And as promised, the view once the bus topped the rise and turned a corner, penetrating the wall of garbage, was everything the brochures had assured them it would be, the land spreading out generously ahead and then rising suddenly into mist-shrouded peaks, the closest mountains at this distance a muted orange, the more faraway ones charcoal-smudged and out of focus. Soon, Edie noticed, even the residual tremor of the TerraVibra had fallen completely away. The windows opened three inches and were protected by double screens, so Edie shoved hers down and leaned her temple against the glass, letting the fresh cool air rush into her nose and take away some of the lingering scent, or scent memory, from the landfill. She was suddenly exhausted and limp. She had been rigid with fear before, and getting past that first bad moment outside the gates had given her, she knew, a temporary and false sense of relief, a lulling certainty that she could close her eyes now, let the slight sway of the bus rock her to sleep, and not worry, for a time, about problematic boyfriends, great walls of trash, ticks.
But there was much to see outside her window. Well, strike that—what was compelling, actually, was the relative emptiness of the landscape compared to inside the zone, or at least the reaches of the zone beyond the perimeter of the TerraVibra, where you could hardly expect to pass, outside of the arboretums and parks, an empty lot, much less undeveloped kilometers populated by nothing but grass, trees, and rock. And the trees! The ones at home were mostly young, thirty or forty years on the top end, and though there were, in the parks, some of the larger species, the oaks and the cedars, the inner-zone trend was toward small, slim, and ornamental: Japanese maples, crepe myrtle, dogwoods, redbuds. The trees weren’t to blame for the ticks, but there was a strong cultural distrust of woods and canopies, not to mention a limited amount of space for them. But these outer-zone trees climbed stories.
Also fascinating were the signs of the old life, the one that had been finally abandoned so many years ago, well before even her mother was born, when construction on the Atlantic Zone’s perimeter was complete and the last group of refugees was granted entrance. Little things. Like road signs, large and green with bold white text, designed for view at a fast-passing distance: Old Fort, Black Mountain, Swannanoa, they sounded like storybook places, like places where the villagers and the shaman might have lived. And those blue signs with their simple declarations of “Food, Gas, Attractions,” the little squares with logos reminding her of the home screen on her tablet—how strange was that? “Gas” and half a dozen places that sold it. No rations, no digital counters, no yearly fuel audit requiring drivers to keep track of kilometers traveled and the purpose of that travel (work, recreation, family, public service), then to calculate a taxable footprint based on the results. She knew that the old times weren’t simpler, that the lack of foresight then was in part what had led to the necessity for strict regulation now, but it was amazing to ponder that freeness. And hard not to feel some jealousy of it.
“Look,” Jesse said, pointing.
It was another green sign: “Exit 55, E Asheville/VA Hospital.” Edie glanced at the overhead monitor and confirmed their progress; the little pulsing dot on the map that represented their bus was almost on top of the destination flag now. The bus didn’t exit at the first sign, or the next couple, but it slowed as highway 25A approached. Edie’s stomach sloshed uncomfortably as the bus veered right, onto the off-ramp. She pulled off her glove so that she could gnaw on her thumbnail.
Andy stood in the aisle, grasping the backs of two seats for balance. “We’re approaching the first checkpoint. It’s just a few minutes after nine o’clock, which means we’ve managed to stay on schedule. Our driver, Johnny, made up some time on the road. Give him a hand.”
There were a few claps.
“We’ll rest for an hour here, so double-check to make sure your watches are synced with the bus’s clock.” He pointed at the monitor. “Nine-oh-four. We want to be loaded and ready to go by ten after ten. If you’re not on the bus by then, tardiness penalties go into effect. We would never leave a traveler behind, but we’ll make it very expensive for you to waste our time. Got it?”
Heads bobbed.
“Tia and I will be handing out power bars and orange juice. Please dispose of your waste in the designated OLE trash cans around the checkpoint facility. They’re bright red and marked with our logo. Hard to miss.”
The bus pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped. The silence initiated by the shut-off engine was sudden and eerie.
“We monitor this site for ticks, but you should be on your guard and near your buddy from here on out. Don’t panic, and don’t psych yourself out, but remember the things I told you. You’ll know the itch when you feel it. It’s unmistakable.” He gestured to the sprawling brown building on the driver’s side of the bus. “This place was a restaurant, a kind of curiosity. We’ve got generators hooked up, and the bathrooms are converted to chemical toilets, so you can use the facilities more or less as you normally would, have your snack at the tables, look around the store. You may not remove or purchase items from the store. Think of it as a museum. We have video monitoring inside, and we’ll be doing bag checks. No souvenirs.”
Wes Feingold, shoulders hunched as he leaned in for a better look, raised a hand and said, “What’s a cracker barrel?”
“Beats me,” said Andy. “But this place was a restaurant with a little store attached, part of a big chain of them. For whatever reason, this location has held up pretty well, and the general store wasn’t looted. I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”
They disembarked the bus sedately from front to back, no one rushing the aisle or holding up the line to pull things from the overhead bins, and, like schoolchildren, accepted from Andy and Tia their designated morning snacks. The foil pouch of juice with the plastic nozzle was the same brand Edie had carried in her kindergarten lunchbox. Comforting. She walked a few steps away from the pack to get a look around. Not much to see here. A chilly but fresh-smelling wind blew into her face, and she tugged her goggles down over her streaming eyes. The restaurant was situated on a rise, surrounded by a parking lot that appeared to have been recently resealed, as was the road leading from the interstate up to it. The air out here, beyond the Wall, was different. The word that sprang to Edie’s mind, oddly, was uncluttered. No trace of smoke or of corn fuel. No cooking oil or perfume of a hundred different competing strains of cuisine. No musk of many bodies, bottled together in subway cars or tiny apartments or watering holes like O’Henry’s. It was beautifully empty air, remarkable to Edie for its surprising neutrality.
There were a few standing structures down the opposite direction, away from the interstate, but they were empty, dilapidated; the overhanging roof on the thing that looked a bit like a fuel station had collapsed completely into a pile of rubble, and the windows on the attached structure were shattered. Edie felt an urge to walk down that way—she wondered what other damage she’d find, what story it would reconstruct—but now wasn’t the time to wander. Or wonder. And Jesse was eyeing the relic of a restaurant with enthusiasm.
“Cracker Barrel Old Country Store,” he read. The sign was faded but still fairly clear, brown print on a yellow backdrop. “What a goddamn riot.”
He strode across the parking lot, and Edie hustled to keep up, but he stopped to hold the oak double doors open so she could pass through. “Milady,” he said.