Introduction

On Memorial Day, a series of bomb explosions shuts down major cities across the US. Her apartment in ruins, Sabine flees Washington DC and begins a grueling journey on foot that brings her to West Virginia, where she finds safety at an abandoned farmhouse with other refugees.

For Sabine, family is a vague memory?she can’t even remember her last name. Without an identity, she hides?although thirty-five, she pretends to be twenty-eight, even to the refugee she falls in love with. But Sabine wants to recover her identity. Despite gangs, bombings, riots, and spreading disease, she longs to return to a family she has begun to recall?a mother, a father, and brothers. Are they alive, surviving, in hiding as she is? Do they await news, and hope to reconcile? Even in harrowing times, Sabine’s desires to belong and to be loved pull her away from shelter.

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

DOGS OF SANITY

May 26, 2014. Memorial Day.

The last thing Sabine remembered was a flash coming through the window and a shudder like colliding subway cars. She woke sprawled on the floor, unsure where she was. She stumbled to the window. Buildings across the street swayed and her apartment building shook. She ran room to room, avoiding flying glass, yelling.

“Go, go, get out before the building collapses!”

At her bedroom door she froze. A backpack hung on the doorknob. As if from a great distance, she watched her hand pick up the backpack, toss in some clothes, then stash notebooks, cell phone, and wallet into the pack’s side pockets. She grabbed her jacket and favorite shawl from the closet and sprinted down the hall past the elevators. She lurched for the stairway exit, took the stairs two at a time, and burst out the front door. Against the building she caught her breath; her head pounded and her legs wobbled.

A body splayed across the bottom step. Shreds of green cloth came into focus, hanging from a charred leg. Half of the man’s cranium was missing. The mess of skull, pink matter, and blood made Sabine turn away. A dark-green uniform with gold braiding: it was

9

the doorman’s. Samuel. Yesterday he’d told her all about taking his aging dog to the vet and they’d reminisced about pets they’d owned as children. Samuel.

She moved closer to his body and searched for something to hold on to, besides his kindness—always smiling, and opening and closing doors for others. She found it in his curled hands. Good-bye, Samuel.

Crumbling buildings. An assault of smoke and sirens. Burnt bodies sprawled on the sidewalk. A white van burned and rocked furiously, a dance of smoke and flames. Across the street a young woman leaned against a building, clutching her entrails, sliding sideways. Sabine staggered through a maze of scorched cars spewing the stench of oil and coolant, the poisoned air of batteries and tires. The reek of gasoline.

She stayed in the street to avoid falling debris. Drowned in panic, she wanted to move fast but couldn’t think with the screams of ambulances and fire engines. West could be the safer direction. East might mean people squeezing onto a margin of coastal land, the beach and the ocean thick with drowned people, sluggish waves rolling corpses onto fetid sand. Please don’t let me be the sole person left alive. Samuel’s gone. What a nice man. She would never know what happened to his dog, his only family. She wondered about her family. Did she have a family?

Out of habit, she flipped open her cell phone and punched the first contact. The name wasn’t familiar, but that didn’t matter, since the phone didn’t have a signal. Did neighbors in her apartment building need help? She couldn’t picture anyone; she had no memory of any names. Samuel was the only name she recalled.

Go back and check. She dodged debris all the way back, but couldn’t enter the building. The fifth floor was blown open to the street. Her neighbor’s apartment looked like a dollhouse living room: black leather furniture, an upended table, a refrigerator on its side. She turned, not wanting to see her personal belongings exposed. Go west.

She wanted a map. If you had a map, you couldn’t really be lost.

A black SUV with a rifle stuck out of a back window smashed into an ATM. The SUV backed over a man crossing the street, then leapt forward to ram the machine again. Two men jumped out of the vehicle and rummaged through ATM debris while the driver shoved the rifle out the window. The man the van ran over lay bleeding; she didn’t help. Would his raincoat fit her? No, she wouldn’t steal a dead man’s coat. Relief felt like joy, the robbers in the SUV weren’t interested in hurting her.

A cramp caught her gut. No time to lean forward, she vomited onto her clothes.

A wet rag for her shirt and face. She stumbled forward. In a convenience store halfway down the block, she grabbed three packs of baby wipes, packs of gum and Nabs, and oranges and a banana, hoping their thick skins made them safe to eat. From the canned food aisle a teenage boy yelled, “More bombs! Run, run! More bombs!”

A kid wouldn’t know about bombs. He wants all the food for himself. She pulled two jars of peanut butter from the shelf.

The image of the boy moved closer, running at her, screaming in her face. Something swung into her vision. Pain in her head, and the white linoleum spun. Then nothing, until she pushed herself off the floor. She stumbled toward cases of water bottles stacked on the floor. She took four bottles and stuffed them into her backpack. No cashier. She took off running.

She slowed her pace, cleaned her face with baby wipes, and dabbed at her shirt. Something had happened back in the grocery store. The wild look on the teenage boy’s face when he ran up to her. Too fast to keep track of anything else.

1

Saturday morning, or maybe Sunday, she woke in a ditch beside a suburban road. Disoriented, lying in dirt and weeds, she mulled over a dream: she’d been wandering through an enormous park resembling DC’s Rock Creek Park. Baby carriages flew through the air; children’s legs and arms dangled from trees, small skulls surrounding the base of the trees like pale, grotesque flowers. She hadn’t cared about the dead children, had been intent only on wandering, looking for more sights.

She was turning into a monster, uninterested in helping and oblivious to dying children. She detested children.

Drink water. Get up. She scrambled out of the ditch, turned her back on the rising sun, and set out. A piece of spearmint gum removed the foul taste in her mouth but not the chemical smell permeating the air. Since leaving the city, she’d discovered neighborhoods untouched by the blasts; in other areas, houses appeared whole but uninhabited. Had people put their cars in the garage, locked their windows and doors, and hidden inside, waiting for the danger to subside?

She came to a well-kept neighborhood and tried to convince herself she’d visited one of the large houses when she was a child. Hard to resist knocking on a door when the angle of a road or a shade of brick on a house stirred dim memories.

Christmas. The season she wanted her country to be celebrating. She didn’t want to live through a summer of maimed people and corpses. How wonderful to drive her car into this neighborhood, park, and walk into one of these houses. Her parents, brothers, and sisters were gathered by the Christmas tree. Cinnamon and pine smells. Someone played carols on the piano, like in the movies. She’d entered a happy new life, where the chaos was merely a bad dream.

But she’d never visited these houses, because she didn’t have a family. Or, if she did, she had no idea what they looked like, or where they were. If they were even still alive.

Five or six people in a front yard, talking in a tight group. She called out with a wave and walked over to them. She longed to join their picnic, to eat and talk and hear the news. But the adults either frowned or looked at her blankly, and most turned their backs. The first time she was shunned, she’d dismissed the reaction as an aberration. But then it had happened again. Twice children had run to greet her, but were stopped by the adults.

Eight days without much food, weak with hunger and enticed by the smell of hamburgers and steaks on the grills, she had to force herself not to approach anyone. The suburbanites appeared ordinary and sane, yet they gave her furtive glances, some outright stares. They had access to the news and knew things she didn’t. It must be Sunday, or Monday. Her body reeked and her hair smelled worse. She ran her hand through the greasy tangles, wondering how she looked. A wild-eyed hag in eight days. If a woman walking alone created hostility and suspicion, only eight days—or was it six or ten days?—after the explosions, she dreaded what would come.

Find shelter indoors. Keep priorities straight. Do not think about dying. Think about something uplifting. Okay, okay, uplifting: at least I wasn’t near a window during the explosion.

She had her life, water, and an intact face.

1

Two days later, she came upon another wealthy neighborhood with a nearby mall called Avery Old Farms. Few cars passed as she walked through the mall parking lot. The buildings revealed no signs of damage. Inside the grocery store she moved past cash registers, drawn toward a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt because his face appeared soft and smiling. Maybe he could tell her the latest news. But as she drew close, his mumbled, disjointed words frightened her. The man pushed an empty grocery cart, his eyes unfocused.

She backed away and bumped into a cart belonging to a woman and two children who were pulling cans off shelves and throwing them in the cart. Sabine nodded; the woman only turned and screamed at the children, “Hurry the fuck up! Come on!”

Squashed, rotting vegetables littered the floor. The stench of slick broccoli rose when she slipped on a heap of decomposing vegetables. From the dairy case she snatched two big blocks of cheese, then ran to the one open checkout line, where five people stood talking in boisterous voices. Someone approached from behind— too close. Panic flooded her. She fled with the cheese, slowing only to snatch three packs of gum. No one followed.

She walked. Toward dusk she passed a suburban gas station with eight pumps. Hand-painted signs tacked to the pumps read, “No gas.

No food. Closed.”

She kicked open the restroom door and washed her face, studying her skin, noting the wear and tear of thirty-five years. Could she still pass for twenty-eight? The skin under her eyes had turned dark and puffy, and new lines had formed around her mouth. Her lips were swollen and cracked. She ran her fingers through her hair to work out matted places. A stinky old dog with mats. But what did she expect if she didn’t comb it? At the next store, she must steal a comb.

In the mirror, her eyes shifted like a crazy person’s; she didn’t look familiar to herself. Almost like her clone was standing behind her, looking at her with eyes too big for her face.

Behind the station, several crates were piled on the grass. She crouched behind them and ate half a block of New York sharp cheddar. Her head pounded; the echoing throb had lasted two or three days now. At least the sirens had stopped. Ambulances, police cars, or fire engines. How many days had the sirens’ screams filled the air, the urgent, intermittent sounds invading her restless sleep? The hospitals might all be in ruins, or full and turning people away. She hoped enough people would be left to dig graves. They’d need pits to hold the corpses, like during a war. The jobs left would be corpse burner, gravedigger, and tomb builder. Burial would be important. Contagious diseases could spread quickly through cities.

She moved out from behind the crates and went to the front of the gas station. She scanned the intersecting roads, checked the traffic and road signs. Two cars passed on the state road and turned onto an interstate ramp about a quarter mile away. Close by, human voices, several people were walking east on the road. She ran to the back of the station, pushed through knee-high brush, and lay flat on the ground. The voices grew louder, but didn’t stop at the station and soon faded.

She’d leave the suburbs behind in the morning. They no longer felt safe; she hated them. Using her jacket for a pillow, she slept.

1

For two days she trudged along the state road, taking cover whenever she heard a car or human voices. The terrain shifted— rocks littered the pastures and hills, small stone and wood-frame houses angled away from the road. White farmhouses sat on hills shaded by lush trees.

Among the larger houses, a few were abandoned. Curious, she headed toward an eerie-looking one, but the stench of urine and dead bodies—maybe animal, maybe human—forced her back to the road. At the bottom of a hill, a stagnant pond with a broken-down dock, a rowboat, and two rusted motorcycles on their sides in high grass. On a rise the charred remains of a barn. Wind blew high-flying clouds into tatters above distant hills. Nothing but crickets chirping and persistent wind.

Over on the left, something darted behind a hay bale.

She listened. Nothing.

She picked up her pace.

She stopped. There, behind the rock pile in the field: a shadow, then jerky movement. A man ran toward her, carrying an object above his head. A sword? A machete. She ran full out, and he fell in behind her. She pushed herself but was too exhausted to sustain the pace. A few steps behind now. No outrunning him. She jerked to a stop, turned, and faced him.

Wide shoulders, a black beard, wild eyes. Open-mouthed, she stopped and turned.

He shouted, “Gimme, gimme!”

“What?”

His voice rasped; his tongue was swollen. “Water.” He dropped the machete and held out his filthy hands.

She opened her pack and shoved a full bottle of water into his hand. “My last bottle.”

He wrenched off the top and guzzled it all.

She focused on the machete. She backed away and glanced around. A car; she needed a car.

The man dropped the empty bottle and moved close enough to grab her shoulder.

She screamed and pounded on his chest with both fists.

“I like ’em feisty!” He grinned, fiddled with his fly, then grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. He stank like rotten meat. “Oh baby, baby,” he groaned, pushed his groin into hers. He slipped his hand down to his pants. The sound of a zipper opening.

She tried to push him away, but he overpowered her. Go limp. Let him rub up against you.

“Good, baby, good. I ain’t gonna hurt you. You come on back to my cabin. Yeah,” he said, and moved back enough to undo his belt. His stink was unbearable.

Don’t move till his pants are down. When his pants dropped to his ankles, Sabine smashed her knee into his groin. He screamed and scrabbled at her as he doubled over and fell.

She grabbed the machete off the ground and with a shout took two swings at his head. One blow hit his neck and he fell. At the first sign of blood, she turned and ran. Looking over her shoulder, she confirmed the man was still on the ground. She crept back, close enough to see blood. A lot of it. She shouted at him but he didn’t move. She watched him for maybe a minute. He didn’t move.

She took off. Up ahead, the road curved to the right. Around the curve, trees lined both sides of the road. She darted through low scrub and small trees, and kept moving even when the canopy thickened and the light dimmed. Fallen branches slowed her. In a small clearing she allowed herself to rest, stunned that she’d escaped.

She’d run as fast as she could, yet her body was moving through molasses. She rummaged through the pack for the other water bottle. She took small sips, alert for human sounds. Don’t rest for long. People could live in these woods. Catch your breath and go. Her jeans felt damp.

She’d peed her pants. Her tongue felt sticky and her head pounded. But the machete at her feet filled her with strength— more than strength, a strong need to protect herself. She’d never seen a machete close up before, but she’d practice swinging it until she transformed into a powerful woman. She had to get stronger.

Sounds of small animals in the underbrush. She dug into a jar of peanut butter with two fingers and pushed a chunk in her mouth. The crunchy kind, her favorite.

Machete man wasn’t the sneaky type—more the maniac type who attacked head-on. She was almost positive he was dead. But even if he wasn’t, she didn’t think he’d have the energy for stealthy tracking. Still, she could be wrong. No telling what he’d do.

If she hadn’t given the man water, he’d have searched her pack and taken both bottles. These days stealing water was as bad as rape. Taking a person’s water could kill. This sounded dramatic, but true. In a single day her world had changed. She’d protect her water and food differently now.

Sudden sounds behind her. She froze, too scared to leave the woods. After a few moments of standing still, she decided to rest awhile. She kicked dead tree limbs out of her way, zipped her jacket, and made a pillow with damp leaves.

1

Her head rammed into something solid, and something struck her face. Be still. Listen.

A trickle down her cheek; she tasted blood. She reached out her hand and felt the sharp branch of the log that she’d rolled into.

The water bottle lay near and she stroked its sleek, graceful shape. More branches snapping—panicked, she shouldered her pack and felt around for the machete. Definite footsteps moving fast behind her. She took off running. She felt the familiar scratching of brush against her leg; she was nearing another road.

At the road she halted, took a right, and hurried along the road. What day was this? She’d left the apartment a few days ago. No, no, too much had happened. Maybe the explosions happened ten or twelve days ago. And again, the pounding in her head. Woods on one side of the road, fields of stubble on the other. Blue sky with thin red streaks, as if it were dawn—a beach sunrise sky. She loved the beach. But she’d never see the beach again.

Without warning a scrawny dog darted from nowhere and lunged at her. She jumped into a ditch, scooped up a handful of rocks, and aimed at him. He moved off a little way before standing his ground, snarling. She lurched toward him, screamed, and threw more rocks, keeping after him until he slunk into the woods.

The dog could be rabid, he could’ve bitten her. Yet she felt a pang as it disappeared, because the dog felt familiar. A childhood memory of a dog connected to her mother and father. Then the memory floated off, insubstantial as a cloud. Of course she must have parents somewhere—or had had them, until the explosions came. Even if her memory was shaky these days, she knew she must have parents.

What if machete man was alive and had heard her yelling at the dog? What if he was already tracking her, a bloody rag tied around his head, his mind on revenge?

Stop worrying. Just move.

The few cars she passed had West Virginia license plates. She’d crossed the state line; at least she’d accomplished something. Where could she find maps? Colored lines on paper meant less with the country in upheaval; still, a map would matter if she found someone who knew the area and the safest places to go. Since leaving the city she hadn’t seen signs of explosions. And if the explosions had been bombs dropped by planes—well, nothing out here looked worth bombing.

Birds crowded the sky; the inky-colored ravens, crows, and vultures called to each other as they came to feast on bodies that must be near. Around the bend, a car pileup by an interstate off-ramp. The cars had out-of-state plates; they must’ve tried to detour off the interstate. Vomit rose to the back of throat. She swallowed. Had the highway been blown up? Had the military put up a blockade—did that make sense? What was of military importance, or even symbolic importance, in rural West Virginia? She had no knowledge of the military. Maybe West Virginia was a good place for an installation.

When she reached the number twenty, she stopped counting the vultures walking and flying over the hoods of cars. More vultures poked around inside the automobiles, searching the car carcasses for food. They grunted, barked, and hissed, fighting over food.

If she died right here, winter snow would obliterate her tracks and her body. The vultures and ravens would feast on her, but what difference would another skeleton make?

Her eyes filled, and she wiped her face on her jacket. She wouldn’t know anyone out here in the country. How shortsighted she’d been to chase the dog away. The dog was as thirsty and as scared as she was. They could’ve been company for each other. Poor Sun Dog. That had been the dog’s name. Sun Dog had waited for her outside a place stinking like a chemistry set, where people ran up and down the halls wearing blue pajamas. A hospital where someone important died when she was a child. Sun Dog. What a great name for a dog.

Engine noise in the distance, coming closer, followed by smoke. The sky grew darker, but this was the wrong season for thunder. No, not the wrong season. Look at the trees, dummy. It must still be June. But the noise might be from cars over on the interstate. She was leery of the interstate.

Remnants of last year’s corn rustled in the fields. If new crops had been planted they hadn’t grown much. Maybe it hadn’t rained.

The wind through the tattered stalks made a soothing sound. Focus on the mountains ahead. Walk faster. Forget smoke and noise. Priorities: Water. Food. Shoes.

Shoes. She backtracked to the wrecked cars and tied a bandana over her mouth and nose—putrid flesh made her gag no matter how many times she came across it—then moved among the cars, glancing inside, focusing on feet and avoiding faces and hands, the most intimate body parts. A woman’s legs dangled out of the passenger side of a red car. The hiking shoes on her feet looked to be the right size. Sabine put her hands around a shoe and yanked, pulling off part of the woman’s heel with it. She shook the rotted flesh out of the shoe and measured the sole against her own swollen right foot. Almost perfect.

The other shoe came off clean. Brand-new walking shoes, the kind that must have cost two hundred dollars. She needed water to wash the rotten smell out of them. Her own socks smelled rotted too; clean socks were a luxury.

She took a final glance into the red car and spotted a half-empty bottle of water. She drank it all. It helped at first, but then made her thirstier. She checked the car again but didn’t see any bottles.

She walked away from the cars, gulped clear air, and tried to stop crying. Damn it, don’t act like a brat, don’t snivel and whine. But, but, this was a real reason to cry. She could cry if she wanted. Who used to yell at her for crying? Probably one of her parents. But they weren’t here to yell at her now. And besides, crying could be good news. Tears were made of water. There was a little bit of water in her body.

Keep your mind off crying, off the ache in your head and your dry mouth. She forced herself to think about color. Blue, her favorite. The blue patina on aging Chevies, Caddies, rusted Mustangs, abandoned blue shells of cars, and the sky. Off to the left, a barrel with the words Keep Out. A clump of green along the edge of a fire-blackened field. Someone had torched the field. Ah, there! A scorched tree without leaves. The black streak looked like a lightning strike. There were green buds in the soil at the base of the tree. She knelt over the tender sprouts and pushed, half-expecting them to disappear, but the seedlings felt solid. Her fingers, when she put them to her nose, smelled pungent, fresh, and green. The color green had its own particular smell.

A flash of blue, across the road—the turquoise of an emaciated child’s shorts and halter. The child walked toward her carrying a pitcher of lemonade. The air didn’t stir and the sun burned hot. Summertime.

Next to the road stood a white metal sign peppered with holes from people using it for target practice. She read aloud, “Welcome to Big Brook, Home of the Harold County Annual Music Festival.

Population 17,540.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

Where did the girl with the lemonade go? She forced herself to think about another color blue, from an Elvis record. She was singing “Blue Moon” on a stage. In the distance, crowds of dead people clapped and hooted at her off-key singing, a few threw stinking tomatoes. She bowed—wearing a blue dress, of course.

The prominent blue veins in a lover’s hand as he bent over a notebook in a coffee shop, his silhouette stark against the window. His long chestnut hair and tight blue T-shirt. Their naked bodies wrapped around each other. Making love all night, falling asleep while morning seeped through sheer pink curtains.

The blue of an ocean—except it was not an ocean but rather a lake, cool and seductive, that lay before her. The bright blue reflected the sky. Yes! All the water she could hold. She knelt by the lake and drank, then pulled off her clothes and walked into the cool water, where she floated and gazed at the sky. Back on shore she washed with a magic bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo that appeared on the sand at the lake’s edge. She swam and dove under to rinse off. A vulture dropped a towel and clean clothes. She ignored the vulture, took the towel and dried off. She washed her socks and scrubbed the rotten flesh out of her new shoes. The shoes and socks dried themselves, spinning in circles above her head.

Cross-legged on the ground, she telescoped and studied herself from a distance. Within minutes, the clothes turned into tiny, dark, twittering birds. She giggled until their beaks grew long, sharp, and ominous, and the twitters turned into terrible screeching.

She grabbed her filthy clothes from the birds and hurried away.

When her stomach growled, she thought at first that it was hunger. But then her bowels moved and a hot, foul-smelling liquid ran down her leg. She was sick. Drink more water to avoid dehydration. Water. Food. Soap. Everything.

1

She woke the following morning lying in weeds beside a deserted roadside store. She stayed still, exhausted. Her jeans were stiff with dried diarrhea, but at least the stink wasn’t fresh. The lake, the vulture with a towel, and the awful birds were gone. A mirage?

Her head hurt and her face felt tight, dirty, and sunburned. Her feet ached. She whimpered and finished off the last of her water. Her stomach still ached. She dug around in her pack hoping to find some Nabs, anything to eat. Instead she found an old pair of cut-off jeans and a gauzy orange dress, mashed flat. She examined the clothes as if they’d landed from outer space. Summer clothes from a beach trip in another life, a carefree week, so carefree she’d forgotten to unpack. Back when actions didn’t have dire consequences.

For the first time, she tried to find her wallet. But it must’ve fallen out of the pack—no probably the kid in the store took it, after he hit her. Money didn’t mean much at the moment, but a driver’s license would have; it held information, like her last name.

Since the explosions, her mind had felt slow and confused. Maybe it was shock, or maybe the bash to her head. One thing she did recall: almost three years ago, she’d launched herself into being a missing person without a family. That must’ve been when she’d shredded her credit cards. Now, she had no place to live. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think accounts for the appeal of post-apocalyptic fictions?

2. What is the significance of Sabine’s trauma?

3. The characters Sabine encounters aren’t simply consequences of the dystopian America. What accounts for their changes in behaviors?

4. What do we learn from Sabine as she goes on the first harrowing journey and finds other refugees? How does she make her way back to herself?

5. How does Sabine work through her psychological and emotional suffering and memory loss in order to reclaim her identity and family?

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