They walked quickly, urgency spurning them onwards up the deserted road. Sara felt wide awake now, her senses sharpened with adrenaline, her legs no longer tired. Ahead the road wove onward into the distant night, and above them, the stars of the universe twinkled down with oblivious peace. It made her feel insignificant, isolated from civilisation and utterly helpless.
"You okay?" Nick asked suddenly.
Sara nodded. "I'm fine."
Grissom's eyes were still reverberating within her, but she knew she had to keep it together. Now was no time to fall apart.
"Hang in there," he said. "Sofia's strong, she's not the type to give up without a fight. And the best thing we can do for her right now is to keep going – to stay positive."
"I know," she said, and tried her best to sound it.
"You religious?" he asked.
Sara looked up. "Uh, no. Not often."
The sum of her religious experience was polite silence at the odd wedding or funeral, and that had been as much as she could manage. But she said nothing, knowing and respecting that Nick felt otherwise.
"My mom always said faith helps. She used to pray in times of crisis, said it makes you stronger, helps you cope. I didn't believe it at the time, but I guess in times like this it doesn't hurt, right?"
"Sure can't do any harm," Warrick agreed. "I think we're all saying our prayers right now, man. I know I am."
"Me too," Sara agreed.
Nick touched her shoulder.
"Let's just keep up a steady pace," he said bracingly. "If we do that, we'll be fine. The tortoise and the hare remember? Slow and steady."
"Slow and steady," Warrick agreed.
They kept walking. It was a surreal experience, hiking the endless dusty track, their quiet footsteps the only noise for miles. They followed the trail up and down slopes, through gullies and around hillsides, as it wove its way through the rugged, dry landscape of desert Nevada. They talked little, breaking into speech only to help each other on, each of them offering support whenever they sensed another beginning to slow. And despite the enormous pressure of the situation, despite the prevailing fear and utter physical exhaustion, she felt comfort in knowing that Nick and Warrick were there with her, feeling exactly the same. Though their jaws were set in determination, there was a trembling vulnerability in their eyes which told her they were as scared for Sofia as she was, and did not blame her for her nerves any more than she did them for theirs. As the miles wore on she felt her physical and mental strength wane, and they each took turns in leadership like a baton relay, urging each other on, keeping each other hydrated, the act becoming harder with each gruelling mile they trekked.
At last, eventually, they arrived. They reached the top of a gradual slope and saw a town below on the desert flat, the road winding down into its dark main street.
"Oh, hello," Nick said, catching sight of the dark buildings. "Jackpot! Let's go, come on –"
He clapped Warrick on the back, and broke into a jog. Sara forced her legs to function, and followed with Warrick at a walk. It was all she could do to keep upright.
Nick headed for the door of the first house and knocked hard.
They waited.
"Las Vegas Police!" Sara shouted, reaching to hammer again. "Could you open your door please?"
Silence.
"Maybe they're not home," Warrick said.
He turned to look at the driveway, and Sara realised for the first time that it was empty.
Nick was undeterred.
"Next one," he said, hurrying to a run-down house over the street.
But a similar fate followed. No one came to the door, and their shouts yielded no answer. There was an old truck in the driveway, but stopping to stare at it, Sara suddenly spotted something – there was grass growing from a patch of dirt and muck along the edge of the roof, and looking down, she saw the front tyre was flat.
"I don't think this has been driven in a while," she said, holding it in the beam of her light.
Nick's hopeful face faltered; Warrick frowned. But Sara was a step ahead of them. With sinking realisation, she went back into the street, and took in the streetscape. She saw now other signs: that the doors of two houses nearby were ajar, a third had a broken window, and down the street, the asphalt had crumbled and disintegrated, clumps of grass and weeds growing in pot holes and in snaking crevices.
"It looks like a ghost town," Warrick said, following her gaze.
Sara was speechless. She made her way back into the street, staring as she walked toward the town centre.
"Oh, I don't believe this," Nick said, somewhere behind her. "This is weird. It's like a movie or something."
"I don't think anyone's lived here for a while," Warrick said. "This place is dead."
Sara stopped outside a small strip of shops. The store windows were dusty, battered by desert winds, and hadn't been cleaned in months. The paint on the glass was faded, and the door to the drug store stood slightly open. Sara walked to it, putting a fingertip to the wooden frame to push it open.
"Las Vegas Crime Lab!" she announced. "Is anyone here?"
No response.
"No one home," Nick said, following her in.
The shelves were fully stocked, everything neatly arranged as though ready for another day of business, yet the floor was covered with a layer of dust, and the counter was covered in a mess of hastily discarded paper and coins.
"Doesn't look like a robbery," Warrick said. "No one breaks in and forgets to take the cash or the drugs."
"What are you thinking?" Nick asked. "Some kind of natural disaster? Evacuation, maybe?"
"I don't know, man," Warrick replied. "There's no sign of storm damage. But whatever happened it sure looks like everyone left in a hurry, and hasn't come back."
At the counter, Sara picked up the phone. There was no dial tone.
"Phone's dead," she said, holding it up.
She spotted a light switch on the wall, and flicked it. Nothing happened, and the only light remained from their own thin beams. She spotted a daily flip calendar on the counter, and shone her light on it to read the date.
"Last page reads November 3," she said. "I guess that's the last time anyone was here."
"That's about nine months," Nick said.
Sara looked up at the guys; she felt confused.
"You know, even if this was a natural disaster or evacuation, you'd expect everyone to have returned by now. This place looks as if it hasn't seen a single person since the day it happened. Nothing's boarded up, the street's in ruin … no one's been back here."
"Maybe whatever happened didn't happen here," Warrick postulated. "We don't know how widespread this thing is, we don't even know it was a storm. There's no sign of that."
Sara glanced around, searching for a newspaper, but found none. And without electricity or a working phone line, she had no hope of looking it up on the store's computer or Internet connection. They were cut off.
"We need to look around," she said. "Find a newspaper or a radio …"
Nick nodded, catching on. "There's a grocery store over the street," he said. "I'll check there."
"I'll check out back," Warrick added.
They disappeared. Sara was just contemplating the medical supplies when she heard Warrick call out again.
"Yo, Sara!"
She followed him to the back of the store, where he stood over a cluttered desk beneath some shelves. He had an old radio in his hands, and was slowly turning the dial. Static buzzed loudly.
"I can't pick up a single station," he said. "You wouldn't expect to get all the local ones, but the nationals on AM should be here. Yet there's nothing."
A feeling of heavy dread grew in the pit of Sara's stomach. At that moment she heard Nick return.
"You two in here somewhere?!" he called.
"Back here!" Sara replied.
He appeared in the doorway, and held up the front page of a newspaper for them to see. The headline was in enormous bold print – "NEW YORK DECIMATED".
"What the hell's that mean?" Warrick asked.
But Sara looked to the photo, and thought she knew. The photos of sick people piled in the streets of Manhattan outside a major hospital was enough. There were hundreds, and most of them looked dead. It looked reminiscent of a historical photo, something she had not seen outside of an encyclopaedia.
"Plague," she realised. "A pandemic."
"And that's not the worst part," Nick went on, his face white. "According to this, this paper was printed in Las Vegas, Utah."
"Utah?" Warrick repeated, confused. "Is that a typo?"
"Not when you look at the weather map inside," Nick replied. "According to this, Nevada doesn't exist. It never seceded from Utah in the first place."
Warrick stared.
"Then where the hell are we?" he asked slowly.
"I don't know," Nick replied. "But I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto."
XXX
They pored over the paper, studying the details by torchlight, trying to piece together the puzzle. Sara read that the virus had started in south-east Asia, and from there migrated to every corner of the world with devastating speed. Measures to contain it had all failed due to the lightning fast gestation period – six hours separating first contact from death – and the United States had soon been hit. Entire cities had been wiped out. They flicked over a few pages to see the weather map Nick had referred to, and she saw he was right. Nevada did not exist.
"If this plague was nine months ago, there's no telling how far it's spread by now," Warrick said. "I mean it looks like this thing has killed nearly everyone it's touched, left no one alive."
"It explains why there's no one on the radio," Sara said. "We don't know there's even anyone out there. We could be the last people on Earth."
"It's something you always joke about as a conversation starter, but it definitely doesn't feel funny now," Nick said worriedly.
"Well fingers crossed that whatever it was has burnt itself out," Warrick said.
"Well if it hasn't, we'll soon know," Sara said, knowing that they would fall sick within the hour.
But strangely, this didn't seem to be the part that most disturbed Nick.
"This timeline overlaps," he said. "The Vegas we know never suffered this, and we're nine months past when this was printed. I mean, it's possible, right? In physics, parallel universes and all that, an infinite number of scenarios and outcomes –"
"What are you saying?" Warrick asked. "That we tripped over in Vegas and woke up in another world?"
"That's … nuts," Sara said, shaking her head.
"I agree," Nick said. "It's crazy. And yet here we are, and I can't think of another theory that even remotely fits. I mean I'm no physics whiz, I did chemistry, but they say it's scientifically possible. You've heard that, right? And I gotta tell you, this place feels pretty real to me. And it explains what happened to us out there, when we woke up not remembering anything, sick, isolated in a strange place despite the fact that only seconds had passed –"
"Nowhere in the literature does it describe that people can walk freely between worlds," Sara said, struggling to take it in.
Nick shrugged, looking every bit as shocked and scared as she was, but not having any other ideas.
"I don't know what to tell you. I hope to God I'm wrong."
Warrick took a deep breath, struggling to digest it. "Well even if it's true –what the hell do we do?"
Nick had no answer, and an uneasy silence settled. Sara thought of Grissom, imagining him sitting alone with Catherine, watching the driveway and hoping for their return as Sofia died before their eyes. Suddenly Sara knew what to do. They only had one option.
"We have to go back," she said firmly. "We'll grab what we can, everything of use – supplies, medication, and food, and go back."
"And if we're contagious?" Warrick asked. "I mean, we haven't been near anyone infected, but we don't know how this thing's being transmitted. It could be on anything we've touched. What do we do if we've contracted this thing?"
"It's probably burnt itself out by now," Sara said. "Most infectious diseases require a host to transmit, they don't survive outside the human body. But if we have … it won't matter."
She gave him a level look, and knew he understood. If they had contacted the disease, they would not even reach the house. They would die on the road, sick with fever, their bodies slumped together in the dirt. And sooner or later, Grissom would come searching, and find her there, dead.
She wrenched her mind away. That thought hurt too much, and she had to remain strong.
"And Sofia?" Warrick asked, grim.
Sara had no answer. The truth was there was nothing they could do.
"We'll stick with her," Nick said, eyes glistening. "We'll do whatever we can. We won't abandon her when she needs us."
"Assuming we even make it back," Warrick said.
"We've gotta stay positive," Nick said, taking charge. "We can't afford to think like that."
He glanced around the room, mind turning to the stock, and Sara nodded, her frantic mind already a step ahead.
"You go grab some food," she said. "Tins, cans, anything long life … I'll gather up some medical supplies."
Warrick pulled himself together. "I'll go see about some transport," he said.
XXX
In the end Warrick was unable to find a car. It was only a small town, and of the few dozen houses the ones that did have cars no longer worked. Like the one they had first passed in the driveway they were ruined, or else the batteries were flat. With no replacement batteries available, he went to the next best thing, and scrounged them bicycles from nearby porches and garages. Nick emerged not long after with several bags of food – airtight tins chosen from the grocery store – and Sara quickly filled a bag of medical supplies from the pharmacy. She got a range of painkillers for Sofia, bandages and syringes, and on impulse threw in some tampons and pads from the bottom shelf, not knowing how long they would be stuck.
They tied the packages to their bikes, and with a hint of sunrise on the horizon, climbed on.
It was harder than Sara could ever have imagined, and harder than she ever wanted to remember later on. All she knew in the end was that it was Nick who had brought them all safely home. She and Warrick were both so far beyond exhaustion that they could barely stay awake, and all of Sara's energy depleted, she longed to simply collapse on the road, to close her eyes. Not even the thought of Grissom could carry her any further. She had a faint awareness of Nick riding beside her, his hand on her back, and sometimes on her handlebars, steering her straight, and she remembered too faint glimpses of him giving similar support to Warrick.
"Nearly there, man," he said gently. "We can make it. You can sleep when we get there, a nice soft mattress waiting for you…"
Perhaps it was the thought of the mattress that carried Sara home, though she had little memory of arriving there. She sensed the track sloping downhill, the hot sun on her sweaty clothes, and then, somewhere, Catherine's voice.
"Hey, Grissom!"
Nick helped her off her bike, and it clattered to the ground. She reached the steps, and sat down.
"We've got big problems, Griss," Nick said.
"Just a minute –"
Sara felt his hand on her shoulder, heard his voice close.
"Sara?" A beat. "Sara?"
Somewhere, Catherine echoed her name. But too tired to respond, Sara fell asleep.
And now the plot's done, I can get on with the bit I'm really itching to write ... feeling good about this story. Slightly guilty about what I'm putting them through, but good nonetheless. ;)