“Anyway,” she said, “Martin Chatwin beat Ember. So it can be done. What’s Martin Chatwin got that the three of us don’t have?”

“Like about six more fingers,” Josh said. “For starters.”

It was good to be out in the field again, whatever the odds. And it was good to be in charge. Before the desert she’d never really given things her all, at least not when the others were around to watch. It was too vulnerable-making; in a way she hadn’t really had her all to give. No wonder the others hadn’t taken her as seriously as they should have. Plus she’d done a few fucked-up things. She wondered whether Quentin felt angry about what happened that night. Like it was her that broke up him and Alice! She’d only done it out of habit. If you’ve got a junkie in the house, you don’t leave your meds just lying on the table.

And like they would have lasted two more weeks anyway, given what a loser Quentin was back in those days anyway. The funny thing was, the more Quentin got his shit together the less she wanted to sleep with him. Weird how that worked.

When they found the boardwalk Janet started trotting along it, double-time. Poppy jogged along behind her but Josh called out “Hey, wait up!” and when they didn’t he started sort of slowly motivating his doughy body along. Guy lives in a fantasy world without junk food or cars or trans fats or TV and he’s still fat. You had to admire his dedication to the cause.

On the way Janet noticed a pair of child’s shoes, ancient and weathered, abandoned on a rock. It was the oddest thing. They looked pitifully small. She wondered what could have brought a boy that young—they were a boy’s shoes—all the way out here, this deep into the Northern Marsh, and what could have happened to him. Nothing good.

When the pier was in sight she drew the crossed axes from her back.

“Awesome axes,” Josh said. “Where did you—”

“Your mom gave them to me,” Janet said. “After I fucked her.”

“Why—”

“Because she enjoyed it so much.”

Not her best work maybe, but they couldn’t all be winners. And she really didn’t feel like telling that story again.

Janet stopped at the very end of the pier and looked around, hands on hips. Everything looked normal. Not a lot of apocalypse going on here. But then swamps already looked like the end of the world anyway. Maximum entropy, land and water commingled chaotically. There wasn’t much farther downhill they could go.

Stray windlets roughened the surface of the bog. A couple of dead, thunderstruck trees poked up in the middle. I was just here, she thought. Like a week ago. Suddenly she felt powerfully aware of the circularity and futility of life.