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was either drink or expire. In late afternoon, a light breeze began to shift the sand and she cried a little despite the fluid loss.
    Finally the sun eased toward the earth. Sometime after that, she began to feel human. She got to her feet and began to pack her bag and thought about which direction to go. The smart thing was to head back. It would take two nights but she had enough water and would be able to recover and rethink how she was going to do this. But it would mean starting over. And the town was only one more night away. It would probably have water. Even if the tanks had gone bad, there would be bottles. Stores and cafés with darkened refrigerators. She ignored the part of her that asked
but what if
and started walking.
    Her feet became sore, then wet-feeling, then numb. She didn’t want to blame the boots but she had the feeling they were letting her down. They were like boys who at first were cool and suave and then after a couple of weeks you realized were assholes. Around midnight she began to hallucinate a little and forget important things like checking her compass. She came across a boulder and sat on it and woke up face-first in the sand. Her lips felt like a baked cake. She drank and drank and finished her water.
    The town rose with the dawn. She walked toward it. She lost her stick somehow. She began to pass houses, places she recognized. She saw the first body and tried not to look but her eyes wouldn’t stay still. It was a woman she knew. Cheryl. She recognized the dress.
I’m here to fix it
, she told Cheryl.
To say sorry.
But she couldn’t really believe Cheryl would be pleased by that, or would forgive Emily in any way. She sucked on her water tube and remembered it was empty and turned in at a gate because it was time to search for water. She walked up the path and stopped because on the house’s concrete front steps lay a brown snake, sunning itself. She stared at it. “Fuck off!” she shouted, and stamped her boots, and it wriggled away.
    • • •
    She pulled open cupboards and passed out in a bedroom and threw up in a toilet and wasn’t sure in which order that happened. She found water and slept. When she awoke the sun was throwing shadows at forty-five degrees and she had to stare at them a long time to figure out whether it was morning or afternoon. She had slept for a day and a half. She was ravenous.
    She found and devoured a box of fruit bars. Her brain liked this and she began to be able to make sense of things. Empty water bottles were everywhere. She sat at the wooden kitchen table and waited for the sun to go down. Then she strapped herself into her pack.
    A strong wind was blowing, tossing stinging sand at her face. She hiked along the road. She had steeled herself for the bodies, and kept her eyes up and her mind focused, but the closer she got, the more the wild, clawing terror grew inside her, wanting to turn her around and steer her out of here. Sand stung her eye and she rubbed at it but it made no difference.
    She passed the gas station, with its burned cars and trucks. She made herself machinery: legs and feet and purpose. She reached the hospital. She stepped over a snarl of cloth and leather and gleaming bone and pushed open the side door. These were things she did. She walked down the corridor. She didn’t recognize anything because that part of her brain was closed. She reached the double doors for the emergency room and dropped her pack and closed her eyes. Then she went in.
    The smell was very bad. Old but wrong. Her nose began to run. Her boots hit something and she shuffled around it. When anything blocked her path, she carefully stepped over it. Her fingers found the counter. She followed it along to the place where she had left the bareword.
    It wasn’t there. She stood awhile, breathing. She followed the counter all the way to the wall, sweeping its surfaces. Her fingers found objects, small things she could identify like a stapler and a nameplate and larger things she dropped upon ascertaining they were not what she wanted and did not think about. She reached the wall and began making a low sound, equal parts moan and hum.
    She circled the counter twice. She made her way back to where the bareword had been and dropped to her hands and knees and began to feel around on the floor. Almost immediately she found cloth and hair and her hum became a shriek and she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t grope around corpses. She got to her feet.