the gas ran out, I had let it roll forward with the remaining momentum until it took a nosedive into a shallow gorge-a thick rivulet cut by the last big rain. Now I stared out the windshield at the vast, vacant plain and felt my stomach twist with panic.
We have to move, Wanderer. It's only going to get hotter.
If I hadn't wasted more than a quarter of a tank of gas stubbornly pushing on to the very base of the second landmark-only to find that the third milestone was no longer visible from that vantage and to have to turn around and backtrack-we would have been so much farther down this sandy wash, so much closer to our next goal. Thanks to me, we were going to have to travel on foot now.
I loaded the water, one bottle at a time, into the pack, my motions unnecessarily deliberate; I added the remaining granola bars just as slowly. All the while, Melanie ached for me to hurry. Her impatience made it hard to think, hard to concentrate on anything. Like what was going to happen to us.
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, she chanted until I lurched, stiff and awkward, out of the car. My back throbbed as I straightened up. It hurt from sleeping so contorted last night, not from the weight of the pack; the pack wasn't that heavy when I used my shoulders to lift it.
Now cover the car, she instructed, picturing me ripping thorny branches from the nearby creosotes and palo verdes and draping them over the silver top of the car.
"Why?"
Her tone implied that I was quite stupid for not understanding. So no one finds us.
But what if I want to be found? What if there's nothing out here but heat and dirt? We have no way to get home!
Home? she questioned, throwing cheerless images at me: the vacant apartment in San Diego, the Seeker's most obnoxious expression, the dot that marked Tucson on the map... a brief, happier flash of the red canyon that slipped in by accident. Where would that be?
I turned my back on the car, ignoring her advice. I was in too far already. I wasn't going to give up all hope of return. Maybe someone would find the car and then find me. I could easily and honestly explain what I was doing here to any rescuer: I was lost. I'd lost my way... lost my control... lost my mind.
I followed the wash at first, letting my body fall into its natural long-strided rhythm. It wasn't the way I walked on the sidewalks to and from the university-it wasn't my walk at all. But it fit the rugged terrain here and moved me smoothly forward with a speed that surprised me until I got used to it.
"What if I hadn't come this way?" I wondered as I walked farther into the desert waste. "What if Healer Fords were still in Chicago? What if my path hadn't taken us so close to them?"
It was that urgency, that lure-the thought that Jared and Jamie might be right here, somewhere in this empty place-that had made it impossible to resist this senseless plan.
I'm not sure, Melanie admitted. I think I might still have tried, but I was afraid while the other souls were near. I'm still afraid. Trusting you could kill them both.
We flinched together at the thought.
But being here, so close... It seemed like I had to try. Please-and suddenly she was pleading with me, begging me, no trace of resentment in her thoughts-please don't use this to hurt them. Please.
"I don't want to... I don't know if I can hurt them. I'd rather..."
What? Die myself? Than give a few stray humans up to the Seekers?
Again we flinched at the thought, but my revulsion at the idea comforted her. And it frightened me more than it soothed her.
When the wash started angling too far toward the north, Melanie suggested that we forget the flat, ashen path and take the direct line to the third landmark, the eastern spur of rock that seemed to point, fingerlike, toward the cloudless sky.
I didn't like leaving the wash, just as I'd resisted leaving the car. I could follow this wash all the way back to the road, and the road back to the highway. It was miles and miles, and it would take me days to traverse, but once I stepped off this wash I was officially adrift.
Have faith, Wanderer. We'll find Uncle Jeb, or he'll find us.