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.
When the sound finally disappeared I rested against the desk, my body renewed with purpose. The troops were looking for me again. I had to keep moving.
Heading for the door, I stepped on a pile of green papers strewn across the tiled floor, covered in sand and dust. I picked one up that read 100, an old man’s stern face on it, realizing, suddenly, that it was a piece of old money. I crumpled the bill and threw it down, leaving it in the dust once more.