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The village sprawls across the grassy hillside, tumbling towards the flood plain below. Rob’s pixelated low-res satellite photos said that Noah’s facility occupied the opposite hill, separated from the village by an unbridged river, but it’s hard to see that way with the sun in my eyes. A decrepit horse trailer, sides streaked with rain-driven rust, slouches on the near edge of town, its wheels bludgeoned off and the chassis leveled with chunks of wood. No electrical lines, no phone lines. The steady breeze carries the smells of manure and old smoke.
But there’s no new smoke.
Even in this heat, people need cooking fires. One of these twenty or thirty ramshackle shacks should have at least a sputter of smoke for the wind to shred. Coming over the hill, I should have seen people walkin
