There will always be assholes.
I leave that house in the morning at first light. I lock the door behind me to be tidy.
Only four bullets left. I should have anticipated that I might need more ammo. But this is Nevada. I can probably find some.
Maybe I can find a friendly dog, also. I love dogs. And it’s not good for people to be too alone.
There might still be some horses out in the northwest valley that haven’t gone totally wild. It’d be nice to have company.
I can get books from the libraries. I’ve got a few months to prepare. I wonder how you take care of a horse on a long pack trip? I wonder if I can manage it on my own?
Well, I’ll find out this winter. And if I get to Reno before the snow melts in the Sierras… I’m a patient girl. And I’ll have the benefit of not having slept through history class. What I mean to say is, I can wait to tackle Donner Pass until springtime.
The lights that are still on stay on longer than I might have expected. But eventually, one by one, they fail. When I can’t see any anywhere anymore, I make my way down to the Strip with Bruce, my brindle mastiff, trotting beside.
Before I head north, I want to say goodbye.
That night the stars shine over Las Vegas, as they have not shone in living memory. The Milky Way is a misty waterfall. I can make out a Subaru logo for the ages: six and a half Pleiades.
I stand in the middle of the empty, dark and silent Strip, and watch the lack of answering lights bloom in the vast black bowl of the valley all around.
I cannot see so far as Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, London, Cairo, Jerusalem, Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Madrid, Kyoto, Chicago, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Mecca, Milan. All the places where artificial light and smog had, for an infinitesimal cosmic moment, wiped them from the sky. But I imagine that those distant, alien suns now shine the same way, there.
As if they had never been dimmed. As if the Milky Way had never faded, ghostlike, before the glare.
I reach down and stroke Bruce’s ears. They’re soft as cashmere. He leans on me, happy.
That night sky would be a remarkable sight. If I had a soul in the world to remark to.
THE RED THREAD
SOFIA SAMATAR
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. Her work has received several honors, including the John W. Campbell Award and the World Fantasy Award. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, and Uncanny, and has been reprinted in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Virginia, where she teaches world literature and speculative fiction at James Madison University.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra. I’m tagging you from center M691, Black Hawk, South Dakota. It’s night and the lights are on in the center. It’s run by an old white guy with a hanging lip—he’s talking to my mom at the counter. Mom’s okay. We’ve barely mentioned you since we left the old group in the valley, just a few weeks after you disappeared. She said your name once, when I found one of your old slates covered with equations. “Well,” she said. “That was Fox.”
One time—I don’t think I told you this—we lost some stuff over a bridge. Back in California, before we met you. The wind was so strong that day, we were stupid to cross. We lost a box of my dad’s stuff, mostly books, and Mom said: “Well. There he goes.”
Like I said, the wind was strong. She probably thought I didn’t hear her.
I think she’s looking at me. Hard to tell through the glass, it’s all scratched and smeared with dead bugs. I guess I should go. We’re headed north—yeah, straight into winter. It’s Mom’s idea.
I’ve still got the bracelet you gave me. It’s turning my wrist red.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra. I’m at center M718, Big Bottom, South Dakota. That’s really the name. There’s almost nothing here but a falling-down house with a giant basement. They’ve got a cantenna, so I figured I’d tag you again.
Did you get my message?
It’s crowded in here. I feel like someone’s about to look over my shoulder.
Anyway, the basement’s beautiful, full of oak arches. It’s warm, and they’ve got these dim red lights, like the way the sky gets in the desert sometimes, and there’s good people, including a couple of oldish ladies who are talking to Mom. One of them has her hair up and a lot of dry twigs stuck in. She calls me Chicken. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t really care. They’ve got a stove and they gave us these piles of hot bread folded up like cloth. Are you okay? I’m just thinking, you know, are you eating and stuff.
Big Bottom. You won’t forget that. It’s by a forest.
Don’t go in the forest if you come through here. There’s an isolation zone in there. We even heard a gunshot on our way past. Mom’s shoulders went stiff and she said very quietly: “Let’s pick up the pace.” When we got to Big Bottom I was practically running, and Mom’s chair was rattling like it was going to fall apart. It’s cold enough now that my breath came white. We rushed up a sort of hill and this lady was standing outside the house waving a handkerchief.
She took us downstairs into the basement where everybody was. The stove glowed hot and some of the people were playing guitars. The lady gave me a big hug, smelling sour. “Oh Chicken,” she said.
Oh Fox. I miss you.
We’re still headed north.
Tag me.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra. If you get this message—can you just let me know if you left because of me? I keep on remembering that night in the canyon, when we sat up on that cold, dizzy ledge wrapped in your blanket. You tied a length of red thread around my wrist. I tore off a piece of my baby quilt for you, a shred of green cloth like the Milky Way. You said it was like the Milky Way. The stars rained down like the sky was trying to empty itself, and when you leaned toward me, I emptied myself into you. Did you leave because of the fight we had afterward, when I said my family belonged to this country, we belonged just as much as you? “Don’t embarrass yourself,” you said. Later I said, “Look, the grass is the exact color of Mom’s eyes.” You told me the grass was the color of plague.
You were her favorite, you know. The smartest. The student she’d always longed for. “Fox-Bright,” she called you, when you weren’t around.
Well. We’re still in Big Bottom. Mom wants to get everybody out of here: She thinks it’s too close to the isolation zone. Every night she lectures and the people here argue back, mostly because they have lots of food: They farm and can fruit from the edge of the forest. The lady who calls me Chicken, who seems to be the mom, opens a jar every night with a soft popping sound. She passes it around with a spoon and there’s compote inside, all thick with beet sugar. This one guy, every time he takes a bite he says “Amen.”
Sorry. Hope you’re not hungry.
Anyway, you can see why these people would want to stay in Big Bottom and not try to haul all that stuff somewhere, including sacks of grain and seed that weigh more than me. “We’ve wintered here before,” said the Chicken lady. “We’ve got the stove. Stay with us! You don’t want to go north with a kid and all.”
Everybody was nodding and you could see the pain in Mom’s face. She hates to be wrong. She argued the best point she had. “Sooner or later they’ll come after you,” she said. “You’re too close. You’ve got kids, too.” She said it was a miracle the isolation folks hadn’t already attacked Big Bottom, with all that food. Then everybody got quiet, the Chicken lady looking around sort of warningly, her eyes glinting, and Mom said, “No.” And the guy who says “Amen” over his compote, he told her they’d already been attacked a couple of times.