Nevertheless, they picked through the wreckage like Victorian mudlarks and found a few small treasures: Several tubes of lip balm (stale-smelling but effective), a pair of expensive sunglasses with only a hairline crack at the side of one lens, three mylar packages of dehydrated food stuffed inside a flattened shoe box, a plastic water bottle with a built-in filter, and a half-full bottle of aspirin. Kory discovered a miniature chess set that was missing only the black bishop. He tucked it into his pocket with particular reverence. Handy nearly swooned when he found a topographical map of the county that was made with heavy, plasticized paper.
In a scant twenty minutes they were out of there, back on the sidewalk and grateful for fresh air.
“What do you say we blow this pop stand?” said Curran. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here when the sun goes down.” He spoke in hushed tones, despite the deserted look of everything.
“We can still backtrack and go the long way around,” said Handy. “But it’s only a mile, straight through.”
“I’m for the shortcut,” said Renna, “but let’s go now. I hate the feel of this place.”
“Agreed,” said Arie. “Sooner the better.”
Two blocks up, they came to the town center, a plaza square that had once hosted musicians and farmers markets and a sprawling annual favorite known as the Oyster Festival. The lawn and deep corner planters had become a miniature prairie, the grasses, weeds, ferns, and dead sunflowers now a dense, towering mass.
Renna, out front with Handy again and leaning heavily on her stick, started laughing. She pointed into the middle of the plaza. Dead center, the copper head and shoulders of a grinning Theodore Roosevelt—liberally decorated with streaks of guano—poked out above the grasses, as if Teddy had gotten himself lost and was scouting a path to freedom.
It was the height of all that plant life that prevented them seeing the message, scrawled on the pale yellow brick of the Hotel Arcata until, a few paces later, they were right in front of it. Above their heads, hanging from the second-story windows, was an enormous heavy-gauge vinyl banner. The nylon cords supporting it were frayed, and it sported a few jagged holes, but it was still perfectly legible:
An arrow pointed north, toward the university. Below the banner, in straggling block letters at least five feet tall, a response:
Finally, under everything else, a more personal message:
They stared for a few moments. “We can’t keep track of the world with our noses, like other animals” said Arie, “so we write it down.” Her fingers strayed to the front of her thigh. Through the soft fabric of her trousers she traced the ridges of her scars, that formation of Vs she’d written into her own flesh. One for each month since the string broke and the fabric of things began to untether.
Renna studied the words for a long time, head tilted to one side as if she were trying to decipher another language. “I don’t get it,” she said finally. “Did Lisa Bento write it for Scott, or did Scott write it for Lisa Bento?” There was no hint of sarcasm in her voice, and when she turned to look at Arie there were tears in her eyes.
It was on the tip of Arie’s tongue to say, It probably didn’t matter either way, in the end. But the sticky abrasion on Renna’s chin and the dark circles under her eyes stopped her. “They knew,” Arie told her. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to Renna’s, gently as she could. “Come on. Let’s cross the street.”
On the next block, the street narrowed and the hill’s grade steepened. At the crest, towering over everything around it, stood the marquee for a movie theater. A true relic from cinema’s golden age, its outsized Art Deco lines and curves were still breathtaking. ARCATA was spelled out vertically in ancient neon bulbs. Arie had a pang, suddenly wishing she could see it lit up and flashing red fire in the dark.
“What’s that?” said Kory. He gaped at the marquee, and Arie was reminded once again of how very little of the world this boy had seen.
“It’s a theater,” Curran told him. “They were one of the really good things from the time before. Popcorn with extra butter.”
“Milk Duds,” said Renna.
“Oldies Night, am I right? The Princess Bride.” He sketched a reverent little bow to Renna. “As you wish,” he said.
“Super Creature Double Feature,” countered Renna. “Shaun of the Dead.”
Walking between them, Kory watched this sally like a tennis match. As they passed into the shade of the theater’s deep overhang, Renna pointed to the small, glassed-in ticket booth. Remarkably intact, it sat on a mosaic sea of tiny red and white tiles. “Check it out, dude,” she told Kory. “They’ll never make anything like this again.”
The boy stepped onto the tile floor almost reverently. A hand shot from the shadows and clutched his sleeve. “Did you bring sandwiches?”
Kory gasped and leaned backward, pulling a haggard woman out onto the sidewalk with him. It happened so fast she appeared to materialize from nowhere. She had a death grip on his jacket, holding him with both hands now and squinting fiercely in a patch of mottled sunlight.
They surrounded Kory in seconds, but when they thought about it later it seemed to have taken five minutes to reach him. Talus shot forward, a snarl erupting from deep in her chest. Curran was right behind her, the butt of the rifle poised above the woman’s face. “Step back,” he said. “We’re just passing.”
She cringed, closing both eyes, but still she clung to the boy. “You promised,” she wheedled. Her raspy voice was like rusted machinery trying to crank to life.
Talus lowered her head and her growl became so menacing that Arie was afraid to touch her. Instead, she took hold of the woman’s bony wrist. “We don’t know you,” she said. “Let him go and we’ll move on now.”
The woman looked down where Arie held her. Whatever she imagined was happening, it seemed to dawn on her that she was in actual danger. Renna and Handy both had knives drawn and the dog’s teeth were fully bared.
She released Kory’s arm and held up both hands, showing her palms. “I’m so hungry.”
“Good dog,” said Curran, and Talus quieted at once, though she did not take her eyes off the woman.
They backed several paces away, and the woman had enough survival instinct not to follow. She dropped her raised hands in a defeated gesture. Her nails were black with grime and she wore uncountable layers of clothing—corduroy pants under a flowered kimono, several t-shirts, a cable-knit pullover so holey it looked like a blue spider’s web, and a pair of sheepskin boots from which her sockless toes protruded. A heavy stench of rot and sour illness hovered around her.
Renna had pushed Kory partway behind her. “You good?” she asked him, warily watching the dirty woman.
“Yeah,” he said. He was rummaging with something and before she could stop him, he had stepped between them, holding something out.