Finally she says, “I don’t understand it, cante sukye. I don’t understand it at all.” A shiver passes over her skin. Shadows have lengthened; the sun has dropped below the tops of the trees. “Let’s go inside. It’s getting cold out here.”

*

“Now I remember why I’ve always hated shopping.”

Koda picks her way through the remains of a sporting goods store, stepping carefully through the spilled tennis and golf balls scattered across the floor. Against the walls, the locked cabinets that once held guns have been broken open, their sliding lexan doors in shards behind the counters. In one dark corner stands a rack that once held basketball jerseys, judging by the scraps of brightly-colored mesh now piled beneath it. From somewhere behind it comes a rustle and the sound of small feet scrabbling on the floor tiles, punctuated by grunts and a threatening hiss. Asi gives a pleading whine, his head up, tail straight as a standard.

“Possum,” says Kirsten from behind a counter that still stands largely intact, “Mama Possum.” The drawers have been thoroughly looted of ammunition, gun oil and other useful items. Her head appears above the glass top of the display case, and she aims a frown at Asi. “Don’t even think about it, Deppity Dawg. You don’t need to get chewed up again.” Asi whines again but stands down, leaving the store’s residents in peace. Returning to her rummaging under the counter, Kirsten adds, “At least you could find stuff to fit. ‘Petite’ is a lot larger than it used to be.”

“Small but mighty.” Koda flashes her a grin. “What hasn’t been carted off or ruined by the weather has been co-opted by the critters.” Still, this modest strip mall is tame compared to the sprawling wreckage of the Wal-Mart on the north side. At least one pack of coyotes had moved in, denning among the fallen I-beams and the slabs of collapsed ceiling, sharing their quarters, judging by the limewash on the walls and the castings on the floor, with a pair of owls and innumerable mice and rats. They have assiduously avoided the business district with its tall office towers rearing up against the purple-grey bulk of the mountains and the sprawling Temple complex, all of which offer prime opportunities for armed bands to fort up. After The Elk Mountain Incident, which has permanently acquired capital letters after the manner of The Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge or The Ox-Bow, Koda will be perfectly happy if they never see another human between now and their return to Ellsworth.

Fat chance.

Sifting through the wreckage of the office, no more than a corner set off by faux pecan panels, Koda, pockets a pair of serviceable pencils and an old-fashioned red plastic grade-school sharpener. A pack of lithium batteries also goes into her pockets, together with a small handheld that looks as though it might be functional. Kirsten has taken to keeping a general log of their journey on her laptop, but other information, such as animal population and migration, the water volume of streams that no longer feed cities, needs to be recorded, too. This world is not the world she grew up in, may become something far different than any has ever imagined.

But for now, she will settle for small things that make their journey less arduous. Which means that they probably need to move on, to see if they can find a part of the city less devastated. In the scatter of papers, she shuffles aside a photograph of a trio of small girls, grinning up at the camera from their swings, their twin blonde pony tails brushing their shoulders. Two are twins. The third is perhaps a year older. To their right, a cocker spaniel makes a fourth to their number, the same grin, the same tumble of bright gold from crown to collarbone. Something is scrawled across the bottom of the picture in a hand too shaky to be legible, but it looks like numbers. Koda turns her attention to the tall free-standing gun safe, which might hold something useful if she can open it. A second scrap of paper with numbers along the bottom catches her eye in the debris on the floor. 12-28-something. The combination? She should be so lucky. She picks it up, though, carefully dusting it off.

Not the combination. Another photo, this one of a dark-eyed toddler on a red tricycle, a motorcycle cap pulled over his forehead as he leans over the handlebars. 12-30-2015.

Not a combination. A date. Retrieving the picture of the three girls, she lays it on the desk next to this one. Same handwriting. Same date. Not a birthday, then, especially since the girls on the swings wear shorts and sandals, their feet skimming green grass. The date is the second or third of the uprising; for these children, it can mean only one thing. DOD. Date of death.

Not only one thing. Date of death, date of disappearance.

“Kirsten,” she says quietly, not turning away from the cubicle. “How old were the oldest children you saw in Craig?”

For a long moment there is silence. Then Kirsten says, quite evenly, “Toddlers. Maybe two and a half. Three, maybe. Why?”

“Come here, would you?”

Kirsten’s feet make small rustling noises in the litter as she picks her way toward the corner. As she comes to stand by Koda, she says, “What is it?”

“These photos. Look at the dates. Look at the kids.”

For a long moment, Kirsten does not answer. Then she says, “The droids were taking them alive, then killing them. I don’t get it. Why?”

“They were using jails, maternity centers, clinics. There used to be a Planned Parenthood branch in this part of Salt Lake. I think we should go check it out.”

In the harsh light of the flash, the revulsion on Kirsten’s face is clear. After a moment, though, she says. “You’re right. It may not help us turn the goddammed things off, but—” Her hand makes small, loose circles in the air.

“There’s always the possibility we’ll find some kids alive,” Koda says gently. “Not much, but some.”

“Even if we can just figure out why—”

“That’ll be a start.” Koda adjusts her pack to lie more comfortably around her waist and shoulders her rifle. “Let’s go.”

*

“Bomb?”

“Looks like. Big one.” Dakota kicks at one end of a broken and charred two-by-four that protrudes from the rubble of roofing shingles and drywall, jagged chunks of concrete block and aluminum siding. Pink fiberglass insulation protrudes from between shattered boards and wall panels, threaded through with bright strands of color-coded wiring. Behind the ruined front of the Salt Lake Birthing Center, the rear half of the building still stands, its framing studs and walls stained black with smoke. Asi quarters the edge of the wreckage, whining.

“Look how bright that insulation is. This is recent.”

Koda’s gaze returns to the cotton-candy mass of fiberglass sandwiched between a collapsed wall and fallen acoustic tiles. It is as shockingly pink as the day it came off the roll, unweathered by snow or desert heat. Slowly, she turns through a full circle. A McDonald’s across the street is similarly ruinous, but its garish plastic furniture, tumbled out onto the restaurant’s parking lot, is faded to pale sherbet colors, orange and lime and raspberry. The electronics factory outlet next to it stares out onto the asphalt through empty windows, only a few shards of glass still clinging to the frames. It would have been one of the first stores to be looted, by people in desperate need of communications gear or by conventional thieves with no idea of the scope of the collapse in progress. “You’re right,” she says quietly. “Check it out?”

For answer, Kirsten nods, revulsion clear on her face and in her meticulous steps amid the wreckage, avoiding contact even with the leather of her boots where she can. Koda herself goes warily, picking out a path down what might have been a paved walkway before the blast that tumbled half the clinic’s front onto it. It takes her onto a tiled surface, perhaps once the clinic’s reception area, with darkened halls opening off it. Open now to the weather and to scavengers human and otherwise. Tucked well back in the exposed rafters between ceiling and roof, a wren has built her barrel-shaped nest, and a spattering of guano on the pale terrazzo bears witness to the colony of bats with which she shares her space. The sharp smell of ammonia rises from it, and Koda covers her nose and mouth with one hand. One corridor seems to be lined with various labs and exam rooms; another with recovery cubicles separated only by grey and tattered curtains. Still a third leads off to service areas; through an open door at its end, Koda can see the shape of a large, aluminum-topped worktable with industrial sized pots and pans hung on a rack above it. No sign of the obstetric wards and surgeries; they must have been in the wing brought down by the blast.

“Look,” Kirsten says from behind her. “On the wall behind the desk.”

Koda looks more closely, squinting at what she had at first thought to be smoke stain. The streaks show a more regular pattern, though, letters scratched out with the end of a charred stick. Some have faded to illegibility; others are faint angular shapes, parts missing where the stick has skipped over the rough surface of the concrete block. B-b- -il-e-s.

“B-b,” she says. “Baby—”

“Killers,” Kirsten finishes for her. “It’s just like that clinic in Craig.”

Koda nods. “Let’s have a look at the pharmacy and get going, then. There’s somebody in the neighborhood that’s armed. They may not want company.” She steps around a fallen chair and heads briskly for the lab corridor.

Kirsten, though, remains rooted where she stands. “We have to check.”

Caught. “There’s no place here to bury bodies, cante sukye,” Koda says softly. “The clinic backs right up to whatever is in that office strip behind it. We won’t find anything.”