Her stomach twinged, the twins kicking. She choked back the taste of bile. She couldn’t allow herself to linger on the possibility of their deaths. They had to be alive. There was no other way. She didn’t have faith. She just knew. No bodies. No blood. No signs of struggle. The evidence said keep searching.

Though she wanted to ask Amy what she believed in, they’d wasted enough time already. Calliope still felt lightheaded, but they shouldn’t stay in one place. They had to move. There weren’t any volcanoes this far across the river, but whatever else the earth could conjure up to scare or break them, she didn’t want to imagine. Storms atop storms had swept the country the past few years, hurricanes and tornadoes where they didn’t belong, in states unaccustomed to such weather, leaving millions without power for weeks. If this was a global warming catastrophe too, where was the government relief? The helicopters? The Red Cross?

No one was coming. She must have known this already. But the realization wormed through her stomach, unsettling the fluid she’d just poured down. They were on their own.

She leaned against the car for support, dizzy again.

Amy cleared her throat. “You should make the kid pee now if you can,” she said. “We’ll be on the road a while. Might have to sleep in the car.”

Calliope nodded, opened the door for Eunjoo. “You heard her, chica. Let’s go.”

Amy followed them into the store, filling her mouth with the two remaining doughnuts and leaving a trail of powdered sugar on her chin and tank top. “While you ladies relieve yourselves, I’ll finish stocking up,” she said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

After Calliope and Eunjoo finished in the restroom (the toilets wouldn’t flush), Calliope sent Eunjoo back to the car and grabbed a box of matches, canned vegetables and meat, a can opener, magazines which she figured she could use as kindling if necessary (how hard could it be to start a fire?), and packs of chewing gum to keep their mouths moist to help preserve water. She wasn’t sure it was true but Andres had told her that a person could survive longer by sucking on a button to create saliva, and then drinking that. The thought of surviving on spit churned her stomach, but sugarless spearmint seemed all right. She carried her items to the checkout counter then laughed at herself. Habit. She didn’t want to be a thief, but she didn’t have her wallet anyway. It had burned with everything else.