They left within the hour. Warrick scrounged three more bikes, and though Sofia joked that she should arrest him for larceny, and breaking and entering, she climbed on with a smile. They rode out to the other side of town to find the highway, and at its junction – where a lonely signpost read "Las Vegas, 20 miles", they turned left.
It was a beautiful day, the type of blissful weather that Sara had always missed when working grave. The sky was a mesmerising shade of blue, the warm sun casting a shadow of her bike gliding along underneath her, the desert around them suddenly taking on a rugged beauty. Sara felt a ray of hope as she rode along beside Grissom, as if the road was her guiding her back to a sorely missed reality. Perhaps, everything would be okay. It was possible the newspaper was a spoof item, some kind of ridiculous joke they had run afoul of, possible that it had all been a bizarre misunderstanding. Maybe, when they reached Vegas they would be rescued, and everything would be okay. But as they rode along and they quickly picked up speed – the flat landscape perfect for cycling – she felt her positivity waver. Even for a desert Nevada highway, it was quiet. Too quiet.
Ahead of her, she saw Nick glance over his shoulder at the highway behind them.
"It's quiet," he called out. "I thought we would've seen a car by now. A highway transport truck or something."
"Maybe it's just the time of day," Warrick suggested. "Not too much traffic early morning. Most long haul transport happens overnight."
Sara glanced behind her, and saw the miles of dead straight road stretching out behind them. It was a lonely sight.
"Let's just keep going," Grissom said calmly. "There's no point speculating, we'll know soon enough."
"Yeah, I know," Nick said. "Don't count your chickens, right?"
It seemed to Sara like a pessimistic choice of phrase, but before she could comment he had rolled ahead to join Sofia. Sara allowed herself to look around the landscape, and began to notice other things beyond the beauty of rugged Nevada: besides the road being eerily deserted, it was covered in places with fine sprinkles of desert sand, as if a wind had blown it over, and as if there had been no vehicles to blow it back. She would have expected to see tyre marks going through, yet there were none. It was odd.
She glanced to Grissom, and saw from his studied gaze of the landscape that despite his words of calm, he was as alert as she was. She took a deep breath, vowing to steady her nerves.
They rode for miles before the road finally began to slope upwards, and Sara's keen CSI eye spotted a car ahead in the distance.
"We've got a vehicle!" she shouted.
She pointed off into the brush, where the faded red sedan lay partially hidden by scrubland. It looked like it had veered straight off the road, the front end buried in a bush. The paintwork and licence plate were faded.
Sara rolled to a stop beside Nick, her legs aching.
"Looks like an accident," he said, putting the stand down on his bike.
"Not a recent one," Sara added. She spotted that the branches of the bush it had crashed in had grown through the twisted metal. The car had evidently been there for some time – months at least.
Nick made to move, but spotting something else, Sara quickly grabbed his arm.
"What?" he prompted, confused. "You don't want to look?"
But Sara's mind was racing far ahead, making quick connections, and she had to steady herself to explain.
"There's a body in the front seat," she replied.
XXX
Grissom intervened. Swiftly summing up the situation as quickly as she had, he held up a hand to pause them.
"No one step any closer," he ordered.
She heard the tremor in his voice, and knew straightaway that he was thinking the same thing she was. Looking unnerved, he walked around the car, keeping a careful radius of ten yards between himself and the vehicle. Sara moved with him, and through the passenger side window saw the body come into view. It had been picked clean by insects and scavengers, old torn clothes hanging on a near skeleton. It looked like a woman, but ominously to Sara, she was still strapped in, and the car did not look that crumpled.
"Doesn't look like a road fatality," Catherine said, voicing the thought for her. "Crash doesn't look consistent with a serious injury."
"It looks relatively intact," Sofia said, circling with them.
"Natural causes, you think?" Nick suggested.
There was a faint trace of hope in his voice – one which Sara couldn't bear to dispel.
"Doubt it," Sofia said, who evidently had no such reservations. "That body's been here for months. PD should have picked up this up by now. The fact that they haven't is significant."
"It's in clear view of the highway," Warrick added. "No reason they should miss it."
"Exactly," Sofia replied. "Which means –"
"That maybe they haven't picked it up because they can't," Grissom finished for her.
Catherine nodded, looking suddenly grave.
"You're talking about the pandemic," she said. "That it wasn't investigated because PD no longer exists?"
She paused.
"Are we seriously suggesting that?"
"I'm not suggesting anything," Sofia said quickly. But she glanced each way around the desert, and her eyes fell back on the road. There were still no cars.
"Well we'll soon know," Sara said, trying to sound brave. "Vegas is just over that hill. It should tell us, one way or the other. We won't need to hypothesise."
"But let's just say this is the plague," Warrick said worriedly. "And Vegas is just over that rise. Do we really want to go there? If this is all true, the dumbest thing we can do right now is head for a city or populated area."
"We need to know either way," Catherine said. "Like we discussed back in town."
Sara nodded in agreement, but did not feel good about it. They had sat down in town and spoken at length about their next step, and they had all agreed that though it was risky, they had to find out the truth. But now it was here, and she was barely a mile away from whatever was waiting for them, she felt her heart begin to beat with trepidation. Something was not right.
"We won't touch anything," Sofia reiterated. "If we keep our hands to ourselves we should be fine."
"And if it looks bad, we don't have to go into the town," Grissom added. "We should be able to see from just over the hill what's happening. There won't be any need to go closer."
"You're talking like it's a done deal," Catherine said. "You know this may just be coincidence?"
"I don't know," Warrick said darkly. "I have a fair bit of experience with coincidence, and it doesn't look like this."
But Catherine had already moved to fetch her bike, and did not hear him. They proceeded down the road with renewed caution, Sara's senses peeled for any traffic or abnormality, but the feeling of deep unease in her chest only grew. She saw Grissom look at her several times, but said nothing. A short way ahead they rode through a cutting and emerged on the other side with a full view down into the valley of Vegas below.
Sara stopped, brakes screeching to a halt, not knowing which way to look first.
It was utter devastation. Las Vegas technically was still present, but it was a mere shell of a city, like an animal that had shed its skin and moved on. It was lifeless, the sprawling suburbs and towering casinos in the distance devoid of any light or movement, the city strangely grey despite the bright sunlight. Cars lay abandoned in city streets, and down the road ahead of them, an old military roadblock was visible. Several of the barricades had blown down or been knocked over, and it seemed that whoever had occupied it was long gone. But that was not the worst. The worst sight of all was outside the city edge, where a sprawling mass graveyard was visible. Row upon row of white crosses stood bright in the scorching sun, and Sara did a quick sum in her head and estimated there to be thousands. Farther on, behind them, an excavator lay abandoned on a pile of dirt, and the large rectangle of soil was a different colour to the rest. She felt a lump in her throat, and knew what it was – a mass grave.
Nick swore.
"Oh my God," Grissom breathed.
"Well there's your answer," Warrick said softly.
The deathly silence stretched into the vacant air.
Sara knew she should turn away, but all the logical reasons for doing so suddenly abandoned her. She felt the sight tugging at her, as if her heart valves had tied themselves into stinging knots. So many crosses, as far as her eye could see …
Catherine moved, beginning a solemn ride down the hill, and without thinking, Sara followed. At the road block they wove through the fallen barricades, and headed like a magnet for the make-shift cemetery.
A long line of hazard tape blocked their entrance, periodic warning signs denying them entrance, but Catherine dropped her bike and ducked under without hesitating. She made her way along the lines of graves, and Sara saw the white crosses had names written on them in black marker. She knew they had been the first casualties; buried hastily, but still with care. Later, when the numbers grew, the mass grave had been dug by those unlucky enough to be left. And now, there was no sign of anyone at all. Had a single person survived?
She stared down at the crosses, immobile as Catherine continued to walk transfixed amongst them. She heard a clatter as more bikes were dropped into the dust, and then Grissom's hand around her elbow. Warrick moved ahead to Catherine's side, where she had stopped a few rows in, staring at one grave in particular.
Warrick's eyes widened.
"Griss?" he said softly.
There was something in the way his eyes passed over Sara that made her move, and though she didn't think she could bear any more, she went to look.
Her eyes dropped to the name on the cross, and she froze, stunned.
Sara Sidle.
A/N: Upping the pace, now. Can't believe how long I dithered over whose name to put on that grave. Poor Grissom - something to think about there. Wanted to put a lot more into this chapter, but in the end it didn't fit, so it'll have to wait for the next one - sigh. Thanks to those who keep reading and encouraging me, I hope you're still finding this interesting and not too abominably slow LOL.