Page 37

chapter thirty-six

Emily

Day Thirteen

I wiped the tears from my eyes as we drove away from the ranch where we’d spent three magical days, looking over my shoulder as the horses grew smaller and smaller.

“You okay?” Tuck asked, pulling me against him and kissing my temple.

I nodded, swallowing heavily. “I just worry about the horses.”

“They’ll be okay. The Garcias left them enough food for many months.”

Would that be enough though? The world was breaking down by the day. It’d taken us nearly two weeks—even with a number of rides clear across states—to make it from Illinois to New Mexico, but we’d left directly in the wake of the solar flare hitting. We’d had several days—at least—where much of the world was at a standstill as people just waited. We’d entered that pause—because of Tuck’s instincts to get on the road—and because of it, we had probably moved much more quickly than others who hadn’t.

And I was worried about the Garcias too. Perhaps it was irrational, but I’d come to think of them as extended family. I’d lived in their home. I’d passed by the family photos on the wall and seen the love reflected there. I’d practically sensed their panic as they realized the scope of the disaster and counted the hours that they didn’t hear from their only child, halfway across the country as society collapsed.

I had to try my best to push those imaginings aside though because they’d only end up breaking me. We’d heard story after story as we’d traveled, and everyone was panicking. So many were trying to get somewhere. People were doing everything possible to protect themselves and those they loved in any way they could. I turned toward Tuck, breathing him in and finding comfort in his scent and his solid strength beside me.

Even the back roads were more crowded now and it was slow going, even in a car. We passed several men siphoning fuel from the cars, watching us with narrowed eyes as we went by as though we might stop and challenge them. And that made sense being that we were in a vehicle that would only keep running if we had a continued supply of gasoline. Now that it had obviously occurred to more people that there was fuel available in the deserted cars, I wondered how long it would take until most of them were emptied out. I wondered how long it’d take before people were fighting over the last of it to keep their generators running, or whatever else they might have that used gas and was still working.

Tuck looked concerned too as we passed by a couple with a gas can and a hose, draining a Lexus SUV. “Things have progressed in the last few days,” I murmured.

“Or regressed.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have holed up for that long,” I said. “But I can’t manage to regret it.”

“Me neither. I wish it could have been longer.”

It could be , I wanted to say. It could be forever. But I didn’t say that and neither did he. I hardly dared to dream that Tuck would stay with me, that he couldn’t bear parting. And right now, there were a thousand unknowns and too many maybes that were bigger than us. I’d seen the way his eyes had lit up when Hosea mentioned helping abandoned children and others who needed assistance. Would he be pulled back on the road once he’d helped me get to my parents? There were so many things he could do now, and I wondered if staying with me would be enough.

That old familiar longing rose inside me, bringing a rush of fear. I felt like, in some ways, I’d been here before. Only now, it was far more complicated, and the stakes were higher.

I hadn’t asked for promises and he hadn’t offered any. Perhaps now was not the time for such things anyway.

I leaned my head back on the seat and stared out the passenger side window, mountains and desert moving past as Tuck went around a truck in the road.

What I did have to hold on to was that the bitterness between us had fallen away completely. We’d made peace. We’d made much more than that, but it was the peace I was going to attempt to take with me, even if I had to leave the rest behind.

But I didn’t need to think of that. Not yet, and so I held out secret hope that we would find a way.

It took us a day and a half to make it to Arizona, only traveling by daylight. We stopped to siphon gas when we needed to with the gas can and hosing Tuck had taken from the Garcias’ garage and put in the trunk, along with food, that we were still rationing, and water. I’d lost a significant amount of weight in the past two weeks. I thought about how the old me would have considered that a positive, and I wanted to grimace. The old me. This journey had transformed me, and I hardly wanted to think about what the next few years would do. Of course, that would depend on many factors, none of which were certain at the moment. For now, the entire country was just trying to survive, including us.

We made love at night, though not with the joyful abandon we had at the Garcias’ home. The sex in the back of the car in the pitch black was needier, more grasping, even if we managed to laugh about the ridiculous maneuvers made necessary by the tiny space. I’d wondered about whether we’d have made out in back seats had life as we’d known it not crashed and burned and so I tried to enjoy the reclaiming of what I’d considered lost. A smoothing of another one of those wrinkles in time.

After just such a back seat interlude on the second night of traveling, I climbed out of the car, mostly naked, and pulled a sleeping bag from the trunk. I wrapped it around me and then scooted up on the hood of the car and lay back. After a minute, Tuck joined me with the other sleeping bag, and we stared up at the stars.

“We could be in California tomorrow night,” I said. He’d shown me the route he thought safest on the map, and I’d been following the signs.

“If all goes well, I estimate we can get close before sunset. We’ll play it safe and cross the California state line the next morning.” I heard him look over at me but didn’t turn to meet his eyes. “Home,” he said softly.

So why didn’t it feel like that? Of course it was home. I’d lived in Southern California all my life. My family was there. It was our destination, and we’d arrive in less than twenty-four hours if all went well. We should feel victorious. Sure, there were many unknowns, and a vast number of challenges before us. But we’d made it. We’d started out on foot two thousand miles ago and we were almost home! And all I could feel was sadness and fear. “Home,” I finally repeated, turning to him. His eyes were milky in the low light of the moon, and I could only make out the shadowy lines of his profile. “We did it.”

He reached over and grasped my hand. “We did,” he said. “Almost.”

Almost. Such a big word in a time like this. I craved more. Certainty. Predictability. “What do you think it’s going to be like there?”

“I’d imagine it’s going to be like it is here. Los Angeles is my worry.”

“Los Angeles. I thought we were going directly to my parents?”

“We are.” He paused. “I’m going to bring you to them, and then I’m going to go to Los Angeles and check on my uncle.” He was quiet again for a moment, and a pain shot through my stomach. “He was there for me when I needed him, even when I didn’t deserve it. I owe him. He might be in trouble, and I owe him.”

He owed him. To his mind, Tuck owed a lot of people. That had even been his motivation for helping me—and Charlie—get home initially. He’d owed it to my parents. It was his driving force. Repaying debts, making amends. And I wanted to be angry and resentful at him for that, but I couldn’t. He was honorable and good. But I was deeply worried that his honor meant more to him than I did. “If your uncle needs somewhere to stay, you know, out of the city…bring him to my parents.”

“Your parents might just have enough to get by—”

“Tuck.” I squeezed his hand. “We’ll make room for your uncle. And you too. You know that.” And though I meant it, I also hoped that if Tuck’s uncle was there at our farm, it would give Tuck even more reason to stay.

Pitiful, Emily. Desperately trying to give Tuck a reason to stay, other than just…you.

“I’ve also been thinking about my dad,” Tuck said somewhat haltingly. “We’ve been estranged for so many years but…he’s still the man who raised me.”

I could see his sadness and conflict. It was the first time he’d mentioned his dad since we started this trip. This new reality had changed perspective for everyone. Priorities had crumbled and shifted. How could they not? And Tuck had that deep thread of honor that wove through him.

“Florida’s gotta be okay, right?” I said. “So much sunshine…and all that fishing…”

“There’s no way to know. That’s been the hardest part. Even behind bars, we were never this cut off.”

I stared up at the twinkling stars, the sky so infinite above us. Yes, it was true we were cut off in so many ways, but in others, the world had expanded. There was so much to adjust to and relearn. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it all.

“Let’s get somewhere safe and then we’ll see what’s what.”

“That’s the plan,” he said and then he gathered me in his arms. An uncertain plan, but a plan nonetheless. I lay my head on his shoulder as a star shot across the sky, brilliant and beautiful and gone too soon.

Day Fifteen

We crossed into California the next evening, a little earlier than we’d estimated, and camped near a reservation that was completely still and silent, no evidence of people living there at all, though we didn’t enter the area.

We drove through Joshua Tree at daybreak, the sun a glittery yellow diamond rising behind the hills, pearly rays fanning over the desert. And it was so beautiful I nearly wept.

We drove around the city of Palm Springs, foot traffic now heavy even on the outskirts where many of the neighborhoods were primarily Airbnb’s. I looked over my shoulder at a group of women carrying suitcases who looked both shocked and scared, and wondered if they’d been here on vacation and then hunkered down as long as they possibly could before packing their bags and hitting the road. So many stories. So much fear and tragedy.

We drove on, heading toward home. It felt so close now, and so very far away. That feeling intensified when we saw the fire. “Holy shit,” Tuck said, slowing down.

It looked like the entirety of the San Bernardino National Forest was burning, the sky practically black as we crested a hill. My heart sank. As a native Californian I was no stranger to forest fires, but this, in the midst of the current desperation and lack of water, was nothing short of calamitous. Tuck swore and then turned back the way we’d come, finally heading north rather than south toward my parents’ home in an effort to go around the fire. He unfolded the map, glancing at it as he drove on the shoulder of the road by necessity as both lanes were filled with vehicles. We drove on, my hands clenched at my sides as we veered away from what had looked like a valley of hell.

The sky cleared and the scent of acrid smoke dissipated as we drove by a sign for Temecula, the parked cars and trucks becoming more sparse on the stretch of road we were on. But when I reached down to the floor where I had a bottle of water, I felt Tuck slow and come to a stop. I sat up just as Tuck began reversing away from a row of cars that had been arranged to block the road up ahead. In front of the blockade of vehicles were men in hunting gear holding rifles and standing duty at the perimeter. “What is that? Would they not let us through?” I asked as Tuck turned around. “Should we try?”

“No. I doubt they’ll let us through. Everywhere is being sectioned off into mini states,” Tuck said. “Borders are being established.”

“On main roads? They can’t do that.”

“Who’s going to stop them? It’s smart, Em. It’s the only way anyone is going to survive.”

“The military must have a store of gasoline somewhere? Even if it’s taken them a couple of weeks to mobilize. This would be one of the first things they addressed, right? The inability of citizens to travel?”

“Even with gasoline, most of the military’s equipment might not work. And any military that tries to knock down these borders will have a fight on their hands because knocking down these borders is sentencing the people inside to death.”

I looked back at the road. He’d given similar advice to the Pritchards. He’d told them to create a perimeter and have neighbors take shifts guarding it. Protecting their food and water and livestock. And it made sense to guard your own property at a time like this. I just hadn’t realized people would start claiming whole swaths of land, setting up roadblocks into any area that had resources a certain group decided to claim.

“What about the ones outside the lines?” I asked. What about travelers, like us?

He shot me a troubled look but didn’t say more. I supposed I didn’t need him to.

We backtracked an hour and took another route, only to find that one was blocked as well. This one however, had a large group of people standing in front of it, yelling at the men with rifles. At the back of the group there was a man and a woman with a double stroller loaded down with items, a baby and a toddler both crying from the seats. “Fuck,” Tuck swore, banging his palms on the steering wheel. He pulled off to the side of the road and unfolded the map just as the loud crack of a gun made me jump and reach for Tuck, gripping his shirt.

The crowd in front of the barrier was screaming now, as were the men behind it. The people parted, and a man lay on the ground, and even from a distance I could see the blood spreading from his body. “They shot him,” I said. “Tuck, they shot him.”

Tuck dropped the map, backed up and then turned around just as one of the women spotted us, raising her hand and yelling, “Hey! Hey! Help!” and began running toward our car. I watched her through the rearview mirror, the others turning too and beginning to pursue our car, but then stopping as we sped away.

The desperation was palpable. Those people were likely out of food, had no transportation, and were on the wrong side of an already-established line. Parents. Children. Young women my age, alone. I swallowed gulps of air, tamping down my anguish.

Tuck was looking at the map as he drove back around the big rig we’d driven past a few minutes before. “Goddammit,” Tuck swore. “Both roads I was going to take to your parents’ are blocked. We’re going to have to go another way.” He pulled over to the side of the road and I was quiet, trying to process what I’d seen at the barricade as Tuck studied the map. After a few minutes, he set it down and pulled back onto the road. I didn’t ask what new route we’d take, trusting him as I’d trusted him to get me this far.

We drove toward the coast now, the only direction available. “Should we try the highway?” I asked. Maybe back roads had been safest once, and mostly empty in many locations, but perhaps the opposite was true now. I couldn’t imagine what anyone would be trying to protect on a highway, especially one where the cars had been raided.

“Not in a car,” Tuck said distractedly, his gaze constantly moving to the rearview mirror as if he expected to be chased down at any moment. “We probably wouldn’t be able to make it through because of the parked vehicles, but even if we could, it isn’t safe. We’d have to travel way too slow in a car and be vulnerable to attack. It’d be safer to go by foot, but we don’t have enough provisions for that. We’ll need to stock up first, at least on water.”

Not having enough provisions also meant we wouldn’t be able to backtrack to Arizona and attempt to get to the San Fer nando Valley from the opposite direction than the one we’d taken. Truthfully, we might not even make it back the way we’d come considering the barriers that seemed to be going up by the hour.

Tuck continued to look extremely unsettled, and it scared me too. “This looks like the only route we can take, but moving north to your parents will mean traveling through Los Angeles,” he said.

Los Angeles.

All this way, we’d avoided cities because they weren’t safe. Tuck had planned to go to Los Angeles alone, but Tuck was strong and street savvy, and his instincts for handling danger were honed. Me, I was none of those things.

That was the old you, Emily. Haven’t you held your own on this journey? Haven’t you proven that you can be an asset too?

“Okay,” I said, giving him a tip of my chin. “Then we’ll check on your uncle together. And then move on to my parents’ from there.”

“We don’t have another choice right now,” Tuck murmured, almost as if to himself. And again, he banged his palms on the steering wheel and cursed under his breath.

We turned onto another road, and then another, finally catching sight of the City of Angels sprawled in the distance.