Victoria waved. “Good morning,” she called. The instant the words were gone, she regretted them. Precious little was good about this morning.

“You’re not from here,” the man said.

“We lost our vehicle last night,” Victoria said. They never slowed.

“You’re Army?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” McCrea said. “But I don’t have any information for you.”

“Where’s the rest of you?” the woman asked. “The rest of the Army, I mean?”

“We weren’t part of a larger unit,” McCrea said.

“That was a war, right?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir, it was.”

“Is it over now?”

“I don’t know that, either. I’m sorry, I know you want information. We all want information, but there’s nothing to pass along.”

Victoria lowered her voice and said, “Boys, I want you to keep your eyes forward when we run into people like that.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke said.

“I know. I just wanted to say.”

“Are we going to be staying here?” Caleb asked.

“Maybe for a while,” Victoria replied. They needed rest and they needed supplies. They needed transportation. The problem was, everybody needed the same thing. There wasn’t a soul left in North America, probably, that wasn’t wanting for items that were critical to their survival.

“Like, in a hotel?” Luke asked.

“Maybe. But not for long.”

“I thought we were going to join Adam,” Caleb said.

“That’s the plan,” Victoria said. “But that’s going to take awhile. Weeks, probably.”

“We’re going to walk the whole way?” Caleb sounded horrified.

“Just like the settlers in the old days,” Victoria said.

“At least they had horses.”

“Pace yourself on the complaints, Caleb,” McCrea said. “We’ve got a long way to go. Hey, Luke, take a look behind us. Is the Grubbs gang still keeping their distance?”

“I don’t see anybody.”

Victoria chose to accept that as good news.

Up ahead, Simmons Gas and Goodies, an Exxon distributor, marked the intersection with Fourth Avenue, where Ortho began to look less like a neighborhood and more like a little town. All the infrastructure was here—roads, streetlights, stoplights, signs—but none of it was working. The glass doors of the Exxon station had been shattered and now rested open and broken at odd angles. The hoses and nozzles from the pumps themselves lay on the ground like so many slain snakes.

Directly across Fourth Avenue, Joey’s Pawnshop had been similarly ravaged. The glass lay strewn in the parking lot. The security bars had been pried from the walls. Even from the outside, it was clear that the shelves had been cleared of merchandise.

“What happened here?” Caleb asked.

“Looting,” McCrea answered.

“Why do I suspect the Grubbs gang?” Victoria mused.