North is where the biologist had fled, and he knew where she would end up: It was right there in her field notes. A precipice she knew better than almost anyone, where the land fell away into the sea, and the sea rushed up onto the rocks. He just had to be prepared. Central might catch up to him before he got there. But lurking behind them might be something even darker and more vast, and that was the killing joke. That the thing catching up with all of them would be even less merciful—and would question them until, like a towel wrung dry and then left out in the sun, they were nothing but brittle husks and hollows.
Unless he made it north in time. If she was there. If she knew anything.
* * *
He left the motel early, just as the sun appeared, grabbed breakfast at a café, and continued north. Here it was all cliffs and sharp curves and the sense that you might dive off into the sky around each upward bend. That the little thought you always overrode—to stop turning the wheel to match the road—might not be stifled this time and you’d gun the engine and push on into the air, and snuff out every secret thing you knew and didn’t want to know. The temperature rarely rose above seventy-five, and the landscape soon became lush—the greens more intense than in the south, the rain when it came a kind of mist so unlike the hellish downpours he’d become used to.
At a general store in a tiny town called Selk that had a gas station whose antiquated pumps didn’t take credit cards, he bought a large knapsack, filled it with about thirty pounds of supplies. He bought a hunting knife, plenty of batteries, an ax, lighters, and a lot more. He didn’t know what he’d need or how much she’d need, how long he might be out there in the wilderness, searching for her. Would her reaction be what he wanted it to be—and what reaction was that? Assuming she was even there. He imagined himself years from now, bearded, living off the land, making carvings like his father, alone, slowly fading into the backdrop from the weight of solitude.
The cashier asked him his name, as part of a sales pitch for a local charity, and he said “John,” and from that point on, he used his real name again. Not Control, not any of the aliases that had gotten him this far. It was a common name. It didn’t stand out. It didn’t mean anything.
He continued the tactics he’d been using, though. Domestic terrorism had made him familiar with a lot of rural areas. For his second assignment out of training, he had spent time in the Midwest on the road between county health departments, under the guise of helping update immunization software. But he’d really been tracking down data on members of a militia. He knew back roads from that other life and took to them as if he’d never left, used all the tricks with no effort although it had been a long time since he’d used them. There was even a kind of stressful freedom to it, an exhilaration and simplicity he hadn’t known for a long time. Then, like now, he’d doubted every pickup truck, especially if it had a mud-obscured license plate, every slow driver, every hitchhiker. Then, as now, he’d picked local roads with dirt side roads that allowed him to double back. He used detailed printed maps, no GPS. He had almost wavered on his cell phone, but had thrown it into the ocean, hadn’t bought a temporary to replace it. He knew he could have bought something that couldn’t be traced, but anyone he called would no doubt be bugged by now. The urge to call any of his relatives, to try his mother one last time, had faded with the miles. If he’d had something to say, he should have picked up the phone a long time ago.
* * *
Sometimes he thought of the director as he drove. Along the banks of a glistening, shallow lake in a valley surrounded by mountains, ripping off pieces of sausage bought at a farmers’ market. The color of the sky so light a blue yet so untroubled by clouds that it didn’t seem real. The girl in the old black-and-white photo. The way she had fixated on the lighthouse but never referred to the lighthouse keeper. Because she had been there. Because she had been there until almost the end. What had she seen? What had she known? Who had known about her? Had Grace known? The hard work to find the levers and means to eventually be hired by the Southern Reach. Had anyone along the way known her secret and thought it was a good idea, as opposed to a compromising of the agency? Why was she hiding what she knew about the lighthouse keeper? These questions worried at him—missed opportunities, being behind, too much focus on plant-and-mouse, on the Voice, on Whitby, or maybe he would have seen it earlier. The files he still had with him didn’t help, having the photograph there in the passenger seat didn’t help.
* * *