Double Helix Ch. 11

Other than the faint sound of passing cars, it was so quiet that I could hear bark beetles chewing away inside many of the older trees that I passed. Starlight filtered through the treetops, casting everything in a cold, dim light. My eyes don't reflect and re-absorb light the way Nock's do, but the lenses make up for some of that. Besides having larger pupils and lenses to gather and focus more light, my retina has two foveas. In bright light, my lenses focus light on the fovea centralis, with its high concentration of color-sensitive cones. In dim light, the lenses distort and refocus to my alternate fovea, which lies just above it and is packed with rods. My sight becomes mostly black and white, but a little starlight is enough to let me see details as clearly as I would in full daylight.

After about twenty minutes of brisk walking, and over a mile through moderately rough terrain, I began to hear voices faintly. Turning my head a few times to zero in on the sound, I pictured in my mind a right triangle with one side represented by the road, another side by an imaginary line drawn from my left shoulder to the road, and the third side connecting me to the midpoint of the voices. Knowing the length of the second side and the angle between the second and third sides was about 32 degrees, the answer popped into my head at soon as I thought about it. I would pass the checkpoint in another 80 yards, give or take.

I still had a fair reserve of energy, but the effort of holding the two bins up on my shoulders had begun to make the muscles in my arms burn. Though the onset was slower than in a normal human, the anaerobic energy to power muscles and the consequent lactic acid buildup was something that genetic engineering hadn't yet found a means to replace with something better.

I stopped and carefully set the bins on the ground, standing upright on their ends. I looked around me and spotted a few fallen limbs that I could probably fashion into a sledge to drag the two bins behind me, if I were willing to shred some of my clothing to use in tying them together, but I didn't have time for that. Norm would be stuck at the checkpoint for thirty minutes, maybe a bit more. Once through, he would need to pull over to the side of the road to wait, and I preferred not to keep him longer than necessary.

Leaning against a tree trunk while my body recovered, I heard a new sound just at the edge of hearing. Once I felt sufficiently rested to continue, I squatted and grunted with the effort of lifting the bins back up to rest on my shoulders. As I went, the sound grew louder and more distinct, though it seemed to be diffused over an area. I frowned in sudden apprehension. I was hearing running water.

Sure enough, after another twenty yards, I came to a steep downward slope. I picked my way carefully over damp soil, loose rocks and exposed roots, moving slowly to keep the bins balanced. Trees crowded along the slope, blocking my view of what lay below until I came to the edge of a drop off of about six feet, where the water had eroded and undercut the bank. I stopped there and considered my options.

The far bank was maybe sixty feet away, much too far to jump from a standing start, even if I wasn't carrying all of that weight. The water wasn't flowing very quickly, and I thought about just dropping down, but it was also murky enough that I couldn't see the bottom. If the water was over my head, I would sink right to the bottom with all of that weight. My blood carried a bit more oxygen than an unenhanced human, but I would also be using it up faster from the extra exertion. Assuming the best conditions in such a scenario, I didn't think I could walk along the bottom to the other side in the time it would take for me to run out of reserve. Besides, the bins didn't seem to be particularly water tight, and much of the food would be completely ruined if it got wet.

I decided to test the waters first, quite literally. I set the bins down, one at a time, behind the trunk of a tree so that they would remain in place, and I stripped out of my clothes. Then, taking a deep breath, I stooped and dropped from the edge, flexing my knees instinctively in anticipation of a possible impact just beneath the surface. I struck the water and went under, letting myself plunge downward as far as possible. After a moment, when I was sure that my descent had stopped, I kicked for the surface, coming up out of the water a few yards downstream from where I had come in. I swam for the other side, feeling for the bottom as I went, but my feet did not touch solid ground until I was about ten feet from the opposite bank. It was a steep slope.

I swam in a bit more and stood where the water came to just below my waist. The current tugged at my legs, but not very strongly. I waded upstream about fifty yards and tested the depth again, but the water was still deeper than I could touch for most of its width. Swimming with the current in the other direction for the same distance yielded the same results. I felt like I was wasting my time, so I swam back towards the bank where I had first entered the water and used the roots and branches of a tree overhanging the water to climb back out.

I found the food bins still sitting where I had left them. I shook the water from my body as well as I could before donning my clothing. My first thought was to head toward the highway, which had to have a bridge across the river, but I could still hear the police and National Guard calling out orders to the motorists in that direction, which meant that the checkpoint was either on or very close to the bridge. My only other option was to head upstream and hope for another way across.

How long would Norm wait for me? I wondered. I had thought by now that I would have already arrived at the point that I told him to meet me, and I still had two miles to go, plus whatever distance I had to walk upstream. Sighing in frustration, I carefully re-shouldered the bins and made the climb of about twenty feet, back to the top of the slope.

I hiked along the top of the bank for perhaps half a mile, with the depth of the ravine decreasing until I was walking along a bank just a few feet above the surface of the water. I again tested the water and once more found that it became too deep to reach the bottom just a few feet out from the edge. I picked up the pace, my mind already working through contingency plans if this trek took much longer and I missed meeting up with Norm. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of options. I knew the number to his cell phone, but this area was very rural, and further depopulated by the Rot. I would probably need to go into town to find a phone.

The river curved south and doubled back on itself before turning west again. It was another mile-and-a-half onward when I came to a two-lane highway and a bridge. The sign next to the road read "Tualatin River", and I committed that name to memory. I suddenly wished that I had taken time to learn more of Oregon's geography before taking this trip.

I approached the edge of the bridge warily, turning my head to look north and south. Everything was quiet except for a faint sigh of wind. I stepped over the metal guardrail and began to cross at a brisk trot. The bridge was long and narrow, with concrete railing and no indication of a sidewalk or shoulder. I was more than halfway across when I heard the grumble of an engine up ahead and headlights winked on from a car that was parked at an angle, partly down in the ditch on the right side.

I stuffed down a wave of panic and forced myself to calmly observe. I immediately spotted and recognized the light rack on the car's top.

"Damn," I breathed. Someone had been sent to watch this bridge, in case anyone diverted here from the highway. They were probably on the lookout for cars, but a lone woman walking at night would be just as suspicious.

The car swerved onto the road and came towards me, not fast enough to be threatening, but quick enough that I knew I couldn't make it to either end of the bridge before it caught up to me.

I kept my eyes forward and continued walking as the car pulled up to the edge of the bridge, cutting left before stopping so that it sat diagonally, blocking both lanes. "Yamhill Sheriff" was printed across the side of the vehicle. The passenger side opened and a bald, bearded man in khaki shirt and slacks stepped out. "Evening, ma'am," he said. "Can I ask where you're headed? Would you like a ride?"

"No, I'm fine," I said. "I'm not going far."

"Those look heavy," he said. "Why don't you just come along with us?"

It was then that the door on the driver side opened, and the driver stepped out. Similarly attired, he looked younger than the other man, with crew-cut black hair. I sensed excitement from him, but where the other man was wary, he was calmly self-assure. He felt very wrong to me.

"So, what's in those bins?" he asked, coming around to the front of the car to confront me.

"Am I under arrest?" I asked.

He waggled a finger at me. "Not unless you've done something illegal." But his tone suggested otherwise. "Now, I asked you a question, girl. What is in those bins?"

I knew, then, that there was no way I was going to bluff my way out of this. I spun and made a run for it, hoping that I could reach the end of the bridge and disappear into the trees before they could get back in the car and catch up to me. I had run half a dozen steps when I felt a hard punch to my leg, at almost the same instant that I heard the crack of the shot. I stumbled, and the weight of the food bins pitched me forward.

I shook my head slowly in the dark. There was nothing after that, not until waking up here. Maybe if I had turned and ran as soon as I saw the headlights, I could have gotten away in the forest and found another way around.

I didn't have time for regret, though. I began to crawl, favoring my injured leg, until my probing fingers found the edge of a wooden crate. I felt for the top and found it. I got my good leg under me and stood, then groaned as my head began to throb anew. I was likely suffering the aftereffects of a moderate concussion.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than my stomach heaved and I doubled over, spitting bile onto the floor. My stomach heaved a few more times, but there was nothing else to bring up. I wiped my mouth and grimaced at the thick, sticky fluid on my hand. My throat felt raw and I had nothing to drink to clear it. I leaned against the crate to rest until my head stopped spinning and my stomach was no longer trying to climb up my throat.

I felt my way along the edge of the crate, found a corner, then followed that edge to a wall. I felt the rough edges of bricks and the prickle of mortar between them. Creeping along a few inches at a time, I began to explore my prison blindly. More crates lined both side walls. I managed to pry the lid off of one of them, but whatever they had contained had long ago decayed to moldy dust.

My stomach rumbled, despite having been sick only a little while ago, and I tried in vain to coax some moisture into my mouth. I was just as susceptible to dehydration as any normal human, and I guessed that I had missed most of a day while I had been unconscious.

I sat down again where I had first awoken, which, on further examination, seemed to be a large sheet of canvas. I didn't have anything to use for gauze, but I tore some strips from the sheet and used them to wind around the wound to make a kind of bandage. It had really been more of a grazing shot, cutting through the meat just below my knee, but I couldn't put much weight on it without the pain threatening to flare past my block. That done, I settled back onto the floor and fell asleep at once.

~Norm~

The drive north was uneventful, and in less than two hours, I found myself back in the little town of Newberg. I took Roy Rogers Road again, since it was the closest major road to the 99 that ran north-south, and kept glancing at the latitude indicator on the GPS as I drove. When I reached the bridge, marking the northwest corner of the triangular search area, I pulled over into the first driveway that I found.

I got out with a first aid kit, compass, and canteen and backtracked to the spot that the GPS had indicated. I called Tilly's name as I searched around and under the bridge, but as before, there was no sign of her. I decided to start by cutting a path straight down the middle of the triangle on my hand-drawn map, assuming that she had figured out and gone for the shortest route possible to the highway.

It rarely got truly hot in this part of the country, but we were nearing the end of spring, and the terrain had just enough rises and dips to get my blood pumping and raise my temperature. Also, I was constantly pushing through thickets and ducking under branches, which not only made the going tougher, but snagged my clothing and left welts and scratches on my exposed skin.

At first, I was glad when I came to a huge clearing of dusty ground, and I stepped over a fallen rail of what used to be a sturdy fence to enter an expanse of dirt with a house in the distance. Movement caught my eye, though, and I crouched to make my profile smaller. A man had just exited the house and looked in my direction. I didn't think he saw me, because he rounded the corner of the garage and swung the door out and upward. He disappeared into the shadowed interior and drove out in a large pickup truck a moment later. I watched as he headed west towards the road and waited until he reached the edge of the property and passed out of sight.

I knew that I didn't want to go anywhere near that house. People in rural areas like this could be protective of their land. Though it took me a good half mile out of my way, I went south around the edge of the property before cutting west again, following the southern edge of the fence for what must have been close to a mile. It had been a good-sized ranch, at one time probably, home to a few hundred cows or horses. The fence ended and the terrain got a bit better after that, and I came upon highway 99 shortly before noon.

Nock had suggested that Tilly might have left some message or sign of her passage, so I went looking about a mile in either direction along the highway. I went northeast first, then backtracked and headed southwest. It was about two in the afternoon by the time I decided to stop, and there had been no sign of her along the highway. I turned west and headed back into the trees and the brush.

I spent the rest of the day hiking back and forth across the triangle between the river, the highway and the road, making a total of four crossings of the area. I stayed off the ranch, but that left plenty of area to cover. The sun slipped behind the coastal mountains, forcing me to hurry back to the truck before it became too dark to navigate safely. I climbed into the cab and tore open one of the packages that Nissi had labeled "Sunday, dinner", too hungry and too distracted to even notice what it was other than that it contained rice. I had skipped lunch completely, but decided to save that one in case I needed it later.

My feet ached, and now that I had stopped moving, so did the muscles in my calves and thighs. My face, neck and arms continued to feel too warm, even hours after the sun had gone down. My skin began to sting as well. I should have stopped in town to get a hat and sunblock, but I had been in such a hurry to get up here and get started looking, that I hadn't stopped to think.

I had one small consolation. In the days before the Rot, traveling through this kind of terrain would have had my clothes covered in burs and mosquito bites on every inch of exposed skin. Most of the weeds were gone, and without abundant wildlife to feed on, the mosquitos had disappeared as well. Even so, I had plenty of scratches from the trees and bushes that I had to push through.

Rummaging through the things that Nissi had packed, I found a blanket and a small pillow. I stretched out as much as I could on the truck's bench seat and settled in for the night.

I woke before dawn, feeling terrible. My skin no longer felt hot, but it was painful and raw, so I started up the truck and drove into town. The only thing open at five in the morning was Walgreens, but it had what I needed. I picked up some aloe, sunblock, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. I also picked up five notebooks for Nissi. I hesitated for a moment over a large pad of graph paper before snatching it up. I kept my eyes down and the cashier, obviously bored and barely awake, didn't look at me as he rung me up.

I slathered the pungent, sticky aloe on my face, neck and arms. It left my skin feeling tight, but eased the discomfort somewhat. I drove back out to where I had parked the previous day near the bridge. Sheathed in my new protective gear, including a thick coating of sunblock, I made a quick meal of "Monday, breakfast" before starting out.

I had already decided to try a different route, following the southern bank of the river toward the highway. This took me well away from the farmhouse that I had encountered the previous day. I decided to descend the bank and have a look around by the water. Not for the first time, I wished that I knew how to read and follow tracks. I tried looking for footprints in the mud, but either I couldn't find any, or I had no idea what I was looking for. I followed the river east until it passed under a bridge at the highway. I turned and headed west again, starting on another crisscross of my search area. This time, I paced myself and re-applied the sunblock every few hours. My skin was already starting to peel in places.

I crossed east and west again, trying to guess at about a hundred yards' distance from my last crossing. On the last trek to the west, I found myself butting up against the ranch fence again. I was hungry and tired, so I decided to take a break. The sun had passed its zenith when I got back to the truck and I tore into "Monday, lunch" and refilled my canteen from one of three large bottles of tepid water on the floor of the passenger side.

As I sat, chewing the last of the cold meal of canned spinach and rice, I thought about what I had learned so far. In a day-and-a-half, I had covered a fair bit of ground and saw nothing to suggest that Tilly had passed this way at all. I had assumed that she would have gone around the ranch, just as I did, but maybe not. She had already been delayed by that time, and she might not have realized that house was occupied, or she might have trusted in the dark to conceal her passing. Certainly the terrain there was easier. That meant that she might have been accosted by the people living there.

That thought wrenched at me, first for the possibility that she could already be dead, and secondly that I had been wasting my time searching elsewhere when it should have been obvious to me what had happened. More than forty-eight hours had passed since she had failed to appear at the highway. She could have been handed over to the police while I had been off searching everywhere else.

I hurriedly folded up the foil wrapper and bagged it with the rest. The stuff could be washed and re-used, and we didn't have much to waste. I snatched up my canteen and the first-aid kit, not bothering to reapply the sunblock this time. I pushed through the trees and bushes at the edge of the road, heading for the north edge of the ranch. When I reached the clearing, I followed the fence and the open ground along it, hoping for some sign that Tilly had come this way.

I watched the house as I went for any signs of habitation. It was purely by chance that I happened to look down and see a footprint clearly in a patch of sandy soil some distance from me. I clambered over the fence and hurried to the spot. It looked to be the right size, but I didn't know what the tread pattern on Tilly's shoe looked like. I looked back but couldn't make out any definite track in the alternately sandy and rocky soil.