For a few seconds her waking panic was every bit as deep-seated and animalistic as her terror in the dream. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing. It was daylight – morning. Why was she not in bed? Where was her father? This wasn’t their apartment . . .

And then she remembered, and wished she could’ve fallen back into confusion and ignorance. A pitiable moan escaped her throat, until she clamped her mouth shut, forced herself to accept what she could not hope to change.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as much to stop herself moaning again as anything. ‘A bad dream. Memories.’

‘That’s all right, you’re safe now. Just take a moment and get your soul back,’ said Cindy French.

A ragged breath escaped her. She realised her bladder was painfully full, and was relieved at least that she hadn’t wet herself in her terror. She must’ve slept through the convoy’s earlier stop, at Ottawa.

The truck’s powerful motor propelled them through the dull glare of morning. The road ahead was deserted, but their path was framed between ramparts of twisted metal; the disintegrating bodies of crashed automobiles bulldozed off the highway by army engineers. The government hadn’t bothered removing the wreckage this far out from KC. It would all eventually decompose into the earth. Sofia had seen the same thing many times when coming up from Texas. Clearing the nation’s highways often meant simply sweeping the debris to one side.

‘I’m okay,’ she told Cindy in a voice that was still shaky. ‘I just get nightmares.’

The truck driver mulled that over for a while. The only sound in the cabin was the steady growl of the engine, and the hum of the eighteen wheels on the highway.

‘I think we all do,’ admitted Cindy. ‘Anybody who remembers, anyway.’

She turned to face Sofia again, in that same disconcerting way as before, taking her eyes off the road. At some point in the last few hours, Cindy had removed her own coat and hoodie, leaving a pink tee-shirt with a frustrated-looking cartoon mouse diligently working at a school desk. Underneath the cartoon was a single line of text: No animal testing.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Sofia asked.

Cindy shook her head. ‘Nah, I’m hot, in truth. But it isn’t menopause.’

Sofia pulled her jacket in tighter around her. ‘If you say so.’

‘Anyway, I know the younger kids are okay with it all – you know, if you were young enough when the Wave came, the world just is what it is now. But I guess you’re old enough to remember it pretty well, eh?’

She replied with a brief nod as Cindy’s gaze turned back to the monotonous passage of Interstate 35.