Off the Grid

by C. J. Box

  He swung his field of vision back to where the pickups had gathered. There was a huge brown-black lump of some kind that looked like a furry rock. The shape was too rounded to have been an elk or a horse, but he couldn’t be sure what it was.

  Joe waited until the pickups were long out of sight before getting up, dusting off the thighs of his Wranglers, and shouldering his carbine.

  It would be a long walk in the wrong direction, but he had to see what they’d left behind.

  A cold black ball of dread filled his stomach, and as he descended down the sandy hill, he kept his senses on alert for the possibility that the trucks might return. He scanned the terrain out in front of him for boulders or brush he could hide behind, if needed, but saw nothing of note.

  Once he committed himself to being in the open, he thought, he’d made a decision he couldn’t take back.

  21

  Joe shook his head with disbelief as he got closer to the dark lump. He no longer doubted what he was going to find. Daisy’s reaction confirmed it. She was hiding behind his legs, skittering from side to side to look around, and whining. She did not want to get closer. The smell of blood and musk hung low in the air.

  Two black ravens had already discovered the carnage. They’d landed on the carcass and didn’t leave until Joe hissed at them.

  His boots were crunching on silica sand and spent shell casings—7.62×39mm, and a lot of them—when he identified the dead and mutilated grizzly bear. It had taken a lot of rounds to kill it, and the targeting had been sloppy, indiscriminate, but deadly. Throw enough lead at any living thing and some of the rounds would hit vital organs or break bones. The bear’s back leg had been nearly severed from its body by bullets, and its thick fur was matted with blood.

  Joe circled the carcass. The head had been sawn off and all four paws had been removed. What was left oozed strong-smelling black blood that was pooling beneath the body.

  The collar reading GB-53 had been tossed aside in a bog of mud and blood.

  He recalled GB-53 rising to a standing position right in front of him and the roar he could still hear. Now this.

  Joe took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was astonished that the bear had traveled this far this quickly. He was also astonished that the story he’d told Phil Parker about the path of the grizzly had played out so accurately.

  He was sickened and angry, though, by what the men in the trucks had done. They’d slaughtered the creature and beheaded it, and they’d taken his massive head and paws for trophies.

  Joe hated the wanton destruction of wildlife. The bear had been no threat to the men in the trucks out there in the open, and they’d chased it down like modern-day hunters slaughtering the last bison. No meat had been taken or even the hide. And for reasons he couldn’t explain fully to himself, Joe felt responsible. Like he’d willed the bear there somehow.

  He gathered up a dozen spent shells with distinct firing-pin strikes and put them in the side pocket of his pack. He cut a bolt of thick hair from the hump of the carcass. The DNA within the hair could be matched up to the paws and head if they were found. Then, in his notebook, he noted the time of day and the approximate location of the body, but he knew it was unlikely he could locate it again.

  Joe also dropped the bloody GPS collar into his backpack. Proof of what he’d found.

  He longed for the tools of his profession: digital camera, GPS, radio, his pickup to pursue the killers.

  He thought that if he ever saw them again, there would be hell to pay.

  “I’m just sorry about this,” he said to what was left of the bear. “I really am.”

  Then to Daisy: “What kind of savages are we dealing with?”

  • • •

  THE SUN WAS STRAIGHT overhead and relentless when Joe peered out from beneath the brim of his hat and saw a glimpse of white far ahead of him in the desert to the north. His first thought was The trucks are back. He again dropped to a squat.

  There was no place to conceal himself, but he thought that if the trucks were far enough away he might be able to find a dry wash or arroyo to flatten into before they arrived.

  His face was hot with sunburn, even though the temperature was barely seventy degrees. The wide brim of his Stetson protected him from above, but the high-altitude sun bounced off the surface of the desert and darkened his face, hands, and neck. It was the same thing that happened when he was fly-fishing in a drift boat on a mountain river: the sun’s rays got him on the bounce.

  Daisy stood by, panting, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. He could feel her hot breath on his neck.

  He raised the binoculars and focused the wheel. It wasn’t a white truck. It was a white shirt.

  The person wearing the white shirt was on foot as well and coming slowly—very slowly—in his direction.

  “What kind of fool would be on foot out here?” he asked Daisy aloud. “Besides us, I mean?”

  He sat back and rested his elbows on his bent knees so he could steady the glasses. Despite the magnification, it took five minutes before he could identify the walker. It was the woman from the Mustang Café, the attractive woman who hadn’t belonged there, Jan-something. It turned out she wasn’t walking slowly at all, but with great will and determination. Her arms swung back and forth at her sides and her head was bent forward.

  She had no hat, no backpack, no walking staff. She was at least fifteen miles from the highway and maybe twenty from the café, with no vehicle of any kind in sight.

  Obviously, judging by her body language, she wanted to get somewhere as quickly as she could.

  • • •

  JOE WAS CONTENT with letting her come to him. He wondered how long it would take for her to break her stride to see him sitting there. She was less than a hundred yards out when she looked up and froze for a moment.

  He watched her face through the binoculars, although at that close range it seemed faintly voyeuristic. She didn’t look as young and clever as she had the first time he saw her. What remained of her makeup had streamed down her skin and her hair hung moist and stringy.

  Jan stood back and placed her hands on her hips, a visual conflict of emotions. She seemed both angry and anxious, and she shook her head and looked at him again to see if she’d imagined him. When he was still there, she sighed, turned slightly, and walked directly toward him.

  Joe groaned as he stood up. His muscles were stiffening already, and the soles of his feet burned within his boots. Why couldn’t she have brought a bucket of ice water he could soak them in?

  But she not only didn’t have ice water, she had no water, period. And nothing else besides the shirt on her back, dusty but tight jeans, and a strong will to get somewhere fast.

  When she got closer, he could see that her lips were swollen.

  “Jan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want some water?” he asked.

  “Oh God, yes,” she said. “Thank you, I’m a mess.”

  He dropped his pack and dug out his last remaining half-gallon of water and handed it to her. She twisted off the cap and raised it, drinking hard.

  “Not too fast,” Joe said. “Take it easy so you don’t get sick.”

  Joe had grown up with the fact that at this elevation in the Rocky Mountains, despite the desert terrain and the fairly cool temperature, dehydration happened at warp speed. Visitors to the region often experienced early symptoms of it and usually blamed it on “altitude sickness.” But it was lack of water.

  He averted his eyes while she drank—it seemed rude to watch her—and he waited for her to finish and return the jug. Maybe two pints left, he thought, but he didn’t make that point out loud. She wasn’t quick to hand over the rest of the water.

  “I’ve never been so thirsty,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “You didn’t bring wa
ter, huh?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to bring any.”

  He looked her over. Before he could speak, she said, “You’re that game warden I met with Phil Parker yesterday, aren’t you? I forgot your name as soon as I noticed the wedding ring.”

  “Yup,” he said, raising his hand and showing it to her again.

  “And now you’re out here all by yourself with your dog.”

  “Meet Daisy.”

  “Hi, Daisy.”

  At the sound of her name, Daisy padded over to Jan so the woman would have the privilege of stroking the top of her head. Daisy was shameless, Joe thought.

  Then Jan asked, “Didn’t you have a truck?”

  “I did.”

  “But now you’re walking,” she said. “Did you break down or something?”

  “Something.”

  Now that hydration was taking place within her, Joe noted, her color was back and her eyes were sharper. He was amazed how quickly it happened.

  She said, “Don’t you find it kind of weird that we’re both here? That we ran across each other like this? I mean, two people on foot in the middle of the Red Desert—what are the odds of that?”

  “Slim.”

  “If I weren’t an atheist, I’d thank God you’re here. You saved my life, I think.”

  Almost reluctantly, she handed over the jug and he dropped it into his backpack.

  “I’m a believer myself,” Joe said.

  She nodded, and the look of confusion he’d seen on her face earlier returned. She said, “You’re a game warden. Are you out here doing game warden things?”

  “Right now, my only goal is to make it to the highway and catch a ride before Daisy and I keel over.”

  She didn’t ask why he didn’t have a phone or a radio with him. He found that interesting.

  “I’m doing the same, sort of,” she said.

  “But you’re walking in the opposite direction.”

  Her eyes slid off him toward the south and she nodded grimly.

  “What’s out there you’re in such a hurry to get to?” Joe asked.

  She paused for a long moment before saying, “I’ve got to warn Ibby.”

  “Who’s Ibby?”

  “He’s a guy I know. He’s a great guy. He’s in danger and he doesn’t even know it.”

  “So Ibby lives in the desert?”

  Jan eyed him warily. “Yes.”

  “And you decided to walk out there from the café and tell him?” Joe asked, skeptical.

  “No, I didn’t decide to walk,” she said, flashing anger. “That’s just how it turned out.”

  She dug an old-fashioned pocket compass out of her jeans pocket, opened it, and let it settle on the palm of her hand. The compass had no electronic parts.

  When the arrow was on true north, she looked over Joe’s shoulder. He followed her gaze to a south-southeasterly direction.

  Joe said, “That’s the direction of the old sheep ranch.”

  “So you’ve seen it?”

  “Yup. Kind of some suspicious activity around that place.”

  “Suspicious to you. Inspiring to me.”

  “So inspiring you decided to walk there,” Joe said.

  She looked up at him with a puzzled squint. “No. Something happened back at the café and I got out of there through the back door as fast as I could. I was able to get into Cooter’s van before they could hurt me, and I took off cross-country to find Ibby and warn him.

  “But Cooter’s gas gauge doesn’t work,” she said, her voice rising. “It reads three-quarters full when apparently there’s less than two gallons of gas in it. So I ran out of gas back there a few miles and I’ve been walking ever since.”

  Jan looked down at her hiking shoes. “Something has gone horribly wrong.”

  “Does it involve four white pickups filled with yay-hoos?”

  She was surprised. “How did you know about them?”

  “I ran across them a couple of hours ago. They didn’t see me.”

  “If they had, you wouldn’t be here.” Despite the heat she shivered. “What they did to Cooter . . .”

  She let the sentence trail off into nothing. She hugged herself as if she were recalling a recent trauma. A trauma so significant, he thought, that it propelled her out of an empty van to continue her journey on foot without food, water, or anything else.

  “What happened to Cooter?” Joe asked.

  “Can’t you see? I can’t waste time talking with you right now. I appreciate the water, but I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to warn Ibby.”

  She shouldered past Joe and regained the stride he’d noted earlier.

  He called after her, “When I get to the highway, I can call for help. What do I tell them?”

  Instead of answering, she waved good-bye to him over her shoulder without turning her head.

  When she was fifty yards away, she stopped and slowly turned around.

  “Joe Pickett?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you know someone named Sheridan?”

  “I’ve got a daughter named Sheridan.”

  “Blond, green-eyed, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two? Student at the University of Wyoming?”

  “That’s her.”

  Jan gestured vaguely south. “She’s with Ibby.”

  He felt a yank in his gut. He recalled Marybeth saying their daughter was going camping this weekend. But . . .

  “Hold up,” he said. “I’m going with you.”

  “What if I don’t want company?”

  “You’re getting it anyway,” he said. “Besides, that will give us a chance to talk. We can start with why Sheridan would be out here with this guy Ibby.”

  • • •

  AFTER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of bearing south-southeast and covering some of the same terrain Joe had tracked earlier, they paused to drink the last of the water at the scene of the grizzly bear carcass. Joe’s head was spinning with Jan’s revelations. She’d seemed comfortable talking to him and he was a good listener. It was one of his gifts.

  But after what he’d heard, he was anxious to find Sheridan and get her out of there.

  He questioned some of the things Jan said Ibby was up to, but he didn’t doubt she believed them. He kept his own doubts to himself—how Ibby had managed to keep his mission a secret, for example, and how he had managed to provide an engineering facility without apparent water, power, or other infrastructure—to keep her talking.

  It seemed too otherworldly to Joe, this mix of conspiracy, technology, and politics out there in the high desert.

  But he had to admit to himself that some of what she said made sense: the fund-raising, the activism, the ideology. It could only be done off the grid, he knew, or officials would learn about it.

  Jan didn’t know how everything fit together, though. She worshipped Ibby and she believed in his idealism, and she knew her part in the whole scheme extremely well. What she didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, she said, was what had happened that morning.

  And while she’d heard Ibby mention seeing another falconer in the desert, she didn’t have a description of the man and she didn’t know the name Nate Romanowski.

  The more Joe learned, the more he thought it likely Nate would be involved in one way or the other. Nate thrived past the edges and beyond the margins.

  Joe could never exist out there, he’d decided. He’d already experienced what it was like to be off the grid, even for a few hours.

  He didn’t like it.

  • • •

  FOR ONCE, Joe was glad not to be in direct contact with Marybeth, because she’d be both horrified and worried sick about what he’d learned. At the same time, though, he could use her counsel because she usually had a clearer head than he did. And he could certainly use her se
nse of urgency and the network of law enforcement and government contacts she had at her fingertips in order to send in the cavalry.

  Jan cringed when she saw the bear carcass up close and she quickly turned away. The flies had found it and they kept up a steady hum.

  “It was them,” she said to Joe. “That’s what they did to Cooter.”

  “They cut off his head?”

  She nodded. “I would have been next if I hadn’t run out the back door. And that would have been after they humiliated me. I could see it in their eyes. I’ve never been looked at like that before.”

  Joe pondered that. He thought of the last time he’d seen Sheridan, a month before, on her weekend visit home. She was fresh-faced, intelligent, attractive, and independent, just like her mother.

  He said, “Let’s get going, then.”

  —— PART SIX ——

  THE NEW MONKEY WRENCH GANG

  Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

  —EDWARD ABBEY, The Monkey Wrench Gang

  22

  As Ibby got up from his chair he asked Nate, “Do you know what an EMP—an electromagnetic pulse—can do?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “An EMP can literally kill every electronic device in the vicinity of the pulse itself. We’re talking phones, computers, cars—anything running on an electric current, which is just about everything there is. A powerful EMP could take down the electrical grid in this country. And it doesn’t just shut things down. An EMP corrupts all the processors and circuitry so they can’t be used again. It can fuse the insides of a power plant together so it wouldn’t work again.”

  Nate sat back. “You’re making a bomb here to do that?”

  “No, no, not a bomb,” Ibby said, insulted that Nate would even use the word. “Sure, that’s one way a massive EMP could be delivered, by a nuclear device on the tip of a missile. A device like that could take out the electrical grid and shut the country down, except for a few isolated pockets and the facilities that had backup power supplies and generators. It would cause massive destruction and death. I can’t even imagine how many people would die if the grid went out for a long time. But I said that no one will get hurt here.”