7th Sigma Read Online Free PDF Page A

and here the dirt-rut detour returned to the county road. Ruth said, “Let’s take a look-see from the river side.” They lowered the travois into the wash and carefully moved toward the river bluff, but there weren’t any bugs in the wash itself. Those landing there by chance would be washed into the river and, unless substantial metal was uncovered, they wouldn’t be drawn there purposefully.
    The wash cut down to a layer of volcanic tuff as it neared the river and when they reached the edge there was a drop of about fifteen feet to the bosque.
    Back before the bugs, the river had been drained for irrigation projects, taking it down to a mere stream most days, but the bugs had wreaked havoc on metal pipes and pumps and gate gears and reinforced concrete. There were still ditch projects that used the water, but nowhere near as much of the river’s volume was diverted and, as a result, the Puerco flowed steadily most days and flooded on others, making the bosque below verdant.
    There were a few bugs in the bosque but not as many as they’d seen near the old road. Cautiously, Ruth climbed up the side of the wash to the bluff top, well away from the road. “Huh.” She stood.
    â€œCan I come up?”
    She crouched and extended her arm, then hauled Kimble up.
    Once you got some fifty feet from the road, there was only one serious cluster of bugs intruding into the property, where an old path or driveway had let people dump their junk out of sight, but it was in the northern third of the land. As they cautiously walked back and forth, the area between the old road and the bluff’s edge was clear of bugs.
    Kimble and Ruth carefully approached the active cluster of bugs set in another shallow wash lined with vivid green grass and brush. “Looks like an old tractor, maybe.”
    Most of it was underground, so Kimble asked, “Why do you say that?”
    She pointed at large chunks of black rubber. “Those were the tire lugs, for pushing the wheels through loose dirt. You don’t see lugs that big on trucks or cars.”
    â€œIf you say so.” Kimble had been outside once, visiting relatives while his mother was still alive, but his memories of the trip had mostly been movies and cartoons played on a cousin’s HD. Cars had also made an impression but the tires on them had been smooth.
    â€œYou’d think the tractor would be gone by now,” Ruth said.
    Bugs reproduced by binary fission, growing additional selves as they ate. One bug was two in three weeks, four in six, eight in nine, and so on. A year would see one bug become two hundred and sixty thousand if they could find the metal for unchecked growth, and it had been fifteen years since the bugs had appeared.
    â€œLook,” said Kimble. “There’s water in the wash.” He pointed at a trickle of water along the lower edge.
    Bugs hated water. You could survive a swarm if you got into water fast enough.
    â€œSo there is. I didn’t see any water running under the road, did you?”
    Kimble frowned for a second. “Or through any of the cuts. No.”
    â€œIf that ground is soaking wet, it would slow them down, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œIt might,” agreed Kimble.
    They walked into the shallow wash closer to the bluff, where there were no bugs. Ruth dropped to her knees and dug her hand into the sand. The top four inches was dry, the next four inches was damp, and below that water seeped into the hole.
    â€œThat’s a lot of water, for here, this high above the river.”
    They walked the perimeter again. The water didn’t flow over the homestead boundaries but came out of a rock formation about fifty feet from the road. It flowed five feet down the limestone face and then into the shallow wash, which, without discussing it, they started calling the “wet” wash.
    They made a fire back by the bluff and put water in the ceramic pot for tea.
    â€œIt would