Samson Arrita Duchamp stands at the coffee hutch at the edge of the blustery marketplace, watching the industrious little ballet of volunteers swapping the goods in their trailers and truck beds for the crates onboard the candy painted cars of the Carlyle Limited No. 4. The train itself rumbles between hydraulic hisses and belches steam that whips away on the wind.

She slugs a tin cup of objectively bad coffee, made worse by her recent, singular experience with good coffee. Her colony’s Garden Master, Mr. Acres, had shared a pot with her made from a small pouch of whole beans he’d gotten as a birthday present. He’d doused it with hazelnut milk and a dusting of fairly ancient cocoa powder, and Sam went to work in the Stadium greenhouses that day more or less glowing.

That had been the sign. A dozen salvaged travel books, a thousand recipes, and four seasons of Anthony Bourdain on a borrowed thumb drive had built the fantasy of life as a traveling food writer, and a single cup of decent coffee had set her off.

There isn’t much traveling anymore, though. Especially not overseas, not with the storm. This close to it, there isn’t even a sky. And thanks to everything set in motion after it, there are barely even roads. There is, however, the Carlyle.

“The Currant Dumas occupies two railway cars of the Carlyle and the only mobile restaurant in the FSA,” Sam says into her voice recorder. She shields it from the constant wind with a hand cupped like she’s lighting a cigarette. But damn near no one smokes anymore. “The facade is a mulled red color—I assume—hence the name. DUMAS is painted in elegant, gold letters spanning its entire length. It’s nested between a string of smoke-gray boxcars being loaded with trade goods, and a handful of green cars occupied by the performers of the Cirque Carlyle, known to bring music and stories and feats of magic and general strangeness to the stops on their route.”

The performers are distinct from the regular train crew in that there isn’t a single faded hoodie between them. Lithe acrobats in wool coats and dancers with glitter-painted faces do light shopping from colony truck beds and disappear inside the warmth of the troup’s green railway cars. Singers and musicians are identifiable by the gloves and heavy scarves they wore to protect the parts of themselves key to their instruments, and the beelines they made to the tea and wax traders. Brawny men with tattooed heads bark with laughter, lounging atop crates and steamer trunks. One of their number approaches the group with a crate of dark liquor hoisted onto his shoulder, and is met with cheers as it was pried open.

“There’s something almost charmingly Victorian about them,” Sam says into her voice recorder. “They’re comfortable, as if life on the rails was something they’d have chosen in any other time in history.”

She frowns, mouthing the sentence again to see if it feels as purple and self-important as it felt the first time.

“I don’t know, maybe don’t use that,” she says aloud.

A young woman with short, dark curls and an alarmingly bright smile steps from one of the Cirque cars and carves a path through the players. Sam immediately decides she’s interesting and follows her movements through the passing loading crew. The woman’s boots are untied and her dark overcoat flaps open at the hem to reveal an emerald satin lining and Sam swallows hard to calm the fluttering that begins in her stomach when she sees the woman is approaching her.

Well, not me, obviously, Sam thinks with a snort. The coffee stand. Unsure how to register the impression, she clicks off the recorder and sips the terrible coffee to slake her sudden thirst.

“Hey,” the woman says cheerily as she reaches the coffee stand. Her eyes sparkle and the copper apples of her cheeks have already begun pinking in the wind.

Sam nods and says an anxious “hey” into her cup. But at least the ice was broken.

“How’s the coffee?” The woman pours herself a cup.

“Ever drink actual tar?” It’s Sam’s best stab at cleverness.

“No. Is today my lucky day?”

“We’ll find out in a second.”

Sam watches as she puts the steaming cup to her exceptionally well-moisturized lips, and counts the seconds until her face changes to something that borders both disgust and hilarity.

“Oh god.” The woman gags.

“Right?” Sam reaches into her tattered messenger bag for a small jar. “Here. Maple sugar. That and a little water should take it down to a pleasant oil slick.”

She pours her a proper dose and the woman stirs it with a long, lacquered finger before trying it again, this time frowning considerably less.

“This is less bad, thank you. I’m Layla,” she says.

“Sam.”

“I’ve never seen you here before. You’re a trader? Really unfortunate barista?”

“Writer. Kind of,” Sam says.

“Magician. Also kind of. Illusions for the disillusioned.” Layla replied with a bit of a theatrical flourish.

“Really?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “Why can’t I think of a single other female magician?”

“To be fair, they just called them witches.” Layla winks.

“Brave new world.” Sam lifts her cup and Layla toasts with her own.

“Brave new world.”

This is going well, Sam tells herself. She finds herself taken with the little black stars in Layla’s ears, the neatly painted navy color of her nails, that Sam notices when Layla turns to wave at someone in the marketplace. She’s about to ask about the whole magician thing when Layla turns back with what shockingly seems like keen interest.

“So what do you write?”

“Food...journalism?” Sam chokes out. It feels like such a silly thing to say seriously now that everything’s fallen apart.

“You sure?” Layla chuckles.

“For now. I work in the horticulture department for the Stadium settlement in South City. I’m being hosted at the Currant, though, to interview people about how our food culture has changed since the end.”

“Ah, a food nerd! Okay! That’s how you know maple sugar is a thing, I take it.”

“Only natural sweetener indigenous to the whole continent. Our Master Gardener is Mvskoke so we’re re-learning all kinds of stuff.”

You’re showing off. Don’t be weird, she scolds herself.

“Genius. The magic of giving the land back.” Layla gives an impressed nod.

“That’s what I said.”

A tall, brown-skinned woman in a weathered Star Wars sweatshirt rushes by, rolling a hand cart stacked high with reusable bins that rattle on the uneven pavement.

“Door. Door, door, door. You,” she says breathlessly, glancing in their direction.

Layla grimaces as she finishes what remains of her coffee and backs away.

“That’s all you. I’ve got some shopping to do before Redd gets on the horn. Don’t stray too far or he will leave you,” Layla advises. “I’ll see you on the rails.”

“Wait! I want to know about this magic stuff. What do you do?” Sam calls after her.

“Come find me for an interview. I’ll show you a trick.”

“Door.” The tall woman barks, and Sam drops her smile a bit, leaving her duffel bag by the coffee stand to get the door for her. A flood of cinnamon and citrus rushes out of the open door and Sam activates a lift to get the trolley onto the right floor before moving aside and clicking on her recorder.

“The Currant is opulent by today’s standards, with wood and brass finishes, a polished bar, and damask wallpaper the color of ripe pomegranates. Everything here seems to fit unlike everywhere else. The kitchen appears to be on the lower le—Oh.” Sams stops when she notices the woman’s irritated glare from the other end of the car.

“You’re the foodie Acres sent us,” she says.

“Something like that, yes. Sam Duchamp.” Sam makes an effort to sound pleasant and self assured as she extends her hand.

“Yvette. Proprietor of this establishment.” Yvette shakes her hand aggressively.

“Oh you’re Yvette,” Sam says, relieved if not for the gun she’s only now noticed on Yvette’s hip. “I’d love to interview you when you ha—”

“You a stranger to work, Sam Duchamp?” Yvette cuts her off.

“Not at all. I grew most of the collards on this haul.”

“Good, because we don’t have room here for anyone who doesn’t work. You’ll do all that writing business on your time, not mine. Understood?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you for having me.”

“Good.” Yvette sighs, grunting as she goes back to securing her bins. “You’ll bunk with the kitchen staff six cars down that way past baggage. Cars beyond that are off limits to anyone but security personnel. You get space for two bags and whatever’s on your back. Hope you brought sheets. Quartermaster is a Mr. Redd. You’ll know him when you see him. You have any problems, you take them to him. Don’t get caught out after he sounds that damn horn. They will absolutely leave you wherever you end up.”

Sam waits in silent anxiety, not sure if she’s dismissed or allowed to ask questions. She hasn’t left the colony in years and the new rules are daunting.

“Is…that all?” Yvette asks finally.

“I just had a couple of questions. How long you’ve been here, why the name Currant Dumas, things like that,” says Sam.

“Six years, four months. ‘Dumas’ because French author Alexandre Dumas’s collected works were the only intact books onboard this particular car when we found it, and ‘Currant’ because there was a lot of this paint, too. Everything’s random in the apocalypse. That all?” Yvette wipes her brow with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and blinks at her impatiently.

“For now,” Sam replies, trying to keep the words in her head until she could record them without being weird about it.

Yvette huffs and heads back toward the door. “Good, because I have things to do. Redd will leave my ass behind, too. I’m only mean when I’m busy. He’s an asshole all the time. Get what you’re getting and get back here. See you on the rails.”

Sam steps back off the train long enough to collect her things from where they wait for her beside the coffee stand, and walks five cars down, past the green Cirque cars and their sounds of practiced music and scent of cloves and incense, to a trio of steel-blue ones. A windowless black car separates the ones designated for passengers from two tankers and a caboose. Armed personnel stand guarding them.

Sam finds her bunk in the second blue car, marked by a torn scrap of paper pinned to the bed curtain. With not much else to do, she considers wandering off to look for Layla again. But a mountain of a man with an impressive red beard walks by the doorway yelling effortlessly and impossibly loud for everyone to board. They make the briefest eye contact and she’s shocked by how furious he looks for what seems like no reason.

“Annnnd…that’s Redd,” she says aloud to no one and sits back on her gym mat of a bed, hoping she packed sheets.

Yvette’s room is a private sleeper cabin in the performers’ residential car. The hallway is filled with music and through the window, the afternoon sun is almost obscenely bright this far northwest, set in the first blue sky Sam has seen since she was fourteen. The storage shelf above her bench has been converted into a bookshelf, lined in part by Dumas’s works. A collapsible table stands between them, doubling as workspace and keeper of the ashtray into which she taps her impeccably rolled Dutch.

“I always dreamed of owning a restaurant,” Yvette says wistfully, exhaling smoke out of the open window. Sam’s recorder ticks away the seconds of Sam’s first interview as a food writer. They’ve been here for twenty minutes already.

“Then the bottom fell out. I mean, the way things were, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway. I taught high school and had ‘Black people credit’ so the money just wasn’t ever going to be there. You dream anyway though. Then there’s the storm, which...I mean, there’s your physical threat to a sustainable society, right? It hit and just wouldn’t let up. Half the eastern seaboard is gone, capital’s drowned, so the shit folds even faster with the fallout. And then there’s the existential threat. What if it’s the end? What if it’s just the end of this place? People panic. There’s this exodus at the same time water runs the islanders out of their homes and into the mainland. And like that, boom.” She snaps her fingers. “Fractured States. Everybody’s scattered and trying to scrape together survival conditions and it’s hard. Eleven years on, it’s still hard. But there’s no debt. No systemic oppression because there’s no enforceable currency in a capitalist state. No government, no bank left to say no to your dreams. So you find a train and you do what you want with it.”

Sam tries to see her as a high school teacher and wonders if all the gray streaking her French braids was there from dealing with children or carving out a life in the aftermath. “Sounds like you’re making it work,” she says. “Anything you’re missing?”

Yvette nods and sips tea to settle a cough. “Tetanus shots. Infrastructure was shot to hell before the country collapsed but there’s a thousand gross ways a train exterior will kill you if you’re not careful.”

Sam blinks. “Oh. Okay...”

Out in the hallway, a door slides closed with a bang and someone races up by, laughing.

“Fools won a crate of whiskey in a game of Uno,” Yvette mutters. “They’ll be lit for the next week.”

“Uno?” Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Ever try to find a full deck of regular playing cards in the apocalypse? You can play Uno with damn near anything.”

“What kind of food does the Currant serve that makes it so popular?” Sam asks. The recorder is on 30% battery and who knows where a charging station is on this thing.

“Soups mostly. Or whatever can be made from what we have on hand or through trades and whatnot. Not like we have too much competition for best restaurant.” She suddenly sits forward as if excited. “We used to head out to these places with the menu on a sandwich board out front. One side was whatever was on the menu, other side was ingredients we had available for trade and the quantities we could let go. I started seeing how…excited these women were to get their hands on what we had. So I started opening the kitchen up to them when we stop by and that’s where the real magic happens. A lot of them don’t have access to full kitchens. Ovens, stoves, refrigerators, solid cookware. My favorite thing is just stepping back, watching aunties of every culture doing what they do in the kitchen, feeling like they did when they were back home for a few hours.”

Sam is suddenly excited, too. These are the food stories she wants. These are the food stories Bourdain would get them to tell.“You think I’ll be able to talk to them?”

“You’ll have to ask them. I’m not here to volunteer anyone else’s time. Next station’s in the Northern Lakes. We don’t stop in the mounta—”

There’s a knock on the cabin door and a dark-skinned man Sam is sure is someone’s grill-enthusiast uncle is standing in the hall.

“Did you put sweet potatoes somewhere?” he asks Yvette, either too tired or too busy to acknowledge Sam.

Yvette rolls her eyes. “I brought whatever they loaded on that dolly and I put it in kitchen storage.”

“Kid’s saying there’s supposed to be some sixty pounds of sweet potatoes and we can’t find ‘em.”

“Well if they’re not in the kitchen, I didn’t get them.”

“Dammit. Think they’re in the back somewhere? Somebody put them on the wrong dolly?”

“Tommy, I don’t know.”

“Well, come help me look.” Tommy insists.

“Get one of the kids to do it! You see I’m doing something. If I don’t have them, somebody else knows where they are,” Yvette snapped.

“I’m just saying, Yve, you’re supposed to be running this shit, I don’t see why—”

Yvette stands up and the curses start flying, each person more done with this shit than the other. Without warning, Yvette leaves the cabin and slams the door, both their voices fading as they disappear down the hall.

“End of, uh…interview, I guess,” Sam says into her recorder and clicks it off. “Good talk.”

The north passes outside the window in the form of abandoned suburbs with their overgrown lawns. Each is now little more than a place for colonists to loot for supplies if they haven’t been picked clean already. Sam knows there isn’t a house outside South City Stadium with so much as a bar of soap left in it. The horn blares on an overpass where she can see the decrepit roadways are clogged with vehicles first abandoned for want of gas, then looted for want of parts. It’s this blockage everywhere that’s made the Carlyle the only reliable way to traverse the countryside.

She threads through the Cirque cars, trying to find either Layla or a charging station for her recorder. Instead, she finds Redd entering the car through the rear door. His body nearly fills the entire corridor and Sam makes herself small, pressing against the windows to inch past him. He passes without a word, but Sam decides the world on a train is too small already and that she isn’t going to shrink again needlessly.

“You’re Redd,” she calls out and he turns back with a look in his eye that says she’s wasting his time. He has a tattoo of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem on his forearm, though, that makes him difficult to find terrifying.

“...yes?” he grunts. Neither is certain it was a question.

“Well, I’m Sam Duchamp. Just a writer covering the Currant. I thought I’d introduce myself so I’m not just a strange face in your hallways here. And so if you see me chasing the train when you pull off one day, you’ll recognize me. Maybe stop. They keep telling me you leave people behind.”

“You don’t want to get left, don’t be late.” Redd shrugs.

“Right.”

A moment of silence passes before she decides she’s said what she came to say. But he speaks again just as she turns to leave.

“Who do you write for?”

“I don’t. I mean...just me right now.”

He looks at her then like she’s given the strangest possible answer. “Alright.”

“I did have a question for you. One maybe you can answer as quartermaster since it’s not really food related.”

Redd says nothing, but rolls his hand in an “out with it” gesture.

Sam clicks on her recorder. “Why is it the Carlyle Limited? That means you don’t make every stop possible, right? Seems like wherever there’s people, they’d need supplies.”

“We only stop the colonies with hubs. The ones sprouted up in the cities. About a dozen spots across the...countryside. Some places we don’t stop because fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em?”

“Yeah.” Redd shrugs. “Some clusters of good ol’ boys set up their little strongholds mosting in the mountain regions. They still hold onto that white supremacy shit while everyone else manages to rebuild together. The Carlyle is an antifa outfit. So fuck ‘em.”

“Damn.”

“They’re hurting for supplies, though. That’s why you see security around here. They haven’t tried us in awhile, but that just means they’re overdue.”

“...oh.” Sam frowns. Being onboard during a racist bandit attack seemed less than ideal.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Redd adds, with the first hint of a smile Sam’s seen. “We have a secret weapon.”

“Oh,” Sam replies with considerably less disappointment. She wonders if she should pry about the secret part.

“That it?”

Sam clicks off her recorder and smiles, grateful to have cleared the air. “That’s it. Thanks.”

Redd nods and responds to his crackling radio with a gruff “on my way” as he starts back up the hallway.

Sam steps through the door to the Cirque’s prop car to find a handful of players around a table. Only a few of them glance up when she enters. The light is low in the windowless room, generated mostly by a string of twinkle lights strewn across the ceiling.

“Hey, it’s Maple Sugar!” Layla is smiling when her head pops up from behind a beam. She is sitting atop a planetary model of Saturn with a fan of Uno cards in her hand.

“Hey.” Sam’s butterflies return. This time she’s not sure if it’s Layla or the assortment of strangers in the dark room of creepy carnival sets.

“Come, come, come. Everyone, this is Sam, the food writer I mentioned. Sam, love, this is Vannish, our ringleader.” She points to an ageless, beautiful sort of man in shirt sleeves and suspenders who tips a hat he isn’t wearing in her general direction. “And this Jazz, Morty, and Farah, all very good at their respective circus things while being total shit at this game.”

“Says the magician like she doesn’t pull stunts with cards all damn day,” quips the person Sam assumes is Farah.

“What?” Layla gasps in mock incredulity.

“You cheat!” says Jazz, probably.

“You lie!” Layla replies. “Do you play, Sam? We can deal you in. It would be hard for you to lose.”

“Don’t bait the children, darling. You’ll be all they talk about when you leave,” Vannish warns, in a bored sort of tone.

“Maybe later?” Sam says. “I’m actually looking for a charging station. My recorder’s dying.”

“They’re in the bunks. I’ll show you.” Layla drops her hand onto the table and stands up.

Sam follows her through the next cars back toward the staff bunks, quietly thrilled about being near her again. Scents of coconut and cocoa butter drift in her wake, and Sam notices a tattoo of a bird on the back of Layla’s neck that she will make a point to ask about later if she runs out of interesting things to say.

“Get anything good in your interviews so far?” Layla asks.

“Talked to Yvette before Tommy dragged her off to look for sweet potatoes. And just talked to Redd about fascists in the mountains.”

“Oh he’s a real chatterbox about the hills having eyes. He tell you there’s a secret weapon?” Layla waggles her eyebrows as if it’s some salacious thing and Sam laughs.

“Yeah. Didn’t mention what it was, though.”

“Sounds about right. Here you are.” Layla shows her the outlet underneath in the windowsill of her bunk. “They prefer you use it during the day while the solar’s still going. We need the stored power at night, especially for our shows.”

“Thanks. So I believe I was promised a trick.”

“Oh I promised, did I? My memory is there was supposed to be an exchange. An interview for a trick.”

“Fair enough.” Sam sits on her bed and clicks on the recorder. Layla doesn’t hesitate to join her.

“Interview with Layla…”

“Legend.”

“Layla Legend? You’re joking.”

“Honest to God, it’s my given name.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Interview with Layla No-Last-Name, Day One aboard the Carlyle. So how long have you been a magician?”

“The only correct answer is all my life.”

“Is that what brought you to the Carlyle? You saw a hole in the Cirque’s programming?”

“I was looking for somewhere to...be. Just like everyone else. There’s always been a type of person who was always meant to run away with the circus. My turn just came late.”

Sam knows this feeling of being born too late, destined to fill some void in a world that no longer existed. She’d been born a collector, and she tried collecting stories at Stadium but, after a long enough period of shared experiences, the stories in one place started to sound the same. There is an entire world out there, fractured, but still. The Carlyle is a step closer than she’d ever been to the rest of it.

“Where were you from originally?” Sam asks.

“Everywhere. I was a military brat. That’s what military brats say. We were just south of the Capital when the storm hit. I was sixteen. I evacuated up north with my parents. They were ordered back to the coast when the riots started. It was too much for them like it was too much for everyone else, I guess.” Layla shrugs and her eyes glisten in the passing sunlight. And Sam immediately regrets doing this.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want.”

“Relax.” Layla sniffles. “I’m well-adjusted. What else did I think we were going to talk about?”

“Alright. So...you found a new home, a new family sort of, on the rails?”

Layla rocks her hand in a so-so kind of way.

“And you’re the only one capable of ‘magic.’” Sam’s air quotes flounder a bit as she wonders if it’s an offensive thing to wave disbelief in a magician’s face.

“Looks like it,” Layla says, unbothered.

“Close-up or…”

“Oh this is you trying to get me to do the trick.”

“Can you blame me?” Sam asks.

“Alright, alright, easy, tiger. Do you have a coin? Bigger the better. A quarter or something.”

Sam scoffs. “I haven’t had money since…”

“Figures. No one carries change these days.” Layla digs into a pocket of her jeans and fishes out a silver dollar, flicking it at Sam. “Check it out. Observe there’s nothing funky about it. Solid, good weight, a little dirty. Perfectly normal silver dollar, right?”

Sam turns it over in her hands. There is indeed nothing funky about it, and she says as much.

“Now place it on the back of your hand. Right there in the center. Good. Hold it up here. Now look at me.”

With pleasure, Sam doesn’t say.

“Promise me you won’t freak out. I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to take my finger and I’m going to push the coin through your hand.”

“Through my hand,” Sam repeats in disbelief. “With the bones and everything in the way.”

“Yep. You freak out and hit me, I’m going to be upset. Black people get all scary about magic but I have a show tonight and this face is what cashes the checks around here. So here we go. One, don’t hit me…”

Sam watches her eyes, her other hand, anything to catch the trick of it all.

“Two, don’t hit me….”

Now she watches the coin on her hand as Layla applies more pressure, careful not to blink.

“Three!”

And the coin hits the floor. It isn’t a new coin. There was just the one. She hadn’t felt anything but the pressure, hadn’t seen anything but Layla’s finger applying it.

“Wait…” Sam tries to piece together some explanation. She examines the back of her hand for signs of trauma (there was none), and then screams as she turns it over to see a perfectly painless, perfectly circular, gaping, silver dollar-sized hole in her palm through, which Layla is now winking at her.

Terrified, Sam shakes her hand so vigorously she hits the bunk above her. But when she stops, the hole is gone. Her hand is normal, intact, but her heart is racing.

“How...what…”

Layla casually retrieves the coin off the floor.“See? Magic.”

The North Lakes settlement is in yet another football stadium about three miles from the train station so Sam doesn’t get to see it; and three miles is too far to wander if Redd decides it’s time to leave. She’s heard most of the settlements are in stadiums, though, for their high capacity and resilience to the elements and their parking garages easily become neighborhoods. The North Lakes stadium is domed, and its residents can’t grow food on its field with natural sunlight, so the Carlyle distributes to them first en route west. The train is greeted warmly from nearby parking structures, leaving the small lot for loading vehicles and trade merchants.

Cirque performers ready their attractions quickly as an audience gathers in the vast, gated parking lot of some abandoned university on the other side of the station. They light the dark with torches and mirrors and solar lanterns strung from garlands. The city is impossibly dark beyond them.

“Lucia Velez-Avila. I’m from the islands. Jayuya.”

She is an older woman, sixty give or take, and one of the two guest chefs in the Currant kitchen tonight. She takes a break from humming while peeling a mountain of plantains for mofongo to enunciate into Sam’s recorder.

“And I am Marcia Batista. I am from the islands as well but have lived in the Capital the last thirty years.” the second woman declares. She is a small, brown-skinned woman with glasses set in red cat-eye frames. She preps trout for frying on a counter further down the line. It’s the only ingredient the Carlyle hasn’t had to bring.

Sam has volunteered for the knife work, chopping chilis and onions, okra and heirloom tomatoes between them. The rest of the kitchen cheered when they were dismissed, because a night off is still a night off, even in the apocalypse.

“Can you tell me what it was like when you left the islands? Was it before the storm?”

“It was close. We were all leaving. Most people barely paid attention to where the boats, planes, whatever were even going. Every storm left behind less and less to rebuild. We were tired already. I came north through Louisiana with one suitcase. The southern coast was too dangerous. By the time I got there, they weren’t even asking for paperwork anymore. Some tornadoes scared the shit out of border security and they were long gone.”

The women laugh loudly.

“It’s always the paperwork that matters,” Mrs. Batista adds. “Until it doesn’t, you know?”

“You know?” Lucia agrees.

“I left the Capitol during one of those early breaks in the storm when they thought it was going to be over. Something told me not to stay. Jimmy and I packed up the car. We were two blocks from being too flooded to go anywhere.”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“My husband, child. Where did you think I got the ‘Mrs.?’ He’s somewhere out there. Thinks he’s a pitmaster but couldn’t grill a hot dog back when there were still hot dogs so I don’t know what he’s doing now.”

“So, both of you were here for the collapse.”

“Yes. I was living with my sister not too far from here when the exodus started. The shortage of everything. People going west to catch planes out of the country then couldn’t go west anymore unless it was on foot because there was no more gas. I ended up here headed to the border before they shut down it down,” says Mrs. Batista.

“I was in the city for the last State of the Union address what’s-his-name gave before the power grid went down. The rest of the world was still out there, though. Watching. Waiting for their turn, I think,” says Lucia.

“I still think about how it took years for things to just...end. You think it all falls apart so slowly that it’ll never be completely done.” Mrs. Batista sighs. “And then you’re standing in the ruins and it takes all of five minutes to explain how you got there.”

A moment of silence passes between them, and Sam can hear the cheering for the Cirque outside. The cooking has started in the kitchen, though, and her eyes begin to burn from either their somber stories or the exposure to the onions and chopped chilis.

“Anything you miss?” she asks them both.

“My kitchen,” Mrs. Batista laughs.

“Just roots,” says Lucia. “The people, you find again. The music, the joy, the culture you bring with you. But everywhere that isn’t home feels...temporary. I think we all know we are refugees. For now it doesn’t feel like we will have to run again. And that’s nice. But we will have to.”

Sam thanks them for their time and excuses herself for fresher air before her vision’s too blurry to get her up the stairs. The night is cool this close to the water that separates what’s left of the city from the old national border. She watches from the overpass as the Cirque performs, checking her hand intermittently for strange holes.

The musical performances that start the night are lively, mostly classical covers of hits most everyone is old enough to remember. By the time food is served, acrobatic acts, a puppet show, and one unfortunate clown have all given their contributions to the night, each introduced by Vannish, elaborately dressed and occasionally eating fire. Spotting Layla in the wings (“wings” here being a couple of tented parking spaces between two dusty HVAC vans) as she’s ready to be introduced, Sam begins to make her way down the hill of broken concrete to be closer to the show.

“Where are you going?” Yvette’s voice chided from behind. Sam turned to see her silhouette backlit by the red, bare bulbs of the Cirque’s signage, arms crossed over her chest, undoubtedly something disapproving on her shadowed face.

Sam barely opened her mouth.

“I hope those ladies dismissed you and you didn’t sneak just sneak off.”

Well, she had, she thought guiltily. But she wasn’t going to miss Layla’s show. “I didn’t want to be in the way.”

“I bet.” Yvette turned to leave. “Get this out of your system and be back for dishes. Cooks don’t clean in my car.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam replied, bowing for some reason before deciding that was ridiculous and turning to find a seat on a grassy hill opposite the rapt audience.

Layla begins with a series of close-up magic tricks aimed at the children present. Sam isn’t close enough to hear the set up, but she’s pretty sure none of them will have holes in their hands.

One small but fearless kid in a purple unicorn t-shirt raises her hand at the front of the audience and Layla asks her to whisper a wish in her ear.

Layla immediately leaps back with an impressed gasp and cries “to fly?” Then there’s the muttering of instructions, something to do with spinning around as fast as she could while the crowd counts down from ten. Sam finds herself counting in a whisper. And by the time everyone gets down to three, a curious pink mist has solidified around the girl’s shoulders. By two, the mist unfurls, and by one, reveals itself to be massive, glowing butterfly wings. The crowd gasps and Sam is on her feet as the girl appears to float a full six feet off the ground before settling back down again to uproarious applause.

“Impossible.” Sam climbs down the short wall into the parking lot. By the time she reaches Layla, the magician has fireworks issuing from finger guns she’s casting into the sky. They burst forth in shades of violet and gold. Every eye is filled with wonder, mouths agape as the sky lights up in the finale.

Layla bows and takes Sam’s hand as they head back to the makeshift corridor made of mismatched panels from the prop car.

“Did you enjoy it?” Layla’s glistening with sweat, but smiles brightly and undoes the red bowtie at her neck.

“Layla, how. HOW,” Sam manages. “Did she really fly? Was she some kind of...prop...child...I don’t…”

And to her pleasant, heart-tripling surprise, Layla lifts her hand and kisses it. “Not now, love. I’m starving.”

The Carlyle steals away in the night, heading westward. Half the Cirque staff are well and tuckered out, the other half make good use of their prize whiskey. Layla decides she will copy her interviews from the recorder long-hand before the next city where she’d collect more stories, take part in new recipes born of the cultural merging of refugees. In the meantime, she and Layla play Uno in the bunk, which Sam has decided is cozy if only for the right company. They share slices of tangerine and laugh quietly at their own jokes so as not to disturb the sleeping kitchen staff around them. Somewhere, a radio crackles with muffled commentary from the security team transitioning their shifts.

“When you said earlier that female magicians were just witches, did you...mean something by it?”

“What would I have meant?” Layla asks, flicking a Draw 4 onto the pile.

“I mean, were you trying to tell me something? About you. Or when you said you belonged with circus people.”

“Something like what?”

Sam bites her lip. She could only play coy so long. Frankly, Layla’s lucky Sam likes her so much.

“Well...are you a witch?” she asks outright. “Or a mutant or something?”

“That’s a hell of a question, isn’t it?” Layla replies between bites of tangerine, but her attention is clearly elsewhere. There’s a flurry of activity between the cars as security gathers. The rumbling of the train tracks barely disguise the words coming over their radios. Sam makes out “lights ahead,” “scout,” and “convoy.” Her pulse races as Layla leans out of the bed and whistles to a guard at the far end of the car. Sam looks back to see him gesture for her to join them.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Sam insists.

“We got trouble.” Layla slides her feet back into her untied boots and heads to the end of the car. Sam, for want of something smarter to do, follows.

They are led to the black box car before the tankers. It’s an armory. Sam’s stomach drops.

Redd is watching monitors, pensively poking his bottom lip with the antenna of his radio. He does a double-take when he notices Sam is present.

“Why is she here?”

“She’s with me. It’s fine. What’s happening?” Layla’s voice is different, more authoritative, less of a jokester.

“Drone’s picked up four vehicles. They’re en route to intercept us after this bridge up here.”

“Looks like a well-regulated militia to me,” Layla says.

Redd snorts. “Security’s got their orders. I’ll get the crew to tuck in.”

“I’m up top,” Layla declares before turning to Sam. “You gonna fall off the train or anything if I take you outside with me?”

“Outside...where? What, while we’re moving?”

“Yeah. It’s cool if you’re squeamish. You can head back to the bunk car, just make sure you’re on the floor away from the windows for like ten minutes.”

Sam’s mind races. This feels like it should be an urgent moment, brimming with imminent danger. But somehow the huge security guy and the magician are calm. “I just...can you help me understand for a second. What does a circus magician have to do with defense strategy against a…”

And it dawns on her. Redd’s bored stare and Layla’s pleasant but impatient one.

Layla’s the secret weapon.

“There you go.” Layla pats her on the back as if seeing the lightbulb go off over her head. “She’s got it. You good?”

“I...yeah…” Sam hesitates.

“Then up we go.”

They don harnesses at their waists and climb a narrow, steel staircase into the windy dark where a guard waits to tether them to the rooftop. Sam can barely make out more than the edges of things touched by moonlight, or the blinking lights on drone helicopters buzzing overhead. They lean into the wind as they cross to the forward end of the train. Sam’s face stings and her eyes burn as she tries to keep them open. Layla seems barely bothered by any of it.

They stop and face south, unable to go further without crunching solar panels. Sam can see a short bridge over glittering water, and the flicker of headlights rushing to meet them on the other side of it.

“What will you do?” Sam shouts into Layla’s ear.

Layla makes an O with her hand and pokes a finger through it. “Magic!” she shouts back.

Sam is trembling. She feels it first in her knees and thinks for a moment she might pitch herself over the side after all. In a matter of seconds, they will be within firing range of whatever guns these people have with them. And if they are going after a train, it won’t be with pea-shooters.

“The front guards will engage first, don’t worry,” Layla shouts as if she hears Sam’s thoughts. Sam wonders if that’s a thing she can do. “You, I have a job for.”

“Me?” Sam shrieks. “Job? What job? Why does everyone want to give me jobs?”

“We all have jobs. I can’t do mine until I see the spot first. So you’re going to count me down.”

“What spot?”

“The Impossible Spot,” Layla yells. “The last second of space between us and them. It’s loud, it’s dark, I have to focus. You just say when, alright? A three-count will do. Don’t get fancy on me.”

Sam’s mind races with a thousand questions, none of which there seem to be time for. “I don’t know if I can,” she blurts.

“Count from three?” Layla raises an eyebrow.

“On top of a speeding train in a hail of bullets? No.”

In an instant, Layla lunges and presses her lips against Sam’s, warm hands cradling the sides of her face. She smells like coffee and theater smoke and gunpowder. The sound of rushing blood in Sam’s ears is lost in the wind and the drone of the train. The sparks from bullets plinking off the iron surface might as well be starlight in her periphery.

Layla pulls back, holding Sam’s gaze in hers as she speaks loudly, slowly. “You feeling confident now? Because we’re in the shit, kid, and that was a goodbye kiss if we die here tonight because you can’t do this.”

“I… what?” Sam is still dazed, her adrenaline peaking with no idea what to do with itself. “Yes. Okay. Yes. I’ll count.”

“Three-two-one, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sam nods vigorously.

“Smashing.” Layla winks at her. She turns away and lifts a finger, drawing a widening spiral on the back of her other hand as the Carlyle begins to cross the bridge. Sam searches the tree line ahead of them for signs of this Impossible Spot but there’s nothing there but rapidly moving darkness. Pings and thwips of bullets fly through northern flora and pepper the atmosphere and the train’s guards return fire. It’s hard to focus when she feels like she should be dodging.

I should be doing dishes right now, she pouts. I would love to be doing dishes right now.

Halfway across the bridge, she gulps as lights bounce through the dark trees on a headlong trajectory, it seems, to meet the train.

That’s it. That’s them.

She takes a deep breath, trying to time the pace of her count so as not to kill them all. “Ready?” Sam calls out.

“Yeah!” Layla’s voice catches on the wind.

The horn blows; Sam holds her breath and instinctively flattens herself against the train. It’s hard not to blink with the wind in her eyes, but she holds fast, marveling at Layla’s tall, focused stance atop the car.

“Three!” she shouts as they cross the bridge completely. The lights are brighter, the moments between the bullets are fewer.

“Two!” A road reveals itself behind the trees, illuminated by the moon and exposing a convoy of six vehicles, maybe seven, all speeding toward the railroad crossing ahead of them. At the last possible second, the moment before the first car reaches the track, she screams: “One!”

She doesn’t blink as Layla raises an outstretched palm. The other side of the sky is visible through a hole in the center of it. Her shoulders dip back suddenly, as if absorbing some recoil. And with a pulse and a pop of atmosphere, like the sensation of sound being sucked from the air just before a thunderclap, a gaping black hole develops in the road just before the tracks, a perfect circle the precise diameter of a six-maybe-seven-vehicle convoy.

The train speeds by in time to see the bandits drop one by one into the pit, each driving much too fast to slow down. And as the last vehicle falls completely out of sight, the hole closes again, the old road complete with its cracks and ancient potholes, the forest trees back in their place beside the river.

Sam is speechless when they return to the armory car. She wants to tell Redd his flat “well done” is insufficient praise for whatever it was that just happened. She wants to ask Layla if she’s okay, if she maybe needs to lie down, what had the kiss been about, and maybe if she’d liked it. But they walk back to her bunk as if they’d just come from a late dinner at the Currant, and Layla seems all too pleased to find the half a tangerine she’d forgotten about.

“Vitamin C,” she says, chewing thirstily on a wedge. “So vital to putting holes in things. Who knew?”

Sam clicks on her recorder and places it on the bed between them. Layla inspects her Uno hand for next moves and Sam watches her.

“You get your…power…from oranges?” Sam asks.

Layla pauses thoughtfully. “Not exactly, but I’m more effective with them than without them. Ever try to do magic with scurvy?”

“I…no?” Sam mutters, only half certain the question was rhetorical. Her face is raw, cheeks buzzing with wind-burn and mild embarrassment. She chews at a dry spot on her bottom lip, wondering if it’d been this rough when Layla kissed her.

“Do you want to re-cap what happened up there? For posterity?”

The kiss. The plummeting of pirates into a gaping abyss. She’ll let Layla decide.

“Me? No. Magicians and our secrets, after all. Do you?”

Sam narrows her eyes. There is elusive and then there’s Layla.

A cook with an impish grin and a generally pungent air squeezes past someone climbing into a bunk and bumps Sam with a lumpy, mesh bag of potatoes. There is whispering and snickering as the cook stops in the aisle behind her, allowing other members of the kitchen staff to take them and hide potatoes in shoes and under pillows and mattresses.

“Oh. There they are,” Layla muses. “You’re not hiding from Yvette, are you? She’ll be through here looking for lost produce sooner or later.”

Sam sighs. “Hiding is a strong word but you’re right. I should probably get to the kitchen. One question, though. Just the one.”

Layla sighs, seemingly resigned, and Sam feels victorious. “Alright. What is it?”

“Where did that hole go?”

And here Layla shrugs, plying a slice of fruit into her mouth and dropping another Draw 4 on their stack.

“Hell, naturally.”