The beach on the far side of the peninsula was, if possible, worse. Gray waves rolled against the shore, topped with white and whipped by a salty wind. Whereas the north shore looked across to the mainland, here the ocean simply continued, flat and featureless as far as Kira could see. She had often dreamed of the world beyond the island, the ruins and wonders, the danger and isolation. Here she saw the world as a great gray nothing—a broken wall, an empty beach, a dull wave slowly grinding it away to nothing. She saw a dead dog half-buried in the sand, brown with old blood and speckled white with maggots. She turned back to the road and kept her eyes from wandering.

If there were people on Long Beach they kept to themselves, and the wagon rumbled along without incident to another bridge on the western tip. Here they crossed back to the main island, circumventing a wide, marshy bay, and then turned west again through another empty city. This shore was much closer to the road than it appeared on the map, which heightened Kira’s unease for reasons she couldn’t explain. All the soldiers were awake now, alert in the fading light, and Jayden whispered at Kira’s side.

“This is the closest we’ll get to the airport—this urban strip heads straight up to it, just three or four miles.”

“You think we’ll see any bandits?”

“You got your rifle?”

Kira nodded, picking it up and checking the chamber. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. “Locked and loaded.”

“Then you’re ready, either way.”

Kira swallowed and pointed the rifle out away from the wagon, holding it the way they’d taught her in school: left hand supporting the barrel, right hand on the grip, finger next to but not on the trigger. She thumbed off the safety and watched the buildings roll by—fancy town houses with tall, old-growth trees in the front yards, probably millions of dollars apiece before the Break. Now their windows and doors were broken, their yards had gone to seed, and rusted cars squatted in their driveways like giant, dead insects. They passed a stretch of trees, and a row of tall buildings beyond them—an old beach resort, probably half-flooded by now. She saw a glint of light in an upper-story window: an idle reflection from a shard of glass? Or a signal to someone hiding in the city?