It was only an eight-foot climb to the top. I dug my fingers in the cold clay and pushed myself up the side. In my normal state, I could have run up, but now it seemed just about insurmountable. This isn’t Everest, I thought grimly, you don’t have to be Junko Tabei. Or maybe I did: I’d be the first woman to climb not Everest, but a pit near Lake Calumet. The National Geographic Society would wine and dine me. I got my hands over the lip of the pit and pulled myself onto the springy turf. When I looked back down, Mitch had stood up, and was walking nervously between Marcena and the side I’d just climbed.

I gave him another hand gesture to lie down. He didn’t obey me, but when he saw I wasn’t moving out of his range of vision he returned to Marcena and curled up next to her.

I stood with my hands in my jeans pockets for a bit, watching the army of blue trucks crawling around the landfill. It was funny that I could hear the engines: the trucks looked so far away. Maybe I was close enough to walk to them, really. Maybe I only thought they were far off because I’d lost my sense of time and space. When people fast for a long time, they start seeing visions. They think angels are coming down from the heavens to them, just like I did now, I could see it dropping from the clouds, a giant shape that was coming toward me, with a horrible racket that blocked out every thought I’d ever had.

I put my hands over my ears. I was losing my mind—this wasn’t an angel, it was a helicopter. Someone had taken my SOS seriously. I stumbled toward the machine as a stranger in a leather bomber jacket jumped down, ducking to get clear of the blades.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded when he’d run across the turf to me.

“They’re down there.” I pointed into the pit. “Get your stretcher crew out; I don’t know what kind of injuries the woman has.”

“I can’t hear you,” the man said irritably. “Where the hell is Billy?”

“Billy?” I croaked, putting my lips close to his ear. “You mean Billy the Kid? I haven’t seen him since church on Sunday. This is Marcena Love. And I think Romeo—Bron Czernin. They need to get to a hospital. Don’t you have a stretcher on that thing?”