Jason Numec drove the black Chevy Suburban through the blowing snow. Delbert Mackai sat beside him, an unwilling passenger. He wiped a little circle in the fogged-up window. Just beyond the shoulder of the road, Little Blitzen Gorge yawned like a huge mouth, sucking the snow down into its swirling depths. Delbert could practically hear the famished groans of the old cannibal-monster, the Indian-crusher, who in olden days carved out Little Blitzen Gorge with an obsidian knife. At least that was the story Delbert used to tell his granddaughter, Demi, when they went hunting together on the mountain. But Demi was older now, old enough to laugh at the cannibal's groans, old enough to know that Little Blitzen Gorge had been carved by a glacier. Old enough to hunt on her own.

Numec's gravelly voice broke the silence. "I'm curious. Where did you find it?"

Delbert had been rummaging his memory ever since the doctor arrived. "There was this lonely fellow living down across the border in Denio. One day he died, and he didn't have any family. People said he was from our band, way back, you know, so they loaded up his things and dumped them in front of my house. I gave it all away, except for that wooden box."

"Do you know how he came by it?"

"I wouldn't know that, but it didn't come from around here, that's for sure. A long time ago, I asked a university professor to look at it, and he said it came from Europe a thousand years ago. It came over the Atlantic Ocean with some Viking explorer, can you believe it? He said it was important, but he didn't say why."

"It is important. And it's far older than he said. For two thousand years, that wooden box has been making its way steadily westward, always westward, working its way back home. I think it was looking for you, Delbert. You and this mountain. Can't you feel its gravity?" He nodded toward the uncertain terrain ahead. "It's like a knot in the fabric of the universe. So many threads pass through this place."

Delbert met Numec's strange words with silence. Looking out his window again, he searched the snow for Demi, imagining her in every shrub and boulder.

"Why did you bury it?" Numec asked after a little while.

Delbert pursed his lips.

"Ah, you didn't want him taking it. You didn't want this white university professor taking it."

Delbert knitted his knobby fingers together. "I was younger then. There I was, an Indian with something of theirs for a change, my very own white artifact, and an important one at that. So I thought I'd just keep it a little while, you know, the way some white folks keep Indian artifacts."

Numec laughed. "You couldn't have chosen a more precious thing to keep from them."

"What do you mean?"

"That artifact you buried holds information that could save this world from the plague that's about to wipe it out. In a matter of months, every human being on this planet will be dead. Except for the native people of North and South America. We alone will endure."

"That's what the doctor said about this JCAV virus."

"So he's given it a name." Numec turned to face Delbert. "Who's he working for?"

Delbert hesitated. "I don't know, but he seems to think you had something to do with making the virus. He says you were the only one with the technology back when it was released."

Numec returned his gaze to the road ahead. "He's right. I was the only one with the technology back then. But I had nothing to do with making it."

"Then who made it?"

"Somebody, in some dark laboratory, somewhere, a hundred years from now, a decade, a thousand years. Nobody remembers."

Again Delbert was speechless.

"You went to boarding school. I'm sure the missionaries taught you about Noah and the ark."

Delbert ran his fingers through the white stubble of his hair. "Are you trying to say this virus is some sort of punishment?"

"And we are the righteous ones, Delbert, just like the house of Noah."

"I want to do right by my people, I truly do. We've suffered more than most. Hell, I've even dreamed about Wovoka's prophecy coming true. But my God, Jason, this isn't right. This is evil." He shook his head. "And I'll have nothing to do with it."

"You're wrong, Delbert. The survivors of this plague will build a world more righteous and just than anything you can imagine."

Numec peered up through the windshield just in time to catch a raven sailing low overhead, wings tucked in as it arced over the road and down into the gorge to their right. "Now and then, the world must be destroyed so that better seeds can take root. Time after time, the gods sacrifice humanity on earth's altar. Every culture tells the same story. The Hebrews and their flood. The Norse and Ragnarok. The Hindu myth of Manu and Matsya. The Five Suns of the Aztecs. Even your mountain band tells the same story."

It was the first story Delbert remembered, there by the winter fire, a small child wrapped in a Pendleton blanket. Gray Wolf, the Creator, saw how corrupt the world had grown, so he burned it all to the ground and started over from scratch. "But those are just stories, you know?"

"Not stories," said Numec. "Memories."

"But billions of innocent people are going to die. My God."

"Does anyone weep for the innocents who died in the flood? Does anyone even give them a single thought? No, they celebrate the rainbow and the new covenant." He shook his head as if to rid it of any lingering doubt. "It's a small price to pay. Compared to all those who have yet to live, compared to the wholeness of things, it's a tiny price to pay." He reached up and touched the ugly scar that split his left eyebrow. "This world has grown old and decrepit, twisted by war and poverty and ignorance. It's time for it to die. It will burn to ashes so that better seeds can sprout."

Ahead, the road skirted a rocky knoll before mounting the edge of a knife-like ridge. To either side, jagged cliffs tumbled down through the swirling snow.

At last, the road delivered them to a high overlook, a lonely pulpit in the clouds, the summit of Steens Mountain.

Numec brought the vehicle to a stop. "Now, show me where you buried that box."

***

Peter leaned forward, his fingers digging into the chair's armrests. Davila stood in the entryway just ten feet away. A sleeved arm extended from behind the dividing wall, its leather-gloved hand gripping the back of Davila's collar. Another gloved hand pressed the barrel of a gun to the base of her skull. She hung there like a coat, arms dangling, the snowball dripping through the loose clutch of her left hand and soaking the splint. She fell to her knees and bowed forward. The holster at the small of her back was empty.

From behind the dividing wall peeked head of slick jet hair and a pair of honey-colored eyes. They latched onto Peter, narrowing down.

Jesus.

"So, you both survived the fire," said Gryphus, firming up his grip on Davila's collar. He craned his neck. "Where's the doctor?"

To Peter's right, the vague form of Brisling's brown suit was rising up from the couch. An arm stretched for something on the dividing wall behind the stove. The sheepherder's tools.

Peter forced an answer past the clot of adrenaline in his throat. "You mean the guy on the kitchen floor?"

He aimed his gun at Peter's chest. "Don't lie to me."

Peter opened his mouth to speak, but the words crumbled on his lips. His gaze slid down Davila's arm to her left hand, now a fist, the snowball crushed within it, the splint ripped loose. Rivulets of icy water dripped from her knuckles onto the wood floor.

"Hoo-ah!" Brisling leaped out from behind the dividing wall with a pair of rusty sheep shears held like a bayonet.

Peter sprang from the chair and launched himself at Gryphus, arms wide for the tackle, eyes closed. The blast came a split second later, heavy and muffled, like the wallop of a down pillow. It jumbled his senses: the cold ring of metal on metal, the tug of a bullet passing through the fabric of his jacket, the rush of falling, palms scraping the gritty floor.

He lay face down. A brass shell danced by his ear, the stench of gunpowder settling around it. Something dense thudded against the floorboards, and he turned his head. There lay Gryphus's gun, smoking. And there lay the snowball, a perfect cast of Davila's fist, like an apple core. She still knelt with her head bowed, but her left fist was held high in triumph. In it, she grasped the handle of the knife from the kitchen, its blade buried to the hilt in the soft flesh just below Gryphus's rib cage.

He teetered, swayed, and crumpled to the floor.

In a flash, Davila grabbed Gryphus's gun and jumped to her feet. Straddling him, she gripped the weapon with both hands and took aim. Brisling reached out to stop her, but it was too late. With a primal scream, she pulled the trigger, over and over until her lungs were empty and blue smoke filled the room.