Is this Aurora? Where’d you go? I don’t have your phone number. Here’s mine. Please call me some time—Ever

Izzy and Cyrus 4Ever. The irony of this didn’t escape her.

Not now, Izzy thought. I can’t. There would be no more drinking, no more hooking up. Only searching. It would give her something to do at least.

She fed the animals, apologized to them, let Dog out to pee in the cool-blue-dark.

After Izzy had eaten oatmeal with ground flax seeds and blueberries, she packed a canteen of water and some dried fruit and almonds, sunscreen, a compass, a flashlight, and gloves, and, from the shed, a pick ax, rope, and Cyrus’s goggles and construction helmet. She also packed Larry’s map and .38 revolver. The sun had just begun to rise. Good. Maybe she’d beat the heat by at least an hour.

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By the time Izzy got to the first mine site, the one where she, Cyrus, Seth, and Nephy used to go, the sky already burned like sheet metal. The truck bumped over the uneven surface. Izzy parked and got out. A tarantula ran over her boot. She thought of the vinegarroons, carnivorous arachnids that used to terrify her as a child. They were rumored, when threatened, to release a vinegar scent so strong you could taste it at the back of your throat. The proper name, Thelyphonida, meant murderess. But vinegarroons were the least of Izzy’s worries. There were hundreds of mines beneath the desert floor.

The narrow path led up into the distance among Joshua trees, yucca blooms, and desert grasses under the barbarous sky. A wrecked tractor and the rust-covered dinosaur bones of other mining equipment marked the site. The air tasted silty, metallic with sand and with heat.

Izzy walked up to a sign that read:

Danger

Unsafe Mine Opening and High Walls

Deadly Gas and Lack of Oxygen

Cave-ins and Decayed Timber

Unsafe Ladders and Rotten Structures

Unstable Explosives

Stay Out, Stay Alive

A skull-and-crossbones presaged the final warning. A dilapidated door hung off its hinges at the entrance to a cave in a rock that resembled a humanoid skull or a deformed octopus. A seat ripped from the innards of a dead car stood sentry at the entrance like a throne for a chthonic god.

The area had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. Stay Out, Stay Alive.

She would not stay out, though. No.

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