by Mike Chen
“It’s Sunny.”
His hands shook, a finger barely able to swipe the screen.
“A text.”
Never before had a single text message brought so much relief.
He’d sent texts to her phone, the one he gave her for emergencies, every twenty or thirty minutes since San Francisco. With limited cell coverage outside of the Metros, it wasn’t clear how many—if any—got through. “‘I’m okay, Daddy,’” he read, “‘see you soon.’ Sent an hour ago.” The pace of his words picked up, the anxiety turning into excitement. “She probably passed a Metro in Oregon and it just processed. I’m not getting anything else. I must have caught a hiccup of Sacramento’s coverage.” His whole body shook with a laugh that reached the sky, eyes squeezed and a grin that spelled out so many different kinds of emotions, all culminating with arms wrapped around her. “She’s safe. She’s safe, she’s safe.”
“She is,” Moira said, returning the gesture. In their embrace, he wasn’t sure who held who. Maybe they held each other. “We’ll find her.”
“Okay.” He pulled back slightly, though they remained eye to eye, her arms still around his waist. “Okay. We can do this. For now, she’s okay. We just have to get up there.”
“We will,” she said, with a fierce determination beyond its quiet volume, as if her voice connected directly to his ears.
They stood at arm’s length, eyes locked, the calm of the Reclaimed community leaving them only with each other and a world of possibilities, including the invisible pull that suddenly drew them closer together, so close that they nearly—
“I think this is it.” Narc’s voice called across the space, a door slamming right after.
They separated, heat flooding Rob’s cheeks, and Narc came out, box in hand and with Krista a few steps behind. “A few more goodies for the road,” he said, planting the box at their feet. He lifted the cardboard lid and pointed. “Carrots. Apples. Pears. A few bottles of fresh-squeezed lemonade.” The lid fell flush, and he patted its top. “Hopefully you’ll be enjoying them with your daughter tomorrow.”
Rob glanced at Moira. Everyone seemed to be all business now. As they should be. “I got a text from her. As of an hour ago, she’s safe,” he said.
Krista beamed.
“Well, then you guys should hit the road and catch up with her,” Narc said.
Moira took the box and put it in the open trunk of her Jeep. “Santiago grew these?”
“Yup. From our family to yours.” Moira slammed the trunk gate shut and gave Narc a big hug. “You’re welcome to visit when there’s not an emergency, you know,” he told her.
“Let’s get through this first.”
Narc nodded and let go of Moira, then shook hands with Rob and Krista. They bounded into the Jeep, Moira behind the wheel, Krista in the back, and Rob up front. “Oh, one more thing.” Narc reached behind him and pulled something out with a glint of black. Rob blinked to make sure he saw it right from the passenger’s seat.
“Is that...a gun?”
“Yeah. Metro gun ban still in place?”
“Sounds like it. Probably even tighter now that there’s unrest.”
“Keep it for safety on the road but hide it. Don’t let anyone see it, especially police or cit-pats. I wouldn’t recommend using it unless you have to, but you never know what you might encounter. Don’t forget that citizen patrol officers only carry Tasers. Can you still shoot?”
Moira nodded as she took it. She held it up, checking it from side to side, and put it under her seat. “Not very well.”
“Then be extra careful. Keep the safety on at all times, and promise me you won’t use it unless you absolutely have to.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to use it.”
“Okay, then.” Narc leaned over, poking his head through Moira’s window to look right at Rob. “What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Sunny.”
“I hope you find Sunny.”
“Hey, Narc,” Krista said from the back seat. “Why does Moira call you that? Were you a cop before everything? Or a drug dealer?”
“Nothing that exciting. My last name’s Narcizo. Narc for short.” He tapped the metal roof, and Moira gave the engine a roar. “Good luck. Maybe we’ll be planning a wedding soon. And Krista,” he said, waving through the open driver-side window, “don’t give up on people, okay? Some deserve a second chance.”
Rob turned to look at Krista. She stared straight down and said nothing as the car began to move.
Excerpt from Walking in the Dark: An Oral History
of the Fourth Path:
“She said she was a traveler, that she’d walked all the way from San Francisco and made friends along the way. And she wanted nothing: not food, not shelter, nothing. People watched as this silent mob marched with her. She spoke just once, right before they headed to Los Angeles.
“She didn’t blink. When I asked her if she was okay, she just smiled but it didn’t look like she saw me, like she saw something else. She talked about how people had gotten it wrong, that the Metros were the old way that failed, that Reclaimed still traded in commerce, that gang life abused humanity and the planet. The Fourth Path, she said, is to go where the land takes them.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Rob
The California-Oregon border checkpoint was smoother than the ride up. The Jeep off-roaded through the wasteland to get to the remains of the old Highway 113, monitoring the police scanner the entire time for reports of looter gang activity, though the majority of conflict areas remained far south of their location. They pushed forward, all the way until they rejoined the MHSP-protected Highway 5, and the journey itself proved uneventful. At the checkpoint, the path narrowed to two lanes, a uniformed soldier on either side. They flashed their IDs, faces still behind breathing masks, and were waved along without any hesitation. In fact, the three of them were specifically instructed not to touch the soldier in any way, even to hand over the ID, presumably because MGS 96 was contact-transmitted rather than airborne.
Rob had eagerly taken over driving for a leg of the journey, but maybe Krista was right about him jinxing things, because the moment he’d thought about how smooth things had been since getting Sunny’s text, he noticed the engine’s temperature gauge rising. He glanced over at Krista, who’d been staring silently at her knitting while the needles clicked a regular rhythm for the past twenty minutes or so. Behind them, Moira slept horizontal, with a jacket as a pillow.
The car felt fine. Best not to say anything about it right now. He already had his ebb and flow of panic, the last thing he needed was to get the others worked up about potentially nothing. He turned the radio on for something to fill the quiet beyond Krista’s knitting. It came to life with a pop and a man’s voice came through the speakers. “We have confirmed reports as far west as Denver, Colorado, and Houston, Texas. On the line with us is Dean Francis...”
Krista’s face formed an immediate scowl and Rob lowered the volume, keeping it loud enough to hear the update while giving Krista some space. “Don’t you want to hear the update?” he asked.
“Not from Uncle Asshole. It’s hard enough knowing I’m going to probably see him when we get to the hospital.”
“You ready to give him a second chance?” Rob said, staring straight ahead.
“I’m doing this for Sunny. If that means talking to him, then I’ll leave it at that. Who said anything about second chances?” Krista threw a sideways look at him. “He’s never earned that.”
“Sorry. I thought Narc mentioned something about that.”
“That wasn’t about Uncle Dean,” Krista said.
The temperature gauge continued creeping up, segment by segment. He eased off the accelerator. Maybe his poor stick-shift skills had caused this. “Should I even ask?”
The car rumbled along, their voyage framed by
the endless line of MHSP fencing around them. “His name is Jas,” she finally said. “Something at Narc’s reminded me of him, that’s all.”
“‘Is.’ Not ‘was.’ Still alive?”
“Yep.” The knitting stopped, and from his peripheral vision, he could see Krista stare out at the black landscape all around them, some four hours having passed since the last rays of sunlight. “You know, I don’t actually like knitting,” she said after a few minutes. “It just helps me think. The rhythm of it. I learned that about myself early on.”
“You’re, uh...” Rob selected his words carefully. “Not knitting now. Do you want to—” He stopped halfway through the question, his focus stolen by a puff of steam rising out from the hood. A thin line fanned out into a plume, visible enough for Krista to sit up before calling to Moira in the back.
A voice from ages ago played in his mind: his own dad, almost fifteen years ago, jabbing him for not taking auto-shop in high school. You’re gonna need it someday. Don’t make me say I told you so.
The car veered onto the dirt shoulder, all the while with Rob cursing himself for jinxing the trip. He forced his mind quiet and watched silently as Moira said she’d see what she could do.
They gathered in front of the open hood, Krista and Rob an audience while Moira inspected the situation with a flashlight. She held without a word, then moved to the passenger side, her fingers tracing along the area adjacent to the front wheel well. “Damn it,” she said. “Die Urbans. This shot got through somehow. I never should have taken off the armor plates.” The flashlight swung out as she moved back to the hood. “The coolant tank. It nicked a crack in it.” She motioned them over; Rob squinted to see a line in the plastic about two inches from the tank bottom. “It’s about an inch long, splinters about an inch wide. We’ll need to patch it. Get some coolant too, or at least water.”
Patching a leak didn’t sound like a huge problem. Rob had helped out a bit with all sorts of plumbing work during quarantine, some big and some small. The issue here was the actual supplies.
And time. Every second they were stalled, Sunny got farther toward Seattle, and who knew what shape that Metro was in.
“I’m assuming Narc didn’t give us anything for that,” Krista said. “Unless apples work.”
“No, but...” Without another word, Moira jogged over to the top of the small hill some thirty or forty feet from the highway, her silhouette breaking the skyline of stars against the moonlight. “There,” she called out after a minute. Rob gave Krista a look of uncertainty; she shot him one back. “It’s about a half mile down. You can see it from the off-ramp.” They joined Moira atop the mound of earth but Rob didn’t see anything except darkness, even after his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. “It’s an old exit stop. Gas stations, convenience stores. Probably a Denny’s. Come on.” She set out on foot with barely a wave for Rob and Krista. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Lucky, Rob thought to himself. He moved forward, following Moira, and as he did, the small complex came into view—shadows of rectangular buildings and unlit signs, all forgotten as days turned to months turned to years. Would they find a treasure trove of supplies inside? Or would everything useful already be gone?
Moira ran ahead to scout out their options, then motioned them over to a small service station. While he jogged to catch up, Rob’s mind wandered to what these places were and what they’d become. The Denny’s to the left, it should have been filled with weary travelers and drunken college students. The pharmacy to the right, perhaps the only one for a few miles—the place people relied upon when they were sick.
Both now lifeless shells, transformed by a world that didn’t need them to be those things anymore.
But perhaps that was the thing with the post-MGS landscape. There was Moira, who’d broken with civilization only to come clawing back. There was Krista, who played by rules only she understood, but pushed her boundaries to be here. They confronted their own demons, not just because they cared about Sunny, but because it made sense, particularly in this world, whatever it was now. Though Krista probably wouldn’t admit that, at least not to him.
And now, it seemed right for him to do so too. Looters, rules, all that stuff, they existed in someone else’s definitions. All that remained were the things that gave him hope.
Like looting an old service station.
Not looting. Surviving.
There was a difference. Rob was beginning to see that.
As he followed Moira in, Krista a few steps behind him, any queasiness in his stomach or uncertainty disappeared.
They were here on a mission.
“Look, finally a break.” Moira tossed him a box. He held it up to the sliver of moonlight and read Plastic Tank & Radiator Repair Kit. “Come on, let’s see what else they’ve got left.” Though it was near-dark, she seemed to move with an uncanny swiftness. “Flashlights over here. Two of them, I think. And a roll of duct tape. You can always use duct tape.”
Rob nodded at her selections, though he wasn’t sure if she actually could see it. “Narc taught you to survive overland?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said as she led him down each aisle. “The world collapsed, and it was the first freedom I ever had in my life. I chose to spend it drinking. A lot.” The tone of Moira’s voice softened. “I probably wouldn’t have made it past a few months without Narc and his friends. We formed our own family. For a lot of us, it was better than our real ones.”
“You need family to survive,” Rob said, his voice just above a whisper.
“There were others like us, and we’d go on supply runs together. I mean, yeah, people took, like, a board game or a book or something for entertainment, but most of it was just what you needed. Food, water, supplies.” She reached out and grabbed what Rob thought were packs of batteries. “You did what you needed to do to push forward.” Moira’s silhouette tilted, angling a little closer. “Isn’t that why you told Sunny what you did?”
“I suppose so.”
“And don’t you think that’s why Krista’s so...Krista?”
“You realize I’m one aisle over, right?” Krista’s voice came in from behind the two of them.
Rob laughed and turned back to Moira, only to find her with one hand outstretched holding what looked like a small piece of paper.
“Is that...” Rob squinted in the darkness “...cash?”
Moira’s silhouette nodded. “I know how you feel about looters. I know learning that I looted wasn’t exactly pleasant. So I thought maybe we could leave a twenty on the counter.”
Rob reached up, fingers and thumb closing on the paper currency. But rather than take it, he guided her hand down. They stood, hands still linked. “You know, all of us, it doesn’t matter how we got here. MoJo or Uncle Dean or Elena. The important thing is that we’re here. And we get to Sunny.” The sound of opening boxes and crinkled plastic wrapping came from the other end of the store, though Rob and Moira seemed to exist in their own space. “How about we hold on to it for now? I don’t want to jinx anything, but I doubt the manager’s coming by anytime soon.”
Though Moira’s face was buried in shadows, he could tell her cheeks rose with a grin. She tucked the cash back in her pocket and stepped forward, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her in the middle of the cold empty aisle. They nearly came nose to nose when she gasped and broke to the side.
“Oh, wow,” Moira said. “This is a sign.” She took something off the bottom shelf, and as Krista caught up with them, the moonlight revealed the forgotten treasure. “Look,” she said, holding up a backpack. “See what happens when you’re famous?”
“Now I totally get why you hate your dad,” Krista said.
Rob traced his finger over the vinyl patch on the backpack’s main pouch, outlining a stylized image of Moira, younger with wild hair and microphone in hand, with the MoJo logo below it. “Can we give it
to Sunny?” he asked.
Moira opened it and began putting the supplies inside. “That’s a great plan.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Sunny
Sunny’s chest pounded so much it hurt.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
She put her hand over heart, like she was saying the morning Humanity Pledge. Except this wasn’t a morning at school. She did it because it felt like the beats would thump right out of her body.
The nice couple next to her, the ones who’d asked her why she’d boarded the bus alone when she sat down next to them, began to wake up when the bus driver announced they’d got to Seattle. Sunny wasn’t sure when exactly the road became the city, just that the long view away had glowing lights in the shadows.
“Do you know where to go to find your mom?” the woman asked with a yawn. Betty was her name maybe, Sunny thought, but she couldn’t quite remember and it wasn’t polite to ask again. Instead, Sunny nodded and pulled a stack of folded papers from her backpack. She remembered how Ms. Eswara showed them to color a symbol on the back of the papers to see which was which. She thumbed past the square (bus schedule), circle (map to the bus station by their house), triangle (phone numbers), all the way to the heart.
The map of Seattle, with a line drawn from the bus station to Uncle Doctor Dean’s hospital.
The woman’s mouth turned sideways. Maybe she was still sleepy. She had been sleeping for the past hour or so.
“Sunny,” Ivo said. She remembered his name. His voice was soft, like when Ms. Eswara announced that Juliana had left for the Reclaimed place. “I think this map is to the hospital.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Is your mommy...” Maybe-Betty’s voice trailed off. She looked at Ivo before turning back to Sunny. “Is your mommy sick?”
“Mm-hmm. But Uncle Doctor Dean is going to make her better.”
“And your dad, he’s still back in San Francisco. But your uncle’s here with your mom?”