They hadn’t seen or heard any virals since their first encounter, but the company was still being cautious. Milly followed at the rear, Glock drawn. Tye twirled his bolas, the two stones on each end whizzing through the air. Peter scouted ahead, and Vera and Robin shuffled along behind. Every few moments Robin squeaked in pain, but the woman was tougher than she looked. Her wounds were superficial, but painful, yet she kept up without complaining.
The company’s mood balanced between upbeat and on edge, the memory of escaping disaster at landfall still palpable, even though it had been eight days and the land and its inhabitants appeared oblivious of their presence. So far. Things had gotten real, fast, and Tye and his friends hadn’t been ready so it did the party good to have a few days to adjust while taking in their new surroundings. Wolves attacked twice, but the animals hadn’t encountered normal people before and were easily scared off. There was plenty of food in their habitat, so none of the animals were overly aggressive.
Mountains rose around them as they walked east; the trees thinning out and spaced further apart, the underbrush of weeds and agave thicker. It was hot and dry, and plumes of dust rose and clogged the air. Tye figured every creature for miles knew of their passage even though they did their best to be stealthy. Thin white clouds fleeted by overhead, but so far there had been no rain. Not even the threat of it. It wasn’t difficult climbing, but it was tedious and tiring. Every step brought them higher into the mountains even though they’d done their best to hit gaps in the range and stay at the lowest elevation possible. They worked around several cliff faces, which appeared out of nowhere in the dense foliage, though most were small and easily traversed. Boulders wreathed in devil grass pocked the mountainside and the farther the fellowship trudged, the sparser the trees became.
A day moon hung in the midday sky, its white luminescence in blunt contrast to the endless blue. Tye chuckled at his companion’s expressions of constant awe. They’d seen no major signs of the gone world, yet the sheer vastness of their new surroundings had overloaded his friends.
“That’s something. The moon I mean,” Peter said.
“Like you’ve never seen the moon on Respite?” Milly said. Tye thought she was being extra bitchy. She’d made it clear more than once that she hadn’t seen any of the fantastical things he’d described, and his explanations of their location and how long it had been since The Day didn’t dissuade her.
“I saw video and heard audio of a man walking on that Moon. My dad said the entire world stood still, everyone waiting by the nearest television or radio. My mother used to say in that moment the world became one. Perhaps the only time ever,” Tye said.
“I can think of another time,” Peter said.
Tye understood why his story was a tough swallow for the younglings. He knew his tales weren’t that far off from many of the sacred texts in their minds. They looked at him with furrowed brows, like he was an old man losing his faculties and slipping into dotage. “Humor your grandfather,” Tye’s mom used to say. Tye had told his stories in the Womb less and less as the years had rushed by.
“Just up and went to the Moon. Like how people traded internal organs and carried devices that could answer any question,” Jerome said. He wasn’t mocking Tye, more like humoring grandad.
“Just like that. Fabulous things that weren’t needed to survive, but does that make them any less magical?” Tye said.
Collective silence. Insects buzzed and two small birds, one chasing the other, darted across their path and disappeared into the evergreen ash trees.
Peter appeared on the path, coming toward them.
“Oy,” Tye said. “What is it?”
“There’s a good view from the ledge ahead, and the land changes dramatically. Everything is brown except a few trees on the valley floor. You sure we’re not by Los Angeles? Sure looks like a bomb detonated down there.”
“I’m sure.” Tye needed every ounce of his self-control to keep from going off on Peter. “LA is… was on the coast.”
“Anything else?” Milly asked.
“I need the binoculars, but there are a few strange things we can investigate,” Peter said.
“Dipshit,” Tye said.
Peter turned and looked at him, but whatever he saw in Tye’s face made him look away.
They walked for another hour before they came to an outcrop that looked over a brown valley. In the distance, tan mountains rose to an azure sky, and everything looked dead or dying. To the right of the ledge a smooth, flat, wide tract of dried turf and weeds stretched in a winding path to the valley floor.
Tye went to the trail, knelt, and dug his fingers into the ground. “This was a road,” he said.
“Where?” Milly said. She knelt beside him. “All I see is some crumbled packed rocks.”
“Give me the binoculars,” Tye said, and Milly complied.
A town, deteriorated and overgrown with wilting weeds and kudzu vines sat at the confluence of two thin rivers on the valley floor. Light sparkled off metal, and most of the structures were nothing but rubble, but a few still stood. There were no signs of people anywhere.
“Is it Mexico City?” Robin said.
“No. Mexico City is much bigger and at least three hundred miles from the coast. We’ve got a long way to go,”
