They had chosen a route that involved cycling down a couple of trails. Sharon said she"d taken it in the past, and it was considerably shorter than following the road all the way to Skykomish. Amanda wasn"t entirely convinced until Sharon told her that the trails ran by a couple of old, abandoned mines. They could mark the exact location of those mines on their way, and then mount an expedition to the corresponding area in the New World.

"We"re doing this whole thing because we need metal ores, right?" Sharon had said, and Amanda had to agree with that. When Sharon added that she"d biked down the trails just a couple of years earlier and found it easy going, Amanda decided that this would be the route they"d take.

But cycling down a trail in good weather was one thing, and doing it in a blizzard was another. They stopped at a deserted gas station for a quick conference. Amanda expressed her reservations, but Sharon was bursting with confidence.

"I"m sure it"s going to be okay," she said. "The only part that may be a little tougher is getting across from one trail to the other. But it"s like a few hundred meters, and last time I went through there I actually rode the bike all the way. We"ve got trail bikes, right? So let"s. .h.i.t the trail."

"You didn"t run into any cougars?"

Sharon laughed.

"No," she said. "Those two trails are pretty popular. All those people constantly coming and going have frightened all the wildlife away."

"I doubt whether there were a lot of people coming and going, recently. And we saw a cougar in the suburbs."

"Didn"t you say they had some sort of a zoo over there, and that it must have escaped? Anyway we"ve got a gun, and you know how to use it. And remember, you said we should find a good spot for a settlement near those mines. In the New World."

"Let"s take another look at the map," Amanda said. A gust of wind nearly tore it out from her hands as she unfolded it, and she shook her head.

But once again, it was clear from the map that the trail route was not more than twenty five kilometers long. In normal weather, that would take three hours at the most. But it could take an eternity in a blizzard.

On the other hand, sticking to the road meant they would have to double back. They would have to travel an extra twenty-odd kilometers, and might not be able to reach Skykomish before dark.

Amanda put the map away and turned to Sharon and said:

"It looks good, but the weather doesn"t. There"s a blizzard coming."

"Bulls.h.i.t," said Sharon, and Amanda frowned. "It"s like this all the time, in the mountains. I grew up in a s.h.i.thole mountain town, remember? If we wait for perfect weather, we might be stuck here for a week."

She broke off because of the look on Amanda"s face, and added quickly:

"Of course it"s your decision. But maybe we could at least try to go up to the Middle Fork trailhead. It"s just ten kilometers, we"ll be there in an hour even in this weather. We"ll be almost halfway to Skykomish, and then you can decide whether we go on or turn back."

"Okay. Let"s go," said Amanda curtly, and mounted her bike. She added:

"You know the road, so you take the lead."

"Okay."

Sharon initially set a very brisk pace, so fast that Amanda had difficulty keeping up. She found herself thinking nasty thoughts about Sharon, and drummers in general. They didn"t even make music, they just helped others make music by providing a rhythm. They provided it by beating up on things. Doing that didn"t require a world-cla.s.s intelligence, to say the least.

She stopped thinking about that before long, however, because the road to the trailhead was full of evidence it hadn"t been frequented in quite a while. A few times, branches and boughs and rocks littering the trail forced them to get off their bikes, and carry them over the obstacles. Fortunately, the dense trees lining the trail partly protected them from the wind.

They reached the trailhead nearly half an hour later than they"d planned. The weather hadn"t gotten worse; nor had it gotten any better. Once again, Amanda got out her map and she and Sharon pored over it, heads touching.

The trail they would follow ended in the middle of nowhere. But Sharon said that there was no chance of getting lost if they followed a couple of creeks, and continued along the sh.o.r.e of a lake they"d encounter. She knew the route, knew the landmarks, and it was four, at most five kilometers cross-country before they hit the trail that would take them almost directly to Skykomish.

"We will be there three-four hours from now," Sharon said confidently. "I can promise you that."

"Let me think," Amanda said, and got out her cigarettes and offered Sharon one before lighting up. She didn"t smoke often: a pack of twenty sometimes lasted her a whole month. She"d found a cigarette improved her mental focus, and right now she needed it to be as good as it could get.

She instantly knew that she didn"t really have a choice. Doubling back to stay on the road virtually guaranteed they wouldn"t reach Skykomish until well after nightfall. Being on the road at night wasn"t a good idea. There had been some nasty rumors circulating about things that took place at night, both in Seattle and elsewhere. In a desperate situation, people did desperate things.

Staying somewhere overnight was risky. The encounter at the diner suggested it might be wise to avoid strangers. Asleep, they would be defenseless. No, the only way to go was forward. She just hoped Sharon knew the route as well as she"d claimed.

She put her hand on Sharon"s shoulder and said:

"If we get lost, I"ll f.u.c.king shoot you before I shoot myself. Let"s go. You know the way, so you lead."

"Okay," Sharon said. She didn"t seem so confident any more. Mentioning they might get shot tended to have that effect on people. It put them in their place. It was a newly subservient Sharon that got on her bike.

They discovered the two bicycles before they"d traveled a hundred meters. They were clumsily concealed, dumped flat behind trees that weren"t quite big enough to hide them. Sharon and Amanda stopped to have a closer look.

It was clear the bicycles hadn"t been there for a long time. They were clear of forest debris that would have acc.u.mulated otherwise. There were strangers around, somewhere nearby. What were they up to?

It was Amanda that came up with the answer.

"Poachers," she said. "People are desperate for food. But poachers are always armed. And they might not appreciate running into other people."

"So what do we do?"

Now that"s more like it, Amanda thought. The drummer revolt was over.

"We go on, of course," she said. "I"ll be right behind you. You see anyone or anything suspicious, get into the trees."

Within a few minutes, they had to get off their bikes to lift them over a fallen bough. And things got progressively worse; before long, they were doing more walking than cycling. But they still moved along at a respectable speed: when Amanda checked the time on her old wind-up watch, she found it was barely past noon. It was hard to believe only six hours had pa.s.sed since they"d set out. So much had happened in the meantime!

After about an hour, they reached a wooden bridge spanning a large creek. They stopped on the other side to eat - they were both ravenously hungry. They stuck the air-activated heaters onto the pouches with the food and waited for it to warm up.

They were just about to start eating when a voice said:

"Hey there."

They jerked round almost as on command. The voice belonged to a lean, mean-looking man who looked to be in his fifties: the bristle on his face was mostly grey and white. He was dressed in a skiing cap and a green anorak and camo pants, and high-topped laced leather boots. He was holding a shotgun in his hands. It was pointed to the side, like his finger on the trigger guard. But that could swiftly change.

There was another man standing behind him. He was much younger, no more than early twenties, and he looked scared. He was carrying big leather bags slung from both shoulders, bags that were full of something lumpy.

The man with the shotgun didn"t look scared. He seemed amused. He said:

"Having a picnic? Not very good weather for that."

Amanda said:

"Would you have any food for sale?"

That threw him off, all right. He was lost for words.

"These are our last MREs," Amanda said. "We really need to get some food."

"You came up here looking for food?" the man said, wonderingly.

"Well, sort of. It"s the guys that are doing the looking. We just tagged along to help them transport whatever they would find."

"The guys? What guys?"

"My husband and her boyfriend. They should be back soon."

"I see," said the man. He glanced around, as if looking for husbands and boyfriends to begin popping out from behind trees. The young man behind him said:

"Let"s get going, Dad. Mom will be getting worried."

Dad hesitated, looking at the MREs.

"All right," he said eventually. "Okay. Hey, girls, you can tell your guys they won"t find nothing around the trail. Maybe around Treen Peak, that"s the rock showing between the trees over there. Now you have a good day."

"You too," Amanda said. Sharon just smiled and nodded.

They waited until the two men were across the bridge before they tore open the pouches with the food and began to eat. They were too hungry to talk. When they"d finished eating, Sharon said:

"That was brilliant, the way you handled those guys."

Amanda shrugged.

"I don"t think they meant to do us any harm," she said.

"Well they were poachers, just like you"d said. And the guy with the gun didn"t look pleased to see us. They seemed to have gotten something, too. I wonder why we didn"t hear that shotgun."

"They"d likely set traps," Amanda said. "I think I heard metal clink in one of those bags when they went by."

Sharon shook her head.

"You are brilliant," she repeated. "At the very least, they"d have taken our MREs."

"Maybe. Okay, off we go."

Within fifteen minutes, they came to the end of the trail. But Sharon pressed on confidently, and they quickly emerged into a small clearing with a creek running alongside. Following it was tough at times, and Amanda began to worry. But then they came across the first of the two abandoned mines Sharon had said they"d find.

It hardly deserved to be called a mine. It was a cave dug into the slope descending to the creek. Its ceiling and sides had been supported by wooden beams and boards, most of which had fallen away. The entrance was half-obscured by rubble. Amanda wanted to look inside, but she changed her mind when a large stone came unstuck from the ceiling of the cave as she approached, and thudded down right in front of her feet.

"What did they mine here?" she asked Sharon.

"Gold. What else? But where there is gold, there are other metal ores. f.u.c.k. I wish my phone would work well enough to get the coordinates."

"There are no smartphones, no coordinates in the New World," Amanda said, and Sharon laughed weakly and shook her head.

After another half an hour they got to a clearing, and saw the waters of a lake flashing between the trees to their right. The snow had stopped falling, and the wind died down. It was eerie, walking alongside their bicycles in almost total silence except for the crack and snap of twigs breaking under their feet and the bike wheels. Sharon became puzzled: she couldn"t find the second creek that was to guide them to the other trail. Once again, the map came out.

"Maybe it dried up, or changed course," Amanda said. "Let"s just keep going northwest. We"re bound to hit this big lake thing here, and then we just have to follow the sh.o.r.e north. Right?"

"Right," Sharon said uncertainly.

Fifteen minutes later, they got lost.

They were distracted from their course by a gleam of water to the north. It took them a while to get there, and see that it wasn"t the lake they were looking for: it was hardly bigger than a pond. When they tried to retrace their steps, they came across a clearing they were sure they hadn"t seen before. They determinedly kept going and came to a cliff Sharon had never come across during her previous travels. She started to get hysterical, and Amanda had to slap her face to calm her down.

"Wait here," she told her. "Don"t you dare budge one little bit. Get some rest. Meanwhile, I"ll climb that cliff and have a look around."

"You"re going to climb that? It"s way too steep!"

"I"ll go around it and up that slope to the side and I"m sure I"ll find a way, from the back."

She was right. After she"d rounded the cliff, she found a place where she had to climb just a couple of meters, with plenty of convenient footholds. When she"d gotten to the top, she stood up straight and looked around and right away she saw the lake they"d been looking for. It was no more than a couple of hundred meters away. Its size and shape corresponded with the lake on her map.

She went back to join Sharon and saw that she was crying from a long way off. She was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, and blubbing into her hands like a little girl. She tried to hide it when she heard Amanda coming, but without much success. A fresh tear welled up over her eyelid and slid down her cheek just as Amanda stopped in front of her.

Amanda said:

"Perk up, girl. We"re right on track. That lake we"re looking for is just a couple of steps to the west. Come on."

This time around she was the one to take the lead, although it was Sharon who supposedly knew the way.

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