Bea turned back to the dark road.

In the course of a night, what had seemed an uncomplicated situation had become overwhelming and messy. For the first time, she wasn’t sure who knew what or thought what about her, and this frightened her. These people she had lived so basely with for so long felt like strangers. She didn’t like for things to shift between them. But she guessed they had been for some time. It made her feel out of control, and in that feeling she realized how in control she’d been since arriving. She’d been a person others deferred to or followed, and she hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t noticed because she hadn’t cared. Why hadn’t she cared? Maybe because she hadn’t cared about any of this, the experiment. It was a game. It made her wish to disappear, to regroup, to assess what her role here was. But thinking of going off alone made her shiver from fear.

So then, take Agnes and Glen, she thought. Shake them awake in the night and steal away, back to Post, back to the City. Live that life again, with all the risk it holds. But no, the fantasy was over before it began. They would never leave. The lump in her throat stopped her breath.

It’s not like she hadn’t seen Carl for what he was. But faced with it now, she could smell the rot, the bile. So she gathered that cold, fearful feeling into her gut and held it there, squeezing until it was hard and compact, a new part of her.

The moon was arcing toward the ridge, and so the depth of the foothills and the ridge face were glowing. It’s pretty, Bea thought. The mountains were tall, and they were real mountains, fronted by a real craggy and proud ridgeline. She suspected the highest point of the ridge might rise a mile above them. If they began to climb, they’d find out how layered and deep the small foothills were. During the day, she’d hardly noticed any depth—in afternoon light it had looked like a flat wall. But now she realized it might be miles and miles of gradual walking before you got the final steep climb to the top. There were mountains to climb before that ridge.

She heard no more cars and saw no more lights. And in their absence that ridge became enormous. She felt its foreboding all at once. Now that she knew how vast everything was. Were they even near the Post? Her legs wobbled. She felt exhausted and wrecked. She wondered if she would freeze to death if she slept right here. She felt such dread in her heart she wasn’t sure her feet would oblige and take her back to camp.

She heard “Psst” behind her.

“Hey, ladybug.” It was Glen. He was there and wrapping a pelt around her shoulders. She felt then how deeply she’d been shivering. “Ladybug,” he sang quietly, and swayed with her there in the blanket. “I didn’t think ladybugs liked the cold,” he whispered into her ear.

Her shivering subsided as he and the blanket warmed her. She realized he was holding her up. Her knees were loose and making circles above her feet.

“Would you like to come to bed?”

She nodded, and felt tears dislodge from the corners of her eyes.

“Would you like some help?”

She nodded again. She felt forgiven. “Take me home,” she said, and he scooped her up and took her to their bed.

? ? ?

A driver lay on the horn as the car rolled slowly by. Palm to the center wheel, one long jeer. With the other hand he brandished his middle finger. The tires spun by, kicking up the remnants of a rare dump of rain collected in the grooves of the asphalt. After the car squealed past, its spent gas burned their nostrils. The children hacked as though they were back in the City with their faces in their pillows.

They’d awoken in puddles, the dry earth unaccustomed to soaking in any water. They couldn’t remember the last time they’d felt rain and scowled that it had come while they slept and so they hadn’t collected it or washed in it. Now their beds were wet. Their clothes stuck to their grimy bodies.

They walked on the road because the dirt shoulder was mud and so was the playa. “Car,” they called up the line. “Car, car, car,” and then a slosh through the mud until it was safe.

The clouds hung in the sky like dirty globes of cotton. An hour into the day’s walk, it began to rain again.

The glinting roof they’d spied from a distance had been nothing but a collection of abandoned buildings, an old Post, inhabited now by a suspicious great horned owl and several families of irritable crows. An empty horse corral was scattered with dried pucks of shit, but no horses. A watering trough with nothing but a shriveled wood rat dead in its bottom. On the door of one of the buildings was nailed a splintery board of wood with a paint-scrawled note: We’ve moved down the road! An arrow pointed to their left. They trudged to the water spigot, and all that came out was a puff of rust. With shoulders slumped, they walked on.

They heard a loud roar behind them, as though a plane might swipe so close it would blow their hair around. When they looked, it was a truck, still miles down the road. As it got closer, it flashed its lights at them and they cleared the road. “Truck,” they called out, and moved to the side.

The truck shook with effort. Its silver paint was muted with dirt and grime, caked on and not coming off anytime soon. It slowed and tooted its horn. It sounded friendly but still all the children except Agnes hid behind the adults.

Even though it was going slow, when the brake was applied the rig convulsed and the back swiveled, out of control briefly. “Whoa,” the driver said as he stopped next to them. “This monster’s not used to the rain.” He smiled with impossibly white teeth. “Are you those folks I read about?” he asked.

Carl stepped in front of the Community, puffing his chest. “We are.”

“Damn it all. Maureen is never going to believe me.” He fumbled with something in his lap. “Let me take a picture,” he said, producing a glimmering rectangle.

“We’d prefer you not,” Carl said, but the man was already tapping it, saying, “Good, okay now, squeeze together,” and they instinctively did what they were told. The camera shimmered just like the guns on the Rangers’ belts and made a loud chirp like a robotic bird with every tap. Sister, Brother, and Pinecone started to cry, at first quietly, then loud and uncontrollably.

The man lowered the rectangle. “Hey now, why are they crying?” he asked.

“You scared them,” said Debra. “They’ve never seen a camera.”

“Oh,” the man said, looking sincerely forlorn. “I feel bad,” he said. His shoulders slumped and he stared intently into his lap. Then he brightened.

“Hey, I can make it up to them. Wanna lift?” He nodded to the flatbed of the truck, caged in steel rails to keep loads in. But there was no load. It was long, empty, and wet. “Won’t keep you dry, but you’ll be wet for less time. Please stop crying, little ones,” he said, but they already had.

They all looked at one another, then closed into a huddle.

“Are we allowed?” Debra asked, voicing the Community’s hesitation.

“Who cares if we are allowed,” Carl said. “The question is, Is this something we want to do?”

“Well, I care if we are allowed because I don’t want to get in trouble,” Debra whispered as though worried someone other than them was listening.

“If we get in trouble, we get in trouble,” said Carl.

“But this seems like a big rule to break if it’s a rule at all. I worry we’d get kicked out.”

“We won’t get kicked out,” said Carl.

“How do you know?” asked Dr. Harold.

“We won’t get kicked out. It’s not in the Manual.”

“We can definitely get kicked out for breaking some rules.”

“But this isn’t one.”

“Are you sure about that?” Dr. Harold said. “Are you sure it doesn’t say that in the Manual?” He glanced at Debra eagerly. No doubt he was attempting to defend her.

Carl sighed. “I mean, yes, I guess so. I don’t know.” His shoulders and face drooped into a superior despair at having to field such inane questions.

The truck driver whistled, then called, “There’s plenty of room for you all, if that’s the problem.”

“One second, sir,” called Glen.

“When did you get so scared, Debra?” said Val, in a pitying tone. She touched her arm quickly, consolingly. But she was trying to make her feel foolish. Debra growled at Val, and Val smirked back.

Bea held her hand up. “I really don’t remember there being any rule about rides, Debra.” She paused.