Reamde: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

  None of which answered the question.

  She permitted herself to look out into the woods now. None of the men noticed; none of them cared.

  But she’d waited too long. The sun was behind the mountains. The fire almost cast more light, now, than the sky. But she was patient, keeping her back to the sunset and the fire and waiting for her eyes to adjust as she stared into the almost perfect blackness of the woods.

  She saw nothing. There was nothing to see.

  And yet something was bothering her. After all she’d been through at the hands of humans, it seemed inconceivable that anything of the natural world could hold any terrors for Zula. But there was something out there, and it did terrify her. Not in the intellectual way of I hope Jones didn’t order them to kill me but at a much deeper level.

  She could feel a tingle at the back of her scalp. This was something that had happened only a few times in her life. Her hair was attempting to stand up on end, like that of a dog who senses it’s staring into something big enough to kill it and wants to look bigger.

  But no matter how long she stared into the deepening shadows she saw nothing more. Finally she made up her mind to tear herself away from it and attend to the cooking. She planted a heel and spun around it.

  A pair of sparks drew faint red traces across the corner of her eye.

  She was relearning ancient lessons here: the peripheral vision was more sensitive to movement than the central. She turned back, shaking her head from side to side like a wolf casting for a scent, and caught glimpses of the twin sparks again.

  There they were. She had them now. Two points of red light.

  She had missed them before because they weren’t down at ground level, where she’d been looking. They were up high in a tree.

  She had almost convinced herself that they were just drops of sap reflecting the light of the fire when they winked out for a moment and then came on again.

  FOR BETTER OR worse, the “attract wildlife to the campsite” strategy bore fruit some hours later. Zula had no idea of the hour—a timepiece would have come in handy—but the eastern sky was not beginning to get light yet. Maybe three in the morning.

  She had dozed off but was now awakened by rustling noises in the vicinity of the jihadists’ tents.

  She reached up and undid the padlock, then made a little prayer or resolution that she’d never have it on her again.

  This made it possible for her to peel off some of the fleece pullovers she had been wearing ever since they had put the chain on. On top of those, she had also been wearing some zip-up garments that could be put on and taken off even with the chain in place, but she had removed those a few hours ago when she had gone to bed. Stripped down, now, to a set of navy blue synthetic long johns, she stuffed the bulky fleeces into her sleeping bag, trying to make it look as if she were still in it.

  She had prepared a fake head by stuffing handfuls of pine needles into a plastic shopping bag until it was round and head-sized, then stretching a stocking cap over it. She placed that in the hood of a pullover and snugged the drawstring around it, then pulled the top of the sleeping bag over it, arranging things so that a flashlight beam shone into the tent and played over this scene would make it look as if she had curled up and pulled the edge of the sleeping bag over her face. She stuck the end of the chain into place beneath it.

  The little tent’s exit was already unzipped; she had seen to that earlier. Only after she’d made all these arrangements did she reach up and part the flaps a fraction of an inch to look out.

  In the light of the moon, she could see at least two creatures waddling around gathering up the food scraps she’d left. From the amount of noise they’d been making, she’d guessed bear cubs. But they were only raccoons.

  She saw, now, too late, that leaving food out had been a mistake. It had attracted animals that were large enough to wake the men up but not large enough to pose an actual threat to them.

  In any case, she could not just squat there in her tent’s entrance. Sooner or later the men would wake up. She emerged from the tent. The damp air struck a chill in her limbs, but she knew that soon enough she’d be perspiring. Trying to ignore the cold, she walked in a straight line, moving deliberately, toward the tent shared by Zakir and Sayed. The latter’s hiking boots—brand-new from Walmart—were standing at attention in front of it. She plucked these off the ground with a quick motion of the hand—a motion she’d been rehearsing in her mind all night long—and pivoted away. She was headed now for the front of the tent shared by Ershut and Jahandar. Her next intention was to grab their boots as well and carry them off into the woods. Zakir she wasn’t as worried about, but it would help her immeasurably to leave those two barefoot.

  Something streaked across her vision about twenty feet away, dark gray moving fast against darker gray. There was a tussle and then a scream, like a toddler being backed over by a car. Zula froze.

  To stop moving was a bad idea, but her mind wasn’t working at the level of ideas.

  Some kind of struggle was taking place, rattling the walls of Ershut and Jahandar’s tent, tumbling across the ground, sending sticks and litter flying.

  A raccoon had been attacked by some other creature. Something that had been stalking it.

  Zula lit out and ran.

  SHE’D NEVER KNOW, and didn’t especially care to know, in what order things had then happened in the camp. Ershut and Jahandar could not possibly have stayed asleep. They’d have climbed out of their tent, guns drawn, to see some kind of Wild Kingdom melee in progress, or perhaps just its bloody aftermath. Not knowing that a hundred meters away Zula was sitting on the ground in the trees, pulling Sayed’s boots onto her feet. Their adrenaline would have been pumping madly. They might have laughed upon realizing that all the fuss had been nothing more than wild animals banging around in the night. Perhaps that laughter would wake up Zakir and Sayed, if they hadn’t been awakened already, and perhaps Sayed would look out and notice that his boots had gone missing. Or perhaps Ershut would go up to Zula’s tent with a flashlight, look inside, and notice the deception, or not.

  All she knew was that, within perhaps a quarter of an hour of her departure, flashlights were bobbing down the plank-avalanche behind her, making their way toward the trail along which Zula was running as fast as she could.

  She ran faster.

  A wave of nausea came over her, and she had to stop to throw up. Her hands were tingling. She wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. She had been running anaerobically. She had no choice but to take the next couple of miles at a more measured pace. Behind her—something like a mile—she could see a flashlight bobbing rhythmically as its owner sprinted along the trail. This gave her a rough idea of how much time she would have, when she reached the Schloss, to get inside and call the police. Right now it was looking pretty favorable. Shaking a little from the nausea but feeling better as her heart and lungs caught up with oxygen debt, she built speed until she had reached the quickest pace she could maintain.

  In her mind the distance from the camp to the Schloss had grown larger with every hour that had passed while she’d been chained to that tree, and so she was startled when she glimpsed one of its roofs in the moonlight. She had covered the distance in very little time. She took the risk of slowing down a little bit so that she could look back over her shoulder and saw the bobbing light still in pursuit, perhaps a bit closer than last time, but still a few minutes away.

  She tried the front door just to see whether it was open, but Uncle Richard had apparently locked it on his way out. That was okay. She’d been visualizing the place in her mind and had already decided where to break in. She ran around to the side facing the dam, which was the least scenic part of the property and consequently where they had situated things like utility sheds and parking lots. The rooms facing that direction tended to be meeting rooms and offices. She picked up a round river rock, about the size of a cantaloupe, from some landscaping. Carrying it in both hands she ran toward an offi
ce window and projected it into the glass. It burst through with a noise that must have been audible in Elphinstone. She stood on one foot and used the other to kick away projecting shards, then reached around through the opening and unlocked the window.

  A few moments later she was inside the office, holding the telephone to her head, hearing nothing.

  The lights didn’t work either.

  All the power, all the phones, all the Internet were dead.

  Jones must have cut the lines when he had come to call on Richard.

  A very powerful impulse was now pushing her to burst out crying, but she turned her back on it, as it were, snubbing it like an unwelcome guest at a party, and tried to think.

  Her whole plan had been predicated on the assumption that she would be able to make a phone call from here. Or at least trigger the alarm system. Flash lights on and off. That was all she needed: to get someone’s attention down the valley. Chet being her best hope; he lived in a little homestead about five miles down the road. On a quiet night it might be possible to hear an alarm from that far away.

  This bank of the river—the right bank—was impassable beyond this point, because of Baron’s Rock, which turned the shore into a vertical stone wall scoured by icy water in violent motion. To get to Elphinstone she would have to cross to the left bank by running across the dam, following the road that ran over its top. From there she’d have twenty miles of bad road between her and Elphinstone. Jahandar—she was pretty sure that the fast-running jihadist was he—was only a short distance behind her at this point, and was running faster. If she merely followed the road, he could drop her with a rifle shot, or simply catch up with her and put a knife in her back.

  She would have to run up into the trees and conceal herself.

  Two things would then happen. One, the jihadists would control the road. In order for her to get into town, she’d have to clamber up into the forested hills that rose above the left bank and then bushwhack all the way into town. Two, she would start to get cold and to suffer from the effects of hunger and thirst. For she’d gambled everything on this sprint, leaving behind her warm clothes, not bringing water or food.

  The only way she could think of to get attention was to set fire to the building and hope that someone might notice the smoke and flames.

  Which might or might not work. But it would take a while. And she couldn’t wait in a burning building. Again, she’d have to run into the woods and stay alive there for a few hours, possibly more.

  She had only a few minutes in which to equip herself for a wilderness survival trek of unknown duration.

  She couldn’t even see in this place. She had groped her way to the telephone by following dim moonlight-gleams. The only source of light in this room was a red LED, down low on a wall, at the height of her knee.

  This brought up a vague memory: the Schloss had emergency flashlights plugged into wall outlets, one in each room, charging all the time, except when the power went off.

  Forcing herself to move in slow, careful steps—she didn’t want to trip and sprawl on broken glass—she crossed the room, felt her way down the wall, and found the flashlight. It came on, dazzlingly bright. She clapped her palm over it, not wanting to present an obvious target for someone peering through gunsights into the building, and allowed a blade of light to escape between fingers, illuminating the path out of the office.

  She exited into a corridor and headed away from the main entrance. To the right was a row of offices and of storerooms that mostly contained kitchen equipment. To the left was the main food prep area for the tavern. Making a quick pass through there, she risked taking her hand off the light—the kitchen had no windows—and plucked a long sharp-pointed butcher knife and a smaller paring knife from a magnetic strip on the wall. These she dropped into a white plastic pail that was sitting on the floor beneath a sink. Using that as a kind of shopping basket she swiped a few odds and ends that might come in handy—two oven mitts, for example, that might serve to keep her hands warm if she couldn’t find anything better. There was, of course, no perishable food stored in the place, since it had been shut down for Mud Month. From a fridge she collected a bottle of canola oil that had been left there so it wouldn’t go rancid, and scored some twenty-ounce plastic bottles of water. Cabinets yielded some sacks of potato chips and other snacks, as well as rice, raisins, pasta. The bucket was approaching full, and she reckoned she had enough calories in there to keep her alive for days, provided she could find a way to cook the stuff.

  Which led her to the idea of camping stoves, and other equipment. Was that too much to hope for, in a ski lodge in the mountains?

  Someone was banging on the lodge’s front door in an exploratory way, trying to figure out how much force would be required to break it down.

  Why didn’t they just shoot out the locks? They certainly had the means.

  Because they were afraid that gunfire might be heard down the valley.

  Uncle Richard had guns here. A fine thought. But impossible. They were stored in a safe in his apartment.

  She had the general sense that outdoor gear tended to be stored in the building’s basement. An emergency map posted on the wall told her where the stairways were. She found one and descended it.

  A window shattered somewhere in the front of the building.

  She was almost overcome, for a moment, by the impulse to flee. But that would just end up with her being dead of hypothermia.

  Her nose told her that she was right about the camping equipment. It wasn’t a bad smell exactly, but all camping gear smelled the same after a while. She shone the light around and found the stuff she needed, strewn all over the floor.

  Of course. If Jones had forced Richard to accompany him, Richard would have needed his own backpack, warm clothes, sleeping bag, tent. They must have come down here and ransacked the place.

  So this, at least, was going her way. She nearly tripped over an empty backpack: a big rig with an external aluminum frame. She set the pail down, snatched up the pack, and verified that it was in decent repair. She grabbed a sleeping bag, already jammed into a stuff sack, and lashed it onto the frame with a couple of bungee cords. She dumped the pail into the top compartment indiscriminately and was reminded that there were a couple of knives in the bottom. Storing those would be tricky, so she set them aside for now.

  Green nylon tarps, neatly folded into rectangles, were stacked on a shelf. She grabbed three of them. One, if she cut a hole through the middle, might serve as a rain poncho. Another could be a ground cloth, the third a makeshift tent. She pawed some hanks of rope from another shelf, a CamelBak from a hook where it had been stored upside down to drain.

  The lodge had collected so many old used ski parkas, pants, and gloves that they were stored in garbage bags in the corners. She ripped two of these open and kicked through them, selecting a coat and some snow pants more for their color (black) than their size (too large), and grabbed two pairs of gloves in navy blue. A stocking cap. A pair of ski goggles, since she didn’t have sunglasses, and might find herself on snow.

  The backpack was stiffening up as she jammed stuff into it. She circled back to the knives and figured out a way to insert them carefully between the pack’s aluminum frame and its nylon sack. They’d stay put there, but the blades weren’t in a position to hurt her, or damage the other gear. The handles protruded from the top of the pack; she’d be able to reach back over her left shoulder and grab them if she had to.

  A sharp scent was in her nostrils: stove fuel. She opened the nearest cabinet door and found a compartment where they kept camp stoves and supplies.

  The jihadists seemed to be giving her all the time in the world. Someone was banging around upstairs, but only one person, as far as she could tell.

  Then she guessed why. Jahandar had arrived first. But he hadn’t entered the building. Instead he had posted himself on the road, on or near the dam, to prevent Zula from crossing over to the left bank. Jahandar might be a fish out of wat
er in British Columbia, but he had more than enough of the Afghan equivalent of street smarts to understand that, if Zula couldn’t cross over to the left bank, she couldn’t go down the road to Elphinstone. Ershut, probably, had made it to the scene a few minutes later; he’d be the one banging around, trying to root her out of the Schloss so that Jahandar could plug her with a rifle shot. The out-of-shape Zakir and shoeless Sayed would not be here for a little while longer.

  The stoves were of the type that screwed directly onto a fuel bottle; they didn’t have tanks of their own. Zula threw a stove, a box of waterproof matches, and a handful of candles into a side pocket of the pack. A little cooking kit—a small pot, a frying pan, and a plate, all cleverly nested and locked together—went into the main compartment. Hard to make use of the stove without that.

  Fuel bottles—pods of spun aluminum with narrow necks plugged by screw-in plastic stoppers—were strewn around the cabinet like bowling pins after a strike. She opened one, dropped to the floor, pinned it upright between her knees, then grabbed a brick-shaped gallon can of stove fuel from the lower shelf, spun its cap off, and learned just how difficult it was to decant white gas from one narrow-necked receptacle into another with violently shaking hands. Half of it spilled onto her knees and soaked into her long johns, a detail she would have to keep in mind if she found herself in the vicinity of fire any time soon.

  Which she had every intention of doing. Only about a quarter of the big can’s contents sufficed to fill the bottle. The rest was available for other purposes.

  First she was careful to get the lid screwed firmly back onto the bottle and stow that in her pack. Then she fished out a couple of the matches she’d packed earlier and stuck them into her mouth. She stood up and hoisted the pack around onto her back. During all of these exertions, she had come upon an old flashlight with nearly dead batteries, so she set it on the floor, aimed toward the stairs, and left it turned on. That enabled her to turn off her own flashlight. Gas can in one hand, she ascended the stairs as quickly as she could without making a lot of noise. Being chased around the Schloss by Ershut would be bad, and being cornered in the basement would be worse, but being caught by him in midstairway was the worst she could think of.