Story Excerpt

Hot

by Cecelia Holland

Francie scraped half-eaten cake into the garbage and plunged the plate furiously into the kitchen sink. It was her birthday, and she shouldn’t have to wash dishes. Down the hall, she could hear her stepmother yelling at her brother.

“I want that lawn mowed now!”

“It’s hot out there,” Lawrence yelled back. “I’ll get heat stroke.” 

“Do what I tell you!” Suellen shouted.

A door slammed. A moment later, through the kitchen window, she saw Lawrence dashing toward the driveway.

”Hey,” Francie said, aloud, although he couldn’t hear her. He had promised to take her out for a driving lesson. She had an appointment on Wednesday to get her driver’s license and she wanted to nail that. He hopped into his car and shot backward down the driveway out of sight.

Suellen stormed into the kitchen, carrying another stack of dishes. Her hair was coiled in a bun on top of her head; she was made up like a movie star. “You kids are so spoiled.” She put the dishes on the counter. “After you’re done here, you’re going to help me fold laundry.”

Francie clenched her teeth. It was her birthday. Suellen went into the dining room and came back with yet more plates from the birthday party lunch, heaped with rib bones, corncobs, bits of potato salad and bread. “Do a good job,” she said. “I don’t want to have to clean up after you.” She stalked out.

The AC was blasting. The day was blazing hot, even this late in the afternoon. Francie scrubbed and rinsed, stacked plates, wiped down the counter. When she was nearly done, suddenly Lawrence’s blue Nissan was pulling back into the driveway.

She went to meet him at the back door. “Remember, you promised—”

“Not today,” he said. “I’m out of gas.”

“I’ll pay for the gas.” She had gotten money for her birthday.

He shook his head. “I just went into Springville. Nobody has any gas. I barely got home.” He looked past her into the hall. “Where’s the wicked witch?”

“Probably in the TV room,” Francie said. “What do you mean nobody has gas?”

He shrugged, angry, his forehead rumpled. “I went to three stations. Nobody has gas. The delivery trucks didn’t come.” Abruptly, he brightened. “Maybe there’s gas in the can in the garage.” He turned and went back out again.

“Then can we go out—” But he was gone.

*   *   *

Around six her father came back from the hospital, still in his blue scrubs, and Suellen met him with a list of Francie’s and Lawrence’s crimes against humanity. “I can’t make those brats of yours do anything.” She leaned on him, her hands flat against his chest.

“Well, teenagers,” her father said.

“I washed the dishes,” Francie said.

He smiled at her and turned back to Suellen. “See? They do grow up.” He kissed her forehead. He looked tired. “Come have a drink with me, honey. Watch the news.”

“The news is awful,” Suellen said, but she followed him down into the TV room. It always annoyed Francie how different her stepmother was when her father was around. Suellen smiled, and even her voice was higher and sweeter.

 

The days grew still hotter. On the news people talked of a heat dome. Somewhere across the world people were dying by the thousands. Francie’s father had an electric car, which he charged at the hospital, so he could keep on driving. He found gas in Bay City, up the freeway from Springville, and brought it back in five-gallon cans. Toilet paper and diapers were hard to find. In the stores people were getting into fistfights over ice cream and toothpaste.

The gas trucks rolled up the freeway, and they could buy gas again in Springville. Her brother took her to the DMV to get her license. She passed the test with no trouble, and she drove home afterward. She wanted to go to McDonald’s but it was closed; they stopped instead at the liquor store and got Cokes.

They rolled south along the freeway, skirting the southern edge of the bay, the slough where a white cattle egret stood in the shallows, the marshes of the wildlife refuge. The off-ramp for Maple Avenue was the last exit before Springville. She drove up along the narrow, curving lane, overhung with madrones and Douglas fir and the maples that gave it its name.

She loved this road, where she had lived all her life: the little houses, the gardens, the orchards on either side, the creek running along to the right. As they went deeper into the country, the houses were farther apart, separated by woodlands and fields. She watched for cats, squirrels, the deer that often darted across the way, the quail that bobbled along the side of the road until suddenly they took flight like feathered bombs in the air. A hawk swayed on a power line. A turkey buzzard circled overhead.

At her house, she turned into the driveway, a gravel strip between the house and the garden, and sat behind the wheel, unwilling to go inside. Her father’s car was gone, which meant Suellen would be in bitch mode. With the air conditioning off, the car heated up quickly. The redwoods on the hill behind the house were showing great patches of yellow.

“Why does he like her?” she burst out.

“They screw a lot,” Lawrence said. He tipped the bottle of Coke up to his lips. 

Shocked, she put her hand over her mouth. She knew what that meant. She’d taken sex ed. But she couldn’t imagine anybody actually doing it, especially not her father. She had never met anybody she wanted to do that with.

“Have you done it?” she asked, and looked at Lawrence.

Her brother scowled at her. “That’s none of your business.” He capped the Coke bottle, looking away out the window. She thought: Yes, he has.

She studied him. She thought he was nice looking, his face, anyway, with broad cheekbones, a full mouth. He shaved, she knew. He had man boobs, though, and his stomach hung over the tops of his shorts. She wondered whom he had done it with.

*   *   *

The gas ran out again. At night the lights flickered on and off, and the power company begged people to use as little electricity as possible. But without the air conditioning, nobody could endure the heat.

 

Their house was two miles from the freeway and three from the little city of Springville, so the only way to get around was by car. Francie had her license now, but no car. She still had nearly one hundred dollars of her birthday money and she was dying to spend it, so one morning halfway through the summer she sucked it up and went with Suellen into Springville.

 

They stopped first at the supermarket, where she pushed the cart while Suellen fussed over her phone, checking the store’s app for the day’s bargains. Francie glanced toward the deli section, thinking she might get some sushi. They rolled down the bread aisle, with Suellen’s attention glued to her screen.

The place was crowded with other shoppers. Francie saw Kelly, a girl from school, also with her mother, and waved; while Suellen priced meat, the two girls stood together and talked.

“Did you hear about Mark Carrera? He died. He was walking down the street and he just collapsed and died.”

Mark Carrera had been in their English class. Francie said, “That’s terrible. I liked him a lot.” 

“He had some kind of heart problem, they said. But still.”

Suellen put a slab of roast into the cart. “All right, let’s go check out.”

“I’ll see you later,” said Kelly. “Maybe at the Shack?” She went back toward her mother. 

“I want to get sushi,” Francie said to Suellen.

“Get in line first.”

They went up to the front of the store, where each cash register had a dozen shoppers waiting; the space inside the checkout row was jammed with carts. Suellen fussed in her purse. Francie said, “I’ll get my sushi.”

“I’m not paying for that,” Suellen said.

“I have money.” She left her stepmother standing there rummaging in her purse and went toward the deli.

Then, with a bang, the lights went out.

The store was instantly dark. A vast cry of alarm went up. Francie wheeled around. Somebody shouted, “The doors won’t open!”

A wail rose. The crowd rushed toward the front, where there was more light anyway. A man in an apron strode out from the nearest cash register, waving his arms.

“Hey—let’s keep order here—”

Francie pushed and slithered through the gathering crowd, looking for her stepmother. The man with the apron shouted, “Look. The cash registers are down. We can’t check you out. You’re just going to have to come back later—”

“We can’t get out! The doors won’t open.”

The man in the apron wheeled around. “We’ll work on that. Just—” Somebody shoved him. “Get out of my way!”

Suellen was standing by their cart, looking around, her mouth open. Francie said, “What are we going to do?” In a mass, people with carts surged toward the doors, not bothering with the cash registers; shoppers who had unloaded their goods onto the conveyor belts were throwing everything back into the carts. An angry shout rose.

“Stop! You can’t just—”

A loud crash sounded up by the front door. Francie looked quickly at Suellen, who stood there gaping, while people jostled and shoved past her and down the checkout lines. Up there, in the light from the windows, a big man lifted a broom handle and battered at the doors. The man with the apron lunged at him, shouting, and then suddenly he slumped to the floor and the crowd surged over him in a wave of bodies.

Francie wheeled. “The back way,” she said. “There must be a back way out.” She started down the bread aisle into the darkness. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she turned on the flashlight. Suellen pushed the cart after her, through a stream of people running down the aisle toward the front of the store, and Francie took hold of the front of the cart, so they wouldn’t get separated.

Suellen was saying, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Behind them, at the front doors, there was a splintering crash.

They came to the meat counter, where a man in a white butcher’s apron was grabbing roasts and ground beef out of the display. On one side was a door marked “Employees only”. They swung this open, pushed into the butcher shop, and turned right to another door. This opened into a storeroom piled with boxes. Francie directed the beam of the flashlight ahead of them. Her heart was pounding. She slipped on something on the floor and grabbed the cart to stay on her feet. They swerved around a stack of crates. Someone panting hurried up behind them. In the back wall was a narrow door, sunlight shining through its window, and as they approached the man behind them lunged past them and jerked the door open and darted out. Francie bolted toward the door. They burst out into the heat of the morning and ran, hauling the cart along between them.

 

At home, the lights were still on, although they flickered now and then. The riot at the supermarket was the top story on the local news. The manager was in the hospital, in critical condition. The newswoman said, wide-eyed, that police were looking for witnesses. Anybody who had information should come forward. The television camera panned next over a street full of bodies, somewhere far away. The president came on, mouthing words.

“We should get a generator,” her brother said. 

“Don’t they run on gasoline?” Francie asked. “Solar, maybe.”

”We should go to Bay City,” Suellen said. “Where’s your father? Why isn’t he home yet?” She put her hands to her face. “Why does he do this to me?”

The TV was now talking about how some scientists wanted to spray diamond dust into the air to cool off the planet. Francie got up and went to her room, out of her stepmother’s range. She booted up her computer and read her email—all her friends complaining of the heat, even her cousin in Portland. The computer kept dropping the internet signal. She was thinking of taking a shower and washing her hair and going to bed when she heard the crunch of tires out on the driveway.

She leapt up; that would be her father. She went out toward the living room, past her brother’s room where she could hear muffled music, and saw her father coming in through the front door.

Suellen rushed into his arms. “Where have you been? I was so worried.”

“We had to take a patient up to Bay City for emergency surgery,” he said. He looked gray, old, his face seamed with lines. “It’s just been a real grind of a day.” Looking past Suellen, who was clinging to him, he saw Francie, and he smiled. “But I’m home now,” he said.

Then the lights dimmed and faded, until they were standing, silent, in utter darkness.

*   *   *

“Francie,” her father said, “don’t be silly. You have to come with us.” 

“I’m not going.”

“Leave her, John. She’ll learn her lesson,” Francie’s stepmother said. She was already in the car, behind the wheel; she couldn’t wait to get away.

Her father took Francie by the hand. “Honey, the power station has shut down. There’s no gas. Nobody is delivering to the stores. They say this could go on for weeks. And I have patients in the ICU at General in Bay City. I can’t abandon them, especially now.”

“I’m staying here,” she said. She set her feet. This was her home; she belonged here. And she was going nowhere with her stepmother.

Everybody was leaving. People had been driving away down the street all morning, since the news came about the power station. Nobody was coming up the other way. While she and her father stood there a truck puttered on past them down toward the freeway, the bed piled with boxes and furniture. She said again, “I’m staying here.”

Her father’s car gave a long derisive honk.

Her father shrugged. “All right, then. When you change your mind, just walk down to the freeway. We’ll only be in Bay City. It’s right by the ocean, so it will be cooler, and a lot of places up there still have power. When I get us settled I’ll come back for you. Or you can find us. Just come to the hospital.”

The car honked again. He looked hard into her eyes. “There’s plenty of food in the house. Stay out of the heat as much as you can. I’ll come back for you. Once we’re settled. Remember. Drink lots of water.” He squeezed her hand and left.

 

At first it was fun. Years before, rambling around the wooded slope behind her house, she had found a cave, where a redwood had fallen over an old streambed and the creek had worn a deep hollow under the bank, which she took over as a place of refuge. When it rained a lot, a trickle of water ran down the middle, but now in the dead of summer it was dry. A narrow entrance beneath the trunk of the fallen tree led to a long low open space, the ceiling a tangle of roots. She dragged in a trashcan and filled it with water from the pond by the house, two buckets at a time. She took in a sleeping bag. By mid-morning the heat outside was unbearable, and she crawled into the deep darkness and slept.

In the evening, after the sun went down, it got cool enough outside to roam around. Her brother’s car sat in the driveway, and she rummaged through it. The backseat was a mess of candy wrappers and half-eaten bags of chips. In the glove compartment she found three dollars. Under the front seat, an empty beer can.

She went into the house. She took a flashlight and a package of batteries from the drawer by the sink. Sitting at the kitchen table, she ate the leftover roast beef from the dead refrigerator. The ice cream had turned to chocolate soup, but she ate that too. On the shelves were boxes of pasta, dried fruit, crackers, nothing really appetizing. The house was still uncomfortably warm, but she went around the rooms, opening drawers and poking into closets. In her parents’ bedroom she found a box of condoms, which made her giggle, and a pile of porn magazines, which shocked her.

Her father had a little office, in a sunny alcove just off the TV room: enough space for his desk, his chair, his shelves of medical books. She sat in the chair and opened the desk drawers, finding nothing much interesting—a first aid kit, a bottle of aspirin, old CDs of the Beatles and Pink Floyd. Her gaze fell on the pictures on the wall above the desk. In an ornate frame was the wedding picture of him and Suellen, smiling, Suellen wearing a flowing white gown, her father in a tuxedo with a flower in the lapel. Next to that, snapshots of her and Lawrence, as babies, as kids, as teenagers. And there, tucked in the corner, a fading polaroid of a woman with curly hair and a broad, happy smile, her hand raised to the crown of a broad-brimmed straw hat.

Her mother. She had died in a car accident when Francie was a baby; she had no memory of her at all. Her father kept this picture on his desk, this happy picture. She put her fingertips to it, suddenly aching with loss.

She hadn’t thought about her mother in years. But he did, every day. And yet he had married Suellen. She got up and went out of the den, her mind tangled.

She tried the water faucets that of course did not work. The toilet was full of piss, and when she pushed the handle down it just gurgled. They had taken the television screen off the wall, and the computers, but under his pillow she found her brother’s cell phone. She played a bubble sort game on that until the battery died. The house was sweltering, and she went out to the yard again. The roses in the front of the house were wilted. She sat on the front step, wondering where her family was—they must have reached Bay City by now. Maybe her father was coming back for her already. She caught her ears straining, trying to pick up the first sounds of a car coming up the road.

Nothing moved on the road. The whole neighborhood had left.

The sky lightened. The sun was rising. She went back into the house and snooped around some more, collected a box of crackers, some cheese. In her parents’ bathroom was a bottle of water, which she drank. She was sweating, her T-shirt stuck to her skin. She went back up to her cave on the hillside, crawled in, and stowed the food and the flashlight and the batteries against the wall, and lay down on the sleeping bag.

The old streambed was pebbly. She resolved to look for some kind of mattress to make it more comfortable.

She slept all day. In the deep night, she took the flashlight and walked over to the neighboring house, half a mile down Maple Road. This was the Bensons’ place. She had played with Tony Benson for years, since they were little kids. The house was dark, both cars gone, their old horse trailer. She tried the door, and it was locked. She banged on it and twisted the knob, getting nowhere, but when she went around to the back, she found the downstairs bathroom window halfway open. Crawling in, she prowled around the house, shining the flashlight into every corner, every closet. They had left behind clothes, furniture, even Tony’s .22 rifle hanging on the wall of his room. Tony’s bunk bed had a memory foam layer, which she rolled up and secured with a belt. In the kitchen, there were cans of broth and beans and stew and a loaf of bread. She found a backpack in the closet and stuffed it with everything except the mattress, slung that over her shoulder, and went back to her house.

The sun was coming up. The long slanting beams were hot against her face. Carrying everything had tired her out. She went back to her cave, deep under the hill, laid the memory foam beneath her sleeping bag, and ate the loaf of bread. She remembered what her father had said, and drank water, and she stayed there all day, sleeping and waking, until in the evening it was cool enough to go out again.

Now the air smelled of smoke. In the last gloom of the day she climbed to the top of the hill behind her house and looked all around, trying to see where the fire was, but she could make out nothing; the smoke was like a fog over everything. She went back down again. She looked for more food, rummaged around the laundry room, and got a clean T-shirt and jean cut-offs and socks. She sat in her room staring at her dead computer.

She wondered why they had let this happen. How things had gotten so crazy. She remembered people arguing for years about global warming, what to do, if it was even maybe a hoax and they didn’t have to do anything.

Too late now.

When the sun rose the sky was yellow. The shadows were weirdly blurry. She thought the smoke was thicker toward the east, but the wind came from the east, so no real clue there. She retreated to her cave.

She dreamt of her father, standing in the dark, far away, waving to her. She called, but she could not make her feet move to go to him, and slowly he disappeared into a haze of smoke.

When she woke in the evening and went out again, she saw people on the road, moving west toward the freeway—two men on bikes, a battered pick-up truck, a dozen people walking, carrying bundles, pushing carts full of stuff. She hung back, wary, and they didn’t notice her, or didn’t care. By full dark they were gone.

The air still stank of burning. She wondered if the fire had driven them out.

She went up Maple Road half a mile to the east, to the Jacksons’ house. Trudging along, she saw no more cars on the road, no more signs of people, as if they had all evaporated in the heat. The Jacksons’ house was also empty. There was no sign of any fire. Five miles on to the east, she knew, Maple Road made the main street of the little town of Greenville, but Greenville would be hotter than here, because it was inland, and it would be hard to go there and get back home in time to escape the heat.

In the Jacksons’ house she found a case of bottled water. Cans of stew and soup. A real trove: a box of freeze-dried camp food. In the backyard she came on a wheelbarrow and loaded it with this booty. The chicken run in the backyard was littered with dead hens, clumps of white feathers like blasted pillows. Something had clawed through the bottom of the wire fence and dragged a chicken halfway through and eaten everything but the head, the wings and the feet. She wondered what had done this—a raccoon, maybe—another night creature.

She rooted through the chicken house, looking for eggs, and heard a faint whine. Squatting, she shone the flashlight into the space under the house and saw a brown and white dog.

She didn’t think the Jacksons had a dog. Certainly they would have taken it with them if they had. This one must have come from somewhere else. Its fur was matted and its eyes were glazed. One paw twitched feebly. It whined again, a whisper of a sound.

She couldn’t leave it like this. She went back to the wheelbarrow and got a bottle of water, took the chickens’ watering pan, and filled it. She pulled the dog out from under the chicken house and held it while it drank. It couldn’t stand by itself. It lapped up all the water and she poured another bottle into the pan.

On a tag around its neck was the name Bernie. She said, “It’s all right, Bernie. It’s all right.” The sound of her own voice startled her. The dog drank without pausing. Its tail wagged when she said its name. Its fur was falling out in clumps, the bare skin red and raw.

It still couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t abandon it now, so she carried it over to the wheelbarrow and laid it down on top of the water and the food. Behind the trees to the east, the sky was turning light. She had to hurry. She rolled the wheelbarrow out to the road and pushed it down to her house.

*   *   *

She wrestled the wheelbarrow around past the deck, over the dry creek bed, and up through the trees to the mouth of the cave. By then the sun was blasting everything, and now even the cave was getting warm. She carried the dog inside and opened a can of stew, but the dog could not eat. She ate the stew herself and fed the dog broth. She soaked her shirt in the water, which made her cooler, and sprinkled water on the dog. She slept, off and on, and whenever she woke up, she fed the dog more broth.

“Bernie,” she said. “You’re going to be all right, Bernie.”

By the end of the day the dog could stand, wobble around a little. When she went out to piss it followed her, its tail wagging. Its skin looked better. Its fur was sleeker. When they went back into the cave it ate a whole can of stew.

 

She remembered in June, at her birthday party, the plates of potato salad, ribs, corn, how she had scraped off piles of uneaten food into the trash. That seemed so stupid now, so heedless, how had they been so wasteful? But without power everything would have gone bad anyway. She wondered why they had gotten so dependent on a power system that easily disrupted.

Of course, looking back, everything looked inevitable. It was only looking on ahead that the world seemed nothing but chaos.

Not a real world yet, just stuff to make a world out of.

The air was clear now. The smoke had dissipated. She roamed around her yard, looking for anything she could use. The pond, where her father had dammed the creek, had dried up. Dead frogs and goldfish littered the bottom. She went through her father’s garden, but there was nothing to pick. The corn plants were stunted and yellow. The lettuce had bolted and then wilted. The peas and beans had never grown. The hills of potatoes had no potatoes. Her father had watered with a drip line from the spring on the top of the hill. That line crossed the slope above her cave, and she disconnected it and ran it down into the cave and used it to fill the trashcan.

They will come back, she thought. Surely they’ll come back.

 

Bernie got steadily stronger. His fur grew back, sleeker. But he was eating a lot. And she was tired of this; she decided to start after her family.

“It’s okay, Bernie,” she said. “My dad will like you. You can live with us from now on.”

Bernie made a little gurgling noise, his eyes fixed on her face. She wondered if he were trying to talk to her. She hugged him. A surge of warm feeling flooded through her. She thought she had never loved anything before as much as she loved this dog. Suellen had never let them have a dog. Surely her father could help Francie change her mind.

Just after sundown, when the air still sizzled with the heat, she packed the wheelbarrow with her food, filled all the water bottles she could find, and rolled off down Maple Road. Her shoes were getting worn out, and the surface of the road was hot enough to burn her feet through the soles; she went along the grassy shoulder. Bernie trotted along beside her. The streetlamp down the way was still shining—it had a solar panel, she realized—but once she passed that, the darkness settled over her. The Moon was rising. She saw something huge in the ditch ahead of her and shone her flashlight on it, and was sorry she had: a dead deer, bloated like a balloon.

The moonlight shone down on everything, and overhead, the stars were brighter than she had ever seen them, clouds of light against the depthless black.

Something huge and silent swooped by overhead: an owl, maybe.

She passed a string of deserted houses. One had solar panels on the roof, and she slowed and stared at it, hopeful. Maybe these people had stayed. But there were no cars in the drive.

“Wait here, Bernie,” she said. “Guard our stuff.”

She took the flashlight and went up the front steps. Bernie lay down by the wheelbarrow, watching her. He understood what she’d told him. She knocked on the front door. No answer. The house sounded hollow. She turned the knob and opened the door, and an alarm blasted.

She staggered back, less from the racket than the blazing hot air that gusted out into her face. The solar panels didn’t run the air conditioning, anyway. Obviously they powered the alarm. The mechanical shrieking continued, a rhythmic hysteria. She went back to the road and the wheelbarrow and Bernie, who stood up and nuzzled her hand.

“Good boy, Bernie.” He gurgled again.

Halfway through the night, she reached the freeway, stopped to eat something, and feed Bernie. Then she rolled the wheelbarrow up the ramp and started north. The freeway ran along the river. Usually during the night there was fog rising from the river, but tonight was clear. She passed a car abandoned on the side of the road, but there was no traffic at all. Her arms were tired from pushing the wheelbarrow but she kept on, past the Fernway off ramp, past the creamery. She passed a sign reading: Cooper’s Landing 6 miles, Bay City 12 miles, Archer City 92 miles, Seattle 530 miles.

“See,” she said to him, “we’re close. They’re probably just up in Bay City. We can get there pretty quick.”

Ahead was the long steep hill that separated the river valley from the bay. She stopped again, ate more stew from a can, fed Bernie, and decided to hole up for the day. The sun would rise soon anyway. She went off the next ramp and climbed into the space beneath the overpass, spread out her sleeping bag, and lay down. Bernie snuggled up to her. She was asleep in moments.

 

When she woke, late in the afternoon, with the sun slanting in beneath the overpass, the wind off the ocean was stirring the dust. The air was still burdened with heat, but she had to get moving. She started north along the freeway, climbing the long hill through the trees. The last of the sun glared in her face and she drank water every few steps. She dribbled some over her head and her hair dried out in a moment.

When she topped the hill, and could see the freeway a long way north, she saw ahead of her a mass of cars. But they weren’t moving.

The sun was going down, and the wind whipped up the hill into her face, hot enough to make her eyes sting. She wiped the sweat off her face with the tail of her shirt. At least she was still sweating; that was a good sign. The freeway ahead of her was jammed with cars, both north and southbound lanes, as far as she could see across the level marshland along the bay. She rolled the wheelbarrow down to the edge of the pack. The cars filled both lanes of the freeway and the shoulders. Up ahead, she saw where some had veered off onto the exit ramp toward the college, maybe thinking they could circle the jam, but a big RV had gotten sideways somehow and blocked the way.

The cars were crammed in so close she could not take the wheelbarrow. She stuffed as many of the water bottles as she could fit into the backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and started off. Bernie hung back; she turned and called to him.

“We can get through this,” she said. “Come on.”

He followed her, and she worked her way down the narrow space between the cars. There was no sign of people, just the hundreds of cars, packed into the road, blocking everything. She had to squeeze sideways between a Jeep and a Subaru. The cars gave off a broiling heat; when she rubbed against the Jeep it burned her skin. In the last of the daylight, she saw, inside the Jeep, piled high in the back seat, a computer monitor, suitcases. In the front seat, only the empty seat belts. The doors were locked. She stopped to drink more water and give Bernie water. Far ahead, up where the next off ramp was, the streetlight began to wink on, and the sky grew dark.

It was still unbearably hot. She turned on the flashlight, to make sure where she was going, but she only had two more batteries, so she quickly switched it off again. The Moon was rising anyway. She threaded her way between the cars, almost to the foot of the hill now. The moonlight glistened on the metal roofs. Now the air seemed cooler, so close to the bay and with the sun gone down, but the cars still radiated heat.

She switched on the flashlight for another quick look around, and to her amazement saw somebody sitting in the car next to her.

She jumped, hard enough that her back slammed into the car behind her. Through the window she saw a woman, slumped in her seat, her head against the backrest, her mouth fallen open. Her eyes were sunken down into her skull, as if she had seen something too horrible to bear. Beyond her a man was buckled forward over the steering wheel.

Francie’s heart was hammering. She thought she could smell them. She wondered what had happened. Quickly she turned and shone the flashlight at the other cars around her. They were empty—the people had gotten out, had walked on.

No. There, in the next lane, another body crumpled down in a backseat, held upright by the seatbelt. Something in its lap. A doll.

Not a doll. She switched the light off before she saw any more.

She wondered how many dead people she had walked past in the dark.

They had stayed in the air-conditioned cars until they ran out of gas and the air conditioning went off and they cooked.

Her stomach was roiling. She turned around, trying to decide what to do. This was hopeless. This was terrible. It would take much more than a day to walk to Bay City like this. And she was running out of water. Her mouth was dry. Her lips were sore.

There was water in the wheelbarrow. “Bernie,” she said, “we have to go back.”

Bernie whined and rubbed his head against her hand. She realized he wanted to get away from here, too. She opened another bottle of water and drank half and gave him the rest, and then they started back up the hill.

The cars had made this happen. The graveyard of cars was a fit monument.

 

The Moon sailed overhead. When they reached the wheelbarrow again, the sky to the east was turning pale. She would never reach home before the sun came up, the terrible furnace. Maybe her family had gotten out ahead of that jam. Surely they would have walked on; she hoped they had walked on, carrying their stuff, but her mind shrank from thinking about it.

Her arms hurt from pushing the wheelbarrow. The light was blooming now. The air swollen with the heat. Her breath scratched her throat. Her muscles were juicy. She was getting sick to her stomach; in the air before her, little black flecks danced. Bernie trudged along after her. She got off the freeway and under a bridge, where the fierce sunlight could not reach, and the ground was still cool. Bernie lay down beside her. She gave him some water, and from her pack took a handful of dog food and gave him that. She chewed on some of the dog food herself. Lying down, she put her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes.

She dreamt she stood in the middle of a great fire, blazing all around her. Through the flames she saw faces, melting like candles, mouths open to scream, eyes hollow with terror. She jerked awake, panting, and Bernie nuzzled her, and she curled her arms around him.

She realized now why her father hadn’t come back for her. Why he might never come back for her. She pressed her face against Bernie’s fur and cried.

 

Late in the afternoon, she went down to the river, thinking she might be able to catch some fish. A stomach-turning stench reached her before she even saw the water. Walking down through the trees, she came to the riverbank. She had never seen the river this low, only ten or twelve feet across, and the water barely moving. The bank was crusted with rotting fish. Flies like filthy little clouds hovered above the mess. On the gravel bar, the feathery carcass of a heron lay, its beak yawning.

Bernie started to bark. Someone called out, “Hey.”

She looked up. On the far side of the river a man was shambling toward her, a scrawny figure in tattered overalls. “Hey,” he cried. “You got anything to eat?”

She got Bernie by the collar, holding him still. “Who are you? Where did you come from?” 

“South. Down by Santa Rosita. I—” He buckled forward, coughing, a hoarse, liquid cough. She held Bernie where he was—she couldn’t let him drink this river water, anyway. The scrawny man fought down his cough, and said, “I come up on the freeway. There was a jam, I got off, my car ran out of gas. I been walking. You got anything to eat?” Another spasm of coughing racked him.

“Did you go to Springville?” Springville was just south of here.

He said, “They—they—” and began to cough again. “You got anything to eat?” He wiped spittle from his chin.

She reached into her backpack and got out a packet of camp food. When she flung it across the river it sailed off and the man scrambled after it, sloshing through the dead fish. She took out a bottle of water and threw that to him, too.

He held the food to his chest; he started forward, as if he would cross, and she said, “No, stay there! Stay there. What happened in Springville?”

“It’s bad,” he said. “They shooting at everybody. Please. You the first person I seen in weeks.” 

She doubted it was that long. Bernie growled. She said, “Stay away from me. You’re sick.” She backed up, toward her own place. If she got sick there was nobody to take care of her. Nobody to feed Bernie.

“Wait,” he cried. “Please—” The coughing took him like a blow and he went to his knees. She turned and ran, back up toward the freeway.

  

Trudging back up Maple Road, halfway through the night, she came on the house with the solar panels, and she slowed. The front door hung open; she didn’t remember leaving the door open, but maybe she had. She left the wheelbarrow on the side of the road and went up the walk.

Bernie came with her. She was glad of that.

The house was hot inside, but it felt empty. It smelled bad. She went cautiously into the front room, switched on the flashlight, and looked around. Somebody had been here ahead of her: in a cupboard on the wall all the drawers were pulled out, underwear and T-shirts dumped on the floor. She wondered who had done that. Not recently, though. A film of dust lay on everything, and there were no footprints.

Bernie sniffed around, and after a few moments he lifted his leg against the wall. Somehow that was reassuring.

She went into the kitchen, where the smell was coming from: a great scum of rotten milk lay on the floor. Those drawers were wide open, too, and spoons and forks scattered around. In a cupboard she found three cans of cat food, and she put them in her backpack.

In the bedrooms it was the same, the dressers ransacked, the covers pulled off the beds. The clothes were all thrown down off the hangers in the closets. Shoes piled in a heap. She looked hopefully through those—her shoes were falling apart—but except for a pair of sneakers, which were too small, they were high heels and slippers.

In the back of one closet was a little box. She fished that out and opened it. 

Inside was a gun.

Her hair stood on end. She wondered how the looters had missed that. But maybe by the time they came in here they already had all they could carry and they had stopped looking. It was a little square black gun, a lot like her father’s Glock, although this one had an eagle on the handle, with spread wings.

Her father had shown her the Glock a couple of times. This was similar. The raised part on top meant it was loaded. She pushed a tab on the barrel, which was probably the safety, and a red patch appeared. She put the safety back on and stuck the gun in her jeans hip pocket.

She found nothing else, and she was getting tired now, with dawn coming, and miles to go before she got to the cave. She went out again to the wheelbarrow and started home.

 

A few nights later, just after sundown, she was in the house rooting around looking for clean clothes when she heard a clanking out on the road. Bernie darted out of the room and started to bark. She went out to the hall and started toward the door, to see what was going on, and then out in front something cracked, twice, and Bernie yelped and was still.

She bolted out the back. Across the deck and the backyard, and up through the trees to the cave. Snatching the gun up, she aimed it toward the mouth of the cave, her heart pounding. She hoped Bernie would come in, but he didn’t. After a long while, she heard the clanking again, moving away down the road toward the freeway.

She waited a while, wishing Bernie would show up, and then went out and crept around the outside of the house, the gun in her hand. When she came to the front corner she leaned on the wall and peered carefully around.

The doors to her brother’s car were open wide. The gas tank lid gaped and the cap hung down. Beyond, Bernie lay on the driveway in the dark, in a puddle.

She sobbed. She ran across the yard to the driveway and went to her knees beside him. He was dead. Part of his head was gone. The puddle was blood. She threw back her head and howled.

A wild hot fury built up in her, and she leapt up and went out to the road. They had gone west, toward the freeway. She went quickly through the dark; she had gotten good at getting around at night, she didn’t need the flashlight. The rage made her snarl. When she went around the curve by the house with the solar panels, up ahead, under the streetlight, there was a truck.

She drew back into the trees on the side of the road. The hood of the truck was open and somebody was bent over the engine. Two other people sat on the road with their backs against the side of the truck.

She crept up closer. Her breath hissed in her throat. Bernie’s yelp sounded again and again in her mind. She came up behind a big tree, raised the gun, thumbed off the safety, aimed at the man bent over the engine, and pulled the trigger.

Even as she did that, she shouted. Her stomach clenched. She dropped the gun. No, she thought. No. She bent over, horrified, her hands to her ears. The two people by the truck leapt up and bolted down the road, going toward the freeway, but the man bent over the engine slumped down and slowly fell into the road.

No, she thought. No. Please.

He wasn’t dead. He crawled away from the car and cried out, and one of the running people raced back and got him by the arm and dragged him to his feet. They staggered off down Maple Road toward the freeway, leaving a dark trail behind in the glare of the streetlight. From down the road came a sudden rattle of gunfire; she heard something thwack into a branch above her head and shrank down behind the tree.

When she looked around, they were gone. The broken truck was still there. She found the gun and picked it up. She would need it again. She didn’t bother thinking why. She went slowly back up to her house, gathered Bernie up, and buried him in the garden. For a while she could not leave him, even under the ground.

But the sun was coming up. The air began to sizzle. She crawled back into the cave and sat there, the gun in her hand.

She had never felt this alone, even before Bernie came.

She had shot somebody. I am not that person. But she was.

She lifted the gun; the hatch on top still tilted up. Another bullet in there. She put the barrel to her head and shut her eyes.

She didn’t pull the trigger. Not yet. But soon. Instead she began to cry. I will never be happy again. She threw the gun down and lay down on her bed and wept and wept until she fell asleep.