Suburbia always feels kinda grim, especially here. At least in some places it’s made prettier with trees, or you can gaze past to look at the ocean. But here the trees just bake until they die miserably in the heat, so instead it’s just ceaseless stucco boxes, their color faded to near uniform grays by the relentless sun. Each one surrounded by a defensive barrier of AstroTurf, or dead green-sprayed grass. Maybe a cactus for ornamentation, or a yucca if the owner’s gone really wild.
Our house was one of the few scattered outliers built before hundreds of clones were hastily thrown up. Not that our place isn’t just as stucco, or just as cookie cutter, but at least it’s more than six inches from the neighbors. People poured out here to the new mines hunting for catalysts to clean up ever crappier oil. All of them either funded by wishful thinking or kleptocracy. Then the pork barrel emptied before the promised boom could make up the funds. With the money went the people, so the neighborhood is half unfinished and the houses are eighty percent empty. And the few that aren’t? The HOA makes sure they don’t go developing a personality.
But, even in the dark, it's not the abandoned ones that feel menacing. It's the myriad sporting Miller’s New America flag: a red-and-black eagle emblazoned across the stars and stripes; the motto, “Liberty Through Strength”, an ugly scroll across the bottom.
It’s not like it’s the official flag.
Of course not.
Even Miller wouldn’t dare touch something so hallowed, not yet.
But his Verity and Tiktok posts boosted the new one, and, of course, our HOA leaped to add it to the list of approved flags. You can drive yourself insane trying to work out if someone chose to fly it, or whether someone’s boss visited and decided they weren’t showing sufficient patriotism. Maybe they found themselves receiving a sudden demotion, perhaps not on paper, but in everything but. Better not to think about it, I find. Better to just quietly avoid those houses.
Yeah, everything’s structured to focus you on compliance. Which, right now, means fulfilling Miller’s grand vision. So up goes the garbage flag, and your neighbors start thinking maybe they should have one too.
The gen AI eagle looks like shit, of course. Everyone knows it. But it doesn’t matter. There's always enough pick-me enablers happy to appease whatever whim strikes our “Just and mighty leader.”
Last year half the city was sporting Liberty Through Strength baseball caps.
Ugh.
Caitlin tucks herself down in the seat, shivering as the fever burns her up. Addy watches her, I can see her knuckles gripping her console, almost crushing it. She’s not playing, not distractible, she’s been watching Caitlin ever since she swayed out to the garage and clambered unsteadily into the truck. Hopefully the exhaustion’ll hit Addy soon and she’ll drop back to sleep. I wish I’d been able to get the kids out of the house without their helping, but — I replay packing in my mind — there really wasn’t a way. Not without Caitlin.
At least Ash has scrunched her sweater up as a pillow — ignoring the pillows stuffed between them — and leaned her head against the window. Her eyes aren’t closed either, she’s quietly watching the street scroll by one last time.
I hate leaving our home. There are so many memories tied to the place. That corner where Ash drew all over the wall in crayon and the paint doesn’t look right. The first time Caitlin kissed me, stood on the threshold. The faucet in the family bathroom that always leaks because Addy never turns it off properly. We worked so hard to make it a good place for our family. And sure, the neighborhood’s in its death throes, but where isn’t. And sure, we’d always promised that one day we’d move somewhere better. Somewhere in a sequestered state.
But creeping out in the middle of the night, leaving most of our lives behind, it wasn’t the plan.
None of this was in the plan.
Fucking past-Erika.
I linger at the corner. It takes a moment before I find the will to flick on the turn signal and pull away, watching our home disappear from the mirror, probably for the last time.
It’s only after we’ve driven down a few blocks — I’ve even stuck on my turn signal to turn out onto the main drag — that I give in to the itching at the back of my brain. I know we should be leaving, but something’s off. Something subtle enough that I could almost convince myself I’m imagining it. But not quite. Disregarding all common sense, I swing straight back into our neighborhood at the next street to check.
The streets are always obnoxiously neat; every car parked in near perfect alignment both with its sibling vehicle, and neatly parallel to the edges of the driveway. The HOA reinforces its rules with the ferocity of a mall cop, but the backup of actual law, so everyone keeps their places meticulously tidy. They have to, or risk losing their homes. A neat and organized frontage is one way to avoid too much attention from them, so: clean cars, parked well.
When I understand what’s amiss it’s bone-deep disconcerting. Not all — but enough — of the driveways are littered with cars that feel somehow like they just got dropped from the sky. And if they landed roughly in the right place, they just stopped. Some with their wheels edging onto the lawn. Some even have doors slightly ajar, dome lights glowing through the street-lit gloom. When the red strobes flicker behind me I panic and glance at the speedometer. Five miles an hour?! Shit. Looking dubious enough?
But then I realize, it’s just red strobes. I shiver as the adrenaline flees as quickly as it arrived, the sweat on my skin becoming instantly cold and clammy. In the mirror, rapidly approaching is an ambulance. I pull out of the way as it swings past and slews to a stop a few houses down. I slow too, making sure they’ll have enough space and then slowing more as the doors swing open.
There’s clearly some debate before one of them angrily grabs a mask, throwing another at the other one who just lets it drop to the floor. The maskless one argues with the gurney, which doesn’t seem to want to exit the ambulance, while mask and gloves adds some kinda yellow-coverall-thing and walks over to the house. It’s then that I see the guy, collapsed and lying through the doorway. Silhouetted by the light a woman and two kids stand some distance back, inside, watching. Mask and gloves leans down, checks a pulse, waves at the other one to hurry up.
My breath hitches in my throat.
It feels like I can hear sirens everywhere.
I strain trying to pick out atonal wails from the background of night time city noise. But it’s just in my head. Still, the clamminess has returned, my heartbeat bounds in my ears.
Gently I accelerate around the ambulance and head back toward the strip.
When we reach it, the wide empty asphalt welcomes us into its quiet embrace. I try and take a few breaths as we accelerate away.
#
Row after row of traffic lights ahead. This bit of town is half vape stores and half empty store fronts. More than half, really. Strip mall after strip mall dying quiet deaths; their lots slowly collecting the desert sand that blows in, sits in the unused spaces, then washes away with the monsoon-like storms. After a while, the kids passed from anxious staring through distracting themselves with their consoles to sleeping. Street lights flicker across their slouched figures in the back, and up front, across Caitlin’s face; sweat glistening on her skin, occasional moans as she moves.
I hold my speed, sticking at exactly thirty-five miles per hour. Braking gently and early for the changing lights. A full and complete stop at every right-on-red. Not one single California roll.
Mirror, turn signal, mirror, maneuver.
Angelic driving from the demon who’s destroyed everything. Who’s ripped apart her entire world.
I couldn’t see a future.
Now, when I can see one, when I can taste it? I’ve wrecked it.
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel, knuckles white I’m gripping it so hard.
Slowly the main drag narrows; six lanes to five, five to four, four to three. Half empty strip malls become empty lots with desolate patches of scrub poking up around once parking lots.
The suburbs become exurbs.
All the time I watch in the mirror. Try and see round every curve.
Waiting for cops.
Watching for Neuragene.
Waiting for someone to realize who I am.
And finally, I breathe a little as the exurbs become open highway.
As the miles rack up, in the half-light in the mirror I see the kids settling against each other, sleeping. I glance across and watch Caitlin struggles to find relief. Silently, tears roll down my face.
#
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. Between the two of them — the rumble strip on the fog line and the pissy chimes of the driver alertness system — I’m snapped out of another goddamn micro sleep (Driver break advised. Yeah, sure, Ford. I’ll do that and risk being caught and thrown in a fucking gulag).
We're seven hours into the drive and I've been awake — well, ish — for a solid twenty-three. It's unsustainable, but our meticulously researched plan — finding neglected stopping places all scattered off almost entirely rural highways — assumed two fit and able drivers.
It also assumed not leaving in the middle of the night.
Sure, there was the ‘run now’ plan, from which I kinda mixed and matched our departure. Mostly I ended up drawing from our plan for a more relaxed exit, but the favored stopping point for that felt too close to home. And the ‘run now’ plan requires us to alternate drivers with just occasional breaks from otherwise continuous driving. And given that Caitlin’s barely been awake since she got home, that’s not gonna fly. So this first stop? An emergency just-in-case stop that Caitlin found. One pulled from her childhood memories, that she checked and double checked would be safe enough.
Pushing the envelope though the drive might be, it’s still the least bad choice.
Sadly, it turns out the planning we did was like the opposite of a capsule wardrobe of fleeing. It gets better further out, but here up front, everything has too few choices. So many places looked okay, but a little research found they’d been tagged with cameras. Or they were popular with the local militia.
Stopping at some unknown hotel, some unchecked campsite? Who knows who might be there, who might decide to report the homosexuals.
I roll my shoulders, roll my neck; try and stretch out the stress. Slim though the pickings are for the next couple of days, it’s just a solid eight to twelve hours of driving each day. I can do that.
At least, I can do it once I’ve had some sleep.
So long as Caitlin stays well enough.
So long as Addy doesn’t get really sick.
Nausea roils my stomach. I feel my chest tighten again.
God I’m grateful as the road slips between the rock walls. At least we’re not so visible now we’ve started the slight climb. Tired, my eyes linger on the scattered rocks littering the narrow shoulder. Chunks that’ve fallen from the larger buttes that, on one side, run right up against the winding roadway. Down on the desert floor the wind was fierce, the cooling air and pressure shifting brought sand with it. I already had to stop twice, the road suddenly disappearing in clouds of dust so thick I could barely see past the hood. Sometimes I could make out the center lines, and creep along them until I’d concede defeat. And then later, I’d see tumbleweed the size of Ash dancing across the road with the wind. When it was suddenly caught in the headlights, they’d make me slow or swerve. But as we climb — so long as no boulders drop down to greet us — the road’s clearer; the going less fierce.
The sun’s not yet made its appearance over the ridges; there’s still another hour or two until it’ll first start to clear the mountains. Our rising up into the shadows feels oppressive. I keep imagining patrol cars hiding on the curves or tucked into the creases in the rock walls. I plead with the universe to let us get to our destination.
When I first moved — fled — to the state, the mountains still kinda glowed pink just before sun-up. But these days there's not enough snow to do it. And what’s there is so dirty the light coming off’s more of a gray haze than a gorgeous rose colored tint. Not even that dismal gray remnant is there yet.
Though at least out here you do get pinpricks of starlight.
Although the odds are just as good that I’m looking at half-dead satellites.
Who can tell which is which anymore.
#
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk.
Shit. I snap upright, blinking. Correct our course and haul us back to the center of the lane. Crack the window a little further. Let the cold of the early morning air blow on me.
I throw a panicked glance at the mirror and down the highway. No cops saw me hitting the fog line again but I can't keep going like this. I've drunk enough Mountain Dew Xtra that I should be having palpitations. My body should definitely not be attempting to nap. But the caffeine isn’t enough.
I'm not sure there's enough stimulants in the world to counter my exhaustion.
The brief flush of adrenaline dumped into my body by being woken from another micro-sleep only holds me over for a few minutes. Cold shivers rack my body, nausea floats around at the edge of my blurry consciousness. With every fiber I want to pull over to power-nap, but the last thing I want is some cop welfare-checking us and running my license.
I don't know how fucked I am yet and I'd really like to avoid finding out for as long as is humanly possible.
Finally, eyelids heavy and body screaming but with less than a mile to go, I do pull over and tap on the dome light. Not to take a break, but because Caitlin's handwritten notes tell me that somewhere in the next three-quarters of a mile there's the original entrance to the campground. And also our way in. She sketched out the map, marked the location of the track we’re meant to take with an arrow.
I glance in the mirror again, the glint I thought I’d seen hasn’t resolved into headlights, so maybe it's nothing. I don't want to draw attention to ourselves by hanging around at the side of the road for too long, though. And even though the scrubby brush has given way to actual, if thin trees, you can probably see our headlights for several miles.
Traffic’s been disconcertingly light, even given the late, or maybe early, hour. But all it takes is one snitch, one enemy of the people, so I pull back out and crank the speed some of the way back up, at least until I see the Homeland Resource Service sign. They didn't even bother replacing the Park Service sign, just slapped the new name over it and added a ‘temporarily closed’ that's been there long enough some plant has dug its roots in behind it and is thriving.
It took a lot of research to find the few sites that weren't summer camps for America Youth, or more commonly sold for investment, or handed off as a gift to some friend of the president or other.
Slowing to a crawl I see the barrier’s still hanging mostly in place. The chain holding it to the leaning gatepost glints reflections at me. Obnoxiously it’s still enough to block the blacktop, but creeping along, a couple hundred feet further on I see the gap where other vehicles have made an unofficial track.
Dropping off the pavement finally wakes the kids.
“Are we nearly there?” Addy yawns.
“Nearly,” I say.
Even Caitlin stirs through the haze of painkillers to mumble, “Careful, sweetheart. They said this ground’s real soft.”
Threading the truck down the rock-strewn track, riding over the sandy ground, with thin branches providing little cover, I wonder how well hidden we’ll be when we finally get there. Our lights must be visible for miles. Fleetingly I consider taking up religion just to give me something to pray to. Some God to give us some fucking luck and persuade whoever might consider looking out into this patch of night to maybe wait until we stop, turn the lights off, and hide.
Finally the track rejoins what was clearly once the road out to the campground. The going’s better, although occasionally desiccated trees loom out of the darkness, slowing our progress back to a crawl. At long last the skeletal and charred remnants of park huts and a toilet block stand to our left. Caitlin’s map sends us right, and further into the sparsely wooded campgrounds.
“There was a waterfall here,” she says, her voice husky both from lack of use and dehydration. She swigs from her water trying to soothe it, coughs a little. “I used to come here as a kid. There was a big pool you could swim in. It dried up years ago though.” She sits the seat up, muffles her discomfort at the movement. In the mirror I can see Addy's eyes widen with anxiety.
“Your mom's going to be okay,” I say, injecting more faith than I have. “We're going to get set up here and then I'm going to give her stuff to help her feel better. Then I’m gonna nap — we’re all going to stay nice and chill — and then we’re gonna get back on the road.”
Caitlin manages a thumbs up before she closes her eyes. “Hey, Erika?” She whispers, “Can you see if site seventeen’s free? That was always my favorite.”
#
As we scrape down the overgrown track, I realize that tucked into some of the spaces are cars, vans, the occasional school bus. Hopefully there’s not anyone in them that’s paying attention to our arrival, and hopefully no one’s paying attention to the vehicles cluttering up this supposedly abandoned campground. Some of them look like they’ve been here a while, though — tires flat or sunk into the dirt. Shrubs grown up around the gravel pads they're parked on. I remind myself Caitlin said this site was the best choice. I crush down my fears, my uncontrolled anxiety. I remember that I pulled the GPS fuse from the car. They could still get us off the cell phone towers, I guess. At least, they could if I pulled our phones out of the bag they're sitting in.
Penny's instructions. Very explicit.
Get far away and don't let them know which direction you're going.
Caitlin moans again as she moves, drawing my eyes across to her. I remember her request as we pulled in: See if site seventeen is free. I half count and half look at the charred or run down markers, most of them almost illegible, stopping now and then to a drag fallen branch off the track. It’s not so much that it’s quieter back here, there still seems to be roughly the same ratio of occupied spaces to empty spots; it's that the proportion of things that look like they’re maybe mobile to things that seem to have rooted to the spot shifts dramatically in favor of the latter.
But space seventeen is, indeed, open. I back the truck over the sad, dead brush.
“Are we staying here?” Ash whispers.
“Just until I’ve had some sleep, honey.”
She curls against her sister, both of them yawning. I lower the seat back a little, warily closing my eyes against the liminal dawn light slithering through the dead trees.
#
Startled from sleep by — something — I try to jump up, instead jamming my knee hard into the steering wheel and crushing my hand. If the noise hadn’t woken everyone else, my yelp would have. I frantically look around and there, hands on the hood, is a woman.
“What the hell?” Caitlin scrapes out, the words abrading her throat. She groans as she pushes herself up and we blink into the day-bright light. “Ah — sh-ugar. I guess I should…”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“Mom?” Addy adds, panic spiking her voice higher.
“But—”
“Sweetheart, you can barely stand. I’ll do it. Kids, it’s okay. She probably just wants to know why we’re here.”
In front of the truck, the woman with waves of shoulder length brown hair takes a slow step back. Her lips are set in a thin line and she looks pissed. Her hand’s resting ostentatiously on her service weapon’s grip, the holster clipped to the black belt of her cargo pants. Whenever she breathes, the Homeland Resource shield sparkles against the brown of her shirt. “Wakey wakey, princesses. Get the hell out here. No sudden movements.” As I crack the door she points the gun at Caitlin. “You too sweetheart.”
“She’s sick.” I say through the crack. “She’s got— we think she caught the virus.”
“Huh,” she says, side stepping towards my door, gun still trained on Caitlin. “You. Out.” She nods her head toward me, stepping around until she can see into the truck. “I guess she does look kinda like shit.”
“There are two kids in the car, too,” I interject, quickly, worrying that if she didn’t know they were there, and saw movement through the tinted glass, she might do something stupid. She glances toward the back window, her posture back to readiness.
“Drop the window,” she says, tense.
“Addy, sweetheart? Lower the window.”
“E, what’s happening?” Ash’s muffled voice comes from somewhere inside just before the window drops and their blinking faces are exposed. I hold my breath for a moment as the woman looks at them, seemingly deciding they’re sufficiently safe.
“I’m just going to explain to this nice lady why we’re here.”
“Yeah you are,” She says, waving me further away from the vehicle. “You got any weapons I need to be aware of?” Something’s off about her posture. Or her demeanor. Or both.
“Not on me. In the truck though, in the glove box,” I say. She’s kept her gun positioned where she can pick her target. Me or Caitlin, if either of us do anything she decides is stupid.
“So,” she says, casting her free hand to encompass the even more dismal surroundings than I’d realized they were when we pulled in. “What brings you to this bit of Homeland Resource paradise?”
Oh, obviously. “Same as you, I expect.”
She sneers at me. “Doesn’t seem likely.”
“There’s gotta be like twenty other cars here — who knows how many folks,” I say glancing through the blackened timber. “I’d wonder why you’re picking on us, since they,” I point to the neighboring site, “Definitely aren’t HRS either. So there’s two choices: you’re wanting a bribe, or you’re not HRS. I’m betting the latter — so to answer your question, we’re just passing through and needed a quiet place to stop.”
“Ah, crap.” she laughs. “Fancy-looking work truck like that? I figured I was gonna get to fuck some snitch up,” she says, stuffing the gun back in her holster. “Whatever. You don’t look like the usual skanks that come up here. They wouldn’t dare bring kids anyway — think we’re all devil worshipping like. And that woman with you does look like rotting garbage.” She stomps on some unseen critter, rubbing it into the ground. “Rules are: Take your trash with you. No open fires, obviously. And the big one: don’t do anything that’ll attract the cops. They mostly ignore us, and we ignore them. That’s the best deal we’ve got.” She looks back toward the track for a second, thinking. “Oh, yeah. The stand pipe that-a-way still sometimes works. You gotta wait a bit though, the pump’s an HRS POS. And it depends on if there’s groundwater. And I’d sure as shit run it through a purifier before your kids drink it.” She pauses, chews on her lip. “The virus she’s got, is it the same crap that ran through here like a couple of months back?”
I shrug.
“Eh, if it is, it shows up their whole male biological superiority bullshit. Women are fine and men? Well,” she laughs. “Joe still says she’s a guy — no matter what she looks like. I told her if she bleeds and can have babies they won’t give a shit. Pretty white girl like her, they pick her up, buzz cut or no, they’ll dump her in a camp and assign her a breeding partner if she, sorry, he, doesn’t get his shit together. Anyhow, keep that shit away from the rest of us. Yeah, I feel fucking great now — better’n I have for years, but boy did I feel like crap for a while. Don’t wanna do that again.” She turns on her heel and stomps off through the trees leaving me blinking into the glaring light.
“Mom? I really need to poop.” Ash says, the moment the woman disappears from view.
“And I’m huuungry.” Addy whines.
Slapping a cheerful smile on my face I turn back. “K, we’ll sort out somewhere to poop first, and then I’ll get y’all breakfast.”