“Come with us,” she says, but he only shakes his head.
“My parents,” he says. “No one’s picking the phone up at home. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Sometimes the road is blocked and they have to turn around to find another route inland. They keep driving north, away from the sea, just in case. Eventually they have no room for more people and when they see someone they don’t stop. As they drive through miniature dust storms, they hope there are no people lost in the murk.
Once, as they prepare for yet one more blind push through the dust, Tasha grabs the edge of the seat beneath her and holds her breath. They hit a bump that could be a body; she crosses herself, even though she hasn’t done that in years. When they’re through the dust, Annie, almost hysterical, pulls the ambulance over to the side of the road.
“What was that?” Annie asks.
“I don’t know,” Tasha whispers. “A body? Do you want me to check?”
Annie shakes her head. “Not that,” she says. “You. Are you praying?”
Laughter catches her off guard; Tasha hiccups, almost chokes. “Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to hang on.” She reaches over and opens the door, then steps down onto the ground and looks back toward the dust storm, which is already clearing.
There is no human body on the road. Instead there is a bear—a small brown bear, likely a cub. Tasha takes a breath and walks over to it. As she gets closer she can see that half of the cub’s snout is smeared with blood, the other half burned away in strips of red and blackened flesh. There is skin and fur under the bear’s claws from scratching itself bloody in a frenzy to soothe the burning.
They might have hit it, she thinks. It might have died before.
“Tasha.” Annie is leaning out the driver’s window, calling. “Tasha, leave it alone. It might be diseased.”
Beyond the bear, on the other side of the road, is another body. That one is human—a woman, the bottom half of her burned beyond recognition, her top half serene—as though she’s only sleeping. Tasha takes one step and then another, and then she’s standing over the body, trying not to cry. The yellow ribbon in the woman’s brown hair is bright and cheerful against the tumbled grass. She is a halfway creature, a mermaid of the ash and fire.
“Tasha!” Annie shouts. “Tasha, we have to go.”
Go where? She turns back to Annie and the ambulance, to the fire trucks that have pulled up behind them and are waiting for her too. Should they go back to the coast and see what’s left to salvage? Or do they see what lies ahead?
“Tasha.” Annie’s voice is softer now. “Tasha, just come back in the ambulance, please.” There’s a sliver of panic in her voice that Tasha recognizes. It’s the same panic Annie tried so hard to hide two years ago, after Tasha’s parents were killed in the fire and Tasha could not function. Where are you? Don’t leave me alone.
She takes a breath, then walks back to Annie.
“Here,” she says. “I can drive.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Annie is too tired to argue. She slides out of her seat reluctantly and yet also with relief; she’s asleep almost as soon as her seatbelt is buckled. Tasha starts the ambulance and pulls back onto the road. The bear cub and the woman by the side of the road disappear.
From the driver’s seat, things look even sharper, brighter, more intense. She spots more dead animals by the side of the road, others that flash quickly across the road in front of them—a deer, a fox, a skittering raccoon—and disappear into the trees. As they crawl farther north, the sloping greenlands on either side of the road give way to trees and clouded sky. Green trees, burning woods.
North. They keep on going north. She’s not sure why, but the road takes her there. Turn here, turn there, keep driving. Far ahead of them are the mountains her mother told stories about. Maybe they’ll reach the mountains and climb up to the moon.
She isn’t surprised when a blurred grey line appears on the horizon that thickens and darkens and sharpens into peaks. Soon foothills roll around them like an earthquake that won’t stop, the houses dotted among them all collapsed or on fire. As they drive on, the houses coalesce into a city.
Or what’s left of it. She reaches up as the winding road becomes a city street and flicks on the siren. The fire trucks behind them follow suit. The sound wakes Annie, who sits up and leans forward.
Tasha feels sad in a way that she hasn’t before—even with the bear cub, even with the burned woman. She drives the ambulance down streets that are too empty, streets where some houses remain untouched while others are caved in and smoking. No one comes out to watch them pass, to beg for help. It is early evening. The sun, or what they can see of it, has begun to climb behind the mountain, and the houses cast thick, smoky shadows over the road.
“Where is everyone?” Annie asks, again. No one answers.
They reach the end of the road—stopped short by a giant crater that spans the block. Tasha grunts in frustration and backs the ambulance up, then turns down a side street. The houses are silent and still.
She heads, though she can’t say how she knows to do so, toward the wreckage of a building that looks like a hospital. The side street leads her to a wider boulevard where the high rises are, or used to be. Here, finally, people come into view. They stand scattered on the street—clustered in groups by the side of the road, gathered around a few open cars.
For a moment she badly wants to cry. No one here will be able to help her.
She turns the key and feels the engine shudder to a halt as the siren quits. Annie reaches over, takes her hand. For a moment Tasha stares down at their interlocked fingers as though they belong to a stranger.
“We’ll be okay,” Annie says. Her Annie.
Tasha gives the smallest hint of a squeeze and pulls her hand away, then climbs out.
These people look haunted, like everyone else they’ve encountered on the road. A tall man with red hair, a blonde girl in a black leather jacket and scuffed lace-up boots. Other men, women, and children staggering about.
A dark-haired woman in a hospital gown sits on the curb, two bright-haired bundles in her lap.
The woman raises her head and looks straight at Tasha. She looks lost too—but there is also something else, something unpredictable and bottomless in her expression that makes Tasha shiver.
She takes a breath. The air is thick with ash and smoke here too, but it feels sharper than the air that she knew by the sea.
All right, she thinks. I’ll be sharper too.
“Who’s in charge here?” she asks, and they tell her.
THE GIRL MADE OF STARS
Once upon a time there was a star that tripped and fell while dancing in the night sky, and tumbled to earth as a girl. When she woke up, the girl did not know who or where she was, only that the darkness above her, speckled with bright spots of light, looked familiar. She had no clothes or name, and when she came to the nearest village, the men and women thought that she was a witch. Since she did not know what a witch was, she couldn’t correct them. They threw stones at her until she ran from them, bruised and afraid.
She found comfort in the darkness, in being alone under the stars. The animals of the forest were kind to her, and brought her things to eat—nuts and berries, roots from the ground that she washed in the river. She did not know how to speak to the animals, but they listened anyway. At night, she washed her hair in the river and sang wordless songs to keep herself company. In time her hair shone as bright as the moon.