“California,” Jamey said.

We were off course, I knew. We were taking too long. Skate State had thrown us off, and now we were twisting down hilly country roads, white and slick, afraid to take too many highways, turned away from some of them by blockades and chains. We had to move slowly, but even then the house couldn’t take the turns. We’d had to back up more than once and turn around, find another way. The truck was burning through fuel, like Grayson had said. We had filled canisters with gas. Taken—and paid for—every bit of fuel we could find, but even that would only last us so long. We would have to find a better road, paved and straight. We would have to find fuel and water.

I drove through the park until we reached a spot near a cinder-block shower house. A campsite, close to the cover of woods. I pulled the truck in, stopping a few feet before the trees. I turned off the engine and sat for a moment, looking through the windshield.

Silver topped the trees and capped the grass. It was more like the memory of grass these days, more white than brown, knitted to the roots in a frost that just didn’t—couldn’t—burn away. The campsite had a fire ring and an old grill. The ring was dented and ashy, the grill cast in frozen grease. Nobody had been here for a long time.

“Do you think we should use the camo?” I asked. “Hide the house?”

“Looks safe to me,” Grayson said. “This place is deserted.”

I looked at Dance but he just shrugged. Jamey was already getting Starla out. “Let’s see if there’s water,” she said cheerfully.

“We could grill tonight,” Grayson said.

“Real meat,” Dance said.

They slammed the doors and busied themselves setting up camp. I stayed in the front seat, listening to the engine tick and the boys take supplies out of the back. More and more, I felt the roads were too empty, the trees too silent. I had the feeling they were waiting—the whole wild world was just waiting—for us to die.

Jamey and Starla ran back from the cinder-block shower house, hand in hand. “Water!” Starla was saying. As excited as a child should have been about candy. “Water!”

“There’s running water in the shower house,” Jamey said. “It’s freezing but on.”

“Beats the river,” Dance said.

As darkness fell in the early afternoon, we ate deer steaks Grayson cooked on the camp grill, easier than my tiny propane stove. We made a fire in the ring and huddled around it, wrapped in blankets. Our hair, wet from showers in the cinder-block house, dried in the smoke. It was so cold my hair almost froze before it dried, crisping around my ears. Starla fell asleep in front of the fire and Jamey carried her into the house.