“They must’ve passed by on the road while we were fishing,” August said. It was the only reasonable conclusion. They’d confirmed the route with the conductor before they’d returned to the golf course with the fishing net. The pond had been far enough off the road that they wouldn’t have seen the Symphony, hidden as they were behind the clubhouse, and the sound of the Symphony’s passing would have been lost in the storm.
“They moved fast,” Kirsten said, but her stomach was clenched, and August was jingling the handful of change in his pocket. It didn’t entirely add up. Why would the Symphony travel in a downpour, unless there was some unexpected emergency? The storm had washed the road clear of tracks, leaves and twigs in swirled patterns over the pavement, and the heat was rising again. The sky had a broken-apart look about it now, patches of blue between the clouds.
“The fish will go bad fast in this heat,” August said.
This was a quandary. Every cell in Kirsten’s body ached to follow the Symphony, but it was safer to light a fire in daylight, and they’d eaten nothing but a strip or two each of rabbit jerky that morning. They gathered wood for a fire but of course everything was wet and it took a long time to spark even the slightest flame. The fire smoked badly, their eyes stinging while they cooked, but at least the smoke replaced the stench of fish from their clothes. They ate as much fish as they could and carried the rest with them in the net, set off half-sick down the road, past the golf course, past a number of houses that had obviously been ransacked years earlier, ruined furniture strewn about on the lawns. After a while they jettisoned the fish—it was turning in the heat—and sped up, walking as quickly as possible, but the Symphony was still out of sight and surely by now there should have been some sign of them, hoofprints or footprints or wheel marks on the road. They didn’t speak.
Near twilight, the road crossed under a highway. Kirsten climbed up to the overpass for a vantage point, hoping that the Symphony might perhaps be just ahead, but the road curved toward the distant shine of the lake and disappeared behind the trees. The highway was miles of permanent gridlock, small trees growing now between cars and thousands of windshields reflecting the sky. There was a skeleton in the driver’s seat of the nearest car.
They slept under a tree near the overpass, side by side on top of August’s plastic sheet. Kirsten slept fitfully, aware each time she woke of the emptiness of the landscape, the lack of people and animals and caravans around her. Hell is the absence of the people you long for.
24
ON THEIR SECOND DAY without the Symphony, Kirsten and August came upon a line of cars, queued along the shoulder of the road. It was late morning and the heat was rising, a hush falling over the landscape. They’d lost sight of the lake. The cars cast curved shadows. They’d been cleaned out, no bones in backseats or abandoned belongings, which suggested someone lived near here and traveled this route. An hour later they reached a gas station, a low building alone by the road with a yellow seashell sign still standing, vehicles crowded and blocking one another at the pumps. One was the color of melted butter, black lettering on the side. A Chicago taxicab, Kirsten realized. Someone in the very final days had hailed one of the last taxis in the rioting city, negotiated a price and fled north. Two neat bullet holes in the driver’s side door. A dog barked and they froze, their hands on their weapons.
The man who came around the side of the building with a golden retriever was in his fifties or sixties, gray hair cut very short and a stiff way of moving that suggested an old injury, a rifle held at his side. He had a complicated scar on his face.
“Help you?” he asked. His tone wasn’t unfriendly, and this was the pleasure of being alive in Year Twenty, this calmer age. For the first ten or twelve years after the collapse, he would have been much more likely to shoot them on sight.
“Just passing through,” Kirsten said. “We mean no harm. We’re headed for the Museum of Civilization.”
“Headed where, now?”
“The Severn City Airport.”
August was silent beside her. He didn’t like to speak to strangers.
The man nodded. “Anyone still out there?”
“We’re hoping our friends are there.”
“You lose them?”
“Yes,” Kirsten said. “We lost them.” August sighed. The absence of the Symphony from this route had been obvious for some time. They had passed over patches of soft earth with no tracks. No horse manure, no recent wheel ruts or footprints, no sign at all that twenty-odd people, three caravans, and seven horses were ahead of them on this road.
“Well.” The man shook his head. “Bad luck. I’m sorry to hear that. I’m Finn, by the way.”
“I’m Kirsten. This is August.”
“That a violin case?” Finn asked.
“Yes.”
“You run away from an orchestra?”
“They ran away from us,” Kirsten said quickly, because she saw the way August’s fist clenched in his pocket. “You here alone?”
“Of course not,” Finn said, and Kirsten realized her error. Even in this calmer era, who would admit to being outnumbered? His gaze rested on Kirsten’s knives. She was finding it difficult not to stare at the scar on the side of his face. Hard to tell at this distance, but it seemed like a deliberate pattern.
“But this isn’t a town?”
“No. I couldn’t call it that.”
“Sorry, just curious. We don’t come across too many like you.”
“Like me?”
“Living outside a town,” Kirsten said.
“Oh. Well. It’s quiet out here. This place you mentioned,” he said, “this museum. You know anything about it?”
“Not really,” Kirsten said. “But our friends were going there.”
“I heard it’s supposed to be a place where artifacts from the old world are preserved,” August said.
The man laughed, a sound like a bark. His dog looked up at him with an expression of concern. “Artifacts from the old world,” he said. “Here’s the thing, kids, the entire world is a place where artifacts from the old world are preserved. When was the last time you saw a new car?”
They glanced at one another.
“Well, anyway,” Finn said, “there’s a pump behind the building if you’d like to fill your water bottles.”
They thanked him and followed him back. Behind the gas station were two small children, redheaded twins of eight or nine years old and indeterminate gender, peeling potatoes. They were barefoot but their clothes were clean, their hair neatly trimmed, and they stared at the strangers as they approached. Kirsten found herself wondering, as she always did when she saw children, if it was better or worse to have never known any world except the one after the Georgia Flu. Finn pointed to a hand pump on a pedestal in the dirt.
“We’ve met,” Kirsten said. “Haven’t we? Weren’t you in St. Deborah by the Water two years ago? I remember little twins with red hair, following me around town when I went out for a walk.”
Finn tensed, and she saw in the twitch of his arm that he was on the point of raising his rifle. “Did the prophet send you?”
“What? No. No, it’s nothing like that. We’ve only passed through that town.”
“We got out as fast as we could,” August said.
“We’re with the Traveling Symphony.”
Finn smiled. “Well, that explains the violin,” he said. “I remember the Symphony, all right.” He relaxed his grip on the rifle, the moment passed. “Can’t say I was ever much for Shakespeare, but that was the best music I’d heard in years.”
“Thank you,” August said.
“You leave town after the prophet took over?” Kirsten asked. August was working the pump while Kirsten held their bottles under the spout, cool water splashing her hands.
“Craziest damn people I ever met in my life,” he said. “Dangerous as hell. A few of us took our kids and fled.”
“Did you know Charlie and Jeremy?” Kirsten recapped the bottles, put them away in her knapsack and August’s bag.
“Musicians, weren’t they? She was black, he was Asian?”
“Yes.”
“Not well. I knew them to say hello. They left with their baby a few days before I did.”
“You know where they went?”
“No idea.”
“Can you tell us what’s down the road?”
“Nothing for miles. Couple of abandoned towns, no one there anymore so far as I know. After that, just Severn City and the lake.”
“Have you been there?” They were walking back to the road. Kirsten glanced at the side of the man’s face, and the scar snapped into focus: a lowercase t with an extra line, the symbol she’d seen spray-painted on buildings in St. Deborah by the Water.
“Severn City? Not since the collapse.”
“What’s it like,” Kirsten asked, “living out here, outside of a town?”
“Quiet.” Finn shrugged. “I wouldn’t have risked it eight or ten years ago, but except for the prophet, it’s been a very quiet decade.” He hesitated. “Look, I wasn’t quite straight with you before. I know the place you’re talking about, the museum. Supposed to be a fair number of people there.”