Temple looks one last time at the nurse, then turns and climbs the concrete steps up towards the road.

The other slugs are still in the distance, but she knows they will catch sight of her soon enough, and that a few have a tendency to turn quickly into a pack and then a swarm. So she walks directly to where the cars are parked and opens the door of the red compact. The keys have been left in it, but the engines dead.

She searches the jeep for keys and cant find any, but there is a screwdriver under the front seat, so she uses it to rip away the cowling from around the ignition and prise out the cap on the ignition barrel. Then she feels for the notch at the end of the barrel and puts the head of the screwdriver into it and turns.

The engine coughs a few times and starts, the gauges on the dash rolling to life.

Okay then, Temple says. Thats a boon for the girl. Half a tank of gas, too. Watch out great wide open, prepare to be motored on.

*

The world is pretty much what she remembers, all burned up and pallid like someone came along with a sponge and soaked up all the colour and the moisture too and left everything bone dry.

But shes also glad to be back. Shes missed the structures of man, which are pretty wondrous when you put your mind to them. Those tall brick buildings with all their little rooms and closets and doors, like ant colonies or wasps nests when you bust open their paper shells. She was in New York City once, when she was little. They had it pretty well slug-free because its an island, and she remembers standing at the bottom of this terrific tall building, thinking that civilizations got some crackerjack people working for its furtherance, and kicking at the base of the building with her foot to see if the whole thing would topple over but realizing that it didnt and never ever would.

In the first town she comes to, she spots a convenience store on the corner and pulls up onto the sidewalk in front of it. Deep slug territory there are meatskins milling around everywhere she looks, but theyre spread out so there must not be anything for them to hunt around here. And theyre slow, some of them even crawling. Nothing to eat for a long time, she figures. This place is written off shell have to go further north.

But first she goes into the convenience store. She discovers a whole box of those peanut butter crackers she likes the ones made like sandwiches with the bright-orange cheese crackers. She rips open one of the packages and eats it right there in the store, standing in the window and watching the slugs inch their way in her direction.

She thinks about her diet on the island.