He went on and on about the dogs, but I didn’t listen. I’m sure it did not escape your notice, anthropologists of the future, how I committed one of the gravest crimes of humanity: the giving of false hope to children. No doubt in your time the penalty for such a crime is stiff, and I willingly accept any punishment posterity deems fit to levy upon my memory. Let me say only this — the circumstances were extraordinary, and forget not that you are all descended from me, that I myself am the source of your laws.
“You mentioned the radio,” my dad said. “What did you mean with the radio?”
My poor father. With his teeth, it sounded like he was saying “wadio.”
Gerry pulled out a transistor radio. He slowly tuned the AM dial along its spectrum of static until it came upon a voice: “I repeat — this is the city of Parkton, United States,” the voice said. “If you receive this signal, we are monitoring shortwave, citizen’s-band, and military frequencies. If you receive this signal and you are capable, transpond this message toward Okinawa.”
The voice was Trudy’s.
I turned toward Club Fed, though I couldn’t see a hundred yards in that snow. “It’s the prison radio,” I said. “The backup generators must be running.”
“I don’t understand,” my father said. “How?”
A thought came to me. I turned north. I walked a couple steps. All was white, but I suddenly knew that out there somewhere, Yulia was alive.
“Gerry,” I said, “I need you to get us to that prison.”
He nodded. “You bet, Hanky,” he said. “Just help us catch a couple more dogs. We were chasing two malamutes when we found you.”
* * *
When we reached the prison, I was covered in dander and had red claw marks up and down my forearms. The dogs I drove had lived lives of willfulness and indolence, and they did not take to the harness well. Behind a full dog team, I drove a little sled with the child named Pat on my shoulders. I kept getting kicked in the face with racquetball racquets, but he was a good kid — trusting, quiet, and he leaned with me in the turns. The dogs did not want to run the last uphill leg across the prison grounds, and I had to lay it on with a willow switch to get them to dig.
“I’m sorry, doggies,” I yelled at them, “but I need everything you’ve got.”
I put some sauce on the switch—that set their paws on fire.
When we neared the base of the broadcast tower, I set the snowbrake while the dogs were still running, a move that knocked them off their feet. Holding Pat’s ankles, I ran forward with the inertia. Pat wrapped his arms around my neck as we burst through the door, and I nearly killed us both trying to run up stairs in snowshoes. When we reached the broadcasting booth, it was empty. In the blue plastic control panel, a cassette tape was playing in an endless loop. I looked around for any sign of Trudy — a lipstick, a gun, a hot-rod magazine — but found nothing. Along the edge of the console, however, was a sprinkling of crumbs. I pressed my finger into them and inspected the ones that stuck — definitely some kind of chip had been eaten here. I licked my finger, but couldn’t guess at the variety.
I lowered Pat off my shoulders and hooked him under an arm.
“Are those Dorito crumbs?” I asked.
He, too, licked his finger and tasted. Eyes closed, he scrunched his face. He seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, but still he had to shrug.
“Can’t say,” he said.
Outside, Gerry and my father were pulling up.
When Gerry had set his snowbrake and dismounted, he said, “Easy on the dogs, Hanky. You’re not dealing with highly trained animals here. These are house pets.”
Dad set the snowbrake on his sled. When he lifted his goggles, he said, “What, were you trying to lose us?”
Gerry grabbed a box of treats from his litter. “Haven’t you ever heard of the reward system, Hanky? When dogs do good, dogs get treats.” He started passing out dog biscuits, paying no attention when a Chow Chow nearly took his finger off.
Oh, it was easy for Dad and Gerry to act like charter members of the Dogs Are People Too society. These particular curs had yet to taste the frozen flesh of a human corpse. They would, though. The hundred-thousand-year friendship between man and dog was but a brief interlude, a cheap affair in the history of both species, and in a week or two, these dogs would join thirty million of their canine brethren in sharpening the teeth of forgotten instincts on the hocks of human loss.
Looking down, I realized I was still holding a child under my arm. When I set him down, he put his arms out for me to pick him up again. Instead, I began pacing in the snow. If my theory was correct, Yulia was alive and well in Croix, North Dakota. To drive to her in a car, I’d need to travel west to Sioux Falls, catch Interstate 87, then head north to Fargo on roads that would take me five hundred miles out of my way. The snow was two feet deep already, and another foot might drop before this weather front moved on. lt’d take two weeks for the roads to melt clear, and I wasn’t waiting two weeks. The only other possibility was driving the whole way in a snowplow, at five miles per hour. Imagine the stalled vehicles and various obstacles blocking those thousand miles. And snowmobiles were out of the question — even if I did figure out how to drive one, what about breakdowns and fuel scarcity, and a dozen other ways to get stranded in rural North Dakota? Only two things were clear: First, the shortest route to Yulia was to follow the Missouri straight across the Dakotas. Second, of dogs there was no shortage.
I turned to Gerry. “I have a hunch,” I said. “If it’s correct, I’m going to need a sled, a big one, the best sled you’ve ever made.”
Gerry asked, “A hunch about what?”
“Do you still have your workshop set up?”
“Well, sure, Hanky.”
“Can you make the sled or not?”
“Sure, I suppose,” Gerry said. “What’s this about?”
“You’ve got three hours,” I told him.
I turned to Dad.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“We’re off, then,” I told him. “Gerry, you’ve got three hours.”
* * *
Next to the broadcast building was the clinic. Dad and I kicked in the door — it took both our boots. Inside, all was quiet and low-lit. The floors were polished, and the brushed stainless-steel cabinets shone red under a single emergency light. Clean butcher paper covered the beds, and several examination instruments waited patiently in a cylinder of blue antiseptic fluid. Ten thousand people had died within miles of this room, and not one bandage had been dispensed.
The next building was the armory. There was no getting in that door, but Dad boosted me up to a small reinforced window. Inside was a sort of prison cell. Behind its grated doors were the prison’s guns, hanging orderly along hooks and racks. Spread across the checkered floor, however, was a chaos of empty ammo cans. It was the same story everywhere: the city was choked with firearms, but there wasn’t a bullet left on earth.
The cafeteria reeked of rotting enchiladas, and the indoor swimming pool had bloomed a fabulous green. The post office got to me more than anything — bin after bin of letters stood waiting for hands that would never receive them. Eggers and Trudy were nowhere to be seen. On a longshot, Dad and I went to check the vending machines that had replaced the Unknown Indian.