south to pursue the Path.
“Yeah,” I said, holding up the clean white plaster. “The old one had seen better days, I guess. They say I still have a few weeks with this one, though.”
I came around the front of the car and saw the backpack on the ground next to her. Behind her a group of soldiers were loading supplies into a trio of Humvees.
“They finally let you sign up?”
Nat shook her head. “They’re dropping me off at home on their way to California. Figured I could help with the rebuilding for a couple years until I can enlist.”
“President Burke says it’ll all be over by then.”
“Yeah,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I heard that too. If he thinks this guy who took Hill’s place is going to fold, he’s crazy or stupid.”
“I’m betting on stupid.”
I threw my pack into the front passenger seat and shut the door. Nat peered into the car where James sat staring out the back window at the base.
“How is he?”
“Fine,” I said quickly. “It’ll take some time, I guess.”
“They should give him a medal.”
“Captain Assad tried,” I said, spreading my arms wide to present the rattletrap hatchback. “But I said we wanted this instead.”
Nat’s laugh was small and reluctant, but it was good to hear. “So you’re headed home too.”
I nodded. “Assad slipped us enough cash to get there and not eat MREs for a while too. We should be okay.”
There was a clap behind her as the soldiers closed the Humvee’s hatch.
“Nat.”
She looked back at one of the men and nodded.
“Well, I guess I better…”
“Yeah.”
Nat started to go but then she jumped forward and threw her arms around me. She pulled me close and her head fell to my shoulder. Everything seemed to go very still around us. I lifted my arms to her back and held her, breathing in the dusty heat that clung to us. I closed my eyes.
“Thank you,” she breathed into my ear.
“Whitacker!” one of the soldiers called. “Let’s move!”
Nat stepped back, her amber eyes shining, the sun lightening her brown hair. She slipped a piece of paper into my hand and then ran to catch her ride. I stood by the car, watching as she slung her pack over her shoulder and jumped into a Humvee. Her door slammed and they pulled out, joining the long line of vehicles waiting at the main gate.
The car door opened with a rusty squeak. I got in and unfolded the piece of paper. On it was a phone number and an address in Wyoming. I stared at it a moment before putting it into my pocket and checking the rearview.
James was watching the line of departing Fed transports as they pulled through the gate and then vanished in a cloud of dust. Sitting closed on his lap was a small green book, stained with faded blood. His hands lay on it as if he was warming them over a fire. The gold leaf of the title, torn and dull, said
I cranked the ignition and guided us away.
We spent the morning driving through a landscape struggling to return to normal. A steady stream of refugee traffic surrounded us, moving north past bombed-out restaurants that sat next to gas stations that were open and lit in neon.
A detour brought us directly through DC, where we saw the worst of it. Even though the government had moved out years before, the Path had hit it with a vengeance. The roads were rubble-strewn and pitted, and most of the gleaming white government buildings we could see were covered in black scorch marks. The White House and the Capitol were ruins of white marble.
Only the ivory needle of the Washington Monument stood nearly pristine. A tent city had sprung up on the mall around it and along the edge of the reflecting pool. Refugees milled about in tattered clothes beneath a ring of American flags.
The signs of war became less frequent as we moved up into Maryland. For miles at a time it was possible to forget the last six years except for the occasional checkpoints staffed by bored-looking privates in lightly armored Humvees.
Once we crossed the border into Pennsylvania, I sat up straighter and gripped the steering wheel. I counted the miles, sure I could feel the bright line of the next border in the distance. One hundred. Fifty. Twenty.
My pulse raced. Even James was sitting up now, peering out the windshield,
“Look!”
A sign appeared at the side of the road, green and white, just beyond the line of trees. The car’s engine gave a wheezy complaint when I stood on the gas, but I didn’t care. The sign grew larger by the second and then we were on it.
I held my breath as we blew past it, and New York surrounded us. And this wasn’t the ugly glass and steel of New York City, this was trees and grass and the rolling hills. This was small towns and snaking rivers and crumbling barns. We passed Binghamton and then Whitney Point, turning west onto 79 for the final stretch that brought us through the dense green of state parks. The side of the road teemed with ferns and white oak and maple trees. I rolled the window down and let the wind blow around us. It smelled of damp leaves and grass warmed by the sun.
I could feel home sitting out beyond the trees, sending tremors through the air and the ground, until my heart pulsed along in time. I knew James felt it too when his hand, thin and weak, clasped my shoulder. I heard myself laugh as the little car struggled on.
We rode the last miles in a silence greater than the inside of any Lighthouse. Even the engine settled into a quiet thrum. James leaned forward between the seats and, as I urged the car faster, everything around us faded into a blur of motion. Only the road remained, a bright seam cutting through the forest. At first it was pockmarked and rough and then, as we grew closer, there was the slick whisper of fresh asphalt that made me feel like we were flying.
I could see Mom’s face and Dad’s and Grandma Betty’s. It was like we had just left only days ago.
We came around a bend in the road, and the trees parted and shops appeared with hanging signs and shining windows. We went over a bridge above a seething falls and the Cornell campus rose and fell away. We were flying again, alone on the road beneath a bower of branches, winding through the bright day. We crested a hill and houses emerged from the woods, one or two at a time and then clusters of them, paneled in wood and brick and surrounded by runs of hedges and sun-dappled lawns. We came to a hill leading to a cul-de-sac and there it was, down at the end of the lane. Cobalt-blue walls surrounded in roses.
“James,” I said, my voice thick with wonder. “James, look…”
27
I parked at the top of the hill and cut the engine.
