Gone

marks led through the sand from a sort of carport that sagged against the side of the house. There were empty oil cans in the trash and two red, twenty-five-gallon steel tanks that smelled like they were full of gasoline.
    Out back was a stack of railroad ties, neatly formed into a square pile. Beside this was smaller lumber, a lot of it used two-by-fours scarred by nails.
    Hermit Jim, as Lana thought of him, must be out. Maybe he had left forever. Maybe what had happened to her grandfatherhad happened to him, and now she was the only person left alive in the whole world.
    She didn’t want to be there if he came back. There was no way to know whether you could trust a man who lived in a searing hot valley between dusty hills at the end of no road, and had a lawn as lush as a putting green.
    Lana finished watering the grass and sprayed Patrick playfully with the hose before turning it off.
    “Want some chili, boy?” she asked the dog.
    She led the way back inside. It was an oven in the cabin, so hot, she started sweating before she had cleared the threshold, but Lana did not think she would ever complain about something so minor. Not after what she had endured.
    Heat? Big deal. She had water, she had food, and all her bones were unbroken, which was how she liked them.
    The chili came in a big number-ten can. With no refrigeration, they had to eat it before it could go bad, so it was chili, meal after meal, till it was gone. But at least there was fruit cocktail for dessert. Tomorrow, maybe she’d open one of the number-ten cans of vanilla pudding and just eat pudding for a couple of days.
    There was no oven, just a one-burner cooktop. No sink. There was a single chair and a table, and an uncomfortable cot against a wall. The one decorative feature was a ratty Persian rug in the center of the only room. The best seat in the house was a smelly but comfortable La-Z-Boy that sat on that rug. It was stuck in the recline position, but that was fine with Lana. She was all about reclining and taking things easy.
    The only thing to do was read. Hermit Jim had exactly thirty-eight books. She had inventoried them. There were fairly recent novels by Patrick O’Brian, Dan Simmons, Stephen King, and Dennis Lehane, and some books that she supposed were philosophy by writers like Thoreau. There were classics whose names seemed familiar to her: Oliver Twist, The Sea Wolf, The Big Sleep, Ivanhoe.
    Nothing had exactly jumped out at her, there were no J. K. Rowling or Meg Cabot books, nothing for kids at all. But over the course of the first day she had read all of Pride and Prejudice and now she was starting The Sea Wolf. Neither was an easy book. But Lana had nothing but time on her hands.
    “We can’t stay here, Patrick,” Lana said as the dog attacked his bowl of chili. “Sooner or later we have to move on. My friends will be worried. Everyone will be. Even Mom and Dad. They must think we’re dead.”
    But even as she said it, Lana had her doubts. There wasn’t much to do once she had inventoried the groceries, so she spent most of her time sitting on the wooden chair, reading, or just watching the desert landscape. She would pull the chair into the doorway where she could have some shade and look out across the lawn at the hills around. She had mastered the trick of reading a paragraph at a time, looking up to scan the area for danger, checking Patrick for warning signs, then sinking back into the book for another paragraph.
    After a while the unending emptiness took a toll on her never-strong sense of optimism.
    The barrier was still there. It was behind the cabin, not inher field of vision unless she stepped away from the cabin.
    Lana carried a tin cup of water toward the door, intending to drink it while having another look at the lawn and suddenly there was Patrick, racing toward her. His fur was up. He shook his head like he was having a seizure.
    “Get in!” Lana yelled.
    She held the door open. Patrick barreled in. She slammed the door and threw the bolt.
    Patrick hit the rug, skidded, rolled over twice, and came up to a sitting position. Something was in his mouth. Something alive.
    Lana approached cautiously. She bent down to see.
    “A horny toad? That’s what you have? You scared me half to death over a horned toad?” She felt her heart thud heavily as it restarted. “Spit that thing out. Good grief, Patrick, I count on you and you freak out over a stupid horned toad?”
    Patrick didn’t want to give up