The Nirvana Plague (46 page)

“She sold my car? What the hell do they think they’re doing?”

“They’ll never get over the border.”

In the early evening of a mid-April day along Yukon’s Highway 1, the beat-up little electric pickup that had carried Karen and Ally all the way from a used-car lot in Wisconsin finally met its fate — within shouting distance of the Alaskan border.

Karen was driving.

As the chill shadow of the Coast Mountains stretched out over the land, the fog had come creeping out of the valleys and slicked the roads with black frost. A moose ambled out of the forest onto the pavement. For an instant the truck’s lights caught it as it lifted and turned its great head unconcernedly toward the oncoming vehicle. Then there was a shocking crunch as the front bumper broke the animal’s knees, followed instantly by the banging crunch of the huge body slamming into the hood and the noble head coming through the windshield into Ally’s lap.

The skidding truck started to spin, but the extra half-ton of moose on the hood kept it from flipping. The truck slid sideways off the road and the back fender brought hard up against a stout pine tree. The front end flipped round, flinging off the fallen moose, and sending the two women crashing into each other in the front seat.

A few eternal seconds passed. The airbags, smeared and spattered with moose blood, were already deflating. The cat was yowling. The engine was dead. The left headlight was still working, and in the silvery gleam of its light, the moose lay sprawled on the ground — the windshield wrapped around its neck — kicking its life out.

“Ally?” Karen muttered, too stiff to look around.

“Are you all right?” Ally answered from the darkness, her voice a whisper.

“I think so. Are you?”

“I’ve been better.”

“Can you see the cat?”

“I can’t see anything.”

It took them some time to extricate themselves from the cab of the truck. The door on Ally’s side was jammed and the window had been cracked by her head.

They were standing and shivering by the wreck, watching the moose die, when a car appeared from the night, slowed, and stopped beside them, without pulling off the road. An old man in overalls got out with a flashlight and walked toward them. He examined them each in turn.

The hair on the right side of Ally’s head was damp with blood.

“You girls all right,” he said. It was a conclusion, not a question.

They nodded slightly in agreement.

He scanned his light over the vehicle bent round the tree.

“Can’t say the same for your truck.”

Finally, he took a couple of steps toward the prone moose, now barely breathing.

“Goddamn moose anyhow.”

He shook his head in disgust and looked back at them again.

“You girls from the States?”

They nodded.

“Well, come on. Get in the back seat. I’ll drive you into town.”

The old man hurtled down the foggy, frosty road like a luge runner. Absently steering with one hand, he palmed his phone in the other and called ahead to the doctor’s office.

They must have recognized his caller ID.

“Yes!” he barked. “And I have two American women in the back, and one American cat in a box.”

The cat was reciting a loud mantra of pathetic mewls.

“Done a bull moose dead as dingo … One of them might need some stitches in her head … Be there in about ten minutes… Yes, why don’t you call Ernie?”

They pulled up in front of a tiny brick medical clinic across the road from a dilapidated diner. The red neon-lit air of the parking lot smelt strongly of charred beef. The old man led the two women inside. Karen sat in the lobby with the cat box at her feet while Ally was getting her scalp stitched.

The old man sat with Karen, but didn’t speak.

A few minutes later, another man came in the front door. He pulled a black cap off his head. His hair was just as black.

The old man stood up and greeted him. “Ernie.”

“Sam,” said the other with a nod. “This her?”

“Other one’s in with the doc. Banged up her head.”

The other man sat down in the chair beside Karen, loosened his coat, and introduced himself. “Ma’am. My name is Ernie Fredrickson. I’m the local constable. Do you have any identification?”

Karen looked up at him miserably. “It’s in the truck.”

“Where’s the truck, ma’am?”

“It’s out near the road up to Danson’s place,” the old man said. “Twisted up like a plug a’ tobacco.”

“All right. Well, what’s your name, ma’am?”

“Karen.”

He produced a mini-tablet and a stylus, and scribbled. “Last name?”

She didn’t want to tell him. But she was too muddle-headed to lie. “Hanover.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Ally,” she said. “Marley.”

“Anybody else with you?”

“No.”

“Just that noisy cat,” the old man added.

“Where are you from?” the constable said.

“Chicago. Evanston.”

“What are you doing in Canada?”

“Going to Alaska.”

“You almost made it.”

“I know.”

“How long have you been in Canada?”

“Four days.”

“Where did you cross the border?”

“Washington.”

“Where exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“What highway?”

“I don’t remember.”

Fredrickson looked at the old man.

“She’s a little shook up, Ernie,” the old man said.

Fredrickson continued his questions. “Do you have a health certificate?”

“It’s in the truck.”

“Why were you headed to Alaska?”

“My husband is there.”

“Do you have a phone?”

“It’s—”

“In your car.”

Karen nodded. It hurt.

“I don’t suppose you know the license plate number?”

“No.”

He looked up at the old man hopefully, but the other shook his head and said, “American plates. Wisconsin.”

“Well, I’ll have to drive out there and get it.”

He turned back to Karen. “You want to use my phone?”

She shook her head — it made her dizzy.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“You want me to call someone for you?”

“No.”

Her voice got smaller with every answer.

“Why not?” he said.

“Blackout.”

“Blackout? What are you talking about?”

“Juneau.”

A lie might have been a good idea at this time, but she was too exhausted and befuddled to make the effort.

The constable sat up. “Oh.”

She felt a teardrop strike the side of her left hand, and she looked down at it. It had made a little mark in the dirt on her skin. Almost made it, she thought.

“Ma’am, there’s no way to get to Juneau. They’re not letting anybody in or out.”

She said nothing.

He asked her husband’s name, and Ally’s, and a few more questions, then put away his stylus and stood up.

“Ma’am, I’m going back out to my car to use the radio. You stay here. I’ll want to talk to your friend too.”

“OK.”

He looked at the old man as if to say, “Keep an eye on her.”

The old man nodded.

An hour later the young constable admitted them to the holding cell of the local jail. He was perfectly polite about it, even apologetic, but he locked them up all the same.

“It’s not much of a jail,” he said. “Don’t have to use it much, fortunately. We like to say we used to be a one-horse town, but then the horse died.”

Karen and Ally looked around the little square room: three log walls and one of steel, two low beds with wool blankets and plump pillows in clean slips, a heavy yarn rug over the plank floor, and a pitcher of water and two mugs on a rough little wooden table. A guestroom — with bars.

Karen put the cat box down on the floor and sat on one of the beds. “Best jail I’ve ever been thrown into.”

Ally sat down on the other bed. She had six stitches in her scalp, covered by an enormous bandage, and the eye on that side was swollen.

The constable had called ahead, and his wife had made the cell up for them before they arrived. She was standing outside the cell with him as he locked the door.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” she said.

“There’s no toilet in there,” said the constable, “so you’ll have to bang on the bars when you need to go.”

“Just let the cat run loose,” said the constable’s wife. “Is it trained?”

“She’ll go on paper, if you have any.”

“I’ll get some.”

The wife went out into the front office.

“What are you going to do with us?” Karen said to the constable.

“The Mounties will be coming to pick you up when they can get round to it. I don’t expect they’ll prosecute you. Probably just take you back to the border and turn you over to the American police.”

“For what?”

“For illegal entry.”

“I mean, what do the American police want us for?”

“Oh. Jumping quarantine, I reckon.”

“I can’t believe we came all this way for nothing.”

“I’ll go out with a tow truck in the morning to find your vehicle and get your things for you,” the constable said.

“Thanks. How long before they come to take us back to the border?”

“Hard to say. Mounties are pretty busy now, you know.”

Ally lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over her.

“Any cases here yet?” Karen said, trying not to look at Ally.

“Here? Nah. We have more trouble with the moose than whatever fancy new disease is fashionable down south. Gonna be a bad year for the tourist business though.”

The constable’s wife came back with a roll of paper towels and squeezed it in between the bars to Karen. “I’m sorry about your husbands,” said the wife. “Good night now.”

She turned the lights off with a switch out of reach from inside the cell.

A nightlight cast a dim green glow through the cell.

After they’d gone, Karen freed the cat, which immediately got into bed with Ally.

The second day in Juneau after the outbreak was as quiet as the first. National Guard troops stood station at all the city’s exit points, but no one attempted to leave. Helicopters patrolled the waterfront and telescopes watched from across the channel, but the streets remained empty. At night, black bears came out from the forest and searched the back alleys for trash.