I’m still looking at the rest-stop map of the Salton Sea when I de-Zombie. The first thing I notice is the noise—the Jungle comes crashing back. To make sure, I take a deep breath, then jump up and down. I slap my face.
Corina looks at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’ve been a Zombie,” I tell her. “I self-witnessed back when we first got to LA.”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
I don’t answer for a minute because I really don’t know what to say, but then: “I was scared, I guess. I wanted to know what would happen.” I reach for her and pull her toward me. She comes, but she’s just going along with it, which makes me feel even worse.
She pulls back and pushes me away, turns to face me. “That was idiotic!”
“No—”
“Yeah,” she interrupts. “Yeah it was idiotic—you went to a future but you didn’t know what future you were going to, did you? You didn’t have any way of knowing that you weren’t going to see a future where we die or where the Locusts and Sabazios and them get away with it.” She brings her hands up in front of her. “You didn’t even think of that, did you? Did you?” She claps the back of her hand with each word and it’s all I can do not to flinch.
“It’s not like that.”
“Really?” She raises an eyebrow.
I want to argue, but I know she’s right. I turn to look in another direction while I get myself under control. When I’m ready, I say, “We need to go to the Salton Sea.”
I don’t look to her, but from the corner of my eye I see her purse her lips and nod. “Get us a ride.”
I do. A trucker who doesn’t speak English. He gives us a ride and a few bucks—he doesn’t have much. He also buys us lunch, which is cool. I don’t really understand how I’m supposed to act around people I’ve rewritten. I end up saying thank you a lot.
Corina rides in silence. She just says, “I don’t speak Spanish,” and looks out the window.
The driver talks in Spanish and I pretend to understand more than I do because hearing him talk makes me feel closer to home than I’ve felt in a while. I smile some. I laugh when he laughs. But all I can think about is what a mess I’ve made of things.
We’re on the road that runs against the east edge of the sea. I can feel the heat pushing in against the air-conditioning through the windows.
We’re past the last field, the last turnoff, the last sign of civilization besides the road itself and the railroad tracks that run on the left side of it when Corina says, “Stop.”
I look out her window.
It’s the view from the picture.
The driver pulls over on the shoulder and we get out. He says something, waves, drives off.
It’s as hot as I have ever felt it and the air smells like dead things. It’s almost unbearable. Even so, the water’s pretty—brilliant blue against the dead brown that’s all around it.
“That way.” Corina points.
I follow her down an old unpaved road that has other roads branching off it. They’re spaced evenly, but there’s nowhere for them to go. “What is this place?”
“How would I know?” she says. Still, she stops and looks around. “Maybe they thought people would want to live out here or something.” She wrinkles her nose and wipes her forehead.
I laugh. So does she. A weight lifts.
We follow the road to the beach. Corina pulls the photo out of my pack. She studies it and then hands it to me.
In the picture, Cassandra and I are standing next to each other with our backs to the water. There are mounds of white sand all around us. I look down. I’m wearing the clothes I’m wearing now. I feel my hair. It’s the same length as it is in the picture. I look up and Corina’s looking at me. She’s shaking her head slowly. “That’s some shit.”
I nod. We walk down the short hill to the beach.
The sand on the beach isn’t sand, it’s little tube shells. Millions of them. Billions. They’re stacked two feet high in some places.
There are piles of dead fish, too, some fresh, some just skeletons. The smell makes me ill. The whole place feels as alien as the Locusts’ planet I saw in the telescope. I find the place where I’m standing in the picture. I look out across the water and up at the mountains on the other side.
“Alex?” Corina says.
I turn around.
Someone’s coming.