac, you’re being modified! And you haven’t told your people? What is with them anyway? You’re, essentially, the Six Billion Dollar Woman, and they just let you waltz off-base?” He’d keep her under lock and key.
“No, not really. The waltzing part, I mean, not the billion dollar part.”
He didn’t laugh. “Oh, terrific. You’re AWOL?” At least, he wasn’t the only one.
“In a manner of speaking. They have a general idea of where I am; I told them where I was going. I even filled out paperwork. It just wasn’t all ... accurate.”
Mother of God. “Are you overdue to check-in?”
“I will be in”—she thought about it—“thirty-six hours, give or take.”
He wondered how she was supposed to do that. As far as he knew, she had no radio or sat phone. The nanobots? “What happens when you don’t report in?”
“They’ll start looking where I originally said my route would take me.”
“Which is where?”
“Wyoming.” A pause. “Roundabout Yellowstone.” A longer pause. “More or less.”
“But, Mac, we’re in Montana.”
“Details, details,” she said.
Only much later would he realize, she never did answer that question about a beacon.
2
Eyes thinned to slits against the wind, Sarah slotted a shovel under existing snowpack and scooped a healthy chunk, which she flung aside. A twinge grabbed her lower back, and she groaned. Another gust peppered her cheeks with flecks of ice. She was operating on nerves and about a gallon of coffee. She should go in, rest, get warm. Eat something. What was she trying to prove? There was no one to impress. She knew, however, why she was out here, in the snow, at night, laboring over a landing zone for a rescue chopper that would not arrive tonight.
Because driving herself was better than being cooped up in a cabin with a dying girl.
She was such a coward. Hank had been the logical choice to go down mountain. Someone had to, and she was the only one with anything remotely resembling medical knowledge. True, her patients were normally of the furry, four-legged variety, with the odd cockatoo or snake thrown in for variety. She figured she knew just enough to keep the girl alive until someone with a real medical degree showed up. Maybe.
Staking the blade into a mound, she let the
shovel hold her up. Sweat oiled her face and neck. Her body heat unfurled in thin, steamy fiddleheads that gleamed in a fan of blue-white light thrown by a battery-powered spot. Reaching for her small daypack set at the base of a mound, she grabbed her water bottle. The water was brain-freeze cold, a frigid ribbon unspooling down the center of her chest before going off like a bomb. She gritted her teeth against a cramp, willing her empty stomach to unclench.
She needed to eat something. Replacing her bottle, she rummaged in a parka pocket and came out with a Baggie of peanut butter crackers. She crunched one, her nose wrinkling a little at the faint peppery tang of dill pickle. A Hank and Pete thing, those peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Pete never got enough of them. Before Hank hurried off down-mountain, she’d slipped four into his pack, along with an equal number of power bars.
As she munched, she calculated. Hank had started down around one. By three, clouds had gathered, scudding in from the north to crowd the sky and color the horizon nickel. Snow soon followed, the fine wavering curtains draping themselves over distant peaks before closing them off completely.
At a flat-out run and in the best of conditions, Hank would be six hours on the trail before he reached his truck and radioed for help. Factor in ice and snow and crampons jury-rigged out of bungee cords and chain strung together with the plasticuffs Hank always carried—zip ties being a cop’s duct tape—he would be even longer on the trail, seven or eight hours, most likely, and at least two or three of those spent in the dark. God, she hoped he was careful.
She checked her watch. Wished she hadn’t. Nine-thirty. Hell. All things being equal, and barring any fresh disasters, Hank should be reaching his truck right around now. This meant the earliest any rescue chopper might arrive was still an hour or so in her future.
Deep down, she knew that wouldn’t happen. No one would fly tonight, nor would a rescue team risk its collective neck hoofing it back up the mountain with a stretcher for an equally treacherous descent that might get not only the patient but everyone else killed.