“Not yet,” Lynn said, looking up at the midday sun. “Mostly I want to get moving. The faster we get to California, the sooner we don’t have to worry about things like food and water.”
“Right,” Lucy agreed, knowing full well Carter wouldn’t be able to do “fast” for long.
The gravel road they were on switched into a patchy pavement, then intersected with a wide highway with a straight yellow line painted down the middle. Lucy walked to the edge where the grass had begun to reclaim its territory, shooting up through the blacktop and reaching for the sun.
“Which way?”
“If you still want to see Entargo, we go left,” Lynn said. “Up to you.”
“Let’s go left then,” Lucy said, and walked onto the road, her new boots clunking against the tarred surface.
Lynn followed, her hand resting lightly on the butt of the gun jammed in her jeans. “I don’t like traveling the bigger roads,” she said. “Could mean more people.”
“More than what? Zero? ’Cause that’s how many we’ve seen.”
“Doesn’t mean we haven’t been seen,” Lynn argued, but fell silent as they walked.
The highway cut through fields once sown with corn, now choked with waist-high grass and clumps of maples that had seeded themselves over the years. Houses that had been neglected for decades stood like skeletons, their siding peeling off like flaps of skin to show the framework. Around three in the afternoon, Lynn stopped Lucy.
“We’re gonna want to steer clear of that one.” She nodded into the distance at a house that looked no more imposing than the others they’d passed.
“Why that one?”
“See the sun glinting off all the windows? None of them are broken. Somebody’s living there. No point giving them the willies by walking past.”
They veered off the road and into the abandoned fields, going slowly over the uneven ground and decades of brush growing unchecked. They cleared a rise to find the remnants of a town nestled in the valley, the road they had been following cutting straight through it and marching into the distance, where a new sight broke the horizon.
Lynn frowned. “What’s that?”
“The city,” Lucy said, her heart skipping a beat. “It’s Entargo.”
“Yeah, but what…” Lynn trailed off, her confusion evident. “How come I can see it so far away? What am I looking at?”
“That’s what we called a skyscraper. It’s a really, really tall building.”
“Taller than them cell phone towers we’ve got out our way?”
“Oh yeah. Much taller.”
“Huh.” Lynn put one hand on her hip, brows still furrowed.
Lucy tried not to smile. It was so odd to see Lynn perplexed. “What were you expecting?”
“Don’t know.” Lynn shrugged. “Something more like that, I suppose.” She gestured toward the village below them. “Just more spread out.”
“There’s places that look like that,” Lucy said, surprised the memory was still there. “It’s where the people mostly lived, the housing areas. But the big buildings like that were mostly for the government, and the hospital where Grandma worked is one of them.”
Lynn nodded, eyes distrustfully riveted on the gray towers. “Isn’t it scary to be up that high?”
“Not really. We lived in one something like that, called an apartment building. Lots of people live in one, you have your own rooms, but you’re all stacked up on top of each other.”
Lynn sat down, unscrewed the cap of her water bottle. “You didn’t have your own house?”
Lucy took advantage of the break to rustle in her pack and slip a few pieces of jerky to the ground while Lynn wasn’t watching. “Having your own place might sound better than living in one of the towers,” she explained, “but it wasn’t. Mostly the people that lived in the outlying areas were on their own. If you lived in the city in one of the towers, you were safer. They were guarded, always. Our water was cleaner. We even had bathrooms.”
“Didn’t know you remembered much about it.”
“It’s hard to forget having a bathroom.”
“I have a bathroom,” Lynn said defensively.
“Sure you do. Remember what happened when I tried to use it?”
“Lord, that was a mess I did not enjoy cleaning up.” Lynn stored her water bottle and shouldered her pack. Lucy took her time doing the same, aware that every second she delayed could make a difference to Carter.
“Still wanna see it?” Lynn asked.
“Sure.”
“All right. We’ll see how close we get. Somebody takes a shot at us, I don’t care how much you miss your bathroom. We’ll give it a wide berth.”
“Somebody takes a shot at me, a bathroom might come in handy.”
Eight
Lucy stood on the overpass, stunned.
Entargo was dead.
“Cover your nose, little one.” Lynn slipped her handkerchief over the lower half of her face. “There’s no knowing what’s on the wind here.”
She did as she was told, hands numb. The outer belt they stood on ran above and outside the perimeter of the city, giving them a good view of the streets, empty except for the trash blowing through them.
“Whatever happened here, it wasn’t long ago,” Lynn said, her voice muffled. “Breathe through your mouth. There’s no stench that way.”
The rows of dead back home had been burned quickly to ward off contagion, so Lucy had never smelled rotting people. The smell of death and decay was no stranger; wild animals ripped one another open all the time, leaving behind the bits they weren’t interested in to fester in the sun.
But the smell of death rising up from the city was so strong that breathing through her mouth felt like inviting the thickness of the air to gag her. The wind shifted against her back and took the worst of it to the north, but she kept her handkerchief in place.
“What do you think happened?”
“Cholera, I’d say.”
Lucy looked at the older woman. “How can you know?”
“I don’t see any bodies outside the city; doesn’t look like people tried to flee, or had the chance. Cholera will drop you in hours, once it gets ahold. Spreads like wildfire too, so once one person got sick, the people nearby were good as dead. I’m guessing nobody wanted to own up to being sick, for fear of being tossed out, so everybody kept their mouths shut, infected others, then died.”
“Lots of things kill you quick,” Lucy said. “Who’s to say it wasn’t polio here too?”
“’Cause underneath the rot, I can smell the shit.”
“That’s how cholera kills you?”
“Yup. Whether you got a bathroom or not.” Lynn’s eyes shifted to the rooftops, and Lucy saw some movement there.
“Buzzards,” Lucy said. The scavengers of the dead perched along the roofs, lining every skyscraper and town house alike.
“Time to go,” Lynn said abruptly.
They walked through dusk to reach Lake Wellesley, the organic smell of the water so strong it pulled them to it like a magnet. Lynn found a spot to camp under a clearing and they spread their blankets, eating without a word.
Exhaustion lay like a weight on Lucy. She had known their trip would wear her down, put blisters on her heels, and maybe even make her be quiet once in a while. But she hadn’t been prepared for the deep ache that filled her limbs, the momentous effort it would take to move at all once she’d sat down for the night.
“You should sleep,” Lynn said, glancing at Lucy in what remained of the light.
Her eyes snapped back open. Lucy hadn’t even known she was dozing. “What about you?”
“Used to it.” Lynn shrugged, without elaborating.
Sleep tugged at her, promising a release from her aches, but Lucy fought it. She needed to get some food to Carter. She was about to excuse herself to the woods when a flash of light on the opposite side of the lake caught her eye, and Lynn’s head shot up.