“Did it?” Jackie said. She kept the crowbar up.

“I live inside the Community College. I should know.”

“Are you a scientist?” Diane asked, moving between the woman and Jackie, waving for her to lower the crowbar. Jackie did not.

“1983,” the woman said.

“Is 1983 when the world ended?” Diane said, in the way a mother might ask a child if a picture of a train is a train.

“No! Are you crazy?” the woman said. “Well, maybe. Hard to say exactly what date.”

“What’s 1983 then?” Jackie said, finally lowering the crowbar because her arm didn’t have any more strength to keep it up.

“Combo to that lock you’re trying to smash.”

“Who’s trying to smash a lock? I was just checking how strong it was,” Jackie said while smashing the lock once more.

“The good-looking guy keeps snacks in there sometimes. Mostly crap though. You want the tasty stuff, go to the biomed neighborhood. They almost always have beef jerky.”

“Thanks,” Diane said. “We will.”

Jackie shrugged and tried the code. The door opened with an electronic whir. The woman pushed past them and rummaged through the fridge while they grabbed a couple of the linen-wrapped plastic flamingos.

They locked the lab back up, hopped into the Mercedes, and drove.

Diane drove to give Jackie a rest after the exertion of failing to break the lock. Soon they were back on Route 800, heading the same direction as before.

They passed Old Woman Josie’s house, next to the used car lot. No one was in the front yard. The used car salesman still stood on the roof of the old Toyota, howling. Diane did not howl back, but she felt hopeful, once again. Every time she was hopeful.

“Jackie.”

“Mm.”

“Thank you for keeping me company in my nightmare.”

Jackie grinned at her.

“Nah, it’s our nightmare now.”

Diane smiled a little, meant it a lot. Jackie took the flamingos from their wrapping and laid them across the center armrest, and they both put a hand on them. For a moment they both separately thought about holding the other’s hand, and both separately decided not to.

42

Jackie could not remember the highway exactly, but she knew she was in a car, and that car must have come from somewhere. She cast a rearward glance. Empty fields and low hills and the 101 freeway, a distant, growling ribbon with no obvious way to get from there to here.

“How did we get here?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did we take a highway?”

“We took the highway. We used these.” Diane indicated the flamingos under their hands. Somewhere during the journey they had grasped each other’s hands after all.