Chapter 6 - Dust on the Northern Ridge
"Pack the saddlebags," Isabel said, her voice dropping into an icy register. "Now."
Takoda was already moving before she finished the sentence. He didn't look at the projected words on the wall; he had lived long enough among the shadows of Mercy Crossing to understand the language of betrayal without reading the script. He racked the lever of his Winchester '73, chambering a heavy .44-40 round with a sharp, oily snap.
"How long has that light been beating?" Takoda asked, tossing a bandolier of ammunition onto the table.
"It started when the seal was broken," Isabel replied, frantically rolling up her surgical instruments and securing the microfilm in an oilcloth pouch tucked inside her leather vest. "They knew the capsule would only be extracted if Naira showed acute symptoms. It was designed to betray our position the moment we tried to save her."
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
Naira appeared at the top of the loft ladder, her small fingers clutching the cedar handrail. The white cotton bandage around her head was spotted with a single dot of dried iodine. Her skin was no longer flushed with fever; instead, it possessed an unnatural, porcelain lucidity. Her irises, usually dark brown, seemed ringed with a strange, pale gold corona.
"They’re coming across the dry wash," Naira said quietly. Her voice was devoid of panic, chillingly calm for a ten-year-old child.
Isabel hurried to the foot of the ladder. "Naira, you need to stay down. The medicine—"
"I don't hear them with my ears, Isabel," the girl interrupted, descending the ladder with a light, rhythmic precision that was completely unlike her usual hesitant walk. She looked toward the northern timber wall. "I feel the horses. Four. Six. Eight iron shoes striking the granite at the creek bed. They have iron masks on their faces."
Takoda vaulted onto the low bench beneath the kitchen’s narrow gun-slit window. He parted the burlap curtain by an inch, peering through a brass field spyglass toward the shimmering heat-mirage of the northern ridge.
"Black coats," Takoda muttered, his jaw muscles clenching like iron bands. "No badges. Heavy draft horses pulling a covered buckboard. Halden’s sweepers."
"Sweepers?" Isabel asked, loading her Colt with practiced speed.
"When a field site was infected, Samuel sent men to burn the bodies. Halden sent sweepers. Men who wear rubberized hoods and canvas suits dipped in pitch. They don't take prisoners, Isabel. They harvest tissues and incinerate the rest."
"We can outrun them through the red canyons," Isabel insisted, grabbing Naira’s coat from the wall peg. "The horses are fresh. We know the switchbacks."
"No," Takoda said, lowering the glass. His eyes were cold, reflecting the harsh morning light like obsidian. "Look at the dust behind them."
Isabel stepped up beside him, squinting through the gun slit.
Behind the advancing horsemen, billowing across the floor of the valley, was a dense, creeping fog of dull ochre dust. It didn't rise into the sky like normal trail dust; it hugged the earth, rolling forward like a living carpet, swallowing the sagebrush and the juniper trees in its path. Wherever the fog touched the desert vegetation, the pale green needles turned black and shriveled within seconds.
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"Halden didn't come to negotiate," Takoda whispered. "He cracked an aerosol canister five miles upwind. The wind is blowing straight down the canyon."
***
