By Grace Agnew

On her second day of walking, Miranda saw clouds hardening into mountains that leaned ominously as if they would topple down and bury her forever. When she looked up, the sight of them rooted her in place with terror, so she stopped looking up. If she thought at all, she thought of Alex. He had a day’s head start and was with his father. Would his father keep him safe? Or if Alex, a soft Sanctuary boy, was a disappointment or too much trouble, would he abandon him a second time? The thought kept her going, despite having spent a second restless night sheltering among rocks and despite her now-burning arm. She didn’t have time to look at it or to fish an antiseptic puff out of her pack.

She walked for what seemed like days but was probably hours. The sky grew darker, and the wind flung debris into her mouth and hair and stung her face. She took off the guardian cloak and fashioned it into a headscarf that covered her mouth. She could only use one arm because the stabbed arm was too painful to move. After another hour, she was nothing but a gigantic throbbing arm attached to a hollow thing that was the rest of her. She was all out of thoughts, including caring whether she was going in the right direction.

Any semblance of a path was gone, obliterated by the dust whipping up to her knees in the wind. She was just putting her foot wherever it could fit on the rocky path. The dusty wind had turned her eyes to stinging, blurry slits. She could see just enough to find her next step. Fortunately, the damaged ankle was blessedly numb. Otherwise, she would simply have lain down where she was and let the wind build a mound of dirt over her. She had no idea where she was headed and barely an idea why this had seemed like a plan a couple of days ago. She was going to die, she knew that, but she wasn’t afraid. Sanctuary seemed like a mirage. Why had it seemed so solid, when just a few feet outside, you saw and felt what the world had really become? Her son was out here, somewhere, navigating the same wind and dirt that she was, or he was already gone, because nothing could survive for long.

Her foot stumbled on a raised patch. She could just make out something dark and cracked. She knew what this was, from streetway design, but her tired brain at first refused to make the connection. Tarmac! Although covered with dust and the roots of vegetation that had thrust itself through the concrete crust, it was a sign of civilization. All roads led somewhere. Miranda stepped gingerly onto the road. The sign that someone human had gone before gave her a new strength, and she pushed herself almost into a trot. When the first drop of rain fell, she looked up. Ahead she saw a blurry structure. A building!

A loud crack split the sky, startling her so that she fell and grazed her knee through the scaleskin. Rain began to slash down—not the pleasant tickle of moisture-laden air she had designed for Sanctuary but an army flinging weapons at her defenseless body. She rose on all fours and crawled to the building, a one-story house with its door blessedly agape.

She pulled herself in as far as she could to evade the stinging streams. The building was dark and stank of rot. She could hear things—ferrats?—scrabbling and squeaking in the walls. She shuddered and pulled her legs up against her chest. And then she smelled—smoke? She looked around wildly. How could anything be burning in so much rain?

She saw a thin trickle of smoke illuminated by the red tip of something that moved deliberately, forward and back. Something attached to a dark shape. The red tip went out, and she heard a snap and then saw a flare of light that illuminated a—face?

Miranda scrabbled to her knees and turned to flee, leaving her pack somewhere in the smelly dark.

“Relax,” the man advised with a wheezy chuckle. “No matter how dangerous I am, the rain is worse.”

“I don’t have anything . . .” she started to say, even as she fished around with her foot for the knife attached to her pack. She struggled to rise, but the effort was too much. She spiraled down into a chilly darkness, her fall broken by the rough stone against her cheek. She leaned into it gratefully.

##

Miranda swam up out of the darkness the way she had once swum cautiously with Alex in Sanctuary’s carefully managed lake. Thankfully, Alex hadn’t cared for the experience, so they never went back. She lay there, letting her mind process all the physical sensations. The bumpy and smelly ground beneath her reminded her she wasn’t in her own soft bed. The noise, rhythmically crashing against the ceiling, what was that? Was she in a fabrication machine room? How had she gotten to work without remembering? Where was Alex? Everything came flooding back, and she struggled to sit up; she took a large gulp of air, thick with dust, and began to cough wildly.

“You get used to it after a while,” a man’s voice drawled. “You want to take short, shallow breaths.”

She turned her head painfully toward the sound of the voice. A thin man with scraggly blond hair was leaning against the wall, watching her. Not her imagination. She scrabbled for her pack.

It’s behind your head,” he advised. “Safest that way, and I know you Sanctuary folk like your pillows.”

“Who are you?” Miranda asked.

He took a puff on something that smoked and created a haze of blue between them. She recognized it from stories of yesteryear. A cigarette, it was called.

“I’m the man who doctored your arm,” he replied. “Smart to bring antibiotic puffs and bandages”

Miranda felt her bandaged arm cautiously. It still hurt but was back to normal size.

“I had to drain it,” the man said. “You’re gonna have a wicked scar to show your Sanctuary friends.”

He reached around her and grabbed her pack before she could react. He rummaged through it and pulled out a water bubble. He bit though the skin and drank a mouthful and then handed it to Miranda, who sucked at it greedily before looking around for anything, a rock or a stick, to use as a weapon.

The man chuckled. “Relax,” he said. “I could have killed you half a dozen times if I wanted.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“No introductions. You get right to the heart of things,” the man said approvingly. “Why didn’t I just kill you? Good question.”

“So, what’s the good answer?” Miranda asked. She was lightheaded and hungry but better. She felt her ankle cautiously. The swelling was down.

“Well, my dear, there’s a reward for bringing you back that is more than double everything you got in your pack. You and I have a mutual friend, Tara Jordan. I have two weeks to return you safe and sound, and you wasted two days of it being passed out cold.”

Two days! A squirt of adrenaline gave her the strength to scramble to her feet. He was between her and the door, and he had the knife she had taken from the marauder girl. She crouched into a spring, like the holo tiger in the Sanctuary zoo a lifetime ago.

“I’m not going back to Sanctuary!” she said through gritted teeth. “Not without—” She stopped.

“Your son. Alex. You been raving about him in your sleep.” The man carefully pinched the glowing end of his cigarette and packed the remnants carefully in a dirty cloth. He stood up and grinned down at her. Miranda realized he was very tall.

“What the hell,” he said. “Tara gave me two weeks to get the job done. We’ve lost a couple of days with your arm, but we have the time. What do you say? Let’s see some outside.”

Miranda looked around. The rain outside was lightening, and she could see details. The man was a raggedy scarecrow, but he reminded her of someone. With a start, she realized he reminded her of Peter. Is that what the outside did to you? Remove everything that made you an individual? What did she look like? She scrabbled self-consciously at her snarled hair. The man reached down a hand. She took it gingerly and then screamed before she could stop herself as pain burst like fireworks through her damaged arm.

The man reached an arm around her shoulders and pulled her up. “We’ll take it easy,” he said. “There’s not that far to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“City of the South,” he replied. “That’s where he’s headed, if he isn’t there already.”

“Unless he’s been killed and eaten,” Miranda replied bitterly.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” the man said. “City of the South is ol’ Pete’s base. He can walk there in his sleep.”

“Pete?” Miranda asked stupidly.

He looked at her without response.

The coldness in her arms and legs invaded her stomach. This man knew her ex-husband well enough to give him a nickname. Did he really know Tara or just of her, from Peter? Was all this a trick? She tried to casually reach for her pack.

The tall man scooped it up. “I’ll carry your things for you,” he said. “We’ll move faster that way.”

“So, you know Peter?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

The man grinned. “Everybody knows everybody out here,” he said. “It’s safest. Anybody out here, you are either dealing with them or killing them before they kill you.”

He slung his pack and Miranda’s over his shoulders and slouched out of the house. He held up a warning hand to hold her back while he looked in all directions and sniffed the air.

“Rain has chased away anything we need to worry about,” he said. “But now that it’s dying down, they’ll be back. Let’s get moving. We should make City of the South by tomorrow morning.”

“What’s your name?” she asked the man.

“You Sanctuary folk, you like the names,” he said. “You think you are going to be around somebody long enough to know them.”

“Two weeks, you said,” Miranda replied.

The man gave a hoarse chuckle that turned into a cough. “Fair enough. Tara calls me Murray.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Murray will do.”

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