Double Helix Ch. 11

~Norm~

The truck rocked and creaked over the potholes of the old country road. Dust blew in through the open windows, but I kept them down. I kept my speed down too, to hear in case Tilly saw me and called out. There had been some small farms here, but many of the residents had moved away after the Rot began to devastate their land. The trees and bushes that had encroached on the road made the task of searching that much harder.

At first, I couldn't imagine what might have happened to Tilly to make her miss our meeting. Then the terrible thought had occurred to me that she might have arrived at our meeting place only after the police officer had shown up. She would have had to stay there and watch me drive off. I had almost turned and gone back north immediately to try to find her, but that idea had some problems.

For one, it was entirely possible that the checkpoint was still in place. Cameras recorded each vehicle's license plate as it went through, and their system would flag me if I showed up again in the same place so soon. I had been lucky that they hadn't recognized me when I went through before. Also, I thought it unlikely that Tilly would just wait on the roadside for me.

My biggest problem was, even if I was right about what she wouldn't do, I couldn't guess what she would do. That was why I was here, driving along a road that was washed out in some places, overgrown by brush in others, along the edge of a large, abandoned ranch. I thought that Tilly might try to walk back home if she had no other alternative, so I had begun to scout the back country roads to the west of highway 99 in the hope that I might stumble across her. I also kept my cell phone plugged in constantly to keep it charged, in case she managed to find a phone to call me.

It was now past noon and I had seen no sign of Tilly. I had not eaten since the previous night outside the warehouse and my stomach had adopted a nearly continuous grumble of complaint. More immediately, the truck was running low on gas. I made my way back to the main road and headed south into Newberg to fuel up. Since I had never gotten my FEMA food vouchers, there really wasn't anywhere that I could go to get a meal. I was feeling wired, amped up on fear and anxiety, but shaky and weak. I stood at the gas pump, watching the numbers climb, and agonized over what to do next. The pump clicked off when it reached the hundred dollars that I had prepaid. I slapped my palm into the side of the truck. "Fuck it," I said.

I climbed into the truck and headed back up highway 99. I passed the place with the barriers and was relieved to see that the checkpoint had cleared, the officers and guardsmen off to set up somewhere else. I had idly wondered many times if the checkpoints ever actually caught any genemods, or if their main purpose was to serve as a constant reminder to the populace of who was in control. The bootleggers certainly seemed to have ways of anticipating or avoiding them.

I turned around a few miles up the road and started back. About a mile past where the checkpoint had been, I slowed and put on my hazard lights. I studied the tree line as I drove, glancing forward every few seconds to ensure I didn't run off the road or into the back of a stopped car. Nothing.

With no better ideas to go on, I went back to patrolling the back roads. I wondered if Tilly had simply lost her way and gone west instead of southwest, or even north, but she had seemed so sure of herself, even giving me the distance to travel to meet her. I considered getting out and searching the area on foot, but I would have to cover a few square miles, at least, to have any realistic chance of finding her.

I stopped running the truck constantly and forced myself to wait and make the trip once an hour down the back roads, so that I wouldn't use up the truck's gas and my dwindling supply of cash. Nightfall arrived as I made one last, desperate trip down Roy Rogers Road, which ran due south to Newberg. Of course, I didn't find anything new that I hadn't seen my last five trips down it. When I came to the outskirts of Newberg, I merged onto 99 and continued south, choosing speed over the dubious safety of the coastal route.

I pulled into the driveway of the farm at around ten o'clock, and was greeted by a small crowd as everyone but Nonna ran out to meet me. Nissi caught me in a crushing hug as soon as I stepped out of the truck. "Where were you?" she said in a tone that was somehow both relieved and accusatory. "We thought you'd been arrested. Norm, what happened? What's wrong?"

"Where's Tilly?" Stansy said, peering past me into the empty cab of the truck.

"I lost her," I said in a choked voice. I was just barely holding my emotions in check. "Can we go inside?" I hurried past the shocked looks on their faces.

Stan heated up some of the leftovers from the evening's meal while I told them all what had happened. Nissi clutched at my hand the whole time, as if I might just vanish if she let go.

"It was getting dark," I finished, "and I didn't know what else to do, so I came back here."

Stan put a plate of rice with a side of applesauce on the table in front of me. I took a forkful and began to chew. I was ravenously hungry, but the food could have been sawdust for all that I noticed of it.

"What are we going to do?" Wendy asked.

"Could she make it all the way down here?" Stansy asked. "What is it, a hundred miles or so?"

"Something like that," I agreed. I shook my head dismally. On foot, that would take days, maybe weeks if she kept off of the roads. "Would she know how to get here?"

"She's got Truedirect, or she should," Nissi said. "I'd be really surprised if they left that off, with the mishmash of enhancements she's got."

I looked at her askance. "Truedirect?"

Nissi nodded. "It's a little engineered magnetoception organ that they started putting in mods on about the third version release of Stan Ups, and a lot of other mods. The biotech that developed it had generous licensing terms. I have one. So does Stansy and Nock. If Tilly has that, she can orient herself to the four compass points within a couple of degrees." That pretty much ruled out the notion that she had gotten lost.

Nissi stood up. "We need to look at a map."

I picked up my plate and we all followed her into the den. We watched as she brought up Openmaps on the terminal screen. "Okay," she said, "any terrain features we can use? You said you were south of Portland, but just north of this little town, Newberg. Anything else?"

"Well, there was a bridge," I said. "I crossed it right after I got through the checkpoint. I mean, the bridge was literally right on the other side of it."

Nissi zoomed in the map and searched along the highway. "Okay, here, probably. This says it's the Tualatin River. You know . . ." She frowned and zoomed in closer.

"What is it?" Stansy asked.

"Well, I was just thinking. This is no dinky little stream. You said that both bins were packed heavy with food, so they might not float. Maybe she got to this river and couldn't go further."

It had never occurred to me that the terrain might be impassable on foot. To me it had been just another bridge. I had crossed dozens of them on the way to Portland. "Okay, follow that thought," I said. "Where would she have gone?"

Nissi brushed her finger over the screen a few times, moving the view to follow the course of the river. "Unless it got shallow enough to cross on foot, which looks unlikely, she had to go a couple of miles to the west before she got to this other bridge. Then it's another mile and a half southeast to get to the place she told you to meet her. No wonder she was late."

The bridge off to the west was the same one I had crossed half a dozen times when I was searching the area west of the highway. "Okay, but why wasn't she there when I went back in the afternoon?"

Nissi double-tapped the screen, causing it to zoom back out. "Well, it seems like pretty rough country."

"It is. A lot of it is undeveloped wilderness, and what is developed looks like no one's lived there for a few years, at least."

"And she might have thought it was too dangerous and exposed to wait anywhere near the highway."

"So she's walking back here," Stan chimed in.

"We don't know that," Nissi said. "Would that be the first thing you would think to do? I mean, she had plenty of food. If it were me, I would find somewhere to hole up near a road that was reasonably dry and hidden and wait for Norm to find me, for a few days, at least. If he didn't show, then I would consider heading down here on foot."

"Yeah," Stan said slowly, "yeah, I think you're right."

"Let's go on the theory that she just missed your meeting," Stansy said. "Norm, how long did you say between the time you left her and the time you were forced to move?"

"It was almost one in the morning when we saw the checkpoint," I said. "And the sun was just coming up when the police officer woke me up. Around six, I think. So five hours."

Stansy peered at the screen. "Nissi, can you get distance on the route you think she took?"

"Yeah, sure," Nissi said. She selected an option from a context menu and then traced a curving blue line with her finger. The distance appeared in a pop-up box: 4.2 miles.

"It's plausible," Stansy said. "I mean, it's not the Congo or anything, but if she had to pick her way through the trees at night, I'd say there was a good chance she just didn't make it in time."

"Well," Wendy mused, "the dark wouldn't be a problem. She's got some kind of mod for that. The cellar was pitch dark when we went down there to talk to Dan and she didn't have any problem."

Stansy shrugged. "I'm thinking, that could change things. The terrain isn't identical, of course, but I used to hike in the mountains west of here and could make that distance in under ninety minutes without much trouble, and that's with some vertical climb. That's mostly flat ground out there."

"She's carrying three hundred pounds," I reminded her.

Nock broke in. "So double the time. Hell, add an extra hour if the ground conditions are poor. She still should have made it. There's more to it than that."

"Something happened out there," Stan said. "She ran into some kind of trouble."

"Now we can't know that," Nissi protested. "This is all just speculation."

"Think about it," Nock said. "Norm drove past their meeting spot later in the day and didn't see anything. If you were her, and you just got there too late, wouldn't you at least try to leave some sign that you were there? Hell, write a message in the mud or something. Put your name with an arrow pointing the direction you went."

"She must have been injured," I said. I didn't even want to think of the other alternatives. I studied the map. "Nissi, can you get me the coordinates that make up that area? Everything bound by the highway, the river, and this road in the west."

"Sure," she said. She drew a representation of the roughly triangular area on a piece of paper and jotted down longitude and latitude for each point.

I took the paper when she offered it and stuffed it into a pocket. My dinner had been forgotten during this exchange, but I quickly finished it and took my dishes to the kitchen. I came back to grab the truck keys, which I had left on the desk.

"Norm? Wendy said. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going back out to look for her."

"Whoa!" Nissi said. She stood and ran to grab my arm. "Hell, no. You need to get some rest."

I looked at Wendy for support, but she shrugged. "There's no reason to think Tilly will expect you to be out looking for her at night. If she's out there, she's probably holed up now. A few hours' sleep will do you a lot of good."

"Don't look at me," Stan said, when I glanced his way. "I'd get in that truck myself and go after her if I could, but you look dead on your feet."

"Get some rest," Nock said. "You look like hell, and that's coming from a guy who sleeps four hours a week."

"Alright," I said with a sigh. "Tomorrow morning." Truth be told, I knew that I was in no condition to drive, but in my current mental state, I felt like I was in no condition to sleep either. When pitted against each other, however, bone-deep fatigue won out over anxiety. I passed out within minutes of hitting the bed.

I slept until Nissi woke me at around six, a little before dawn. She had a cup of steaming, aromatic coffee in her hand, the same coffee that I had brought back with me from Portland.

"Mm, I want to kiss you," I said. "But first I want a sip of that."

She laughed as she handed me the cup. I actually took too large a drink and burned my tongue, but I didn't care. It was the best thing I had tasted in months. The kiss I gave Nissi, of course, didn't stop at that. She didn't bother taking off her nightgown, tossing the covers aside and climbing onto me in a frenzy of pent-up need. She fit her body to mine, sinking down onto me in a shuddering sigh. For a few brief minutes, all other concerns were chased away by the warmth and passion of her body as she made love to me. I unbuttoned the nightgown at the top and pushed it down her shoulders so that I could pull and suck at her nipples while she rode me.

"Amanda," I breathed, remembering to use her real name in spite of the fog of lust I was under, "you're going to make me come."

"Yes," she whispered. "Come inside me, Martin. I want you to. I want to feel it."

She straightened and I watched her in profile, cast in the faint light of the still-rising sun. Her face was hidden by the curtain of her hair. She ground herself against me and reached between her thighs to finger herself just above where our bodies came together. I gave a wordless groan as my orgasm pulsed through me. I felt Nissi's fingers flitting over her clit and then she, too, climaxed, throwing her head back, her body shaking as her pussy clenched at my cock.

She fell limply against me and we lay together, warm and safe in each other's embrace. "I made you breakfast," she said, still panting, and added apologetically, "It's probably cold now."

"It's fine," I said. "I'll take hot sex and cold food over their opposites."

"Jesus, Norm," she said softly. "That has got to be the unsexiest pillow talk I have ever heard."

"Well, I've got lots more where that came from, and I have a captive audience."

She rose to her knees, letting me slip from her depths, picked up a pillow, and smacked me across the face. "Well, sir, I have a pillow, and I'm not afraid to use it." She whacked me again to drive her point home.

I laughed. "Okay, okay. I should really get up, though." She got off me, tugging her nightgown back into place falling into place. I dressed and came downstairs to eat the breakfast that she had prepared. Most of the others were still asleep, but Nock and Wendy were there to wish me luck before I headed out.

Nissi went to the fridge and pulled out a paper bag with two jars of Dan's canned fruit and some items wrapped in foil. "There's two days there for you," she said. "I packed some spare clothes and essentials in the truck. I expect you back here by the day after tomorrow at the latest. Promise me?"

"I'll be back," I said. I hoped that I didn't have to break that promise.

Nissi enfolded me in an embrace. "Be safe," she said.

"I will." Her arms held fast against me for just a moment before she relented and let me go. I opened the driver door and climbed into the cab of the truck.

"Norm," Nissi said.

I had the key in the ignition but waited.

"You'll bring her back," she said.

I nodded, swallowed down the pit of worry in my throat, and started the engine.

~Tilly~

The first thing I noticed was that I was cold. The second thing was that I hurt, a lot. I couldn't locate a source for the pain right away, and it seemed to be growing worse as I roused to consciousness. My head throbbed in time to my heartbeat.

I opened my eyes to darkness. I knew that it wasn't just the dimness of night, but a complete, enfolding blackness. Panic tried to well up from the dark reaches of my reptile brain, but my rational mind quickly rose to the fore as I took a calming breath. I was alive.

I was lying on my side, on a bed of something firm and lumpy. I started to stand up and bit back a scream as fire raced up from just below my knee. I curled up into a ball, sucking quick gasps through clenched teeth, my mind a haze.

With a supreme effort of will, I focused my thoughts. I imagined the pain as a great sea swallowing up my consciousness, and then imagined it receding, like a tide going out. Slowly, the crush of the agony lessened until all I felt was a dull throbbing. I focused a few moments more, setting the block firmly in place. The nerve endings at the edges of the wound would continue to fire, and the signals would still travel up my spine, but my brain had isolated the bundle of synapses sending those impulses and dialed back their weight, so that they would not propagate as strongly and cause the sensation of intense pain. I could have stopped any signals from getting through, but that could be dangerous.

Carefully, I rolled onto my back and then to a sitting position to examine the wound. My fingers found warm moisture. I continued to probe at the wound, tracing a jagged line of torn flesh. It seemed that most of the bleeding had stopped. Gritting my teeth against the flashes of agony that spilled over my pain block, I relented and paused for a moment to rest. My head was swimming.

Once the dizziness had passed, I lifted my hand to touch the source of the throbbing pain in my head. I found a gash high on the right side of my forehead, crusted over and with bits of hard grit mixed into the scab. The area around it was tender and swollen. My memory of what had happened before awakening was foggy, a jumble of images that lacked a coherent narrative.

I remembered waking in confusion to Norm's voice and peering out the windshield of the truck at the lights in the distance. I could just make out a pair of National Guard vehicles and four law enforcement vehicles. "Checkpoint!" I said, "Norm, that's a checkpoint."

Norm murmured his agreement while I thought and observed. Turning around wasn't possible, and leaving the truck behind would lose us a vital asset. There really was only one alternative with any chance of a good outcome. Norm balked at my plan, of course, but I didn't have time to argue.

The bins were heavy, but I thought I could manage them long enough to make the three-mile trek to meet up with Norm. Without stopping to think what I was doing, I dragged both bins out of the truck and pulled the door shut and latched it. I lifted one bin onto my shoulders, and, steeling myself, lofted the other up with one hand and managed to catch and balance it onto my other shoulder with a steadying hand. The weight would be tiring but manageable, but the bigger problem was that I had just perched three hundred pounds on my hundred pound frame. I was horribly unbalanced. I turned and ran for the other side of the road. I knew that it was going to be a difficult jump, but in a few more seconds, I would be in the headlights of the next car. I gritted my teeth, planted my lead foot and kicked off with all of my strength. The landing was jarring, and I very nearly did fall, but somehow kept my footing long enough to stabilize the weight.

The shoulder of the road dipped down into a shallow ditch, then back up. Within a few steps, I had slipped between a pair of pines. There, I came to an ungainly stop and turned to look back. Norm had begun to roll the truck forward, and the flaring hazard lights switched off as he accelerated. My feet crunched over a thick carpet of pine needles as I moved deeper into the trees. I turned my head slightly from side to side, feeling the cardinal directions as faint tingles at the crown of my scalp, courtesy of the tiny magnetoception organ in my skull. I opted to go due west for about a hundred yards, and then parallel the highway's southwestern course. I would remain close enough that I could use the sound of the cars as a point of reference, but far enough away that I wasn't likely to be spotted by anyone.