“Yeah, boy,” she mutters. “I see her.”
For several minutes, Kirsten does just that, examining the scene before her. The woman—no, a girl, slender and still almost flat-chested under the bulk of her jacket, with generic Midwestern features and light-brown hair spilling out from beneath the brim of a knitted cap—lies some ten feet from the verge of the road, in the westbound lane of the Interstate. A wavering line of footprints, now rapidly filling with the new snow, dots the empty field to the north of the road.
Halfway across there are slip marks and a hollow where someone has fallen, presumably the annoyance in front of her. Even at a distance, she can make out a pink tinge to patches of the snow. Closer too, crimson spatters the fresh cover, with a long streak where the girl has skidded and fallen again.
There are half a dozen ways it could be a trap. The girl could be microchipped or wearing a transponder. She might have a weapon under her jacket. There could be droids waiting behind a line of trees that runs along a ridge to the other side of the road. Almost as bad, there might be human predators who have left their latest victim as bait for the next.
As the possibilities sort through her mind, one of the ravens stalks up to the girl on the road, waddling a little on the still-soft surface. Cocking its head, it seems to study her face for a moment, then grasps a strand of her long hair in its bill and tugs. And tugs again, backing up in the snow. The girl thrashes and cries out weakly. “No! Oh, no! Jesus, help me!”
Kirsten has never placed much credence in the idea of a fate worse than death, but being eaten alive qualifies. In spades. She pauses only to check the magazine of her pistol, slides out of the seat and slogs toward the young woman who has suddenly become her unwelcome charge. Less inhibited, Asimov streaks past her and bounds over the girl’s body in a flying arc, landing splay-legged in the middle of the ravens and snapping at the air. The birds, not much impressed, step away from the dog with a haughty stare and ruffle of wing feathers. The girl, though, cries out in terror. “A wolf! Oh my God, noooooo!”
“No he isn’t. He just think he’s one,” Kirsten snaps. She whistles sharply, “Come, Asi!”
The girl turns to look at Kirsten, floundering in the snow. Closer to, Kirsten can see that the right leg of her jeans is ripped and soaked with red, fresh blood pooling and melting the snow where she lies. Her eyes are all pupil, so wide with pain and terror that Kirsten cannot tell what color they are. Scratches streak her face, though they seem superficial, perhaps the result of fleeing through the underbrush of the woods along the ridge. Her left arm lies at a strange angle, either broken or dislocated.
Oh, wonderful, Kirsten thinks. Multiple choice: (a)put her out of her misery; (b), take her with me; or © leave her for the ravens.
Leaving her for the birds is not an option. If it were, Kirsten would already be five miles further down the road, five supremely important miles further toward the end of her own journey. Euthanasia by 9mm round? She cannot quite bring herself to do it, at least not without knowing for certain that the life seeping out onto the road at her feet is unsalvageable. All right, then. That leaves (b).
With a sigh, she thumbs on her gun’s safety catch and tucks the weapon into her belt. No good deed ever goes unpunished, she reminds herself, wryly, and this one will probably have an exorbitant cost. Saving this girl’s life, if she can, will make her that much later getting to the manufacturing facility at Minot. And that will almost certainly be paid for in other lives, elsewhere. She has already killed innocent people to get as far as she has. She is not willing to do it again except under circumstances more extreme than this.
She kneels in the snow beside the wounded girl, whose huge black eyes have never left her own. Forcing her voice to the gentleness that always marked her mother’s, Kirsten takes the girl’s hand, lifting it from where it still scrabbles at the snow, fighting for purchase. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
The girl’s only answer is a whimper, deep in her throat. She shrinks away, trying to make herself small, when Kirsten reaches for the zip of her jacket.
“All right,” she says. “My name’s—my name’s Annie. I’m going to look at your leg, if you’ll let me. I’ll try really hard not to hurt you.”
Damn. It’s like talking to a half-feral dog.
You would do this for a dog. Pretend she is one if that’s what it takes. Patience.
“Easy,” she whispers. “Easy, now.”
Without waiting for a response, Kirsten folds the torn denim back from the girl’s thigh. There is a puncture wound, probably a from a large-caliber bullet. The good news, insofar as there is any, is that the blood slowly seeping from its depths is dark, almost black. Venous blood, which means it’s just possible that her new responsibility is not going to bleed to death on her. If the femoral artery had been hit, she would be dead by now. And we would not be having this charming conversation. Unfortunately, she cannot see the exit wound and has no idea how much of the flesh has been torn away in the projectile’s passage. There is no way at all she can deal with the arm until she gets the jacket off, and she cannot do that with her patient lying in the snow.
“Listen to me,” she says gently. “I can’t tend to you like this. I’m going to bring the van over here and lift you into it. I’ve got some medicines and other supplies that will help you. Do you understand?”
Silence. The eyes fixed on her remain huge and black. Kirsten begins to wonder if there’s a concussion along with the other injuries, or if the girl is deaf. But she can speak; that is certain. Damn. “Okay, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Can you raise your raise your hand if you understand me?”
Nothing. Then, very slowly, two fingers rise up out of the snow.
Kirsten lets out a long breath. “Good. I’ll only be gone a minute. This is Asimov.” She points to the dog, where he sits on the girl’s other side, tongue lolling and a happy-idiot expression on his face as he watches the ravens. “He’ll keep the birds away from you. He is not a wolf.” No matter what he might think.
It takes Kirsten more time than she would like to maneuver the truck to within a couple feet of her patient. Once alongside, she slides open the side door and clears out a spot on the floor. Her task is easier than it would have been a few days ago, and she frowns. Her supplies are getting low. She has enough gas in the jerry cans to get her across the rest of Minnesota and half of North Dakota, with maybe a tank and a half to spare. She cannot take this waif with her; neither can she spend much of her precious fuel looking for a safe haven.
In this sparsely populated country, there would have been fewer droids than in the cities. Somewhere she had read—National Geographic? Scientific American? —that there were still bands of Mennonites here on the northern plains who had refused to come out of the nineteenth century even so far as to use electricity, much less modern farm machinery. In the last hundred miles, Kirsten had seen the occasional tracks of a wheeled vehicle, even more occasionally a thin column of smoke from a chimney. Almost any group of survivors ought to be glad of another pair of hands, even if they come accompanied by a young and healthy appetite.
They ought to be willing to take a good, well-trained dog, too.
The idea comes unbidden. It is something she has been trying very hard not to think about, though she has known from the beginning that she cannot take Asimov where she is going. Simply abandoning him is unthinkable, just as leaving him behind had been. Far in the back of her mind is the even harder choice she had known she might face. With a bit of luck, now, it will not come to that.