Lana was gone. Lana was missing. “Where are you?” I whispered at least a hundred times a day. I whispered it as we left a building that yielded no secrets. I whispered it as we rode out in the morning, as we made our search plans.
There was hope. We hadn’t found them, living or dead. If they’d been killed, surely we would have seen them walking around. We made noise up and down the highway every day in the hopes we’d lure them out if they’d … changed. Nothing. Oh, things came out of the fields, but they weren’t our people.
“Where are you?” I said again, not realizing I’d said it loud enough for Dan to hear.
“Hmm?” Dan had taken to staring out the window of the hotel room we stayed in at night. He said he was watching for signs of life in the neighboring buildings despite the fact we’d searched them. A flicker of light, smoke, other signs of fire. Something to give us hope.
“Nothing,” I said. I joined him at the window. “Anything?”
“No.” He sighed. “I thought I saw fire over there, but it was just the sun. The wind made the glass move, I guess. I don’t know.” He dragged a hand through his hair, then leaned his forehead on the cold pane. “It’s getting colder. Twenty-eight last night and it’s already thirty-three tonight.”
If Owen was out there alone, still alive but alone, he would freeze to death. If Lana was with him, or Ivy, then they would figure out how to keep themselves warm, which would mean smoke. Fire.
“Would they have gone north?” he asked. “Found another vehicle and kept going, hoping it would be safer the farther away from the city they got? Why? Why wouldn’t they circle back?”
I didn’t know. I’d asked myself this a million times. If they were alive, why would they leave? I thought back to what we’d done since that awful day. Had they circled back and missed us? Was this one big comedy of errors? “Do you think they found Evan and Jean’s bodies and thought we were all dead?”
“Wouldn’t they search for us the way we are searching for them?”
I didn’t know. If something bad had happened—and it obviously had, considering the van, the blood smear—if something bad had happened and Lana had to weigh searching for me and going to the boys … I thought she’d leave me behind. And really, how well could she possibly search with three little kids and Ivy on her hands? Ivy, who’d tuned out and hadn’t said a word since finding her daughter and grandkids dead. “There were a lot of them that day. Maybe Lana, Ivy, and the kids headed north. Maybe they were worried we wouldn’t make it and decided it was more important to save the children.”
A desperate flicker of hope lit in Dan’s eyes, though he tried really hard not to let it flare. I understood. I walked a dangerous line between wanting so badly to believe Lana was alive … and not wanting to get my hopes up for fear my heart would shatter if I found her body.
“I’m going to hit the hay,” I said. “It was a long day.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll stay up a bit longer. You know.” He gestured to the city outside.
I knew.
Dan and I were sharing a room, and Isaac and Paisley were across the hall. We had tents to sleep in and sleeping bags, having gone back to the store after the dead things moved on. The tents kept our body heat in, the sleeping bags too, and we each had a twin air mattress underneath us. It was quite cozy.
I took off my shoes but left on my thick socks and crawled inside the tent. I’d already changed my clothes when we got back to the hotel—no pajamas for us in case we had to get the hell out fast—and so I slipped inside my sleeping bag with a sigh, before rolling to my side to scroll through my phone. We’d gotten a couple of solar chargers from the store too, so I kept my phone plugged in and charged so I could look at the picture of Lana and the boys. I smiled as I studied the last picture I had of Lana. It was a selfie, taken at the hotel when we arrived in Omaha. Lana was squinting into the sun and smiling, her arm around my waist, mine around her shoulders. Goddess, I missed her. “Where are you?” I murmured. She smiled back at me but didn’t answer. Didn’t reveal her secrets. What had happened to the van to make them abandon it like that? Why had the door been open? What about the blood?
If they found another car, maybe they did go north. It would mean they were safe …
What about the blood?
Safe somewhere north of here.
I would have to convince Dan to move on soon. I could imagine Lana stopping, making signs for us. If she were alive, she’d want me to know it. She might not wait for me, the thought of the boys might drive her on, but she’d leave signs.
If I didn’t see any, I would know …
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to stave off the tears. I hated being in this place of not knowing. The boys had been bad enough but I’d had Lana with me. I’d had her to lean on, I’d had her to worry about. Now …
Fuck.
I heard Dan
