The second day she smelled it—just a whiff, as a short tendril of wind brought it past her nose—the sour, almost metallic smell of the poisoned air, like a mix of sulfur and smoke and ozone. Just a hint and it was gone. The day after that she woke up to the smell, and it lasted most of the day, and here and there more bleached-white trees stood like haunting skeletons in the scattered groves by the side of the road. The grass that clung to the lees of the fence posts was paler now, more scraggly and desperate, and each day it grew worse. The next city they reached was a lonely place called Ottumwa, and in it they found the streets and walls and roofs all streaked with chemical residue, as if the runoff from the rain itself was stringent and deadly. A river cut through the center of town, not nearly as big as the Mississippi, but by extension, not blessed with impressive bridges. They had all fallen, whether to ancient sabotage or relentless weather Kira couldn’t say. The water, at least, looked fresh, running down from the north where the land was cleaner. They stopped there for a few hours, scouring the ramshackle stores and restaurants for any meds they could find, and any cans of food that looked like they might still be good. Heron was a capable hunter, but now that they’d entered the wasteland it would likely no longer be safe to eat anything she caught. Kira checked Afa’s wound again, no worse yet no better than it had been since the shipwreck, and murmured soothing reassurances in his ear.

“We’re going to cross the river now,” she said softly, dribbling some of the last of their fresh water over the bullet hole in his leg. “We’re going to swim, but it’s nothing like the last one. It will be easy.”

“We’ll ruin the radio,” said Afa, his eyes half-focused through the blend of pain and painkillers. “We can’t get it wet or we’ll ruin it.”

“We’ve already lost the radio,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“We can find a new one.”

“We will,” she said calmly, slathering the wound in Neosporin. “After we cross the river.”

“I don’t want to cross the river, we’ll crash our boat again.” And so they went, round in circles while Kira wrapped his wound in tight bandages and then covered it with plastic bags and duct tape, doing everything she could to keep it waterproof. She finished and walked to Samm.

“He’s not even aware of where we are,” she said. “We have no business taking him any farther—we have no right to do it.”

“We can’t just leave him—”