Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(28)

I nodded, but the truth was, I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was stupid. This had been the plan. We figure out who she is and get her off the mountain; then things go back to normal. I should have been relieved—I wanted to be relieved—but when I thought of her being gone, I don’t know, it was like all the air had rushed out of me.

“Hey! You okay? What’s wrong?”

I thought Greer was talking to me, but when I looked up, I saw that the girl was at the fence, head down, with her back to us. The ID was clamped in her hands. When she moved to return it to Greer, I saw that she was crying.

“What?” he said as he scanned the license again. “You don’t like the name? I think Marianne is nice. We could call you Mari if you want.”

No response. Greer looked at me, helpless, and handed the card over. It was a New York driver’s license all right and it was definitely her in the picture, green hair and all, but there was something about it, something I couldn’t put my finger on. And then it hit me all at once.

“It’s fake,” I said.

Greer plucked the card out of my hand. “What? No way. How do you know?”

I started to answer, but the girl interrupted me.

“Marianne Dashwood.”

Her back was pressed up against the fence, and she was clutching at the key around her neck. Her eyes were puffy and red. Greer looked to me, confused.

“She’s a character in a book called Sense and Sensibility,” I said.

“Well, maybe her parents just—”

“The address isn’t real either,” I explained. “Eighteen eleven Austen Street? Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Greer said. “Why would she have been carrying a fake ID? Where would she have even gotten one?”

I knelt down and opened the backpack again. There had to be something else there. I turned the thing inside out, but there were no pictures, no bank cards, no phone, no other ID. I went through the wallet, but all Greer had missed when he found the license was some cash in small bills. As I counted through them, a scrap of paper fell to the ground. It was rumpled and torn, but as soon as I unfolded it, I could see what it was. A Greyhound bus ticket stub.

It was for a route that ran from some town in Indiana to one that was barely an hour from Black River. But why would someone keep a bus ticket in her wallet for over six months? Just as that thought went through my head, I saw it. A few numbers printed at the bottom. The wallet dropped out of my hands.

“What’s up, Card? You got something?”

I handed Greer the ticket. It took him only a second to see the same thing I did. “But that’s not—”

“What is it?” the girl asked.

When Greer didn’t answer, she snatched the ticket out of his hand. “So what?” she said. “You said some people were just passing through when—”

I took a step toward her. “Look at the departure date on the bottom.”

The girl did and then looked up at me, uncomprehending.

“That was three days ago.”

None of us moved. When the girl spoke again, her voice was hard and small.

“But . . . you said the town’s been quarantined for months.”

I turned to Greer. “Was there a charity group at the supply drop yesterday?”

“Yeah, some church was helping out, I think. Oh! That’s it! I heard they came in the day before to get ready. She must have gotten permission to cross into the QZ to do some charity work and then ended up getting infected.”

It made sense, but something about it didn’t feel right. I turned it all over in my head. A bus ticket and a fake ID sitting in a mostly empty backpack. No phone. No ATM card. Her hair had been dyed recently. Each piece clicked together like the sides of a frame. When the picture inside emerged, I felt something cold in the pit of my stomach.

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“Then what?” Greer asked.

I studied the girl as she stood there holding the ticket in her trembling hand. She looked exactly as she had the first time I’d seen her. Hunted. Frightened. Lost. But strong too. I took a breath to steady myself and looked her in the eye.

“You did it on purpose,” I said. “You came here because you wanted to get infected.”

“What?” Greer exclaimed. “No way, man.”

“People have tried before. Gonzalez said—”

“That every now and then some mental case throws himself against the fence. You think that’s who she is? No. Uh-uh.”

The girl had started backing away toward the gate. Greer went after her.

“Listen, Card thinks he knows everything, but trust me, he’s not as smart as he—”

Greer tried to grab her arm to keep her from leaving, but she drove both hands into his chest and knocked him to the ground. She threw herself through the gate and into the street. I called out to her, but she ran past City Hall and St. Stephen’s and then down Elm Street. Greer groaned as he rolled over.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Fine,” Greer said. “See? Told you. Former Navy SEAL. Come on, we better go after her.”

I went back for her bag. As I stuffed her things inside, I saw a splash of yellow tangled up in the thorns of a rosebush near the fence. A thin jacket, like a Windbreaker. I remembered her saying she’d been hot as the virus took hold. I yanked it off the thorns and immediately felt something in the pocket. I reached inside and pulled it out. It was a small sealed envelope. On the front, in neat block letters, it said: