“You’re watching it like a clock,” I said now, pointing to the sun.
“It is my clock. And my compass and my calendar.” He brought his finger to his chin to feign surprise. “Seems like there are some things you don’t know after all . . .”
I glanced behind me, to Arden. She was picking at the dirt beneath her fingernails, oblivious. I knew Caleb was our best bet for safety. He had stayed with me at the river, hiding me in the fallen helicopter, for what reason I couldn’t be sure. I still didn’t understand his motivations, or believe we could trust him completely. I didn’t like the way he always seemed to be mocking me, or how he pressed me last night with questions I didn’t want to answer.
“Look, Caleb,” I said, enunciating his name. “We appreciate your help. But we never asked for it.”
“Yes,” Caleb said. “You reminded me of that. An hour ago . . . and this morning . . . and when you agreed to come back to camp. You’ll stay a night, take our food, then I am to escort you back to Route eighty so you can move on to Califia. I got it.”
He led us down another road, which dead-ended into a row of decrepit houses. Floodwaters had swept through, leaving a brown ring on the shingles a foot above the front doors. A message was spray painted across a brick facade: DYING. PLEASE HELP.
“Who’s hungry?” Caleb asked.
Before we could answer, he bounded up the splintered front steps and disappeared into the house.
“Guess this is our lunch stop . . .” Arden murmured, following him.
Inside, the floorboards were warped and broken. Mold bloomed black on the walls. I covered my nose with my T-shirt, trying to block out the smell. In the corner of the room was a giant frame of sorts, its shattered front creating a design like a star.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to it.
Caleb moved through the living room, stepping over waterlogged books and mounds of putrid, rotting garbage. Arden and I slowly followed.
“A television,” he said, as we reached the doorway to the kitchen.
I nodded, but I only vaguely recognized the term. The center of it looked like it could’ve contained something valuable. The rotted sofa was facing it, as if a whole family sat there to stare at it.
Every cabinet in the kitchen was open, the cupboards strewn with dirty plastic forks and empty cans. A few chairs lay on the floor, their seats ripped, exposing mildewed gray insides. The ceiling was falling down in clumps.
“Careful,” Arden hissed, pulling me to her. She pointed to a hole in the floor I’d nearly stepped through.
Caleb jumped over the gap and headed toward a staircase, which led into a dark cellar. “I’ll check to see if there’s anything in the basement.”
While Arden wandered back through the living room, I approached the refrigerator in the corner. It was covered with old photos and drawings. One picture was of a young couple, a baby cradled in their arms. The woman’s bangs were stuck to her sweaty forehead, but the light caught her wide, sparkling eyes. Below it was a colorful drawing of a stick figure family. All three people—mother, father, and child—were surrounded by ominous ghosts, their outlines scribbled in black crayon.
In those last days, I drew as much as I could. I’d sit downstairs at my plastic blue table and go through a stack of paper, drawing for my mother. I drew her pictures of us in the old playground by our house, the one with the tilt-a-whirl where she spun me around and around and around. I’d draw her in bed and the doctor, a magic wand perched in his hand as he made her well. I showed her our house, with a fence around it to keep the bad virus out. I slipped them under her door so she could have them—her special gifts. Kisses, she would say, patting the other side of the wood. I would give you a million kisses if I could.
I glanced at the young woman’s face one last time before turning to the empty room. I heard a creak somewhere above me, and followed it.
“Arden?” I called, walking down the silent hallway. The floor groaned with each step. The cool breeze rushed in through the broken windows. “Where are you?”
I peered into a tiny bathroom, its floor pitted from missing tiles. “Arden?” I called. My voice echoed.
At the end of the hall a door was slightly ajar. I headed toward it, passing by another bedroom with a rotted bed, the springs popping out of the frame.
I crept closer, easing my way along the wall. The wallpaper was peeling in sections, scraping at my bare shoulders. My pulse quickened and the small of my back beaded with sweat. We’d entered the house in haste, but we should’ve searched it before splitting up. There was always the chance that we were being watched.