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I watched Calverton through the broken glass. He went around the other side of the shack, to where an old doghouse sat.
“What about you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Arden tried to smile but her face looked strained. “I’ll distract them. Don’t worry—I’ll meet you in Califia,” she said. “I’ll find the road again. ”
“No,” I said, wiping at my eyes. I wanted to believe her, but I knew how impossible it would be, for either of us, to make it on our own. “You can’t. I’d rather be taken to the City, I don’t care, just don’t—”
“You would do the same for me,” she interrupted. “You already did. ”
She didn’t wait for me to respond. She slipped her hand from mine and darted out into the yard. Richards sprang up from his position at the deck and chased her, Calverton following close behind. They kept running, their backs disappearing beyond the gate.
Gunshots broke the silence. I waited, scared I’d hear Arden scream. But there was only the soldier’s voice, moving farther out, and heavy footsteps pounding the dry earth.
I started toward the fence, pulling the chair to it as Arden had instructed. I imagined her there, her hand on my arm, guiding me over. I ran in the opposite direction, imagining the blue shock of her sweater winding through the trees. Sometimes I saw her turn to me, her cheeks flushed red, or nod off to a trail, signaling for us to change direction. I kept going, the massive rocks behind me, cutting into the sky. It wasn’t until the air cooled and the woods dimmed that I stopped, and realized I was completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-nine
TIME PASSED. TWO DAYS, MAYBE THREE. I HAD NO REASON to count.
I lay in the brown-ringed bathtub of an abandoned house, holding a dull knife. My feet were bloodied and bare. I’d run so far my laces had broken and I’d lost my shoes somewhere along the way.
Drifting in and out of sleep, I pictured the cellar: Otis and Marjorie, their bodies in a tangled, writhing heap. Lark’s face pressed into the cold cement floor. The smell of gunpowder and blood. Calverton pausing to wipe a scuff from his boot. Arden’s fingers digging desperately into my arm. Richards’s eyes, gray and unfeeling, meeting mine.
It should’ve been the first thing I said when I awoke. It should’ve been a priority to tell of the message, of the way I’d used the radio. Instead, I’d buzzed happily on the thrill of the dream, on that silly fantasy of Caleb in his room.
I wondered if there was something inside me that was rotten. I had left Pip. I had left Pip and Ruby and Marjorie and Otis and Lark, moving swiftly forward, their lives in my horrible wake. I didn’t want to witness any of it anymore, the boarded-up homes and the tattered red flags hanging from cracked windows, PLAGUE printed across them in black. The children were too young to be motherless. I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.
There was no desire to eat, no desire to move. I hadn’t drunk anything in days. My legs were frail and my back burned. As the sun slipped below the window ledge I dropped the knife, knowing that if I stayed there in that tub, the end would come before the troops did.
The warmth of the day vanished. Hours came, hours went. In the moments between unconsciousness, I was with Arden, behind the shack. I had the sudden vision of her face in the light, her words: You would do the same for me. That memory gave way to one of my mother standing at the doorway as she watched me loaded onto the truck. I saw the plate of eggs that Marjorie slid in front of me, felt the way Arden had tucked my toes beneath the blanket, Otis’s wrinkled hand covering my own.
My body curled and seized, ridden with shame. In School and out of School, I had believed that love was a liability—something that could be wielded against you. I began to weep, finally knowing the truth: love was death’s only adversary, the only thing powerful enough to combat its clawing, desperate grasp.
I would not remain there. I would not give in. If only for Arden, if only for Marjorie and Otis, if only for my mother. I love you, I love you, I love you.
I heaved myself out of the tub. I was weak. The house was now dim. Broken tiles cut at my feet. The rotted floorboards threatened more splinters. Bile caked the front of my tattered gray sweater. I didn’t care. I searched each room, moving with slow determination. I found a dented tin beneath the refrigerator and kept going through cupboards and drawers. I ran my hand over bookshelves until I discovered what it was I’d been looking for.
The atlas was like the one Teacher Florence had shown us our eleventh year of School, its edges bound with leather. I studied the pages, looking at meaningless green stretches of land. I flipped over maps of strange places with names like Tonga, Afghanistan, El Salvador. There was so much of the world I’d never known about. I wondered what those places looked like, if they were vast stretches of land or peaked with mountains or perhaps lush, tropical paradises. Had they all been ravaged by the plague as we had?
Turning page after page, nothing resembled anything I recognized. On the shelf beside it was another one, thinner. In it lines crisscrossed the maps, each one dotted with a number. I finally found it: Route 80. My finger traced it all the way across the page, to where it met a blue mass. The ocean.
For the first time in days, my terror gave way to possibility. I studied the maps, ripping out the pages that said Sedona, Arizona, the green area below Route 80, and the places called Los Angeles and San Francisco. I pieced it all together on the floor, locating the giant lake Caleb had lived on—Tahoe.
Tomorrow morning I would scavenge supplies and go north toward Califia. I couldn’t stay another day in the house, just waiting to die. Even if the troops found me, even if I collapsed out in the desert, in the shadow of those great rocks, I had to move. I had to at least try.
Chapter Thirty
I SET OUT EARLY, BEFORE THE BIRDS AWOKE. I FOUND A rusted tin of peas, and ate half for dinner and half for breakfast, drinking the last of the congealed liquid inside. Moving from house to house, scouring the neighborhood, I discovered two more unlabeled cans and a jar of jam. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to take me a few days, until I found another place safe enough to rest.
The morning was cold as I moved north, through the short shrubs beside the roads. I pulled my sweater close to me, grateful to whoever had lived in that house. They’d left a few changes of clothes and a pair of size eight sneakers, NIKE written across the sides. The map directed me over more desert, to where land stretched out a golden brown. I walked as fast as I could, my legs still weak, stopping every hour to take a fingerful of jam, the sweet sugary rush providing more fuel.
Just before noon I reached an intersection. Rusted cars filled a large parking lot, and across from it stood a brick building with broken windows, BANK OF AMERICA written on its front in red.
I was walking toward a ransacked supermarket when I heard a strange sound. My body recognized it before my memory did: a car’s engine. I darted through the broken front door of the bank and inside, where desks lined the windows. I crawled underneath and waited.
The car drove slowly down the street. From my hiding place I could hear the familiar roar, the crunching sound of garbage breaking under its weight. My hands shook when the car paused, puttering for a moment as if taking one long, dreadful breath. Then it started on its way again.