Frozen

“Maybe,” she said, and his stomach flipped.

“Ever seen photos from Before? It’s like another planet,” she said, changing the subject. “Can you imagine what it’s like to be that hot?”

“Nope, I surely can’t. Can’t imagine ever being warm outside,” he said. “Supposedly deserts still exist somewhere.” Seeing the look on her face, he quickly explained lest she think him a dolt. “Not here, obviously, but in the enclosures.”

“Desert enclosures?” Her tone sarcastic.

“Yeah. Messed up, right? Fusion hogs, most like. I heard they have beaches in them, too. Man-made ones, of course,” he said. “I’ve been to the beach once. When we were stationed in ’Tonio, there was a little bit of it left when we went over to Galveston. Couldn’t swim in the water, though. Not unless you want your kids to have three legs.”

“What was Texas like?” she asked.

“Freezing,” Wes said tersely, suddenly unwilling to say any more. He didn’t know why he’d mentioned it; he never wanted to talk about what happened in Texas. “Just like everywhere else.”

“You’ve seen a lot, haven’t you?” Her voice was warm, and sitting next to her in the truck, it felt as if they were alone, as if it were just the two of them left on earth.

This was his chance, he saw, to tell her about himself, to earn her trust. Maybe he didn’t have to flirt with her. Maybe he could just trick her into being friends. Maybe then she would tell him why she was on her way to New Crete, tell him what Old Joe had handed her right before he disappeared. Tell him what he needed to know so he could figure out a way to take it from her.

“I’ve seen enough,” he said. “When my parents died, I joined the service. They sent me everywhere. You name it, I’ve patrolled it.”

“What were your parents like?” she asked as the truck crunched over the ice-covered road.

“They were all right, you know, for parents,” he said. He didn’t say any more.

“Do you miss them?” Nat asked. “I’m sorry, it’s a stupid question. Of course you miss them.”

“It’s okay. Yeah, I miss them, I try not to since it’s too hard, but there you go. I had a sister, too,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

“Younger? Older?”

After a while, he finally answered. “Younger.”

“What happened to her?”

He shrugged. Outside, the blizzard had stopped, and the air was clear again. Wes fiddled with the music player, switching through songs until he found one he liked. “I’m not sure. They took her away.” It was hard to talk about what happened to Eliza.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Nat gaze out at the endless mounds of garbage buried underneath another layer of snow. “Took her away?” she asked. “Who took her away?”

“Military family, higher-ups,” he sighed. “They said it was better for her. My parents didn’t have the license to have a second kid. So they came to collect.” The memory of that horrible day was still seared in his memory. He wasn’t ready to tell her the truth about Eliza. Not yet. He turned up the music a little and the cabin filled with the sound of jangling guitars and a thin, reedy voice singing over a harmonica.

Nat hummed along for a while then said, “Well, at least she’s with a family; it’s more than many of us get or can hope for.”

“That what you were? Orphan?”

“You had me checked out,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

He shrugged. “Standard procedure.”

“Then you should know my story.”

“Not much of it.”

“What happened to ‘no questions asked,’” she said.

“I did say that, didn’t I? No big deal, just making conversation.” He didn’t push. One day at a time, he thought.

He would be patient.

* * *

The garbage-strewn border gave way to a graveyard of ships and trucks that had been washed inland by the floodwaters over a hundred years ago. Monstrous steel hulls, skeletons of cruise ships and navy carriers loomed over the snowy terrain; dark, thick vines sprouted from the dead machines, weaving through the carcasses. Winter branches, they were called, some sort of plant that thrived in the tundra. Wes stared at them. He could have sworn the branches were iridescent, almost glittering, sparkling. But he was just seeing things, wasn’t he? When he looked again, the branches were the same dull color, reaching toward the heavens, weaving a tangled web of rusted metal, along with trailer homes and tumbled-over cars on the snow-covered desert floor. The Black Flood had carried the junk almost as far as Vegas before receding. As they moved closer to the coast, they could see the failed levees and makeshift dams that the military and a few desperate civilians had erected in an attempt to stop the rising waters.

It was their second day on the road and Shakes was back on driving duty, with Zedric acting as navigator. Wes and Nat shared the middle seat, and each clung to the opposite corner, as far away from the other as possible. In the back, the boys were awake, jostling and teasing; an annoyed Daran had pushed Farouk’s cap down low over his eyes.

“They’d lock that door once they saw you coming—” Farouk was laughing and hiccupping. “A year’s share of marital-day passes in a week! That must have been a record!”

“Daran likes the ladies,” Wes explained to Nat, as Daran looked smug and made a rude gesture with his hands.

“No doubt the ladies like him,” she said with a smirk. Daran was pretty hot, with his sharp cheekbones and glossy dark hair.

Wes laughed, although for a moment his face twisted at her words. There were two kinds of marriages these days—day passes for temporary unions—so that you could rent a room at one of the love hotels—and real ones from chapel. Day passes kept the population clean of disease. No sexual activity without a license. There was a license for everything. In his experience, it took a lot of the romance out of the equation, standing in line at the bureau, checking the little boxes, waiting for the result of the blood test before you could do so much as kiss a girl.

“So you like Daran, eh?” he asked.

“I didn’t say that,” she huffed.

“You ever filled ’em out?” he asked, looking at her sideways.

“What—forms for a marital pass?” She looked offended.

“Sure, why not? What’s the problem, no offers?” he teased.

“Exactly the opposite, my friend,” she said archly. “Too many to mention.”

“That’s what worries me.” He grinned wickedly and she tossed a wadded paper napkin at his face.

“You should be so lucky,” she huffed.

“I should,” he said, still smiling as he batted it away.

“Don’t worry, I turned them all down,” she told him.

“All of them?”

“Shut up!” She laughed. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

She wasn’t the only one being teased about it. Farouk was giving Daran a hard time in the back.

“It’s a miracle you passed the STD monitors—not with those girls from Ho Ho City!” he said, while Zedric chimed in from the front, “Yeah, bro, you’re so twisted I swear the last one was a freaking drau!” Daran pummeled Farouk and threatened his brother, and finally Wes yelled at the three of them to shut up, they were giving him a headache.

“Hold up! Hold up! What’s that?” Farouk suddenly yelled, underneath Daran’s fists.

“What’s what?” Wes asked, studying the black metal forest, looking through the tangle of vines. Then he saw it. There were shapes moving through the devastated landscape, and even the vines seemed to be moving. The figures multiplied in the distance.

“Thrillers,” he cursed. “Let’s hope we don’t come closer to any.” He took the binoculars for a closer look.