They rested for the night in a barn by a river. Old tack hung on the walls, buckets for milking, lengths of chains. An old tractor sat on flattened tires. The house was gone, collapsed into its foundation, its walls improbably folded one on top of another like the flaps of a box, not so much destroyed as packed away. They divvied the cans they’d found and sat on the floor to eat the contents cold. Through the ragged tears in the roof they could see stars, and then, as the night drew down, the moon, ringed by scudding clouds. Peter took first watch with Michael; by the time Hollis and Sara relieved them, the stars were gone, the moon no more than a region of paleness in the cloud-thickened sky. He slept, dreaming of nothing, and when he awoke in the morning, he saw that it had snowed in the night.

By midmorning the air had warmed again; the snow had melted away. On the map, the next town was named Placerville. Eight days had passed since they’d seen the body of the cat in the trees. The feeling that something was following them had dissipated over the long days of walking, the silent, star-strewn nights. The farmstead was a distant memory; the Haven, and all that had occurred there, seemed like years ago.

They were tracing a river now. Peter thought it was the Dolores, or the San Miguel. The road was long gone, absorbed by the grass, the wash of earth and time. They marched in silence, two rows of three. What were they looking for, what would they find? The journey had acquired a meaning of its own, intrinsic: to move, to keep moving. The thought of stopping, of reaching the end, seemed beyond Peter’s power to imagine. Amy was walking beside him, her back sloped forward against the heft of her pack, her sleeping sack and winter jacket lashed to the bottom of the frame. She was dressed, like all of them, in clothing scavenged at Outdoor World: a pair of gaps cinched to her hips and, on her upper body, a loose-fitting blouse of red and white checks, the sleeves unsnapped and flapping around her wrists. On her feet, a pair of leather sneakers; her head was bare. She had given up the glasses long ago. She kept her eyes forward, squinting against the brightness. In the days since they’d left the farmstead, a shift had occurred, subtle but unmistakable. Like the river, she was leading them now; their job was simply to follow. With each passing day, the feeling grew stronger. Peter thought, as he often did, of the message Michael had shown him, that long-ago night in the Lighthouse. Its words formed a backbeat to the rhythm of his walking, each footfall carrying him forward, into a world he didn’t know, into the hidden heart of the past, to the place where Amy came from.