In the passenger seat, the big man nodded. “All eyes, Major.”

Greer stepped back, making space for Peter to approach.

“Well,” Sara said, “I guess this is it.”

“I guess so.”

“Take care of Michael, all right?” She snuffled and wiped her eyes. “He needs … looking after.”

“You can count on it.” He reached in to shake Hollis’s hand, wished him good luck, then lifted his voice to the rear of the Humvee. “Theo? Maus? All set back there?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be, brother. We’ll see you in Kerrville.”

Peter backed away. Sara put the Humvee in gear, swung the vehicle in a wide circle, and pulled slowly down the street. The five of them—Peter, Alicia, Michael, Greer, and Amy—stood in silence, watching it go. A boiling plume of dust, the sound of its motor fading, then gone.

“Well,” Peter said finally, “the day’s not getting any younger.”

“Is that a joke?” Michael said.

Peter shrugged. “I guess it was.”

They retrieved their packs and hoisted them onto their backs. As Peter took his rifle from the floor, he spied Amy still standing at the edge of the porch, her eyes tracing the drifting cloud of the Humvee’s departure.

“Amy? What is it?”

She turned to face him. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I think they’ll be all right.” She smiled. “Sara is a good driver.”

There were no more words to say; the moment of departure was at hand. The morning sun had lifted over the valley. If everything went well, they would reach California by midsummer.

They began to walk.

Chapter Seventy-Three

SEVENTY-THREE

At a shimmering distance, they saw them: a vast field of turning blades, spinning in the wind.

The turbines.

They had kept to the deserts, the hot, dry places, sheltering where they could, and where they could not, building a fire and waiting out the nights. Once, and only once, did they see any virals alive. A pod of three. This was in Arizona, a place the map called “Painted Desert.” The creatures were dozing in the shade beneath a bridge, hanging from the girders. Amy had felt them as they approached. Let me, Alicia said.

Alicia had taken them all. Three of them, on the blade. They found her in the culvert, pulling her knife from the chest of the last one; they had already begun to smoke. Easy, she said. They didn’t even seem to know what she was. Perhaps they simply thought she was another viral.

There were others. Bodies, the barest remains. The form of a blackened rib cage, the crumbling, ashlike bones of a hand or skull; the suggestive imprint on a square of asphalt, like something burned in a pan. Usually they came upon these remnants in the few towns they passed through. Most were lying not far from the buildings where they had slept and then departed, when they had laid themselves down in the sun to die.