One day, as she was coming back from a solitary walk around a swampy, mosquito-infested neighborhood that used to have the best used record stores, she’d seen a squad of people in white hazard suits come out of the shelter with the sad woman and a few others—mostly children—bundle them into a white van with darkened windows, and speed away. The men’s faces were covered with blue surgical masks and their hands were gloved. The lady had left her purse behind, pushed halfway under her pillow, as if she was planning on coming back in a few minutes; as if she hadn’t meant to leave. By the next morning it was gone, and the pillow, too. Pillows were in short supply. After that, Lucy had gotten out of there as soon as she could. She’d been better away from people and among the trees, where she felt like she could breathe.
A sudden flurry of raindrops forced their way through the roof and dripped onto her head and neck. She blinked. She’d set bundles of sage burning in the corners and the purple smoke was thick on the ground, the spicy fug strong enough to mask the briny scent of cooked turtle. Her clothes were still damp, but beginning to stiffen. She had been sitting for an hour at least, staring at nothing. She peeled off her wet things, scrubbed her skin with a scratchy towel, and put on dry clothes. The thick woolly socks on her feet felt like heaven, even though her big toes poked through. She wrapped herself in her mother’s shawl, and then slipped on her leather jacket, pulling the collar up around her ears. She pushed her waterlogged boots close to the fire. Then she peered into the depths of the cooking pot. It looked like a thick soup, greenish-brown, and it smelled salty and wild. Chunks and strings of indefinable matter floated on the top. Lucy’s stomach turned an unhappy somersault, but from nausea or hunger, she wasn’t sure. It had been at least sixteen hours since she’d choked down a heap of lukewarm acorn mush, and she dipped a bowl in now, being careful not to stir up the murk too much. It was stronger tasting than she expected. As salty as boiled seaweed, and although she was careful to sip with a pursed mouth, straining it through her teeth, there was plenty of sand and little bits of turtle shell floating around with the gluey wild onions and the chewy dried mushrooms. It was slightly less repulsive than the salamander stew she’d made before finding out it was better to skin them first, and she reminded herself that the survival book had praised turtle meat as being high-protein and low-fat. However, she would not be recommending it to anyone.
She forced the food down, and then sat determinedly not thinking about what she had just eaten for a few minutes until she could be sure that it was going to stay down. Instead she found her thoughts returning to Aidan. Lucy decided that she was pretty sure she disliked him intensely, his attitude, his annoying self-assured way. The fire wheezed and snapped and sent out tiny wavering flames that occasionally puffed gouts of smoke as if they concealed a small dragon. The flicker of rain falling beyond the walls reminded her of snow on a television screen. Lucy fell asleep, sitting up, her jacket pulled tight around her, the smell of worn leather comforting.
In her dream there were dogs swimming in the lake, their pelts dark and streaming water like seals, and they were herding the small boat she was in, pushing it toward shore. There was something hidden in the pitch-black that terrified her. Was Aidan somewhere? She could hear him, but the sound of his voice echoed all around her, and she couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it was too dark to see him. Suddenly she was certain that the dogs were pushing her away from the safety of land, into the open waters.
She came awake in a rush, not sure what had roused her. Her eyes felt as if they were filled with grit. The camp was flooded with a soft gray light. It was too quiet, and after a moment Lucy realized that the storm had blown itself out and that it was the encompassing stillness that had wakened her. She could hear the trickle of water sheeting down the walls of her shelter, but other than that there was a deep silence, muffled, as if she still had her head under her arm, or she were still asleep. It was eerie. She got up, forced on her boots without tying them, and moved the screen aside. She was definitely awake. Her boots were clammy, the leather stiff. It was not quite dawn. Droplets of moisture glistened on the grass stems. The rain must have just stopped. The trees about her shook as though a giant had flicked their tops carelessly as he walked past, and Lucy realized that the roof of her shelter was swaying as if blown by a strong breeze. But there was not a breath of wind now. It was still and so, so hushed, it seemed the entire world was frozen between moments.
Lucy stumbled out toward the shore. Wet reeds slapped against her hands. Her jeans were already soaked to the knee. The air was warm. All the myriad sounds of animals waking up were missing. No frogs. No birdsong. No rustle of mouse or vole in the long grass. The sun was rising now, just cresting the purple edge of the horizon behind her. She felt the heat on the back of her neck and shrugged out of her leather jacket and the shawl, carrying both under one arm. She checked to make sure her knife was sheathed at her waist. Everything seemed crystal clear, the curious quality of light so sharp it hurt her eyes. Her booted feet squelched and slid in the sand, the loose laces clumpy with mud. A sound like the flip-flop of a car’s windshield wipers in a rainstorm reached her ears, but magnified a hundredfold. Ahead of her, the surface of the sea appeared to be seething, like molten silver at a boiling point. She stopped and slit her eyes, shading them against the brilliance of the light. She’d seen the ocean just before a sudden storm, with a blazing sun overhead, when the waves seemed picked out in metal wires and the sky was almost black, but this was different. This was like a spilling of gleaming coins.
She realized that she was looking at fish flopping on the beach, thousands of silver bodies leaping like dancers. The tide was out so far, she could see nothing but the fish and the brown sugary sand, the water drained away as if someone had pulled a giant bath plug. Far beyond, reflecting flickers and flashes of sun, she could see the ocean. It was retreating, the waters drawing back like a tide in reverse.
She turned and began to run. Panic spilled into her mouth like bile. The waterlogged sand tugged at her feet, slowing her down and threatening to trip her. She pushed on, forcing her knees higher. No time to bend and tie her laces. Only two thoughts yammered in Lucy’s brain and she grabbed hold of them: Get my stuff. Get to the highest ground I can find.
CHAPTER FOUR
SEA
After the first disasters, they’d had emergency drills at schooclass="underline" what to do in case of earthquake, cyclone, and flash flood. They’d watched countless hours of video footage, of Maui engulfed by lava and the devastating eruptions of Mount St. Helens and Mount Vesuvius, massive explosions that buried all of Portland, Oregon, in ash and molten rock, and tilted the city of Naples into a boiling sea. Even the youngest kids knew to find a doorway or a desk, a cellar or the highest ground.
So before the thought had hit her brain, Lucy had turned and started running. She had twenty minutes if she was lucky, ten if she was not, and considering how things usually played out in her life, she’d better not count on having enough time.