on the back of her neck, like the tension before a thunderstorm—that quality of light spreading a sense of dread somewhere in your body left over from before humanity knew such things as language and science.
“Here.” Margie squats by the small stack of books against the wall and flips through for the right one. “You figure out where you want to stop for dinner and if there’s any sightseeing you want to do. Plan it all out, and I’ll be right back.” Margie sets the Visitor’s Guide to West Virginia on the table and picks up the shotgun before stepping outside.
When she looks back, her little sister still kneels on the bench by the table. Her finger’s stuck on that map, pointing at something too far away, which probably doesn’t exist anymore anyway.
Margie never mentions to Sally that sometimes she just has to get away from the tightness of it all. In the beginning, just after the change time, she’d hated the outside, hated to leave the comfort of four walls and a roof, but now it makes her feel trapped. She’s always judging the escape routes, figuring distance and the time it would take to cover it.
Their newest cabin sits on top of a mountain that’s steep enough to keep the monsters away. There’s a deep well, a gun cabinet stashed with crates of ammunition, a cistern of fuel oil, and a pantry brimming with canned food—enough to make Margie think that perhaps they have a shot at surviving all of this so long as it’s just the two of them. They’ve lived here for most of the summer, so that now the fear’s just a low humming noise in the background, like the sound of bees around a blackberry patch.
The first thing she did after Sally and she moved in, other than tossing the bodies over the cliff, was cut down all the rhododendron and laurel. She piled it in a circle partway down the mountain and in the gaps she strung old cans and bottles on twine to rattle if anyone—living or dead—came near.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense that something could be moving around outside. That’s why she’s jittery and pre-lightning-strike aware. If someone’s on their mountain, it’s not one of the monsters, and too often it’s the living that end up being worse than the dead. She’s seen it before when the bandits have come claiming supplies and people and shelter as their own. There’s not enough safety in this new world, and too many people are willing to take what little they can find at any cost.
“I know you’re out there,” she calls, her fingers curled around the gun, holding it tight to her shoulder. She’s lying—she doesn’t know that anyone’s really out there at all. She figures that if it’s somehow a monster, he’s already smelled her, so shouting won’t give her away, and if it isn’t a monster then she may as well have been shouting at the stars.
No one answers, which doesn’t surprise her.
“I’ve got the place trapped,” she calls out again. “You try coming inside and you might as well go blow your own head off.”
Another lie—but nothing whoever or whatever is out there needs to know.
“Find anything?” Sally asks when Margie gets back inside.
“Skunk,” Margie mutters. “Don’t go out there stumbling around until I find him,” Margie warns. “We don’t need to smell things up again.”
Sally crinkles her nose. Dirt mingles indistinguishably with freckles along the bridge. She yawns, long and loud.
“Bedtime,” Margie says, pushing Sally toward the rope ladder up to the loft.
Once they’re both curled up on the wide bed with just a sheet pulled over them, Margie says, “Tell me about this trip we’re taking through West Virginia.”
“There’s this place there called the Paw Paw Tunnel—it took them more than a decade to dig,” Sally starts to tell her. “First we’ll have to stop by the town and eat at this place on a hill called Panorama at the Peak. It’ll be a long walk from there to the tunnel, but the travel book says it’s a must if you’re visiting the area.”
Margie closes her eyes. Her little sister smells like sweat and unwashed hair, but it’s a sweet smell, familiar and steadying. Margie tries to sleep—she wants to sleep—but instead she just counts heartbeats. Outside it begins to rain, thunder tripping through the valleys around them. Sally’s breathing falls into a steady rhythm, and in between lightning strikes all Margie can think about is someone being outside. Right now. Watching their little cabin.
She sneaks back down the ladder and crouches by the window, looking out at the clearing surrounding the house. Rain courses from the sky—a curtain of water blocking the outside world.
The storm rolls closer, lightning and thunder wrapping around each other and pummeling the mountain. In the bare seconds of light, Margie scours the clearing around the cabin, terrified of seeing something out there that doesn’t belong.
Eventually, when her legs fall numb, she moves to the table, where the flashes of lightning illuminate the atlas and tattered notebook. The change time came when Sally was in third grade and Margie in tenth. Her sister’s handwriting is stiff and careful, the letters showing the unsteadiness of her little hand as if she’s still stuck in the before time that happened years ago.
Margie flips through the book: page after page of adventures and plans. Details of a path across the entire continent, as far as their maps can take them. It’s to be the grandest road trip ever, according to Sally.
Margie wonders when Sally will figure it all out. Figure out the truth of their life.
Because it’s the end of summer, another big thunderstorm rolls into the valley the next afternoon. The sky glows a sickening green, and nothing feels right to Margie. Heat settles thick and humid, the wind holding its breath before the storm pushes in hard. Sally seems oblivious, sorting through the guidebooks, flipping through the pages with an almost manic intensity.
“Whatcha looking for?” Margie asks. She crouches next to her sister but keeps glancing out the window. The air’s so saturated it’s hard to see much farther than the porch.
“West Virginia.” Her voice comes out almost breathless, that kind of sound you get on the edge of panic. “I can’t find West Virginia. We haven’t finished the route through, and I need to find someplace where we can stay the second night or we’ll be trapped outside.”
She looks up at her older sister with eyes wide and wet. “We can’t be outside, Margie,” she whispers harshly. “We have to be inside where it’s safe, and I can’t find the book of inns and hotels.”
“It’s okay.” Margie lays a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but she shrugs it away. “We had it last night. It’s here.”
“It’s not here!” Sally cries, shaking her head. “It’s not here,” she says again.
“We’ll keep looking,” Margie reassures her. Beyond the window the storm finally hits, wind hissing and rain bending trees to the ground.
Margie convinces Sally to skip West Virginia for now and figure out where they should stop in Maryland. “I’ve always heard they have great crab cakes there,” Margie says. She finds the Maryland guidebook and sets it on the table.
The picture on the cover shows a faded blue bay and white sails, with a red crab bursting from the text. It makes Margie ache for something she’s tried to give up. It makes her feel lonely in a way she hasn’t before—an intense desire to share something as simple as a chair by the
