-5-

 

SHE HEEDED THE MAN’S WARNING. They followed the poles of the streetlights closely. There seemed to be a highway hidden beneath the dust which remained mostly intact. Hannah relished the thought. Finally, she had a sure path to follow. 

​

Sludge trammeled their progress. It gripped their ankles and made the path slick. Sludge means water. Water means ocean. Hannah would have been overjoyed at the thought of reaching the ocean if she wasn’t haunted by the man’s final warning: Don’t wander, don’t stop, don’t sleep. Keep going.

​

Day became dusk. The two travelers trudged forward in the red light of a hidden sun. Hannah noticed that they were moving at a slug’s pace, their energy exhausted. Her graph of efficient traveling reminded her that they would get slower and slower until they couldn’t move anymore. She hoped they’d make it through the night. The coast was so close. Sable held Hannah’s hand and lagged behind her. Hannah practically dragged him forward.

​

“Come on, Sable, speed up,” she grumbled. It wasn’t his fault they were going too slow. The blame was also hers. She was near the end of her strength and didn’t want to carry him. Not yet. She needed to save her energy. If they moved all night, they would spend at least eight more hours in the dark. Eight hours of long, treacherous, tedious, horrid walking. Sable needed to stay on his own feet as long as he could.

​

Hannah handed him a bottle of water and didn’t even ration it--they were near the coast, after all. She fed him single bites of canned green beans and coaxed him to keep up with her. He did: the temptation of calories was enough for him to keep moving. They followed the tall metal streetlights that marched on like monks assembling. 

​

“Who told you that the coast is a haven?” the old man had asked. His voice trailed her consciousness like a hunter. She didn’t want to answer. He waited for her as she fluffed her old cotton pillow to get the lumps out. 

​

“A man rode a motorcycle into Newark a couple months after the advent,” she said as she laid down. “He was a salesman. He went back for his family and friends. He said there were no birds on the coast to the south. And no dust.”

 

“Did anyone else believe him?” 

​

Hannah didn’t like the way he asked that question. She felt as though he was trying to get her to talk herself into rationality. 

​

“No. I didn’t believe him either,” she said. 

​

“What changed your mind?”

​

"Fish."

​

The salesman brought three fresh trout with him from the coast. He claimed he'd caught them himself only a day ago. He cooked them in the street and handed out bits of it to the crowd that gathered around him. It was the first time Hannah had real meat in over a month. Before then she'd just made it on Spam and canned turnips. When the trout strip melted in her mouth, she'd sworn she had never tasted anything so good. The salesman had to be telling the truth. Even while the other adults claimed he had found the fish somewhere, Hannah knew he had caught them. Refrigerators didn't function. There was no ice to keep the fish cold after the Advent. There was no other explanation.

​

“So you followed him? The guy with the fish?” the old man asked as he studied her.

​

“No. He didn’t get to leave Newark. Some jackass killed him for his motorcycle. No-one else wanted to risk the journey.”

​

“But you did.”

​

“I was hungry.”

 

Hannah stepped on her foot wrong and nearly twisted her ankle. She limped to a stop and took her weight off of her right foot with a groan. She stretched before continuing her journey through the falling light. She wanted to be back in that room with its foul air and safe walls.

​

The sun went down. Night came in full-force. It was the first time Hannah had been exposed at night instead of hiding under a rock or in a house or in a ditch or somewhere. One couldn’t light a torch without attracting Shrikes. There was no moon or stars to guide them. At the final draw of twilight’s curtain, Hannah briefly considered finding somewhere safe to sleep. No use going on when they couldn’t see… 

​

Don’t stop, the man’s voice repeated in her brain. Don’t fall asleep.

​

Everything became pitch-dark. Hannah paused for a moment with her hand firmly clasping Sable’s. She had to calm her nerves. She just needed a moment to take a breath. 

​

Then she moved a little to the right and forward. She found the metal streetlight pole in the dark. It was her anchor. She took Sable forward, her right hand stretched out to her side. They walked blindly for several paces. She found the next pole. Relief settled in her heart as she felt the metal under her hand. They went forward again. This repeated over and over and over--a constant roller coaster of comfort, fear, comfort, fear. She went on for what seemed like hours. 

 

Hannah carried Sable on her shoulders and picked up speed as she became confident in the fact that the pole would be there. Until one wasn’t. 

​

Hannah stretched both arms out, worried she’d missed the pole by a little. She felt around in the dark, expecting to find it just a yard or two away from where she was. She didn’t find it. She panicked. Go back to the other pole, she told herself. She backtracked. She couldn’t find that one, either. Maybe she’d gone further than a yard or two from the path. She was completely directionless. She spun around in the blackness. Absolute terror consumed her. 

​

“You lost it! You lost it, you idiot!” she hissed. She swore under her breath and clenched her forehead in both hands. Sable, who’d all but fallen asleep on her back, moved a little. Hannah got herself together. She couldn’t scare Sable. 

​

“We’re going to stop for the night, OK?” she asked gently. She felt Sable nod. She tried to think clearly. How far should they go in search of shelter? What if they lost the path entirely?

​

Hannah set Sable down and proceeded to dig into the layers of dust and sludge until she found the old asphalt underneath. She carved out a little spot. “We’ll stay right here. But you need to be quiet,” she said jokingly, then winced. Her own joke felt like a blunt object hitting her gut. In truth, she would have loved to hear him speak.... If only once...

​

Hannah emptied her sack of food. She pulled Sable down with her into the sludge and the dust. She tucked his pants into his socks and cinched his sleeves and mask. She pulled the sack open by the seams and wrapped it around their heads so that they faced each other on the ground. She pulled the dust and sludge back on top of them like a crab burying itself in the sand. Soon they were covered. Hidden. She prayed nothing would notice them there.

​

She was determined to stay awake, but after two days of no sleep, Hannah could barely continue to function. She wished she could see Sable’s face. She wished it wasn’t night. She wished a lot of things.