“Show me on the map where the black corners are,” I said. Small black areas painted themselves out. There weren’t many, but they were there . . . and they were scattered from coast to coast, north to south. Almost . . . deliberately. “Okay, looking good. David, you’re talking through the radio.”
There was a long pause, and then David said, in the tone of someone who really didn’t understand why I was stating the obvious, “Yes . . . ?”
“Is that just to us, or can you do it anywhere?”
“Define anywhere.”
“All radios in specific areas.”
Another pause, and then he said, slowly, “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Awesome. You are the new Djinn Emergency Broadcast System.” I got out of the car and spread the atlas out on the hood of the idling car. Cherise and Kevin got out with me; Kevin was holding the toddler, who had fallen charmingly asleep in his arms. “I need dimensions on these black corners. Specifically, how many people they can hold, whether there’s any food and water, shelter, that kind of thing. Get me all the information you can.”
“Uh—how?” Cherise asked blankly. She held out her phone. It still said NO SERVICE. “Internet go boom.”
“The aetheric’s still there,” I said. “You and Kevin get up there, find me these two black corners; they’re the largest ones. Tell me whatever you can. Do it fast.”
Kevin handed me the baby, which was a smart move. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t drop the kid on his head at the best of times, but being out of his body wouldn’t help him be Best Surrogate Dad Ever. The child was surprisingly heavy and warm, and settled against me with a sleepy murmur. I smoothed dark hair, balanced him (her?) on my hip, and stared down at the map as Cherise and Kevin stood, immobile and vacant next to me. Both of the areas I’d indicated to them were remote; whatever had happened there to damage the planet’s awareness had been significant, but it had also probably happened a very long time ago. Maybe even before humans began building their first mud huts. Maybe they’d been even larger, and the Earth was slowly, steadily healing in those areas.
But what was important to me was that if I put people inside those borders, they’d be safe from supernatural forces. As safe as I could make them, anyway.
Cherise came back first, staggering as her spirit reunited with her body and catching herself with both hands against the car’s fender. She snatched her palms off it immediately. “Ow!” she said. “Damn. Hot. And I’m not talking about myself, you know.” I didn’t need to put her back on track. She took in a deep breath and continued. “It’s pretty large, but it’s wild out there. Overgrown. No shelter or structures I could see. There’s a stream, though, so fresh water. You’d have to arrange for the food.”
“Roads?”
“There’s a kind of road—damn, that map’s too small. Guess you can’t zoom in.”
“It’s paper, Cher.”
“Kidding. Anyway, yeah, there’s a way in, you could probably drive it. Not sure how tough it would be, though.”
“How many people could it hold?”
“It’s about as big as half of Manhattan, so you figure it out. Of course, unless they’re living in trees, you can only put them on the ground floor.”
It was better than nothing. Not a lot better, but still.
Kevin returned a few minutes later. He had better news, from the western black corner—which was large, empty, and easy to reach. Only problem was, it was barren. Really barren. No source of fresh water running through it, or even near it. It was also hotter than hell there, and even with tents and temporary shelters it might be fatal conditions for many.
But we didn’t have a choice. I ordered everybody back into the car. Kevin took the kid back from me; the baby woke up and started fretting. Kevin bounced him in his arms, waking a surprisingly cheerful set of giggles, and the kid put its chubby arms around his neck.
“Boy or girl?” I asked. Kevin gave me a long- suffering, disgusted look.
“Boy, obviously,” he said. “Wow. I thought you were all up on the birds and the bees.”
I tried again. “What’s his name?”
“How am I supposed to know? The kid was lying underneath his dead mom. He didn’t come with papers .” Kevin’s eyes glittered in the white backwash of the headlights, but not with Djinn power, not anymore. Those were real, human tears. “They left him there to starve or get eaten. So maybe his name ought to be Lucky; what do you think?”
“Kevin,” I said, gently. “Deep breaths.”
“Fuck you,” he snapped, and got in the car. I ached for him, because nobody—not even Kevin—should feel the kind of agony I could hear in his voice. He hated this as much as I did, as much as Cher did. I could feel that pain and panic burrowing inside me like a carnivorous small animal. Make it stop. I don’t want to do this anymore. Make it all go away.
For a few seconds, it was so overwhelming that I wanted to scream. I forced myself to take deep, steady breaths, and stared at the map until my eyes blurred. I blinked, and tears slid cold down my cheeks, but I wiped them away impatiently. I have no time for this crap, I told myself. Sack up, Jo. Right now.
I wanted to be strong, but it seemed like the solid rock I’d always felt to be inside me had turned to slippery, clinging mud, and I wasn’t sure I had any emotional footing anymore.
“Jo?” That was David’s voice, coming from the car. I grabbed the atlas and got back inside. The second I slammed the door, we got moving again at Djinn speed, turning the night into a shadowy blur beyond the windows.
Except for the cold white moon, almost full, that floated up overhead like a balloon. Its glow almost eclipsed the stars. Out here in the dark, there were so many of those, thick as spilled sacks of gems in the heavens. Easy to feel small.
Easy to feel a sense of the ice-cold infinite out there, too, for whom the death struggles on this planet were of merely academic interest.
Perversely, that made me feel better.
“David,” I said, and was glad that my voice sounded steady now. “I need you to send messages to all the Wardens you can reach. Tell them we’ve identified two main areas where they can send refugees, and give them coordinates and the details. Give them the coordinates of the other black corners, too. Even if some will only hold a few people, it’s something. We should use it.”
“I’m on it,” he said, and oddly enough, he laughed.
“What?”
“Coordinating. Isn’t that what Lewis tried to sentence us to from the start?”
The radio turned itself off.
I leaned back in the seat, which no longer felt remotely comfy after the long, long hours, and glanced over at the Djinn driver. “So,” I said. “How you doing?”
I didn’t really expect an answer, and I didn’t get one.
It was a long drive to the next major town.
We never quite reached it.
The sun was just coming up, and we still had six hours or so to go to the next town big enough to merit the name, when I finally put my foot down and said that we needed beds, showers, food, and restrooms. That wasn’t as tough as it sounded to achieve; two curves of the road later, we spotted a roadside motel, the no- name-brand kind made of bravely painted cinder blocks that doesn’t have to go into double digits on room numbers. Technically, it was a motor court. I wasn’t sure what the difference was, except that “motor court” sounded slightly more upscale than “no-tell motel.”
It wasn’t.
The office was locked, but somebody had already done yeoman work breaking in the door, which swung wide open. The cash register was on the floor, cracked and empty. There was a TV missing from a stand in the corner, cable connections left dangling. Looters always take the TVs. And it always seems insane, but never more than now.