I head west, the road before me illuminated in wide arcs. I see palm trees and tropical drinks with those little paper umbrellas. I see a barrage of motel rooms and late mornings. At some point I swap my car for an open-top convertible and use it to snake along the coastline like a shadow.

I can almost feel the sea spray. It cleanses me. I feel the breeze catching in my hair, playing with my shirt collar, and with each passing moment I seem to shed more weight, until I feel as though I can practically levitate, until I have become completely unencumbered.

I spend my days betting on horses and when either my luck runs out or the sun runs off I go in search of loose women. I fuck them behind bars and on the hoods of cars. I take them from behind, their hair wrapped tightly in my clenched fist. And when they gasp and then beg for me to slow down I thunder on, as if I am trying to rip them apart. I stop only when, at last, I am sated.

But the fantasy falls apart almost as quickly as it materialises. The logistics rendered suddenly laughable. How would I rent a convertible without providing some form of identification? Who were these loose women, and where was this disposable income coming from?

I think again of the boy on the highway.

I sit perfectly still and try to visualise the internal mechanics of my own body. To disassemble my molecular structure. To reduce my body to its purest form. To release a lifetime of guilt and regret. Until I am left with only the goodness in me.

But I find the person who remains unrecognisable.

We would be strangers in the street.

I would pass him and he would pass me, and we would share not a single glance.

XXXI

I lift myself wearily from the chair and am preparing for bed when I spot a faint light dancing in the window of Phil and Helen’s house. I switch off the television, kneel at the window and watch. The thin beam moves with a nefarious purpose. Leaping forward and stopping suddenly, lingering on various items before eventually moving on.

Had they turned back? Realised the futility in trying to outrun the sickness? Perhaps they’d been stopped at the state line, or run into some impassable congestion on the highway? But if that were the case why wouldn’t they turn on their lights?

I lift the curtain back gently, so as not to attract the attention of the light, and peer round to look for the RV in the driveway but there’s no sign of it.

From the garage I run barefoot in a diagonal line, avoiding the security lights at the front of the house and arriving silently at their back door. I find it locked so I circle the property, searching desperately for a way inside.

There’s no evidence of any forced entry. No open windows or doors. As far as I can tell the house is shut up tight. But through the curtains I can make out the faint shape of a person, and the beam of a flashlight sweeping from room to room.