was up ahead, a dilapidated school with a bent flagpole and faded green walls. Maeve had gotten the location from one of the earlier messages from the Trail. People were instructed not to write the address down, so I’d memorized it. 7351 North Campbell Road, I repeated to myself, as I had a hundred times in the last few days. I scanned the worn map I had, checking street signs to be certain.
I passed an abandoned playground, the metal swings clanking together whenever the wind came through. I kept my headlight off and stayed close to the edge of the building, trying to keep the watchtower out of sight. One of the side doors was smashed in. I walked the bike through the broken frame, the stench hitting me first. I’d remembered it from the plague, the wet rot of dead bodies. As I started down the hall toward the room marked 198, I saw the shadow of a man, lying facedown, several yards ahead.
I held my breath, covering my face with my sweater as I ducked into the room. Blood was smeared across the floor. Short wooden desks were overturned, piled on top of one another. Simple sentences were still printed on the far wall: The party was fun. My mother smiled. The sky is blue. I moved to the back closet, the third one in from the windows, as Maeve had described. There was a three-foot-wide hole in the floor. I listened, trying to decipher footsteps. Everything was quiet and still.
I lowered myself down, into the blackness, clutching the sides with both hands. When I hit the ground I fumbled with the flashlight Maeve had given me, finally turning it on. The beam flew ahead, illuminating the tunnel. Mud came over the soles of my boots. There was more blood, some of it dried on the wall. A jacket, the red band still tied around the sleeve, was crumpled on the floor.
I turned the corner, seeing for the first time how the walls changed, the mud giving way to the remnants of the old concrete flood tunnels. The corridor widened in places, until it was several feet across. A red cloth had been tied to a pipe snaking out of the ceiling, marking the threshold when I crossed inside the City. When I neared the end, I saw a figure huddled on the ground, tending to a wound on his leg. It looked as though he’d been hiding there for weeks, a bunch of cans scattered by his feet. He raised his gun, aiming at me, and I froze, the flashlight unsteady in my hand.
“I’m just trying to pass through,” I said. “I’m with the rebels.”
He squinted against the light, then lowered his weapon. “As soon as you get out, go east,” he said. He set the gun down and resumed changing a fabric bandage on his leg. “There’s a government barricade to the west, just three blocks away.”
He went back to his work, wincing as he knotted the strip. He didn’t say anything else, instead digging through his supplies, pulling out corked bottles of water. “Thanks,” I said as I started back down the tunnel, where the ceiling broke open, revealing a dank room. I climbed into the small walk-in closet, setting the thin carpet back over the opening, along with an empty cardboard box that had been pushed into the corner.
Inside, the first-story apartment was dark. I could make out the ripped couch on its side and a moldy, half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table, casually sitting there, as if someone had left abruptly and never came back. The front window was shattered in the corner, making it hard to see through.
I pulled the tattered curtains away just an inch, exposing an intact piece of glass. A soldier came down the road. He looked over the end of his rifle as he scanned the buildings. He paused a moment in my direction and I froze, not moving my hand away from the thin curtain. He was younger than I was, his face gaunt, his cheeks hollowed out. He squinted for a moment before he finally looked away.
For a long while I stayed there, my finger pinning the curtain away from the glass, waiting until I was certain he wouldn’t return. I could feel the eight-hour journey in my movements, in the dead ache in my legs, the throbbing in my lower back. I needed one night to rest, to prepare for what lay ahead in the