“Look over there,” Angela said. “Is that...?” She didn’t finish her sentence, but walked around the old house rather than through it and approached the garage. Sammi jogged after her. Her footfalls on the silty ground felt strange, and it reminded her of how it sometimes felt walking through the pine woods close to their cabin, like there was a hollowness to her footsteps, as if the forest floor was settled on hidden spaces underneath, caves or tunnels, unknown shadows. She thought perhaps the tree roots were so interlocked that they formed a canopy over the space beneath, leaves and pine needles gathered over the decades to form a false ground. Or perhaps there were caves down there, inhabited by pale blind things that listened to her footsteps and made up stories about what could make such a sound.

“They left their car,” Angela said. “Ford?”

“Don’t know,” Lilou said. “They all look the same to me.”

“Oh yeah. You don’t drive.”

“Weird,” Sammi said. The garage had mostly rotted away, the skeleton of heavy timber walls sagged and holed and fallen onto the vehicle. The car was rusted and deformed, but the windows were still in place, obscured by a slick plant growth on the inside surfaces. It was another sad sight, another forgotten thing.

Then Sammi saw some objects that definitely were bones. Through the lowered rear windows, she could make out a shape nestled on the back seat.

“Something’s in there,” she said. She approached the car, stepping carefully past the fallen walls, and leaned in closer.

Sediment had settled inside the car as well, but the skull protruded above its level on the back seat, empty eyes staring back at her. Its curved spine arched up and down again, and stretched up behind it was a twisted, broken leg.

“Dog,” Angela said behind her. “Big one. Me and Vince wanted one, but our place was too small. We were going to wait ’til we got somewhere bigger.”

They walked through the remains of the old town, and it began to take shape in Sammi’s mind. They saw more homes, a line of larger buildings that might have been shops on a main street. The simple two-road layout provided four distinct districts of ruined buildings. The northern corner was on higher ground, and there were more old trees protruding from the mud, the house outlines larger and more opulent. There stood the largest ruin they had found, and Lilou led them that way.

It was a church, stone walls supporting the bare remains of a tumbled structure that had once been the spire. Maybe there’s still a bell in there, Sammi thought, and she imagined its lonesome ring echoing unheard through the depths of the reservoir for four decades. The spread of silt around the church was wide and flat, spiked here and there with the tops of what could only have been headstones. They were walking across a hundred bodies.