And Carl erupted, “Exactly, this is stupid.”

“I’m not finished, Carl,” Bea said. Carl’s face fell. He knew he’d been baited. Debra’s face brightened. Bea continued, “But of course we can look in the Manual.” She said it calmly, even though she thought this was an idiotic endeavor. Just get in the fucking truck already, she wanted to scream. But she hated Carl and Val’s bullying ways more than she hated this time waste. If someone needed to look at the Manual to feel okay, then they looked at the Manual. It’s how they’d always operated. Carl and Val were becoming more ill-tempered about other people’s needs, and she wouldn’t have it. “Is that okay with everyone?” she cooed.

Everyone nodded except Carl and Val and, Bea noted, Agnes, who was paying close attention to the proceedings rather than playing Shadow Tap with Sister and Brother.

Val was carrying the Manual, and for a brief moment, she held it tightly and sneered at them, showing her teeth in threat. But she finally pulled it out, and also the folder of all the addenda that had accumulated over their years of walking, the result of new rules sent down from the Administration, and ever narrowing interpretations of wildness and wilderness.

As she gripped the cover to open it, the truck driver called out, clearly irritated now, “Well, I didn’t mean for it to be so hard. You want a ride or not? This ship has gotta go.”

They all looked at one another, at the Manual that looked so large and unwieldy, then at Debra, who frowned and looked longingly at the truck. “I just don’t want to get kicked out,” she said, even as they all moved urgently toward the rig.

Then they were hoisting one another onto the tall bed and hauling up the food bags, bedding rolls, the smoker, the garbage, the Manual, the Cast Iron, the Book Bag, all of their belongings. They sat dazed as the truck cranked into motion. Bea leaned against the side and propped her feet up. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had her feet up. Everything in her body sloshed back and forth, settling into an unknown ease. The wind in their hair was so different from when the wind just blew in across the plain, from somewhere else. This wind was soft like careful fingers. Then, as they picked up speed, it got wild and they were trying to push their hair out of their eyes.

The driver cranked open the back window so he could talk to them. He used to work in the Manufacturing Zone, he told them. “But that’s a lonely life,” he said. “Bleep. Bloop. Bleep. Bloop.” So he’d taken a job with the Shipping Districts, and now he sees a bit of this crazy country.

He seemed energized by the company. He barely breathed before launching into his next sentence, about a fish he caught in a river by the road. “Well, I didn’t catch it exactly. It just kind of flopped out of the water and onto the road. The river was flooded, I guess. There was water in the road. It was flopping there. So I grabbed it.”

They all looked at one another. What he was describing was against the rules, but they weren’t going to tell him that. So they just nodded.

“Of course,” the driver continued, “I didn’t know the first thing about how to prepare it. You all probably would have feasted. But I just threw it back. Wow, did it feel weird in my hands. Slippery and sharp. It smelt too. And it looked scared to shit. Which is also part of why I put it back. I hate to scare anything.” He rubbed at the scruff on his face. It made a sound Bea could hear over the roar of the engine. “I haven’t seen a fish in, well—” he said. “A live one, never. It kind of disgusted me, to be honest.”

He turned in his seat as the truck rumbled down the road. “Sorry again for scaring you, kiddos.”

Bea winced, afraid the truck might hit something without his eyes on the road. But what was there to hit? The road melted into the playa.

“Are there always this many cars?” Bea yelled.

“Ha, what do you mean? I haven’t seen any.”

“We’ve seen a lot.”

“Well,” he said, and rubbed his scruff again, and it made Bea tense in some long-forgotten way, like chalk screeching. He said, “It’s a holiday weekend. So maybe people are on the move. It would be mostly Ranger families, maybe a few from the Mines.”

“Is there a big town nearby?”

“Nearby? Not exactly. Nearest? Yes.”

“And so people in this town are allowed to just drive around this place?”

“Oh no, just this stretch of road. And you need permits. Place is a prison. Locked up tight.”

The rain was now spittle. Out at the edge of the playa they could see the clouds breaking. A morning rain, not a full day’s deluge. Steam rose off the playa, the mix of hot and cold and wet weaving a fine curtain in front of their eyes.

The driver peered at them using the rearview mirror. “Crazy what you’re doing, you know,” he said quietly, almost to himself. But Bea heard.

The driver cleared his throat. “Where you headed?”

“The next Post,” said Carl.

“Oh, yeah? What’ll you do there?”

Carl sighed and said nothing. His aim was mystery.

“Paperwork,” said Bea.

The driver laughed hard until he coughed, and it seemed like a real laugh. But she couldn’t be sure. “That’s rich,” he said, chuckling some more, repeating the word. “Paperwork.”

Bea said, “Yeah, I guess everyone has to do it. Our paperwork, your permits for the road.”

“Yep,” the driver said, a little wistfully.

“Lots of rules to follow,” she said. She was thoroughly enjoying this everyman conversation.

“For everyone but the Rangers,” the driver said, laughing joylessly.

“Oh, come on. I’m sure they have some rules,” Bea said. “Everyone has rules.” She knew for a fact Rangers followed rules, because she and Ranger Bob had bonded over their interest in following rules.

“Not everyone and not the Rangers,” the driver said, serious now. “No, the Rangers can pretty much do what they want, when they want, where they want. They’re in charge around here.”

Regret pulsed through Bea. Why did Glen have to be so old? If he’d been Carl’s age, maybe he would have known about the Rangers. They didn’t take Carl because he was a bastard, but wasn’t Glen everything they’d be looking for? If Glen had been a Ranger, Agnes would never have gotten sick. They could have lived here in an actual house. A home. She sighed and realized she was really missing her bed. What an absurd thing to miss now, over five—six? seven?—years later, she thought. She looked at Glen. He was staring into the sky, a happy little smile on his face. Of course, she wouldn’t have met Glen if he’d been a Ranger. She wouldn’t have had Agnes if she’d been a Ranger’s wife. She’d have some other kid. Bea looked at Carl and saw he’d been listening to her conversation with the driver. His jaw was set, red heat rising into his face. She could read his mind. A life without rules had evaded him, because somehow he’d not understood that people who enforce rules don’t have to follow them. It was too much. How had this tragedy happened?

Bea groaned and lay down against the wooden flatbed. The vibration from the road and the might of the truck made her queasy.

Under the grime and the dirt of the truck bed, she could see streaks of purple paint that said something, possibly something important about this truck. Or something that had been important years ago. Perhaps it was nothing.

Agnes turned to her with wet eyes. She touched the truck bed.

“Isn’t it pretty, Mama?” she said.

Bea watched Agnes lick the rusted metal of the truck grate, exploring it fully. She thought of the way Agnes ran after rabbits, or climbed trees when they came across them. Of course she wasn’t sick anymore. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was there was nothing for her in the City. Schools were training grounds for jobs that needed filling. Rooftops didn’t have paths, flowers, gardens of vegetables. They had water-collection tanks, solar grids, cell towers, and barbed wire to guard it all. No one was ever outside unless they were going from one building to another. A few blocks from their building was one tree, gated so no one could touch it. Somehow, it still bloomed every spring and people came from all over to see its tissue-tender pink flowers. And when the petals later dropped, people crowded around the gate to try to catch those that drifted in the wind. The rest rotted around the trunk. It was one of ten trees left in the City. They were lucky to live near it.

The driver was saying something about buildings: “New buildings. All just built. It’s the new Post after the old one didn’t work.”

“Why didn’t it work?” Glen asked, always the seeker of knowledge.

The driver didn’t answer his question.

“This Post has hot springs. And the old cowboys built a little shack over it so it echoes.”

“What old cowboys?”

The trucker barreled on. “Sometimes it’s too hot. Like, it gets a surge of something awful from below. Can’t go in it then. It’ll burn your skin off. But I’m hoping to get a little soak in. My back. This seat.”