IT took Dan a while to find the sheriff. He rolled down the streets on the bike, pulling over now and then to ask directions from pedestrians. This town seemed crowded after the long emptinesses he’d traversed. The sidewalks bustling, jaywalkers keeping him on edge, the way a place ought to be, the way towns all across America once had been. Several of the folks he stopped to ask just shrugged, saying they weren’t from here, they were evacuees from Denver, and had no idea where the sheriff’s office might be.
It had taken two days to get here from Montana. He’d doglegged south around the no-go areas, following Hardin’s directions and the fallout map the militiawoman had printed out for him. Then angled east again, and crossed Yellowstone.
The park had been closed, but he’d nursed the bike around Jersey barriers and motored around the wide placid blue lake on a narrow two-laner. His engine echoed from the mountainsides. It was probably scenic, but somehow he couldn’t see it as anything but distance to be conquered. A single ranger vehicle turning out from the lodge had trailed him for a time, but he’d sped up and it finally gave up the chase. If it had even been a chase … He’d slept in the open that night, snatching a few hours with the bike pulled into a copse of fir along a creek. Its channel held only a trickle, but he washed his face in it and drank some, then gnawed at his processed food, though it was tasteless. He didn’t care whether the water was potable or not, contaminated or not. It just didn’t seem to matter.
He couldn’t stop reproaching himself. What might he have done, could he have done, should he have done, to keep Nan safe? How had he let her take a job so far from home, on the far side of the country? Jack Byrne, an advisor on Yangerhans’s staff and an old friend, had warned him to get her out of Seattle. “She’s sitting right on the bull’s-eye,” Byrne had said.
But he hadn’t done a thing. Just assumed she’d be safe. Or, no. To be exact: hadn’t thought much about it. Just told himself she was adult, she wouldn’t obey. Would feel it her duty to stay, and keep trying to produce the drug that would save lives and bear her name. Or at least her initial.
But he should have tried. Even if he didn’t think she’d leave, he should have tried. Sentiment aside, it was, at the very least, his biological duty.
Yeah. He should have worried more about her. Back when worrying could have done some good.
He lay staring into the dark. He could blame his ex-wife. He could blame the war. He could blame Nan.
But the only one he really had any right to be angry at was himself.
THE next morning he’d hit the road again at dawn and powered on through the day. The highway ran along mountainsides, then through valleys. Past lakes, then through much deeper ravines barriered by lead-colored mountains. Some serious peaks rose above and beyond them to the north. He guessed he was in the Rockies. At Wapiti he found an open gas station, and was asked for a ration card for the first time. He didn’t have one, of course, and the guy made an issue of it, threatened to report him, but at last accepted the .38 in trade for a fill-up.
There, for the first time, he got a hit when he asked about the truck. Yeah, the station owner said, he’d seen it. A refrigerator truck, with five motorcyclists riding escort. They’d pointed rifles and demanded gas and food. Dan had agreed, that was beyond acceptable behavior. Had one of them killed his daughter? He drank a cup of boiled-down coffee, used the dirty toilet-paper-less head, and got back on the road again.
East of Wapiti the countryside seemed little by little to return to something resembling normality. More cars dotted the road, though still far fewer than in peacetime, or at least in what peacetime had been like before the war. He was stopped twice more, but each time was let go once he presented his M&M pass. He was getting the feeling that the federal government’s writ, never popular out here, had been supplanted by the sheriffs and the Mobilized Militias since the Exchange.
The hours passed in a blur. Valleys and plains were painted a deep verdant green with new crops, though no one was working in those fields and he saw little agricultural machinery. He motored through more endless valleys, the engine cocooning him in a soothing omlike hum that emptied his brain.
When he wasn’t thinking he wasn’t remembering. Was no longer dreading what he was going to find at the end of this ride. Instead, it was as if he were riding from life into a deathlike realm he’d never expected to visit. A gray underworld through whose mists he wandered like a wraith.
He’d always thought, hoped, expected, his daughter would outlive him. That he’d never have to confront this worst doom that could befall a parent.
But apparently now he would.
A mountain pass, winding roads, great trees towering to either side. Waterfalls. An honest to God state road crew, repairing a washout. They waved and cheered as he roared past, and he lifted a hand in acknowledgment, a little puzzled by their enthusiasm, before the numbness returned.
The land flattened. It became planed-smooth grasslands that stretched to the horizon like a calm, occasionally wind-ruffled green sea. Hour after hour of flatness, the asphalt blurring beneath him as he pushed the bike to eighty, to ninety, to near a hundred. Then eased off, realizing he was courting something he didn’t want to name. Another gas station, in Gillette, let him fuel without a ration card, only asking an exorbitant sum per gallon. He handed the bills over reluctantly. He was running out of cash, and even the mention of a credit card earned him a look that suggested he was crazy.
At long last, late in the afternoon, a sign welcomed him to Chadron. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now. Wide fields stretched away on either side. Farms and the occasional metal-roofed, pristinely kept barn perched on low hills. The rest of the land reached away almost to infinity, sealike, disorienting. Then the open view across the land gradually gave way to the usual beach wrack of small-town outskirts. A church, a brick-pillared cemetery, a nursing home; then trailer parks, convenience stores, car lots, a Wal-Mart, and the bland faux-glitzy normality of a shopping mall. A Taco John’s was even doing business, with a blinking OPEN sign, cars parked out front, locals chatting by the door. So here they had electrical power … He was terrifically hungry, but pressed on, dreading what lay ahead but also strangely eager to get it over with, confirmed, accepting the blow and the blame even though he had no idea what it would be like on the other side.
Telling himself a lot of other people, dads, moms, families, had known this moment, in this war. He wasn’t alone.
But that didn’t seem to help.
Eventually he found the sheriff’s office, pointed the last couple of blocks by a friendly older woman in a painter’s apron, who was retouching a faded sign in front of the public library. He coasted into a diagonal parking slot in front of the three-story building that held not just a sheriff’s department, but the district judge and the county offices. It all looked so normal and everyday that his heart lifted just a tiny bit. Before he remembered why he was here.
The sheriff was named Kit Larsen. A deputy stood by as he was ushered into her office. She acted reserved until he told her why he was here, half in uniform, hatless and windblown and stubbled and probably smelling of gasoline and dirt.
“Ah. You’re her father,” she said in a flat midwestern accent, pointing to a chair. “Sit down, sir. Please.”
He slid it over and sank into it, the old springs protesting audibly. “Maybe. Maybe. That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“We never discovered any ID on her, and we don’t have the connectivity back yet to do fingerprints.” She started to open a file cabinet, then seemed to change her mind. “The face … I mean, she wasn’t in good shape. Whoever left her out there beat her up pretty bad.”
Dan swallowed. He forced himself to ask, “Do you have any suspects? I heard it was a motorcycle gang—”
“Not a gang. Just a stranger on a Harley. Or at least the bartender down at EJ’s said he’d seen her with him. Some time before she was found at the creek.
“See, there are a lot of new people in town these days. ‘Vackers,’ we call them. People look past them, most of the time. Since we know they might not be here for long.” She frowned. “See, we’re between two big fallout plumes here. We’re all just hoping the contamination doesn’t move south or east. There are supposed to be monitoring teams out, but we’re not getting their reports. A lot of folks think it’s worse than what they’re telling us.” She sighed. “And that this cease-fire might not hold.”
“I think it will,” Dan said. “Just my opinion, but both sides are pretty damn sick of this war.”
“Yeah, us too.” She sighed again, placed her hands on the desk, and rose. “We don’t have a county morgue. Body’s being held at Hertich’s. Local funeral home. So, let’s take you over there.”
THE patrol car smelled like he expected a small-town police cruiser to. Unwashed bodies, greasy fast food, and the ghosts of vomit past. When they pulled up a few blocks distant, a corpulent man in a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie was waiting at the curb. The mortician shook Larsen’s hand and introduced himself, though Dan didn’t register his name. He was abstracted. Not really here.
He was asking a power he hoped was there for help. For strength. Not for a given result, not for it not to be her. He wouldn’t ask for that. Because then he’d just be wishing horror and grief onto another father, another family, instead of his own. He couldn’t pray for that.
Only for the strength to bear whatever came.
The mortician ushered them through several curtained and carpeted parlors, down a flight of steps, into an air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit basement.
Here the air smelled like cinnamon and acetone. The director cleared his throat. Unsmiling, deliberate, with the air of a robing priest, he pulled on a crackling green plastic embalming gown and green nitrile gloves. Talc drifted in the still air. Clearing his throat again—a tic?—he rolled a dressing table out of the way and unlatched the door to a gleaming stainless three-body mortuary cooler.
A single shrouded bundle lay on the top rack. The tray extended with a squeal of bearings. The pale blue sheet atop the body was dotted with brownish fluid. “She was unclaimed,” the director said. “So I didn’t put much time into prettying her up.” He looked shyly at the sheriff, then at Dan, as if expecting to be chided.
“Go ahead, Rog,” Sheriff Larsen said.
The director cleared his throat again, grasped the upper hem of the sheet with thumbs and forefingers, and drew it back with a respectful yet somehow still showmanlike flourish.
Dan felt iced, emotionless, as if walled off by many meters of frozen asbestos from some devouring flame. He forced unwilling legs to dolly him forward.
The face was obliterated, hammered by blunt force into black bruises, so distorted the bones beneath must have been smashed out of shape. The head lay cocked to one side, as if in mute question. Why? Or maybe, Who? No, this victim must have known her assailant. The damage was so up close, so personal a violation.
But confronted with this swollen, distorted wreckage of a face, Dan couldn’t tell if it was familiar or not.
“We figure about five nine, maybe one thirty, one forty. A little taller than average for a woman, but not that much. Mid- to late twenties. Hard to tell race. She’s pretty banged up,” the director said, half admiringly, as if he were describing a used but durable car he was selling. “If you asked me, I’d say she was dragged. There’s a lot of abrasion damage.”
The sheriff said, “Then maybe beaten, so she wouldn’t be recognized?”
“Could be,” the director said. “But that could’ve happened in a car crash, or a motorcycle accident, too. I see a lot of young adults come in here like that. Those are always sad. Donorcycles, they call the bikes, down at the hospital.”
The icy sheath was melting. He felt queasy now, ready to bolt for a toilet. He’d seen the dead before. Many times. But none had been his own daughter. “Can I see her hair?” he muttered, only realizing he’d said it aloud after the words were out.
The director nodded. Those green nitrile gloves lifted the head and fanned out the hair. Dark brown, like hers. But … it was short. He blinked, fighting voices in his brain lifted in argument. Nan hadn’t worn her hair this short. But … she could have cut it. Even, probably had cut it, working in a lab environment.
Her mother’s hair had been jet black. His own, lighter, almost blond. She’d been nearly blond once, when she was small, but it had darkened as she grew up.
Without being asked, the director flirted the sheet downward. Uncovering a torso and chest, also bruised. The skin was mottled red and brown, lacerated and stripped down to raw meat.
Dan closed his eyes, and put out a hand to brace himself against a utility cabinet.
“Did your daughter have any identifying markings?” Larsen asked, beside him, in a not unsympathetic tone.
“A, uh … a tattoo. A tennis racket. With some kind of design around it. Leaves, or flowers. She got it when she was at college, thinking about going pro.”
The director murmured, “Where was it, sir?”
“Right wrist. No, left, I think … Actually I’m not sure right now.” He ground his teeth, fighting down the nausea. He had to stick with this. Had to know. One way or the other.
The director pulled the left hand from under the sheet and turned it over. The skin was mottled, but there was no sign of a tattoo of any kind.
“The right one?” the sheriff, Kit, said.
The director tucked the left hand back under the sheet, refolded the sheet, and took out the right hand. His deliberate, measured movements were enraging. Dan squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open again.
On the right hand, the skin was gone from above the elbow down nearly to the fingertips, scooped or scraped off, leaving raw red muscle and white tendons.
“That’s what we call road rash,” the director said. “It’s instinct. You tend to push your arms out when you go down. Try to break the fall. So maybe, whatever happened to her, it started with a wipeout.”
Dan rubbed his face. He tried to remember what his daughter’s body looked like, but all his mind gave him was pictures of her as a child. Bony, long legs, long arms. Her slightly awkward, stiff-legged run. This body was the right size. Five nine was about right, and the weight was ballpark. The skin appeared slightly sallow, at least in the uninjured areas, more or less like he remembered hers looking like when she’d been indoors studying and hadn’t gotten much sun. Which she probably hadn’t, working at Archipelago.
But he couldn’t tell, and he wavered, standing there, between wondering if he was just denying what was in front of him, or if this truly might not be her. The undertaker and the sheriff stood watching. Waiting for some decision.
But he just couldn’t look at the poor broken thing in front of him anymore. As if some force field, or magnetic repulsion, wrenched his gaze away. He had to think about breathing just to get air down to his lungs, and the room kept trying to spin. At last he said, inspecting the green-and-white tile floor, “You can cover her up now.”
“So, is that your daughter, sir?” the sheriff asked, taking his arm.
“I … I’m sorry, but I just can’t tell. What about clothes? What was she found in? That might help.”
“Found her pretty much just like this,” the sheriff said. “Covered in leaves, out where the highway crosses the White River, north of the airport. Stripped naked, lying under the trees. Jogger who spotted one hand called it in.”
“Can you do something else to ID her? Fingerprints, blood type … DNA?”
They looked at each other. The director cleared his throat. He shook his head and whispered something to the sheriff that Dan didn’t catch.
Finally Larsen said, “It’s not exactly like CSI or the movies, Captain. Not out here, these days. We could maybe do DNA, but it would take a while. The sample would have to go to Lincoln. Like I said, it would take a while. Weeks. Maybe months, I don’t know how much backlog they have, with all the … you know, the remains, from the Exchange.”
“I’d be happy to pay, if that would help.” Dan wished he felt icy again. Now he felt hot, sweaty, and his legs were beginning to quiver. “Look, I don’t know what to say. I really can’t tell for sure. It’s probably her. But I can’t be certain, so I don’t want to…” He caught his breath; could see from their sympathetic yet baffled expressions he wasn’t making sense. “Look, I’m going to have to get out of here.”
“Sure. Sure.” The sheriff took his arm again and they climbed back up the steps, back through the floral-scented parlors, outside into the fresh air.
When they reached the patrol car his knees buckled under him. He felt dizzy, sick, ill. He dropped to a crouch on the curb, covering his face with both hands.
The others patted his back, murmuring in consoling tones. Hands slid under his armpits, to lift him, but he twisted away, fought to stand on his own. Finally he made it, but barely, swaying.
He leaned against the patrol car, fighting just to breathe past the sucking black hole in his chest. Wishing now that numbness would return. That feeling he wasn’t really involved. Was not seeing what was right in front of him.
But this nausea, and this endless and bottomless horror, felt like they were here to stay.