Skylar laughed. She imagined a million people could be walking in that direction.
“You still think we can survive all this?” she asked.
“Don’t we have to try?”
Not knowing what else to do, Skylar agreed to go with him. They probably wouldn’t get far.
The roads headed east were less crowded than she imagined, and when they encountered other people, these interactions were brief and guarded. It was frightening to discover how little was understood about what had happened. The farther they walked from the city, the more terms like “EMP” and “pulse” were replaced by “aliens” and “God.” Some believed the United States had been attacked by Russia or North Korea or both and expected military allies to eventually save them. One creative fellow explained, using disparate Bible verses, how the pulse had begun the Lord’s tribulation period. The destruction of technology was meant to cast divine confusion on the Arab enemies of Israel as a way to stop them from attacking the Jewish state. All this, of course, was a convoluted prelude to the Rapture.
With every step she took, Skylar’s mood sunk lower. So what if they found a place to stay? So what if Thomas could use his handgun to hunt for food? He would eventually run out of ammunition, and she didn’t care to eat game, anyway. She preferred her steaks wrapped in butcher paper or sizzling on a plate topped by a pat of butter. Except she would probably never eat butter again. She would never see her family again. She would never ride in a plane or visit Paris or sit on her deck and watch the sun set over the Pacific. She would never win an Oscar. She would never buy another pair of shoes or put on makeup or stand under a curtain of hot water in the shower.
She would never feel safe again.
They walked and walked and eventually Skylar realized it was easier to breathe and the sky looked almost blue. When Thomas tried to talk to her, she answered him with silence. She didn’t want him to believe, even for one minute, that she was happy to be here. She wanted him to be miserable the way she was. And if that meant she was an ungrateful, spoiled bitch, then so be it.
But when more hours had gone by, when the industrious look on his face refused to evaporate, Skylar ended the silent treatment and lit into Thomas.
“Why are we bothering with all this?” she said. “Why prolong the inevitable?”
“Skylar,” he answered patiently, as if to a disobedient child. “I know you’re frightened. You have every reason to be. All I’m trying to do is give us a chance to survive. I am not the enemy here.”
“What I’m saying is why bother? Maybe I don’t want to live with you in a little house on the prairie. Did you ever think of that?”
He turned and looked at her.
“I know you think you have a death wish, but if that’s the choice you wanted to make, you could have done it already.”
“I’m too afraid,” she said. “Will you do it for me?”
He refused to answer.
They walked until dark, when Thomas suggested they stop and make camp. He directed her well off the road and eventually found a spot under an oak tree. A little while later she leaned into him, his arms around her, against the tree.
“I’m sorry,” Skylar said.
“Me, too.”
“I keep thinking what a waste this is. All we had to do was plan ahead a little. It’s not like people didn’t know this could happen.”
“We gambled,” said Thomas. “We gambled with our future and lost. I guess it’s how we’re wired. We never plan for problems, even when we know they’re coming. We wait until the problem is already here, and this time that was too late.”
Skylar awoke to a violet sky and the sound of birds singing in the tree above. Thomas’ arms were wrapped around her and he was still asleep. Her mind wandered to her parents and her brother and what they might be doing… if they were still alive. She thought about babies born since the pulse, how so many of them would die senseless, blameless deaths. And what about the ones who didn’t? What would those fierce children think of the old world, that place of magic and privilege and unparalleled luxury they might never know except through oral history? Would they believe unhappiness could exist in such a world? Would they understand why people with such easy lives were determined to fight over the most trivial differences?
What new superstitions would these post-pulse cultures develop? What belief systems would emerge from the melted copper apocalypse?
Would mankind ever regain its old glory?
After they shared twenty-one peanuts and half a bottle of water, the two of them set out eastward again. They walked for a while and eventually reached a town called Greenville.
“I think we should go around,” Thomas suggested. “There’s no telling what it’s like. We’re strangers. They may not take kindly to us.”
“But maybe they have supplies. Maybe they would help us.”
“And maybe they would shoot me and take you hostage. Are you willing to risk that?”
That Skylar didn’t immediately answer this question annoyed Thomas so badly that for a while he walked well ahead of her. They curved around Greenville on its western and southern edges and saw walkers here and there. At one intersection, a man and his wife were huddled over a beat-up stroller in the parking lot of a Phillips 66. The couple watched with frightened and wary eyes as Skylar and Thomas went by. When she raised a hand to them, neither the wife nor her husband returned the gesture.
At the southern edge of Greenville, they passed an Hispanic man who took one look at the gun Thomas was carrying and offered a wide berth.
“Morning,” Thomas said.
“Hungry,” the man replied.
Not long after, they reached a junction in the road, and Thomas stopped.
“This is Highway 69,” he said. “The lake is straight down that way. I’m surprised more people haven’t come this direction, but maybe that means we’ll have a real chance when we reach the lake.”
“Or maybe the lake is crawling with refugees.”
“Maybe. But we need water. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”
She couldn’t believe Thomas would admit he was suffering.
“Even if we stumble across an empty cabin,” she asked, “what then?”
“Maybe we’ll find a fishing pole. It’s a pretty big lake.”
“Fish?”
She waited for him to stammer through an optimistic lie about how he could catch enough food from the lake to feed them, but instead Thomas looked away and walked on silently.
There was a serenity about this new world she might have embraced if the serenity hadn’t been a lie. They were out of water and food, and from this point forward every waking minute would be wasted trying not to die.
By now Skylar should have been willing to concede that the things she previously believed to be important were in fact worthless. Like expensive clothes and her precise body fat percentage and whether her next film project would be her last. But instead, she pictured a Ralph’s just up the road. She imagined large trays of oranges and apples, potatoes arranged in towering pyramids, and chicken breasts laid out in rows, they didn’t even have to be organic. That was the high-definition world she longed for. Not this low-fi, hardscrabble deathscape left behind by shortsighted men more concerned with today’s profit than tomorrow’s planet.
She didn’t want this world, but she was also afraid to do anything about it.
Eventually they reached the northern tip of the lake and worked their way south until they found a clear shoreline. After mouthfuls of raw lake water, Thomas was reenergized, and to Skylar’s chagrin his optimistic mood returned.