“Let’s go get her,” I said.
Her mouth trembled a little. She put the car in gear and we started into the woods.
56
It was desolate country, the road rutted and water-filled. We banged along at fifteen miles an hour and it seemed too fast, and still we got nowhere. I sat up straight, watching the odometer move by tenths of a mile. The road would run north by northeast for seven miles, I remembered from the map: then we’d come to a fork and the branch we wanted would run along the creek and climb gradually past the lake. The cabin would be in the woods at the top of the rise. Our chances of making it would depend on the condition of the road beyond the fork. Down here the gravel kept it hard, basic and boring, one mile-slice indistinguishable from the next. We would come to a bend, but always the ribbon rolled out again, winnowing into a black wall that kept running away from us. I had a vision of a vast mountain range off to my right, though nothing could be seen past the narrow yellow shaft thrown out by the headlights. We could be anywhere in the world, I thought.
I put an arm over Trish’s shoulder and stroked her neck with my finger. She smiled faintly without taking her eyes off the road. I touched her under the left ear and stirred the hair on her neck. She made a kissing gesture and tried to smile again. Her skin felt cool and I noticed a chill in the air. She had started to shiver, perhaps to tremble—I had never thought about the difference until then—but she made no move to turn on the heater, and finally I reached over and did it for her. “Don’t pick at me, Janeway, I’m fine.” In the same instant she reached up and took my hand, pressed it tightly against her cheek, kissed my knuckles, and held me tight. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Incredibly, we had come just two miles. It seemed we had been on this road to nowhere half the night. The odometer stood still while the clock moved on, flicking its digit to 1:35 in the march toward a gray dawn four hours away. We had already debated the wisdom of coming in the dark, the most significant of the pros and cons being the possibility of getting in close before anyone could see us coming versus groping around in an alien landscape. Best to stay loose, I thought: see what we found when we got there. We could park and wait in the trees if that seemed best. Given my temperament, neither of us could see that happening.
The road had begun to rise gradually out of the valley and the rain was now little more than a fine mist. The headlights showed a wall of rock rising up from the right shoulder and a sudden drop-off on the left. We came to a short steep stretch, then it leveled off again and the climb went on at its steady upward drift. “I think the lake’s over there,” Irish said, nodding into the chasm. “The fork’s got to be right here somewhere.”
We reached it a few minutes later, as the clock turned over at 2:04. Now the tough part would begin. But it wasn’t tough at all. The rain ceased to be a factor up here as the road faded into simple ruts on a grassy slope. The grass held the earth firm even in the rain. We could make it, but it was going to be slow going on a road well-pocked with deep holes. The car rocked, sloshed through what seemed like a gully, and then began to climb again. This continued until we crested on a hill. “Probably lovely up here on a sunny day,” Trish said. God’s country, I thought. I hoped God was home to walk us through it.
“Let’s do it,” I heard myself say. “Let’s get it on.”
This was a stupid thing to say and she laughed a little. She said, “Jesus,” under her breath, and the name seemed to come up from some ethereal force in the car between us. How did we get here, defying logic, with no viable alternatives in sight? I wanted to get it done now, pull out the stops and get on down the road. But we rocked along at a crawl. It was 2:30 a.m.
Then we were there. I knew it. She knew it. There were no signs posted and no cabins in sight, but something made her stop on the slope and let the car idle for a long moment. “I think we’re very close,” she said in a voice just above a whisper. The terrain had stiffened in the last hundred yards as if in a last-ditch effort to push us back. We were sitting on a sharp incline, her headlights pointing into the sky. “Careful when you go over the hill,” I said. “Better cut your lights and go with the parking lights.” She pushed the switch too far and the world plunged into a darkness so black I had nothing in my experience to compare it to. She pulled on the parking lights and the only relief from the oppressive night was that the dashboard light came on and lit up our faces. “Not gonna be able to see a damn thing with these parking lights,” she said. But we didn’t dare make our final approach any brighter.
“Let’s see how the radio’s doing,” she said.
She lifted the little transmitter off its hook, pressed a button, and said, “Car six to desk, car six to desk.”
Static flooded the car.
She sighed and tried again.
Nothing.
“No offense to you, sweetheart,” she said, “but I can’t remember ever feeling quite this alone.”
“Let’s get going.”
She eased the car over the hump. The road made a severe dip to the right, and I braced against the door with my foot and leaned against her to keep her steady behind the wheel. We straightened out and went into another dip. The floor scraped against the rocks as we straddled deep holes at the bottom. Up we went again, Trish hunched tight over the wheel, fighting shadows and ghosts that hadn’t been there before. The parking lights weren’t much better than nothing. “God, I can’t even see the road now,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
“Hold it a minute.”
She stopped and I told her I was going to get out and lead her along on foot. She didn’t like that, but she didn’t like this either. I took my flashlight and opened the door and stepped out on a rocky hillside. Underbrush grew thick on the slope beneath me: I could see an almost impenetrable blanket of it in the faint glow of the parking lights. The rain was steady but light: it didn’t bother me at all. I flicked my flashlight and motioned her on, walking slowly three feet ahead. The ground rose again and we took it easy and gradually worked our way to the top.
