“She returns,” he announced, shaking his penis off, tucking it into his pants.

Val beelined into the middle of the circle of bedding each person or family had laid out, past where Bea and Glen had just lain down to bed. She marched straight to where Carl lay, on top of his bedding, his arm tucked behind his head, looking up at the stars in performed reverie. Everyone braced for an argument, for Val’s screech and Carl’s smug, terse retorts, maybe some kicks to his ribs. Their usual spar with Carl feigning the high road and Val taking cheap shots. But instead Val pulled up her tunic and straddled him in one swift movement that reminded Bea of a big cat pouncing. Val strangled Carl as she also began to fuck him. She screamed obscenities while he gurgled and growled. After a moment he tore her hands from his throat and grabbed her hair, snapping her head back so hard that around the bed circle they heard her xylophone vertebra aligning and her shocked, excited gasp. Then Carl’s hands groped at her hips and he thrust her back and forth, grunting angrily, while she clawed at his chest. Their sex was so loud and aggressive that Bea reached for Agnes, to cover her ears, and was relieved to remember that Agnes had slunk off, and was, as far as she knew, not witnessing this.

Everyone under the starlight tried to look at something other than Carl and Val’s glowing shapes fucking vigorously, to listen to something other than their animal grunts and screams. But it was hard to ignore. Bea heard some others trying to stay silent as they touched themselves. Glen reached for Bea and pressed his erection against her, but she pushed him away even though she herself was throbbing. Disappointed, he cupped himself and shrank from her. They both lay awake, uneasy under the stars.

*

They supposed the Post was on the other side of the playa, which was now dune-covered. But the playa was large. Larger than they’d thought. They had to stumble through the loose sand. They made slow progress.

After a day they believed they saw buildings. And they had been passing more human debris, the kind of things left by the wayside when a person is nearing home and getting careless: the foil from a piece of gum, a once-blue plastic pen cap that had yellowed. They were certain they saw rooftops glinting ahead.

After the sun slipped fully behind the ridge, they stopped walking and prepared dinner and prepared for darkness. The mountains turned stone-colored.

A line formed at the Cast Iron, but Val cut to the front and exclaimed, “I need more food because I’m eating for two!”

Debra and Juan, stirring the pot, looked at each other quizzically, then around at the others who waited for their portion. Then to Carl, who nodded. They gave her more. Bea shook her head. Val often thought she was pregnant. Bea was grateful she never turned out to be right. Carl and Val individually were difficult to stomach. She was sure Val wanted a child to solidify that union and that power. They enjoyed being at the top too much. Every chance they had, they tried to subvert a Community decision to follow their own idea, and were gleeful when it worked. Leaders shouldn’t enjoy leadership, she told herself. Like Glen said, it should be a role one takes because one feels obligated.

With her hollowed-wood bowl full of stewed rabbit parts, Bea looked for where to sit or stand. Glen was nowhere to be found. Agnes sat close to Val on a log. So close that on the small log there was room for Bea to sit. Agnes, listening to Val prattle on, looked up and saw Bea eyeing the seat next to her. Agnes inched away from Val and widened her knees to try to occupy the empty space. Bea had to swallow a laugh at how childishly cruel her child could be.

Juan walked in circles a few hundred feet from them. He seemed to be talking to himself, gesturing in an orating manner with one hand while holding his bowl of food in the other. Dr. Harold sat in the dirt morosely watching Debra, who was eating with Pinecone and Sister and Brother.

Bea’s eyes eventually rested on Carl, who was already watching her. He sat alone on a log, and when he caught her eye, he patted the space next to him. Where was Glen?

Bea didn’t want to sit next to Carl. She couldn’t stop thinking about their evening huddled together. Actions that she had told herself were essential had become a cringe-worthy offense. But there was no way to refuse a seat next to him now. Where would she go? Sit alone in a sand dune? A refusal would be obvious. He was watching her for glimmers of shame. She would not show him any. She strode over.

“Hello,” she said cordially.

He nodded, his mouth full. He did not say more. Why had she thought sitting next to Carl would mean something? He had merely motioned for her to sit where there was an empty seat. She sat feeling vaguely humiliated and unsure why.

Across the fire, Agnes slouched now and looked bored as Val made some kind of soliloquy, her hand on her belly and her other hand fondling Agnes’s hair, something Bea knew Agnes hated, and she hated to see Agnes allowing it. She wondered when Agnes would cease to be mercurial. Would she ever be a spritely girl, game and smiling again like when she was very young, before she got sick? Or when they’d first arrived here, when she’d rebounded, eyes dancing, feet running. Making up for the lost bedridden time. She wasn’t that young girl anymore, though, in sickness or in health.

Bea thought about all their original reasons for coming to this strange Wilderness. Had everyone altered their reason for being here by now, or were they still clinging to adventure, health, opportunity? Opportunity for what? Had she? Looking at her daughter’s scowl made Bea laugh at her reason: To keep my daughter well. This was an overture of love to a girl who now seemed to loathe such overtures. She wondered if it was a martyr’s overture too. One couldn’t live like this for unselfish reasons alone. But nothing she landed on felt true anymore. Was fear for her daughter enough?

She wished she could talk to her mother about it. She would write a letter and mail it at Post. Though it was exactly the kind of question her mother would relish. Her answer would no doubt be, No! So come home! But Bea thought she could word it so that her message was clear. Her mother knew when to be practical, but she also knew how to be kind, even if it meant not being entirely honest. It was not something Bea had inherited.

In her youth, her own mother was an uneasy caretaker in a changed world that had become almost unrecognizable to her. In Bea’s early womanhood, her mother had been a bemused friend, questioning Bea’s choices though they were often the choices she herself had made. And now, her mother was most like a mother. At an age when she might have thought she didn’t need a mother, Bea craved hers more than ever. In every letter, even the ones where her mother seemed to have embraced Bea’s mission, she still begged for her return. We’ve become so close, it makes me miss you all the more.

She’d been staring at Agnes and Agnes at her when Agnes’s gaze darted to the ridge above them. But Bea saw nothing. When Agnes turned back, Bea felt a primal chill and she looked back up on the ridge to see what up there might have its gaze fixed on them. Where was Glen? she wondered and began to worry. She stood up reflexively, searching the ridge. When she looked back across the fire, Agnes was gone. Bea spotted her walking toward where the sleeping circle had been. There was Glen shaking out the bedding. Agnes arrived and helped him. My weird family, Bea thought, and watched them, her heart light with love but heavy with regret for whatever it was that made people keep one another at arm’s length. It was a deep, human, instinctual regret. But it was also personal.

As the Community cleaned up and set up bed, they were surprised to see a light blink on in the distance. The light seemed to be moving. Carl cupped his ear toward it.

“It’s a truck,” he said, and the suggestion translated for them the strange alien hum that had broken their desert silence.

“A Ranger truck?” asked Val.

“No, a truck truck.”

“We must be near the Boundary Road,” Glen said, pulling out the map.

Supposedly a raw and frost-heaved road ringed the Wilderness State, connecting the Posts and allowing the Rangers access to different regions without having to disrupt the remote and wild middle. They’d only ever seen the part that stretched between the Posts farther east. There was never anyone on that road, but out here, where it felt emptier, they saw another set of headlights flick on. And then farther ahead another emerged. Then the red tail of a vehicle heading in the opposite direction.