It released a low woof. Alerted, the coyotes squared to the challenge, bristling and hunching their backs. The dog stopped at thirty yards and woofed louder. It knew better than to fight. At the same time, the coyotes seemed to know they had been vanquished. Sure enough, a gunshot fractured the stalemate and the coyotes skulked away looking over their shoulders. The black dog followed woofing and snarling at a distance until all four disappeared.

Now a heavy old woman limped down the opposite hillside. She gripped a rifle. With each lumbering footfall, a long gray braid swung behind her. She dragged herself stiffly between the several smaller sod structures. Then, as she entered what Bender had identified as the house, she seemed to vanish directly into the hillside.

“Stay here and cover me.”

When Bender was ready, the sheriff descended two hundred feet through buckthorn and berry brambles and reached level ground through a reef of red-tinged sumac. The first low sod building had a rounded roof that merged with the terrain on either side and framed a hobbit door of hewn wood. She bandoliered her rifle and opened the door. From inside came a sweetly nauseating stench, mysterious until her eyes adjusted to make out shelved walls stacked with canning jars, some ruptured and billowing mold. A root cellar. She swallowed back her revulsion as she closed the door.

The next structure, another low, freestanding dome, contained tools and hardware, cans of diesel fuel and gasoline, coils of cable and wire, lumber, nails, the requirements of self-sufficiency. She hunched beneath the roof and probed the corners with her Maglite. Nothing else to see. She closed the door.

She crossed the creek on stepping-stones. The contents of the next structure astonished her: bundles and bales of decomposing, mouse-chewed newspapers. With hesitant fingers she separated the layers of one bale, mid-heap, and found a masthead: New York Times, Saturday, December 5, 2015. Above this was a Broadcaster of the same vintage. Below it, a Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The bales were bound with twine.

As she ducked and followed her flashlight into what Bender had called the garage, she held her breath, sick with fear at the sight of Leroy Fanta’s old Tercel. Beside it was a rusted, mud-spattered Bronco, its last renewal tag 2009. Next was an empty slot.

She reeled out into blinding sunshine. As she tried to signal Bender—No white truck!—she heard the door of the house creak open behind her.

CHAPTER 41

Taylor could not read the road signs. He worried that the man couldn’t see with his frog eyes and would drive them right off into a ditch. This had almost happened twice, and by the time Taylor saw any signs the words were flashing by too fast.

But then they were on gravel and he knew.

“Sir, this isn’t the right way.”