She hands Ron the stack of papers.

“The stuff about the train is on top,” she says.

Ron eyes the stack. He sips from his glass.

“Well, I suppose, for me, this is a sort of reckoning.”

“How?”

He smiles. “You might do all you can to avoid the new world, but it’s going to come knocking, in some form or another, soon enough.”

Malorie thinks of the census man. Ron squints as he reads the top page. He nods.

“On the radio, it was said the train was functioning. The host, if you could call him that, he’s literally alone, so he’s everything, he said he’d never take it himself.”

“What did he know about it?”

“He said he didn’t think it was safe.”

“Why not?”

“I imagine that’s because it’s a blind train, Malorie.”

Ron eyes her. It’s supposed to be funny. Malorie doesn’t know, maybe it is.

“Yes,” Ron says, reading again. “Lansing. Although I actually heard it was East Lansing. There is a difference, you know.”

“I do.”

A university town. An agriculture school. Michigan State.

“How far are we from East Lansing?” she asks.

But Ron is focusing on the paper.

“It really is very interesting,” he says. “Preordained paths, I mean. Train tracks. By this logic, the only other safe form of travel in the new world would be by roller coaster. Any desire to see Cedar Point, Malorie?”

Ron doesn’t look at her long enough for her to have to smile.

“How far is it?” she asks again.

“It’s about thirty miles. But of course that’s something you’d want to be sure of before setting out on foot.”

Malorie senses the world sinking. The hope she feels, the hope she cannot deny, partially turns to dust. She almost stands up. Ron sits down.

“Thirty miles,” she says. “There’s just…just no way.”

Ron nods. “It’s a tall order. Your stories of twenty miles on a river are mind-boggling enough.”

“Fuck.”

When she looks at Ron, he’s staring back at her. He looks inquisitive, almost like he’s observing her making a decision. Like he’s wondering what it takes to do something brave.

“In the old world,” Ron says, “thirty miles on foot would take about eight hours. That’s at fifteen minutes a mile.”

“With sight,” Malorie says. “And walking a straight line.”

“So double it. Triple it. Even more. I’d say it could take three days.”

Malorie thinks.

“I don’t mean to be the bearer of worse news,” Ron says, “but there’s no guarantee the train is still there. Or how often it runs. Or what the people are like, the sort of people who would consider running such a thing.”

The dread he’s espousing is palpable, as if Ron has just tossed her a black hole to catch.